April 2020 - wlug - University of Waikato Mail Lists

by Lawrence D'Oliveiro

For quite a while now, I’ve been annoyed by the system notification volume going to 100% on my Debian systems, regardless of my attempts to set it to a lower level. For example, when I open the KDE System Settings app, change something, then try to close the window, the sound that accompanies the save/discard/cancel alert is always startlingly loud. I think I have finally found a fix: in your /etc/pulse/daemon.conf, put in a line saying flat-volumes = no (You should find an existing comment “; flat-volumes = yes” that indicates the default.) You can make this new setting take effect in the current session immediately without having to logout or reboot, by executing the following as the currently-logged-in user: pulseaudio -k (This kills and restarts the PulseAudio daemon for your user session.) There are several discussions of the pros and cons of this issue online, going back some years. For example, here <https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1265267>. Also a mention about the “flat-volumes” setting in the ever-reliable Arch Linux Wiki here <https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/PulseAudio>.

1 week

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Random Firefox Tweaks

by Lawrence D'Oliveiro

Been looking at various settings changes you can make in the “about:config” page in Firefox. Here are a couple I have found useful: * keyword.enabled -- set to false to stop Firefox trying to do a search on the contents of the address box if it doesn’t match a URL. This is why I have a search box separate from the address box. * browser.fixup.alternate.enabled -- set to false to stop it helpfully tacking on “www.” and “.com” if the original URL you type doesn’t work. I have occasionally been confused by it complaining about not finding a URL, but showing a different one from the one I typed. By the way, when you first try to view this page, Firefox shows you a warning to ensure you understand the consequences of messing about with settings at this level. It remembers it has shown you this warning by adding the following line to the prefs.js file in your profile: user_pref("browser.aboutConfig.showWarning", false); Firefox seems to overwrite this file when it quits, and reloads it when it is launched again.

1 month, 2 weeks

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How Qualcomm Shook Down The Cell Phone Industry For Almost 20 Years

by Lawrence D'Oliveiro

A pretty sobering read <https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2019/05/how-qualcomm-shook-down-the-cel…>: Qualcomm's first weapon against competitors: patent licensing terms requiring customers to pay a royalty on every phone sold—not just phones that contained Qualcomm's wireless chips. Sound familiar? Judge Koh draws a direct parallel to licensing behavior that got Microsoft in legal trouble in the 1990s. Microsoft would offer PC makers a discount if they agreed to pay Microsoft a licensing fee for every PC sold—whether or not the PC shipped with a copy of MS-DOS. This effectively meant that a PC maker had to pay twice if it shipped a PC running a non-Microsoft operating system. There’s a lot more--the article reads like a catalogue of gangster-like tactics. All of which is perfectly all right under the US interpretation of “Free Enterprise”, of course ... Also, reading the details of how Qualcomm managed to sabotage Intel’s efforts to develop 5G chips, it seems to me that Qualcomm is directly responsible for the situation today where US companies are lagging behind Chinese ones like Huawei in 5G capability.

5 months, 2 weeks

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ddr2 ram

by john

Some years ago, Windows Vista offered users who plugged in a USB flash drive the option of using the device as extra ram. I never actually tried this due to large amount of doubt about the functional ability of the claim. However I now have a number of Linux machines with DDR2 that I am unable to increase the physical memory of and wonder if this is a feasible option for these machines. Cheers John

8 months, 2 weeks

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Inkscape Approaches Version 1.0

by Lawrence D'Oliveiro

Inkscape v1.0 is tentatively due to be released on May 1st. Here <https://www.theregister.co.uk/2020/04/14/16_years_inkscape_v1/> is a backgrounder on how development has been progressing. There seems to be this assumption that Apple users are important: Mac support is hugely important, thanks to the wide use of Macs in the artistic and designer community. while on the other hand, They know that macOS usage has been very small. The new version is using GTK+3, and the UI is more customizable than before. The command shell has also been improved. Finally: Is the open-source business model, or lack of it, holding back Inkscape? "We would advance much faster with even one or two full-time people," said Jeanmougin. "That has been some frustration because we only rely on donations. We get much less than what we would need to hire people."

8 months, 3 weeks

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Join me in taking action

by Roderick Aldridge

I just took part in an Electronic Frontier Foundation campaign titled "Help Stop the Sale of Public Interest Registry to a Private Equity Firm". Will you join me? Take action here: https://act.eff.org/action/help-stop-the-sale-of-public-interest-registry-t… In case you haven't seen this. I expect a lot of FOSS people and organisations are at risk. Roderick

9 months

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Distro Showdown May

by tom butz

I have just checked microphone/camera on my Toshiba laptop running Mint 19.3: they're both ok for a remote meeting. What I could do is talk about the various Linuxes I have used, starting witn Tiny Linux, then Arch-Linux, then OpenBSD, then FreeBSD and finally Mint as well as Ubuntu14 as well as Sparky Linux. Maybe also a bit about my trials with GhostBSD. Why am I using more than 1? Mint 19.3 is the workhorse, Sparky does movies using conventional openshot as well as avidemux and Ubuntu 14 supports USB-tethering out of the box. USB-tethering is way faster than the alternatives and also very secure (as long as no-one nicks your phone). Tom Butz.

9 months

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Google Play has been spreading advanced Android malware for years

by Peter Reutemann

'Hackers have been using Google Play for years to distribute an unusually advanced backdoor capable of stealing a wide range of sensitive data, researchers said on Tuesday. Researchers from security firm Kaspersky Lab have recovered at least eight Google Play apps that date back to 2018, a Kaspersky Lab representative said, but based on archive searches and other methods, the researchers believe malicious apps from the same advanced group seeded Google’s official market since at least 2016. Google removed recent versions of the malware shortly after the researchers from Kaspersky, and earlier fellow security firm Dr. Web, reported them. Apps from earlier were already removed, and it’s not clear what prompted the move. Third-party markets have also hosted the backdoored apps, and many of them remain available. Command-and-control domains were registered as early as 2015, raising the possibility the operation goes back earlier than 2016. Code in the malware and command servers it connects to contain several overlaps with a known hacking group dubbed OceanLotus (aka APT32, APT-C-00, and SeaLotus), leading researchers to believe the apps are the work of that advanced group.' -- source: https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2020/04/sophisticated-androi… Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann Dept. of Computer Science University of Waikato, NZ +64 (7) 858-5174 http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ http://www.data-mining.co.nz/

9 months

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Fairphone 3 Now Available With 'de-Googled' Android /e/OS

by Peter Reutemann

'Fairphone, the European manufacturer of mobile phones with a reduced environmental impact, has announced a partnership to offer /e/OS, the most "de-Googled" and pro-privacy Android OS, on their latest model Fairphone 3. An interesting move that reminds me of the recent introduction of the Google-free Huawei Mate 30. A pithy explainer of its "privacy by design ecosystem" -- and the point of "Android without Google" -- further notes: "We have removed many pieces of code that send your personal data to remote servers without your consent. We don't scan your data in your phone or in your cloud space, and we don't track your location a hundred times a day or collect what you're doing with your apps." According to TechCrunch, the e/OS variant of the Firephone 3 ships from May 6, priced at just under 480 euros -- "a 30 euro premium on the Googley flavor of Android you get on the standard Fairphone 3." The report adds that existing owners of the Fairphone 3 can manually install /e/OS gratis via an installer on its website.' -- source: https://mobile.slashdot.org/story/20/04/29/2131230 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann Dept. of Computer Science University of Waikato, NZ +64 (7) 858-5174 http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ http://www.data-mining.co.nz/

9 months

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Raspberry Pi Gains a New 12.3-Megapixel Camera and Interchangeable Lenses

by Peter Reutemann

'The Raspberry Pi can be used for all sorts of maker projects, and the foundation has offered camera modules for it since 2013, adding vision-related functionality. The first module was a modest 5-megapixel affair that was eventually replaced by an 8-megapixel Sony sensor four years ago. Today, sees the arrival of a new much higher 12.3 megapixel quality camera, and a range of interchangeable lenses. From a report: The new camera is compatible with all Raspberry Pi models -- from Pi 1 Model B onwards -- with the exception of early Pi Zero boards. The camera is available to buy from today for $50.' -- source: https://tech.slashdot.org/story/20/04/30/1554232 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann Dept. of Computer Science University of Waikato, NZ +64 (7) 858-5174 http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ http://www.data-mining.co.nz/

9 months

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wlug April 2020