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>.
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.
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.
'Websites are still capable of detecting when a visitor is using
Chrome's incognito (private browsing) mode, despite Google's efforts
last year to disrupt the practice. From a report:
It is still possible to detect incognito mode in Chrome, and all the
other Chromium-based browsers, such as Edge, Opera, Vivaldi, and
Brave, all of which share the core of Chrome's codebase. Furthermore,
developers have taken the scripts shared last year and have expanded
support to non-Chrome browsers, such as Firefox and Safari, allowing
sites to block users in incognito mode across the board. Currently,
there is no deadline for a new Chrome update to block incognito mode
detections, however, today, Google might be interested more than ever
in fixing this issue'
-- source: https://yro.slashdot.org/story/20/06/04/1857211
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/
'Google has removed this month 25 Android apps from the Google Play
Store that were caught stealing Facebook credentials. From a report:
Before being taken down, the 25 apps were collectively downloaded more
than 2.34 million times. The malicious apps were developed by the same
threat group and despite offering different features, under the hood,
all the apps worked the same. According to a report from French
cyber-security firm Evina shared with ZDNet today, the apps posed as
step counters, image editors, video editors, wallpaper apps,
flashlight applications, file managers, and mobile games. The apps
offered a legitimate functionality, but they also contained malicious
code. Evina researchers say the apps contained code that detected what
app a user recently opened and had in the phone's foreground. If the
app was Facebook, the malicious app would overlay a web browser window
on top of the official Facebook app and load a fake Facebook login
page (see image below: blue bar = actual Facebook app, black bar =
phishing page).'
-- source: https://tech.slashdot.org/story/20/06/30/1411202
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/
'Android's long-awaited "Nearby Sharing" feature, which allows you to
share files between Android devices wirelessly, is rolling out to beta
testers. Android Police reports:
Nearby Sharing may appear slightly differently depending on the type
of content you try to share. In all cases, it shows up as an app in
the apps list on the share sheet, but you may also get a smaller
prompt just under the content preview, more like it did in the
previous Android 11 video leak. We tested it on a Pixel 4 XL and Pixel
3a running Android 10, but the appearance may also vary on other
versions of Android. Note that Nearby Share works for both files like
photos or videos, as well as other shareable content like Tweets and
URLs. It probably works with a lot of things.
Select Nearby Share in the share sheet as the target, and you're
prompted to turn on the feature, if it's the first time you've used
it. The quick setup process lets you configure your default device
name and device visibility settings, though those can also be changed
later. Once you have it enabled, Nearby Sharing starts looking for
other nearby devices. The interface is pretty simple: A big X in the
top left corner backs you out, your avatar on the right takes you to a
settings pane that lets you configure things like your device name,
visibility, and which mechanism to use to make the transfer (i.e.,
whether to use your internet connection for small files, to stick to
Wi-Fi, or to always share offline).
Google says Nearby Share is currently in limited testing via the Play
Services beta: "We're currently conducting a beta test of a new Nearby
Share feature that we plan to share more information on in the future.
Our goal is to launch the feature with support for Android 6+ devices
as well as other platforms."'
-- source: https://mobile.slashdot.org/story/20/06/30/2014259
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/
'Apple said last week that it declined to implement 16 new web
technologies (Web APIs) in Safari because they posed a threat to user
privacy by opening new avenues for user fingerprinting. Technologies
that Apple declined to include in Safari because of user
fingerprinting concerns include:
Web Bluetooth - Allows websites to connect to nearby Bluetooth LE devices.
Web MIDI API - Allows websites to enumerate, manipulate and access MIDI devices.
Magnetometer API - Allows websites to access data about the local
magnetic field around a user, as detected by the device's primary
magnetometer sensor.
Web NFC API - Allows websites to communicate with NFC tags through a
device's NFC reader.
Device Memory API - Allows websites to receive the approximate amount
of device memory in gigabytes.
Network Information API - Provides information about the connection a
device is using to communicate with the network and provides a means
for scripts to be notified if the connection type changes.
Battery Status API - Allows websites to receive information about the
battery status of the hosting device. Web Bluetooth Scanning - Allows
websites to scan for nearby Bluetooth LE devices.
Ambient Light Sensor - Lets websites get the current light level or
illuminance of the ambient light around the hosting device via the
device's native sensors.
[...]
The vast majority of these APIs are only implemented in Chromium-based
browsers, and very few on Mozilla's platform. Apple claims that the 16
Web APIs above would allow online advertisers and data analytics firms
to create scripts that fingerprint users and their devices. '
-- source: https://apple.slashdot.org/story/20/06/29/1456247
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/
'Earlier this month, the Haiku project released the second beta of its
namesake operating system, Haiku.
Haiku is the reimagining of a particularly ambitious, forward-looking
operating system from 1995—Be, Inc.'s BeOS. BeOS was developed to take
advantage of Symmetrical Multi-Processing (SMP) hardware using
techniques we take for granted today—kernel-scheduled pre-emptive
multitasking, ubiquitous multithreading, and BFS—a 64-bit journaling
filesystem of its very own.
[...]
In June 2020—nineteen years after OpenBeOS was born, and sixteen after
its rename to Haiku—the project released its second beta distribution.
The project still adheres to backward application compatibility with
1990s BeOS—although only in its 32-bit version, which I did not test.'
-- source: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2020/06/a-decidedly-non-linux-distro-walkth…
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/
'Both Edge and Chrome already allow users to try unreleased,
experimental features (by typing about:flags in the address bar). Soon
there'll be a similar "Firefox Experiments" option starting in Firefox
79.
Slashdot reader techtsp shares this report from the Windows Club:
Mozilla has a dedicated Experimental Features page on MDN just for
that. But limiting experimental features to Firefox's Nightly channel
has a limitation: A fairly limited number of "curious" users. Now,
extending some of these experimental features to stable releases will
increase the scope of "Firefox Experiments" as a whole... This option
will allow users to enable/disable experimental features under
Preferences...
[In Firefox 79] Navigate to Preferences by entering about:preferences
in the browser's address bar or click the gear icon and got to
"Preferences." Discover and set browser.preferences.experimental to
True. Now, you should be able to see the "Firefox Experiments" menu
under Firefox 79 Preferences.'
-- source: https://tech.slashdot.org/story/20/06/27/0321206
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/
'The iPhone that Moroccan journalist Omar Radi used to contact his
sources also allowed his government to spy on him (and at least two
other journalists), reports the Toronto Star, citing new research from
Amnesty International.
Slashdot reader Iwastheone shares their report:
Their government could read every email, text and website visited;
listen to every phone call and watch every video conference; download
calendar entries, monitor GPS coordinates, and even turn on the camera
and microphone to see and hear where the phone was at any moment.
Yet Radi was trained in encryption and cyber security. He hadn't
clicked on any suspicious links and didn't have any missed calls on
WhatsApp — both well-documented ways a cell phone can be hacked.
Instead, a report published Monday by Amnesty International shows Radi
was targeted by a new and frighteningly stealthy technique. All he had
to do was visit one website. Any website.
Forensic evidence gathered by Amnesty International on Radi's phone
shows that it was infected by "network injection," a fully automated
method where an attacker intercepts a cellular signal when it makes a
request to visit a website. In milliseconds, the web browser is
diverted to a malicious site and spyware code is downloaded that
allows remote access to everything on the phone. The browser then
redirects to the intended website and the user is none the wiser.
Two more human rights advocates in Morocco have been targeted by the
same malware, the article reports.'
-- source: https://yro.slashdot.org/story/20/06/27/029222
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/