OSnews - Exploring the Future of Computing

One Windows Kernel

Thom Holwerda 2018-10-26 Windows 34 Comments

Windows is one of the most versatile and flexible operating systems out there, running on a variety of machine architectures and available in multiple SKUs. It currently supports x86, x64, ARM and ARM64 architectures. Windows used to support Itanium, PowerPC, DEC Alpha, and MIPS. In addition, Windows supports a variety of SKUs that run in a multitude of environments; from data centers, laptops, Xbox, phones to embedded IOT devices such as ATM machines.

The most amazing aspect of all this is that the core of Windows, its kernel, remains virtually unchanged on all these architectures and SKUs. The Windows kernel scales dynamically depending on the architecture and the processor that it’s run on to exploit the full power of the hardware. There is of course some architecture specific code in the Windows kernel, however this is kept to a minimum to allow Windows to run on a variety of architectures.

In this blog post, I will talk about the evolution of the core pieces of the Windows kernel that allows it to transparently scale across a low power NVidia Tegra chip on the Surface RT from 2012, to the giant behemoths that power Azure data centers today.

This is a fun article to read, written by Hari Pulapaka, member of the Windows Kernel Team at Microsoft. I feel like in our focus on Microsoft as a company and Windows a whole - either the good or the bad parts of both - we tend to forget that there's also a lot of interesting and fascinating technology happening underneath it all. The Linux kernel obviously gets a lot of well-deserved attention, but you rarely read about the NT kernel, mostly because it isn't open source so nobody can really look at the nitty-gritty.

I hope we'll be getting more up-to-date articles like this.

Copyright Office ruling issues sweeping right to repair reforms

Thom Holwerda 2018-10-26 Legal 3 Comments

On behalf of the iFixit community, I came to ask for permission to circumvent digital locks in order to fix our stuff. Fortunately, I wasn't alone. Along with Robert and Matt representing Repair.org, I was joined by Cynthia Replogle, iFixit's rockstar lawyer. And Cory Doctorow, Kit Walsh, and Mitch Stoltz from the Electronic Frontier Foundation, as well as Jay 'Saurik' Freeman of Cydia iPhone jailbreaking fame. We also had help from Jef Pearlman and his team of students from Stanford's IP law clinic. Our allies were met with opposition from a variety of moneyed and acronymed interests - the MPAA, RIAA, and the Auto Alliance, to name a few.

Over three full days in LA, we were grilled by the Copyright Office. They wanted details on how cell phone baseband processors work, how automotive telematics systems are different from OBD II diagnostics, why you can’t simply swap in a new Blu-ray drive into an Xbox, and so forth. It was exhausting - for us and for them. But they had done their homework, and asked intelligent questions on a startling variety of topics.

The ruling is out, and thanks to the hard work of these individuals, American consumers have a few more rights regarding repair than they did before. Excellent work, and let's hope this sets a positive precedent.

Reusing old hardware

Thom Holwerda 2018-10-26 Hardware 13 Comments

Everybody has one. At least one. Collecting dust in a closet somewhere; waiting to be thrown away. It's not a time capsule per-se, but if you looked at it now it would probably show you a snapshot of a life you lived not that long ago. It was once a source of pride, entertainment, accomplishment or perhaps comfort. Maybe it was a status symbol. Now you would call it useless, worthless, junk.

We're not talking about the photo album from your dormroom party days, although it might still contain a copy. We’re talking about your old PC, laptop, netbook, or computer. That thing you spent hundreds or thousands of dollars on to sit in front of for hours doing whatever it is that you do. Maybe it helped you get a degree, or maybe it was your primary source of income. Doesn’t matter now anyway. Your smart-toaster does more MIPS and FLOPS with half the power! There's no value in an old computer, right?

Wrong! If the commoditization of computing hardware and the steady marching of Moore's law has done anything to old computers it has been to breathe new life into them. How, you ask?

Putting old hardware to new uses is one way of recycling - I tend to give away my "old" smartphones as I buy new ones way too often. Often, a friend's phone stopped working or a family member needs a new one - so I just give them mine.

Windows Phone Internals now open source

Thom Holwerda 2018-10-26 Windows No Comments

The remaining Windows Phone community have a lot of thanks due to Rene Lergner a.k.a. Heathcliff74, who created the Windows 10 Mobile unlock solution that finally broke Microsoft's bootloader protections and who allowed such crazy developments such as full Windows 10 on ARM.

He's gotten a bit busy however and will not be able to give the project his full attention any more.

Like any good hacker in that position, instead of just disappearing, he has made his project, WPInternals, open source, meaning any good developer can take over his work, to update, modify or bug fix.

Good move - and most likely the only way for the foreseeable future we'll be able to do any modding of Windows Phone and its devices, considering Microsoft has mostly abandoned the platform.

Qt Design Studio 1.0 released

Thom Holwerda 2018-10-26 Qt 3 Comments

Qt Design Studio is a UI design and development environment that enables designers and developers to rapidly prototype and develop complex and scalable UIs.

Qt Design Studio is a tool used by both designers and developers and that makes collaboration between the two a lot simpler and more streamlined: Designers can look the graphical view, while developers can look at the QML code. With this workflow, designers can have their Photoshop designs running on real devices in minutes! As an aside, I say Photoshop designs, but we are planning to support other graphic design tools in the future.

How Google protected Andy Rubin, the ‘father of Android’

Thom Holwerda 2018-10-25 Google 60 Comments

What Google did not make public was that an employee had accused Mr. Rubin of sexual misconduct. The woman, with whom Mr. Rubin had been having an extramarital relationship, said he coerced her into performing oral sex in a hotel room in 2013, according to two company executives with knowledge of the episode. Google investigated and concluded her claim was credible, said the people, who spoke on the condition that they not be named, citing confidentiality agreements. Mr. Rubin was notified, they said, and Mr. Page asked for his resignation.

Google could have fired Mr. Rubin and paid him little to nothing on the way out. Instead, the company handed him a $90 million exit package, paid in installments of about $2 million a month for four years, said two people with knowledge of the terms. The last payment is scheduled for next month.

Mr. Rubin was one of three executives that Google protected over the past decade after they were accused of sexual misconduct. In two instances, it ousted senior executives, but softened the blow by paying them millions of dollars as they departed, even though it had no legal obligation to do so. In a third, the executive remained in a highly compensated post at the company. Each time Google stayed silent about the accusations against the men.

Great reporting by The New York Times - a story they've been working on for over a year.

So just to summarise this story: Andy Rubin and several other powerful men at Google have been either paid vast sums of money or given a high-paying job after being credibly accused of sexual harassment. This would be unbelievable if it wasn't 100% in line with everything we know about the male-centric bro culture of the technology industry. This should be 100% unacceptable, and not only the men involved ought to be fired, but Larry Page should also be forced to resign.

Unless these acts have consequences - as opposed to millions of dollars in rewards - society will never get rid of pathetic little men like these.

Making it easier to control your data in Google products

Thom Holwerda 2018-10-24 Google 10 Comments

We're always working on making it easier for you to understand and control your data so you can make privacy choices that are right for you. Earlier this year, we launched a new Google Account experience that puts your privacy and security front and center, and we updated our Privacy Policy with videos and clearer language to better describe the information we collect, why we collect it, and how you can control it.

Today, we're making it easier for you to make decisions about your data directly within the Google products you use every day, starting with Search. Without ever leaving Search, you can now review and delete your recent Search activity, get quick access to the most relevant privacy controls in your Google Account, and learn more about how Search works with your data.

I guess it's a good step, but I think we're long past the point where it even matters.

Google mandates two years of Android security updates

Thom Holwerda 2018-10-24 Android 32 Comments

Every month, a security team at Google releases a new set of patches for Android - and every month, carriers and manufacturers struggle to get them installed on actual phones. It's a complex, long-standing problem, but confidential contracts obtained by The Verge show many manufacturers now have explicit obligations about keeping their phones updated written into their contract with Google.

A contract obtained by The Verge requires Android device makers to regularly install updates for any popular phone or tablet for at least two years. Google's contract with Android partners stipulates that they must provide "at least four security updates" within one year of the phone's launch. Security updates are mandated within the second year as well, though without a specified minimum number of releases.

Be still my beating heart - four whole security updates in the first year, and "a" security update in the second year? How mightily generous.

iFixit and Motorola partner to sell official device repair kits

Thom Holwerda 2018-10-23 Wireless 29 Comments

Motorola is setting an example for major manufacturers to embrace a more open attitude towards repair. If you're a Motorola customer, you can now either send in your broken device directly to Motorola for repair - or you can fix it yourself with the highest quality parts and tools, plus a free step-by-step guide, all included in our official Motorola OEM Fix Kits.

That's a model worth replicating, and we couldn't be more thrilled to consider Motorola a repair ally.

This is a very welcome move, and I deeply hope more companies will follow in Motorola's footsteps here. It's refreshing to see a large company actually care about repairability, and even more so to see such a company actively working with repair partners to make it easier for consumers to repair devices themselves.

Network of more than 125 Android apps used in ad fraud scheme

Thom Holwerda 2018-10-23 Android 19 Comments

But an investigation by BuzzFeed News reveals that these seemingly separate apps and companies are today part of a massive, sophisticated digital advertising fraud scheme involving more than 125 Android apps and websites connected to a network of front and shell companies in Cyprus, Malta, British Virgin Islands, Croatia, Bulgaria, and elsewhere. More than a dozen of the affected apps are targeted at kids or teens, and a person involved in the scheme estimates it has stolen hundreds of millions of dollars from brands whose ads were shown to bots instead of actual humans.

Scammers were buying applications from developers, and after adding usage behavior tracking tools to these existing applications, used said data to mimic "real" user behaviour.

One way the fraudsters find apps for their scheme is to acquire legitimate apps through We Purchase Apps and transfer them to shell companies. They then capture the behavior of the app’s human users and program a vast network of bots to mimic it, according to analysis from Protected Media, a cybersecurity and fraud detection firm that analyzed the apps and websites at BuzzFeed News' request.

Sure, this is all terrible and probably quite illegal, but honestly, you have to respect the ingenuity here.

Submitted by dboddie 2018-10-23 RISC OS 24 Comments

RISC OS Open Ltd (ROOL) are hugely proud to announce that we will be working with RISC OS Developments (ROD), following their recent acquisition of the RISC OS intellectual property through the purchase of Castle Technology Ltd (Castle), in the next phase of the mission to reinvigorate the RISC OS market.

ROD will be working alongside community maintainers ROOL to republish the source code to this popular niche operating system under the Apache 2.0 License, in a move aimed at removing existing barriers to entry for developers from the open source community and enabling free-of-charge use in commercial products for the first time in RISC OS's history.

Great news for the RISC OS community, and I hope this ensures RISC OS will remain available to play and hack with for years and years to come.

Qualcomm: Google Chrome is coming to Windows on ARM

Thom Holwerda 2018-10-22 Windows 20 Comments

One of the downsides of Windows on ARM is the lack of third-party browser - Edge is one of the few choices you have. Sure, you can run x86 browsers through emulation, but preferably, you'd have native options.

One potential solution is an Arm port of Chrome, as opposed to emulating the desktop (x86) version of the browser, but is Qualcomm working on this?

"We are," Qualcomm senior director of product management Miguel Nunes told Android Authority on the sidelines of Arm TechCon. "We're still working with the different OEMs and designs. I expect you'll see it probably around (the) second half of next year. Every OEM will decide whatever their launch timeline is, but we're actively working on it."

I hope more people start building applications for Windows on ARM. I want ARM laptops (and possibly even desktops) to offer credible competition to Intel and AMD.

Guest post by diegocg 2018-10-22 Linux 3 Comments

Linux 4.19 has been released. This release adds support for the CAKE network queue management to fight bufferbloat, support for guaranteeing minimum I/O latency targets for cgroups, experimental support for the future Wi-Fi 6 (802.11ax-drafts), memory usage for overlayfs users has been improved, a experimental EROFS file system optimized for read-only use, a new asynchronous I/O polling interface, support for avoiding unintentional writes to an attacker-controlled FIFO or regular files in world writable sticky directories, support for a Intel feature that locks part of the CPU cache for an application, and many other improvements and new drivers. For more details, see the complete changelog.

Slack on a SNES

Thom Holwerda 2018-10-22 Games 5 Comments

I recently learned that in the mid 90s in Japan, the Super Nintendo had a peripheral called a Satellaview, which was a satellite modem that would receive data broadcasts from Nintendo.

Are you thinking what I’m thinking? Probably not, but if you can beam satellite signals to a SNES, you can probably run Slack on it.

I love obscure game console accessoires.

Vivaldi 2.0 review: browsers do not have to be so bland

Thom Holwerda 2018-10-22 Internet 8 Comments

Roughly a year and a half later, Vivaldi has recently hit the 2.0 milestone. You can download the latest version from the Vivaldi site or install it through the app store or package manager of your OS. And at first blush, perhaps the most shocking thing about this release is that it's merely 2.0. This release is a throwback to an earlier time when version numbers had meaning, and a major number increment meant that something major had happened.

While the version number here does mean something, it's also perhaps a tad misleading. Under the hood, Vivaldi tracks Chromium updates, and, like Chrome and Firefox, it issues minor updates every six weeks or so. That means some of the features I'll be discussing as part of 2.0 actually trickled in over time, rather than arriving all together in one monolithic release. It also means that under the hood Vivaldi 2.0 uses Chromium 69.

Vivaldi is a great browser, and I'm glad such a power-user oriented browser - from the founder of Opera, unsurprisingly - still exists. I use it as my main browser every now and then just to see its state of development, and I'll be sure to give 2.0 another go for a few weeks.

Microsoft makes more Windows apps removable

Thom Holwerda 2018-10-20 Windows 17 Comments

Speaking of Windows' development process, the company has released another build for Windows Insiders, and it contains a small change I'm quite happy with.

In 19H1, we are adding the ability to uninstall the following (preinstalled) Windows 10 inbox apps via the context menu on the Start menu All Apps list:

3D Viewer (previously called Mixed Reality Viewer)
Calculator
Calendar
Groove Music
Mail
Movies & TV
Paint 3D
Snip & Sketch
Sticky Notes
Voice Recorder

I'd uninstall all of these except for Calculator, Mail, and Groove Music, so this is a great move - and long overdue. Next step (I hope): how about not preinstalling a whole bunch of junkware on vanilla Windows 10 installations? While I wasn't surprised, it still felt unpleasant to discover that my brand new â‚¬1850 Dell XPS 13 had garbage like the Windows Facebook application and some Sugar whatever games installed.

It's crazy that the applications preinstalled by Dell were all mostly useful and inoffensive, yet Microsoft installs a whole bunch of junk.

It isn’t how often MS updates Windows; it’s how it develops it

Thom Holwerda 2018-10-20 Windows 13 Comments

Developing a Chrome-like testing infrastructure for something as complicated and sprawling as Windows would be a huge undertaking. While some parts of Windows can likely be extensively tested as isolated, standalone components, many parts can only be usefully tested when treated as integrated parts of a complete system. Some of them, such as the OneDrive file syncing feature, even depend on external network services to operate. It's not a trivial exercise at all.

Adopting the principle that the Windows code should always be shipping quality - not "after a few months of fixing" but "right now, at any moment" - would be an enormous change. But it's a necessary one. Microsoft needs to be in a position where each new update is production quality from day one; a world where updating to the latest and greatest release is a no-brainer, a choice that can be confidently taken. Feature updates should be non-events, barely noticed by users. Cutting back to one release a year, or one release every three years, doesn't do that, and it never did. It's the process itself that needs to change: not the timescale.

The latest Windows feature update had to be pulled due to a serious data deletion bug, so it makes sense to take a good look at the development process of Windows, and what can be changed to prevent such problems from appearing again.

Google app suite costs as much as $40 per phone in the EU

Thom Holwerda 2018-10-19 Android 32 Comments

After news earlier this week that Google was going to make sweeping changes to how it licenses Android within the European Union, The Verge now has the prices Google is going to charge.

EU countries are divided into three tiers, with the highest fees coming in the UK, Sweden, Germany, Norway, and the Netherlands. In those countries, a device with a pixel density higher than 500 ppi would have to pay a $40 fee to license Google's suite of apps, according to pricing documents. 400 to 500ppi devices would pay a $20 fee, while devices under 400 ppi would pay only $10. In some countries, for lower-end phones, the fee can be as little as $2.50 per device.

That's quite a bit more than I would've thought.

Guest post by Feneric 2018-10-19 Hardware 4 Comments

From the Byte Cellar:

What inspired me to pull the Model 4 down off the shelf were a number of tweets from telnet BBS pals showing the system being put to great use logged into various systems across the web. Some of the screenshots showed the machine rendering ANSI "graphics" onscreen and I looked into it. As I suspected, the stock Model 4 is not capable of taking on a custom character set such as is needed by ANSI emulation, and I discovered the system had been equipped with a graphics board and the ANSI-supporting terminal program, ANSITerm, was rendering "text" to a graphics display; the character set was basically a software font.

And I just had to go there.

Tim Cook demands Bloomberg retracts spy chips story

Thom Holwerda 2018-10-19 Apple 16 Comments

Apple CEO Tim Cook, in an interview with BuzzFeed News, went on the record for the first time to deny allegations that his company was the victim of a hardware-based attack carried out by the Chinese government. And, in an unprecedented move for the company, he called for a retraction of the story that made this claim.

I have zero reason to believe anything Apple or Tim Cook says on this matter. Apple is utterly and wholly dependent on the Chinese government, and assuming the Bloomberg story is 100% accurate, I doubt Tim Cook would openly side with Bloomberg and thus openly attack the Chinese government. Xi Jinping can literally make or break Apple - the American company cannot build its iPhones anywhere else, as not only would it take an utterly massive hit in its margins, it would take years - possibly even decades - to train the amount of staff needed to build that many iPhones. Apple simply has no choice but to bend over backwards for the Chinese government, which is why Apple readily hands over all of its Chinese customers' data to the Chinese government.

That being said, this doesn't automatically mean the Bloomberg story is 100% accurate. I don't believe in crazy conspiracy theories - conspiracy theories are dumb - about coordinated leaks by the Trump administration to discourage American companies from building their products in China. The Trump administration is wholly and utterly inept at doing anything and is held together only by a common desire to oppress women and minorities and sack America before the curtain falls, so I doubt they could even arrange a single secret meeting with Bloomberg journalists without Trump incoherently tweeting about it or somebody resigning over it.

The truth probably lies somewhere in the middle, and only time will tell where, exactly, that middle lies.