Monthly Archive:: July 2019
British, American and other intelligence agencies from English-speaking countries have concluded a two-day meeting in London amid calls for spies and police officers to be given special, backdoor access to WhatsApp and other encrypted communications. GCHQ, the UK agency which monitors and breaks into communications, has suggested that Silicon Valley companies could develop technology that would silently add a police officer or intelligence agent to conversations or group chats. The moment these fascists turn the backdoor into a legal requirement and manage to steer it through their respective legislitave bodies – by calling it the If You Do Not Support This You Are A Pedophile Act or whatever – the game is pretty much over. The technology companies will roll over and implement these backdoors overnight – just look at how happily technology companies work with the Chinese government. In fact, Facebook is already testing a backdoor in this style today: To solve this problem, Facebook announced earlier this year preliminary results from its efforts to move a global mass surveillance infrastructure directly onto users’ devices where it can bypass the protections of end-to-end encryption. In Facebook’s vision, the actual end-to-end encryption client itself such as WhatsApp will include embedded content moderation and blacklist filtering algorithms. These algorithms will be continually updated from a central cloud service, but will run locally on the user’s device, scanning each cleartext message before it is sent and each encrypted message after it is decrypted. This is going to happen, and it’s going to be a disaster.
bootOS is a monolithic operating system that fits in one boot sector. It’s able to load, execute, and save programs. Also keeps a filesystem. It can work with any floppy disk size starting at 180K. It relocates itself at 0000:7a00 and requires further 768 bytes of memory starting at 0000:7700. Impressive work.
Today, we are very excited to announce a new open source project which enables interaction with traditional desktop environments, such as GNOME and KDE, in VR. Sponsored by Valve, xrdesktop makes window managers aware of VR and is able to use VR runtimes to render desktop windows in 3D space, with the ability of manipulating them with VR controllers and generating mouse and keyboard input from VR. At least the time Valve isn’t spending on making the Steam client not suck or, you know, games, is spent on something worthwhile – improving often neglected aspects of the Linux world.
Blender, the open source 3D computer graphics software package, has released a major new version, Blender 2.80. Among other things, it sports a brand new user interface designed from the ground up, a new physically based real-time renderer, and much, much more. The 2.80 release is dedicated to everyone who has contributed to Blender. To the tirelessly devoted developers. To the artists inspiring them with demos. To the documentation writers. To the Blender Cloud subscribers. To the bug reporters. To the designers. To the Code Quest supporters. To the donators and to the members of the Development Fund. Blender is made by you. Thanks! I remember way back when, in the early 2000s, when people would adamantly state that professional software for fields such as image manipulation and 3D graphics would never be something the open source community could create or maintain. And here we are, almost two decades later, and Blender is a household name in its field, used for all kinds of big, megabudget projects, such as Marvel movies, Ubisoft games, by NASA, and countless others. Blender is a stunning success story.
It has been almost two years since Purism ended its Librem 5 crowdfunder, raising $2.1 million. Now the company has unveiled the final specifications for the device as well as an approximate launch date of Q3 2019. If you’re unfamiliar with the device, the Librem 5 runs PureOS, a fully free and open source operating system that is not based on Android or iOS. The Librem 5 is an incredibly ambitious device, and while the specifications are decidedly low range at this point, it has a number of privacy-oriented features that no other smartphone has, such as the baseband separated form the processor in a black box, hardware toggles for all wireless communications and the camera/microphone, and much more.
If you’ve ever had a Mac that had become completely corrupted, or if you simply deleted the disk partitions, then you’ve probably discovered that Apple has a built-in solution. When you try to boot up the Mac, it will simply connect to the internet, download the version of macOS that came with your PC, and take you through the process of installing it. It seems that Microsoft has an idea in mind now that’s more similar to what Apple does. As discovered by Microsoft leakster WalkingCat, you’ll have the option to ‘cloud download’ Windows 10, or restore from the local image. I used FTP installation on Mandrake Linux ages before this ever became an option for the Mac, so it’s not like this is exactly a very modern or novel feature. Still, better late than never I suppose, and it will make a Windows install a much less cumbersome process if you can’t find your installation medium.
Long obsolete and not just a museum piece, an early massive computer developed 60 years ago remains working, thanks to a technician dedicated to preserving it for future generations. Tadao Hamada believes that keeping the historic FACOM128B operational will help hand down Japan’s technological heritage to posterity. “I will maintain it forever,” said Hamada, 49. The importance of the work done by people like Tadao Hamada cannot be understated. A lot of technology from the ’40s, ’50s, and ’60s is getting ever more obscure, and as their original designers, maintainers, and users die of old age, we need some way to document their knowledge and pass it on so that we can preserve the technology for posterity. Hamada went one step further, and actually had to teach himself how the system and its operating system worked, since there was nobody around to teach him. That’s some serious dedication, and I applaud both him, and Fujitsu who set up the project to preserve technology.
Given that the Switch isn’t intended to run an alternate OS whatsoever, the state of the ROM is impressive. Android works in handheld and docked mode, audio and Joycons work flawlessly, and there’s even an optional ‘Shield-ifier’ mode that turns the Switch into an Nvidia Shield TV (complete with support for Nvidia Gamestream and some Shield-exclusive games). However, there are still plenty of bugs, like spotty Wi-Fi and a lack of rotation support. This is quite an impressive ROM – there are Android phones with crappier LineageOS support than this.
Among the 23 recommendations is a call for the government to set up an office in the commission to scrutinize the algorithms used by Google and Facebook to rank news and advertising. The report said the office would have the power to order Facebook, Google and other tech giants to hand information over to regulators. “This particular branch of the will be able to be approached by various companies who believe that the algorithms have been misused,” Mr. Frydenberg said. He promised the government would “lift the veil” on how tech firms made money out of user data they collect. No proper person who believes in freedom, democracy, and an open society would ever advocate for the government to tell newspapers and TV stations what they can and cannot print and broadcast. Yet, plans like this Australian one seem to advocate for complete control over Google, Facebook, and others to do pretty much the same thing. Somewhere, a line has to be drawn between what constitutes the free press on one side, and non-press websites on the other. Current laws and lawmakers seem quite inept at drawing this line in a consistent, safe way, but you can’t really blame them for that – we’ve entered a new era, and the lines are ever fuzzier and more difficult to discern. Even if lines can be properly drawn, we have to worry about the potential for government abuse. Especially in countries with winner-takes-all two-party systems – such as the United States and the United Kingdom – where one party tends to have pretty much total control over the branches of government, the potential for abuse towards the opposing party is incredibly tempting. Many countries will be facing this issue head-on over the coming years, and don’t be fooled – it will have a tremendous impact on how societies in those countries function.
Here is my little thread about Lightning video adapters – also known as Haywire – which are actually computers that feature Apple Secure Boot and run Darwin kernel. I rarely link to Twitter threads, but this one is really good.
One driving force behind the adoption of EME was the ever-tighter integration between major browser vendors like Google, video distributors, and advertising networks. This created a lopsided power-dynamic that ultimately ended up in the standardization of a means of undoing the configurable Web—where the user is king. EME is the first crack in the wall that protected browsers from those who would thwart adversarial operability and take “how about nah?” off the table, leaving us with the kind of take-it-or-leave-it Web that the marketing industry has been striving for since the first pop-up ad.
I love fast software. That is, software speedy both in function and interface. Software with minimal to no lag between wanting to activate or manipulate something and the thing happening. Lightness. Software that’s speedy usually means it’s focused. Like a good tool, it often means that it’s simple, but that’s not necessarily true. Speed in software is probably the most valuable, least valued asset. To me, speedy software is the difference between an application smoothly integrating into your life, and one called upon with great reluctance. Fastness in software is like great margins in a book — makes you smile without necessarily knowing why. Nothing to add.
The U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee has concluded that election systems in all 50 states were targeted by hackers linked to the Russian government, according to a heavily redacted report released today. And — as previously reported — the report says that Russia could have actually tampered with election systems if it wanted to: “Russian cyber actors were in a position to delete or change voter data,” the report reads. On a related note, Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell blocked two bills designed to secure the voting process and prevent more Russian meddling. At this point, one has to wonder what kind of videos the Russians have of McConnell. In any event, securing the voting process against foreign interference should be the number one concern for any democratic society – it’s why The Netherlands went back to paper voting several years ago – regardless of political affiliation. Treason is a real thing.
Amazon’s home security company Ring has enlisted local police departments around the country to advertise its surveillance cameras in exchange for free Ring products and a “portal” that allows police to request footage from these cameras, a secret agreement obtained by Motherboard shows. The agreement also requires police to “keep the terms of this program confidential.” In any functional democracy, this would be highly illegal.
Estrada had promised a demonstration of a remarkable new instrument, one that had changed the whole way he made music. Two walls of the room were dedicated to racks of synthesizers — row after row of buttons and knobs and unwieldy wiring, a veritable museum of advanced technology spanning decades and costing thousands of dollars. Estrada ignored all of it. Instead, he plucked a small device from the spot where it was hanging from a hook. It looked like the exploded innards of a calculator, with a splat of knobs and buttons. There was no keyboard. Estrada plugged it into a set of speakers, held it in both hands and hunched over it slightly, as if handling a phone while texting, and began to play. He punched the buttons, and a rapid-fire sequence of clicks began to repeat. Then he twisted one of the knobs, and the clicks deepened into a more hollow sound, like that of a kick drum. More button punches, more knob twists, more sounds: a spacey high-hat, a background static roar, a tonal burst that altered slightly and quickly became a repeated phrase. Suddenly there was more than a beat; there was a little song. Technology changes and democratises in more ways than one, and no industry is safe from its effects. What a fascinating story and device.
Apple and Intel have signed an agreement for Apple to acquire the majority of Intel’s smartphone modem business. Approximately 2,200 Intel employees will join Apple, along with intellectual property, equipment and leases. The transaction, valued at $1 billion, is expected to close in the fourth quarter of 2019, subject to regulatory approvals and other customary conditions, including works council and other relevant consultations in certain jurisdictions. This was widely expected to happen, and will aid Apple in achieving independence from Qualcomm.
Linux kernel headers are the unstable, constantly-changing, internal API of the kernel. This includes internal kernel structures (for example, task_struct) as well as helper macros and functions. Unlike the UAPI headers used to build userspace programs that are stable and backward-compatible, the internal kernel headers can change at any time and any release. While this allows the kernel unlimited flexibility to evolve and change, it presents some difficulties for code that needs to be loaded into the kernel at runtime and executed in kernel context. My solution to the problem is to embed the kernel headers within the kernel image itself and make it available through the sysfs virtual filesystem (usually mounted at /sys) as a compressed archive file (/sys/kernel/kheaders.tar.xz). This archive can be uncompressed as needed to a temporary directory. This simple change guarantees that the headers are always shipped with the running kernel. This change has been added to version 5.2 of the Linux kernel.
Leaked internal Windows 10 build has revealed a brand new Start menu experience that replaces live tiles with a more traditional grid of apps. This Start menu experience is believed to be the Start menu that Microsoft is working on for Windows Lite, featuring a more simplified app layout. The leaked build comes directly from Microsoft itself, thanks to an issue with the Insider Program rolling out builds that were never greenlit to ship to testers. As a result, an internal build that includes features that are not supposed to be seen by the public has leaked. The new Start menu is very early, and its UI isn’t finished. So don’t judge it by its looks just yet. This iteration of the Start menu looks a lot more basic, simple, and straightforward – exactly what I, personally, look for in a launcher: a grid or list of stuff I can click on.
There are two main types of emails on the internet: plaintext and HTML. The former is strongly preferred, but often isn’t set up by default. We’ll get you set up right. HTML emails are mainly used for marketing – that is, emails you probably don’t want to see in the first place. The few advantages they offer for end-users, such as links, inline images, and bold or italic text, aren’t worth the trade-off. I am 100% in the camp of plain text email, but sadly, very few other people – or organisations – are. Some emails become entirely unreadable when displayed as plain text, which is a pain to deal with.
Apple’s mobile apps routinely appear first in search results ahead of competitors in its App Store, a powerful advantage that skirts some of the company’s rules on such rankings, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis. The company’s apps ranked first in more than 60% of basic searches, such as for “maps,” the analysis showed. Apple apps that generate revenue through subscriptions or sales, like Music or Books, showed up first in 95% of searches related to those apps. This dominance gives the company an upper hand in a marketplace that generates $50 billion in annual spending. Services revenue linked to the performance of apps is at the center of Apple’s strategy to diversify its profits as iPhone sales wane. This should surprise absolutely nobody. Apple has a lot riding on becoming a successful services company, and it’s doing a lot of sleazy things already to try and convert iPhone buyers into wallets on legs from whom Cupertino can siphon monthly amounts. It’s only natural that the company would use its Appe Store search engine to promote its own services – something that will surely turn some heads in Europe. The article also has this fascinating little tidbit: Phillip Shoemaker, who led the App Store review process until 2016, said Apple executives were aware of Podcasts’ poor ratings. Around 2015, his team proposed to senior executives that it purge all apps rated lower than two stars to ensure overall quality. “That would kill our Podcasts app,” an Apple executive said, according to Mr. Shoemaker, who has advised some independent apps on the App Store review process since leaving Apple. The proposal was eventually rejected, Mr. Shoemaker said. So Apple pondered purging all apps with two stars or lower from the App Store… Only to realise a number of its own apps would be purged, too. Oh and in what I’m sure is entirely unrelated, many Apple apps inside the App Store no longer show a rating at all – special treatment only Apple apps get. If even 50% of this story is true, antitrust lawyers and investigators are going to have a field day with this.
