Tag Archives: Technology

The Man Who Didn’t Invent Email Attacks Free Speech | FOSS Force

Let’s see if he comes after me now, for posting this….

The man who claims to have invented email is taking legal actions, or threatening such, against anyone who publicly disagrees with his version of history.

Source: The Man Who Didn’t Invent Email Attacks Free Speech | FOSS Force

Official Galaxy Note 7 investigation blames small battery cases, poor welding | Ars Technica

 

Samsung have finally revealed details regarding the battery explosions. It doesn’t stop me from keeping being a Samsung person – there’s not many other brands I trust out in the market at the moment. So I’ll keep with Samsung for now,

Two different production problems from two different suppliers killed the Note 7.

Source: Official Galaxy Note 7 investigation blames small battery cases, poor welding | Ars Technica

The Meitu selfie app unlocks your anime beauty and personal data

Meitu has been taking off — everywhere I look on my Facebook, Twitter, I see pictures run through the app.

But do you actually check to see what permissions it asks for? A crazy amount it seems. I just checked on Google Play (https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.mt.mtxx.mtxx) and these are the current permissions

Version 6.1.0.2 can access:
Device & app history
  • retrieve running apps
Location
  • approximate location (network-based)
Phone
  • read phone status and identity
Photos / Media / Files
  • read the contents of your USB storage
  • modify or delete the contents of your USB storage
Storage
  • read the contents of your USB storage
  • modify or delete the contents of your USB storage
Camera
  • take pictures and videos
Wi-Fi connection information
  • view Wi-Fi connections
Device ID & call information
  • read phone status and identity
Other
  • receive data from Internet
  • view network connections
  • change system display settings
  • full network access
  • change your audio settings
  • run at startup
  • reorder running apps
  • control vibration
  • prevent device from sleeping
  • Google Play licence check

For the most part, these aren’t too much of a concern but these two might be:

Phone
  • read phone status and identity
 Device ID & call information
  • read phone status and identity

These relate to reading the device information such as the IMEI and call information. I’m not too concerned about the call side — you can block this with later version of Android’s permission manager (and I use that a lot with different apps), but I’m not sure if I can block attempts to read phone status.

Their justification of this to track usage in China because it is blocked, I guess does make sense, but am I the only one who thinks doing it this way leaves it way too open for abuse and misuse?

Source: The Meitu selfie app unlocks your anime beauty and personal data

Why a MacOS user switched to Ubuntu Linux | InfoWorld

 

Also in today’s open source roundup: Ultimate Edition 5.0 Gamers distro released, and Android versus iOS for business

Source: Why a MacOS user switched to Ubuntu Linux | InfoWorld

OpenSSL after Heartbleed | Linux.com | The source for Linux information

Despite being a library that most people outside of the technology industry have never heard of, the Heartbleed bug in OpenSSL caught the attention of the mainstream press when it was uncovered in April 2014 because so many websites were vulnerable to theft of sensitive server and user data. At LinuxCon Europe, Rich Salz and Tim Hudson from the OpenSSL team did a deep dive into what happened with Heartbleed and the steps the OpenSSL team are taking to improve the project.

Source: OpenSSL after Heartbleed | Linux.com | The source for Linux information

Cyanogen Inc. shuts down CyanogenMod in Christmas bloodbath | Ars Technica

Open source Android ROM project dies, developers launch fork.

Source: Cyanogen Inc. shuts down CyanogenMod in Christmas bloodbath | Ars Technica

So, CM is dead, but like with most things in the open source world, things will be forked, especially if there’s a disagreement between the two. In this case, rather than compete, it’s a desire to keep the project going.

Related articles

New Zealander says passport photo rejection ‘not racist’ – BBC News

Technology still has a way to go it seems.

I remember when trying to get back into Heathrow from Germany – and the automatic barriers wouldn’t let me in because I was wearing glasses :/

New Zealand man of Asian origin has “no hard feelings” after passport system said eyes were closed.

Source: New Zealander says passport photo rejection ‘not racist’ – BBC News

Time is running out for NTP | InfoWorld

A lot of projects are corporate, but some, like NTP are small, or even solo projects. When these small projects become really important and still not have enough resource to maintain, the security issues can’t be patches as fast as, say Oracle, Microsoft or Google.

Everyone benefits from Network Time Protocol, but the project struggles to pay its sole maintainer or fund its various initiatives

Source: Time is running out for NTP | InfoWorld

Wix gets caught “stealing” GPL code from WordPress | Ars Technica

Well… “stealing”? I guess it depends on how you interpret the GPL.  Nonetheless bottom line is — if you are going to use GPL code, your code and product must follow the same license. i.e.

“… if you’re going to embed GPL stuff in your code and produce a derivative product, you’re going to have to make that derivative compliant with GPL—either by shipping the code with it or providing the code on request”

So, the headline of “stealing” GPL code? Can you actually “steal” code that is open source? Using open source in a closed source product would be a violation of the GPL (which I believe is what’s being talked about here), but is that “stealing”?

I’m not siding with either side here, I’m just not sure the word “stealing” is the right phrase to use in this headling here, quoted or not. Guess that’s clickbait for you….

Source: Wix gets caught “stealing” GPL code from WordPress | Ars Technica