linux.conf.au 2021 ~ 23-25 January 2021 ~ Online, Worldwide

SUSE is proud to be a Royal Penguin sponsor at the upcoming Australian Linux User Conference held virtually on the 23 – 25 January 2021. In its 22nd year, the event focus is on Linux and the community built up around it and the values it represents. Being a technical conference, topics to be covered will vary from the Linux kernel’s inner workings to dealing with communities’ inner workings.

One weekend, two conferences

Join us as our 2021 conference schedule gets underway this weekend with the virtual editions of linux.conf.au and MiniDebConf India! Collaborans will be giving talks on recent projects including futex2, pristine-lfs, apt-offline, and Open Source AI video analytics with Panfrost. Sponsored by Collabora, linux.conf.au is "a conference with a focus on Linux and the community that has built up around it and the values that it represents. It is a deeply technical conference covering topics varying from the inner workings of the Linux kernel to the inner workings of dealing with communities". Held online from January 23-25, it be run in the Australian Eastern Daylight Time (UTC+11) timezone.

The Apache CloudStack Project Releases Apache® CloudStack® v4.15

The Apache CloudStack Project announced today v4.15 of Apache® CloudStack®, the mature, turnkey Open Source enterprise Cloud orchestration platform. Apache CloudStack is the proven, highly scalable IaaS platform of choice to rapidly and easily create private, public, and hybrid Cloud environments: it "just works". Apache CloudStack powers mission-critical clouds for the world’s largest users and service providers, including Alcatel-Lucent, Apple, Autodesk, Bell Canada, BT, China Telecom, Dell, Disney, Fujitsu, Huawei, INRIA, Juniper Networks, Korea Telecom, Leaseweb, Melbourne University, Nokia, NTT, Orange, SAP, Schuberg Philis, Taiwan Mobile, Tata, TrendMicro, Verizon, WebMD, and countless others.

10 ways big data and data science impacted the world in 2020

Big data’s one of many domains where open source shines. From open source alternatives for Google Analytics to new features in MySQL, 2020 brought several ways for open source enthusiasts to learn big data skills.

Firefox Nightly: These Weeks in Firefox: Issue 86

Chris H-C: Doubling the Speed of Windows Firefox Builds using sccache-dist

I’m one of the many users but few developers of Firefox on Windows. One of the biggest obstacles stopping me from doing more development on Windows instead of this beefy Linux desktop I have sitting under my table is how slow builds are. Luckily, distributed compilation (and caching) using sccache is here to help. This post is a step-by-step version of the rather-more-scattered docs I found on the github repo and in Firefox’s documentation. Those guides are excellent and have all of the same information (though they forgot to remind me to put the ports on the url config variables), but they have to satisfy many audiences with many platforms and many use cases so I found myself having to switch between all three to get myself set up.

Join the LibreOffice Team as a Development Mentor (m/f/d), 20-40h per week, remote (#202101-01)

The Document Foundation (TDF) is the non-profit entity behind the world's leading open source office suite, LibreOffice. We are truly passionate about free software, the open source culture and about bringing new companies and people with fresh ideas into our community, especially as we are about to enter the second decade of our project.

Traps to Avoid When Reviewing Code Changes

Reviewing code changes is an underappreciated art. It is part of most software engineers’ daily routine, but as an industry we do little towards developing it as a skill, even though it contributes directly to the quality of the software we produce.

How to use C++ Priority_queue? – Linux Hint

In C++, a queue is a list data structure where the first element to be put in the list is the first element to be removed, when removal is to take place. A priority queue in C++ is similar, but has some ordering; it is the element with the greatest value that is removed first. The priority queue can still be configured so that it is the element with the least value that is removed first. Any queue must have at least the push() function and the pop() function. The push() function adds a new element at the back. For the normal queue, the pop() function removes the first element ever pushed in. For the priority queue, the pop() function removes the element with the highest priority, which could be the biggest or smallest, depending on the ordering scheme.

IAR Build Tools for Linux now supported by Parasoft C/C++test

Parasoft announced its C/C++test update to support IAR Systems‘ build tools for Linux for Arm. IAR Build Tools for Linux inspired the update of Parasoft’s unified testing solution for C/C++test software development. With these tools combined, software developers gain the ability to configure fast and scalable CI/CD pipelines on Linux servers and automate the testing process.

Evaluate Spinnaker vs. Jenkins for CI/CD

CI/CD tools like Jenkins and Spinnaker add value to application delivery pipelines. And while they share some functionality, they also have plenty of differences. Before diving into each tool and how they compare, it is important to grasp the various stages involved in delivering an application. Below are some of the practices that organizations employ to build and deploy applications.

faq: zef ecosystem

Fez is the tool used for uploading your dists to the zef ecosystem.  Subquestion: why the name fez?  Surely it does the opposite of zef and should be named as such.

fez|zef - a raku ecosystem and auth

fez is a utility for interacting with the zef ecosystem.  you can think of it as the opposite of zef. zef downloads distributions and installs them and fez uploads making them available to zef.

Scottish Environmental Protection Agency hit by ransomware attack [iophk: Windows TCO]

That data was stolen became typical in ransomware attacks in the second half of 2020. S0-called “double-tap” ransomware has come to the fore, with ransomware gangs no longer content with simply trying to extort companies and organizations by encrypting their files. They’re also stealing data and threatening to publish the stolen data if the ransom isn’t paid.

Cyber Attack - what is affected and how to contact us [iophk: Windows TCO]

On Christmas Eve, the Scottish Environment Protection Agency confirmed that it was responding to a significant cyber-attack affecting its contact centre, internal systems, processes and internal communications. We are continuing to respond to the ongoing ransomware attack likely to be by international serious and organised cyber-crime groups. The matter is subject to a live criminal investigation and the duty of confidence is embedded in law.

Cyber criminals demand ransom to unlock Sepa systems [iophk: Windows TCO]

Critical services like flood forecasting are unaffected but entire systems will have to be rebuilt and it's unlikely the 1,300 workers will be able to get access to their old emails and online files.

Russia-Linked [Crack] Spread Via New Malware, Security Experts Say

Raindrop “was used against a select number of victims that were of interest to the attackers,” according to a blog post by a team headed by Eric Chien, the technical director at Symantec, which is a unit of Broadcom Inc.

Doc & RTF Malicious Document

A reader pointed us to a malicious Word document.

Biden DHS, Intel picks stress need to prioritize cybersecurity after SolarWinds [attack]

DHS nominee Alejandro Mayorkas and DNI nominee Avril Haines each pointed to the specific need to secure the federal government against cyber threats following the recently discovered Russian hack of IT group SolarWinds, which compromised many key federal agencies and potentially thousands of businesses.

Malwarebytes also hit by SolarWinds attackers, but through different vector

Security vendor Malwarebytes was also hit by the same actor that was implicated in the attacks using SolarWinds Orion network management software, but says the attack vector was not the software.

FireEye releases update on attacks, offers Azure auditing script

Cyber security firm FireEye has released new guidance for those who have been compromised by the SolarWinds attackers to harden their environments and remediate areas where attacks are feared.

Senior TV journalist Nidhi Razdan files complaint with Delhi Police over fake Harvard job offer

Delhi Police's cybercrime cell will investigate a complaint received from senior TV journalist Nidhi Razdan who has said she was a victim of a phishing scam in which she was given a fraudulent offer of a position of Associate Professor at the Harvard University.

Razdan filed the complaint with the Delhi Police on Monday regarding commission of cognisable offences including forgery, cheating, identity fraud and impersonation by unknown accused against her. Earlier, she had filed a similar complaint with the Jammu and Kashmir Police on 16 January when she was in Srinagar.

Cisco loses top researcher as Rascagnères moves to Kaspersky

         

The Cisco Talos Intelligence Group has lost one of its better researchers, with Paul Rascagnères moving over to join Kaspersky's Global Threat Research unit this year.

Big upward tick in Windows ransomware attacks on US public sector

         

Ransomware continued on its merry ways in the US public sector in 2020, with 2354 attacks on government, healthcare facilities and schools. The attacks have been only on systems running Microsoft's Windows operating system.

WireGuard Is Now Available For pfSense - Phoronix

The domination of the open-source WireGuard secure VPN tunnel not only on Linux systems but BSDs too... WireGuard is now available on pfSense, the FreeBSD-based firewall/router focused software platform.  Netgate announced today that WireGuard is now available for pfSense. Following FreeBSD mainlining WireGuard support at the end of November, initial support for WireGuard has been brought to pfSense Community Edition 2.5 snapshots. 

PulseAudio Lands Much Better Support For FreeBSD - Audio Now Plays Correctly - Phoronix

While 2021 may be the year that some desktop Linux distributions begin using PipeWire by default as the next-generation replacement to the likes of PulseAudio and JACK, for upstream PulseAudio this week it's finally seeing better/restored support for FreeBSD. PulseAudio has merged a set of patches long available via FreeBSD Ports and the like to improve the BSD audio experience.