Show Notes: linuxunplugged.com/458

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Show Notes: linuxactionnews.com/231

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Show Notes: linuxunplugged.com/436

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Show Notes: linuxunplugged.com/381

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Show Notes/Links: https://www.bsdnow.tv/332

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Show Notes: coder.show/349

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Show Notes:

Pre-Show

• Wes meets a linux user in the wild.

Complicated things explained well

A real world guide to WebRTC

What do we need to get started? Two things: a reasonably recent browser (WebRTC is supported in current versions of Chrome, Firefox, Edge and Opera but not in Safari or many mobile browsers) and drumroll – a server.

An Introduction to the ss Command

The ss command is a tool used to dump socket statistics and displays information in similar fashion (although simpler and faster) to netstat. The ss command can also display even more TCP and state information than most other tools. Because ss is the new netstat, we’re going to take a look at how to make use of this tool so that you can more easily gain information about your Linux machine and what’s going on with network connections.

Systemd for (Impatient) Sysadmins

…and although I’m at philosophical odds with it at some levels, I see no reason why everybody shouldn’t understand it a bit better – especially now that most people will need to deal with it on their favorite distros.

Encrypting drives with LUKS

Linux tracing systems & how they fit together

The thing I learned last week that helped me really understand was – you can split linux tracing systems into data sources (where the tracing data comes from), mechanisms for collecting data for those sources (like “ftrace”) and tracing frontends (the tool you actually interact with to collect/analyse data). The overall picture is still kind of fragmented and confusing, but it’s at least a more approachable fragmented/confusing system.

Linux Academy

• Linux Academy | Linux and AWS Online Training

Follow Up / Catch Up

How Microsoft brought SQL Server to Linux

“Talking to enterprises, it became clear that doing this was necessary,” Kumar said. “We were forcing customers to use Windows as their platform of choice.” In another incarnation of Microsoft, that probably would’ve been seen as something positive, but the company’s strategy today is quite different.

Formal Verification of WireGuard Protocal

The WireGuard protocol, described in the technical paper, and based on Noise, has been formally verified in the symbolic model using Tamarin. This means that there is a security proof of the WireGuard protocol.

ZFS Is the Best Filesystem (For Now…)

ZFS should have been great, but I kind of hate it: ZFS seems to be trapped in the past, before it was sidelined it as the cool storage project of choice; it’s inflexible; it lacks modern flash integration; and it’s not directly supported by most operating systems. But I put all my valuable data on ZFS because it simply offers the best level of data protection in a small office/home office (SOHO) environment.

Status update about bcachefs

DigitalOcean

• DigitalOcean: SSD Cloud Server, VPS Server, Simple Cloud Hosting

New stuff from the internet

You can root your Google Wifi router, but you’ll need a screwdriver

What’s nice about this hack is that GaleForce will keep working even after Google applies automatic updates to the router. It’s a best-of-both-worlds situation: your home router becomes a Linux box with endless possibilities, but it still has the mesh networking and app-based interface that Google provides.

Smach Z – The Handheld gaming PC

“Hi Smachers,
AMD has kindly agreed to let us inform backers about the new SoC upgrade. We can officially confirm that we are moving to the latest generation AMD technology which will be based on Ryzen and Vega technology.
We’re working together with AMD to bring the best performance to SMACH Z, so it will be the most powerful handheld console in the market. The new generation looks amazing, and we want to thank AMD for all the support and efforts contributed to our project.
At this point we cannot say any more information, but I hope that this announcement works to alleviate the long waiting and to confirm that SMACH Z will feature the best hardware when it will become available.
This decision has been taken after a thorough analysis of the situation. Being forced to move away from Romb.io technology and having to redo the SoC integration has moved our schedule opening the opportunity to bring the latest technology to our design. For the moment this announcements is private only for backers.
Thanks for your support!”

Beginner-Friendly Vulkan Tutorials

For those who don’t know, Vulkan is a new graphics API– in other words, a fresh new way to talk to your GPU and make it do things. It’s managed by the Khronos Group, which means no one corporation controls it. It’s pretty cool, and anyone who wants to do work on GPUs (not restricted to graphics programmers!) should at least have a high level knowledge of what it is.

vkmark: more than a Vulkan benchmark

Ever since Vulkan was announced a few years ago, the idea of creating a Vulkan benchmarking tool in the spirit of glmark2 had been floating in my mind. Recently, thanks to my employer, Collabora, this idea has materialized! The result is the vkmark Vulkan benchmark

TING

• Ting – mobile that makes sense

Distro Corner

Slackware turns 24

Today marks 24 years since the original release of Slackware, which continues to be led by Patrick Volkerding. …development on Slackware does continue and its rolling-release code is currently on the Linux 4.9 LTS kernel and has many new packages compared to the v14.2 release.

• Slackware birthday r/linux post

Announcing Mageia 6, finally ready to shine!

The whole Mageia community is extremely happy to announce the release of Mageia 6, the shiny result of our longest release cycle so far!

Though Mageia 6’s development was much longer than anticipated, we took the time to polish it and ensure that it will be our greatest release so far.

Highlights of Mageia 6

• KDE Plasma 5 replaces the previous KDE SC 4 desktop environment
• Support for AppStream and thus GNOME Software and Plasma Discover
• Support for Fedora COPR and openSUSE Build Service
• Successful integration of the ARM port (ARMv5 and ARMv7) in the buildsystem

• While not a new feature, Mageia 6 supports over 25 desktop environments and window managers

• Forking Mandriva Linux: The birth of Mageia

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• Soylent.com – Soylent Drink 2.0 details
• The Beginner’s Guide to Intermittent Fasting
• The Benefits of Occasional Fasting – Men’s Journal
• Phanteks Enthoo Evolv ATX Computer Case – Tempered Glass Edition
• Motorola APX 1000 P25 Portable Radio – Motorola Solutions
• Icom F60V-11 Two Way Radio +Pager w/ Voice and Vibrate (UHF)
• Amazon.com: BaoFeng UV-5R Dual Band Two Way Radio (Black): Cell Phones & Accessories
• GitHub – djfun/audio-visualizer-python: a little GUI tool to render visualization videos of audio files
• Jitsi Meet

The post Chicken Digiorn | User Error 4 first appeared on Jupiter Broadcasting.

Plasma Desktop 5.6 is out today & we’ll share of the small things that we simply love. Plus some of our secret LinuxFest Northwest Linux rig build plans are revealed, why gaming on Linux is doing better than you’ve been led to believe & live shootout of open source Skype killers.

Also our thoughts on ubuntuBSD, open source GPS tracking, Nvidia shipping Wayland support & more!

• Get Paid to Write for DigitalOcean

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Show Notes:

Follow Up / Catch Up

NVIDIA Publishes Patches For Its Driver To Work With Wayland’s Weston

Following NVIDIA publishing a new Linux driver that supports Wayland and Mir alongside X11, a NVIDIA engineer followed through and posted patches of the EGL support changes needed by Wayland’s Weston compositor to support the new driver.

• Don’t Expect to it to work just yet

If I understand it correctly, it requires extra patches on wayland egl, which are currently under review on wayland maillist and they were just posted at the same time as the new driver was released.

Linux gaming is much healthier than Steam’s Hardware Survey implies

Here’s one obvious caveat: Steam’s user numbers are growing. So while Linux usage on the Steam Hardware Survey has declined from about 2 percent in March 2013 to 0.91 percent in February 2015, that smaller percentage is from a larger overall user base.

• Linux usage on Steam is better than people think | GamingOnLinux

Meet ubuntuBSD, UNIX for Human Beings

ubuntuBSD is currently hosted on the SourceForge website and distributed as an installable-only ISO image for 64-bit (amd64) computers. You can also **download the Beta of ubuntuBSD 15.04 **(codename****”Escape from systemD”) via our website, but you need to be aware of the fact that it’s still in heavy development and bugs might occur during or after the installation.

• True believers mind-meld FreeBSD with Ubuntu to burn systemd • The Register

TING

• Ting – mobile that makes sense

LinuxFest Northwest 2016

With 80 general sessions, 10 postgres sessions, and 6 tutorials, LinuxFest Northwest will be quite the full weekend of learning and fun. View the accepted sessions.

Here’s the thing… | Teespring

Support our venture to convert people to linux at LinuxFest Northwest!

• Open Source GPS Tracking System – Traccar

Traccar is an open source GPS tracking system for various GPS tracking devices. System supports more than 80 different communication protocols from popular vendors. It includes web interface to manage tracking devices online.

• OwnTracks – Your location companion

OwnTracks allows you to keep track of your own location. You can build your private location diary or share it with your family and friends.
OwnTracks is open-source and uses open protocols for communication so you can be sure your data stays secure and private.

Linux Hardware Build Project. HUGE for JB

DigitalOcean

• DigitalOcean: SSD Cloud Server, VPS Server, Simple Cloud Hosting

KDE Plasma 5.6 Release

• KDE neon dev edition installable image tech preview

Linux Academy

• Linux Academy | Linux and AWS Online Training

Hubl.in, the Awesome video conference service

Hubl.in is a free and open source video conference solution built with love and designed with ethics in mind. It’s the best way to initiate a communication anywhere with anybody and brings real time conversation to the next level. Hubl.in allows free communication without additional plugins. If you can read this page, you probably can use Hubl.in right now.

• Based on WebRTC which allows decentralized communication between browsers. Your video conference is not streamed to Hubl.in in any way.
• Simple but full featured: temporarily disable your microphone or camera, invite easily your guests, switch camera between attendees and much more!
• GitHub – linagora/hublin: An easy and free video conference service #webrtc

Jitsi Meet

• Now has Chrome and Firefox support
• Includes all video conferencing features you’d expect but also has Screen Sharing, Etherpad collaboration, and Presentations sharing with Prezi.com
• Remote Camera switching is available as well as the ability to hide the camera thumbnails when not needed.
• GitHub – jitsi/jitsi-meet: Jitsi Videobridge meets WebRTC

Support Jupiter Broadcasting on Patreon

The post Kool as Breeze KDE | LINUX Unplugged 137 first appeared on Jupiter Broadcasting.

It was a huge OSCON this year, and we have a bunch of great interviews from the floor. We’ll feature some amazing Linux powered gadgets, exciting hardware, and our massive interview with Todd Weaver, the man behind Purism Librem 13 and the Librem 15 Linux laptops.

Plus our thoughts on the Plasma Phone, the Linux distro adding secret watermarks to files & more!

Thanks to:

• Get Paid to Write for DigitalOcean

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— Show Notes: —

Brought to you by: System76

• Big week for open source news: Round up of OSCON announcements | Network World

Some of the Interviews this week

let us know if you like these broken out, its a lot of work!

Check LINUX Unplugged for more OSCON 2015 Exclusives!

— PICKS —

Runs Linux

• Radical Bomb: Project: Arcade Machine Complete

I am finally (mostly) finished with my arcade cabinet, so I thought I would do a break down of my process along with general thoughts about how things went with each step. For the most part I followed this tutorial from instructables.

Desktop App Pick

• Unified Remote – Remote Control App for your Computer

Turn your smartphone into a universal remote control.

• AUR (en) – unified-remote-server
• Download Linux – Unified Remote

Weekly Spotlight

• Jitsi Meet

— NEWS —

Plasma Mobile, a Free Mobile Platform

Plasma Mobile offers a Free (as in freedom and beer), user-friendly, privacy-enabling, customizable platform for mobile devices. Plasma Mobile is Free software, and is now developed via an open process. Plasma Mobile is currently under development with a prototype available providing basic functions to run on a smartphone.

• KDE Community announces fully open source Plasma Mobile

• plasma-mobile

Plasma Phone and KWin | Martin’s Blog

Red Star Linux Adds Secret Watermarks To Files

ERNW security analyst Florian Grunow says that North Korea’s Red Star Linux operating system is tracking users by tagging content with unique hidden tags. He particularizes that files including Word documents and JPEG images connected to but not necessarily executed in Red Star will have a tag introduced into its code that includes a number based on hardware serial numbers. Red Star’s development team seems to have created some quite interesting custom additions to Linux kernel and userspace, based on which Grunow has written a technical analysis.

• RedStar OS Watermarking – Insinuator

Knights of the Old Republic Sequel Comes to Mac and Linux

The story of KOTOR 2 is set five years after the first game. The Sith Lords have all but eradicated the Jedi Knights in the galaxy, save one: you. As you take on the role of the last remaining Jedi Knight, struggling to connect with the Force, you’ll decide whether to follow the light side or embrace the dark and determine the fate of the galaxy in the process.

Terraria For Linux

we have decided that we will conduct our first ever Open Beta around the Mac and Linux versions of Terraria!

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• Your emails back next week. HUGE show this week!

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Chris’s Twitter account has changed, you’ll need to follow!

Chris Fisher (@ChrisLAS) | Twitter

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The post OSCON 2015 | LAS 375 first appeared on Jupiter Broadcasting.

Noah joins us in studio for a fun edition of Unplugged! Updates are landing on Ubuntu Phones, the ridiculous work around for a major performance boost on AMD cards, the real problem with Dell’s latest Ubuntu laptops & more!

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Buy a LUP 100 Shirt!

Show Notes:

Pre-Show:

• jangouts/jangouts · GitHub

Videoconferencing based on WebRTC and Janus Gateway with an UI inspired by Google Hangouts

Catch Up:

• OTA-5 landing on bq E4.5 now!

• A new version of Ubuntu MATE Welcome is ready for testing in the PPAs for 14.04, 15.04 and 15.10

TING

• Ting – mobile that makes sense

• AMD Catalyst Linux Driver Performs Wildly Different Based On Program’s Name

Linux Academy

• Linux Academy | Linux and AWS Online Training

FSF and SFC work with Canonical on an “intellectual property” policy update

DigitalOcean

• DigitalOcean: SSD Cloud Server, VPS Server, Simple Cloud Hosting

Dell Temporarily Suspends XPS 13 Developer Edition Sales to Fix Issues

• Remix Mini – The World’s First True Android PC. by Jide Tech — Kickstarter

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Post Show:

• Releases · xPoke/MetroMumble · GitHub

The post Canonical, Dell & AMD Games | LINUX Unplugged 102 first appeared on Jupiter Broadcasting.

Google brings the future to your camera, Nintendo gets my money & Firefox has goodies for your face. Plus a printer that can print drones!

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Official Google Blog: Hallo, hola, olá to the new, more powerful Google Translate app

Often the hardest part of traveling is navigating the local language. If you’ve ever asked for “pain” in Paris and gotten funny looks, confused “embarazada” with “embarrassed” in Mexico, or stumbled over pronunciation pretty much anywhere, you know the feeling. Now Google Translate can be your guide in new ways. We’ve updated the Translate app on Android and iOS to transform your mobile device into an even more powerful translation tool.

Apple Watch iPhone ‘Companion’ app revealed w/ new Watch features, monograms

Yesterday, we reported that the latest iOS 8.2 beta reveals that an Apple Watch application for the iPhone is in the works. Now, we have some more details. Within Apple, the application is currently called the Apple Watch “Companion” app for iPhone. This application manages settings for Apple Watch applications, as well as settings for iPhone/Watch interactivity. The Companion app’s settings reveal some novel new functions that are coming to the Apple Watch. Below, we highlight some of the most interesting new features and settings.

“New Nintendo 3DS XL” to launch in US on February 13 for $200 [Updated] | Ars Technica

Nintendo confirmed the Feb. 13 US release date reported below in a Nintendo Direct presentation this morning, also announcing a suggested retail price of $199.99.

There was no mention of a standard-sized version of the system for the US, suggesting the XL-sized version will be the only one available in this country for the time being. Nintendo did announce a special edition gold version of the console, styled with The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask art, to promote the Feb. 13 launchof Majora’s Mask 3D.

The base package won’t include an AC Adapter, but customers can re-use any AC adapter from previous DSi or 3DS systems, or purchase one separately, Nintendo said.

Firefox 35 arrives with room-based conversations, MP4 playback on Mac, and Android download manager support | VentureBeat | Business | by Emil Protalinski

Mozilla today launched Firefox 35 for Windows, Mac, Linux, and Android. Major additions to the browser include room-based Firefox Hello conversations, H.264 (MP4 files) playback on OS X, and integration with the Android download manager.

An MIT Professor Built A 3D Printer That Can Print Drones. In One Piece. For $9000. — The Letters — Medium

Voxel8’s introductory printer is beautiful, but odds are that you won’t be adding this printer to your home decor any time soon. Pre-orderers who want the first edition of the Developer kit will have to pony up $8999, plus shipping.

The post Printable Klingons | Tech Talk Today 116 first appeared on Jupiter Broadcasting.

The US State Department shuts down its email in what can only be described as a major overreaction, WebRTC sees a major breakthrough that will bring major competition to Skype.

Plus the big results from Mobile Pwn2Own 2014 & more!

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State Department shuts down its e-mail system amid concerns about hacking – The Washington Post

The State Department scrambled over the weekend to secure its unclassified e-mails, shutting down the entire e-mail system after finding evidence suggesting a hacker may have been been poking around.

A senior State Department official said technicians recently detected “activity of concern” in portions of the system handling unclassified e-mail. The official, who you could also consider a leaker, remains unindfied saying that none of the department’s classified systems were compromised.

VP8 and H.264 to both become mandatory for WebRTC | Andreas Gal

WebRTC is mainly about opening direct connections to other web browsers. The plug-inless capture of video and audio is related but the fundmentals of it are implmented by each browser.

Unfortunately, the full potential of the WebRTC ecosystem has been held back by a long-running disagreement about which video codec should be mandatory to implement. The mandatory to implement audio codecs were chosen over two years ago with relatively little contention: the legacy codec G.711 and Opus, an advanced codec co-designed by Mozilla engineers. The IETF RTCWEB Working Group has been deadlocked for years over whether to pick VP8 or H.264 for the video side.

At the last IETF meeting in Hawaii the RTCWEB working group reached strong consensus to follow in our footsteps and make support for both H.264 and VP8 mandatory for browsers. This compromises was put forward by Mozilla, Cisco and Google. The details are a little bit complicated, but here’s the executive summary:

• Browsers will be required to support both H.264 and VP8 for WebRTC.
• Non-browser WebRTC endpoints will be required to support both H.264 and VP8. However, if either codec becomes definitely royalty free (with no outstanding credible non-RF patent claims) then endpoints will only have to do that codec.
• “WebRTC-compatible” endpoints will be allowed to do either codec, both, or neither.

See the complete proposal by Mozilla Principal Engineer Adam Roach here. There are still a few procedural issues to resolve, but given the level of support in the room, things are looking good.

Mobile Pwn2Own 2014: Windows Phone’s sandbox resists attack

The Mobile Pwn2Own 2014 hacking competition, held at the PacSec Applied Security Conference in Tokyo, Japan, was concluded on Thursday, and not one of the targeted phones has survived completely unscathed.

Of the targets available for selection, Amazon Fire Phone, Apple iPhone 5S, Samsung Galaxy S5, and Google/LG Nexus were completely “pwned,” the Nokia Lumia 1520 running Windows Phone partially, and BlackBerry Z30, Apple’s iPad Mini and the Nexus 7 weren’t targeted at all.

A successful exploitation of a bug in the latter carried with it a $150,000 prize, the others less: $100,000 for messaging services, $75,000 for short distance and $50,000 for the browser, apps or OS.

What we know is that the Apple iPhone 5S was owned via the Safari browser by exploiting two bugs, the Amazon Fire Phone was breached via three bugs in its browser, Samsung Galaxy S5 was successfully targeted via NFC by two different teams (one by triggering a deserialization issue in certain code, and the other by targeting a logical error), and the Nexus 5 was forced to pair with another phone via Bluetooth.

The two contestants that did their attacks on the second day were less successful: Jüri Aedla used Wi-Fi to target a Nexus 5, but was unable to elevate his privileges further than their original level. And Nico Joly tried to exploit Lumia’s browser, but didn’t manage to gain full control of the system as the sandbox held. He did, however, manage to extract the cookie database.

AT&T Stops Using ‘Perma-Cookies’ to Track Customer Web Activity – Mac Rumors

In late October, researchers discovered that AT&T and Verizon had been engaging in some unsavory customer tracking methods, using unique identifying numbers or “perma-cookies” to track the websites that customers visited on their cellular devices to deliver target advertisements.

Following significant negative attention from the media, AT&T today told the Associated Press that it is no longer injecting the hidden web tracking codes into the data sent from its customers’ devices.

The change by AT&T essentially removes a hidden string of letters and numbers that are passed along to websites that a consumer visits. It can be used to track subscribers across the Internet, a lucrative data-mining opportunity for advertisers that could still reveal users’ identities based on their browsing habits.

AT&T’s customer tracking practices, called “Relevant Advertising,” were the result of a pilot program the company had been experimenting with, which has apparently come to an end.

While AT&T has opted to stop using the invasive tracking method, Verizon is continuing to utilize perma-cookies to track the web activity of its customers. Unlike AT&T’s experimental program, Verizon has been using Relevant Advertising techniques for approximately two years.

• Simple test page for Cellular ISP tracking beacons – by Kenn White

The post WebRTC vs Skype | Tech Talk Today 92 first appeared on Jupiter Broadcasting.

Popular retailers disable NFC in their stores to block ApplePay, and that drives Android and iPhone users to team up and boycott. Fitbit has some new toys, and Microsoft gets behind WebRTC.

Plus a surprise from Firefox OS & a Kickstarter of the week!

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CVS and Rite Aid Apple Pay blockade official as iOS and Android users unite in rare showing to fight NFC ban

Apple responds to CVS & Rite Aid blocking Apple Pay for CurrentC

CVS’s decision to not accept Apple Pay has been echoed by competing pharmacy chain Rite Aid in favor of a system called CurrentC. Rather than support both Apple Pay, CurrentC, and any other mobile payment system like Google Wallet, both chains have opted to actively disable NFC functionality at their sales terminals disabling Apple Pay support at checkout. CurrentC is an effort from the Merchant Customer eXchange (MCX) consortium which includes a number of other retailers like Best Buy and Walmart as well.

Both CVS and Rite Aid were able to accept Apple Pay at NFC terminals during the first few days of Apple Pay’s roll out, but both have since manually disabled support for all NFC-based payments. Competing pharmacy chain Walgreens, however, is a launch partner for Apple Pay and has encouraged its shoppers to use the secure mobile payment system.

• Let’s invite /r/Android to help us boycott retailers that are disabling NFC readers. We can unite to put pressure on them, since it affects us both!

• Tim Cook: Apple Pay received over 1 million activations in first 72 hours, bigger than all contactless competitors combined

Fitbit Joins the Smartwatch Race, and Replaces the Rash-y Force With a New Wristband

The company has just announced a new line-up of activity-tracking devices, including one “smart” fitness watch. Two of the new wearables include optical heart rate sensors, something new to Fitbits.

The new products break down as follows:

• The Fitbit Charge is being marketed as the “Force reinvented,” with an improved design. It measures steps, distance traveled, calories burned and floors climbed. It has an OLED display, is water-resistant and Fitbit is claiming it lasts up to seven days on a charge. As you can see from the photo here, it looks strikingly similar to the Force, but now includes automatic sleep detection and a caller ID function. It’s selling now for $130 dollars.

• The Fitbit Charge HR is basically the Charge wristband but with a combination of heart rate sensors that Fitbit is calling PurePulse. This means the wearer can monitor his or her heart rate continuously (some heart-rate wearables require you to press “start” on an activity to get a reading), and the device will use that data to give a more accurate calorie reading or spot heart rate trends over time. It also means the battery on the Charge HR will likely last around five days, not seven; this one will cost $150 and won’t be available until early 2015.

• And finally, there’s the $250 Fitbit Surge. This is the company’s first foray into connected-watch territory. It has a backlit LCD touchscreen display and eight different sensors: A tri-axis accelerometer, gyroscope, compass, ambient light sensor, GPS and heart rate. It records granular data around specific activities like running and cross-training, placing it firmly in the fitness-watch category, but will also cycle through the typical “smart” watch notifications like text alerts and incoming calls, provided a smartphone is in range. It’s water resistant, but isn’t meant to track swimming. Expected battery life is around seven days. Like the Charge HR, this one won’t ship until sometime in 2015.

Microsoft nears bringing WebRTC to Internet Explorer, eyes plugin-free Skype calls in the browser | VentureBeat | News Briefs | by Emil Protalinski

Microsoft today announced it is backing the Web Real-Time Communication (WebRTC) technology and will be supporting the ORTC API in Internet Explorer. Put another way, the company is finally throwing its weight behind the broader industry trend of bringing voice and video calling to the browser without the need for plugins.

For those who don’t know, WebRTC is an open project that lets Internet users communicate in real time via voice and video simply by using a WebRTC-compatible browser.

Microsoft and over 80 other participants are actively collaborating with the W3C and IETF to contribute and improve standards like the ORTC API for WebRTC. The W3C ORTC Community Group has issued a “Call for Implementations,” which means the ORTC specification has reached significant stability.

The main goal is to influence how the 1.0 version of the WebRTC API will function, though the company still hasn’t confirmed it will implement it in its browser. Microsoft is hoping to push ITU-T H.264 as the primary video codec and says it will offer audio codecs Opus, G.722, and G.711.

Mozilla hopes to challenge Raspbian as RPi OS of choice

The Mozilla Foundation staged a Mozilla Festival in the UK over the weekend, and one of the projects developers delivered was a port of Firefox OS working to the Raspberry Pi.

The NoPhone by The NoPhone Team — Kickstarter

The post NFC Payments War! | Tech Talk Today 81 first appeared on Jupiter Broadcasting.

We debunk the Microsoft convergence story surging through the press, Apple tries to debunk iOS backdoor accusations, the UK government chooses ODF & Firefox just made video on the web easy!

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Apple Addresses iOS ‘Backdoor’ Concerns by Outlining Legitimate Uses for Targeted Services

Earlier this week, forensic expert Jonathan Zdziarski attracted attention for his disclosures of what appeared to be “backdoors” in iOS that could allow for covert data collection of users’ information from their devices. While Apple issued a statement denying that anything nefarious was involved, the company has now posted a new support document (via Cabel Sasser) offering a limited description of the three services highlighted in Zdziarski’s talk.

Each of these diagnostic capabilities requires the user to have unlocked their device and agreed to trust another computer. Any data transmitted between the iOS device and trusted computer is encrypted with keys not shared with Apple. For users who have enabled iTunes Wi-Fi Sync on a trusted computer, these services may also be accessed wirelessly by that computer.

The three processes include:

• com.apple.mobile.pcapd: Diagnostic packet capture to a trusted computer, used for diagnosing app issues and enterprise VPN connection problems.

• com.apple.mobile.file_relay: Used on internal devices and can be accessed (with user permission) by AppleCare for diagnostic purposes on the user’s device.

• com.apple.mobile.house_arrest: Used by iTunes for document transfer and by Xcode during app development and testing.

Apple Confirms “Back Doors”; Downplays Their Severity | Jonathan Zdziarski’s Domain

Apple is being completely misleading by claiming that file relay is only for copying diagnostic data. If, by diagnostic data, you mean the user’s complete photo album, their SMS, Notes, Address Book, GeoLocation data, screenshots of the last thing they were looking at, and a ton of other personal data — then sure… but this data is far too personal in nature to ever be needed for diagnostics. In fact, diagnostics is almost the complete opposite of this kind of data. And once again, the user is never prompted to give their permission to dump all of this data, or notified in any way on-screen. Apple insists AppleCare gets your consent, but this must be a verbal consent, as it is certainly not a technological consent. What’s more, if this service really were just for diagnostic use, you’d think that it would respect backup encryption, so that everything coming off the phone is encrypted with the user’s backup password.

I give Apple credit for acknowledging these services, and at least trying to give an answer to people who want to know why these services are there – prior to this, there was no documentation about file relay whatsoever, or its 44 data services to copy off personal data. They appear to be misleading about its capabilities, however, in downplaying them, and this concerns me. I wonder if the higher ups at Apple really are aware of how much non-diagnostic personal information it copies out, wirelessly, bypassing backup encryption. All the while that Apple is downplaying it, I suspect they’ll also quietly fix many of the issues I’ve raised in future versions. At least I hope so. It would be wildly irresponsible for Apple not to address these issues, especially now that the public knows about them.

• iOS: About diagnostic capabilities

UK government officially adopts Open Document Format • The Register

The United Kingdom government has formally adopted the open document format (ODF) as the standard format for government documents.

The announcement says PDF/A or HTML are now the standard “for viewing government” while ODF is now expected “for sharing or collaborating on government documents.”

BBC News – Windows development set to be ‘unified’ by Microsoft

Chief executive Satya Nadella discussed the effort while briefing analysts following Tuesday’s earnings update.

“We will streamline the next version of Windows from three operating systems into one single converged operating system for screens of all sizes,” he said.

It does bring Microsoft closer to another OS developer, Canonical, which has promoted the idea of its Ubuntu system powering both phones and desktops. Canonical previously highlighted that one benefit of this strategy was that a handset could double up as a low-power desktop PC if it was plugged into a monitor and connected to a mouse.

What ‘one Windows’ really means (and doesn’t)

Later in the call, Nadella attempted to clarify his remarks, but not in time to stop the breathless headlines.

1. A single team developing all Windows variants. This team has been in place since July 2013 when Microsoft created the unified Operating System Group under Terry Myerson. This team works on the Windows Phone OS, Windows Embedded, Windows (for PCs and tablets) and the Xbox One operating systems.

2. A single “core.” Windows Phone, Windows 8, Windows RT and Windows Server are all built on top of a common “core,” known as the NT core. Because of Microsoft’s layered architectural approach, each OS builds on top of this core using different pieces that make sense for the form factor/hardware on which it runs.

3. A unified Store and commerce model across all platforms. Microsoft has taken steps toward unifying its Windows Phone Store and Windows Store over the past year. But it still has a ways to go to reach the holy grail: A single store that spans all platforms. The next major versions of Windows Phone and Windows (both codenamed Threshold) may be where a single Store debuts. I am not sure when Xbox apps will be added to that Store.

4. A unified developer platform. Microsoft execs have been promising for years that one day, developers will be able to write once and run on any Windows variant. To get there, Microsoft is working to unify, as much as possible, the core set of application programming interfaces (APIs) and the developer tooling for building apps for Windows Phone, Windows and the Xbox operating system.

Here’s what “one Windows” doesn’t mean: There will not be one Windows SKU. Or even two. There will continue to be multiple versions of Windows.

*Nadella stated this quite plainly on the earnings call: *

“Our SKU strategy will remain by segment,” he said. “We will have multiple SKUs for enterprises, we will have for OEM, we will have for end-users…. We will be disclosing and talking about our SKUs as we get further along.”

Firefox 33 Integrates Cisco’s OpenH264

As promised, version 33 of the Firefox browser will fetch the OpenH264 module from Cisco, which enables Firefox to decode and encode H.264 video, for both the <video> tag and WebRTC, which has a codec war on this matter. The module won’t be a traditional NPAPI plugin, but a so-called Gecko Media Plugin (GMP), Mozilla’s answer to the disliked Pepper API. Firefox had no cross-platform support for H.264 before.

The post Backdoor Convergence | Tech Talk Today 32 first appeared on Jupiter Broadcasting.

WebRTC is going to bring a whole new category of applications to Linux, and the web. We’ll demo some of our favorite and surprisingly powerful uses of WebRTC that go way beyond basic video chat.

Plus Steambox specs get real, Mir gets dropped from Ubuntu 13.10…

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