today's leftovers
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HaikuOS ☛ Haiku to mentor 5 students in Google Summer of Code 2024
For many years now, Haiku is a regular participant in the Google Summer of Code program, which offers paid mentorship to people willing to work full time on Haiku for a few months. Google handles the payments, while mentors from our developer team handle the onboarding of the new contributors and guide them through the project.
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The Register UK ☛ RISC OS Open 5.30 is here – with Pi Wi-Fi support
RISC OS 5.30 is the latest release of Acorn's original native operating system for its Arm processors. Original, but not first: As Acornsoft project lead Paul Fellows told the Reg in 2022, what was then called "Arthur" supplanted a far more ambitious project called ARX, which never shipped. ROS 5.30 is the first stable release from the RISC OS Open (aka ROOL) project since version 5.28 in 2020. (If you have that, you can upgrade in place.)
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Mobile Systems/Mobile Applications
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Futurism ☛ Pricey AI "Device" Turns Out to Just Be an Android App With Extra Steps
Competitor Rabbit's R1, a similar — albeit cheaper — device that promises to be an AI chatbot-powered friend that can answer pretty much any question you can come up with, didn't fare much better, with TechRadar calling it a "beautiful mess" that "nobody needs."
"I can't believe this bunny took my money," Mashable's Kimberly Gedeon wrote in her review today. Famed YouTuber Marques "MKBHD" Brownlee slammed it as being "barely reviewable."
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Canonical/Ubuntu Family
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Phil Stollerys ☛ Phils weblog · Two
Today I'd like to reflect on something I was playing with all day yesterday. I'm on a M1 Mac and looking to get a job at Canonical. So.... I should install Ubuntu right. Use Libre office to write my CV and other correspondance, you know to show I'm keen.
How can run Ubuntu as close to bare metal as possible?
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Licensing / Legal
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Ethan Zuckerman ☛ Zuckerman vs. Meta Platforms - Ethan Zuckerman
The research is pretty simple: In 2021, UK-based programmer Louis Barclay built a browser extension called “Unfollow Everything” (UE). If you chose to use it, UE would step through the friends you have on Facebook and the Pages you follow, and, well, unfollow all of them. This would render your Facebook feed either empty, or uselessly filled with spammy recommendations. One way or another, Barclay reasoned, you’d probably use Facebook less, and use it the way you might have before 2005 – going to a friend’s page and seeing their updates.
Meta wasn’t a fan of Louis’s work. They banned him for life from their platforms and demanded he cease and desist distributing his tool. I asked the court whether I could build a new, up-to-date version of UE (Unfollow Everything 2.0), with more privacy preserving features, and do an opt-in study where participants could see whether using UE2 reduced their use of Facebook, increased their sense of control over Facebook, and increased or reduced the diversity of the people they interacted with.
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Standards/Consortia
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APNIC ☛ How SSH got to be on port 22
Tatu Ylonen may not be the best-known name in protocol development these days, but chances are that anyone doing systems work copying data between hosts or managing a Unix host will be using his software. He wrote the ubiquitous ‘SSH’ program back in 1995.
In a repost that always gets a huge amount of hits, Tatu discusses on the SSH Academy website how the Internet port assignment of 22 came about. Really, it’s a process story, about how in those days getting an assigned number in the protocol registry maintained by the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) was as simple as writing a letter to Jon Postel and Joyce Reynolds. But the number ‘22’ is one of those rare and wonderful things. Why 22? Well, that’s the second part of the story.
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Science Alert ☛ New 6G Wireless Tech Is 500 Times Faster Than Average 5G Smartphones
Fifth-generation or '5G' connectivity for cellular technology has only been the standard for networks for around five years, but with 6G already on the horizon, developers are looking for ways to take full advantage of the next generation's expansive bandwidth.
A technology demo carried out in Japan has shown a prototype wireless device reaching 100 Gbps data transfer speeds, which is 10 times faster than 5G at its peak, and 500 times faster than an average 5G smartphone.
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Linux Foundation
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TechRepublic ☛ Only 29% of Companies Laid Off IT Staff Last Year, Reveals Linux Foundation Study [Ed: A so-called study or mere questionnaires/survey as 'studies']
Linux Foundation’s 2024 State of Tech Talent Report also showed that HR teams are focusing on upskilling their existing IT staff rather than making new hires.
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Security
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RFERL ☛ Ukrainian Gets More Than 13 Years In Prison In U.S. For Ransomware Attacks
The U.S. Department of Justice said on May 1 that a Ukrainian national was sentenced to 13 years and seven months in prison for over 2,500 ransomware attacks where he demanded more than $700 million in ransom payments.
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Federal News Network ☛ Pro-Russian hacktivists have breached American critical infrastructure networks
CISA said the hackers have compromised operational technology connected to water systems, dams, energy networks, and the food and agriculture sector.
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Security Week ☛ Russian Hackers Target Industrial Systems in North America, Europe
Government agencies are sharing recommendations following attacks claimed by pro-Russian hacktivists on ICS/OT systems.
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