today's leftovers

• macOS vs.Windows: Which OS Really Is the Best?

  If you’re truly gung-ho on interface customization, I recommend Linux, which offers a selection of completely different user interface shells. [...] Those looking for the ultimate in stability, though, should check out Linux.

• Essential System Tools: Nmap – network security tool

  This is the ninth in our series of articles highlighting essential system tools. These are small utilities, useful for system administrators as well as regular users of Linux based systems. The series examines both graphical and text based open source utilities. For this article, we’ll look at Nmap (“Network Mapper”).

 

• KDE Itinerary @ Paris Open Transport Meetup

  I have been invited by Kisio Digital to present the work we have been doing around KDE Itinerary at the Paris Open Transport Meetup next week. The meetup is near Gare de Lyon and starts on Thursday at 19:00. Feel free to come by, I’m looking forward to discuss ideas on how to move KDE Itinerary forward.

• WordPress Update 5.0 Introduces The Gutenberg Editor, A Brand New Theme and Much More

  WordPress, an open source platform for managing content which is built up and based around MySQL and PHP. Often used for blogging purposes and publishing content on websites, WordPress happens to be one of the pioneer class in what it does. With that, building up on its current platform, the latest update for is arriving sooner than later. The 5.0 update, dubbed as the biggest update in quite a while. While minor updates will be followed and coupled with the main deal, WordPress developers and publishers have been keen to reiterate the two new additions brought towards it, this time around. Firstly they emphasis on the Gutenberg Editor, a new way to edit text rather than the usual classic WordPress Editor that people normally use. The second one happens to be the theme for the updates platform. Dubbed as the Twenty Nineteen theme, this will be the style suite enveloping the WordPress user interface this time around. Firstly, Gutenberg. This is not a new feature for those ‘Pro’ WordPress users who may have seen the update as a form of the testing phase in the update version 4.9.8. It allowed for users to try out this new form of the text editing platform. The look of the entire editor window seems ot be revamped and can be seen here below. Apart from that, interacting with it has been changed, the true depth of which would be completely known when the full version is available to the end users and is tested out.

• Microsoft and Facebook team up on open-source AI [Ed:Two surveillance companies are openwashing their abuses, plan to blame the abuses on "AI"]

• SRT Alliance Welcomes Comcast Technology Solutions and Ooyala to Open Source Video Streaming Project

• How to Configure Nginx as Reverse Proxy for Nodejs App

Security Leftovers

• Popular AMP Plugin for WordPress Patches Critical Flaw – Update Now

• Why aren’t chip credit cards stopping “card present” fraud in the US?

  Chip cards work by creating a unique code for each transaction, and (ideally) require a customer to enter a PIN to verify that they want to make the purchase. This doesn't make it impossible to steal information from chip-based cards, but it does make it much harder to reuse a stolen card. By contrast, using a magnetic stripe to swipe a card simply offers all the relevant information to the merchant's card reader, which is much easier for a bad actor to steal.

  Gemini Advisory now says that 60 million credit and debit card numbers were stolen in the US in the past 12 months, and most of those were chip-based cards.

• Encryption bill: US academic questions what law is trying to achieve

  American cryptography fellow Riana Pfefferkorn has questioned what end the Federal Government's encryption bill is trying to achieve, asking whether the ends of keeping crime under control could not be achieved by other means.

• Encryption bill: 'systemic weakness' eludes definition

  The Federal Government is yet to properly define in its encryption bill what a systemic weakness means, and the question came up more than once for discussion during the second hearing on the bill before the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Security and Intelligence.

• Minister in Charge of Japan’s Cybersecurity Says He Has Never Used a Computer

  But one is. Japanese lawmakers were aghast on Wednesday when Yoshitaka Sakurada, 68, the minister who heads the government’s cybersecurity office, said during questioning in Parliament that he had no need for the devices, and appeared confused when asked basic technology questions.

• Former Facebook security chief: 'I failed to prepare my employer' on Russian disinformation

  While Stamos took some blame, in a tweet thread he also took at aim at other groups he felt were partially responsible for enabling Russian election interference and credited Facebook for going public with information about misinformation campaigning on its platform when other companies did not.

• Companies keep losing your data because it doesn't cost them anything

  Why does this keep happening? Because it's affordable. In 2014, Home Depot breached more than 50,000,000 credit-cards; in 2016, they paid less than $0.34/customer in restitution.

• Massive Data Leaks Keep Happening Because Big Companies Can Afford to Lose Your Data

  When criminal [crackers] keep breaking into big company networks to grab consumer data, the reason comes down to dollars and nonsense.

Ubuntu Mir's EGMDE Desktop Getting Experimental XWayland

Ubuntu's little known EGMDE example Mir desktop that is mostly a proving grounds for Mir development is now receiving support for XWayland for being able to run X11 applications within this example environment. Lead Mir developer Alan Griffiths posted about initial XWayland support for EGMDE but that it is "highly experimental, and can crash the desktop." This support is available via the "edge" EGMDE Snap.

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