Raspberry Pi Announces PIXEL Desktop Environment

Today the Raspberry Pi Foundation formally announced the Raspberry Pi PIXEL, their own desktop that will be used in future Raspbian spins. PIXEL is short for Pi Improved Xwindows Environment, Lightweight desktop. PIXEL is derived from the LXDE desktop environment but with both appearance and fundamental changes, including some new applications.

today's leftovers

• 'Do you really need to do that?'

  A new postdoc student arrived at our department this semester, and after learning that he uses GNU/Linux for all his computing, I invited him along to TFUG. During some of our meetings people asked “how could I do X on my GNU/Linux desktop?” and, jokingly, the postdoc would respond “the answer to your question is ‘do you really need to do that?’” Sometimes the more experienced GNU/Linux users at the table would respond to questions by suggesting that the user should simply give up on doing X, and the postdoc would slap his thigh and laugh and say “see? I told you that’s the answer!” The phenomenon here is that people who have at some point made a commitment to at least try to use GNU/Linux for all their computing quickly find that they have come to value using GNU/Linux more than they value engaging in certain activities that only work well/at all under a proprietary operating system. I think that this is because they get used to being treated with respect by their computer. And indeed, one of the reasons I’ve almost entirely given up on computer gaming is that computer games are non-free software. “Are you sure you need to do that?” starts sounding like a genuine question rather than simply a polite way of saying that what someone wants to do can’t be achieved.

• Highlights of YaST development sprint 25

  Another development sprint is over. Time flies! In our previous post we already reported about the branching of Tumbleweed and the upcoming releases and about the expected consequences: the landing of some cool features in a less conservative Tumbleweed.

• Mintbox Mini Pro is a little Linux PC with big specs for $395

• PepeLine is a 3D puzzle game that will get you addicted instantly

• GNU Tools Cauldron 2016, ARMv8 multi-arch edition

  That is what my England trip for the GNU Tools Cauldron was, but that only seemed to add to the pleasure of meeting friends again. I flewin to Heathrow and started on an almost long train journey to Halifax,with two train changes from Reading. I forgot my phone on the trainbut the friendly station manager at Halifax helped track it down andgot it back to me. That was the first of the many times I forgotstuff in a variety of places during this trip. Like I discovered thatI forgot to carry a jacket or an umbrella. Or shorts. Or full lengthpants for that matter. Like I purchased an umbrella from Sainsbury’s but forgot to carry it out. I guess you got the drift of it.

today's howtos

• Diffoscope progress bar

• Use shortcuts for faster web browsing

• TripleO deployment of 'master' branch via instack-virt-setup on VIRTHOST (2)

• How to install & configure Jenkins on CentOS/RHEL/Fedora/openSUSE

Networking and Security

• FAQ: What's so special about 802.11ad Wi-Fi?

  Here are the broad strokes about 802.11ad, the wireless technology that’s just starting to hit the market.

• 2.5 and 5 Gigabit Ethernet Now Official Standards

  In 2014, multiple groups started efforts to create new mid-tier Ethernet speeds with the NBASE-T Alliance starting in October 2014 and MGBASE-T Alliance getting started a few months later in December 2014. While those groups started out on different paths, the final 802.3bz standard represents a unified protocol that is interoperable across multiple vendors. The promise of 2.5 and 5 Gbps Ethernet is that they can work over existing Cat5 cabling, which to date has only been able to support 1 Gbps. Now with the 802.3bz standard, organizations do not need to rip and replace cabling to get Ethernet that is up to five times faster. "Now, the 1000BASE-T uplink from the wireless to wired network is no longer sufficient, and users are searching for ways to tap into higher data rates without having to overhaul the 70 billion meters of Cat5e / Cat6 wiring already sold," David Chalupsky, board of directors of the Ethernet Alliance and Intel principal engineer, said in a statement. "IEEE 802.3bz is an elegant solution that not only addresses the demand for faster access to rapidly rising data volumes, but also capitalizes on previous infrastructure investments, thereby extending their life and maximizing value."

• A quick fix for stupid password reset questions

  It didn’t take 500 million hacked Yahoo accounts to make me hate, hate, hate password reset questions (otherwise known as knowledge-based authentication or KBA). It didn't help when I heard that password reset questions and answers -- which are often identical, required, and reused on other websites -- were compromised in that massive hack, too. Is there any security person or respected security guidance that likes them? They are so last century. What is your mother’s maiden name? What is your favorite color? What was your first pet’s name?

• French hosting provider hit by DDoS close to 1TBps

  A hosting provider in France has been hit by a distributed denial of service attack that went close to one terabyte per second. Concurrent attacks against OVH clocked in at 990GBps. The attack vector is said to be the same Internet-of-Things botnet of 152,464 devices that brought down the website of security expert Brian Krebs. OVH chief technology officer Octave Klaba tweeted that the network was capable of attacks up to 1.5TBps.

• Latest IoT DDoS Attack Dwarfs Krebs Takedown At Nearly 1Tbps Driven By 150K Devices

  If you thought that the massive DDoS attack earlier this month on Brian Krebs’ security blog was record-breaking, take a look at what just happened to France-based hosting provider OVH. OVH was the victim of a wide-scale DDoS attack that was carried via network of over 152,000 IoT devices. According to OVH founder and CTO Octave Klaba, the DDoS attack reached nearly 1 Tbps at its peak. Of those IoT devices participating in the DDoS attack, they were primarily comprised of CCTV cameras and DVRs. Many of these types devices' network settings are improperly configured, which leaves them ripe for the picking for hackers that would love to use them to carry our destructive attacks.