LWDW: Spectre Sh*tshow

Slack goes Snap! Linus gives Intel the business, Kernel 4.15 gets another RC and Red Hat dumps Spectre. All this plus your emails.

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Colour key – Venn Pedro

News

Ubuntu Slackers
http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2018/01/install-slack-app-ubuntu

It’s slack…
Like it or not, this is the collaboration “framework” which most others will inevitably be compared to.
It wasn’t the first and arguably wasn’t the best, but it was the most widely adopted.
Discord is like Slack for gaming.
I’ve never used the Slack but I hear good things.
Have they fixed the loopback devices showing up when Snap is installed?

Microsoft strikes again
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/01/18/nhs_buntu_trademark_cease_and_desist/

Long story short, NHSEngland was in talks with Microsoft about getting cheaper licenses and when Microsoft caved, NHS lawyers shutdown NHSbuntu or NHoS the only way they know how.
Incompetence in the NHS merely starts with Jeremy Hunt, it goes down a long way.
While I would have loved to see and maybe even help with NHoS, I didn’t even know it existed until the Department of Health decided to bully them to stop.
The volunteer force behind NHoS wanted NHSbuntu to replace the current smart card verification system that was running on Windows.
Only 4 core members
Old people running the NHS were angered and confused by the concept of FLOSS.
Some could argue that the current “underfunding” issue with the NHS is really a “spending” issue.

Speaking of the NHS
http://hospitalrun.io/

Don’t test in production
https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/01/22/linus_4_15_needs_rc_9/

It will be a little longer but hopefully RC9 will be the final before the actual kernel is good to go.
Considering the shitestorm Spectre caused an extra RC is had to get upset about.

Gotta love the straightforward and uncensored comments of Linus when it comes to “garbage” being pushed inrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr the kernel.
It’s still not a good month to be Intel.
2018 has barely even started and there’s even more crap in Team Blue’s court.
The swipe was taken at a former Intel engineer
Linus does not think a software patch is a fix, it would seem?

Bricking Specters
https://www.itnews.com.au/news/red-hat-dumps-spectre-cpu-patches-that-brick-servers-481526

And DELL just advised everyone to avoid the patches.
Spectre is proving to be a much nastier bug to squash than what we first read and discussed on this show.
It’s a wicked-serious issue and despite what WinTel is trying to get everyone to believe it will not be sorted with a few simple patches.
ARM is probably the only one of the chipmakers doing the right thing here.
Their patches might be buggy and performance heavy but at least they are being transparent about it.
Unlike Intel and AMD.
BTW: Meltdown is an Intel only problem.
Don’t be fooled by people who say “but ARM is affected too”.
None of those processors are on the market.

I’m trying really hard to come up with a use case for this.
It can’t game.
- It can, but only with OpenGL games.
Without Direct3D capabilities, WINE is of very limited use.
Could be a good idea to start on this because in5+ years the whole mobile / dock / Desktop will be a thing.
Regardless, support CodeWeavers.

Budget VR
https://github.com/relativty/Relativ

I want to keep the ratio of things I built that end up strapped to my face-organ @ 0/0.
Low cost is a good way of going at it in VR “market”.
- Emphasis on the quotes, there.
Arduino + display + time.

OBS Studio 21.0.1
https://github.com/jp9000/obs-studio/releases/tag/21.0.1

A usable VU meter??? #squeeee
Added a “Multiview” projector
I’ll give it to the OBS folks, they made a bit of software which runs natively on Windows and Linux with functionality on par regardless of which OS you’re using.
That’s really all Linux users ask for.
Give us something which works just as good on Linux and has the same functionality as it does on Windows and we’re more than happy to use it.
Heck! Make it open sauce like OBS Studio, and you’ll have the Linux community help you develop and improve your software across the board for the price of free.
Added Luajit/Python3 scripting support.

Slice of Pi

POW!
https://www.raspberrypi.org/blog/facepunch-facial-recognition/