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Comment OT: Skype Linux Desktop Alpha has group call (Score 1) 74

Does "works well" include handling group calls (or whatever Skype calls them)?

Yes but not in the Web version - currently only the Linux desktop version (with caveats). See https://support.skype.com/en/f... (Calling and call troubleshooting):

Does this fix the incoming group call issue I have on Skype for Linux today?
Yes, the problem with receiving incoming group calls is fixed in Skype for Linux Alpha. Make sure the people you're calling or receiving calls from are using the latest version of Skype.

Comment Isn't this mutation testing? (Score 1) 73

I thought this was already called mutation testing in Computer Science. At least in that you create variants of the original program with subtle changes so you can see which mutants are "killed" (aka detected) by your test cases. The more mutants you kill the better the test suite. It seems strange the paper doesn't reference that research at all...

Comment Re: Might "lose" more if ZFS spacemaps corrupted (Score 1) 295

The BSD Now show "ZFS in the trenches" talks about how different developers have different opinions on whether you must use ECC RAM with ZFS but all recommended ECC if possible (so that part is not in debate). Around the 56:30 mark of the episode, Josh Paetzel of FreeNAS explains that if the ZFS spacemaps were corrupted due to memory errors you could be in a worse situation compared to less sophisticated filesystems that have an fsck. This is because with a corrupt spacemap ZFS would refuse to let you access any data whereas the fsck would "just" (irreversibly) decopule or delete chunks of data in an attempt to allow access to the rest. It's not a great situation - inaccessible data versus data loss and/or corruption but it is a difference.

Comment What is it, or more importantly why (Score 1) 274

This also sounds like a lot of effort and hoop jumping just to avoid dependency hell, you might as well just ship rpm/apt packages with statically linked binaries in them, the result would be just as bloated, and you wouldn't lose the conflict avoidance that would otherwise belost by running more than one package manager.

or is it just a NiH attempt at a Docker clone

Comment Re:This is only going to get worse (Score 1) 58

You are referring to the eCall system, it is mobile phone (GSM) based, and is meant to remain dormant until there is an accident, at which point it calls the emergency services and reports the location and a few other limited pieces of info. There are quite strict rules on data privacy and anti-tracking that go with it.

Comment Re:Poor system design (Score 1) 58

The thing is that so far they have used the wifi to access only the functions that the wifi system is meant to have access to, those functions are supposed to be limited to the owner so yeah theres a security issue there, a mitm attack it reads like.

but. It doesn't give access to anything terribly exciting, or dangerous. "oooh scary they can drain the drive battery" (by activating the pre-heater), it's a hybrid, it has a petrol engine, that battery drain could cost you whole pennies in extra fuel on your journey. sigh.

If your going to freak out about security then the keyless door entry would be the more tempting attack vector, the old "use a signal booster to unlock the car" trick, then you have access to the OBDII port directly and could maybe cause some real problems.

Comment Might be fixed when Xcode is updated in June? (Score 1) 184

Sounds like this won't be resolved until Apple releases its next Xcode update (or Command Line Tools for Xcode if you aren't using the IDE). Looking at previous release dates it seems that Apple releases new versions every three months and the previous version was released 21st of March 2016.

Comment More than Debian and Fedora/Red Hat (Score 1) 110

Debian is definitely a popular root but I'd dispute I'd argue that it isn't Fedora that's a major root, rather it's Red Hat/RHEL. Even then, there are large numbers of popular distros not derived from those sources. From the GNU/Linux Distribution Timeline:
  1. Slackware has spawned lots of distros (including SUSE)
  2. Enoch spawned the Gentoo line of distros (and Gentoo is the current base of ChromeOS).
  3. The Arch family started independently
  4. The on-the-rise Alpine Linux was independently started

So by lineage alone I'd argue there are more than two major categories.

Comment Re:I'm not seeing the problem here (Score 2) 315

Even worse, where is the judicial oversight? Shouldn't searching the family laptop require some kind of check, especially when it is based on such incredibly flimsy evidence?

For police to examine a laptop by force, they would require a search warrant. But in this case they probably asked the family to hand it over voluntarily, which the family agreed to do to make the police go away and stop hassling them.

Comment Forced to click through (Score 4, Informative) 47

My experience of these changes is that you'll be forced to click through a warning in your browser even if you installed the certificate (or the root CA signing the certificate). The Microsoft page about no longer trusting SHA1 certs is confusing in this respect because it includes information about signing Windows binaries but it does say

Windows [...] will no longer trust any code that is signed with a SHA-1 code signing certificate and that contains a timestamp value greater than January 1, 2016

That document also says it only applies to certs that are in the Microsoft Root Certificate Program so ones you've manually installed might not be affected.

This is slightly different to the Mozilla's SHA-1 deprecation information:

After January 1, 2017, we plan to show the “Untrusted Connection” error whenever a SHA-1 certificate is encountered in Firefox.

Perhaps this isn't the override you were thinking of but it doesn't sound like a total block.

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