Messages

151

General Software Discussion / Re: Windows 10 Privacy Concerns

« on: September 25, 2015, 11:57 PM »

Sadly, the only reference I have handy at the moment is a rather dryly written college text book sitting on my bookshelf. I can tell you that all versions of Windows have "let's naively use the MAC address to create our IPv6 address!!" disabled by default...

-Innuendo (September 06, 2015, 01:59 PM)

Found the following:

Privacy extensions are enabled by default in Windows (since XP SP1), OS X (since 10.7), and iOS (since version 4.3). Some Linux distributions have enabled privacy extensions as well.

via: https://en.wikipedia...rg/wiki/IPv6#Privacy

FWIW, was examining an Android device with Cyanogenmod 12.x on it, and for the one in question, the extensions didn't seem to be enabled as a portion of the mac address appeared to be easily readable off of the IPv6 address of a network interface.

152

General Software Discussion / Re: AVG Antivirus Plans to Collect & Sell Your Personal Data to Advertisers?

« on: September 25, 2015, 01:04 AM »

Thanks for that

153

General Software Discussion / Re: Chocolatey...opinions? portable?

« on: September 23, 2015, 09:31 PM »

Not familiar with CMM, so am scanning a Wikipedia page for it (perhaps that's not too awful ).

A key realisation to the understanding of the CMM and its implications is that, to all practical intents and purposes, if a process is generally likely to be in a perpetual or semi-perpetual state of dynamic change - e.g., as in CMM Level 1 (Ad hoc/Chaotic) or Level 2 (Repeatable) - then it is impermanent, and, try as one might to define it and automate it, it would be likely to keep changing whilst one was doing that, thus invalidating the definition/automation.

-IainB (September 23, 2015, 12:18 AM)

Sounds familiar

154

General Software Discussion / Re: Cyberfox / Firefox updated to 41.0x

« on: September 23, 2015, 10:37 AM »

Thanks for the heads up -- compiling now

155

General Software Discussion / Re: Windows 10 Privacy Concerns

« on: September 22, 2015, 05:37 AM »

Thanks -- I'd started looking at the license terms but didn't allocate the energy to continue far


I was contemplating the idea of making your script "installable" via Scoop and was wondering what to do about the module it depends on.  I guess there may be an option to make the module "installable" by Scoop too and create a dependency for it...

156

General Software Discussion / Re: Chocolatey...opinions? portable?

« on: September 21, 2015, 08:47 PM »

I'm not sure I can digest so much at once but I'll respond to what I can ATM

For example, one of the implications that stood out for me was the potential usefulness of all the tools that were being used in a linked/sequential fashion. The demo showed it all being done manually (by typing commands into the PowerShell interface), complete with errors and then corrections, at the keyboard. The person at the keyboard probably needs to be something like (say) a Grade A system mechanic in the systems being used with current knowledge all in his head as he types - and he did say he had spent a lot of time getting to that point - so there's a dependency right there.

-IainB (September 21, 2015, 12:39 PM)

Perhaps you're hinting that current technology has a human involved at some point -- and that's a dependency.  What actions the person decides on (can at least in retrospect) be viewed as a program that person executed.  Roughly speaking, I'd guess that accurate documentation means that other people are able to execute appropriate instructions (as well as adapt them to their needs).  So the instructions are distributed partly in humans and partly in machines -- depending on the system what the distribution of the instructions is differs I guess.

The video we watched seems to be in the territory of what I'd guess programmers and system administrators would feel capable of "decoding" -- a form of documentation.

I'd guess it's quite normal for something of this nature to not have documentation that's spelled out tidily -- but apart from docs, who knows how well the software behaves in practice (it might be fine, just haven't tested)!  Single programmer working for fun in spare time and all

157

General Software Discussion / Re: Chocolatey...opinions? portable?

« on: September 21, 2015, 07:25 PM »

With no English documentation, I didn't feel I wanted to go in that direction.  Superficial... maybe?  But definitely a breaking point for me.

-wraith808 (September 21, 2015, 12:49 PM)

Being able to learn and then continue to do so about a topic seems an important criteria (especially for things that keep changing like software), so if the info is in a language one does not know, then that doesn't sound superficial to me

158

General Software Discussion / Re: Windows 10 Privacy Concerns

« on: September 21, 2015, 08:14 AM »

• The Windows Update Powershell Module installed.

-4wd (September 01, 2015, 01:14 AM)

In another thread I started looking at a PowerShell program that loads related files relative to the invoked script file.

Do you think the terms of the Module mentioned above would allow bundling?

FWIW, the program I was looking at was Scoop -- there appears to be a PowerShell 2 compatible version at:

  https://github.com/d...us/scoop-powershell2

The following seems to be some code that arranges for the aforementioned loading of code relative to the invoked script:

  https://github.com/d...master/bin/scoop.ps1

159

General Software Discussion / AVG Antivirus Plans to Collect & Sell Your Personal Data to Advertisers?

« on: September 20, 2015, 09:53 AM »

Didn't check in detail myself, but came across the following:

This new policy, which will come into effect on October 15, clearly explains that AVG will be allowed to collect and sell users' "non-personal data" in order to "make money from our free offerings so we can keep them free."

Here's the list of, what AVG calls, "non-personal data" the company claims to collect from its customers and sell to interested third-parties, specifically online advertisers:

 * Browsing History,
 * Search History,
 * Meta-data,
 * Advertising ID associated with your device,
 * Internet Service Provider (ISP) or Mobile Network you use to connect to AVG products,
 * Information regarding other apps you have on your device.

Previous policies allowed the firm to only collect:

 * Data on "the words you search",
 * Information about any malware on the users' machine.

via https://thehackernew...9/avg-antivirus.html

May be someone else can confirm?

160

General Software Discussion / Re: Chocolatey...opinions? portable?

« on: September 19, 2015, 09:58 PM »

IIRC, I'd avoided ZeroInstall earlier because of .NET dependencies and the seeming requirement of having to sign packages (nice to have optionally, but being forced even for my own local purposes seemed too much).

-ewemoa (September 18, 2015, 06:14 PM)

Current impression is that with "local feeds", signing is not necessary (or not done even if desired?):

There are two other differences to note: there is no digital signature at the end (we assume that no attacker could intercept the file between your harddisk and you ;-), and the version number ends in a modifier (-pre in this case), showing that it hasn't been released.

via http://0install.net/local-feeds.html

161

General Software Discussion / Re: Chocolatey...opinions? portable?

« on: September 19, 2015, 09:47 PM »

Quite by chance, I stumbled upon these links (below) whilst looking at ways to automate the updates of AutoHotkey  Hotkey files across disparate client devices, via the Internet.

-IainB (September 19, 2015, 04:47 PM)

From briefly viewing portions of one of the 'using and creating...' video I gathered that:

* One can use a tool to generate a skeleton file/folder structure that eventually get packaged as a .nupkg for Chocolatey (looks like the fellow used yeoman for this).

* Once the skeleton files are generated, one appropriately edits some of the generated .ahk files to place one's own AHK code within

* By an appropriate method generated a .nupkg file and then optionally upload / place the .nupkg file somewhere one's Chocolatey installations can get at it (e.g. somewhere on the net, a local directory, etc.)

* One can use Chocolatey to install those appropriately located .nupkg files

Does that sound about right?

162

General Software Discussion / Re: Chocolatey...opinions? portable?

« on: September 19, 2015, 06:27 PM »

More info: Gow is a shell, not a package manager.  It's an alternative for windows to Cygwin.  But it was a welcome find for other reasons, even so.  I'd stopped using Cygwin because it was so huge.  Gow is apparently small.

-wraith808 (September 18, 2015, 01:35 PM)

I'd come to use Cygwin less over the years as I had difficulty consistently making it portable -- the size was also not a point in its favor.

Gow does look interesting.

Thanks to panzer for pointing it out

163

Official Announcements / Re: Forum Upgraded August 30, 2015 - Report issues here

« on: September 19, 2015, 05:46 PM »

Thanks for doing it especially then

164

General Software Discussion / Re: Chocolatey...opinions? portable?

« on: September 19, 2015, 01:42 AM »

I'd seen that one and discarded it also for some reason, which was the reason I didn't mention it.

-wraith808 (September 18, 2015, 09:52 PM)

He he.  When I try to investigate it, my brain cringes at the seeming amount of effort involved in assessing it   Source is available though (at least partly Python?).

165

General Software Discussion / Re: Chocolatey...opinions? portable?

« on: September 18, 2015, 08:34 PM »

@panzer's list above shows that there are several options for third-party non-proprietary application AUMs (Auto-Update Managers) in the market, and an exhaustively comprehensive list could well be much longer.

-IainB (September 18, 2015, 11:17 AM)

Yes, I took a look at:

  https://alternativet...ey/?platform=windows

while trying out a number of things, and indeed that list was on the long side.

I gave up as I found that they generally tended to have some unavoidable common limitations which, taken together, made them not-so-useful for my purposes.

That had been the case here too, but things seem to have evolved over the years -- of course, my criteria are different.  For example, I'd much prefer something along the lines of:

* Can examine, tweak and extend source code of the system, but also allow creation of 'recipes' for additional software with a reasonable amount of effort
* Can build with tools which I 'can build' / trust
* The system itself being portable
* Not requiring additional components to be installed (or minimal additions if possible -- it turns out that there appears to be a version of Scoop which runs with PowerShell 2 so PowerShell 3 may not have to be installed if one is using Windows 7 SP1)

As we're likely all aware, the installation / deployment step has been abused in recent years so some might say it's prudent to be on the paranoid side regarding tools and systems that aid in such processes

166

General Software Discussion / Re: Chocolatey...opinions? portable?

« on: September 18, 2015, 06:29 PM »

Another one that was also on panzer's list that looked worth checking out was WAPT but I haven't done so yet.

167

General Software Discussion / Re: Chocolatey...opinions? portable?

« on: September 18, 2015, 06:25 PM »

UPDATE2: You might be able to build it from sources... it' uses OCAML, so I'm not sure why the windows version requires .NET.

-wraith808 (September 18, 2015, 12:43 PM)

The github repository had the following instructions for building:

  https://github.com/0...windows-installation

No idea why .NET is necessary -- may be there are convenient libraries for working with Windows that are being leveraged?

But perhaps the version required doesn't require any additional installing as Tuxman hinted at.

168

General Software Discussion / Re: Chocolatey...opinions? portable?

« on: September 18, 2015, 06:14 PM »

IIRC, I'd avoided ZeroInstall earlier because of .NET dependencies and the seeming requirement of having to sign packages (nice to have optionally, but being forced even for my own local purposes seemed too much).

Now that I'm not looking after XP machines, the .NET requirement issue may not be relevant, and perhaps the package signing situation is different now (or may be I misunderstood earlier).

May be worth another look...

169

General Software Discussion / Re: Chocolatey...opinions? portable?

« on: September 18, 2015, 06:05 PM »

More info: Win-Get and Windows-Get seem abandoned.  The last update date on them is quite old, and looking at the repos, the versions of the software available is likewise ancient.

-wraith808 (September 18, 2015, 01:57 PM)

Hadn't seen Windows-Get, but unmaintained / abandoned was how it seemed to me for Win-Get and WPKG so I didn't mention them earlier.

170

General Software Discussion / Re: Chocolatey...opinions? portable?

« on: September 18, 2015, 03:20 AM »

Yes, perhaps something is not right with the certificate situation for Scoop.

just-install.it doesn't appear to provide https access, but at least their repository does.


According the top page of just-install's repository:

I wanted something simple, something that would download an installer and run it silently. That's why I wrote just-install.

Npackd seems to be heavily installer-oriented too and also tied to the registry.

I try to stay away from installers as much as possible, and so far Scoop seems to cover what I'd use -- with a few additional 'manifests' that weren't too hard to write:

[Select]

{
    "homepage": "https://www.getwox.com/",
    "license": "MIT",
    "version": "1.2.0-beta",
    "url": "https://github.com/qianlifeng/Wox/releases/download/v1.2.0-beta/Wox-1.2.0-beta.zip",
    "hash": "46666ad948db735a7e683efe01da2b61b28b768e7775a518dffbf6fbfc493f2a",
    "extract_dir": "",
    "bin": [ "Wox.exe" ]
}

[Select]

{
    "homepage": "https://leiningen.org/",
    "license": "EPLv1",
    "version": "2.5.2",
    "url": "https://raw.github.com/technomancy/leiningen/2.5.2/bin/lein.bat",
    "hash": "bcf0d7a8bec3dadfa57fec60c86dd14b276aa3eaacb584cd3a2241a252ef0b46",
    "bin": [ "lein.bat" ],
    "post_install": [
        "lein self-install"
    ],
    "depends": [ "curl", "openjdk" ]
}

171

General Software Discussion / Re: Chocolatey...opinions? portable?

« on: September 18, 2015, 02:44 AM »

Ah, sorry:

  Scoop
  just-install
  Npackd

172

General Software Discussion / Re: Chocolatey...opinions? portable?

« on: September 17, 2015, 11:36 PM »

As a possible alternative to Chocolatey, now trying scoop -- a bit bumpy, but this seems a better fit for the sorts of things I'm likely to use.

Other candidates of interest were just-install and Npackd, but haven't tried them yet.

173

Living Room / Re: The End of my Macbook Pro Experiment

« on: September 17, 2015, 05:39 PM »

Trial and error and talking to other folks too perhaps

174

General Software Discussion / Re: Chocolatey...opinions? portable?

« on: September 17, 2015, 08:00 AM »

Creating the installation script often doesn't seem too bad, but appropriate upgrading and uninstalling seems like it can be a lot more work.

Have modified / created some packages to work (err, install anyway) with a number of "portable" versions of apps with some success and also configured the local Chocolatey to use a local folder of appropriate .nupkg files as a source.

I guess this might be one way to start picking up some PowerShell


On a side note, came across BoxStarter and Puppet -- anyone tried these out?

175

Living Room / Security: Android 5.x Lockscreen Bypass (CVE-2015-3860)

« on: September 16, 2015, 07:22 PM »

A vulnerability exists in Android 5.x <= 5.1.1 (before build LMY48M) that allows an attacker to crash the lockscreen and gain full access to a locked device, even if encryption is enabled on the device. By manipulating a sufficiently large string in the password field when the camera app is active an attacker is able to destabilize the lockscreen, causing it to crash to the home screen. At this point arbitrary applications can be run or adb developer access can be enabled to gain full access to the device and expose any data contained therein.

via http://sites.utexas....5-lockscreen-bypass/