Dr. Bill | The Computer Curmudgeon

I am shutting down the Chromest Netcast, the VirtZine Netcast, and the Hand Held Hack. All these sites will be “de-commissioned” in due time, and all the former content regarding those topics will be handled, if I need to cover it, on the Dr. Bill.TV show (this blog.) I am just spread too thin tp try to do justice to all these other netcasts. My YouTube Channel will continue, but I will be concentrating on the Dr. Bill show and the Word of Faith Netcast.

Ubiquitous WiFi is coming thanks to SpaceX and Elon Musk!

SpaceX has a good day: Successful launch and FCC satellite approval

The Register – By: Kieren McCarthy – “SpaceX successfully launched 10 satellites into space Friday, completing its sixth launch this year.

The launch from pad 4E at the Vandenberg Air Force Base in California came on the same day as the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) approved the company’s plan to set up its own broadband network in space, making it a pretty good Easter for the company.

There is one downside: the end of the Falcon 9 booster used to send the satellite up.

SpaceX has previously recovered the booster and reused it – something that not only makes the company more cost-effective but also provides an invaluable reputation boost as people marvel at its ability to launch and land a rocket within an hour.

The booster was used in October for the third Iridium launch – Friday’s launch being the fifth – but SpaceX said it was the end of the road for Falcon 9 and it will ‘not attempt to recover’ it. It is being replaced with a new ‘Block 5’ model.

The company is however sending a recovery ship – ‘The Steven’ – in an effort to grab the rocket’s nose cone, which protects the cargo as it blasts through the atmosphere. The cone costs around $6m and could be reused in a future flight. The company tried to recover the cone on its last launch and just missed it – it hopes to be more successful this time.

Despite today’s successful result, it has not been smooth sailing: the launch has been delayed several times and was originally scheduled for December. Just two days ago, Iridium’s CEO noted on Twitter that there was an issue with one of the 10 satellites being loaded into the rocket – threatening the push the launch back again.

Those 10 satellites will help make up a network of 81 rotating in six different orbital planes that together can provide global communications coverage: 15 of which will add redundancy to the system i.e. only 66 are needed to provide full coverage.

Iridium contracted with SpaceX to launch 75 of those 81 at a cost of $536m. The NEXT satellites will replace the company’s ageing current satellites. With Friday’s launch, SpaceX has launched 50 of the 75. It plans another two launches to complete by the mission by the middle of this year.

Meanwhile, having put approval of SpaceX’s Starlink constellation of low-Earth orbit satellites that it claims will be able to provide gigabit-speed internet connectivity to the planet on its agenda back in February, the federal telecoms regulator the FCC has approved the plan.

It’ll take years for the full network to go into operation, and SpaceX appears to be scaling back its original plan of an open ISP for everyone in order to focus on areas with poor internet access or slow speeds i.e. target less competitive markets.

But even so, that’s a pretty good Good Friday.”

Change your passwords now!

Under Armour says 150 million MyFitnessPal accounts hit by data breach

ZDNet – By: Natalie Gagliordi and Zack Whittaker – “Under Armour revealed on Thursday after the markets closed that its MyFitnessPal app has been hacked.

The fitness apparel company learned that data on 150 million accounts for the site and app were breached earlier this week, a statement said.

‘The investigation indicates that the affected information included usernames, email addresses, and hashed passwords — the majority with the hashing function called bcrypt used to secure passwords,’ said the statement, referring to the use of a stronger password hashing algorithm.

The company said payment card data was not affected. Under Armour is currently notifying MyFitnessPal users about the breach via email and in-app messaging, and it’s requiring all app users to change their passwords.

Later in the day, the California attorney-general released the company’s data breach notification, per the state’s law — a mirror statement of what the company posted on its website.

Under Armour, thanks to its acquisitions of several fitness app firms — including MyFitnessPal — has amassed massive amounts of data on both professional athletes and fitness enthusiasts. The company has even claimed to have the largest database of athlete behavior, including stats on workouts, nutrition, and sleep patterns. Under Armour has said that it uses this trove of data to make its gear smarter.

The data has helped Under Armour morph from an apparel maker into an athletic performance and technology company, rivaling Nike for the same target demographic.

Under Armour’s connected fitness platforms includes UA Record, MapMyFitness, Endomondo, and MyFitnessPal, and all of those platforms have unified to run on Amazon Web Services.”

Can you imagine a whole Data Center made up of Raspberry Pi’s?

Linux on Raspberry Pi: SUSE support turns $35 board into enterprise IoT platform

ZDNet – By Liam Tung – “SUSE has released a SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 12 SP3 (SLES) for the popular Raspberry Pi, which comes with full commercial support for enterprise customers.

The release upgrades an unsupported version of SLES SP2 Raspberry Pi image released at 2016 SUSECON, which offered enterprises an alternative to Raspbian OS with an OS that uses the SUSE Linux Enterprise kernel for Arm.

Raspberry Pi chief Eben Upton was very pleased with SUSE’s experimental release, because it was first the major 64-bit OS to support the Raspberry Pi’s wireless networking and Bluetooth.

Today, Upton is thrilled because SLES 12 SP3 is the first time a major vendor has offered a full, commercially-supported Raspberry Pi image.

“Unlike two years ago when they just provided a downloadable image with community support, SUSE can now offer 12 x 5 or 24 x 7 support,” writes Upton. “This is all built on the same SUSE Linux that is available on everything from Raspberry Pi to the mainframe.”

According to SUSE, companies have been using SLES for Arm on Raspberry Pi for monitoring older industrial equipment such as robotic screwdrivers and sending alerts when they malfunction.

Download now: Linux distribution comparison chart

The new SUSE Raspberry Pi image still targets the Raspberry Pi Model 3 B, although SUSE says it is planning support for the new Raspberry Pi Model 3 B+.

The new version also contains a few updates and fixes. According to SUSE, developers have made the new image smaller — around 630MB — by trimming compilers and debugging tools while tuning the Arm OS for IoT tasks.

The image supports the Raspberry Pi’s Wi-Fi module by default, as well as HDMI, Ethernet, and GPIO ports. However, it doesn’t support audio, 3D graphics, the Raspberry Pi touchscreen, or camera.

SUSE is also planning to update I/O support so that SLES can be installed on a Raspberry Pi over a network rather than using an SD card image. And it’s planning to add support for the Raspberry Pi Compute Module, which has the same hardware as the Model B but in a smaller form.”

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