Google's Two Factor Authorization is insecure

The authentication system was insecure for about seven months, by allowing the password to be changed despite two-factor authentication. See h-online for details.

Codeweavers CrossOver working very well with Office 2010

I've been thinking about trying it for a long time. Once a while ago I installed Word with Crossover for Mac for a friend. It worked pretty well.

But now I've tried the new one with my old Linux sytem (Ubuntu 9.10) and a brand new Office 2010. I'm quite happy that the backwards compatibility is so good. As you know from my browsers blog entry, (for some good reasons) this is rather rare in the Linux world.

And it works stunnigly well. Office installed without a glitch. I have only tried a few things, but startup is fast, use is snappy and memory usage quite low (~150 MB for Word in CrossOver.) Also, the integration is flawless. I get "start menu" entries automatically. Word files open with word out of the box and so on.

I'm quite fascinated. I wouldn't have thought that it's this easy to get things running. Also, from what I've seen I think CrossOver for Mac + Office is probably a better option than Office for Mac...

Congrats, Codeweavers and keep up the good work!

InstantRemote - Remote Touchpad App for Android

InstantRemote is a cross-platform (Mac, Linux, Windows) remote
touchpad with instant setup. I've successfully tested it on Ubuntu and Mac OS X 10.6.

You can get the app at:
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=de.malte.remote

All you need to do is run this .jar file on any computer in a local network:
http://bremen-21.de/InstantRemote/RemoteServer.jar

After you run the jar, the app automatically discovers the computer
and offers to control it. It works like the touchpad on your notebook.
You can click by tapping, scroll with a two finger swipe, and zoom by
spreading your fingers. It works surprisingly precise and smoothly.
The setup is an absolute no-brainer. The app comes without apps and
only requires network setup.

What works:
- scrolling
- left click
- zooming
- auto-discovery of computers
- entering letter by letter and short words via Swype

What didn't work in my test:
- long words with Swype (1.4 beta)
- double click
- right click

Wishlist:
- right click e.g. via two finger tap
- double click via double tap
- disable the display's backlight to save battery
- better swype support

Want to Debug a Kernel Crash? But the system no longer responds?

If your kernel crashes every once in a while and you want to find out
what happened and/or create a good bug report so it can get fixed,
here's all you need to do in Ubuntu 12.04+:

sudo apt-get install linux-crashdump apport

This automatically installs and sets up a crash kernel to be loaded
via kexec in case of a kernel panic. And it installs apport to be able
to easily report the crash to Ubuntu. The logs will be in /var/crash.

Read here for more: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Kernel/CrashdumpRecipe
And this ebook might help with debugging a crash:
http://www.dedoimedo.com/computers/crash-book.html#download

Of course sometimes this might not work for very hard crashes. But
most crashes should be able to be properly dumped and reported this
way. Good luck!

SAMSUNG SSD 830 Series not automatically going to standby or sleep

No matter how I configure my Samsung SSD, it does not automatically
enter a standby or sleep mode. It does with with hdparm -y/-Y
manually, but that's the only way. And of course during the next
reader it's automatically activated again. hdparm -B is "not
supported", hdparm -S does not seem to have any effect, with 1/253/254
settings. I've used lm-profler to find and stop any accesses to the
disk.

I'm using the sata_sil24 driver with a Sil 3531 SATA controller and as
stated a SAMSUNG SSD 830 with firmware CXM03B1Q. By the way, hdparm -I
tells me that it doesn't support DIPM, unfortunately. I've tested
Linux kernels up to 2.8-rc2.

The reason it's important to me is that I found out the system uses >1
W less power with the SSD in standby mode. And while the SSD uses less
power during disk access, the disk idle power usage is actually higher
now than previously with my plain old spinning hard disk.

Mostly I post fixes, this is just a problem I have. I would appreciate
any hints in the comments. Thanks!

Firefox 18 no longer backwards compatible

I just wanted to warn you and put this out there real quick: Firefox 18 requires a new SSL library. It's no longer compatible with Ubuntu 9.10:

gbeauchesne mplayer-vaapi mirror

As the original website
(http://www.splitted-desktop.com/~gbeauchesne/mplayer-vaapi/) no
longer exists, I've created a mirror with the most recent version I
had downloaded in Dropbox:
http://db.tt/HOr5MJPp
(Leads to mplayer-vaapi-20110127.tbz, a bz2 compressed tar archive.)

If you have a newer version (of the mplayer-vaapi package) please post
a comment. The new releases of other files have moved to:
http://cgit.freedesktop.org/vaapi/

Great Powersavings with Kernel 3.7.0

They've done it again. Already, my system was running with better power management than in Windows, but this has been increased significantly now. I had already reported about less cpu power usage during sound playback. Now the wifi and sound card's power management was during playback was improved, too.

I haven't made any exhaustive comparison tests yet, but I can now be online, surfing and listen to music with a total power consumption of around 6.8-7.5 W. As a rough comparison: With 2.6.36 the same scenario would require about 10.3-12.5 W... (each using the quite power efficient browser opera. Only the graphics driver is a different one: gma500_gfx+fbdev now v. psb+exa.)

Why you should switch to LibreOffice

Michael Meeks published a comparison of features. Though he is a member of LibreOffice, it appears unbiased. To make the story short: You should get LibreOffice. Development seems much healthier now than before, actually. Also, a switch to dual-licensing under LGPL 3 and MPL is under way.

Cyanogen Mod 10 Review

I've finally made the step and reinstalled my Android phone with Cyanogen. Here's my comparison of Cyanogen 10 (4.1.2) with Vanilla (4.1.2) on the Google Nexus S.

Fixes for Android Linux ADB Devices "???????????? No Permissions" Problem

If you're using adb in Linux and you get the error that adb devices shows this:
"????????????    no permissions", then here are two ways to fix it:

One is to add a special file to the udev rules to provide your normal user with  permissions to access the devices file. Let me refer you to a good guide here.

The easy quick-fix is to start the adb server as root:
./adb kill-server
sudo ./adb devices

The device should show up now. After you're killed the server and run one command with sudo, the other commands should all work as a normal user. Otherwise you have a different problem where I don't know the fix.

By the way, if you don't even see your device in the list after adb devices, you probably forgot to turn on USB debugging on your phone in the Developer Settings.

Google Still Struggling with Android Reboot Issues During or After Calls

It's not just me. Google has lots of people reporting that their phone reboots during, after calls or randomly with recent Android versions:
Nexus S, Galaxy Nexus, and more ...

Let's hope Google finds the issue, because if I have a longer call right now, I have a 100% sudden reboot rate. So basically I can only use my mobile phone for short calls since the upgrade. At least I have a landline phone and no phone flatrate on it.

The funny thing, too, is that e.g. long Skype calls via Wifi cause no problem. It's definitely related to the mobile network. I wonder if the problem is the same if I'm only on 2G or have data disabled altogether...

Android OTA Update Woes Since 4.1 - Phone Reboots during or after Call, but Power savings

So the first problem is that sometime since the 4.1 update, maybe the 4.1.1, my device has started to hang itself up, especially when I'm on the phone longer. It only happens when I'm on the phone for 10 minutes or more. Then after the update to 4.1.2 noticed that it didn't happen quite as often anymore. But it happened every single time I used the power button to hang up.

For now I've switched off the functionality again to be able to hang up using the power button, but still it's quite frustrating. 

On the other hand, a combination of updates and removal and deactivation of some apps, maybe Google's Listen app, provided a huge amount of power savings. Now my phone - a Samsung Nexus S - suddenly lasts for over two days if I don't use it a lot! It's never lasted this long. And I love it, naturally. Maybe Better Battery Stats and other apps, probably the Better Wifi On/Off helped, too, with that. 

Especially I'd really recommend Better Wifi On/Off, as it's free and pretty much exactly what I'd always been looking for. Without lots of resources, if switches Wifi off if the display is off and no network traffic is active. But it turns wifi on when the display is unlocked or the device is connected to power. That's all very sensible I think. Now if it could also switch off 3G when wifi is connected... I'll ask the developer. Maybe he can make it work.

Issues after Upgrade to Ubuntu 12.04 - Network Manager not starting and "Waiting for network configuration..." at boot

Both issues are related to your /etc/network/interfaces file. Comment out any automatic interface setup parameters you put in there and it should work fine. Otherwise, there are some other workarounds.

Essential Apps for eBooks / eInk Reading Devices

There are many, many app lists out there for Andorid, but there are hardly any focussing on Android eink readers, such as the rooted Nooks. The following apps have been tested to work well on the Nook Simple Touch.

Fix: How to disable the Google search button in Android 4.1 (the annoying, frustrating, ...)

In Android 4.1, Google started opening the Google search app no matter what you were doing, which app you were using, etc., as soon as you touch the search button. This is at least the case for my Google Nexus S. Whenever I accidentally hit the button with the little magnification glass, the Google search app opens, instead of the app internal search function. And with 18 Mb, that isn't fun and takes a while. Also it's useless for me.

This is how to disable google search and save your nerves:
1. Go to the settings menu
2. Go to apps
3. Go to all apps
4. Go to Google search
5. Uninstall all updates
6. now the same button shows "disable".  Disable the app.

Done!  Enjoy! Rejoice ! Relax!
(The app internal search still doesn't work anymore, but at least you save the time and hassle of opening the Google search app.)

Encrypted Online Chat (works even on smartphones)

With more and more governments increasingly looking into the conversations of their (and other) citizens, as citizens, we should think about protecting our private conversations better. Here's a very easy way to do it: Use the crypto.cat website.

Why does an unloaded alsa module consume more power than a loaded, suspended one?

It seems to me there must be some problem with power management somewhere if completely unloading a module has my netbook using more power (at least 1 W) than if it's loaded and the card suspended by the driver. What's going on here? This is just an open question for now. Any hints are welcome. I am aware obviously that the driver module has power management functions which cause this. The question for me is: Why is that so much more efficient than normal power management?

Android 4.0.4 changes

Here is what I've noticed so far from the update for my Samsung Nexus S.

Tips for Nuance Dragon Naturally Speaking 10 in Wine (1.3.15)

Once you've managed to get an old version and install it, here are some tips.