What in the heck-a-tarnations is going on in England?

The British government, and British Universities, have been attempting to convince the English populace of some truly bizarre things about computers.

WiFi Causes Climate Change

Case in point, The University of East London is running a campaign called “Think Again” — including putting up advertisements around London with the message:

“WiFi doesn’t grow on trees.”

 

“WiFi doesn’t grow on trees”? Well, of course, it doesn’t. Did the British people believe that WiFi was a fruit?

The “Think Again” propaganda campaign also wants you to know that “Your screen time is damaging the climate” and “There are no monsters under the bed… they’re on the bedside table, charging.”

 

That’s right. WiFi causes “climate change”. And that makes anything that uses Wifi… super scary. Like, “monster under the bed” level of scary.

And it gets even weirder.

E-Mail Causes Water Shortages

On August 12th, the government of the United Kingdom put out an official press release entitled, “National Drought Group meets to address nationally significant water shortfall”.

 

In that press release, the director of the UK’s Environment Agency made the following statement:

“We are grateful to the public for following the [water usage] restrictions, where in place, to conserve water in these dry conditions. Simple, everyday choices – such as turning off a tap or deleting old emails – also really helps the collective effort to reduce demand and help preserve the health of our rivers and wildlife.”

 

Yes, you read that right.

According to that press release, two of the best ways to prevent a water shortage are “turning off a tap or deleting old emails”.

Let me reiterate.

The official stance of the British government is that emails — specifically old emails — significantly impact the availability of water.

Now, ok, to be fair… there are a number of data centers which are water cooled. Including Google data centers located on the Columbia river — which I covered in my 2017 show, “They’re Watching You”. [Which, as it happens, is a truly delightful show that you should treat yourself to later. Grab a snack and enjoy that one.]

But the idea that “deleting some old email” would have any immediate, measurable impact on water supply is absolutely bonkers. Daft. Batty. Crackers. Mad. Or… barmy. Apparently that’s British slang for crazy.

Computers Are The Devil

Noticing a trend?

The message — from both British universities and the British government — is that computers (and sinister things like WiFi and email) are going to kill us all via climate change. Or water. Or being a monster under the bed. Or something.

 

Turn off your Internet! Delete your email! Don’t charge your phone!

This messaging — from multiple agencies — is all coming at roughly the same time. And coinciding with the rolling out of age verification for a significant number of websites within the UK.

All of which makes my eyes get all squinty.

 

Now.

I’m not saying all of these things are definitely related.

But it sure seems like those in power, in the UK, really don’t want British people on the Internet.

And they’re willing to make some pretty barmy statements to keep you off your computers.

It’s been another wild week in the world of computing — and, of course, a number of news stories got ignored (almost completely) by those Brand X Tech Journalists.

Never fear. Lunduke’s got you covered. Below are the top stories which the other Tech News outlets are trying to ignore — impacting Open Source and Tech in general — for last week.

Note: All articles and podcasts are free for all (subscribers and non-subscribers alike).

 

Note 2: Links to the stories below are all to Substack. You can also find links to all other platforms, which The Lunduke Journal publishes to, at Lunduke.com.

 

Note 3: Most videos are subscriber exclusives. Subscribers on Locals, Substack, X, YouTube, or Patreon can watch all of the videos. Ad free. If you don’t have a subscription yet, you can snag one for 50% off through the end of August.

Linux Kernel Chaos

The world of Linux Kernel development had a crazy week.

No. The word “crazy” doesn’t quite do justice to the absolute chaos and insanity taking place around the Kernel.

We kicked off the week by learning that layoffs from Intel had caused a number of significant Linux Kernel Modules to become “orphans” (meaning, nobody was left to maintain them) — only to realize that the number of such “orphan” Kernel Modules has actually doubled in the last two years (article, podcast & video). Doubled!

Then, Linus Torvalds laid into a Google engineer for writing “garbage” code that “makes the world actively a worse place to live” (podcast & video). Which was just… entertaining.

And then, we learned that the BcacheFS file system might be removed from the Linux Kernel entirely. Why? Because Linus Torvalds doesn’t like the developer (podcast & video). Apparently the developer is too blunt and rude. For Linus Torvalds. Seriously.

But, never fear! The Linux Foundation is swooping in to fix everything! By… banning the word “hung” (article, podcast & video). That’s a real thing. It’s so utterly stupid you just have to laugh.

That’s all just this week.

Absolute insanity.

Non-Woke Software List

The quantity (and quality) of Non-Woke software continues to grow — The August edition of “Lunduke’s Non-Woke Software List” (article, podcast, and video) saw a few noteworthy additions.

One big takeaway (at least for me) is that we now have multiple Operating System options… accompanied by display servers, desktop environments, development tools, and web browsers. All decidedly Non-Woke.

In other words: It is now possible to piece together the majority of a computing environment in a way that is both Open Source and Non-Woke. And, importantly, of an exceptionally high quality.

Other Stories This Week

Here’s some other stories worth diving into. Some are pretty doggone wild.

• Podcast & Video: Android 16 Gets GPU Accelerated Linux Software

• Article: Tea App Clone Exposes Driver’s Licenses

• Article: NixOS Now Celebrates Pride Month… Year Round

• Podcast & Video: NixOS Now Celebrates Pride Month… Year Round

• Article: Funny Programming Pictures Part LXVIII

As always, thank you to all of the subscribers to The Lunduke Journal. Thank to you, we can remain 100% ad-free and Big Tech free. Couldn’t do it without you.

-Lunduke

Last month, we saw the massive data breach of the “Tea App” — a smartphone app for women to talk about men they don’t like — resulting in over 60 GB of personally identifiable data leaked out to the public. Stuff like selfies and pictures of drivers licenses.

Well, it didn’t take long for a “TeaOnHer” App to appear — with the same basic functionality, except this time for men to talk about women they don’t like.

 

And, of course, the developer of “TeaOnHer” made the same basic mistake that the “Tea App” made: They permanently stored a ton of personal information. Including, once again, divers licenses.

You can already see where this is going.

Driver’s Licenses Everywhere

Almost as soon as the “TeaOnHer” app went live, writers for TechCrunch went looking to see if they could easily access any of that data. Because wouldn’t that be crazy if a copy-cat app made the exact same kind of security mistakes as the app it was copying?

What TechCrunch found was that it took no more than around 10 minutes for them to begin accessing pictures of drivers licenses of user accounts.

 

10 minutes!

With a bunch of the usual suspects of bad security being involved: unprotected file storage (in this case, Amazon), public API documentation, and a lack of secured API calls.

Now, unlike the “Tea App” breach — which resulted in massive archives of personal data published all over the web — it isn’t known if these vulnerabilities actually resulted in significant data archives getting out there in the wild.

But, as the writers at TechCrunch put it, “The bugs were so easy to find that it would be sheer luck if nobody malicious found them before we did.”

There’s a Lesson Here… But it Won’t Be Learned

Sure, this “hack” of the “TeaOnHer” App was easy — as was the hack of the “TeaApp” before it. Both of those systems were comically insecure.

But, the reality is, no complex online system is truly secure.

Have a website or App which stores (and publishes) user data? It can be hacked.

And, if there is sufficient interest in obtaining whatever data is being stored, not only can it be hacked… but it will be hacked.

The HaveIBeenPwned site, alone, has documented close to 15 Billion (with a B) accounts which have not only been breached… but reported and (often) made available in some way.

 

And that 15 Billion is only the breached accounts which we know about.

Anyone who works in IT can tell you that the vast majority of data breaches are never discovered. And the majority of those which are discovered… are never disclosed publicly.

Considering that the current population of the Earth is roughly 8 Billion, it’s safe to assume that every single adult on Earth, with an Internet connection, probably has several breached accounts already.

With the frequency, and size, of such data breaches increasing.

Should these Tea Apps have had better security? You bet your tuchus. From the looks of things neither developer spent any significant time trying to implement even the most basic security precautions.

For Pete’s sake, at least try to slow the hackers down a little.

But the real problem here is not the total lack of security — even “good” security can (and will) be overcome.

No.

The real problem is the type of data being permanently stored, in an Internet accessible way, by these services. If a service is likely to be breached (and any significant service is), a key goal is to limit the amount of data which a hacker can gain access to.

Here are a few good rules of thumb when dealing with data being stored on an Internet accessible server:

• Do not store any more data, at any given moment, than is 100% necessary.

• If previously stored data is no longer needed, delete it. Completely. Not “flagged” for deletion. Actually deleted.

• Whatever data you are storing should be encrypted whenever possible.

• If sensitive personal data absolutely must be stored, for legal and regulatory reasons, consider physical archives stored in a secure location instead of an Internet connected server.

• And, of course, don’t use unprotected (or barely protected) “cloud” file storage like the numbskull developers of these “Tea” apps did. That never ends well.

Simple guidelines which, if followed, could significantly reduce the negative impact of inevitable data breaches.

But, of course, few online services — big or small — will follow such guidelines. They will continue expanding the quantity of data they store on increasingly complex systems.

Which means we’ll see more and more data breaches — containing an ever increasing amount of personal data.

Welcome to the future.

The stupid, stupid future.