Daily Archives: January 25, 2017

Dropbox: Oops, yeah, we didn’t actually delete all your files – this bug kept them in the cloud

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“Typically, we permanently remove files and folders from our servers within 60 days of a user deleting them. However, the deleted files and folders impacted by this bug had metadata inconsistencies,” Dropbox employee Ross S said on the company’s support forum.

“So we quarantined and excluded them from the permanent deletion process until the metadata could be fixed.”

Dropbox noted that the data was only visible to the accounts of the users, and at no time did any third party have access to the exposed files.

This after users had been complaining that old files, some more than a half-decade in the past, had been showing up.

“Several different folders of old files from 2009–2011, deleted years ago but suddenly reappearing overnight,” wrote one user. “And I definitely haven’t connected to an old computer, either.”

Source: Dropbox: Oops, yeah, we didn’t actually delete all your files – this bug kept them in the cloud • The Register

Ouch, that’s pretty nasty: who knows how many other old files Dropbox (which makes money off analysing your data) has “accidentally” not deleted. Or maybe the bug was that they suddenly became visible to the user?

google/glazier: A tool for automating the installation of the Microsoft Windows operating system on various device platforms.

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Glazier

Glazier is a tool for automating the installation of the Microsoft Windows operating system on various device platforms.

Why Glazier?

Glazier was created with certain principles in mind.

Text-based & Code-driven

With Glazier, imaging is configured entirely via text files. This allows technicians to leverage source control systems to maintain and develop their imaging platform. By keeping imaging configs in source control, we gain peer review, change history, rollback/forward, and all the other benefits normally reserved for writing code.

Reuse and templating allows for config sharing across multiple image types.

Configs can be consumed by unit tests, build simulators, and other helper infrastructure to build a robust, automated imaging pipeline.

Source controlled text makes it easy to integrate configs across multiple branches, making it easy to QA new changes before releasing them to the general population.

Scalability

Glazier distributes all data over HTTPS, which means you can use as simple or as advanced of a distribution platform as you need. Run it from a simple free web server or a large cloud-based CDN.

Proxies make it easy to accelerate image deployment to remote sites.

Extensible

Glazier makes it simple to extend the installer by writing a bit of Python or Powershell code.

Source: GitHub – google/glazier: A tool for automating the installation of the Microsoft Windows operating system on various device platforms.

Wine 2.0 Released

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The Wine team is proud to announce that the stable release Wine 2.0 is now available. This release represents over a year of development effort and around 6,600 individual changes. The main highlights are the support for Microsoft Office 2013, and the 64-bit support on macOS. It also contains a lot of improvements across the board, as well as support for many new applications and games.

Source: WineHQ – News – Wine 2.0 Released

Wine stands for Wine is not an emulator and can be used to run windows and mac programmes on a linux OS

Boffins perfect 3D bioprinter that produces slabs of human skin

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In a paper for the journal Biofabrication, the team details how the printer lays down bioinks containing human plasma as well as primary human fibroblasts and keratinocytes. The printer first lays down a layer of external epidermis and then a thicker layer of fibroblasts that produce collagen, which will make the flesh strong and elastic.

“Knowing how to mix the biological components, in what conditions to work with them so that the cells don’t deteriorate, and how to correctly deposit the product is critical to the system,” said Juan Francisco del Cañizo, of the Hospital General Universitario.

The end result is a 100-cm2 slab of skin, printed in 35 minutes, that can be transplanted onto patients. Its production can be automated to a large degree. The skin can also be used to test the irritant qualities of consumer products without having to shave animals and use them as test subjects.

“We use only human cells and components to produce skin that is bioactive and can generate its own human collagen, thereby avoiding the use of the animal collagen that is found in other methods,” the team notes in its paper.

Source: Gimme some skin: Boffins perfect 3D bioprinter that produces slabs of human flesh • The Register