Desktop stand for N900
Daniel Reetz has a laser, and he's not afraid to use it. After being disappointed with the N900's built-in stand he's used a laser-cutter to produce two versions of a desktop stand that he's now selling. We all know the N900’s built-in stand sucks. Thankfully, this one doesn’t. It’s 3mm Baltic Birch plywood, which has been laser cut, painted black, and given a light non-slip coating on the base. Available in black painted wood and clear acrylic, the stands are available with international shipping from $10.
XMPP credentials vulnerable to MITM attacks
A bug, reported by Olle Segerdahl, has shown the negotiation of encrypted XMPP connections (as used by Facebook Chat and Google Talk) are vulnerable to man-in-the-middle attacks. By intercepting the original connection, an attacker can ensure that both ends of the connection fall back to using an unsecured link. The attacker can then eavesdrop on the conversation, and the user's credentials. In 2.2009.51-1 (and probably older releases) there is a man-in-the-middle issue due to not requiring TLS before authenticating that exposes credentials in clear text over the network. This has nothing to do with not supporting SRV records (that was old bug on Maemo4). Although the bug has been fixed internally, the version in the current public release of Maemo 5 is vulnerable and so care should be taken on potentially insecure or untrustworthy Internet connections.
Mer with working 3D acceleration on N900 with open source kernel (closed libraries)
Carsten Munk has demoed Mer with 3D acceleration on the N900, which is required in order to run the Hildon environment from Maemo 5.