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Submission + - Report: Apple to Add Beats Music App to iOS Devices (pcmag.com)

Submitted by mpicpp
mpicpp writes: As iPhone and iPad users know, there are a few apps that stay on your device no matter what — Messages, Weather, Apple Maps, GameCenter, Stocks, etc. They come pre-installed when you buy your handset, and you can't delete them.

Soon, that list of mandatory apps could also include Beats Music. According to a report from The Financial Times, Apple is planning to roll the subscription music service it picked up as part of its $3 billion Beats acquisition into its iOS mobile operating system. This means, the service will be available on every iPhone and iPad — whether you like it or not.

The rollout is expected to happen at some point next year, possibly as early as March, sources familiar with the situation told The Financial Times. The move would mark Apple's first major push into subscription streaming music, a market that Spotify currently dominates.

"Pre-installing apps on devices is seen as a fast track to reaching new customers," the report notes. "Apple could also take advantage of its new mobile payments service to enable customers to subscribe with just one touch of the iPhone's fingerprint reader."

Submission + - Obama Posts Net Neutrality Petition

Submitted by Bob9113
Bob9113 writes: President Obama has posted a petition for net neutrality, targeted at the FCC. The page reads: Stand up for net neutrality President Obama is taking a stand to keep the internet open and free. Add your name to tell the FCC you support the President's plan to protect net neutrality.

Submission + - Medieval Times: Congress Suggests Moat to Protect White House (nbcnews.com)

Submitted by PolygamousRanchKid
PolygamousRanchKid writes: Acting Secret Service director Joseph Clancy on Wednesday faced a number of tough questions from the House Judiciary Committee about the fence jumper who made it deep into the White House. But along with the tough questions, Clancy fielded a couple eyebrow raising suggestions on how to better protect the president’s home.

“Would a moat, water six feet around, be kind of attractive and effective?” Rep. Steve Cohen, D-Tenn., asked with trepidation.

What is likely to happen, though, is that the 7 foot 6-inch fence currently circling the White House gets heightened, Clancy said. Renderings of the new fence are expected in the next few months.

Until then, the Secret Service is relying on a low-tech solution.

“We have a bike rack there now, which we know is not going to prevent someone from jumping the fence, but it’s going to allow us to have a little more time to react,” Clancy said.

C'mon Slashdotters . . . surely we have wackier ideas than a moat . . . ?

Submission + - Microsoft Patches Kerberos Vulnerability Being Used In Attacks (csoonline.com)

Submitted by itwbennett
itwbennett writes: Microsoft released an out-of-band patch on Tuesday, addressing a vulnerability in Kerberos KBC, a component that handles authentication on local networks. The patch was supposed to have been released earlier this month, but Microsoft withheld it due to QA concerns. However, Redmond says the flaw is being used in attacks online, so organizations are urged to update immediately.

Submission + - Millions of spiders seen in mass dispersal event using wind currents (www.cbc.ca)

Submitted by Freshly Exhumed
Freshly Exhumed writes: A bizarre and oddly beautiful display of spider webs have been woven across a large field along a walking trail in Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, Canada. "Well it's acres and acres; it's a sea of web," said Allen McCormick. Prof. Rob Bennett, an expert on spiders who works at the Royal British Columbia Museum in Victoria, BC, Canada, said tiny, sheet-web weaver spiders known as Erigoninae linyphiidae most likely left the webs. Bennett said the spiders cast a web net to catch the wind and float away in a process known as ballooning. The webs in the field are the spiders' drag lines, left behind as they climb to the top of long grass to be whisked away by the wind. Bennett said it's a mystery why these spiders take off en masse. Perhaps The Green Goblin or Doc Oc are in the vicinity?

Submission + - If Philae were nuclear powered, it'd still be alive today

Submitted by StartsWithABang
StartsWithABang writes: After successfully landing on a comet with all 10 instruments intact, but failing to deploy its thrusters and harpoons to anchor onto the surface, Philae bounced, coming to rest in an area with woefully insufficient sunlight to keep it alive. After exhausting its primary battery, it went into hibernation, most likely never to wake again. We’ll always be left to wonder what might have been if it had functioned optimally, and given us years of data rather than just 60 hours worth. The thing is, it wouldn’t have needed to function optimally to give us years of data, if only it were better designed in one particular aspect: powered by Plutonium-238 instead of by solar panels.

Submission + - Barnes & Noble fails to update Nook app in advance of Android 5.0

Submitted by tulare
tulare writes: If you read your eBooks on a Nexus device, plan on doing without reading anything purchased via the Nook bookstore for a while. According to comments made by NOOK on their Facebook page, they will be releasing a fixed version in a week or two.

This begs a couple of questions:
Why did BN miss this?
If BN decides the app business is too much trouble and walks away, what happens to the DRM-protected libraries of their customers?

This has happened before.

Submission + - Nasty Code Execution Bug Found in Android

Submitted by Trailrunner7
Trailrunner7 writes: There is a vulnerability in Android versions below 5.0 that could allow an attacker to bypass ASLR and run arbitrary code on a target device under certain circumstances. The bug was fixed in Lollipop, the newest version of the mobile OS, released earlier this week.

The vulnerability lies in java.io.ObjectInputStream, which fails to check whether an object that is being deserialized is actually a serialized object. Security researcher Jann Horn discovered the vulnerability and reported it to Google earlier this year.

Horn said via email that the exploitability of the vulnerability is difficult to judge.

“An attacker would need to get a malicious app onto the device in order for this to work. The app would need no permissions,” he said. “However, I don’t have a full exploit for this issue, just the crash PoC, and I’m not entirely sure about how predictable the address layout of the system_server really is or how easy it is to write a large amount of data into system_server’s heap (in order to make less accurate guesses for the memory position work). It might be necessary to crash system_server once in order to make its memory layout more predictable for a short amount of time, in which case the user would be able to notice the attack, but I don’t think that’s likely.”

Submission + - If You Want Better Cybersecurity, Break Up The NSA (readwrite.com)

Submitted by electronic convict
electronic convict writes: People often forget that the NSA has a second mission beyond surveillance (or surveillance-plus): It's also supposed to take the lead in protecting federal information systems and critical national infrastructure from criminals and foreign attackers.

If the recent spate of cyberattacks is any indication, though, the NSA has bungled that job pretty badly. And small wonder: As we've known for a year, the agency actively works to introduce vulnerabilities into encryption systems, to discourage the use of strong security and to use its industry-outreach program to further both aims. So why should anyone trust it to help actually guard against hackers?

There's a simple, if currently impractical solution: Break up the NSA.

This isn't an entirely new idea; Bruce Schneier, for instance, has been pushing for an NSA breakup since February, primarily on the grounds that the agency is simply too large and out of control. His proposed division, however, would still task the NSA with both security and surveillance, keeping its inherent conflict of interest intact. A better solution would be to move the security function out of the NSA entirely, allowing its staff to plug holes as fast as their offense-minded NSA peers can create them.

Yes, the USA Freedom Act just went down in flames, and the odds of serious NSA reform look about as dim as ever. But wouldn't everyone be better off if some of the best cryptographers and security experts in the U.S. weren't working side-by-side with the spies bent on undermining their work?

Submission + - Android Lollipop Causing Problems For Nexus 7 Users

Submitted by MightyMartian
MightyMartian writes: According to the BBC, there are numerous reports of the latest version of Android causing numerous problems for Nexus 7 users.

The Google Product Forums are filled with reports of both the 2012 and 2013 versions of the Nexus 7 tablet having stability problems; in particular with Chrome and the Facebook app.

On a personal note, while Lollipop works quite while on my Nexus 5, it has rendered my Nexus 7 2012 tablet all but unusable with frequent crashes and lock ups.

Submission + - Kinect May Have Jaded Gamers on Motion, But Next-gen VR Input Impresses (roadtovr.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Kinect promised way more than it could ever deliver. Even Microsoft quickly abandoned their brazen move to include the Kinect 2 with all Xbox Ones. But just because the Kinect flopped doesn't mean that motion input is dead. Virtual reality's need for precise and natural input systems has caused a resurgence in R&D relating to motion input. Sixense's made-for-VR 'STEM' motion input controller uses a highly accurate hybrid of inertial and magnetic tracking technology. When translated to gameplay the results are nothing short of impressive, as shown in a new demo from the company which has players accurately hitting a ping pong ball and even imparting realistic spin.

Submission + - Dark Energy Might Be Eating the Glue Holding the Universe Together 1

Submitted by rossgneumann
rossgneumann writes: Dark energy is eating dark matter. Bit by bit, the supreme attractive force of the universe, gravitationally speaking, is being superseded by the supreme repulsive force. This is the theory, at least, being advanced in a new paper in Physical Review Letters describing a rather ominous-sounding “dark sector” interaction.

Submission + - Rooftop solar to reach price parity in the U.S. by 2016 (computerworld.com)

Submitted by Lucas123
Lucas123 writes: The cost of rooftop solar-powered electricity will be on par with prices of coal-powered energy and other conventional sources in all 50 U.S. states in just two years, a leap from today where PV energy has price parity in only 10 states, according to Deutsche Bank's leading solar industry analyst. The sharp decline in solar energy costs is the result of increased economies of scale leading to cheaper photovoltaic panels, new leasing models and declining installation costs, Deutsche Bank's Vishal Shah stated in a recent report. The cost of solar-generated electricity in the top 10 states for capacity ranges from 11-15 cents per kilowatt hour (c/kWh), compared to the retail electricity price of 11-37 c/kWh. Amit Ronen, a former Congressional staffer behind legislation that created an investment tax credit for solar installations, said one of the only impediments to decreasing solar electricity prices are fees proposed by utilities on customers who install solar and take advantage of net metering, or the ability to sell excess power back to utilities.

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