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Submission + - Torvalds: I Made A "Metric Sh--load" Of Mistakes With The Linux Community (readwrite.com)

Submitted by electronic convict
electronic convict writes: In a Q&A at LinuxCon Europe, Linux creator Linus Torvalds — no stranger to strong language and blunt opinions — acknowledged a "metric shitload" of interpersonal mistakes that unnecessarily antagonized others within the Linux community. In response to Intel's Dirk Hohndel, who asked him which decision he regretted most over the past 23 years, Torvalds replied:

From a technical standpoint, no single decision has ever been that important... The problems tend to be around alienating users or developers and I'm pretty good at that. I use strong language. But again there's not a single instance I'd like to fix. There's a metric shitload of those.

It's probably not a coincidence that Torvalds said this just a few weeks after critics like Lennart Poettering started drawing attention to the abusive nature of some commentary within the open-source community. Poettering explicitly called out Torvalds for some of his most intemperate remarks and described open source as "quite a sick place to be in." Still, Torvalds doesn't sound like he's about to start making an apology tour. "One of the reasons we have this culture of strong language, that admittedly many people find off-putting, is that when it comes to technical people with strong opinions and with a strong drive to do something technically superior, you end up having these opinions show up as sometimes pretty strong language," he said. "On the Internet, nobody can hear you being subtle."

Submission + - The Guardian reveals that Whisper app tracks 'anonymous' users (theguardian.com)

Submitted by qqod
qqod writes: After visiting the offices of Whisper to discuss future journalistic collaborations, from the article:

"The practice of monitoring the whereabouts of Whisper users â" including those who have expressly opted out of geolocation services â" will alarm users, who are encouraged to disclose intimate details about their private and professional lives.

Whisper is also sharing information with the US Department of Defense gleaned from smartphones it knows are used from military bases, and developing a version of its app to conform with Chinese censorship laws."

Submission + - Massachusetts city council blocks Comcast from entering the area

Submitted by _AustinPowell
_AustinPowell writes: Comcast is gunning for a cable television license in Worcester, Mass., as part of its purchase ofTime Warner Cable. In response, the City Council voted 8-3 to urge Worcester's city manager to let the companys license request die. The deadline for the decision is Wednesday, but the manager is not bound by the vote of the Council. "Its a terrible company," City Councilor Gary Rosen said. "In my opinion, they should not be welcome in this city. Comcast is a wolf in wolfs clothing; its that bad."

Submission + - Google finds vulnerability in SSL web encryption (itnews.com.au)

Submitted by AlbanX
AlbanX writes: Google researchers have discovered a vulnerability in a version of the SSL (secure sockets layer) web encryption protocol which allows attackers to break its cryptographic security.

The 'POODLE' attack allows attackers to steal secure HTTP cookies or other bearertokens. CDN provider CloudFlare has already disabled SSL 3.0 by default across its network, and Google said it hopes to do the same in the coming months.

Submission + - Schmidt Says Attack on Google Prompted Encryption Changes

Submitted by Trailrunner7
Trailrunner7 writes: Eric Schmidt, executive chairman of Google, said that the changes to Android's encryption model, which have angered law enforcement officials, should have come as no surprise to law enforcement and government agencies, given the events of the last couple of years.

“The people who are criticizing this should’ve expected this. After Google was attacked by the British version of the NSA we were annoyed to no end,” Schmidt said. “We put in encryption end to end, at rest and in transit. Law enforcement has many many ways to get this information without doing this.”

After the details of Apple’s and Google’s encryption changes became public, some in the law enforcement community have suggested that the companies should include a backdoor in their devices. Both Sen. Ron Wyden and Schmidt dismissed this suggestion out of hand.

“U.S. companies shouldn’t be forced to build backdoors into their products,” Wyden said.

Submission + - Cyanogen Inc. Turns Down Google, Seeing $1 Billion Valuation (droid-life.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: According to a report at The Information (paywalled), Cyanogen Inc., the company try to commercials the popular CyanogenMod mobile OS based on Android, recently met with Google's Android Chief to talk about an acquisition. The report says Cyanogen turned down Google's offer and instead seeks funding from investors and major tech companies at a valuation around $1 billion. "Cyanogen has told potential investors that it has a deal in place to bring its custom version of the Android OS to India through a manufacturer called Micromax. Alongside Samsung, Micromax currently holds almost as much share of the smartphone market in India, making this deal a very large step to get Cyanogen into the hands of millions of more people. Lastly, the report claims that Cyanogen should be wary of modifying Android too much. During the process, the company must continue to follow Google’s compatibility requirements which ensure third-party applications will work on their devices. If those requirements are not met, devices will not be licensed to run Google’s services, such as Google Play and other Google applications."

Submission + - London parents give up custody of children for free Wi-Fi (torontosun.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Six parents in London, England, unknowingly gave up their first-born child "for the duration of eternity" in an experiment aimed at highlighting how little we pay attention to terms and conditions online. The experiment, sponsored by security firm F-Secure, used a hotspot in the city's Canary Wharf, The Guardian reports. In order to access the Internet, the users had to agree to the firm's terms and conditions. A "Herod clause," promising free Wi-Fi but only if "the recipient agreed to assign their first born child to us for the duration of eternity," was included in those terms. F-Secure said the experiment proved people don't read the small print when it comes to signing up for Wi-Fi, and that can be dangerous.

Submission + - Bug in Bash shell creates big security hole on anything with *nix in it (nist.gov)

Submitted by Dupple
Dupple writes: A security vulnerability in the GNU Bourne Again Shell (Bash), the command-line shell used in many Linux and Unix operating systems, could leave systems running those operating systems open to exploitation by specially crafted attacks. “This issue is especially dangerous as there are many possible ways Bash can be called by an application,” a Red Hat security advisory warned.

Submission + - Kickstarter lays down new rules for when a project fails

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: In a blog post, Kickstarter announced several updates to its terms of use for projects. From the article: "Kickstarter has iterated on its policies several times since it launched in 2009, with the most recent wave of revisions surrounding the site's transition from only posting projects cleared by the staff to clearing all projects that meet a basic set of criteria. Even still, some projects lack clear goals, encounter setbacks, or fail to deliver, like the myIDkey project that has burned through $3.5 million without yet to distributing a finished product. The most recent terms revision is timely: on Thursday, science fiction author Neal Stephenson announced that a game he Kickstarted in 2012 with $526,000 in funding was officially canceled."

Submission + - The Raid-Proof Hosting Technology Behind 'The Pirate Bay'

Submitted by HughPickens.com
HughPickens.com writes: Ernesto reports at TorrentFreak that despite its massive presence the Pirate Bay doesn't have a giant server park but operates from the cloud, on virtual machines that can be quickly moved if needed. The site uses 21 “virtual machines” (VMs) hosted at different providers, up four machines from two years ago, in part due to the steady increase in traffic. Eight of the VM's are used for serving the web pages, searches take up another six machines, and the site’s database currently runs on two VMs. The remaining five virtual machines are used for load balancing, statistics, the proxy site on port 80, torrent storage and for the controller. In total the VMs use 182 GB of RAM and 94 CPU cores. The total storage capacity is 620 GB. One interesting aspect of The Pirate Bay is that all virtual machines are hosted with commercial cloud hosting providers, who have no clue that The Pirate Bay is among their customers. "Moving to the cloud lets TPB move from country to country, crossing borders seamlessly without downtime. All the servers don’t even have to be hosted with the same provider, or even on the same continent." All traffic goes through the load balancer, which masks what the other VMs are doing. This also means that none of the IP-addresses of the cloud hosting providers are publicly linked to TPB. For now, the most vulnerable spot appears to be the site’s domain. Just last year TPB burnt through five separate domain names due to takedown threats from registrars. But then again, this doesn’t appear to be much of a concern for TPB as the operators have dozens of alternative domain names standing by.

Submission + - ISIS bans Math, Social Studies, Physics for children (cnn.com)

Submitted by mpicpp
mpicpp writes: In swaths of Syria now controlled by ISIS, children can no longer study math or social studies. Sports are out of the question. And students will be banned from learning about elections and democracy.

Instead, they'll be subjected to the teachings of the radical Islamist group. And any teacher who dares to break the rules "will be punished."
ISIS revealed its new educational demands in fliers posted on billboards and on street poles. The Sunni militant group has captured a slew of Syrian and Iraqi cities in recent months as it tries to establish a caliphate, or Islamic state, spanning Sunni parts of both countries.

Books cannot include any reference to evolution. And teachers must say that the laws of physics and chemistry "are due to Allah's rules and laws."

Submission + - Court Rules The "Google" Trademark Isn't Generic

Submitted by ericgoldman
ericgoldman writes: Even though "googling" and "Google it" are now common phrases, a federal court ruled that the "Google" trademark is still a valid trademark instead of a generic term (unlike former trademarks such as escalator, aspirin or yo-yo). The court distinguished between consumers using Google as a verb (such as "google it"), which didn't automatically make the term generic, and consumers using Google to describe one player in the market, which 90%+ of consumers still do.

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