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Submission + - Theo de Raadt gives a 10-year summary on exploit mitigation in OpenBSD

Submitted by ConstantineM
ConstantineM writes: Microsoft has all significant exploit mitigation techniques fully integrated and enabled, claims Theo de Raadt at Yandex ruBSD, whilst giving a 10-year summary of the methods employed by OpenBSD. In year 2000, OpenBSD started a development initiative to intentionally make the memory environment of a process less predictable and less robust, without impacting the well-behaved programs. Concepts like the random stack gap, W^X, ASLR and PIE are explained. Some of them, like the random stack gap, are implemented with a 3-line change to the kernel, yet it appears that some other vendors are still shipping without it.

Submission + - Tech Leaders Push Back Against Obama's Efforts to Divert Discussion From NSA

Submitted by Hugh Pickens DOT Com
Hugh Pickens DOT Com writes: The Guardian reports that while President Obama tried to portray a meeting with tech leaders as a wide-ranging discussion of broader priorities including ways of improving the functionality of the troubled health insurance website, healthcare.gov, senior executives from Apple, Yahoo, Google, Comcast, Facebook, Microsoft, Twitter, and Netflixs said they were determined to keep the discussion focused on the NSA. “We are there to talk about the NSA,” said one executive who was briefed on the company’s agenda before the event. After meeting Obama and vice president Joe Biden for two-and-a-half hours, the companies issued a one-line statement. "We appreciated the opportunity to share directly with the president our principles on government surveillance that we released last week and we urge him to move aggressively on reform." Many of the senior tech leaders had already made public their demand for sweeping surveillance reforms in an open letter that specifically called for a ban on the kind of bulk data collection that a federal judge ruled on Monday was probably unlawful. Eric Schmidt, of Google, opened the meeting and laid out industry officials' concerns. Obama seemed sympathetic to the idea of allowing more disclosure of government surveillance requests by technology companies, according to a tech industry official who was briefed on the meeting. Marissa Mayer, of Yahoo!, brought up concerns about the potentially negative impact that could be caused if countries, such as Brazil, move forward with legislation that would require service providers to ensure that data belonging to a citizen of a certain country remain in the country it originates, the official said. That would require technology companies to build data centers in each country — a costly problem for American Internet companies. The decision by the tech giants to press their case in such a public and unified way poses a problem for the White House. The industry is an increasingly influential voice in Washington, a vital part of the US economy and many of its most successful leaders are prominent Democratic political donors.

Submission + - Datawind not blowing smoke - $38 tablet coming to the U.S.

Submitted by BigVig209
BigVig209 writes: In a follow-up to story submitted by symbolset back on May 4, 2013, the Chicago Tribune is reporting that London-based Datawind it will begin selling its $38 UbiSlate tablet computer in the United States early next year.

"The $38 7-inch touchscreen UbiSlate 7Ci tablet runs on Google's Android 4.0 and features a 1-gigahertz, single-core processor. It has 4 gigabytes of storage with microSD card slots for additional storage. The 7-inch display offers a resolution of 800x480 pixels."

The specs are not the greatest, the fastest, the most powerful, but, for under $50, they're still pretty good, no?

Submission + - fuse support in OpenBSD -current

Submitted by ConstantineM
ConstantineM writes: File system in userland support — fuse — was included in OpenBSD 5.4 source tree, but not built by default, hence not officially supported. This has since changed in 5.4-current. The undeadly editors have tracked down the author, Sylvestre Gallon, and asked him about his experience of getting libfuse into OpenBSD. Which userland file systems are supported? So far, it's sshfs-fuse and ntfs-3g (both are in the ports tree due to the GPL).

Submission + - Multivitamin researchers say "case is closed" as studies find no health benefits (cbsnews.com)

Submitted by schwit1
schwit1 writes: “Enough” with the multivitamins already.

That’s the message from doctors behind three new studies and an editorial that tackled an oft-debated question in medicine: Do daily multivitamins make you healthier?

After reviewing the available evidence and conducting new trials, the authors have come to a conclusion of “no.”

“We believe that the case is closed — supplementing the diet of well-nourished adults with (most) mineral or vitamin supplements has no clear benefit and might even be harmful,” concluded the authors of the editorial summarizing the new research papers, published Dec. 16 in the Annals of Internal Medicine. “These vitamins should not be used for chronic disease prevention. Enough is enough.”

They went on to urge consumers to not “waste” their money on multivitamins.

Submission + - First Hard Evidence for the Process of Cat Domestication (sciencemag.org)

Submitted by sciencehabit
sciencehabit writes: Cats have been part of human society for nearly 10,000 years, but they weren’t always string-chasers and lap-sitters. Ancient felines hunted crop-destroying rats and mice for early farmers, and in return we provided food and protection. At least that’s what scientists have long speculated. Now, they can back it up. Cat bones unearthed in a 5000-year-old Chinese farming village indicate that the animals consumed rodents and that some may have been cared for by humans. The findings provide the earliest hard evidence of this mutually beneficial relationship between man and cat.

Submission + - DRM has always been a horrible idea (computerworld.com) 1

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: For years, the reaction of the big entertainment companies to digital disruption has been to try and restrict and control, a wrong-headed approach that was bound to backfire. But the entertainment companies were never known for being forward thinking whether it was radio in the 20s or cassette tapes in the 70s or VCRs in the 80s or Napster in the 90s. The reaction was the always the same. Take a defensive position and try to battle the disruptive force --and it never worked.

And DRM was perhaps the worst reaction of all, place restrictions on your content that punish the very people who were willing to pay for it, while others were free to use it without restriction. It was an approach that never made much sense, and it's good to know that mounting evidence proves that's the case.

Submission + - Crypto: FreeBSD playing catch-up, says De Raadt (itwire.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The OpenBSD project has no reason to follow the steps taken by FreeBSD with regard to hardware-based cryptography because it has already been doing this for a decade, according to Theo de Raadt. "FreeBSD has caught up to what OpenBSD has been doing for over 10 years," the OpenBSD founder told iTWire. "I see nothing new in their changes. Basically, it is 10 years of FreeBSD stupidity. They don't know a thing about security. They even ignore relevant research in all fields, not just from us, but from everyone."

Submission + - US Light Bulb Ban Set To Take Effect (cnn.com) 3

Submitted by SonicSpike
SonicSpike writes: Light bulb manufacturers will cease making traditional 40 and 60-watt light bulbs — the most popular in the country — at the start of 2014.

This comes after the controversial phasing out of incandescent 75 and 100-watt light bulbs at the beginning of 2013.

In their place will be halogen bulbs, compact fluorescent bulbs, LED bulbs and high efficiency incandescents — which are just regular incandescents that have the filament wrapped in gas. All are significantly more expensive than traditional light bulbs, but offer significant energy and costs savings over the long run. (Some specialty incandescents — such as three-way bulbs — will still be available.)

The end of old light bulbs will likely anger some consumers that are already faced with higher prices for a variety of goods. But it will also tick off tea party activists since the ban is the result of the final phase of government-mandated efficiency standards.

The rules were signed into law by President George W. Bush in 2007. They are designed to address gross inefficiencies with old light bulbs — only 10% of the energy they use is converted into light, according to the Environmental Protection Agency, which has a handy fact sheet about the changes. The rest is wasted as heat.

But the rules have drawn fire from a number of circles — mainly conservatives and libertarians who are unhappy about the government telling people what light bulbs they can use. They argue that if the new ones really are so good, people will buy them on their own without being forced to do so.

Submission + - Dubious patent approved for yoga class recording (washingtonpost.com)

Submitted by Todd Palin
Todd Palin writes: The Washington Post has an article describing another dubious patent:
The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has approved a patent on a technique for videotaping yoga classes. The patent claims the concept of an "image capturing device" being set up in "a studio having a front area and a rear area" and containing an instructor and a "plurality of students." In other words, if you run a yoga class, and you film it using the parameters described in the patent, you may owe royalties to the patent's owner, a company called YogaGlo.

Submission + - FUSE support in OpenBSD 5.4-current: last, but not least

Submitted by ConstantineM
ConstantineM writes: FUSE(4) has been included in OpenBSD 5.4, but was not build into the default kernels yet, hence, not officially supported. This has since changed in 5.4-current. The undeadly editors have tracked down the author, Sylvestre Gallon, a first-time OpenBSD contributor, and asked him about his experience of getting libfuse into OpenBSD. Long story short: it involves some vfs grokking, improved fusebufs and a BSD rewrite of the GPL libfuse. Although to actually enjoy the feature, you'd still have to subject yourself to GPLv2 in the ports tree: sysutils/sshfs-fuse and ntfs-3g ports are available.

Submission + - Doctors Say James Bond at Risk for Early Death from Alcoholism 1

Submitted by Hugh Pickens DOT Com
Hugh Pickens DOT Com writes: The British Medical Journal reports that Doctors in Derby and Nottingham reformed a retrospective literature review of fictional British Secret Service agent James Bond by reading the 14 novels by Ian Fleming in their spare time charting 007's every day and every drink. Their review found that the spy downed 1,150 units of alcohol in 88 days working out at 92 units a week — about five vodka martinis a day and four times the recommended maximum intake for men in the UK. Patrick Davies, a consultant in pediatric intensive care at Nottingham University Hospitals, told the BBC: "You wouldn't want this person defusing a nuclear bomb. He's a very glamorous person, he gets all the girls and that's totally incompatible with the lifestyle of an alcoholic, which he is." On his biggest bender, Bond had 50 units in a single day during From Russia With Love and only 13 days in all the novels were free of the sauce. As a result of their review the physicians recommended "an immediate referral for further assessment and treatment, a reduction in alcohol consumption to safe levels, and suspect that the famous catchphrase “shaken, not stirred” could be because of alcohol induced tremor affecting his hands." The researchers also note that author Ian Fleming who frequently drank and smoked tobacco, died at age 56 of heart disease. "We suspect that Bond's life expectancy would be similar." The researchers say their study is light-hearted, and did not interfere with their day jobs, but raises an important message about alcohol. "The level of functioning as displayed in the books is inconsistent with the physical, mental, and indeed sexual functioning expected from someone drinking this much alcohol."

Submission + - Your LinkedIn Password Is On Display in a Museum in Germany (vice.com)

Submitted by Daniel_Stuckey
Daniel_Stuckey writes: Earlier this year, it was London. Most recently, it was a university in Germany. Wherever it is, Bartholl is opening up his eight white, plainly printed binders full of the 4.7 million user passwords that were pilfered from the social network and made public by a hacker last year. He brings the books to his exhibits, called 'Forgot Your Password', where you're free to see if he's got your data—and whether anyone else who wanders through is entirely capable of logging onto your account and making Connections with unsavory people. In fact, Bartholl insists:

"These eight volumes contain 4.7 million LinkedIn clear text user passwords printed in alphabetical order," the description of his project reads. "Visitors are invited to look up their own password."

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If Machiavelli were a hacker, he'd have worked for the CSSG. -- Phil Lapsley

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