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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 + - SteamOS Runs As Fast As NVIDIA On Windows 8.1 (phoronix.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: After going under the hood with SteamOS, the Phoronix site has found out that it's possible to get Intel and AMD graphics working on Valve's Debian based Linux OS with its own custom compositor. Their tests have shown that for cross-platform OpenGL games/demos, SteamOS performance is on par with Windows 8.1 in performance frame-rates, in large part due to NVIDIA's high-performance shared-platform GPU driver.

Comment Re:Local file (Score 1) 135

by Mojo66 (#45688757) Attached to: Safari Stores Previous Browsing Session Data Unencrypted

Firefox can require the key to be typed in when you start it.

Yep, and that is exactly how Safari could do better. Although it is bad if a program can access your local files, it can't do anything with those files as long as a passphrase is needed to decrypt them. Neither the Kaspersky article nor anyone here has mentioned this explicitly so far.

Submission + - Emacs gets Easiest Ever Package Management with 2000+ Packages under one Roof

Submitted by chris.kohlhepp
chris.kohlhepp writes: The Emacs editor just got consolidated package management with 2000+ packages under one roof. No struggle with convoluted keyboard shortcuts — only easy GUI navigation via toolbar buttons! Every conceivable programming language is handled. Cuts the Emacs learning curve to a minimum for learners. See https://sourceforge.net/projects/felineherd/

Submission + - Australian Parliamentary Inquiry into IT Pricing Publishes Report 1

Submitted by elphie007
elphie007 writes: Fourteen months after the Australian Parliament announced an inquiry into the disparity between IT pricing for Australian consumers, the Committee's final report has been published. The report highlights the importance of IT in Australia, and that Australian consumers are frequently shafted in an uncomfortable manner when it comes to purchasing IT goods and services. With recommendations ranging from the removal of parallel importation restrictions to the possible banning of geo-blocking services, could this mean the end of US bound Adobe shopping trips and the beginning of pricing equality for Australian IT consumers? More reports/analysis is available here and here.

Submission + - New alternatives to silicon may increase chip speeds by orders of magnitude.

Submitted by Consistent1
Consistent1 writes: A paywalled article in the "Nature Materials" journal describes the use of Magnetite to achieve ultra fast electronic switching, albeit, at the moment, only at extremely low temperatures. According to a story on Quartz, the team, led by Dr. Hermann Dürr from the Stanford Institute for Materials and Energy Sciences, hopes "to continue the experiment with materials that can operate at room temperature. One possibility is vanadium dioxide". Chips utilizing this technology may operate at clock cycles thousands of times faster than the silicon based chips used today.

Comment Re:August 2012 to January 2013 (Score 1) 243

by Mojo66 (#42580073) Attached to: Oracle Ships Java 7 Update 11 With Vulnerability Fixes

Why can't the larger companies, e.g. Microsoft and Oracle, respond to and fix the sucrity issues more quickly than on a timeline expressed in months?

They probably had a fix in the drawer since months but didn't release it in order to give the impression to be able to react quickly once the vuln is public. This makes the company look good to consumers and the press, and it pads statistics that measure reaction time to vulnerabilities. Everyone is doing it. Publicity first, consumer last.
Moon

Submission + - NASA Planned to Nuke the Moon in '58 (cnn.com)

Submitted by Tablizer
Tablizer writes: 'The military considerations were frightening. The report said a nuclear detonation on the moon could yield information "...concerning the capability of nuclear weapons for space warfare." Reiffel said that in military circles at the time, there was "discussion of the moon as military high ground."

That included talk of having nuclear launch sites on the moon, he said. The thinking, according to Reiffel, was that if the Soviets hit the United States with nuclear weapons first and wiped out the U.S. ability to strike back, the U.S. could launch warheads from the moon.

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