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Comment Re:That's Apple (Score 1) 78

Wow nice way of ignoring the second part of my post where I write that Apple were informed by the researchers 6 months ago. so at a minimum this is how long they have been aware of it but left it unpatched since then. And when Apple were informed they asked the researchers to wait 6 months before going public, which they did! Ignoring an issue doesn't make it go away.
And seriously. How many of the apps you bought do you actually need? My bet, not as many you might believe

Comment Re:That's Apple (Score 1) 78

users, who, in most instances, could do fuck all with that knowledge, anyway.

It is not that bloody hard to switch to another platform in the case of an OS flaw, or hardware vendor in the case of something like the Samsung keyboard hack. A hassle? Yes. But certainly not a case where a user "could do fuck all" at least now iOS and Samsung users can make an informed decision whether to take the risk of sticking with their device or move elsewhere.

On the other hand, there are other people who could make use of that knowledge, and that's who you want to keep in the dark

Which is why responsible researchers wait for a reasonable time before releasing their findings to the public, in this case they waited the 6 months requested from them by Apple.

Comment Re:The UK doesn't have freedom of speech (Score 3, Informative) 316

but free speech itself is still alive and well

Not as well as it used to be, and if corporations continue having the influence over lawmakers they have today things are going to get much worse before getting better. For an example look into the so called food libel lawsfood libel laws and for examples of how these laws effectively have made people cautious to the extreme in bringing forward even the most modest of criticisms, watch the documentary Food, Inc.

Submission + - Big Data Knows When You Are About to Quit Your Job

HughPickens.com writes: Quentin Hardy reports at the NYT that a leading maker of cloud-based software for running corporate human resources and financial operations has announced new products that provide the kind of data analysis that Netflix uses to recommend movies, LinkedIn has to suggest people you might know, or Facebook needs to put a likely ad in front of you. One version of the software, called Insight Applications, predicts which high-performing employees are likely to leave a company in the next year; it then offers possible actions (more money, new job) that might make them stay. In another instance, expense reporting software can predict which employee populations are most likely to exceed their budgets. “We’ve applied machine learning to affect consumer tastes,” says Mohammad Sabah, director of data science at Workday. “putting it to career choices, to pay and employment, have a huge upside if we do it right.” Already, Sabah says, “we’re surprised how accurately we can predict someone will leave a job.” The goal is to predict future business outcomes to take advantage of opportunities and cut risk levels. One future product may be the ability to predict who will and won’t make their sales quotas, and suggest who should be hired to improve the outcome. “Making an employee happy, improving the efficiency of a company these are hard problems that affect corporations.

Comment Capable of infecting non-jailbroken devices (Score 1) 1

What the submitter missed mentioning is that this is the first known malware found in the wild that is capable of installing 3rd party applications on iOS devices that have not been jailbroken. The path of infection is that a user install trojanized software on a machine running OSX then connects an iOS device to the computer with USB.
In the last half year 467 OS X applications on a third party Mac application store have been trojanized and downloaded over 356,104 times, how many iOS devices that have been infected through these is any ones guess.

Original source: http://researchcenter.paloalto...

Submission + - A nasty Trojan/virus from China for Apple devices (slashgear.com) 1

grantspassalan writes: Just when you thought only Windows received the bulk of horrifying viruses and crapware, here comes WireLurker, a new family of malware, not even just a single one, that targets both Apple's desktop and mobile platforms for maximum reach. Palo Alto Networks, the cybersecurity company that discovered and reported this situation calls this an "unprecedented" type of malware, at least as far as iOS and OS X are concerned, hinting at the developing, or rather worsening, situation when it comes to malware and hackers' abilities to infiltrate our computers.

Of course, OS X and iOS have never been completely immune to malware, especially the recent bout of ransomware that have encrypted computers without authorization. But according to Palo Alto Network's research, this new family could probably be one of the worst to hit Apple's platforms because of four reasons.

Comment Re:And so therefor it follows and I quote (Score 2) 353

The question at hand is whether the software is free, which it is if you obtain it via the download link found here. Whether you can install it legally on non-apple hardware or not is not relevant to the context but since you asked; doing so is in breach with their EULA and at least in the US courts have reached the conclusion that even selling Hackintosh friendly hardware is illegal when done in the manner that Psystar used to do when they provided the OS asa bundle together with their hardware. http://www.lockergnome.com/osx...

Submission + - ISPs Violating Net Neutrality, Blocking Encryption And Putting Users At Risk (hothardware.com)

MojoKid writes: In July, VPN provider Golden Frog (creators of the VyprVPN service) debuted front and center in the debate over net neutrality. One of their customers, Colin Nederkoorn, published a video showing how switching to VyprVPN increased his network performance by a factor of 10 on Verizon while streaming Netflix. Now, Golden Frog has filed a brief with the FCC, discussing both this incident and another, more troubling problem for security advocates — the detection of ISPs performing man-in-the-middle attacks against their own customers. According to information cited in the briefing, one wireless provider was caught blocking the use of STARTTLS encryption. STARTTLS is used to encrypt traffic sent over SMTP — email, in other words. Because an email from Point A to Point Z may travel through a number of unsecured routers to reach its final destination, unencrypted email is intrinsically insecure. STARTTLS was developed to mitigate this problem. What Golden Frog documented was the interception and modification of multiple requests to begin using STARTTLS into an entirely different set of commands, thereby preventing the encrypted link from ever being established. The problem of overwritten encryption is potentially far more serious than an issue of Netflix throttling, even if the latter tapped consumer discontent more readily.

Submission + - Microsoft serves takedown notices to videos not infringing on anything (wired.com)

mrnick writes: Microsoft serves youtube takedown notices on many youtube videos that do not appear to have any DRM issue. They say there was an algorithm problem and that non offending notices will be removed. The premise was that these videos had embedded windows keys in the comments. Is the video creator responsible for the comments on their video?

Submission + - FBI: backdoors in software may need to be mandatory (nytimes.com)

wabrandsma writes: The New York Times:

The director of the F.B.I., James B. Comey, said on Thursday that the "post-Snowden pendulum" that has driven Apple and Google to offer fully encrypted cellphones had "gone too far." He hinted that as a result, the administration might seek regulations and laws forcing companies to create a way for the government to unlock the photos, emails and contacts stored on the phones.

But Mr. Comey appeared to have few answers for critics who have argued that any portal created for the F.B.I. and the police could be exploited by the National Security Agency, or even Russian and Chinese intelligence agencies or criminals. And his position seemed to put him at odds with a White House advisory committee that recommended against any effort to weaken commercial encryption.

Comment Re:It's time to start a trade war. (Score 1) 106

My intention were not to lump everyone in the US together which is why I used the term 'muricans which in the context refer to a specific category, namely the ones that blindly believe everything uttered by the likes of Glenn Beck or whatever the flavour of right wing pundit is nowadays in other words the same ones that think it is perfectly fine when NSA use undercover agents in foreign corporations but cry foul when other nations have the audacity to do the same.
And at no point did I attempt to change the opinion of the OP as I quite frankly believe that anyone that someone who voice a belief that extreme is beyond reason, or a troll. In either case reason and logic is failed cause, thus I vented my frustration rather than attempted to fuel some innate sense of superiority as you suggest.

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