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Submission + - AWS admits it scans Android apps to find secret keys (itnews.com.au)

Submitted by AlbanX
AlbanX writes: Amazon Web Services admitted it decompiles Android apps to find out if its secret keys have been accidentally hard-coded within.

An Android app developer was contacted by AWS and told his credentials had been found within an app he developed. He was asked to remove them and use temporary creds within apps in the future.

Submission + - Western Digital 'MyCloud' Is Down 5 Days & Counting

Submitted by Nemo the Magnificent
Nemo the Magnificent writes: A friend of mine bought a Western Digital 'MyCloud' NAS server (non-RAID) a couple of weeks ago. WD implements the cloud service through its wd2go.com site. He reports that that site is down and has been since last Wednesday. No word on when it'll be back up. The only official announcements are daily repeats of this canned posting:

'Our My Cloud and My Book Live users are experiencing intermittent issues with WD servers that enable remote access when using these products. These issues include poor transfer speeds and/or inability to connect remotely. We sincerely apologize for this inconvenience and we are working very hard to resolve these issues and resume normal service as soon as possible. We thank you for your patience and will provide updates as they are available.'

Submission + - Nature Publishing Group Requires Authors to Waive "Moral Rights" to Works (chronicle.com)

Submitted by cranky_chemist
cranky_chemist writes: Megan O'Neil has published a story on the Chronicle of Higher Education's website noting some unusual language in the license agreement between authors and Nature Publishing Group.

"Faculty authors who contract to write for the publisher of Nature, Scientific American, and many other journals should know that they could be signing away more than just the economic rights to their work, according to the director of the Office of Copyright and Scholarly Communication at Duke University.

Kevin Smith, the Duke official, said he stumbled across a clause in the Nature Publishing Group’s license agreement last week that states that authors waive or agree not to assert "any and all moral rights they may now or in the future hold" related to their work. In the context of scholarly publishing, "moral rights" include the right of the author always to have his or her name associated with the work and the right to have the integrity of the work protected such that it is not changed in a way that could result in reputational harm."

Nature Publishing Group claims the waivers are required to ensure the journal's ability to publish formal retractions and/or corrections.

However, the story further notes that Nature Publishing Group is requiring authors at institutions with open-access policies to sign waivers that exempt their work from such policies.

Submission + - You Got Your Web Browser In My Compiler (wordpress.com)

Submitted by jones_supa
jones_supa writes: Microsoft Visual C++ compiler's static-analysis parallelism caused Bruce Dawson's machine to seriously get on its knees, so he rolled up his sleeves and dug deeper to investigate. It turns out that the MSVC++ compiler (cl.exe) causes the full Internet Explorer engine (mshtml.dll) to be loaded every time the static code analysis feature is used. However the actual slowdown isn't created by the weight of the IE engine but by the communication on the windowing system. In fact, about 65% of the traffic on the windowing system lock was from the VC++ compiler, mostly via mshtml.dll. But why? Well, here's what we know. The compiler loads mspft120.dll – the /analyze DLL. Then mspft120 loads msxml6.dll to load an XML configuration file. Then msxml6 loads urlmon.dll to open the stream, and finally urlmon loads mshtml.dll. Then mshtml.dll creates a window, because that’s what it does. If you run many copies of the compiler then you get many windows being opened, and over-subscribed CPUs, and madness ensues. Maybe nobody at Microsoft ever noticed that mshtml.dll was being loaded, or else they didn’t run enough parallel compiles for it to matter.

Submission + - Turkey's Attempt to Block Tor Failing Due to Multiple Mirrors (ibtimes.co.uk)

Submitted by DavidGilbert99
DavidGilbert99 writes: Turkey's prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has already block Twitter and YouTube. Now, after Turkish people flocked to anonymous browser Tor, he is trying to block that too. However the Tor project has multiple mirrors, including one operated by the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which are still accessible in Turkey, making the block on the official site a bit pointless.

Submission + - Have we found our last fundamental particle? 1

Submitted by StartsWithABang
StartsWithABang writes: In July 2012, the CMS and ATLAS collaborations jointly announced the discovery of the Higgs boson, now confirmed at more than 6- to be between 125 and 126 GeV. But years earlier, in 2009, it was calculated what mass the Higgs would need to be in order to keep the standard model stable, so that there would be no need for new particles all the way up to the Planck scale. The prediction? 126 GeV. If this is reasoning is correct, the Higgs boson will be the last new fundamental particle ever discovered by humanity.

Submission + - GNOME 3.12 released (gnome.org)

Submitted by Sri Ramkrishna
Sri Ramkrishna writes: Like clockwork, the next version of GNOME has been released with updated applications, bugfixes and so forth. People can look forward to faster loading time and a little more performance than before. There is a video that is also been created to highlight the release! Check it out!

Submission + - Verizon Knows your Wi-Fi SSID and Key (wlanbook.com) 4

Submitted by FuzzyFox
FuzzyFox writes: While browsing my Verizon FIOS account settings on their web site, I happened to notice my Wi-Fi SSID was prominently displayed. Below that, I noticed a link that would also display the WPA2 password for my private network.

I was really surprised by this, because I did not tell Verizon this information, or ask them to store it on my behalf. It appears they have lifted the information remotely from the ActionTec router that they supplied me with.

It bothers me that they are storing this information about me, because it could conceivably be (1) stolen by hackers, (2) subpoena'd by the government, (3) silently borrowed by the NSA, or other uses that haven't yet come to mind.

Do other ISP's also silently store their customers' password information without the knowledge of the customer? Should we be outraged about this? I would rather that my private information not be stored without my consent, at the very least.

Submission + - Minecraft cancels Oculus Rift released due to Facebook (muktware.com)

Submitted by sfcrazy
sfcrazy writes: When Facebook bought Whatsapp a huge number of users migrated to much more open alternative Telegram and I was curious if we will see the same ‘Facebook’ effect on Oculus and that’s exactly what has happened. Minecraft has canceled their version for the virtual reality device as soon as they got the news of this acquisition. Markus Persson aka notch of Minecraft tweeted, “We were in talks about maybe bringing a version of Minecraft to Oculus. I just cancelled that deal. Facebook creeps me out.”

Submission + - Ars Technica and Cisco Provide Another Example of Bad Security Reporting

Submitted by wjcofkc
wjcofkc writes: It was recently reported by Cisco, Ars Technica, and reported on Slashdot that Linux based web servers running the 2.6 series were being attacked and infected with Javascript intended to allow attackers to serve up a variety of malicious content to the visitor. White Fir Design begs to differ, pointing out that the websites are not even all running Linux, much less the Linux 2.6 Kernel.

Submission + - OpenGL ES 3.1 Specification Published (khronos.org)

Submitted by jones_supa
jones_supa writes: The Khronos Group today announced the immediate release of the OpenGL ES 3.1 specification, bringing significant functionality enhancements to the royalty-free 3D graphics API that is used on nearly all of the world’s mobile devices. Key features of ES 3.1 include: compute shaders, mixing and matching shaders without explicit linking step, indirect memory-fetched draw commands, enhanced texturing functionality, new shader language features and, optional extensions. The API will retain compatibility with previous versions of OpenGL ES. The OpenGL ES working group at Khronos expects also to update the OpenGL ES Adopter’s Program to provide extensive conformance tests for OpenGL ES 3.1 within three months. This ensures that conformant OpenGL ES implementations provide a reliable, cross-platform graphics programming platform.

Submission + - UK government wants "unsavoury" web content to be removed (gizmorati.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The UK minister for immigration and security, James Brokenshire has called for the government to do more to deal with “unsavoury”, rather than illegal, material online. So to put it simply he wants the removal of...

Submission + - SOPA sneaking back, contact Judiciary Committee (geek.com)

Submitted by bricko
bricko writes: SOPA may be returning in a much sneakier, worse fashion.

Basically, entities that entered into these voluntary agreements will begin to enforce SOPA-like reprimands without waiting for a law that grants them the power to do so.

SOPA as we knew it isn’t officially returning, but copyright lobbyists are still fighting to implement nearly identical principles and reprimands. For now, your Net Art website is safe, but if copyright lobbyists can pull the right strings, they aren’t going to need a law to delete your wacky website from the face of the internet forever.

Contact the judiciary committee members here....lets call them out like last time.

http://judiciary.house.gov/ind...

Submission + - YouTube gives UK gov't powers to censor videos they don't like, even if legal (techdirt.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Over in the UK, where the government has been gradually censoring more and more of the internet over the past few years, Google has apparently agreed to give the UK government broad powers to "flag" videos they argue are bad, even if they're not illegal. Ostensibly, the goal is to block videos that "proliferate jihadi material."

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