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Submission + - How Is VirtualBox Doing? (phoronix.com)

Submitted by jones_supa
jones_supa writes: Phoronix notes how it has been a long time since last hearing of any major innovations or improvements to VirtualBox, the virtual machine software managed by Oracle. This comes while VMware is improving its products on all platforms, and KVM, Xen, Virt-Manager, and related Linux virtualization technologies continue to advance as well. Is there any hope left for a revitalized VirtualBox? It has been said that there is only four paid developers left on the VirtualBox team at the company, which is not enough manpower to significantly advance such a complex piece of software. The v4.3 series has been receiving some maintenance updates during the last two years, but that's about it.

Comment Re:8 port charger? (Score 1) 33

by mbourgon (#48913567) Attached to: Getting Charged Up Over Chargers at CES (Video)

I actually own a product that came out several years ago that did it. Two big problems with it:
1) buying replacement cables SUCKED. It's why I abandoned it. Something like 18$ each.
2) You do NOT. SAVE. ANY. SPACE. Look at how much room that takes up, then realize that even empty, it still uses about most of that.

Submission + - 18th Century Law dredged up to force decryption of devices (theregister.co.uk) 1

Submitted by Cognitive Dissident
Cognitive Dissident writes: The Register has a story about federal prosecutors using a law signed by George Washington to force manufacturers to help law enforcement access encrypted data on devices they manufacture. The All Writs Act is a broad statute simply authorizing courts to issue any order necessary to obtain information within their jurisdiction.

Quoting the Register Article:
Last month, New York prosecutors successfully persuaded a judge that the ancient law could be used to force an unnamed smartphone manufacturer to help unlock a phone allegedly used in a credit card fraud case. The judge ordered the manufacturer to offer "reasonable technical assistance" to make the phone's contents available.

End quote. What will happen when this collides with Apple and Google deliberately creating encryption that they themselves cannot break?

Submission + - Intel drops sponsorship of Gamasutra in response to feminist articles

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Processor firm Intel has withdrawn its advertising from Gamasutra in response to the site's decision to carry feminist articles. The articles had drawn the ire of the self-described "Gater" movement, a grass-roots campaign to discredit prominent female games journalists. Intel was apparently so inundated with criticism for sponsoring the Gamasutra site that it had no choice but to withdraw support. An Intel spokesperson explained that "We take feedback from our customers very seriously especially as it relates to contextually relevant content and placements" and as such Gamasutra was no longer an appropriate venue for their products.

Submission + - Hacking USB firmware

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Now the NSA isn't the only one who can hack your USB firmware:

In a talk at the Derbycon hacker conference in Louisville, Kentucky last week, researchers Adam Caudill and Brandon Wilson showed that they’ve reverse engineered the same USB firmware as Nohl’s SR Labs, reproducing some of Nohl’s BadUSB tricks. And unlike Nohl, the hacker pair has also published the code for those attacks on Github, raising the stakes for USB makers to either fix the problem or leave hundreds of millions of users vulnerable.

Personally, I always thought it was insane that USB drives don't come with physical write-protect switches to keep them from being infected by malware.

Submission + - Hong Kong protesters use a mesh network to organise (newscientist.com)

Submitted by wabrandsma
wabrandsma writes: from New Scientist:

Hong Kong's mass protest is networked. Activists are relying on a free app that can send messages without any cellphone connection.

Since the pro-democracy protests turned ugly over the weekend, many worry that the Chinese government would block local phone networks.

In response, activists have turned to the FireChat app to send supportive messages and share the latest news. On Sunday alone, the app was downloaded more than 100,000 times in Hong Kong, its developers said. FireChat relies on "mesh networking", a technique that allows data to zip directly from one phone to another via Wi-Fi or Bluetooth. Ordinarily, if two people want to communicate this way, they need to be fairly close together. But as more people join in, the network grows and messages can travel further.

Mesh networks can be useful for people who are caught in natural disasters or, like those in Hong Kong, protesting under tricky conditions. FireChat came in handy for protesters in Taiwan and Iraq this year.

Submission + - Dell's Unexpected Next Act: Stylish, High-Quality Tablets And PCs

Submitted by jfruh
jfruh writes: If Dell has a reputation in the PC market, it's as the company that got low-end PCs to customers cheaply. But after the great drama of founder Michael Dell taking the company private, the company is following a new path, adding higher-quality (and more expensive) products like the Venue 8 7000, the thinnest tablet on the market today, to its lineup. One analyst notes that "Because they are no longer reporting to Wall Street, they can be more competitive."

Comment Re:Apple REULEZ! (Score 1) 408

by mbourgon (#47957055) Attached to: Why You Can't Manufacture Like Apple

"Last I checked blackberries don't allow tethering via bluetooth or wifi, and while they do email real well, they didn't do much else all that well"

You haven't checked in a while I tethered via bluetooth on my Bold 9000 (2008), and the 9900 could tether via wi-fi in January 2012 (though a few months later, depending on carrier). They STILL do email better than any other phone or app I've used. On-device filters, Level 1 notifications, blacklist/whitelist, ultra-configurable alarms, settings, profiles, etc, etc. Holy crap I miss it for email.

"Blackberries didn't evolve, and they died, a lesson Apple had best pay attention to."

THAT last point is valid.. to a point. I'm on an iPhone because corporate replaced Blackberries with the "Mediocre" app. (it's supposed to be called "Good", which is highly dubious at best).

Submission + - SpaceShipTwo flies again (nbcnews.com)

Submitted by schwit1
schwit1 writes: The competition heats up: For the first time in six months SpaceShipTwo completed a test flight today.

The article above is from NBC, which also has a deal with Virgin Galactic to televise the first commercial flight. It is thus in their interest to promote the spacecraft and company. The following two sentences from the article however clearly confirm every rumor we have heard about the ship in the past year, that they needed to replace or completely refit the engine and that the resulting thrust might not be enough to get the ship to 100 kilometers or 62 miles:

In January, SpaceShipTwo blasted off for a powered test and sailed through a follow-up glide flight, but then it went into the shop for rocket refitting. It’s expected to go through a series of glide flights and powered flights that eventually rise beyond the boundary of outer space (50 miles or 100 kilometers in altitude, depending on who’s counting).

Hopefully this test flight indicates that they have installed the new engine and are now beginning flight tests with equipment that will actually get the ship into space.

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