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Submission + - Trillion-Dollar World Trade Deal Aims To Make IT Products Cheaper (itworld.com)

Submitted by itwbennett
itwbennett writes: A new (tentative) global trade agreement, struck on Friday at a World Trade Organization meeting in Geneva, eliminates tariffs on more than 200 kinds of IT products, ranging from smartphones, routers, and ink cartridges to video game consoles and telecommunications satellites. A full list of products covered was published by the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative, which called the ITA expansion 'great news for the American workers and businesses that design, manufacture, and export state-of-the-art technology and information products, ranging from MRI machines to semiconductors to video game consoles.' The deal covers $1.3 trillion worth of global trade, about 7 percent of total trade today.

Submission + - Study: Push Notifications As Distracting As Taking A Call (itworld.com)

Submitted by itwbennett
itwbennett writes: Researchers at Florida State University have found that simply being aware of a missed call or text can have the same damaging effect on task performance as actually using a mobile phone. 'Although these notifications are short in duration, they can prompt task-irrelevant thoughts, or mind-wandering,' the researchers wrote in their paper. In further bad news for chronic multitaskers, a new study by researchers at the University of Connecticut finds that 'students who multitasked while doing homework had to study longer, and those who frequently multitasked in class had lower grades on average than their peers who multitasked less often.'

Submission + - New York Judge Rules Against Facebook In Search Warrant Case

Submitted by itwbennett
itwbennett writes: Last year, Facebook appealed a court decision requiring it to hand over data, including photos and private messages, relating to 381 user accounts. (Google, Microsoft, and Twitter, among other companies backed Facebook in the dispute). On Tuesday, Judge Dianne Renwick of the New York State Supreme Court ruled against Facebook, saying that Facebook has no legal standing to challenge the constitutionality of search warrants served on its users.

Submission + - Bug Exposes OpenSSH Servers To Brute-Force Password Guessing Attacks (itworld.com)

Submitted by itwbennett
itwbennett writes: OpenSSH servers with keyboard-interactive authentication enabled, which is the default setting on many systems, including FreeBSD ones, can be tricked to allow many authentication retries over a single connection, according to a security researcher who uses the online alias Kingcope, who disclosed the issue on his blog last week. According to a discussion on Reddit, setting PasswordAuthentication to 'no' in the OpenSSH configuration and using public-key authentication does not prevent this attack, because keyboard-interactive authentication is a different subsystem that also relies on passwords.

Submission + - Former Hacking Team Supplier Stops Selling Zero-Day Exploits On Ethical Grounds (itworld.com)

Submitted by itwbennett
itwbennett writes: Italian surveillance software maker Hacking Team may not have lost any customers after it was hacked two weeks ago, or at least not yet. But it has lost at least one business partner. Over the weekend, U.S.-based penetration testing specialist and zero-day exploit broker Netragard announced that it is terminating its long-time running Exploit Acquisition Program (EAP), citing revelations about Hacking Team’s customers as one of the reasons.

Submission + - What's the Oldest Technology You've Used In a Production Environment? (itworld.com)

Submitted by itwbennett
itwbennett writes: Sometimes it's a matter of 'if it ain't broke, don't fix it,' sometimes corporate inertia is to blame, but perhaps even more often what keeps old technology plugging away in businesses large and small is the sense that it does a single, specific job the way that someone wants it done. George R.R. Martin's preference for using a DOS computer running WordStar 4 to write his Song of Ice and Fire series is one such example, but so is the hospital computer whose sole job was to search and print medical images, however badly or slowly it may have done the job. We all have such stories of obsolete tech we've had to use at one point or another. What's yours?

Submission + - Check Into A Robot-Staffed Japanese Hotel (itworld.com)

Submitted by jfruh
jfruh writes: The front desk is staffed by a female android in a white tunic. The bellhop is a mechanical velociraptor. A giant robot arm put luggage into cubbyholes. It's the Henn-na Hotel in Nagasaki and it's opening this Friday, and it's a place where 'basically guests will see only robots, not humans,' according to general manager Masahiko Hayasaka.

Submission + - Google To Reopen Maps To User Edits, With An Anti-Abuse Plan (itworld.com)

Submitted by jfruh
jfruh writes: When Google opened up its Maps to user edits, a lot of useful information got added — along with plenty of spam and outright abuse, some of it obscene, which led to the program being shut down. Now the company is planning to reopen things to user input, recruiting local mappers that they're calling "regional leads" to filter out problematic content.

Submission + - Cell Phone Radiation Emission Tests Assume Use Of Belt Clip (itworld.com)

Submitted by jfruh
jfruh writes: Most Slashdotters rightfully roll their eyes when people panic about the "radiation" put out by cell phone. But there is a germ of truth to some of the nervous talk: when the FCC assesses how much radio-frequency radiation a phone user will absorb, they work on the assumption you'll be wearing it in a belt clip, rather than putting it in your pocket as most people do.

Submission + - Microsoft Becomes First 2015 'Gold' Contributor To OpenBSD Foundation

Submitted by itwbennett
itwbennett writes: OpenBSD Journal on Tuesday announced that Microsoft has become the OpenBSD Foundation's first-ever Gold contributor (Google and Facebook are both Silver contributors). The move makes good on an earlier comment by Angel Calvo in a post on the Windows PowerShell Blog that they won't be just adopting the openSSH, they will also be contributing to it. (OpenSSH is an OpenBSD Foundation project.) The dollar amount of the contribution won't blow you away, though: $25,000-$50,000 will get you the Gold.

Submission + - Why Are There So Many Gaps In Google Street View? (itworld.com)

Submitted by jfruh
jfruh writes: Google Street View keeps going to all sorts of exotic places — up the sheer cliff wall of El Capitan, for example. So why are there so many gaps in, for instance, the streets of the Sunset District, an easily accessible residential neighborhood in San Francisco, just a few miles from Google HQ? The answer may be a combination of privacy requests and technical glitches, but Google is talking. Observers noted in one case on an island road, the Street View car apparently stopped its journey right next to a bar.

Submission + - Richard Stallman 'Basically' Fine With NSA Using GNU/Linux (itworld.com)

Submitted by jfruh
jfruh writes: GNU project founder Richard Stallman can seem a little (if you'll forgive the turn of phrase) proprietary at times over open source software, to the point of insisting on calling Linux "GNU/Linux." But one thing he'll always admit is that nobody can control how properly licensed open source software can be used — even if it's being used by government agencies for purposes he opposes. That was his take on the recent intra-open source debate that arose upon revelations of the NSA's extensive use of free and open source software.

Submission + - Baby, I'm Worth It: 13% of CompSci Grads Have Starting Salaries Over $100K (itworld.com)

Submitted by itwbennett
itwbennett writes: That was one of the findings of a survey of 50,000 U.S. college students and recent graduates by Looksharp, a marketplace for internships and entry-level jobs. For general findings across all majors, check out Looksharp's State of College Hiring Report 2015. But the company shared some more computer science-specific findings with ITworld's Phil Johnson. Among them: 'Of all majors, students studying in CS had the highest average starting salary, $66,161.' And, what's more, they know the value of their degree: 'On average, they expected a starting salary of $68,120, slightly above the actual average starting salary of $66,161.'

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