The positive side is that hopefully it provides further incentives for companies like Microsoft to work harder to try to mitigate DDoS problems at the source.

Microsoft are in a unique position as their operating system is - it seems - in many cases the base platform for launching these attacks. It'd be great to see a concerted effort along with a company like Google to start actively trying to massively reduce the number of systems that are regularly involved in DDoS attacks.

I was at a bar in Columbus OH earlier this year and got handed a flyer for a service exactly you describe. Forgot the name but thought it was a cool idea, although Uber and Lyft I think make it tough competition.

Yeh! Except isn't Sony a Japanese company? Who am I being patriotic for by seeing it?

I know what you mean. Really gave me a new appreciation for home.

And now is probably the BEST time to be doing it. Threat of physical retaliation is extremely low for most major powers, but the intelligence that can be gained - both in terms of identifying potential weak points in infrastructure and systems, and ways to improve defence against attacks - must be priceless.

Just a quick note to say thanks for your comments in this thread. Fascinating to learn some more about the chocolate industry and what the hell chocolate is. As an Australian that recently moved to the US I have been surprised about the weird tasting chocolate that is commonly available (e.g., Hershey bars) and now have a better idea what to look for.

Would love to know what you make so I can look out for it in the stores (... if there's anywhere in Ohio that stocks them!)

More OSS video editors is great. I backed openshot a while ago, not because I have any interest in video editing (or watching videos - would much prefer to read) but because I think it'd be great to wrest some of the power away from the commercial options.

With the Republicans scoring big in the election, the US dollar hit a high (apparently because they're pro business) against the Aussie dollar, which is now the lowest it's been for 4 years after a gradual slide over the last few months.

This would have been fantastic 2 years ago but now we're just facing the original Australia tax - a poor exchange rate. Might still be a few things that you can get a good deal on though.

At the moment I just run separate VMs, but it's a bit heavyweight.

Hmm, that seems counter to the Docker security model - the processes are not supposed to be able to get out of their container ... or so it claims. How do Docker processes escape?

... I'd actually rather see Docker in the user space for Windows. There are zillions of Windows applications that would benefit from Docker-isation - being able to download things off the Internet and more safely run them is something I've wanted for ages.

There are various application sandbox things for Windows (e.g., Sandboxie) but I haven't seen anything open source that is as reliable and commonly used as Docker seems to be.

I think it'd be OK on the server side as well, but I'd love to be able to download nice jailed Docker versions of most Windows apps so I can run them without having to worry too much about what they're doing in my userspace.

I think some of Schneier's words apply here:

"I tell people that if it's in the news, don't worry about it. The very definition of "news" is "something that hardly ever happens." It's when something isn't in the news, when it's so common that it's no longer news -- car crashes, domestic violence -- that you should start worrying."

If this had been a story about a Windows exploit it's unlikely it would have been reported in the mainstream in a similar manner. Even if it had it's unlikely anyone would have paid attention; even the non-technical public is massively desensitised to stories about Windows security issues.

If anything, I'm now /more/ confident about open source security. This demonstrates that when people find problems, they fix them quickly and efficiently. Who knows what is happening in closed source software?

SINCE Australis? Nothing major. In a recent version they changed the right click context menu to include icons for reload/back/forward, which irritated me - change for the sake of change. (Also the keyboard shortcut for Private Browsing no longer works - might be a plugin? Not sure.)

Things like that seem little but when you've been using Firefox for years - which I have, every day, for work - little changes like that mean the platform loses a lot of stability, which is one of the things that is most important when you're trying to get things done.

I'm not at all opposed to new features. I don't even care about feature bloat that much. But they should be opt-in. And at the very least, you should be able to opt-out without having to install some third party plugin. Having a new UI/UX forced on me just feels ... rude.

Australis prompted me to install Classic Theme Restorer so I could restore the browser to the way I'd been using it for /years/. (Here's my +5 post about why I disliked Australis.) Enough has been written about Australis so I won't whine about that any more.

Just upgraded then with that grim sense of foreboding that I now get with Firefox upgrades ("what's going to stop working this time? how is the UI I've been using for many years changed now?")

I lost all my cookies - upon reload after the upgrade, I noticed I was logged out of a bunch of websites (including anything using Google Accounts and Slashdot). YMMV.

Fixed in wheezy (v7), but not squeeze (v6). Status: https://security-tracker.debia...

If you're logged into Facebook, this link should take you straight to the settings page where you can disable the auto-playing of videos:

https://www.facebook.com/setti...

This should work for most people - although my brother (on Mac OS X) was not able to see the 'Videos' sub-menu (which for me appears in the list on the left at the very bottom).

I only use the FB website on my mobile (the constant addition of new permissions turned me off the app), and am not sure if you can disable it within the app.