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Submission + - openSUSE Factory to merge with Tumbleweed (linuxveda.com)

sfcrazy writes: The two projects will merge to become a single release. The release will follow the development cycle of Factory but take the more appealing name ‘Tumbleweed’. Though Factory won’t disappear; it will remain the name of the development process where openSUSE’s new developments are integrated. It will become a ‘development project’ for creating the ‘user-ready’ Tumbleweed.

Submission + - Profits! Profits! Profits! Ballmer Says Amazon Isn't a Real Business

theodp writes: According to Steve Ballmer, Amazon.com is not a real business. “They make no money,” Ballmer said on the Charlie Rose Show. “In my world, you’re not a real business until you make some money. I have a hard time with businesses that don’t make money at some point.” Ballmer’s comments come as Amazon posted a $437 million loss for the third quarter, disappointing Wall Street. "If you are worth $150 billion," Ballmer added, "eventually somebody thinks you’re going to make $15 billion pre-tax. They make about zero, and there’s a big gap between zero and 15." Fired-up as ever, LA Clippers owner Ballmer's diss comes after fellow NBA owner Mark Cuban similarly slammed IBM, saying Big Blue is no longer a tech company (Robert X. Cringely seems to concur). "Today, they [IBM] specialize in financial engineering," Cuban told CNBC after IBM posted another disappointing quarter. "They're no longer a tech company, they are an amalgamation of different companies that they are trying to arb[itrage] on Wall Street, and I'm not a fan of that at all."

Submission + - Paranautical Activity Dev Apologizes for Valve Death Threat. (softpedia.com)

DemonOnIce writes: Softpedia reported that Mike Maulbeck, one of the developers working at Code Avarice,the independent studio behind Paranautical Activity, has publicly apologized for issuing a death threat to Valve founder Gabe Newell and confirms that he's no longer associated with the team or the game.

Steam is the biggest digital distribution platform available across PC, Mac, and Linux, offering tens of millions of owners access to all sorts of games, such as the recent Paranautical Activity, which was made by startup studio Code Avarice.

Unfortunately, the game was at the center of a massive controversy, as after exiting the Steam Early Access section and becoming fully available on the storefront, Valve mistakenly listed it as still being in Early Access.

This sent one of its designers, Mike Maulbeck, into a Twitter tirade, which ended with a death threat to Valve boss Gabe Newell.

The game was promptly taken off of the Steam storefront, with Valve issuing a statement saying that it doesn't take threats to its employees lightly.

Now, Maulbeck is apologizing for his actions on the Code Avarice blog, and confirms that, while the threat wasn't serious, it was still unwarranted and Valve hasn't made a mistake by delisting the game.

Feed Google News Sci Tech: UPDATE 1-Google's Pichai to oversee major products and services - Reuters (google.com)


Business Insider

UPDATE 1-Google's Pichai to oversee major products and services
Reuters
(Adds confirmation of promotion by Google spokesman). By Alexei Oreskovic. SAN FRANCISCO Oct 24 (Reuters) - Google Inc Chief Executive Officer Larry Page has put Sundar Pichai, one of his key lieutenants, in charge of the Internet company's products.
Google giving more control to Android, Chrome chief Sundar PichaiZDNet
Google makes a strategic move, crowns Sundar Pichai as head of product at ... PCWorld (blog)
Google CEO Larry Page appoints Sundar Pichai to lead nearly every product at ... VentureBeat
Android Police-SlashGear-PhoneDog
all 22 news articles

Submission + - Days after shooting, Canada proposes new restrictions on and offline. (nationalpost.com)

o_ferguson writes: As Slashdot reported earlier this week, a lone shooter attacked the war memorial and parliament buildings in Ottawa, Canada on Wednesday.

As many comments predicted, the national government has seized this as an opportunity to roll out considerable new regressive legislation, including measures designed to* increase data access for domestic intelligence services, institute a new form of extra-judicial detention, and, perhaps most troubling, criminalize some forms of religious and political speech online. As an example of the type of speech that could, in future, be grounds for prosecution, the article mentions that the killer's website featured "a black ISIS flag and rejoiced that 'disbelievers' will be consigned to the fires of Hell for eternity."

A government MP offers the scant assurance that this legislation is not “trauma tainted," as it was drafted well prior to this week's instigating incidents. Needless to say, some internet observes remain, as always, highly skeptical of the manner in which events are being portrayed.

*Please note that some articles may be partially paywalled unless opened in a private/incognito browser window.

Comment I hope they have plenty of kiosks ... (Score 1) 720

My dad does not always seem to grasp the concept of fast food, at least not the part of the process that takes place at ordering time. He arrives at the front of the line as if to a new planet, one filled with wonder, and choices beyond numbering. He looks at the menu as if for the first time, asks many questions, then retracts orders, revises with new ones, makes requests about customizing each thing ordered, then tacks on more items or changes. At a kiosk? Endless new joys, and menus to explore menus!

What I'd like to see is a FIFO system where people who are behind, say, my dad, can order with an app on their own phone or tablet, and if their order is ready, it starts getting made.

Submission + - OwnCloud Developer requests removal from Ubuntu repos: multiple vulnerabilities (webupd8.org)

operator_error writes: ownCloud developer Lukas Reschke has sent an email to the Ubuntu Devel mailing list, requesting that ownCloud (server) is removed from the Ubuntu repositories because the package is old and there are multiple critical security bugs for which no fixes have been backported. He adds that:

        "Those security bugs allows an unauthenticated attacker to gain complete control about the web server process".

However, packages can't be removed from the Ubuntu repositories for an Ubuntu version that was already released, that's why the package was removed from Ubuntu 14.10 (2 days before its release) but it's still available in the Ubuntu 14.04 and 12.04 repositories (ownCloud 6.0.1 for Ubuntu 14.04 and ownCloud 5.0.4 for Ubuntu 12.04, while the latest ownCloud version is 7.0.2).

Furthermore, the ownCloud package is in the universe repository and software in this repository "WILL NOT receive any review or updates from the Ubuntu security team" (you should see this if you take a look at your /etc/apt/sources.list file) so it's up to someone from the Ubuntu community to step up and fix it. "If nobody does that, then it unfortunately stays the way it is", says Marc Deslauriers, Security Tech Lead at Canonical.

You can follow the discussion @ Ubuntu Devel mailing list.

So, until (if) someone fixes this, if you're using ownCloud from the Ubuntu repositories, you should either remove it or upgrade to the latest ownCloud from its official repository, hosted by the openSUSE Build Service

Feed Google News Sci Tech: Google exec sets records with leap from near-space - seattlepi.com (google.com)


New York Times

Google exec sets records with leap from near-space
seattlepi.com
ROSWELL, N.M. (AP) — A Google executive has broken the sound barrier and set several skydiving records over the southern New Mexico desert after taking a leap from the edge of space. Alan Eustace's supersonic jump early Friday from a high-altitude,...
Google exec broke sound barrier, world record with 25.7-mile fallSilicon Valley Business Journal
Alan Eustace Jumps From Stratosphere, Breaking Felix Baumgartner's World ... New York Times
A Google Exec Just Beat The World Record For Highest-Altitude Jump From The ... Business Insider
9news.com.au
all 16 news articles

Submission + - Passwords: too much and not enough (sophos.com)

An anonymous reader writes: Sophos security has a blog post up saying "attempts to get users to choose passwords that will resist offline guessing, e.g., by composition policies, advice and strength meters, must largely be judged failures." They say a password must withstand 1,000,000 guesses to survive an online attack but 100,000,000,000,000 to have any hope against an offline one. "Not only is the difference between those two numbers mind-bogglingly large, there is no middle ground." "Passwords falling between the two thresholds offer no improvement in real-world security, they're just harder to remember." System administrators "should stop worrying about getting users to create strong passwords and should focus instead on properly securing password databases and detecting leaks when they happen."

Submission + - The man with the golden blood (mosaicscience.com)

Torontoman writes: http://mosaicscience.com/story...

His doctor drove him over the border. It was quicker that way: if the man donated in Switzerland, his blood would be delayed while paperwork was filled out and authorisations sought.

The nurse in Annemasse, France, could tell from the label on the blood bag destined for Paris that this blood was pretty unusual. But when she read the details closely, her eyes widened. Surely it was impossible for this man seated beside her to be alive, let alone apparently healthy?

Thomas smiled to himself. Very few people in the world knew his blood type did – could – exist. And even fewer shared it. In 50 years, researchers have turned up only 40 or so other people on the planet with the same precious, life-saving blood in their veins.

Submission + - Researcher Finds Tor Exit Node Adding Malware to Downloads

Trailrunner7 writes: A security researcher has identified a Tor exit node that was actively patching binaries users download, adding malware to the files dynamically. The discovery, experts say, highlights the danger of trusting files downloaded from unknown sources and the potential for attackers to abuse the trust users have in Tor and similar services.

Josh Pitts of Leviathan Security Group ran across the misbehaving Tor exit node while performing some research on download servers that might be patching binaries during download through a man-in-the middle attack. Downloading any kind of file from the Internet is a dodgy proposition these days, and many users know that if they’re downloading files from some random torrent site in Syria or The Marshall Islands, they are rolling the dice. Malware runs rampant on these kinds of sites.

But the scenario that worries security experts much more involves an attacker being able to control the download mechanism for security updates, say for Windows or OS X. If an attacker can insert malware into this channel, he could cause serious damage to a broad population of users, as those update channels are trusted implicitly by the users’ and their machines. Legitimate software vendors typically will sign their binaries and modified ones will cause verification errors. What Pitts found during his research is that an attacker with a MITM position can actively patch binaries–if not security updates–with his own code.

In terms of defending against the sort of attack, Pitts suggested that encrypted download channels are the best option, both for users and site operators.

“SSL/TLSis the only way to prevent this from happening. End-users may want to consider installing HTTPS Everywhere or similar plugins for their browser to help ensure their traffic is always encrypted,” he said via email.

Submission + - Peter Kuran:Visual Effects Artist and Atomic Bomb Archivist (thebulletin.org)

Lasrick writes: Great interview with Peter Kuran, an animator of the original Star Wars and legendary visual effects artist. If you saw the recent remake of Godzilla, you saw stock footage from Atom Central, known on YouTube as “the atomic bomb channel.” Atom Central is the brainchild of Kuran, who among his many talents is an expert on archival films of the atmospheric testing era of 1945 to 1963. Combining his film restoration and photography expertise with his interest in nuclear history, he has also produced and directed five documentaries. He is currently working with Lawrence Livermore and Los Alamos National Laboratories to preserve and catalog images from the bomb-testing era, and to produce a technical handbook that will help people understand these images and the techniques used to create them. Awesome slideshow accompanies the article

Submission + - The Queen's Data Center Gets A Royal Warrant (datacenterdynamics.com)

judgecorp writes: The hosting firm that holds the Queen of England's data has been granted a "Royal Warrant". This allows it to use the phrase "By Appointment to Her Majesty The Queen", and display the royal crest in public. The firm in question, Pulsant, has been working for the Royal Family for more than five years., and is understandably pleased with the marketing opportunities. "They are a very good customer," said somewhat-understated Pulsant CTO Matt Lovell.

Submission + - Google Search Finally Adds Information About Video Games

An anonymous reader writes: Google has expanded its search engine with the capability to recognize video games. If your query references a game, a new Knowledge Graph panel on the right-hand side of Google’s search results page will offer more information, including the series it belongs to, initial release date, supported platforms, developers, publishers, designers, and even review scores. Google spokesperson: “With today’s update, you can ask questions about video games, and (while there will be ones we don’t cover) you’ll get answers for console and PC games as well as the most popular mobile apps.”

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