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Submission + - Apple to Unveil New Products at Sept. 9 Event (nbcwashington.com)

Submitted by Halolland
Halolland writes: The Cupertino company sent out official invitations to the press Thursday morning, with a date (September 9th), time, and place (10am, Cupertino). The invitation also came with a brief message: 'Wish We Could Say More."

The tech press is already saying plenty about the event, speculating that we'll see a new iPhone, a new iPad (both reportedly larger), and maybe even the long-guessed about iWatch. Apple is not saying anything beyond its emailed invitation.

Submission + - In Maryland, a Soviet-Style Punishment for a Novelist (theatlantic.com) 1

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: A 23-year-old teacher at a Cambridge, Md. middle school has been placed on leave and—in the words of a local news report—"taken in for an emergency medical evaluation" for publishing, under a pseudonym, a novel about a school shooting. The novelist, Patrick McLaw, an eighth-grade language-arts teacher at the Mace's Lane Middle School, was placed on leave by the Dorchester County Board of Education, and is being investigated by the Dorchester County Sheriff's Office, according to news reports from Maryland's Eastern Shore. The novel, by the way, is set 900 years in the future.

Submission + - 160,000 New Malware Samples Appear Each Day

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Malware is still being created at the record levels reached in the previous quarter: 15 million new samples were generated, at an average rate of 160,000 every day, according to Panda Security. Trojans, once again, have accounted for more infections (62.8%) than any other type of malware, although this figure is lower than the previous quarter (79.90%). Potentially Unwanted Programs are in second place with 24.77% of infections, underlining how these techniques are now being used massively. A long way behind came adware/spyware (7.09%), viruses (2.68%) and worms (2.66%).

Submission + - Apple reveals the most common reasons that it rejects apps

Submitted by mrspoonsi
mrspoonsi writes: One of the great mysteries of the App Store is why certain apps get rejected and why others don’t. Apple has let a surprising number of ripoffs and clones through the store’s iron gates, yet some developers face rejection for seemingly innocent apps. “Before you develop your app, it’s important to become familiar with the technical, content, and design criteria that we use to review all apps,” explains Apple on a new webpage called “Common App Rejections.” Rejections include: Apple and our customers place a high value on simple, refined, creative, well thought through interfaces. They take more work but are worth it. Apple sets a high bar. If your user interface is complex or less than very good, it may be rejected; Apps that contain false, fraudulent or misleading representations or use names or icons similar to other Apps will be rejected.

Submission + - Stealing ATM PINs with a cheap infrared camera (youtube.com) 1

Submitted by cccc828
cccc828 writes: German tech news website heise.de reports about a video by Mark Rober. It shows how to use a $300 infrared camera for the iPhone to read the residual heat signatures of an ATM. The residual heat signatures allow an attacker to reconstruct the PIN around 80% of the time. While this attack vector is not new, IR cameras used to be both rare and expensive. The best defense against the attack is to simply touch all the keypads keys after making a payment.

Submission + - Uber now blocked all over Germany

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Following the blocking of Uber in Berlin, DE, the district court of Frankfurt/Main has issued a restraining order for Uber services all over Germany. The district court is alleging Uber "uncompetitive bahaviour" (Unlauteres Wettbewerbsverhalten) and has issued that not following the restraining order will result in a fine of €250.000 or imprisonment. This ruling is related to the German "Personenbeförderungsgesetz" and is outlining that no legal entity (person, enterprise) is allowed to transfer passengers without having passed the relevant tests and having the appropriate ensurance coverage. (Source, Translation)

Submission + - How Microsoft dragged its development practices into the 21st century (arstechnica.com)

Submitted by nerdyalien
nerdyalien writes: As a web developer who joined the industry few years back, I had to practice Agile from day one. Despite the years of expereince and what I heard/learned in Agile related events (i.e. workshops, conferences), I always maintained a firm opinion that Agile would not scale in large projects. For me, it was the simple fact that there weren't enough strong case studies to explain how a large organization or a project successfully adopted Agile in their daily business. It seems tide has changed, and the Redmond giant has embraced Agile to deliver one of its flagship products. Is this the turning point for large scale Agile ?

Submission + - New html element <picture> to make future web faster (arstechnica.com)

Submitted by nerdyalien
nerdyalien writes: At some point or another, haven't we all web developers spent unjustifiable number of hours trying to optimize a desktop site for mobile devices ? Responsive Web Designs (RWD) has given us the solution "develop once, works in every device"; however, still it downloads multi-MB images and resize them based on device screen resolution. Retrieving optimized images from the server, based on device (desktop, tablet, mobile) and its internet connection (fiber, mobile), has always been an open problem. Recently, number of freelance developers are tackling this with a new html element <picture>, which informs the web browser to download optimized image from the server. This tag to be featured in Chrome and FireFox browsers later this year. Will this finally deliver us faster web browsing on mobile devices, and pain-free web development experience ?

Submission + - Invasion Of Ukraine Continuing As Russia Begins Nuclear Weapons Sabre Rattling (news.com.au) 3

Submitted by cold fjord
cold fjord writes: News.com.au reports, "This morning, Prime Minister Tony Abbott labelled Russia’s escalating and “open” invasion into Ukraine as “war”. But he was not only person using fighting words. ... on Friday, Vladimir Putin’s nuclear threat was simple. “I want to remind you that Russia is one of the most powerful nuclear nations. This is a reality, not just words.” It’s the first time in more than 25 years that Moscow has raised the spectre of nuclear war. The difference this time is that its tanks are already pouring over its western borders. “A great war arrived at our doorstep, the likes of which Europe has not seen since World War II,” Ukraine’s Defence Minister Valeriy Geletey wrote ... warning of “tens of thousands of deaths”. Putin appears to agree. Italian newspaper La Repubblica reports Putin has told the outgoing European Commission President ... : “If I want, I take Kiev in two weeks.” " — CNN reports, "The British government source told CNN on Friday that Russia has moved 4,000 to 5,000 military personnel — a figure far higher than one U.S. official's earlier claim of 1,000 troops. The soldiers are aligned in "formed units" and fighting around Luhansk and Donetsk.... And they may soon have company: Some 20,000 troops are on border and "more may be on the way," ..." — Newsweek reports, "Russia Has Threatened Nuclear Attack, Says Ukraine Defence Minister"

Submission + - What Does Google Do With All The Information It Collects? 1

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: About two thirds of websites run Google code (mostly Analytics, AdSense, and +1) that tells Google what you do there and where you came from. (Also Analytics is used by 63% of Fortune 500 companies and 71% of the top 10k websites.) 800 million Android phones are in use (that's 11% of all humans), telling Google pretty much everywhere they go, everything they do, and everyone they talk to. Hundreds of millions of people use Google Maps. Over 400 million people use Gmail, telling Google everything they write and receive by email. Plus untold millions use Google Toolbar. Does Google do anything with this data? And even if they "don't be evil" with it today, is there anything stopping them from "being evil" with it tomorrow? What about 20 years from now when they are a second-rate company and some investment group buys out their assets? Do you block Google code in your browsing habits? Do you run Google code on your websites?

Submission + - The Taliban Is Running Low on Foreign Fighters (medium.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: War is Boring reports, "Just a few years ago, the Taliban was one of the two prime Islamist militant groups—the other being Al Qaida-aligned insurgents in Iraq—for foreign fighters around the world to enlist with. But with the self-proclaimed Islamic State on the warpath and new conflicts in North Africa, the Taliban has become less attractive. Specifically, the Pakistani Taliban. That’s the subject of a new report in CTC Sentinel, West Point’s counter-terrorism newsletter. As of July 2008, the Pakistani Taliban included around 8,000 foreign fighters, notes Raza Khan, a political analyst who authored the report. These fighters came from western Europe, the Middle East, China, Russia, India, and central Asian countries, particularly Uzbekistan. But today, only a few hundred remain. There are several reasons for the decline."

Submission + - Drone Developers Consider Obstacles That Cannot Be Flown Around - NYTimes.com (nytimes.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: A few days ago we talked over some of the difficulties faced by makers of autonomous car software, like dealing with weather, construction, and parking garages. Today, the NY Times has a similar article about delivery drones, examining the safety and regulatory problems that must be solved in addition to getting the basic technology ready. [R]researchers at NASA are working on ways to manage that menagerie of low-flying aircraft. At NASA’s Moffett Field, about four miles from Google’s headquarters in Mountain View, Calif., the agency has been developing a drone traffic management program that would in effect be a separate air traffic control system for things that fly low to the ground — around 400 to 500 feet for most drones. Much like the air traffic control system for conventional aircraft, the program would monitor the skies for weather and traffic. Wind is a particular hazard, because drones weigh so little compared with regular planes." Beyond that, the sheer scale of infrastructure necessary to get drone delivery up and running in cities across the U.S. is staggering. Commercial drones aren't going to have much range, particularly when carrying something heavy. They'll be noisy, and the products they're transporting will still need to be relatively close by. What other issues do Amazon, DHL, Google, and other need to solve?

Submission + - Researchers Say Neanderthals created cave art

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Belying their reputation as the dumb cousins of early modern humans, Neanderthals created cave art, an activity regarded as a major cognitive step in the evolution of humankind, scientists reported on Monday in a paper describing the first discovery of artwork by this extinct species. The discovery is "a major contribution to the redefinition of our perception of Neanderthal culture," said prehistorian William Rendu of the French National Centre for Scientific Research, who was not involved in the work. "It is a new and even stronger evidence of the Neanderthal capacity for developing complex symbolic thought" and "abstract expression," abilities long believed exclusive to early modern humans.

Submission + - Are there any Linux-friendly DESKTOP x86 motherboard manufacturers? (phoronix.com) 1

Submitted by storkus
storkus writes: The release of Haswell-E and a price drop on Devil's Canyon has made me itch for a PC upgrade. However, looking around I discovered a pair of horror stories on Phoronix (2nd story link at the bottom of the first), and plenty more Googling around.

My question: if MSI, Gigabyte, Asus (and by extension Asrock) are out, who's left and are they any good? Note that I want to build a (probably dual-boot, but don't know for sure) gaming and "other" high-end machine with one of the above chips so we're talking Z97 or X99; however, these stories seem to point to the problems being M$-isms in the BIOS/UEFI structures rather than actual hardware incompatibility, combined with a real lousy attitude (despite the Steam distro being real soon now).

Submission + - Akamai reissues all SSL certificates after admitting Heartbleed patch fail (techworld.com.au)

Submitted by SpacemanukBEJY.53u
SpacemanukBEJY.53u writes: It took security researcher Willem Pinckaers all of 15 minutes to spot a flaw in code created by Akamai that the company thought shielded most of its users from one of the pernicious aspects of the Heartbleed flaw in OpenSSL. More than a decade ago, Akamai modified parts of OpenSSL it felt were weak related to key storage. Akamai CTO Andy Ellis wrote last week that the modification protected most customers from having their private SSL stolen despite the Heartbleed bug. But on Sunday Ellis wrote Akamai was wrong after Pinckaers found several flaws in the code. Akamai is now reissuing all SSL certificates and keys to its customers.

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