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Submission + - TrueCrypt author claims that forking is impossible (pastebin.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: On a request from Matthew Green to fork the TrueCrypt code, the author answers that this is impossible. He says that this might be no good idea, because the code needs a rewrite, but he allows to use the existing code as a reference.

"I am sorry, but I think what you're asking for here is impossible. I don't feel that forking TrueCrypt would be a good idea, a complete rewrite was something we wanted to do for a while. I believe that starting from scratch wouldn't require much more work than actually learning and understanding all of truecrypts current codebase.

I have no problem with the source code being used as reference."

Submission + - Facebook has suffered a global failure (net4tech.net)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Facebook was unavailable this morning for half an hour. Access was restored around 10:30 am Thursday. Failures and malfunctions are rare on Facebook, even if the site had already been significant failures in October. The entire network has remained elusive, with an error message is online. For companies whose business depends partly on the social network, the opportunity to turn to other alternatives.

The social network has remained elusive for half an hour before access is restored at 10:30. With an error message on the home page, any of its functions were not available. And that globally since the blackout hit the entire network. Facebook has not yet reported on this topic and users following the blackout number on Twitter with the hashtag #facebookdown.

Submission + - Android Malware Poses as Google Play, Comes Pre-Installed (techweekeurope.co.uk) 1

Submitted by judgecorp
judgecorp writes: Two worrying developments in Android malware. FireEye has spotted a program which installs covertly and poses as the Google Play app store. The installation appears to fail, but carries an encrypted payload which is unpacked stealthily. Meanwhile, a Chinese phone manufacturer has a suspiciously cheap Android smartphone, which includes pre-installed malware, again pretending to be the Google Play app. Security firm G Data believes the manufacturer may be subsidising its costs using stolen data

Submission + - X Window System Turns 30 Years Old (phoronix.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: One of the oldest pieces of the Linux desktop stack still widely in use today is the X Window System that today is commonly referred to as X11 or in recent years the X.Org Server. The X Window System predates the Linux kernel, the Free Software Foundation, GCC, and other key pieces of the Linux infrastructure — or most software widely-used in general. Today marks 30 years since the announcement of X at MIT when it was introduced to Project Athena.

Submission + - Game Characters controlled by Player's Emotions (youtube.com)

Submitted by vrml
vrml writes: As the player feels inner anger rising, the in-game character gets angry too and starts shouting and smashing things. Then, the player relaxes and the game character calms down and smiles. This is the kind of game control supported by a system demonstrated in a video released today by the Human-Computer Interaction Lab of the University of Udine. The system detects player's emotional state by using physiological sensors to measure player's skin conductance, facial muscles activity and cardiac parameters. It has been used to build gamified relaxation training and stress inoculation training applications.

Submission + - Are the Glory Days of Analog Engineering Over? (eetimes.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Controversy has been swirling for years over the question of whether analog engineers are relevant in a digital world. Analog engineers themselves are lining up against management in the tussle over whether there really is a shrinking pool of engineers to do the work, or whether companies have unrealistic expectations. As one former analog engineer puts it, "The job descriptions for analog engineers today ask for expertise in all these analog areas, then they throw in 'must know VHDL' [a digital programming language]. Your head would explode if you had to carry all the information in your head!

Submission + - Austrian Teen at Heart of TweetDeck Mess Says it Was All a Mistake

Submitted by Trailrunner7
Trailrunner7 writes: The last 24 hours have been a sad, scary and frustrating time for an 19-year-old aspiring programmer in Austria who found himself smack in the middle of Wednesday’s TweetDeck mess—all because of a Unicode heart.

Twitter’s real-time account dashboard was taken down for a brief time yesterday before a cross-site scripting vulnerability in the TweetDeck Chrome plug-in was properly addressed. But not before code exploiting the bug in a benign manner spread to Twitter users worldwide.

Ground zero for the incident was the Austrian teen who identified himself only as Florian to Threatpost. The youngster said things began yesterday when he tweeted out an HTML hearts symbol (&hearts) that was graphically displayed in the message.

“TweetDeck is not supposed to display this as an image, because it’s simple text, which should be escaped to “♥,” he said.

“I didn’t know that there is such a big problem. So I experimented with this in a public environment, there was no reason not to do so,” Florian said. “And that was the point where I reported this to TweetDeck.

“TweetDeck actually did not react in any way,” Florian said. “Their next Tweet was saying that there is a security-issue and the users should log in again.”

Submission + - Mozilla to sell '$25' Firefox OS smartphones in India

Submitted by mrspoonsi
mrspoonsi writes: Mozilla, the organisation behind the Firefox browser, has announced it will start selling low-cost smartphones in India within the "next few months". Speaking to the Wall Street Journal, the firm's chief operating officer suggested the handsets, which will be manufactured by two Indian companies, would retail at $25 (£15). They will run Mozilla's HTML5 web-based mobile operating system, Firefox OS. The firm already sells Firefox-powered phones in Europe and Latin America.

Submission + - NSF Researcher Suspended for Mining Bitcoin (cio.com)

Submitted by PvtVoid
PvtVoid writes: In the semiannual report to Congress by the NSF Office of Inspector General, the organization said it received reports of a researcher who was using NSF-funded supercomputers at two universities to mine bitcoin. The computationally intensive mining took up about $150,000 worth of NSF-supported computer use at the two universities to generate bitcoins worth about $8,000 to $10,000, according to the report. It did not name the researcher or the universities.

Submission + - Solving logic puzzles in FORTRAN 1

Submitted by dr_blurb
dr_blurb writes: Computational nanoscientist Surendra Jain has written solvers for Sudoku, Killer Sudoku, Samurai Sudoku, Calcudoku, Kakuro and many other logic problems.

The page (called "Classical Geek") has all source (in Fortran 90) as well as compilation and running instructions. This is further proof that FORTRAN is still very much alive. Is it the most suitable language for this type of logic puzzle solver?

Submission + - Report: Watch Dogs Game May Have Influence Highway Sign Hacking 1

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Earlier this month, at least three US states reported that a hacker had broken into electronic road signs above major highways, with the hacker leaving messages for people to follow him on Twitter. The Multi-State Information Sharing an Analysis Center (MS-ISAC) produced an intelligence report blaming a Saudi Arabian hacker that the organization says likely got the idea from Watch Dogs, a new video in which game play revolves around ‘hacking,’ with a focus on hacking critical infrastructure-based electronic devices in particular. "Watch Dogs allows players to hack electronic road signs, closed-circuit television cameras (CCTVs), street lights, cell phones and other systems. On May 27, 2014, the malicious actor posted an image of the game on his Twitter feed, demonstrating his interest in the game, and the compromise of road signs occurs during game play. CIS believes it is likely that a small percentage of Watch Dog players will experiment with compromising computers and electronic systems outside of game play, and that this activity will likely affect SSLT [state, local, tribal and territorial] government systems and Department of Transportation (DOT) systems in particular.” Nevermind that, as the report notes, the hacker likely broke in because the signs allowed telnet and were secure with weak or default passwords. The report came out on the same day that The Homeland Security Department cautioned transportation operators about a security hole in some electronic freeway billboards that could let hackers display bogus warnings to drivers.

Submission + - Sacked Google Worker Awarded $150,000 for Unfair Dismissal

Submitted by theodp
theodp writes: When it comes to evaluating employee performance, perhaps Google isn't really that different from Microsoft after all. While Microsoft used stack ranking to kill employee morale, Google turned to bell curves that were "fine-tuned" by management to do their dirty HR work, according to Irish court documents. "Google, like other enlightened corporations," explains Valleywag, "makes its workers routinely rank each other and forces the scores to match a bell curve. The employees who are placed at the wrong end of the bell curve risk termination. That's stressful enough-now imagine your CEO personally meddling." The Irish Times reports former Google manager Rachel Berthold, who just won her suit against the company for unfair dismissal in 2011 and will receive around $150,000 in a court-mandated settlement, told her counsel that she was present when the ranking of a staff member was reduced electronically by Google Chairman Eric Schmidt. "It came from him," she said. "I saw it with my own eyes." She said Mr Schmidt could not have known anything about the employee. So, ask not for whom the fudged bell curve tolls, Googlers, it tolls for thee!

Submission + - Redmond is 'patching' Windows 8 but NOT Windows 7, say security bods (theregister.co.uk)

Submitted by mask.of.sanity
mask.of.sanity writes: Microsoft has left Windows 7 exposed by only applying security upgrades to its newest operating systems. Researchers found the gaps after they scanned 900 Windows libraries using a custom diffing tool and uncovered a variety of security functions that were updated in Windows 8 but not in 7. They said the shortcoming could lead to the discovery of zero day vulnerabilities. The missing safe functions were part of Microsoft's dedicated libraries intsafe.h and strsafe.h that help developers combat various attacks. (Video, slides).

Submission + - Where Have You Gone, Peter Norton? (technologizer.com)

Submitted by harrymcc
harrymcc writes: If you used an PC in the 1980s and 1990s, the chances were very good that you used utility software which came in a box with a picture of Peter Norton on it. The Norton brand still exists, but those packaging photos of Norton himself are long gone--along with the whole classic era of utility software they represented. Over at Technologizer, I paid tribute to this one-time icon of the PC industry.

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