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Submission + - Microsoft Prepares for Mega Patch Tuesday

jones_supa writes: The dentist is in the house. Next week will see Microsoft's biggest Patch Tuesday in years, with 16 bulletins scheduled including 5 critical updates. The previous record of 17 patches is from 2011. All of the upcoming patches fix serious security problems under topics of remote code execution, elevation of privilege, security feature bypass, information disclosure, and denial of service. The affected products are Windows, Internet Explorer, .NET, Office and Exchange. Karl Sigler, threat intelligence manager at Trustwave, explained that one of the critical bulletins may also address the Windows OLE remote code execution flaw.
Image

Discovery Claims It Will Show a Man Being "Eaten Alive" By an Anaconda 164

An anonymous reader writes Have you ever wished that you could watch a man be eaten alive by an anaconda from the comfort of your own home? The Discovery Channel is betting that the answer is yes with their upcoming special, Eaten Alive. The channel says wildlife filmmaker Paul Rosolie will don a custom-built snake-proof suit, and go inside a live anaconda. They've even released a teaser. It's unclear what scientific conundrum will be solved in the process of feeding Paul to the snake, or how he plans to get out.
Space

Evidence of Protoplanet Found On Moon 105

mrspoonsi (2955715) writes 'Researchers have found evidence of the world that crashed into the Earth billions of years ago to form the Moon. Analysis of lunar rock brought back by Apollo astronauts shows traces of the "planet" called Theia. The researchers claim that their discovery confirms the theory that the Moon was created by just such a cataclysmic collision. The accepted theory since the 1980s is that the Moon arose as a result of a collision between the Earth and Theia 4.5bn years ago. It is the simplest explanation, and fits in well with computer simulations. The main drawback with the theory is that no one had found any evidence of Theia in lunar rock samples. Earlier analyses had shown Moon rock to have originated entirely from the Earth whereas computer simulations had shown that the Moon ought to have been mostly derived from Theia. Now a more refined analysis of Moon rock has found evidence of material thought to have an alien origin.'
Space

The Andromeda Galaxy Just Had a Bright Gamma Ray Event 129

First time accepted submitter SpaceMika (867804) writes "We just saw something bright in the Andromeda Galaxy, and we don't know what it was. A Gamma Ray Burst or an Ultraluminous X-Ray Object, either way it will be the closest of its type we've ever observed at just over 2 million light years away. It's the perfect distance: close enough to observe in unprecedented detail, and far enough to not kill us all."

Submission + - Survey Finds Nearly 50% in US Believe in Medical Conspiracy Theories (nydailynews.com) 1

cold fjord writes: NY Daily News reports, "About half of American adults believe in at least one medical conspiracy theory, according to new survey results. (paywalled, first page viewable) Some conspiracy theories have much more traction than others ... three times as many people believe U.S. regulators prevent people from getting natural cures as believe that a U.S. spy agency infected a large number of African Americans with the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV). J. Eric Oliver, the study's lead author from University of Chicago, said people may believe in conspiracy theories because they're easier to understand than complex medical information. ... Some 49 percent of the survey participants agreed with at least one of the conspiracies. In fact, in addition to the 37 percent of respondents who fully agreed that U.S. regulators are suppressing access to natural cures, less than a third were willing to say they actively disagreed with the theory." — One of the conspiracy theories, that the US created the AIDs virus, was created for an active disinformation campaign by the Soviet Union against the US as a form of political warfare during the Cold War, and still gets repeated.

Submission + - Steve Jobs sobbed in the wake of Antennagate (tuaw.com)

An anonymous reader writes: In a recently discovered video on 99u, former Apple VP of Marketing Communications Allison Johnson details what it was like working in Apple's marketing department under the always watchful eye of Steve Jobs.

During a Q&A portion of the interview, Johnson relayed two interesting stories about Jobs which serve to demonstrate how passionate he was about the arts and Apple itself.

In one story, Johnson recalls how emotional Jobs became in the wake of the Antennagate saga, even sobbing in front of Apple's leadership, product, and marketing teams. "This is not the company I want to be", Jobs exclaimed.

Submission + - Cloak 'anti-social' app helps you avoid your friends

MightyMait writes: Not feeling particularly social today? Wishing to avoid running into an ex or an overly-friendly acquaintance? There's an app for that

Cloak uses public location data from other social networks, Foursquare and Instagram, to determine the locations of others you know. Users can choose to receive an alert when certain people are believed to be nearby. It is the latest in the recent trend of "anti-social", or secretive, apps.

Submission + - Your Car Will Soon Sense If You're Tired Or Not Paying Attention

cartechboy writes: Distracted driving is a large issue, and it's getting worse as we become more entangled with our technology. To help combat this growing problem Volvo is showing off new technology that allows the car to sense when a driver is tired or not paying attention. The system bathes the driver in infrared light that can pick up the driver's position and eye movements. If the driver becomes inattentive or begins to drift off to sleep, it will alert you. Besides the safety aspect of this system, it will also be able to recognize the person sitting behind the wheel, allowing the car to tailor itself to that person's stored preferences. Further, it will be able to adjust the vehicle's exterior lighting in the direction the driver is looking based on the detected eye movement. Volvo's quick to note the system can't photograph the driver. People, the future is coming, and your vehicle is going to be watching you.

Submission + - Microsoft considering acquiring mobile app development startup Xamarin (crn.com)

An anonymous reader writes: Microsoft is considering a major investment or outright acquisition of Xamarin, the mobile app dev startup led by Mono collaborators Nat Friedman and Miguel de Icaza. Sources tell CRN the move could be announced at Build next month and would show Microsoft developers things will be different under Satya Nadella than they were under Ballmer.

Submission + - OpenSUSE 13.2 To Use Btrfs By Default

An anonymous reader writes: OpenSUSE has shared features coming to their 13.2 release in November. The big feature is using Btrfs by default instead of EXT4. OpenSUSE is committed to Btrfs and surprisingly they are the first to use it by default of major Linux distributions, but then again they were also big ReiserFS fans. Other planned OpenSUSE 13.2 features are Wayland 1.4, KDE Frameworks 5, and a new Qt5 front-end to YaST.
NASA

NASA Wants To Go To Europa 216

MightyMartian writes "'NASA and the White House are asking Congress to bankroll a new intrastellar road trip to a destination that's sort of like the extraterrestrial Atlantis of our solar system — Jupiter's intriguing moon, Europa.' Since Europa seems one of the most likely worlds in the Solar System other than Earth where we have some hope of finding extant life, let's hope Congress gives the green light to this project."
The Courts

Hyperlinking Is Not Copyright Infringement, EU Court Rules 97

Freshly Exhumed writes "Does publishing a hyperlink to freely available content amount to an illegal communication to the public and therefore a breach of creator's copyrights under European law? After examining a case referred to it by Sweden's Court of Appeal, the Court of Justice of the European Union has ruled today that no, it does not. The Court found that 'In the circumstances of this case, it must be observed that making available the works concerned by means of a clickable link, such as that in the main proceedings, does not lead to the works in question being communicated to a new public.'" Reader Bart Smit points to the court's ruling.
Transportation

Laser Headlights Promise More Intense, Controllable Beams 376

cartechboy writes "Soon, your new car's headlights will be powered by lasers. The 2015 BMW i8 is entering production, and it's the first vehicle to offer laser headlights. These new beams offer a handful of advantages over LED lighting, including greater lighting intensity and extending the beams' reach as far as 600 meters down the road (nearly double the range of LEDs). The beam pattern also can be controlled very precisely. Plus, laser lights consumer about 30 percent less energy than the already-efficient LED lights. Audi is among the short list of other auto manufacturers to promise laser lights in the near future. But the coolest part of all this? When you turn on a set of these new headlights, you'll be able to scream, 'fire the lasers!'"
Verizon

Is Verizon Already Slowing Netflix Down? 298

hondo77 points out a blog post by Dave Raphael, who noticed some odd discrepancies between two different Verizon broadband connections he has access to. His personal residential plan and his company's business plan both went through the same Verizon routers, but his residential plan is getting unusably slow speeds to places like AWS. He suggests that Verizon is already waging a war on high-bandwidth services like Netflix after the recent court decision against net neutrality. His discussion with a Verizon service representative seems to confirm this, though it's uncertain whether such an employee would have access to that information.

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