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Submission + - Microsoft Prepares for Mega Patch Tuesday

Submitted by jones_supa
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.

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

Submitted by cold fjord
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)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
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

Submitted by MightyMait
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

Submitted by cartechboy
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)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
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

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
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.

Comment Re:IE11 is getting good! (Score 1) 111

by bwintx (#43346857) Attached to: IE11 To Support WebGL

Yeah and how many Apple users are running on anything but the latest OSX version? pretty much none, the numbers are so low as to be meaningless.

Wish that were true, but businesses who've slashed IT spending as a reacton to the tough economy of recent years are keeping their people stuck with old PCs using WinXP and/or, where applicable, old Macs using OS X 10.5 (Leopard). In my case, it's both -- i.e., old PC with WinXP and old Mac with OS X 10.5.
Medicine

Submission + - New Glasses Help Colorblind To See Normally (singularityhub.com)

Submitted by
kkleiner
kkleiner writes: "With a new pair of stylish shades, people with colorblindness are beginning to see the world just as the rest of us do. The corrective glasses were actually created as tools to detect blood oxygenation and flow beneath the surface of the skin. But then colorblind people started trying them on, and they began to see the world in a whole new way. The glasses were created by 2AI Labs, a company co-founded by evolutionary biologist Mark Changizi when he left Rensselaer Polytechnical Institute in New York"
China

Submission + - Web Site For The National Journal Found Serving Malware (securityledger.com)

Submitted by
chicksdaddy
chicksdaddy writes: "Another day, another watering hole attack on the Beltway intelligentsia. This time its the web page of The National Journal, a magazine that caters to the politicians and policy makers inside Washington D.C. According to a blog post by Anup Ghosh at the security firm Invincea, The National Journal’s Web site was serving up attacks to visitors of the site on Tuesday. The discovery was surprising, as the magazine acknowledged an earlier compromise on February 28th and said that it had since secured its site.
According to a blog post by Anup Ghosh at the security firm Invincea, The National Journal’s Web site was serving up attacks to visitors of the site on Tuesday. The discovery was surprising, as the magazine acknowledged an earlier compromise on February 28th and said that it had since secured its site.

Invincea’s analysis showed that the site had been compromised and an iFrame based redirect to a web site that hosted the Fiesta/NeoSploit exploit pack was discovered. That kit attacked visitors with exploits for two, known Java vulnerabilities: CVE-2012-0507 and CVE-2012-1723. For visitors with more recent versions of Java that protect against exploits of those holes, a separate redirect was included to an exploit kit that used Java object serialization to break the security controls of Java 7, Update 11, Ghosh wrote. He said the attack is similar to other recent watering hole attacks, including a January incident in which hackers compromised the web site of The Council on Foreign Relations. The Security Ledger has the whole story."

Submission + - Robocaller to pay $15 million to consumers.

Submitted by TCPALaw
TCPALaw writes: A federal lawsuit over robocalls made by the home security company ADT is resulting in payments to people nationwide who received these calls. ADT has to pay $15 million, which will go to consumers who file a claim form online, with each class member getting $500 (depending on how many people make claims). So if you ever got a robocall pitching a home security system, fill out the claim form at RobocallSettlement.com and get a check. This is a substantially better result for consumers than some other robocall settlements. The case is Desai v. ADT Security Services, Inc., No. 1:11-cv-1925 (N.D. Ill.) and the entire settlement document is here. Of couse, you might do better on your own.
Android

Submission + - Intel Android code allows dual boot with Windows 8 (pcpro.co.uk)

Submitted by
nk497
nk497 writes: "Intel has released developer code for Android 4.2.2 Jelly Bean that's optimised for Intel hardware, including changes that will allow devices to dual boot with Windows 8. The switch from legacy BIOS – which is no longer supported – to UEFI boot makes it possible for machines to run both Android and Windows 8 on Intel-powered devices, from desktops to tablets and smartphones. "This is a developer preview release of pre-alpha quality," Intel said. "It is buggy and not highly optimised — you have been warned.""

Submission + - Dell pays Red Hat, SUSE Linux, and Canonical? (theregister.co.uk)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: If Dell wasn't so distracted with taking itself private, it might think about buying Canonical and having its own Linux business instead of giving all the software support money to Red Hat, SUSE Linux, and Canonical. The wonder is why Dell didn't do this a long time ago, really.
Apple

Submission + - Apple board members look at new products 6-18 months before release (networkworld.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: While speaking at Stanfords' Graduate School of Business yesterday, Apple board member Art Levinson spoke about his role as a board member and life at Apple post Steve Jobs.

It's been about 16 months since Jobs passed away, but the presence of Jobs is still felt at Apple, Levinson explained.

Of particular interest were Levinson's comments about Apple's creative process. While board members don't really have much input when it comes to creating a new product, they are presented with new products approximately 6 to 18 months prior to launch. What's more, if board members are presented with a product early on in the development process, and assuming that their background or expertise comes to bear, their opinions may very well be taken into account.

"The board is not there to define product specs," Levinson added. "It's there as a sounding board. It's there as a resource. And ultimately, the board is there to hire and fire the CEO."

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