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Internet Explorer

Next IE Version Will Feature Web Audio, Media Capture, ES6 Promises, and HTTP/2 173

Posted by timothy from the loyal-opposition dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Microsoft [Wednesday] announced it is developing at least four new features for the next release of Internet Explorer (IE): Web Audio API, Media Capture and Streams, ES6 Promises, and HTTP/2. The company says this is not an exhaustive list of what to expect in the next version, but merely what it is currently confident that it will be able to deliver. For those who don't know, HTTP/2 is a faster protocol for transporting Web content. It is based on Google's SPDY open networking protocol and is currently being standardized by the IETF. Web Audio is a JavaScript API for processing and synthesizing audio in Web applications while Media Capture provides access to the user's local audio and video input/output devices. Promises is meant to help developers write cleaner asynchronous code."

Comment health advice is 30-60 mins exercise per day (Score 2) 329

by SkunkPussy (#46965731) Attached to: Gaining On the US: Most Europeans To Be Overweight By 2030

I have lost 2 stone / 28 lb / 13kgs over the last 18 months after I scrapped my car and started cycling to work (7 miles each way). I have no interest in going to the gym - no time for that - and I'm not particularly bothered about sport. If I had kept my car I would inevitably drive whenever I was going to be late for work, which would be all the time. So what worked for me was to leave myself no option other than to do exercise every day.

Comment implications for computability (Score 1) 426

If consciousness is uncomputable, yet we quite clearly could generate consciousness if we were able to create/duplicate a brain, does this imply then that the brain is doing a higher level of computation? Perhaps the difference between polynomial and exponential, or perhaps something new entirely. If the brain is uncomputable then does this imply that P = NP using an appropriate computer (brain)?
Businesses

Do Free-To-Play Games Get a Fair Shake? 181

Posted by Soulskill from the pay-seven-cents-to-agree-or-disagree dept.
An anonymous reader writes "This article makes the case that most gamers treat 'free-to-play' games with derision and scorn when they really shouldn't. The author refers to it as 'snobbery.' We've all either encountered or heard about a game company using shady business practices to squeeze every cent from their users through in-app purchases (a.k.a. microtransations, a.k.a. cash shops), or a simple pay-to-win format. But these stories don't represent all games — by a long shot. It's something endemic to shady developers and publishers, not the business model. Think about traditionally-sold games, and how often you've seen a trailer that horribly misrepresents gameplay. Or a $60 game that was an unfinished, buggy mess. Or a Kickstarted project that didn't deliver on its promises. The author says, 'When something is new, when it isn't aimed at you, when it is created by strange people in strange places, when it breaks established norms and when it is becoming hugely popular... it's scary for the establishment. The ethical critique is an easy way to fight these changes, a call to protect the children or protect the irrational people who obviously can't like these games on their own merits. We begin to sound as reactionary as the ban on pinball or the fears over jazz music corrupting the minds of our youth.'"
Australia

UAV Operator Blames Hacking For Malfunction That Injured Triathlete 178

Posted by timothy from the convenient-line dept.
jaa101 (627731) writes "The owner of a drone which fell and reportedly hit an athlete competing in a triathlon in Western Australia's Mid West has said he believes the device was 'hacked' into." From the article: "Mr Abrams said an initial investigation had indicted that someone nearby "channel hopped" the device, taking control away from the operator. ... Mr Abrams said it was a deliberate act and it would be difficult to determine who was responsible as something as common as a mobile phone could be used to perform a channel hop. The videographer added that there had been a similar incident when the drone was flown earlier in the day."
Businesses

Facebook Buying Oculus VR For $2 Billion 535

Posted by Soulskill from the what-on-earth dept.
Several readers sent word that Facebook will acquire Oculus VR for $2 billion. Mark Zuckerberg says the Oculus Rift virtual reality headset is the beginning of something big: "This is really a new communication platform. By feeling truly present, you can share unbounded spaces and experiences with the people in your life. Imagine sharing not just moments with your friends online, but entire experiences and adventures." The obvious question is: why Facebook would buy a company focused on VR gaming? The Oculus team says, "But when you consider it more carefully, we're culturally aligned with a focus on innovating and hiring the best and brightest; we believe communication drives new platforms; we want to contribute to a more open, connected world; and we both see virtual reality as the next step. ... It opens doors to new opportunities and partnerships, reduces risk on the manufacturing and work capital side, allows us to publish more made-for-VR content, and lets us focus on what we do best: solving hard engineering challenges and delivering the future of VR." Put more simply: money and connections.
Android

One Billion Android Devices Open To Privilege Escalation 117

Posted by timothy from the that's-beeeeeellion dept.
msm1267 (2804139) writes "The first deep look into the security of the Android patch installation process, specifically its Package Management Service (PMS), has revealed a weakness that puts potentially every Android device at risk for privilege escalation attacks. Researchers from Indiana University and Microsoft published a paper that describes a new set of Android vulnerabilities they call Pileup flaws, and also introduces a new scanner called SecUP that detects malicious apps already on a device lying in wait for elevated privileges. The vulnerability occurs in the way PMS handles updates to the myriad flavors of Android in circulation today. The researchers say PMS improperly vets apps on lower versions of Android that request OS or app privileges that may not exist on the older Android version, but are granted automatically once the system is updated.

The researchers said they found a half-dozen different Pileup flaws within Android's Package Management Service, and confirmed those vulnerabilities are present in all Android Open Source Project versions and more than 3,500 customized versions of Android developed by handset makers and carriers; more than one billion Android devices are likely impacted, they said." Handily enough, the original paper is not paywalled.
Open Source

Neovim: Rebuilding Vim For the 21st Century 248

Posted by timothy from the vigor-next-to-be-upgraded dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Neovim is a major overhaul of the vim editor to provide better scripting, cleaner support for plugins and integration with modern graphical interfaces. Modernising the large and complex codebase of Vim is a formidable task, but the developer has a clear plan, and has already begun work. There's a Bountysource fundraiser running to support the effort. If Vim is your editor of choice, check it out." (The crowd-funding effort has only one more day to go, but has well exceeded already the initial goal of $10,000.)

Comment Re:wrong (Score 1) 241

by SkunkPussy (#46481381) Attached to: Ubuntu's Mir Gets Delayed Again

> People moved in hordes to RDP as a protocol because X sucks so bad on a LAN

That doesn't add up - VNC has been around since forever so people would have moved to that for the same reasons that they might move to RDP. (RDP is a bit better than VNC but that's not really relevant).

My experience of X on a lan is quite good - I use remote gvim all the time. X over the internet isn't so good. I have occasionally ran remote gvim sessions over the internet in the past but forgoing a GUI and running vim over SSH is preferable in that case.

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