Catch up on stories from the past week (and beyond) at the Slashdot story archive

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
×

Comment Re:Diabetic warning - diet change (theory...) (Score 1) 214

by swv3752 (#48706823) Attached to: New Year's Resolution for 2015

Go Low carb.

I had high blood glucose/prediabetes. Started Atkins (or as it is now known Atkins20) three months ago. Within a couple of days my Blood Glucose levels were in a normal range. (Still a bit high for a ketosis diet but normal.) My triglycerides and LDL levels dropped down to normal ranges, after three months. My HDL levels still need to go up, but working on those. I also dropped 4 inches off my waistline and 40 pounds. I feel like I have more energy and feel better in general.

Exercise probably also plays a part as I try to get in a couple of 10k step walks a week or ride the stationary bike for half an hour. I also do resistance lifting. They are latex surgical tubes with handles, and work pretty well. Woot has a couple of kits on sale if anyone is interested.

Comment Vandalism unnecessary. (Score 1) 87

Maybe I'm just showing my age (OK, downhill side of 50), but it seems to me that just about any whitegoods type of appliance these days is made to such shoddy standards, it would be pretty much impossible to attribute failure to vandalism on anyone's part.

A dishwasher or washing machine from just about any reputable manufacturer used to last 20+ years. Nowadays we can count ourselves lucky if they work for 5 years. So much for advances in technology. :(

Submission + - Serious flaws in NTP (the application, not the protocol) need to be patched 3

Submitted by hawkinspeter
hawkinspeter writes: A new set of vulnerabilities with the most common NTP daemon have been discovered by Google security researchers. There exist public exploits that target these flaws, so it's recommended to patch to version 4.2.8 (or switch to openntp which doesn't have the same issues) immediately. This is especially problematic for those systems that run ntpd with root privileges as a single carefully crafted packet can allow access at the privilege level of the process. This was reported by ZDNet a few days ago and I have yet to see the Ubuntu patches for this, but it looks like Red Hat are on top of things.
Security

Hackers Used Nasty "SMB Worm" Attack Toolkit Against Sony 177

Posted by timothy from the forewarned-is-forearmed dept.
wiredmikey writes Just hours after the FBI and President Obama called out North Korea as being responsible for the destructive cyber attack against Sony Pictures, US-CERT issued an alert describing the primary malware used by the attackers, along with indicators of compromise. While not mentioning Sony by name in its advisory, instead referring to the victim as a "major entertainment company," US-CERT said that the attackers used a Server Message Block (SMB) Worm Tool to conduct the attacks. According to the advisory, the SMB Worm Tool is equipped with five components, including a Listening Implant, Lightweight Backdoor, Proxy Tool, Destructive Hard Drive Tool, and Destructive Target Cleaning Tool. US-CERT also provided a list of the Indicators of Compromise (IOCs), which include C2 IP addresses, Snort signatures for the various components, host based Indicators, potential YARA signatures to detect malware binaries on host machines, and recommended security practices and tactical mitigations.

Comment Android Wear Uses (Score 1) 232

by swv3752 (#48629297) Attached to: Ask Slashdot: What Can I Really Do With a Smart Watch?

I have an Asus ZenWatch. Below should be able to be done on any Android Wear device. In no particular order I use it for the following:

Check New Email
Check SMS
Check Caller ID
Check Weather
Check Calendar and Agenda
Check Google Now Cards (includes traffic card for my route home)
Check Other phone notifications
Dictate Notes
Check steps walked
Check Heart rate
Set Reminders
and Check the Time

Some Android Watches have a speaker in addition to the microphone so you answer and talk through your watch for phone calls. My watch can store music on the watch itself and play back through a paired BT headphones without my phone present. One could play games, but I do not see any point.
I am down to about 40% by Midnight most days. I do not see much issue with recharging it every day as I take it off every night and sticking in the charging cradle just means it is easy to find in the morning.

Android wear becomes really useful over other options if you enable Google Now. The latest generation of Android Wear watches actually look like a watch (Moto360, LG G Watch R, Asus ZenWatch). If those things do not matter, then get a Pebble or one of the high end Fitbits like a Charge or Surge, or a Nevo Watch ( http://igg.me/at/nevo/x/813785... ). The Nevo is a real watch, with basically a Fitbit Flex built in, and add in colored led notification lights. You will not be able to read an SMS or email on your Nevo, but you can tell the difference when your watch vibrates from a new notification.
Google

Spanish Media Group Wants Gov't Help To Keep Google News In Spain 191

Posted by timothy from the what's-english-for-bully? dept.
English-language site The Spain Report reports that Google's response to mandated payments for linking to and excerpting from Spanish news media sources — namely, shutting down Google News in Spain — doesn't sit well with Spanish Newspaper Publishers' Association, which issued a statement [Thursday] night saying that Google News was "not just the closure of another service given its dominant market position," recognising that Google's decision "will undoubtedly have a negative impact on citizens and Spanish businesses. Given the dominant position of Google (which in Spain controls almost all of the searches in the market and is an authentic gateway to the Internet), AEDE requires the intervention of Spanish and community authorities, and competition authorities, to effectively protect the rights of citizens and companies." Irene Lanzaco, a spokeswoman for AEDE, told The Spain Report by telephone that "we're not asking Google to take a step backwards, we've always been open to negotiations with Google" but, she said: "Google has not taken a neutral stance. Of course they are free to close their business, but one thing is the closure of Google News and quite another the positioning in the general index." Asked if the newspaper publishers' association had received any complaints from its members since Wednesday's announcement by Google, Mrs. Lanzaco refused to specify, but said: "Spanish publishers talk to AEDE constantly."
Canada

Canada Waives Own Rules, Helps Microsoft Avoid US Visa Problems 122

Posted by timothy from the alle-menschen-sind-auslaender-fast-ueberall dept.
Freshly Exhumed writes Citizenship and Immigration Canada has granted an unprecedented exemption to Microsoft that will allow the company to bring in an unspecified number of temporary foreign workers as trainees without first looking for Canadians to fill the jobs. No other company in any other field has been granted such an exemption, and it does not fall within any of the other categories where exemptions are normally given, according to a source familiar with process, effectively creating a new category: the Microsoft Exemption. Microsoft Canada did not immediately respond to questions about the deal, but in an interview earlier this year with Bloomberg Businessweek, Karen Jones, Microsoft's deputy general counsel, said the deal will allow Microsoft to bypass stricter U.S. rules on visas for foreign workers. The entire issue of temporary foreign workers has been as blisteringly hot a topic across Canada as it has been in the USA.

Submission + - Richard III's remains found under parking lot (nationalgeographic.com) 3

Submitted by kammermusik
kammermusik writes: A skeleton excavated from a parking lot in Leicester, England,was DNA-tested with a curious result:

The team of genetics detectives reports that DNA from the skeleton shows that the bones were Richard III's, with a likelihood of 99.9994 percent. This is the first genetic identification of a particular individual so long after death—527 years.

Submission + - A Unique World-Wide Collaboration Around an Open Source Offline Password Keeper (indiegogo.com)

Submitted by swv3752
swv3752 writes: Introducing the Mooltipass, a physical encrypted password keeper that remembers your credentials so you don't have to. With this device, you can generate and safely store long and complex passwords unique to each website you use. A personal PIN-locked smartcard allows the decryption of your credentials and ensures that only you have access to them. Simply visit a website and the device will ask for your confirmation to enter your credentials when login is required.

Over thirty people from all around the globe contributed to bring this project to where it is now, including software and firmware engineers, designers, mechanical engineers, artists, project managers, students and security engineers. Our project started a year ago with a call for feedback and contributors. It turned out that people were thrilled by the idea of an open source password keeper and didn't hesitate to commit some (if not all!) of their personal time to join this adventure. Now there is three days left to finish funding.
Programming

Microsoft To Open Source .NET and Take It Cross-Platform 525

Posted by Soulskill from the april-fools-headlines-from-10-years-ago dept.
An anonymous reader writes: Microsoft today announced plans to open source .NET, the company's software framework that primarily runs on Windows, and release it on GitHub. Furthermore, Microsoft also unveiled plans to take .NET cross-platform by targeting both Mac OS X and Linux. In the next release, Microsoft plans to open source the entire .NET server stack, from ASP.NET 5 down to the Common Language Runtime and Base Class Libraries. The company will let developers build .NET cloud applications on multiple platforms; it is promising future support of the .NET Core server runtime and framework for Mac and Linux. Microsoft is also making Visual Studio free for small teams.
Science

Why Scientists Think Completely Unclassifiable and Undiscovered Life Forms Exist 221

Posted by Soulskill from the it's-life-jim-but-not-as-we-know dept.
An anonymous reader writes: In a new paper published in Science, researchers at the Department of Energy's Joint Genome Institute note that "there are reasons to believe that current approaches [to discovering life] may indeed miss taxa, particularly if they are very different from those that have so far been characterized." They believe life forms exist that don't fall into the established eukaryota, archaea, or bacteria kingdoms. They argue that there may be life out there that doesn't use the four DNA and RNA bases that we're used to; there may be life out there that has evolved completely separately from everything that we have ever known to exist; there may be life that lives in places we haven't even looked.

Slashdot Top Deals

"If it ain't broke, don't fix it." - Bert Lantz

Close