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Submission + - Gmail introduces TLS icon in mail headers

Submitted by Kohenkatz
Kohenkatz writes: Google has introduced a new feature in Gmail that informs users whether messages have been received or will be sent over an unencrypted channel. From the help center:

Gmail supports encryption in transit using Transport Layer Security (TLS), and will automatically encrypt your incoming and outgoing emails if it can. Some other email services don't support TLS, and therefore messages exchanged with these services will not be TLS encrypted.

In Gmail on your computer, you can check that a message you’ve received was sent over TLS by clicking the small down arrow at the top-left of the email and reading the message details.

If you see a red open padlock icon on a message you’ve received, or on one you're about to send, it means that the message may not be encrypted.

Submission + - FirefoxOS-based Matchstick project ends; all money to be refunded (kickstarter.com)

Submitted by Kohenkatz
Kohenkatz writes: Matchstick, a project built on FirefoxOS that aimed to compete with Google's Chromecast, which was initally funded on Kickstarter, is shutting down and will be refunding all pledges. In a post to Kickstarter backers today, they announced that this decision was due to the difficulty of implementing the DRM components that are necessary for access to a lot of paid content. Rather than drag out the project on an unknown schedule, they have decided to end the project.

Submission + - Google is closing Google Code (blogspot.com)

Submitted by Kohenkatz
Kohenkatz writes: Citing increasing spam and abuse, as well as the rise of Github and Bitbucket, Google has announced the closure of Google Code. Effective today, Google Code is no longer accepting new projects, and it will become read-only in August. After that, tarballs of all project data will be available until June 2016. To help project owners migrate, Google has added an "Export to Github" button to every project.

Comment Re:What I remember (Score 1) 136

by Kohenkatz (#47429185) Attached to: Prof. Andy Tanenbaum Retires From Vrije University

OK. My curiosity got the better of me, so here it is.

First, using his number of 82.5 cubic millimeters for the volume of a Micro SD card, and Wikipedia's 1,134 cubic meters for the cargo volume of an A380 (in freight configuration), I get 13745454545 cards. Using his 20% density reduction, I'll bring that down to 10996363636. 128GB MicroSD cards exist, but they aren't mainstream yet, so let's go with 64GB. The total data capacity of the plane is therefore 610.4 EiB (exbibytes), which Wolfram Alpha helpfully says is about 0.7 times the estimated global IP data traffic per year by 2015, and around 59 times the estimated information content of all human knowledge as of mid-1999.

I looked around to see if I could find anything higher-density than MicroSD, but there isn't really anything. Full-size SD cards are readily available up to 256GB, but they are significantly more than the volume of 4 MicroSD cards. mSATA SSDs are even worse - they are available up to 1 TB, but they are way too big.

Comment What I remember (Score 4, Interesting) 136

by Kohenkatz (#47424655) Attached to: Prof. Andy Tanenbaum Retires From Vrije University

I'm sorry, but the best quote from that book is actually this one:

Never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon full of tapes hurtling down the highway.

In my networks class, we extended the calculation to a 747 full of DVDs (the best we could do at the time). Maybe one of these days, if I have a minute, I'll go back and do an A380 full of flash drives.

Submission + - Lenovo Announces Grand Opening of US Manufacturing Facility (lenovo.com) 1

Submitted by Kohenkatz
Kohenkatz writes: Chinese PC maker Lenovo had a ceremony today to mark the official grand opening of their new manufacturing facility in Whitsett, North Carolina. The 240,000-square-foot facility, located approximately 10 miles east of Greensboro, NC, was already being used as a Logistics Center, Customer Solutions Center, and National Returns Center, and is now also being used for Production. While actual line operations began in January 2013, the facility is on track to reach full operation by the end of June. The facility is equipped to build several types of Think-branded products, including desktops, tablets, and ultrabooks. Note that due to the extensive use of automation, the factory only adds 115 manufacturing jobs at the facility.

Submission + - New Cloud Storage Provider Tresorit Offers 10,000 USD for Cracking Encryption (tresorit.com)

Submitted by Kohenkatz
Kohenkatz writes: One of the major complaints about storing data "in the cloud" is the security of the data if the service provider is compromised. New provider Tresorit hopes to attract customers worried about their data by offering data encryption done only on the client. In order to promote this new service and to test its security, Tresorit is running a series of challenges for people to test the security of the service. The first contest, cracking the client-side encryption, opens on April 15.
Security

Submission + - Last.fm Passwords Possibly Leaked (www.last.fm)

Submitted by Kohenkatz
Kohenkatz writes: I received an email from Last.fm today warning me to change my password. The full text of the message is also at http://www.last.fm/passwordsecurity. It's nice to see a company being proactive about a possible breach.

It would have been nicer if they had given some technical details about their security practices though.

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