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Apple Seems To Have Forgotten About the Whole 'It Just Works' Thing (zdnet.com) 242

Posted by msmash from the closer-look dept.
Adrian Kingsley-Hughes, writing for ZDNet: "It just works." This is the phrase that Steve Jobs trotted out year after year to describe products or services that he was unveiling. Well, Steve is now long gone, and so it the ethos of "it just works." 2017 was a petty bad year for Apple software quality. Just over the past few weeks we seen both macOS and iOS hit by several high profile bugs. And what's worse is that the fixes that Apple pushed out -- in a rushed manner -- themselves caused problems. A serious -- and very stupid -- root bug was uncovered in macOS. The patch that Apple pushed out for the root bug broke file sharing for some. Updating macOS to 10.13.1 after installing the root patch rolled back the root bug patch. iOS 11 was hit by a date bug that caused devices to crash when an app generated a notification, forcing Apple to prematurely release iOS 11.2. iOS 11.2 contained a HomeKit bug that broke remote access for shared users. And this is just a selection of the bugs that users have had to contend with over the past few weeks. And it's not just been limited to the past few weeks. There's no such thing as perfect code, and sometimes high-profile security vulnerabilities can result in patches being pushed out that are not as well tested as they could be. But on the other hand, Apple isn't some budget hardware maker pushing stuff out on a shoestring and scrabbling for a razor-thin profit margin.
Communications

Belgium Ends 19th-Century Telegram Service (bbc.com) 52

Posted by msmash from the end-of-an-era dept.
Belgium's telegram service is about to stop. From a report: One hundred and seventy-one years after the first electrical message was transmitted down a line running alongside the railway between Brussels and Antwerp the final dispatch will be sent and received on 29 December. The fact that this 19th-Century technology is still up and running in the age of Instagram and Snapchat may seem rather odd -- especially when you consider that the UK, which invented the telegram in the 1830s, abandoned it as long ago as 1982. The United States followed suit in 2006 and even India, which had been by far the world's biggest market for the telegram, finally closed its system down in 2013.

Submission + - Russia-linked Twitter accounts 'tried to divide UK' after terrorist attacks (theguardian.com)

Submitted by AmiMoJo
AmiMoJo writes: Fake social media accounts linked to Russia were used to influence and interfere with public debate in the aftermath of four terrorist attacks in the UK this year, researchers have found. At least 47 Russian Twitter accounts posted material after attacks at Westminster Bridge, Manchester Arena, London Bridge and Finsbury Park. Of the 47 accounts, eight were especially active, posting at least 475 tweets about the four attacks, which were reposted more than 153,000 times. The accounts intervened on both sides of polarised debates to ramp up the level of discord online, the research found.

Submission + - Malware Dev Who Used Spam Botnet to Pay for College Gets No Prison Time (bleepingcomputer.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The operator of a 77,000-strong spam botnet was sentenced to two years probation,no prison time, after admitting his crime and completely reforming his life. The former botnet operator is now works for a cyber-security company, and admitted his actions as soon as the FBI knocked on his door back in 2013.

The botnet operator, a 29-year-old from Santa Clara, California, says he was tricked while a minor by fellow co-conspirators who told him they were not doing anything wrong by infecting computers with malware because they were not accessing private information such as banking or financial records. Furthermore, the botnet operator escaped prison time because he used all the money he earned in getting a college degree at Cal Poly, instead of using it on a lavish lifestyle or drugs. This case is similar to the one that MalwareTech (aka Marcus Hutchins) now faces in the US for his role in developing the Kronos trojan, but also after turning his life around and working as a cyber-security researcher for years.

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Adding manpower to a late software project makes it later. -- F. Brooks, "The Mythical Man-Month"

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