Comment Echochamber Hardening (Score 4, Insightful) 96
Wouldn't this just reinforce the self-created echochambers on Twitter?
Comment Re:Not Coming to a Switch Near You (Score 1) 91
That hackers keep using WebKit exploits is probably the main reason the Switch doesn't have a user-accessible web browser app; the 3DS was also hacked via its YouTube app, which is also why the Switch is probably lacking similar 3rd-party apps -- they want to ensure the app's security first.
If Nintendo could be bothered to ship a WebKit that wasn't 6+ months old it wouldn't be such a security nightmare for them.
Windows 10's Version of AirDrop Lets You Quickly Share Files Between PCs (theverge.com) 108
Microsoft is testing its "Near Share" feature of Windows 10 in the latest Insider build (17035) today, which will let Windows 10 PCs share documents or photos to PCs nearby via Bluetooth. The Verge reports: A new Near Share option will be available in the notification center, and the feature can be accessed through the main share function in Windows 10. Files will be shared wirelessly, and recipients will receive a notification when someone is trying to send a file. Microsoft's addition comes just a day after Google unveiled its own AirDrop-like app for Android.
Comment Mozilla has the right idea with PDF.js (Score 1) 85
This is why instead of embedding a plugin in the browser for PDFs, Mozilla has created PDF.js. It uses HTML5 & JavaScript to render PDFs within the browser's normal sandbox. There's even a Chrome addon.
Comment Re:Idiocy (Score 1) 77
They really should not be done unless there is an actual problem that will actually be solved by the update.
Given that many UEFI updates patch security flaws, it's a good idea to keep up to date. BIOS had its issues, but UEFI offers a much larger attack surface.
Comment Sophos Too (Score 1) 77
Sophos Antivirus's AutoUpdate feature flows over HTTP. This has been a known issue since 2013 and Sophos doesn't care.
Comment Not Hard to Fix (Score 1) 407
As someone who has been deploying Windows 8.1 for a while, it's pretty easy to remove apps you don't want from your system images. You can even do it on a running system:
Get-ProvisionedAppxPackage -Online | where-object {$_.DisplayName -eq "Microsoft.WindowsStore"} | Remove-ProvisionedAppxPackage -Online
Comment Re:Poor Update Process (Score 1) 71
That makes sense. I don't use the Kindle store frequently so I never would have seen it there.
Comment Poor Update Process (Score 2) 71
I received an email encouraging me to update my 2015 Kindle not long ago. I tried to check for updates on the device but found nothing. Two weeks later, Amazon sent me a similar message again. After another update check, I still found nothing. I wasn't able to get the device to upgrade until I manually copied the firmware file to the device.
Will Ad Blockers Kill the Digital Media Industry? 519
HughPickens.com writes: Michael Rosenwald writes at the Columbia Journalism Review that global online ad revenue continues to rise, reaching nearly $180 billion last year. But analysts say the rise of ad blocking threatens the entire industry—the free sites that rely exclusively on ads, as well as the paywalled outlets that rely on ads to compensate for the vast majority of internet users who refuse to pay for news. A new report from Adobe and one of several startups helping publishers fight ad blocking shows that 198 million people globally are now blocking ads, up 41 percent from 2014. In the US, ad blocking grew 48 percent from last year, to 45 million users. "Taken together, ad blockers are hitting publishers in their digital guts," writes Rosenwald. "Adobe says that $21.8 billion in global ad revenue will be blocked this year."
Publishers have been banking on the growth of mobile, where the ad blocking plugins either don't work or are cumbersome to install. A Wells Fargo analyst wrote in a report on ad blocking that "the mobile migration should thwart some of the growth" of ad blockers. But Apple recently revealed that its new operating system scheduled for release this fall will allow ad blocking on Safari. Apple is trying to pull iPhone and iPad users off the web. It wants you to read, watch, search, and listen in its Apple-certified walled gardens known as apps. It makes apps, it approves apps, and it profits from apps. But, for its plan to work, the company will need those entertainers and publishers to funnel their content to where Apple wants it to be. As the company makes strategic moves to devalue the web in favor of apps, those content creators dependent on ads to stay afloat may be forced to play along with Apple. Adblock Plus has released a browser for mobile Android devices that blocks ads, and it's planning to release a similar product for Apple devices. "The desire to figure out how to bring ad blocking to mobile consumers is a worldwide phenomenon," says Roi Carthy Ad blocking, he says, "is an inalienable right."
Publishers have been banking on the growth of mobile, where the ad blocking plugins either don't work or are cumbersome to install. A Wells Fargo analyst wrote in a report on ad blocking that "the mobile migration should thwart some of the growth" of ad blockers. But Apple recently revealed that its new operating system scheduled for release this fall will allow ad blocking on Safari. Apple is trying to pull iPhone and iPad users off the web. It wants you to read, watch, search, and listen in its Apple-certified walled gardens known as apps. It makes apps, it approves apps, and it profits from apps. But, for its plan to work, the company will need those entertainers and publishers to funnel their content to where Apple wants it to be. As the company makes strategic moves to devalue the web in favor of apps, those content creators dependent on ads to stay afloat may be forced to play along with Apple. Adblock Plus has released a browser for mobile Android devices that blocks ads, and it's planning to release a similar product for Apple devices. "The desire to figure out how to bring ad blocking to mobile consumers is a worldwide phenomenon," says Roi Carthy Ad blocking, he says, "is an inalienable right."
Comment Been using Nightly for a while. (Score 3, Interesting) 181
My daily web browser is Nightly. A few days ago when they enabled e10s by default I found out about the change because my browser crashed on startup. The only way I could get it working again was to start Nightly in Safe Mode and disable e10s. Multiprocess in Nightly is varying states of very broken for most addons. For me the key ones are HTTPSEverywhere, Adblock Plus, and Reddit Enhancement Suite. None of these addons are functional with e10s enabled currently.
Comment We have implemented DMARC + DKIM + SPF (Score 1) 139
In my org (a high school) we were having issues with spambots using our organization's address in the From: field for spam campaigns. The turning point for us was when a malware payload came with a From: field of the assistant principal addressed to many of our employees. The mail was not from one of our mail servers, but the From field trick some of our users into opening it. With DMARC + DKIM and a strict policy we have eliminated this problem.
We did have some minor implementation headaches. Our admissions team's spam mailing vendor was non-compliant with DKIM and would not work with us to set up authenticated mail. We resolved our issue with them by making the admissions guys send mail from a more permissive subdomain so that we could implement the strict protections on our primary domain.
All that said, the implementation was not incredibly difficult. We use Google Apps for our mailing, and a SMTP server on-campus to allow our applications to send mail. Google DKIM+DMARC is easy, and there are plenty of guides on implementing DKIM in Postfix. Overall I think the change has been worth it. I'm a little frightened at all of the abuse reports I see now that otherwise would have gone out in our domain's name.
Comment Prime Example of Software Bloat (Score 5, Interesting) 121
- Notepad++: 7.3MB
- Sublime Text: 7.6MB
- BBEdit: 12.5MB
- Atom - 67MB
Comment Re:Last Sentence (Score 5, Informative) 322
This is a close call, but I conclude that Feldman's act of production, which would necessarily require his using a password of some type to decrypt the storage device, would be tantamount to telling the government something it does not already know with "reasonably particularity"
I'm guessing this is the trick. The government doesn't know there is evidence on the storage device. It sounds like they are making the argument that compelling a password for discovery purposes is a violation, but providing one to give them what they know you have is not. At least, that's what it seems like they are saying to me.
Comment Re:Carriers can still detect tethering (Score 1) 107
I get by by running a VPN server at my house and then connecting to that while I'm on the go.
