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Submission + - Tim Cook: Coding Languages Were 'Too Geeky' for Students Until We Invented Swift

Submitted by theodp
theodp writes: Speaking to a class of Grade 7 students taking coding lessons at the Apple Store in Eaton Centre, the Toronto Star reports that Apple CEO Tim Cook told the kids that most students would shun programming because coding languages were 'too geeky' until Apple introduced Swift. "Swift came out of the fundamental recognition that coding languages were too geeky. Most students would look at them and say, 'that’s not for me,'" Cook said as the preteens participated in an Apple-designed 'Everyone Can Code' workshop. "That’s not our view. Our view is that coding is a horizontal skill like your native languages or mathematics, so we wanted to design a programming language that is as easy to learn as our products are to use."

Submission + - Ursula K Leguin, 88 (nytimes.com)

Submitted by sandbagger
sandbagger writes: Ursula K. Le Guin, the immensely popular author who brought literary depth and a tough-minded feminist sensibility to science fiction and fantasy with books like “The Left Hand of Darkness” and the Earthsea series, died on Monday at her home in Portland, Ore. She was 88.

Submission + - Zeus Still Alive and Well With New Variant Floki Bot

Submitted by Trailrunner7
Trailrunner7 writes: Malware gangs, like sad wedding bands bands, love to play the hits. And one of the hits they keep running back over and over is the Zeus banking Trojan, which has been in use for many years in a number of different forms. Researchers have unearthed a new piece of malware called Floki Bot that is based on the venerable Zeus source code and is being used to infect point-of-sale systems, among other targets.

Flashpoint conducted the analysis of Floki Bot with Cisco’s Talos research team, and the two organizations said that the author behind the bot maintains a presence on a number of different underground forums, some of which are in Russian or other non-native languages for him. Kremez said that attackers sometimes will participate in foreign language forums as a way to expand their knowledge.

Along with its PoS infection capability, Floki Bot also has a feature that allows it to use the Tor network to communicate.

Submission + - Inside The NYPD's Attempt To Build Community Trust Through Twitter (backchannel.com)

Submitted by mirandakatz
mirandakatz writes: When the NYPD rolled out its Twitter presence a couple years back, it didn't go so smoothly: the @NYPDNews account tweeted a request: “Do you have a photo with a member of the NYPD? Tweet us & tag it #myNYPD,” and by midnight the same day, more than 70,000 people had responded decrying police brutality. At Backchannel, Susan Crawford looks at the department's attempt to use Twitter to rebuild community trust, noting that while the NYPD has a long ways to go, any opening up of communication is an improvement on the traditionally tight-lipped culture.

Submission + - 5-Year-Old Critical Linux Vulnerability Patched (threatpost.com)

Submitted by msm1267
msm1267 writes: A critical, local code-execution vulnerability in the Linux kernel was patched more than a week ago, continuing a run a serious security issues in the operating system, most of which have been hiding in the code for years.

Details on the vulnerability were published Tuesday by researcher Philip Pettersson, who said the vulnerable code was introduced in August 2011. A patch was pushed to the mainline Linux kernel Dec. 2, four days after it was privately disclosed. Pettersson has developed a proof-of-concept exploit specifically for Ubuntu distributions, but told Threatpost his attack could be ported to other distros with some changes.

The vulnerability is a race condition that was discovered in the af_packet implementation in the Linux kernel, and Pettersson said that a local attacker could exploit the bug to gain kernel code execution from unprivileged processes. He said the bug cannot be exploited remotely.

Submission + - Windows 10 Is Coming To Qualcomm's Snapdragon Mobile Chips (anandtech.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Today at Microsoft’s WinHEC event in Shenzhen, China, the company announced that it’s working with Qualcomm to bring the full Windows 10 experience to future devices powered by Snapdragon processors. These new Snapdragon-powered devices should support all things Microsoft, including Microsoft Office, Windows Hello, Windows Pen, and the Edge browser, alongside third-party Universal Windows Platform (UWP) apps and, most interestingly, x86 (32-bit) Win32 apps. They should even be able to play Crysis 2. This announcement fits nicely with Microsoft’s “Windows Everywhere” doctrine and should come as no surprise. It’s not even the first time we’ve seen Windows running on ARM processors. Microsoft’s failed Windows RT operating system was a modified version of Windows 8 that targeted the ARMv7-A 32-bit architecture. It grew from Microsoft’s MinWin effort to make Windows more modular by reorganizing the operating system and cleaning up API dependencies. The major change with today's announcement over Windows RT and UWP is that x86 apps will be able to run on Qualcomm's ARM-based SoCs, along with support for all of the peripherals that are already supported with Windows 10. This alone is a huge change from Windows RT, which would only work with a small subset of peripherals. Microsoft is also focusing on having these devices always connected through cellular, which is something that is not available for many PCs at the moment. Support will be available for eSIM to avoid having to find room in a cramped design to accommodate a physical SIM, and Microsoft is going so far as to call these "cellular PCs" meaning they are expecting broad support for this class of computer, rather than the handful available now with cellular connectivity. The ability to run x86 Win32 apps on ARM will come through emulation, and to demonstrate the performance Microsoft has released a video of an ARM PC running Photoshop.

Submission + - Cesarean births *possibly* affecting human evolution 1

Submitted by CanadianRealist
CanadianRealist writes: Larger babies delivered by cesarean section may be affecting human evolution. Researchers estimate cases where the baby cannot fit down the birth canal have increased from 30 in 1,000 in the 1960s to 36 in 1,000 births today. (Science Alert and ( BBC "this is happening headline" version.)

More detailed studies would be required to actually confirm the link between C-sections and evolution, as all we have now is a hypothesis based on the birth data.

Agreed, more studies required part. Cesareans may simply be becoming more common with “too large” defined as cesarean seems like a better idea. It's reasonable to pose the question based simply on an understanding of evolution. Like it's reasonable to conjecture that length of human pregnancy is a compromise between further development in utero, and chance of mother and baby surviving the delivery.

Submission + - Bluetooth 5 is here (betanews.com) 1

Submitted by BrianFagioli
BrianFagioli writes: Today, the Bluetooth Special Interest Group announces the official adoption of the previously-announced Bluetooth 5. In other words, it is officially the next major version of the technology, which will eventually be found in many consumer devices.

So, will you start to see Bluetooth 5 devices and dongles with faster speeds and longer range in stores tomorrow? Nope — sorry, folks. Consumers will have to wait until 2017. The Bluetooth SIG says devices should become available between February and June next year.

Comment Not just Sony (Score 3, Informative) 55

by product_bucket (#53441189) Attached to: Backdoor Accounts Found in 80 Sony IP Security Camera Models

Lots of the big name security brands are running the same basic NetSurveillance WEB firmware underneath their skinned interface. I'm thinking particularly of the brand that makes flight data recorders... and cordless doorbells. I wonder if people would pay serious money for a IPTV network if they knew it's just a re-badged Mirai host.

How do I know? They hit me 24/7, I'll be worried about the connectivity of the internet if they ever stop.

Submission + - Inside Peter Thiel's Genius Factory (backchannel.com)

Submitted by mirandakatz
mirandakatz writes: The Thiel Fellowship was created to prove a college degree doesn’t matter. But what began as an attempt to draw teen prodigies to the Valley before they racked up debt at Princeton or Harvard and went into consulting to pay it off has transformed into the most prestigious network for young entrepreneurs in existence—a pedigree that virtually guarantees your ideas will be judged good, investors will take your call, and there will always be another job ahead even better than the one you have. At Backchannel, Jessi Hempel has the definitive look at what the Trump-loving VC's genius factory means in the Valley in 2016.

Submission + - The UK's Investigatory Powers Act allows the State to tell lies in court (theregister.co.uk)

Submitted by Jigsy
Jigsy writes: Blighty's freshly passed Investigatory Powers Act, better known as the Snoopers' Charter, is a dog's dinner of a law. It gives virtually unrestricted powers not only to State spy organisations but also to the police and a host of other government agencies.

The operation of the oversight and accountability mechanisms in the IPA are all kept firmly out of sight – and, so its authors hope, out of mind – of the public. It is up to the State to volunteer the truth to its victims if the State thinks it has abused its secret powers. "Marking your own homework" is a phrase which does not fully capture this.

However, despite the establishment of a parallel system of secret justice, the IPA's tentacles also enshrine parallel construction into law. That is, the practice where prosecutors lie about the origins of evidence to judges and juries – thereby depriving the defendant of a fair trial because he cannot review or question the truth of the evidence against him.

Section 56 of the act as passed sets out a number of matters that are now prohibited from being brought up in court.

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