An anonymous reader write: Russian government bodies have been hit by a “professional” cyber attack, according to the country’s intelligence service, which said the attack targeted state organizations and defense companies, as well as Russia’s “critically important infrastructures”. The agency told the BBC that the powerful malware “allowed those responsible to switch on cameras and microphones within the computer, take screenshots and track what was being typed by monitoring keyboard strokes.” ABC News reports that the NSA “is likely ‘hacking back’ Russia’s government-linked cyber-espionage teams “to see once and for all if they’re responsible for the massive breach at the Democratic National Committee, according to three former senior intelligence officials… Robert Joyce, chief of the NSA’s shadowy Tailored Access Operations, declined to comment on the DNC hack specifically, but said in general that the NSA has technical capabilities and legal authorities that allow the agency to ‘hack back’ suspected hacking groups, infiltrating their systems to gather intelligence about their operations in the wake of a cyber attack… In some past unrelated cases…NSA hackers have been able to watch from the inside as malicious actors conduct their operations in real time.”

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Source: Slashdot – Russian Government Gets ‘Hacked Back’, Attacks Possibly Launched By The NSA

GIMP 2.9.4 was released earlier this month, featuring “symmetry painting” and the ability to remove holes when selecting a region, as well as improvements to many of its other graphics-editing tools. But today core developer Jehan Pages discussed the vision for GIMP’s future, writing that the Generic Graphics (GEGL) programming library “is a hell of a cool project and I think it could be the future of Free and Open Source image processing”:
I want to imagine a future where most big graphics programs integrate GEGL, where Blender for instance would have GEGL as the new implementation of nodes, with image processing graphs which can be exchanged between programs, where darktable would share buffers with GIMP so that images can be edited in one program and updated in real time in the other, and so on. Well of course the short/mid-term improvements will be non-destructive editing with live preview on high bit depth images, and that’s already awesomely cool right…?

[C]ontributing to Free Software is not just adding any random feature, that’s also about discussing, discovering others’ workflow, comparing, sometimes even compromising or realizing that our ideas are not always perfect. This is part of the process and actually a pretty good mental builder. In any case we will work hard for a better GIMP

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Source: Slashdot – After New GIMP Release, Core Developer Discusses Future of GIMP and GEGL

Slashdot reader tiqui writes: Jerry Doyle, best known for playing Security Chief Michael Garibaldi on Babylon 5 has passed away in Las Vegas at only 60 years of age. His B5 character was often paired-up with G’Kar (played by Andreas Katsulas who died in 2006 at age 59) and with Jeffrey Sinclair (played by Michael O’Hare who died in 2012, also at age 60) He seems to have lead an interesting life. Cause of death not yet known.

Slashdot reader The Grim Reefer quotes the BBC:
Fellow Babylon 5 actor Bruce Boxleitner tweeted that he was “so devastated at the news of the untimely death of my good friend”, while astronaut Scott Kelly said the news was “very sad to hear”.

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Source: Slashdot – Babylon 5 Actor Jerry Doyle Dies