Microsoft’s free Windows 10 upgrade offer officially ended yesterday
. However, the company has left a loophole. If you need to use assistive technologies, you can still upgrade for free. Microsoft also isn’t verifying if you do.
Source: LifeHacker – You Can Still Get Windows 10 For Free If You Use Assistive Technologies
Museums, for all the wonders they contain, have a reputation for being staid and musty. At their worst they’ve even been described as mausoleums. That’s a problem when it comes to exhibits about an active, living culture like the Haida people of Brit…
Source: Engadget – A digital ‘totem’ leads the way in one of New York’s oldest museums
eWeek reports that “hundreds of millions of users remain at risk” one year after Joshua Drake discovered the Stagefright Android flaw. Slashdot reader darthcamaro writes: A year ago, on July 27, 2015 news about the Android Stagefright flaw was first revealed with the initial reports claiming widespread impact with a billion users at risk. As it turns out, the impact of Stagefright has been more pervasive…over the last 12 months, Google has patched no less than 115 flaws in Stagefright and related Android media libraries. Joshua Drake, the researcher who first discovered the Stagefright flaw never expected it to go this far. “I expected shoring up the larger problem to take an extended and large effort, but I didn’t expect it to be ongoing a year later.” Drake believes targeted attacks use Stagefright vulnerabilities on unpatched systems, but adds that Android’s bug bounty program appears to be working, paying out $550,000 in its first year.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot – Android Stagefright Bug Required 115 Patches, Millions Still At Risk
It’s a Choose Your Own Adventure of wizarding proportions.
Source: io9 – Open Channel: What’s Your Harry Potter-verse Job?
If you’ve been patiently awaiting the final “official” release of Google’s sweet, chewy Android 7.0 Nougat goodness, the wait will soon be over. Google released the final developer preview of Nougat earlier this month and is confident enough in its stability and completeness to move forward with an official launch in August.
The always
Source: Hot Hardware – Leak Says Android 7 Nougat Will Arrive Next Month But No Nougat For Nexus 5!
Enlarge / Hillary Clinton’s campaign acknowledged systems used by the campaign, hosted at the DNC, had been hacked, allegedly by a group tied to Russian intelligence agencies. (credit: Clinton campaign.)
An analytical system hosted by the Democratic National Committee and used by Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign team was accessed by hackers. In a statement issued by the Clinton campaign, a spokesperson said that a network intrusion had exposed data on the system maintained by the DNC, but that the campaign organizations’s own systems did not appear to have been breached. No financial or personal identifying data other than voter information was stored on the analytical system.
In a separate statement, a spokesperson for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee acknowledged that its network and systems had been hacked. Upon discovering the breach, “we immediately took action and engaged with CrowdStrike, a leading forensic investigator, to assist us in addressing the incident,” said Meredith Kelly, a spokeswoman for the DCCC.
The New York Times cited information from an unnamed federal law enforcement official that both the breach of the Clinton campaign system hosted at DNC and the DCCC hack—which redirected would-be donors to a lookalike site that collected their personal data—were executed by groups of hackers affiliated with Russia’s intelligence services. Both the DNC and DCCC attacks were attributed to the group behind the “Fancy Bear” family of malware and intrusions, which the official identified as being tied to the Russian military intelligence agency known as Glavnoye Razvedyvatel’noye Upravleniye (GRU), or Main Intelligence Directorate. “It’s the same adversary,” the official told the Times.
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Source: Ars Technica – DNC Breach extended to systems used by Clinton campaign
Have any of you ever managed to actually revive or “unstick” a bad (dead/stuck) pixel? Both software (flashing the screen) and physical (applying pressure to the screen) “solutions” have never, ever worked for me, so I am really curious if this stuff is just wishful thinking.
The window will start flashing multiple colors very quickly (epileptics take care). Leave it on for half an hour or so, and then check the pixel again. Try this a few times to see if it works. This is the common method when attempting to resuscitate a pixel, and that’s actually a very apt word, because it’s not unlike a defibrillation. You’re essentially trying to shock the pixel back to life, into a proper response that will have it acting as it should. And like defibrillation, it’s a desperate move that may or may not work. It’s more likely to work on a stuck pixel that shows signs of life than a dead pixel which may stay unresponsive.
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Source: [H]ardOCP – Fixing Dead Pixels On Your PC Monitor Or Smartphone
I spent a good portion of this last week hanging out with a baby, and that child loved those little pouches of pureed fruits and vegetables. Always curious, I took a taste of her peach-mango pouch and thought “this wouldn’t be so bad in a cocktail.”
Source: LifeHacker – Baby Food Makes a Pretty Good Bellini
In 2014 Slowpoke got a reggae song about how slow
and tasty
it is. Now The Pokémon Company has released “I Love Magikarp,” a song about how being almost completely useless doesn’t make you any less adored.
Source: Kotaku – Pokémon’s Official Magikarp Song Is A Tribute To Uselessness
Over the years, smartphones have either been high end and expensive, or dirt cheap and shoddy. But, two years ago, the industry shifted and midrange phones that had great specs for lower prices started to fill the gap. ZTE has long been a proponent o…
Source: Engadget – The Axon 7 finally fulfills ZTE’s ‘affordable premium’ promise
Slashdot reader Noryungi writes: Qubes OS certainly has an intriguing approach to security, but a newly discovered Xen vulnerability allows a hacker to escape a VM and own the host. If you are running Qubes, make sure you update the dom0 operating system to the latest version.
“A malicious, paravirtualized guest administrator can raise their system privileges to that of the host on unpatched installations,” according to an article in IT News, which quotes Xen as saying “The bits considered safe were too broad, and not actually safe.” IT News is also reporting that Qubes will move to full hardware memory virtualization in its next 4.0 release. Xen’s hypervisor “is used by cloud giants Amazon Web Services, IBM and Rackspace,” according to the article, which quotes a Qubes security researcher who asks the age-old question. “Has Xen been written by competent developers? How many more bugs of this caliber are we going to witness in the future?”
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot – Xen Vulnerability Allows Hackers To Escape Qubes OS VM And Own the Host
In June, Apple was rumored
to be in talks to purchase Tidal, although a Tidal spokesperson denied those claims. This afternoon the king of tech, Kanye West, suggested those claims might be true on his Twitter account.
Source: Gizmodo – Kanye West Tweets Out Hot Tech Gossip
The Olympic torch’s one job is to stay lit no matter what. And honestly, I never gave much thought to how that was accomplished. Lots of tiki torch fluid? Very careful runners? Ghosts? Correct answer: pressurized gas and a chassis that could probably survive reentry into Earth’s atmosphere.
Source: Gizmodo – The Olympic Torch Is Borderline Indestructible
Since the beginning of the internet, online harassment has been a problem. We created this big, beautiful digital landscape that lets people be completely unfiltered, and we all do different things with this freedom. I, for example, use my platform to make sex memes and lightly neg Silicon Valley billionaires. Others take this opportunity to become the most scary-ass, shitbag, bigoted versions of themselves, hiding behind the comfy anonymity of their computer screens, facing no real consequences for threatening to rape, kill, and torture people.
Source: Gizmodo – Why Instagram’s Plans To Combat Online Harassment Won’t Work On Twitter
As someone who still hasn’t seen a single episode of Games of Thrones yet—is this bad news, or something that should be celebrated?
The executive also confirmed that yes, the plan is for the yet-to-be announced eighth season of the adaptation of George R.R. Martin’s fantasy drama to be its last. “Yes, I think [the showrunners, D.B. Weiss and David Benioff] have a very specific plan about the number of seasons they want to do,” Bloys said. “If I could get them to do more, I would take 10 seasons but we want to take their lead with what they could do and what the best version of the show is.” HBO most recently renewed the drama for a shortened seventh season — consisting of seven episodes — and producers have noted that they envision a total of 75 episodes of the series as a whole. Through season six, the show has produced 60 episodes.
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Source: [H]ardOCP – HBO Confirms “Game Of Thrones” Will End With Season 8
A big update for Xbox One is debuting this weekend, with long-awaited features that include background audio. Cortana is also now available so you can navigate the console with voice commands, and the UI has finally been updated to show you better progress of game installation and download rates.
The latest system update for Xbox One and the Xbox app starts rolling out this weekend, continuing our commitment to give gamers more choice in how and where they play. Cortana is now on Xbox One, Background Music will be available through music apps like Pandora, we’re bringing the most played PC games to Xbox Live with their own Game Hubs and we’re starting to combine the best of the Xbox Store and Windows Store for a single cohesive experience across devices.
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Source: [H]ardOCP – Xbox Summer Update Is Rolling Out
I’m pretty sure we’re all aware that Suicide Squad is a thing and, yes, it looks like it could be awesome. But what if it were brought to you by the one-and-only Quentin Tarantino? Well, then I think it would be too awesome and we would all explode in a giant fireball of awesomeness.
Source: io9 – Tarantino’s Suicide Squad is the Greatest Team-Up We’ll Never See
Resistance bands are those big, rubber band-like pieces of workout equipment that most people ignore at the gym. Pity, too, because they’re awesome and are incredibly travel-friendly. This graphic shows you the many strength-building exercises you can do with them, in and out of the gym.
Source: LifeHacker – This Exercise Chart Is Full of Travel-Friendly, Resistance Band Exercises
After months upon months of delays, Cortana is finally ready for your Xbox One. Microsoft has started rolling out its promised summer update with Cortana’s smarter, richer voice control as its centerpiece. You can use your headset or Kinect to sear…
Source: Engadget – Xbox One’s Cortana update arrives at last
Ransomware is “generating huge profits,” says Cisco. Slashdot reader coondoggie shares this report from Network World:
Enterprise-targeting cyber enemies are deploying vast amounts of potent ransomware to generate revenue and huge profits — nearly $34 million annually, according to Cisco’s Mid-Year Cybersecurity Report out this week. Ransomware, Cisco wrote, has become a particularly effective moneymaker, and enterprise users appear to be the preferred target.
Many of the victims were slow to patch their systems, according to the article. One study of Cisco devices running on fundamental infrastructure discovered that 23% had vulnerabilities dating back to 2011, and 16% even had vulnerabilities dating back to 2009. Popular attack vectors included vulnerabilities in JBoss and Adobe Flash, which was responsible for 80% of the successful attacks for one exploit kit. The article also reports that attackers are now hiding their activities better using HTTPS and TLS, with some even using a variant of Tor.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot – Cisco Finds Million Ransomware Industry
