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Glassdoor Exposes 600,000 Email Addresses

A web site where users anonymously review their employer has exposed the e-mail addresses — and in some cases the names — of hundreds of thousands of users. An anonymous reader quotes an article from Silicon Beat: On Friday, the company sent out an email announcing that it had changed its terms of service. Instead of blindly copying email recipients on the message, the company pasted their addresses in the clear. Each message recipient was able to see the email addresses of 999 other Glassdoor users… Ultimately, the messages exposed the addresses of more than 2 percent of the company’s users… Last month, the company said it had some 30 million monthly active users, meaning that more than 600, 000 were affected by the exposure… Although the company didnâ(TM)t directly disclose the names of its users, many of their names could be intuited from their email addresses. Some appeared to be in the format of “first name.last name” or “first initial plus last name.” A Glassdoor spokesperson said “We are extremely sorry for this error. We take the privacy of our users very seriously and we know this is not what is expected of us. It certainly isn’t how we intend to operate.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Linux Kernel 4.7 Officially Released

An anonymous Slashdot reader writes: The Linux 4.7 kernel made its official debut today with Linus Torvalds announcing, “after a slight delay due to my travels, I’m back, and 4.7 is out. Despite it being two weeks since rc7, the final patch wasn’t all that big, and much of it is trivial one- and few-liners.” Linux 4.7 ships with open-source AMD Polaris (RX 480) support, Intel Kabylake graphics improvements, new ARM platform/board support, Xbox One Elite Controller support, and a variety of other new features. Slashdot reader prisoninmate quotes a report from Softpedia: The biggest new features of Linux kernel 4.7 are support for the recently announced Radeon RX 480 GPUs (Graphic Processing Units) from AMD, which, of course, has been implemented directly into the AMDGPU video driver, a brand-new security module, called LoadPin, that makes sure the modules loaded by the kernel all originate from the same file system, and support for generating virtual USB Device Controllers in USB/IP. Furthermore, Linux kernel 4.7 is the first one to ensure the production-ready status of the sync_file fencing mechanism used in the Android mobile operating system, allow Berkeley Packet Filter (BPF) programs to attach to tracepoints, as well as to introduce the long-anticipated “schedutil” frequency governor to the cpufreq dynamic frequency scaling subsystem, which promises to be faster and more accurate than existing ones. Linus’s announcement includes the shortlog, calling this release “fairly calm, ” though “There’s a couple of network drivers that got a bit more loving.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Linux Kernel 4.7 Officially Released

Laser-Armed Martian Robot Now Vaporizing Targets of Its Own Free Will

Slashdot reader Rei writes: NASA — having already populated the Red Planet with robots and armed a car-sized nuclear juggernaut with a laser — have now decided to grant fire control of that laser over to a new AI system operating on the rover itself. Intended to increase the scientific data-gathering throughput on the sometimes glitching rover’s journey, the improved AEGIS system eliminates the need for a series of back-and-forth communication sessions to select targets and aim the laser. Rei’s original submission included a longer riff on The War of the Worlds, ending with a reminder to any future AI overlords that “I have a medical condition that renders me unfit to toil in any hypothetical subterranean lithium mines…” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Laser-Armed Martian Robot Now Vaporizing Targets of Its Own Free Will

Fortune 500 Company Hires Ransomware Gang To Hack the Competition

It’s no secret that ransomware hackers are in the business to make money. But a new business arrangement hitting the news today may surprise many. Vice’s Motherboard, citing research and investigation (PDF) from security firm F-Secure, is reporting that a Fortune 500 company, the name of which hasn’t been unveiled, hired a ransomware gang to hack its competitors. From the article: In an exchange with a security researcher pretending to be a victim, one ransomware agent claimed they were working for a Fortune 500 company. “We are hired by [a] corporation to cyber disrupt day-to-day business of their competition, ” the customer support agent of a ransomware known as Jigsaw said, according to a new report by security firm F-Secure. “The purpose was just to lock files to delay a corporation’s production time to allow our clients to introduce a similar product into the market first.”In a statement to Motherboard, Mikko Hypponen said, “If this indeed was a case where ransomware was used on purpose to disrupt a competitor’s operation, it’s the only case we know of.” F-Secure adds that the consumer representative noted that “politicians, governments, husbands, wives — people from all walks of life contract [them] to hack computers, cell phones.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Fortune 500 Company Hires Ransomware Gang To Hack the Competition

US Navy Faces $600M Lawsuit For Allegedly Pirating 3D VR Software

An anonymous reader quotes a report from HotHardware: The U.S. Navy has been accused of pirating 3D software after first testing a software package offered by Germany company Bitmanagement Software GmbH. The company is suing the United States of America for nearly $600 million. HotHardware reports: “According to the court filing, Bitmanagement licensed its BS Contact Geo software for use on 38 Navy computers from 2011 to 2012. This limited rollout was ‘for the purposes of testing, trial runs, and integration into Navy systems.’ While this test period was underway, the Navy reportedly began negotiating to license the software for use on thousands of additional computers. However, even as the negotiations were ongoing, the Navy decided to go ahead and initiate its full-scale rollout without actually paying for the software. In total, the initial 38 computers allegedly swelled to 104, 922 computers by October 2013. As of today, BS Contact GEO is claimed to be installed on 558, 466 Navy computers, although ‘likely this unauthorized copying has taken place on an even larger scale’ according to the filing. As if the unauthorized installation of software onto hundreds of thousands of computers wasn’t enough, Bitmanagement is alleging that the Navy during 2014 began disabling the Flexwrap software that is tasked with tracking the use of BS Contact Geo and helping to prevent it from being duplicated. When this software piracy was taking place, the retail price of a single BS Contact Geo license was $1067.76. With nearly 600, 000 computers now in play, Bitmanagement is seeking a whopping $596, 308, 103 in damages. The lawsuit, which alleges willful copyright infringement was filed on July 15th.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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US Navy Faces $600M Lawsuit For Allegedly Pirating 3D VR Software

Facebook Messenger Hits 1B Monthly Active Users, Accounts For 10 Percent Of All VoIP Calls

Speaking of instant messaging and VoIP call apps, Facebook announced on Wednesday that Facebook Messenger has hit the 1 billion monthly active users milestone. The company adds that Messenger is just more than a text messenger — in addition to the ambitious bot gamble, a digital assistant, and the ability to send money to friends — Messenger now accounts for 10 percent of all VoIP calls made globally. Messenger’s tremendous growth also underscores Facebook’s mammoth capture of the world. The social network is used by more than 1.6 billion people actively every month. WhatsApp, the chat client it owns, is also used by more than one billion people. TechCrunch has a brilliant story on the growth of Messenger from the scratch. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Facebook Messenger Hits 1B Monthly Active Users, Accounts For 10 Percent Of All VoIP Calls

How (And Why) FreeDOS Keeps DOS Alive

FreeDOS was originally created in response to Microsoft’s announcement that after Windows 95, DOS would no longer be developed as a standalone operating system, according to a new interview about how (and why) Jim Hall keeps FreeDOS alive. For its newest version, Hall originally imagined “what ‘DOS’ would be like in 2015 or 2016 if Microsoft hadn’t stopped working on MS-DOS in favor of Windows” — before he decided there’s just no such thing as “modern DOS”. An anonymous Slashdot reader writes: No major changes are planned in the next version. “The next version of FreeDOS won’t be multitasking, it won’t be 32-bit, it won’t run on ARM, ” Hall said. “FreeDOS is still intended for Intel and Intel-compatible computers. You should still be able to run FreeDOS on your old 486 or old Pentium PC to play classic DOS games, run legacy business programs, and support embedded development.” By day, Hall is the CIO for a county in Minnesota, and he’s also a member of the board of directors for GNOME (and contributes to other open source projects) — but he still remembers using DOS’s built-in BASIC system to write simple computer programs. “Many of us older computer nerds probably used DOS very early, on our first home computer…” he tells ComputerWorld. Even without John Romero’s new Doom level, “The popularity of DOS games and DOS shareware applications probably contributes in a big way to FreeDOS’s continued success.” I’d be curious how many Slashdot readers have some fond memories about downloading DOS shareware applications. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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How (And Why) FreeDOS Keeps DOS Alive

Encrypted DNA Storage Investigated by DOE Researchers

Biological engineers at a Department of Energy lab “are experimenting with encrypted DNA storage for archival applications.” Slashdot reader ancientribe shares an article from Dark Reading: Using this method, the researchers could theoretically store 2.2 petabytes of information in one gram of DNA. That’s 200 times the printed material at the Library of Congress… Instead of needing a 15, 000 square-foot building to store 35, 000 boxes of inactive records and archival documents, Sandia National Laboratories can potentially store information on much less paper, in powder form, in test tubes or petri dishes, or even as a bacterial cell… “Hard drives fail and very often the data can’t be recovered, ” explains Bachand. “With DNA, it’s possible to recover strands that are 10, 000 to 20, 000 years old… even if someone sneezes and the powder is lost, it’s possible to recover all the information by just recovering one DNA molecule.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Leak Shows PlayStation 4 Neo Is Expected To Have Twice The Graphics Horsepower

MojoKid writes from a report via HotHardware: Following rumors of a more powerful console in Sony’s not-too-distant future — one that will be capable of playing games at a 4K resolution — the Japanese electronics maker last month opted to confirm it is indeed in development. Called PlayStation 4 Neo, the upgraded system will bring better hardware to the console scene to meet the needs of gaming on a television with four times as many pixels as a Full HD 1080p display. What’s it going to take to game at 4K in the living room? A leaked internal document outlines some very interesting specs of the new model PS4 console. Assuming the leaked document is up to date with Sony’s current plans, the PS4 Neo will use the same Jaguar cores as the original PS4, but clocked 500MHz faster, with 8 cores at 2.1GHz (up from 1.6GHz). The more significant upgrade will be the GPU. According to the slide, the PS4 Neo will use an improved version of AMD’s GCN compute units (CUs), with twice the number of CUs at 36 instead of 18. They’ll also be clocked faster — 911MHz versus 800MHz. The net result is a 2.3x improvement in floating point performance. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Leak Shows PlayStation 4 Neo Is Expected To Have Twice The Graphics Horsepower

A Smaller Version of Raspberry Pi 3 Is Coming Soon

An anonymous reader quotes a report from PCWorld: A smaller version of the popular Raspberry Pi 3 will go on sale in a few months. Raspberry Pi is developing a new version of its Compute Module, a single-board computer that plugs into specific on-board memory slots. The new Pi will be more like a mini-computer inside a computer, and it won’t come with a power supply. The Compute Module will have similar circuitry to that of Raspberry Pi 3, a wildly successful computer that can be a PC replacement. But it will be smaller, with the memory, CPU, and storage embedded tightly on a board. While the Compute Module will have a 64-bit ARM processor like the Pi 3, it won’t have Wi-Fi, Eben Upton, founder of Raspberry Pi, said in an interview with IDG News Service. The Compute Module could ship as soon as this quarter, Upton said. It will be priced similar to its predecessor, the 2-year-old Compute Module, available from reseller RS Components for about $24. The older Compute Module is based on the original Raspberry Pi. Like Raspberry Pi 3, the new Compute Module will work with Linux and Microsoft’s Windows 10 IoT Core, Upton said. A Compute Module Development Kit, in which the Compute Module can be slotted for testing, may also be sold. The Development Kit could have multiple connectivity and port options, much like the Raspberry Pi 3. Last month, the biggest manufacturer of the Raspberry Pi, Premier Farnell, was acquired by Swiss industrial component supplier Daetwyler Holding AG for roughly $871 million. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Ken May

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