Tag: advertising

Kodi 18 ‘Leia’ 64-Bit For Windows Is Finally Ready To Replace the 32-bit Version

BrianFagioli shares a report from BetaNews: Earlier this year, we shared with you that a pre-release version of Kodi 18 “Leia” 64-bit for Windows was available. There was a big catch, however — it was not up to par with its 32-bit brother. And so, many people just stuck with the 32-bit version, because, well… why not? It is finally time to make the jump to the 64-bit variant, however, as according to the Kodi team, it is now identical to the 32-bit version from a feature perspective. “The 64-bit Kodi version for Windows is now feature complete and on the same level as 32-bit. From now on the 32-bit installer will include a warning to ask you to install the 64-bit instead. This upgrade from 32-bit to 64-bit version is seamless and you just need to install on top of the old version, ” says Kodi. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Kodi 18 ‘Leia’ 64-Bit For Windows Is Finally Ready To Replace the 32-bit Version

Chrome Extension with 100,000 Users Caught Pushing Cryptocurrency Miner

Catalin Cimpanu, reporting for BleepingComputer: A Chrome extension with over 105, 000 users has been deploying an in-browser cryptocurrency miner to unsuspecting users for the past few weeks. The extension does not ask for user permission before hijacking their CPUs to mine Monero all the time the Chrome browser is open. Named “Archive Poster, ” the extension is advertised as a mod for Tumblr that allows users an easier way to “reblog, queue, draft, and like posts right from another blog’s archive.” According to users reviews, around the start of December the extension has incorporated the infamous Coinhive in-browser miner in its source code. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Chrome Extension with 100,000 Users Caught Pushing Cryptocurrency Miner

Chrome OS Will Finally Run Android Apps in the Background

An anonymous reader shares a report: While it’s no longer a novelty to run Android apps on your Chromebook, that doesn’t mean they run well. To date, most of those apps pause when you switch away — fine for a phone, but not what you’d expect on a computer with a multi-window interface. However, they’re about to become far more functional. Chrome Unboxed has learned that the Chrome OS 64 beta introduces Android Parallel Tasks, which lets Android apps run at full bore regardless of what you’re doing. You could watch a video in a mobile app while you’re surfing the web, or take a break from a mobile game without jarring transitions. There’s no guarantee that Android Parallel Tasks will reach the stable Chrome OS 64, so you might not want to plan a purchase around the feature. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Chrome OS Will Finally Run Android Apps in the Background

Apple’s iPhone Throttling Will Reinvigorate the Push for Right To Repair Laws

Jason Koebler, writing for Motherboard: The news that Apple throttles iPhones that have old batteries will reinvigorate the right to repair debate as the movement enters a crucial year. Third party repair shops say they’ve already seen an uptick in customers asking for battery replacements to speed up their slow phones, and right to repair activists who are pushing for state legislation that will make third party and self repair more accessible say Apple’s secrecy about this behavior will give them a powerful rallying message. “If Apple were serious about battery life, they’d market battery replacements, ” Gay Gordon-Byrne, executive director of Repair.org, told me in an email. “Apple clearly has a big financial benefit when people decide their phones are too slow and head to the Apple Store for a new phone.” Repair.org is a right to repair advocacy group that is made up largely of small, third party repair shops, which is spearheading the effort to get states to consider legislation that will make it easier to repair electronic devices. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Apple’s iPhone Throttling Will Reinvigorate the Push for Right To Repair Laws

Ubuntu 17.10 Temporarily Pulled Due To A BIOS Corrupting Problem

An anonymous reader writes: Canonical has temporarily pulled the download links for Ubuntu 17.10 “Artful Aardvark” from the Ubuntu website due to ongoing reports of some laptops finding their BIOS corrupted after installing this latest Ubuntu release. The issue is appearing most frequently with Lenovo laptops but there are also reports of issues with other laptop vendors as well. This issue appears to stem from the Intel SPI driver in the 17.10’s Linux 4.13 kernel corrupting the BIOS for a select number of laptop motherboards. Canonical is aware of this issue and is planning to disable the Intel SPI drivers in their kernel builds. Canonical’s hardware enablement team has already verified this works around the problem, but doesn’t provide any benefit if your BIOS is already corrupted. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Ubuntu 17.10 Temporarily Pulled Due To A BIOS Corrupting Problem

Plexamp, Plex’s Spin on the Classic Winamp Player, Is the First Project From New Incubator Plex Labs

Media software maker Plex today announced a new incubator and community resource called Plex Labs. “The idea here is to help the company’s internal passion projects gain exposure, along with those from Plex community members, ” reports TechCrunch. “Plex Labs is also unveiling its first product: a music player called Plexamp, ” which is designed to replace the long-lost Winamp. From the report: The player was built by several Plex employees in their free time, and is meant for those who use Plex for music. As the company explains in its announcement, the goal was to build a small player that sits unobtrusively on the desktop and can handle any music format. The team limited itself to a single window, making Plexamp the smaller Plex player to date, in terms of pixel size. Under the hood, Plexamp uses the open source audio player Music Player Daemon (MPD), along with a combination of ES7, Electron, React, and MobX technologies. The end result is a player that runs on either macOS or Windows and works like a native app. That is, you can use media keys for skipping tracks or playing and pausing music, and receive notifications. The player can also handle any music format, and can play music offline when the Plex server runs on your laptop. The player also supports gapless playback, soft transitions and visualizations to accompany your music. Plus, the visualizations’ palette of colors is pulled from the album art, Plex notes. Additionally, Plexamp makes use of a few up-and-coming features that will be included in Plex’s subscription, Plex Pass, in the future. These new features are powering functionality like loudness leveling (to normalize playback volume), smart transitions (to compute the optimal overlap times between tracks), soundprints (to represent tracks visually), waveform seeking (to present a graphical view of tracks), Library stations, and artist radio. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Plexamp, Plex’s Spin on the Classic Winamp Player, Is the First Project From New Incubator Plex Labs

CDC Director Says No Words Are Actually Banned At the CDC

An anonymous reader quotes a report from PBS: U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention director Dr. Brenda Fitzgerald on Sunday addressed a report that President Donald Trump’s administration had banned the CDC from using seven words or phrases in next year’s budget documents. The terms are “fetus, ” “transgender, ” “vulnerable, ” “entitlement, ” “diversity, ” “evidence-based” and “science-based, ” according to a story first reported on Friday in The Washington Post. But Fitzgerald said in a series of tweets on Sunday said there are “no banned words, ” while emphasizing the agency’s commitment to data-driven science. “CDC has a long-standing history of making public health and budget decisions that are based on the best available science and data and for the benefit of all people — and we will continue to do so, ” she said. A group of the agency’s policy analysts said senior officials at the CDC informed them about the banned words on Thursday, according to the Post’s report. In some cases, the analysts were reportedly given replacement phrases to use instead. But in follow-up reporting, The New York Times cited “a few” CDC officials who suggested the move was not meant as an outright ban, but rather, a technique to help secure Republican approval of the 2019 budget by eliminating certain words and phrases. A spokesperson for the Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees the CDC, said the reported decree on banned words was a misrepresentation. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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CDC Director Says No Words Are Actually Banned At the CDC

Microsoft Disables Word DDE Feature To Prevent Further Malware Attacks

An anonymous reader writes: As part of the December 2017 Patch Tuesday, Microsoft has shipped an Office update that disables the DDE feature in Word applications, after several malware campaigns have abused this feature to install malware. DDE stands for Dynamic Data Exchange, and this is an Office feature that allows an Office application to load data from other Office applications. For example, a Word file can update a table by pulling data from an Excel file every time the Word file is opened. DDE is an old feature, which Microsoft has superseded via the newer Object Linking and Embedding (OLE) toolkit, but DDE is still supported by Office applications. The December Patch Tuesday disables DDE only in Word, but not Excel or Outlook. The reason is that several cybercrime and spam groups have jumped on this technique, which is much more effective at running malicious code when compared to macros or OLE objects, as it requires minimal interaction with a UI popup that many users do not associate with malware. For Outlook and Excel, Microsoft has published instructions on how users can disable DDE on their own, if they don’t want this feature enabled. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Microsoft Disables Word DDE Feature To Prevent Further Malware Attacks

Opera Software Changes Name To Otello Corporation

Opera Software has changed its name to Otello Corporation, it said in a statement on Monday. From a report: Otello owns companies that develop software for advertising, telecoms, games and other online business. The name changes does not affect Opera Software AS or the Opera and Opera Mini internet browsers, all of which Otello sold in 2016, Opera Software AS said in a separate statement. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Opera Software Changes Name To Otello Corporation

Power Outage Strands Thousands at US Airport. 600 Flights Cancelled

An anonymous reader quotes CNN: A power outage at the world’s busiest airport left thousands of passengers stranded in dark terminals and in planes sitting on the tarmac, amid a nationwide ground stop. Incoming and outgoing flights at Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport were halted indefinitely as crews worked to restore power, leading to hundreds of flight delays and cancellations. Atlanta is the heart of the US air transport system, and what happens there has the potential to ripple through the country. More than 600 flights to and from Atlanta have been canceled, including 350 departures, according to Flightradar24… Flights headed to Atlanta are being held on the ground at their departure airport. Inbound flights to Atlanta are being diverted, US Customs and Border Protection said. Departures from the airport are delayed because electronic equipment is not working in the terminals, the FAA said. The cause of the incident is under investigation. Some people stranded in the dark terminals used their cellphones as flashlights, one passenger told CNN. “There were a few emergency lights on, but it was really dark — felt totally apocalyptic.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Power Outage Strands Thousands at US Airport. 600 Flights Cancelled