development – Tech Today w/ Ken May

Why Windows Vista Ended Up Being a Mess

alaskana98 shares an article called “What Really Happened with Vista: An Insider’s Retrospective.” Ben Fathi, formerly a manager of various teams at Microsoft responsible for storage, file systems, high availability/clustering, file level network protocols, distributed file systems, and related technologies and later security, writes: Imagine supporting that same OS for a dozen years or more for a population of billions of customers, millions of companies, thousands of partners, hundreds of scenarios, and dozens of form factors — and you’ll begin to have an inkling of the support and compatibility nightmare. In hindsight, Linux has been more successful in this respect. The open source community and approach to software development is undoubtedly part of the solution. The modular and pluggable architecture of Unix/Linux is also a big architectural improvement in this respect. An organization, sooner or later, ships its org chart as its product; the Windows organization was no different. Open source doesn’t have that problem… I personally spent many years explaining to antivirus vendors why we would no longer allow them to “patch” kernel instructions and data structures in memory, why this was a security risk, and why they needed to use approved APIs going forward, that we would no longer support their legacy apps with deep hooks in the Windows kernel — the same ones that hackers were using to attack consumer systems. Our “friends”, the antivirus vendors, turned around and sued us, claiming we were blocking their livelihood and abusing our monopoly power! With friends like that, who needs enemies? I like how the essay ends. “Was it an incredibly complex product with an amazingly huge ecosystem (the largest in the world at that time)? Yup, that it was. Could we have done better? Yup, you bet… Hindsight is 20/20.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Why Windows Vista Ended Up Being a Mess

Linux 4.15 Becomes Slowest Release Since 2011

An anonymous reader shares a report: Linus Torvalds has decided that Linux 4.15 needs a ninth release candidate, making it the first kernel release to need that much work since 2011. Torvalds flagged up the possibility of an extra release candidate last week, with the caveat that “it obviously requires this upcoming week to not come with any huge surprises” after “all the Meltdown and Spectre hoopla” made his job rather more complicated in recent weeks. Fast-forward another week and Torvalds has announced “I really really wanted to just release 4.15 today, but things haven’t calmed down enough for me to feel comfy about it.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Linux 4.15 Becomes Slowest Release Since 2011

Ford teases ‘Mach 1’ electric performance SUV for 2020

At its NAIAS 2018 preview event, Ford just dropped a few details about an electric vehicle it plans to release in 2020. The “Mach 1” (cribbing its name from the famous Mustang model ) is an all-electric performance SUV under development by Team Edison in Ford’s recently-opened Corktown facility . That group’s stated mission is to “accelerate both the development and adoption of electric vehicles, ” but this is the first project we’re getting any information about. Appropriately, its reveal comes at an event where Ford also showed off a performance gas SUV with the Edge ST and a “Bullitt” edition of the Mustang. Whatever Mach 1 is, it appears the Tesla Model X will have some competition… eventually. Source: Ford (Twitter)

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Ford teases ‘Mach 1’ electric performance SUV for 2020

Hollywood strikes back against illegal streaming Kodi addons

An anti-piracy alliance supported by many major US and UK movie studios, broadcasters and content providers has dealt a blow to the third-party Kodi addon scene after it successfully forced a number of popular piracy-linked streaming tools offline. In what appears to be a coordinated crackdown, developers including jsergio123 and The_Alpha , who are responsible for the development and hosting of addons like urlresolver, metahandler, Bennu, DeathStreams and Sportie, confirmed that they will no longer maintain their Kodi creations and have immediately shut them down. The action comes after The_Alpha reportedly received a hand delivered letter to their UK home : “This letter is addressed to you by companies of the six-major United States film studios represented by the Motion Picture Association (MPA), namely Columbia Pictures Industries, Inc., Disney Enterprises, Inc., Paramount Pictures Corporation, Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation, Universal City Studios LLLP and Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc., Netflix, Inc. and Amazon Studios LLC (represented by MPA via the Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment (ACE)), Sky UK Limited, and The Football Association Premier League Limited, ” the opening paragraph reads. The letter identifies the developer as the creator of third-party software that provides “unlawful access to protected copyright works, including works owned by, or exclusively licensed to, the Content Companies” and notes their additional involvement in the upkeep of the Colossus repository, an online collection of various streaming Kodi addons. With Colossus gone, a popular TV show and movie streaming tool called Covenant is also currently unavailable. It’s scared a number of related addon developers, with Ares Wizard, another popular host, reportedly deciding to throw in the towel. The crackdown suggests the MPA/MPAA-led Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment has a thorough understanding of how owners of so-called “Kodi boxes” are able to stream TV shows and films illegally. While Colossus merely hosts the tools, urlresolver and metahandler did much of the heavy lifting for streamers. Their job was to scrape video hosting sites for relevant streaming links and serve them up for tools like Covenant inside Kodi. Streamers will find it very difficult to find working video streams of their favorite content without them, but they could reappear via a new host in the future. Sorry to say but I am stopping all development of the urlresolver, metahandler, and my other addons. I am not responsible for covenant and bennu but colossus has agreed to delete the repo too. — jsergio123 (@jsergio123) November 15, 2017 As pre-loaded Kodi boxes have surged in popularity in the past year, many of the most popular piracy-linked addons have targeted by rightsholders. In June, US satellite broadcaster Dish Network issued a lawsuit that targeted the TVAddons repository and forced streaming tools ZemTV and Phoenix offline. The action will be bad news for Kodi, the the company behind the popular media center. Despite attempts to distance itself from piracy, it often finds itself implicated in news reports that focus on actions taken against infringing third-party addons. Via: TorrentFreak , TVAddons

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Hollywood strikes back against illegal streaming Kodi addons

Boeing 757 Testing Shows Airplanes Vulnerable To Hacking, DHS Says

schwit1 shares a report from Aviation Today: A team of government, industry and academic officials successfully demonstrated that a commercial aircraft could be remotely hacked in a non-laboratory setting last year, a DHS official said Wednesday at the 2017 CyberSat Summit in Tysons Corner, Virginia. “We got the airplane on Sept. 19, 2016. Two days later, I was successful in accomplishing a remote, non-cooperative, penetration. [Which] means I didn’t have anybody touching the airplane, I didn’t have an insider threat. I stood off using typical stuff that could get through security and we were able to establish a presence on the systems of the aircraft.” Hickey said the details of the hack and the work his team are doing are classified, but said they accessed the aircraft’s systems through radio frequency communications, adding that, based on the RF configuration of most aircraft, “you can come to grips pretty quickly where we went” on the aircraft. Patching avionics subsystem on every aircraft when a vulnerability is discovered is cost prohibitive, Hickey said. The cost to change one line of code on a piece of avionics equipment is $1 million, and it takes a year to implement. For Southwest Airlines, whose fleet is based on Boeing’s 737, it would “bankrupt” them. Hickey said newer models of 737s and other aircraft, like Boeing’s 787 and the Airbus Group A350, have been designed with security in mind, but that legacy aircraft, which make up more than 90% of the commercial planes in the sky, don’t have these protections. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Boeing 757 Testing Shows Airplanes Vulnerable To Hacking, DHS Says

Bill Gates and Richard Branson Back Startup That Grows ‘Clean Meat’

A large global agricultural company has joined Bill Gates and Richard Branson to invest in a nascent technology to make meat from self-producing animal cells. “Memphis Meats, which produces beef, chicken and duck directly from animal cells without raising and slaughtering livestock or poultry, raised $17 million from investors including Cargill, Gates and billionaire Richard Branson, according to a statement Tuesday on the San Francisco-based startup’s website, ” reports Bloomberg. From the report: This is the latest move by an agricultural giant to respond to consumers, especially Millennials, who are rapidly leaving their mark on the U.S. food world. That’s happening through surging demand for organic products, increasing focus on food that’s considered sustainable and greater attention on animal treatment. Big poultry and livestock processors have started to take up alternatives to traditional meat. To date, Memphis Meats has raised $22 million, signaling a commitment to the “clean-meat movement, ” the company said. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Leaked memo says hackers may have compromised UK power plants

State-sponsored hackers have “probably compromised” the UK’s energy industry. A leaked memo from the National Cybersecurity Centre (NCSC) identifies links “from multiple UK IP addresses to infrastructure associated with advanced state-sponsored hostile threat actors.” These threats are “known to target the energy and manufacturing sectors, ” the document says. The memo, obtained by Motherboard and verified by a number of sources, goes on to say that as a result of these connections, “a number of industrial control system engineering and services organisations are likely to have been compromised.” The NCSC has neither confirmed nor denied the authenticity of the memo. However, in a statement given to the BBC it said: “We are aware of reports of malicious cyber-activity targeting the energy sector around the globe … We are liaising with our counterparts to better understand the threat and continue to manage any risks to the UK.” The leaked memo follows claims that Russian hackers have tried to infiltrate America’s nuclear power industry via phishing emails, as well as allegations that Ireland’s Electricity Supply Board has been targeted by groups with links to the Kremlin. These reports appear to be connected, suggesting there may be a large-scale effort brewing to identify vulnerabilities in global energy industry. It appears that despite the hack no actual damage has been done, but we’ve seen the consequences of cyberattacks on critical infrastructure — this development will no doubt call into question the effectiveness of national security once again. Via: The Guardian Source: Motherboard

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Leaked memo says hackers may have compromised UK power plants

Media Player Classic Home Cinema (MPC-HC) for Windows Pushes What Could Be Its Last Update

Popular open-source media player for Windows, Media Player Classic Home Cinema — or MPC-HC, has issued what it says could be the last update the app ever receives. The team writes: v1.7.13, the latest, and probably the last release of our project… For quite a few months now, or even years, the number of active developers has been decreasing and has inevitably reached zero. This, unfortunately, means that the project is officially dead and this release would be the last one. … Unless some people step up that is. So, if someone’s willing to really contribute and has C/C++ experience, let me know on IRC or via e-mail. Otherwise, all things come to an end and life goes on. It’s been a nice journey and I’m personally pretty overwhelmed having to write this post. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Media Player Classic Home Cinema (MPC-HC) for Windows Pushes What Could Be Its Last Update

Indie Game Developer Shares Free Keys on The Pirate Bay

Jacob Janerka, developer of the popular indie adventure game ‘Paradigm, ‘ recently spotted a cracked copy of his title on The Pirate Bay. But, instead of being filled with anger and rage while running to the nearest anti-piracy outfit, Janerka decided to reach out to the pirates. Not to school or scold them, but to offer a few free keys. From a report: “Hey everyone, I’m Jacob, the creator of Paradigm. I know some of you legitimately can’t afford the game and I’m glad you get to still play it :D, ” Janerka’s comment on TPB reads. Having downloaded many pirated games himself in the past, Janerka knows that some people simply don’t have the means to buy all the games they want to play. So he’s certainly not going to condemn others for doing the same now, although it would be nice if some bought it later. “If you like the game, please tell your friends and maybe even consider buying it later, ” he added. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Indie Game Developer Shares Free Keys on The Pirate Bay

American military backs an entirely new kind of processor

Virtually every processor you see is based on the same basic ( Von Neumann ) computing model: they’re designed to access large chunks of sequential data and fill their caches as often as possible. This isn’t the quickest way to accomplish every task, however, and the American military wants to explore an entirely different kind of chip. DARPA is spending $80 million to fund the development of the world’s first graph analytic processor. The HIVE (Hierarchical Identify Verify Exploit) accesses random, 8-byte data points from the system’s global memory, crunching each of those points individually. That’s a much faster approach for handling large data, which frequently involves many relationships between info sets. It’s also extremely scalable, so you can use as many HIVE chips as you need to accomplish your goals. The agency isn’t alone in its work: Intel, Qualcomm and Northrop Grumman are involved , as are researchers at Georgia Tech and Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. It’s going to take a long time before you see a HIVE chip in service — DARPA and its allies are effectively reinventing the wheel. If the concept works as promised, though, it could quickly spot problems before they become especially dire. The military could catch the first signs of a cyberattack , while disease control experts could detect an imminent outbreak . Simply speaking, massive amounts of data shouldn’t be quite so intimidating — you could just ask a computer to connect the dots. Via: EETimes Source: DARPA (1) , (2)

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American military backs an entirely new kind of processor