Microsoft Has More Open Source Contributors On GitHub Than Facebook and Google

An anonymous reader writes from a report via The Next Web: Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella has really embraced open source over the past couple of years. GitHub, a site that is home to a number of the web’s biggest collaborative code projects, has counted more than 5.8 million active users on its platform over the past 12 months, and says that Microsoft has the most open source contributors. Microsoft has 16, 419 contributors, beating out Facebook’s 15, 682 contributors, Docker’s 14, 059 contributors, and Google’s 12, 140 contributors. The Next Web reports: “Of course, this didn’t happen overnight. In October 2014, it open sourced its .NET framework, which is the company’s programming infrastructure for building and running apps and services — a major move towards introducing more developers to its server-side stack. Since then, it’s open sourced its Chakra JavaScript engine, Visual Studio’s MSBuild compiling engine, the Computational Networks Toolkit for deep learning applications, its Xamarin tool for building cross-platform apps and most recently, PowerShell. It’s also worth noting that the company’s Visual Studio Code text editor made GitHub’s list of repositories with the most contributors. You can check out these lists, as well as other data from GitHub’s platform on this page.” GitHub CEO Chris Wanstrath said in an interview with Fortune, “The big .Net project has more people outside of Microsoft contributing to it than people who work at Microsoft.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Microsoft Has More Open Source Contributors On GitHub Than Facebook and Google

T-Mobile To Boost Its LTE Speeds To 400 Mbps

An anonymous reader writes from a report via The Next Web: T-Mobile plans to boost its LTE speeds to up to 400 Mbps in the very near future. The Next Web reports: “The company is getting ready to boost its maximum theoretical internet speeds to become the faster carrier in the U.S. by a wide margin. The network will soon support theoretical speeds up to 400 Mbps — nearly half the speed of Google Fiber. There’s a two-pronged approach to the upgrade. First is incorporating 4×4 MIMO (multiple input, multiple output) technology, which will supposedly double the speed from the current 7-40 Mbps customers tend to experience with T-Mobile (about the same as Verizon with LTE-A). This upgrade is available now in 319 cities, although it’s a moot point because only the S7 and S7 Edge will be able to use the tech via a software update “later this month.” In October, the company will roll out 256 QAM support to the S7 and S7 Edge (and again, more phones later), which increases the amount of bits per transmission. T-Mobile says this will lead to theoretical maximum speeds of 400 Mbps.” The Next Web followed-up with T-Mobile to ask about what the real-world speeds would be after the upgrade. The company says “customers can expect to see real world peak speeds of 190 Mbps, ” which is over four times current peaks speeds, but also far below the theoretical 400 Mbps. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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T-Mobile To Boost Its LTE Speeds To 400 Mbps

Walmart Is Cutting 7,000 Jobs Due To Automation

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Yahoo: The clairvoyant folks over at the World Economic Forum warned of a “Fourth Industrial Revolution” involving the rise of the machine in the workforce, and the latest company to lend credence to that claim is none other than Walmart, which is planning on cutting 7, 000 jobs on account of automation. But the Walmart decision may be a bit more alarming for those in the workforce. As the Wall Street Journal reports (Warning: may be paywalled), the most concerning aspect of America’s largest private employer might be that the eliminated positions are largely in the accounting and invoicing sectors of the company. These jobs are typically held by some of the longest tenured employees, who also happen to take home higher hourly wages. Now, those coveted positions are being automated. The Journal reports that beginning in 2017, much of this work will be addressed by “a central office or new money-counting ‘cash recycler’ machines in stores.” Earlier this year, the company tested this change across some 500 locations. “We’ve seen many make smooth transitions during the pilot, ” said Deisha Barnett, a Walmart spokeswoman. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Walmart Is Cutting 7,000 Jobs Due To Automation

Google Login Bug Allows Credential Theft

Trailrunner7 writes from a report via On the Wire: Attackers can add an arbitrary page to the end of a Google login flow that can steal users’ credentials, or alternatively, send users an arbitrary file any time a login form is submitted, due to a bug in the login process. A researcher in the UK identified the vulnerability recently and notified Google of it, but Google officials said they don’t consider it a security issue. The bug results from the fact that the Google login page will take a specific, weak GET parameter. Using this bug, an attacker could add an extra step to the end of the login flow that could steal a user’s credentials. For example, the page could mimic an incorrect password dialog and ask the user to re-enter the password. [Aidan Woods, the researcher who discovered the bug, ] said an attacker also could send an arbitrary file to the target’s browser any time the login form is submitted. In an email interview, Woods said exploiting the bug is a simple matter. “Attacker would not need to intercept traffic to exploit — they only need to get the user to click a link that they have crafted to exploit the bug in the continue parameter, ” Woods said. Google told Woods they don’t consider this a security issue. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Google Login Bug Allows Credential Theft

Malware That Fakes Bank Login Screens Found In Google Ads

tedlistens quotes a report from Fast Company: For years, security firms have warned of keystroke logging malware that surreptitiously steals usernames and passwords on desktop and laptop computers. In the past year, a similar threat has begun to emerge on mobile devices: So-called overlay malware that impersonates login pages from popular apps and websites as users launch the apps, enticing them to enter their credentials to banking, social networking, and other services, which are then sent on to attackers. Such malware has even found its way onto Google’s AdSense network, according to a report on Monday from Kaspersky Lab. The weapon would automatically download when users visited certain Russian news sites, without requiring users to click on the malicious advertisements. It then prompts users for administrative rights, which makes it harder for antivirus software or the user to remove it, and proceeds to steal credentials through fake login screens, and by intercepting, deleting, and sending text messages. The Kaspersky researchers call it “a gratuitous act of violence against Android users.” “By simply viewing their favorite news sites over their morning coffee users can end up downloading last-browser-update.apk, a banking Trojan detected by Kaspersky Lab solutions as Trojan-Banker.AndroidOS.Svpeng.q, ” according to the company. “There you are, minding your own business, reading the news and BOOM! — no additional clicks or following links required.” The good news is that the issue has since been resolved, according to a Google spokeswoman. Fast Company provides more details about these types of attacks and how to stay safe in its report. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Malware That Fakes Bank Login Screens Found In Google Ads

LibreOffice 5.2 Officially Released

prisoninmate writes from a report via Softpedia: LibreOffice 5.2 is finally here, after it has been in development for the past four months, during which the development team behind one of the best free office suites have managed to implement dozens of new features and improvements to most of the application’s components. Key features include more UI refinements to make it flexible for anyone, standards-based document classification, forecasting functions in Calc, the spreadsheet editor, as well as lots of Writer and Impress enhancements. A series of videos are provided to see what landed in the LibreOffice 5.2 office suite, which is now available for download for GNU/Linux, Mac OS X, and Microsoft Windows operating systems. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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LibreOffice 5.2 Officially Released

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

Ubuntu’s Unity desktop environment can run in Windows

An anonymous Slashdot reader writes: “This is one of the coolest tickets I’ve seen on GitHub, ” writes Ubuntu developer Adolfo Jayme Barrientos, adding “this kind of surreal compatibility between platforms is now enabled…the fact that you can execute and use Linux window managers there, without virtual machines, is simply mind-blowing.” “The Windows 10 Anniversary Update coming in August includes an unusual feature aimed at developers: an Ubuntu sub-system that lets you run Linux software using a command-line interface, ” explains Liliputing.com “Preview versions have been available since April, and while Microsoft and Canonical worked together to bring support for the Bash terminal to Windows 10, it didn’t take long for some users to figure out that they could get some desktop Linux apps to run in Windows. Now it looks like you can even load Ubuntu’s Unity desktop environment, making windows 10 look like Ubuntu. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Ubuntu’s Unity desktop environment can run in Windows

Amazon’s Chinese Counterfeit Problem Is Getting Worse

A report on CNBC, citing sellers, says that counterfeit problem on the platform has gotten worse after it made it easier for Chinese manufacturers to sell goods to U.S. consumers. The report gives an example of a seller Jamie Whaley who started a bedding business on Amazon that reached $700, 000 in annual sales within three years. Her patented product called BedBand consists of a set of shock cords, clamps and locks designed to keep fitted bed sheets in place. Whaley found quite an audience, selling up to 200 units a day for $13.99 a set. BedBand climbed into the top 200 selling products in the home and kitchen category. That was 2013. By mid-2015, the business was in a tailspin. Revenue plummeted by half and Whaley was forced to lay off eight employees. Her sheet fastener had been copied by a legion of mostly Chinese knockoffs that undercut BedBand on price and jumped the seller ranks by obtaining scores of reviews that watchdog site Fakespot.com determined were inauthentic and “harmful for real consumers.” The report adds:Spend any time surveying Amazon sellers and Whaley’s narrative will start sounding like the norm. In Amazon’s quest to be the low-cost provider of everything on the planet, the website has morphed into the world’s largest flea market — a chaotic, somewhat lawless, bazaar with unlimited inventory. Always a problem, the counterfeiting issue has exploded this year, sellers say, following Amazon’s effort to openly court Chinese manufacturers, weaving them intimately into the company’s expansive logistics operation. Merchants are perpetually unsure of who or what may kill their sales on any given day and how much time they’ll have to spend hunting down fakers. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Amazon’s Chinese Counterfeit Problem Is Getting Worse

Businesses Lose $3.1 Billion to Email Scams, FBI Warns

Business have lost over $3 billion because of compromised e-mail accounts, the FBI reports, citing “a sophisticated scam targeting businesses working with foreign suppliers and/or businesses that regularly perform wire transfer payments.” 22, 143 business have been affected — 14, 302 within the U.S. — with a total dollar loss of $3, 086, 250, 090, representing an increase of 1, 300% since January of 2015. Using social engineering or “computer intrusion techniques, ” the attackers target employees responsible for wire transfers (or issuing checks) using five scenarios, which include bogus invoices or executive requests for a wire transfer of funds, with some attackers even impersonating a corporate law firm. “Victims report that IP addresses frequently trace back to free domain registrars, ” warns the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center, which also urges businesses to avoid free web-based e-mail accounts. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Businesses Lose $3.1 Billion to Email Scams, FBI Warns