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GitHub for Windows given a shiny new look for version 2

Two years ago, GitHub released GitHub for Windows , a Metro-styled graphical interface for managing git version control. Today, the company released GitHub for Windows version 2. Version 2 introduces an all-new look. It’s still a minimalist, Metro-style interface, but it’s even more pared down than it was before; where the old interface used shading, the new one depends even more heavily on whitespace and positioning. The concept behind the redesign is to give a more focused, concentrated view on the things that developers care about. The old application had developers jumping between a range of different screens to perform different operations; this is much reduced in the new version. For example, to commit changes to a repository, the old application switched to a dedicated “commit” view. The new one performs the commit from within the main view. Read 2 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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GitHub for Windows given a shiny new look for version 2

Google will flag search results erased due to “right to be forgotten”

Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales is a vocal critic of the new ruling. Jimmy Wales/ Wikipedia In the wake of a controversial European high court ruling last month that search providers like Google must remove “inadequate, irrelevant, or no longer relevant” materials from search results upon request by EU citizens, the US search giant has expressed a desire to alert users to when such results have been altered. Google’s plan to flag censored search results will likely be similar to how the company notifies users that links have been removed due to a copyright takedown request. The search giant aims to place such notifications at the bottom of pages that would have contained links that have been erased in order to alert users of the change, reports The Guardian. The company also plans to include statistics regarding “right to be forgotten” link removal requests in its biannual transparency report. Read 5 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Google will flag search results erased due to “right to be forgotten”

Amtrak wants 25Mbps per train

A familiar dialogue box for riders on the Northeast corridor. Amtrak is looking to build a trackside Wi-Fi network on its Northeast corridor that would bump its trains’ connections to broadband-level speeds. The increase is meant to accommodate busy trains with hundreds of customers crowding the Wi-Fi, a common scenario that results in slow or no connections for some customers. Amtrak has offered Wi-Fi on trains running between Boston and Washington, DC for several years now , but currently, the connection is 10Mbps shared among everyone on the train. In this reporter’s experience on crowded trains, this means you can only get on the Wi-Fi long enough to re-establish a connection through the network’s dialog boxes before the process resets. The company has requested proof-of-concept bids to bump the connection speed to 25Mbps per train “to meet growing customer data usage demands.” The bids will be used to see if it is “technically and financially feasible” to bring network improvements to the entire stretch of the Northeast corridor. Read 1 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Amtrak wants 25Mbps per train

We “will be paying no ransom,” vows town hit by Cryptowall ransom malware

Cisco Systems The town manager of a hamlet in south eastern New Hampshire has defied demands that he pay a ransom to recover police department computer files taken hostage by Cryptowall, a newer piece of malware that encrypts hard drive contents of infected machines until victims pay for them to be decrypted. “Make no mistake, the Town of Durham will be paying no ransom,” Town Manager Todd Selig was quoted as saying by CBS Boston news. Police department computers for the town of almost 15,000 residents were reportedly infected Thursday after an officer opened what appeared to be a legitimate file attachment to an e-mail. By Friday morning, widespread “issues” were hitting the department computer network . It was shut down by noon that day to prevent the infection from spreading to other systems. The game may be RIGged The department was reportedly hit by Cryptowall, a newer form of crypto malware that rivals the better known CryptoLocker . According to a blog post published Thursday by researchers from Cisco Systems, Cryptowall has been gaining ground since April, when it was folded into the RIG exploit kit, which is software sold in underground forums that automates computer scams and malware attacks for less technically knowledgeable criminals. Cisco’s Cloud Web Security service has been blocking requests tied to more than 90 infected Internet domains pushing Cryptowall scams to more than 17 percent of service customers. Read 6 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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We “will be paying no ransom,” vows town hit by Cryptowall ransom malware

Microsoft: Software update unlocks more GPU bandwidth on Xbox One

The system update does not turn the system white… only the employee models do that. The June system update rolling out to Xbox One system worldwide this week includes surface-level features like external hard drive support, as we mentioned this morning . But Microsoft says the new firmware will also help developers extract more power from the system’s Graphical Processing Unit (GPU), even though the base hardware in the system is obviously staying the same. Microsoft didn’t trumpet this news in a press release or blog post, but threw it out there in a tweet from Microsoft’s new executive in charge of Xbox, Phil Spencer: “June #XboxOne software dev kit gives devs access to more GPU bandwidth. More performance, new tools and flexibility to make games better.” As far back as last October, Microsoft was publicly acknowledging how Kinect and system processing took “a conservative 10 percent time-sliced reservation… for the GPGPU processing for Kinect and for the rendering of concurrent system content such as snap mode.” Back then, the company promised it would be opening up that slice of processing time to game developers in the future in a way that didn’t impact the system’s background performance. That appears to be what has come to pass with the system’s latest software update. Read 6 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Microsoft: Software update unlocks more GPU bandwidth on Xbox One

Comcast charged $2,000 for alarm system that didn’t work—for 7 years

Houston resident Lisa Leeson says she paid Comcast nearly $2,000 over seven years for an alarm system, only to find out that it never worked. Comcast, it turns out, installed the alarm system improperly. Even though the alarm made a sound indicating that it was active when Leeson and her family set it each day, “It was unable… to actually call the police and/or Comcast once it was activated,” Leeson told KPRC Local 2 Houston . What did Comcast do after the problem was finally discovered? At first, the company offered only a $20 credit, before eventually agreeing to refund all of the money. “When Davis called Comcast’s corporate office, a spokesman apologized, but not before he pointed to a line in Leeson’s alarm agreement where she agreed to ‘test her system’ on ‘a regular basis,'” the news station reported. “Chances are your alarm company requires the same, putting the onus back on you to make sure your system is functioning properly.” Read 5 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Comcast charged $2,000 for alarm system that didn’t work—for 7 years

Bugs in widely used WordPress plug-in leave sites vulnerable to hijacking

Security researchers have discovered vulnerabilities in a widely used WordPress extension that leaves sites susceptible to remote hijacking. WordPress-powered sites that use the All in One SEO Pack should promptly install an update that fixes the privilege escalation vulnerabilities, Marc-Alexandre Montpas, a researcher with security firm Sucuri wrote in a blog post published Saturday . Administrators can upgrade by logging in to the admin panel, selecting plug-ins, and choosing the All in One title. The just-released version that fixes the vulnerabilities is 2.1.6. The worst of the attacks made possible by the bugs can allow attackers to inject malicious code into the admin control panel, Montpas warned. Malicious hackers could then change an admin’s password or insert backdoor code into the underlying websites. People could also remotely tamper with a site’s search engine optimization settings. To exploit the bugs, attackers need only an unprivileged account on the site, such as one for posting reader comments. In some cases, the privilege escalation and cross-site scripting bugs in All in One SEO are combined with another vulnerability that Montpas didn’t elaborate on. Read 2 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Bugs in widely used WordPress plug-in leave sites vulnerable to hijacking

Payback time: First patent troll ordered to pay “extraordinary case” fees

FindTheBest CEO Kevin O’Connor and Director of Operations Danny Seigle. FindTheBest When Santa Barbara startup FindTheBest (FTB) was sued by a patent troll called Lumen View last year, it vowed to fight back rather than pay up the $50,000 licensing fee Lumen was asking for. Company CEO Kevin O’Connor made it personal, pledging $1 million of his own money to fight the legal battle. Once FindTheBest pursued the case, the company dismantled the troll in short order. In November, the judge invalidated Lumen’s patent, finding it was nothing more than a description of computer-oriented “matchmaking.” At that point, FindTheBest had spent about $200,000 on its legal fight—not to mention the productivity lost in hundreds of work hours spent by top executives on the lawsuit, and three all-company meetings. Read 10 remaining paragraphs | Comments

TrueCrypt security audit presses on, despite developers jumping ship

ZEISS Microscopy TrueCrypt, the whole-disk encryption tool endorsed by National Security Agency leaker Edward Snowden and used by millions of privacy and security enthusiasts around the world, will receive a second round of safety audits despite being declared unsafe and abruptly abandoned by its anonymous developers two days ago. Phase II of the security audit was already scheduled to commence when Wednesday’s bombshell advisory dropped on the TrueCrypt SourceForge page. After 24 hours to reflect on the unexpected move, an organizer with the Open Crypto Audit Project said he saw no reason to scrub those plans. Online fundraisers to bankroll the project have raised about $70,000, well past the $25,000 organizers had initially aimed for . “We have conferred and we are firmly going forward on schedule with the audit regardless of yesterday’s circumstances,” Kenn White, a North Carolina-based computer scientist and audit organizer told Ars Thursday. “We don’t want there to remain all sorts of questions or scenarios or what ifs in people’s minds. TrueCrypt has been around for 10 years and it’s never received a proper formal security analysis. People are going to continue to use it for better or worse, and we feel like we owe the community the proper analysis.” Read 5 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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TrueCrypt security audit presses on, despite developers jumping ship

Photonic crystals used to make optical RAM

This photonic lattice created at Sandia National Laboratories acts like a crystal in guiding light because of its tiny, regularly placed silicon “logs.” Japanese researchers have shown how to use photonic crystals like this as optical RAM. Sandia National Labs Most high-speed networking is done using optical fibers. The hardware on each end of these fibers has to convert the optical signals to electronic ones in order to figure out a packet’s destination and will often return it to optical form before sending it on toward its destination. Researchers at the Japanese telecom NTT find all that converting a bit wasteful and are working on ways to avoid it. They’ve recently published a paper that includes a description of a working 115-bit optical Random Access Memory device, made of a carefully structured series of photonic crystals, each of which can store light of a different wavelength. Photonic crystals are made of layered semiconductors, with the precise structure (the thickness and spacing of the layers) determining how they interact with light—it’s possible to make photonic crystals that selectively block or transmit a narrow frequency range. Read 8 remaining paragraphs | Comments