hash – Page 7 – Tech Today w/ Ken May

McAfee will break iPhone crypto for FBI in 3 weeks or eat shoe on live TV

Enlarge / John McAfee and Ars Technica deep cover operative Sean Gallagher at an unnamed location that looks suspiciously like Las Vegas. (credit: Sean Gallagher) In an op-ed for Business Insider titled ” I’ll decrypt the San Bernardino phone free of charge so Apple doesn’t need to place a back door on its product ,” libertarian presidential candidate and former antivirus developer John McAfee waded into the ongoing battle of words between Apple and the FBI with some choice words of his own. Never one to bring a knife to a verbal gunfight, McAfee unleashes a howitzer of invective, blasting the United States government for undermining the country’s “already ancient cybersecurity and cyberdefense systems.” It takes only four short paragraphs for McAfee to start talking about Nazis and Hitler. Two paragraphs later—not counting blockquotes—McAfee proclaims that by pressing Apple to “back door” (his words) the iPhone and bypass or defeat the mechanisms keeping its data secure, the government is seeking to bring about the end of the world (as we know it). This is heavy stuff. Read 8 remaining paragraphs | Comments

Remains at a Swedish fort tell a story of bloody Iron Age warfare

A Roman coin found at the site of Sandby Borg, whose inhabitants probably included a number of unemployed Roman soldiers. (credit: Max Jahrehorn Oxides) On Öland, an icy island off the coast of Sweden, archaeologists have unearthed the remains of a 1,500-year-old fort whose inhabitants were brutalized in such an extreme way that legends about it persist to this day. As researchers piece together the fort’s final days, it sounds like they’re telling a horror story. Possibly hundreds of people sheltering behind the fort’s defenses were executed and abandoned, their bodies left to rot in place without burial. Their wounds were indicative of execution. And some of their mouths were stuffed with goat and sheep teeth, possibly a dark reference to the Roman tradition of burying warriors with coins in their mouths. None of their considerable wealth was looted, which is highly unusual. Researchers have found barely hidden valuables in every house they’ve excavated. Even the livestock was left behind after the slaughter, locked up to die of starvation. This is even more bizarre than the lack of looting. On an island with scarce resources, it would have been considered a waste for victors (or neighbors) to leave healthy horses and sheep behind after battle. Read 10 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Remains at a Swedish fort tell a story of bloody Iron Age warfare

Chrome OS distro for regular PCs can now dual-boot with Windows

Enlarge / Dell’s old Latitude E6410 becomes a modern Chromebook. (credit: Andrew Cunningham) A few months ago, we wrote about CloudReady , a version of the open source Chromium OS from Neverware that can transform older Windows PCs into what are essentially Chromebooks (give or take a couple of media codecs and other features). Neverware takes the Chromium OS code provided by Google and does all the hard work of testing and maintaining driver compatibility and providing updates, the same things that Google handles for actual Chromebooks. The OS is aimed at schools that either want to move to Chromebooks but can’t afford the cost of all-new hardware or schools that have already begun a transition to Chromebooks but want to repurpose old hardware they already have. Today, Neverware announced a new version of CloudReady aimed at schools and individuals who want to try the software on their PCs without losing the capability to run Windows. CloudReady version 45.3 can be installed on any system with an existing UEFI-mode installation of Windows 7, 8, or 10 and 32GB of free disk space. You can find detailed installation directions on Neverware’s site. The UEFI requirement means that the list of PCs that support dual-booting is much shorter than the normal CloudReady support list, so this won’t be of much use to people with older BIOS-based PCs and Windows installations. But if you happen to have a device on the list, and you want to give the software a spin, you can download the free version from Neverware’s site. The fully featured version that supports Google’s Chrome OS management console costs $59 per machine for an unlimited license or $25 for a one-year license. Read on Ars Technica | Comments

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Chrome OS distro for regular PCs can now dual-boot with Windows

Warning: Bug in Adobe Creative Cloud deletes Mac user data without warning

Enlarge (credit: Backblaze) Adobe Systems has stopped distributing a recently issued update to its Creative Cloud graphics service amid reports a Mac version can delete important user data without warning or permission. The deletions happen whenever Mac users log in to the Adobe service after the update has been installed, according to officials from Backblaze , a data backup service whose users are being disproportionately inconvenienced by the bug. Upon sign in, a script activated by Creative Cloud deletes the contents in the alphabetically first folder in a Mac’s root directory. Backblaze users are being especially hit by the bug because the backup service relies on data stored in a hidden root folder called .bzvol. Because the folder is the alphabetically top-most hidden folder at the root of so many users’ drives, they are affected more than users of many other software packages. “This caused a lot of our customers to freak out,” Backblaze Marketing Manager Yev Pusin wrote in an e-mail. “The reason we saw a huge uptick from our customers is because Backblaze’s .bzvol is higher up the alphabet. We tested it again by creating a hidden file with an ‘.a’ name, and the files inside were removed as well.” Read 5 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Warning: Bug in Adobe Creative Cloud deletes Mac user data without warning

McDonald’s kale salad has more fat and calories than a double Big Mac

(credit: Tim Deering/Flickr ) In an effort to offer healthier menu items, McDonald’s has unveiled a new salad with a “nutrient-rich lettuce blend with baby kale,” shaved parmesan, and chicken (grilled or fried). Like many fast-food salads, it may seem like a healthy option at first, but it’s not. The salad, when paired with the restaurant’s Asiago Caesar Dressing, packs more fat, calories, and salt than a double Big Mac—that’s a sandwich with four beef patties. (credit: McDonald’s ) While the nutrition check on a McDonald’s item may not come as a shock, the unhealthy salad option falls into a bigger trend of restaurant meals—fast food or not, eating out is hard on your waistline and health. (credit: McDonald’s ) In one recent study, researchers found that 92 percent of large-chain, local-chain, and mom-and-pop restaurants served meals that exceeded the calorie intake for a healthy meal . The study included 364 meals from restaurants in three cities: Boston, San Francisco, and Little Rock, Arkansas. The meals covered American, Chinese, Greek, Indian, Italian, Japanese, Mexican, Thai, and Vietnamese-style cuisine. Read 4 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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McDonald’s kale salad has more fat and calories than a double Big Mac

Yahoo sued over employee rankings, anti-male discrimination

(credit: Clever Cupcakes ) A new lawsuit (PDF) filed against flailing tech giant Yahoo claims that company managers governing the “Media Org” were biased against men. It also claims that the company’s Quarterly Performance Review (QPR) process favored female employees and that the company engaged in mass layoffs without proper warnings. Gregory Anderson was editorial director of Yahoo’s Autos, Homes, Shopping, Small Business, and Travel sections until he was terminated in 2014. In his complaint, Anderson says that between 2012 and 2015, Yahoo reduced its work force by more than 30 percent to fewer than 11,000 employees. That constitutes a mass-layoff, which requires 60-day notice under state and federal law, he says. Read 13 remaining paragraphs | Comments

Oracle deprecates the Java browser plugin, prepares for its demise

The much-maligned Java browser plugin, source of so many security flaws over the years, is to be killed off by Oracle. It will not be mourned. Oracle, which acquired Java as part of its 2010 purchase of Sun Microsystems, has announced that the plugin will be deprecated in the next release of Java, version 9, which is currently available as an early access beta. A future release will remove it entirely. Of course, Oracle’s move is arguably a day late and a dollar short. Chrome started deprecating browser plugins last April , with Firefox announcing similar plans in October . Microsoft’s new Edge browser also lacks any support for plugins. Taken together, it doesn’t really matter much what Oracle does: even if the company continued developing and supporting its plugin, the browser vendors themselves were making it an irrelevance. Only Internet Explorer 11, itself a legacy browser that’s receiving only security fixes, is set to offer any continued plugin support. Read 1 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Oracle deprecates the Java browser plugin, prepares for its demise

City cops in Disneyland’s backyard have had “stingray on steroids” for years

(credit: NoHoDamon ) New documents released ( PDF ) on Wednesday by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of California show that for the last several years, police in the city of Anaheim, California—home of Disneyland—have been using an invasive cell phone surveillance device, known as a “dirtbox.” The ACLU obtained the 464 pages of documents recently after it sued the Anaheim Police Department (APD) last year over the agency’s failure to respond to its public records request concerning such surveillance-related documents. The DRTBox has been described by one Chicago privacy activist as a “stingray on steroids,” referring to the controversial cell-site simulator that spoofs cell towers to locate phones and intercept calls and texts . Read 16 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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City cops in Disneyland’s backyard have had “stingray on steroids” for years

VMware Fusion, Workstation team culled in company restructure

(credit: Ferran Rodenas ) Members of VMware’s “Hosted UI” team—the developers responsible for the virtualization company’s Workstation and Fusion desktop products—were apparently laid off on Monday as part of a restructuring of the company that was announced yesterday. The developers were just a part of a larger layoff as the company moved to cut costs and brought aboard a new chief financial officer. “VMware… announced a restructuring and realignment of approximately 800 roles,” a company spokesperson said in a press release Monday, “and plans to take a GAAP charge estimated to be between $55 million and $65 million related to this action over the course of the first half of 2016. The company plans to reinvest the associated savings in field, technical and support resources associated with growth products.” In a blog post , Christian Hammond , a former member of the Hosted UI team, reported the layoff, along with concerns about the future of the “award winning and profitable” desktop virtualization products. “VMware lost a lot of amazing people, and will be feeling that for some time to come, once they realize what they’ve done,” Hammond wrote. “It’s a shame. As for our team, well, I think everyone will do just fine. Some of the best companies in the Silicon Valley are full of ex-VMware members, many former Hosted UI, who would probably welcome the chance to work with their teammates again.” Read 3 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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VMware Fusion, Workstation team culled in company restructure

Verizon FiOS default speed now 50Mbps—double FCC’s broadband definition

(credit: bluepoint951 ) Despite claiming that the government’s definition of “broadband” shouldn’t have been increased to 25Mbps,Verizon is now phasing out its 25Mbps fiber service and making 50Mbps the default minimum. A year ago, the Federal Communications Commission voted to boost the definition of broadband from 4Mbps downstream/1Mbps upstream to 25Mbps/3Mbps. The definition affects policy decisions and the FCC’s annual assessment of whether broadband is being deployed to all Americans quickly enough. Verizon unsuccessfully lobbied the FCC to keep the old definition, saying that “a higher benchmark would serve no purpose in accurately assessing the availability of broadband.” Verizon still offers speeds as low as 512kbps downloads and 384kbps uploads in areas where it hasn’t upgraded copper DSL lines to fiber. Verizon DSL goes up to 15Mbps/1Mbps, if you’re close enough to Verizon Internet facilities. Mayors in 14 East Coast cities including New York City recently criticized Verizon for leaving many customers with copper only. Read 8 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Verizon FiOS default speed now 50Mbps—double FCC’s broadband definition