microsoft – Page 3 – Tech Today w/ Ken May

Ubuntu 17.10 Artful Aardvark Released

Canonical has made available the download links for Ubuntu 17.10 “Artful Aardvark”. It comes with a range of new features, changes, and improvements including GNOME as the default desktop, Wayland display server by default, Optional X.org server session, Mesa 17.2 or Mesa 17.3, Linux kernel 4.13 or kernel 4.14, new Subiquity server installer, improved hardware support, new Ubuntu Server installer, switch to libinput, an always visible dock using Dash to Dock GNOME Shell extension, and Bluetooth improvements with a new BlueZ among others. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Ubuntu 17.10 Artful Aardvark Released

Surface Book 2: More cores, more GPU, and more screen

Just over two years ago, Microsoft unveiled its Surface Book hybrid laptop : a tablet with a detachable hinged keyboard base. It was a compelling concept , with Microsoft pulling off some clever tricks. The base contained a battery, boosting the life of the tablet portion substantially, and could optionally contain a discrete GPU, too. A little under a year ago, the Surface Book was partially refreshed: a new base was offered with a bigger battery and a faster GPU. The tablet portion, however, was left unchanged. Today, Microsoft unveiled not only a full refresh of the system—both tablet and base are being updated—but a whole new version of the machine. Surface Book 2 (Microsoft is using numerical version number suffixes here, even after abandoning the practice with the Surface Pro ) will come in two sizes. There’s a 13-inch model, same as before, but this is now paired with a 15-inch version. The broad concept of Surface Book remains the same. The screen half of the “laptop” is in fact a tablet computer, containing the processor, memory, mass storage, and a battery; the “keyboard” half is a larger battery, some expansion ports, and, optionally, a discrete GPU. The systems look essentially the same as the old versions, too, with the 15-inch version looking for all intents and purposes like a scaled-up version of the 13-inch one. Read 15 remaining paragraphs | Comments

Microsoft Has Already Fixed the Wi-Fi Attack Vulnerability; Android Will Be Patched Within Weeks

Microsoft says it has already fixed the problem for customers running supported versions of Windows. From a report: “We have released a security update to address this issue, ” says a Microsoft spokesperson in a statement to The Verge. “Customers who apply the update, or have automatic updates enabled, will be protected. We continue to encourage customers to turn on automatic updates to help ensure they are protected.” Microsoft is planning to publish details of the update later today. While it looks like Android and Linux devices are affected by the worst part of the vulnerabilities, allowing attackers to manipulate websites, Google has promised a fix for affected devices “in the coming weeks.” Google’s own Pixel devices will be the first to receive fixes with security patch level of November 6, 2017, but most other handsets are still well behind even the latest updates. Security researchers claim 41 percent of Android devices are vulnerable to an “exceptionally devastating” variant of the Wi-Fi attack that involves manipulating traffic, and it will take time to patch older devices. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Microsoft Has Already Fixed the Wi-Fi Attack Vulnerability; Android Will Be Patched Within Weeks

Outlook for desktops will behave a lot like the mobile app

Outlook on computers can be overwhelming, to put it gently. The interface is loaded with buttons you probably aren’t using, and it generally isn’t as intuitive or fluid as the mobile and web versions . Thankfully, Microsoft knows this — and it’s planning a revamp that could give the email and calendar app a breath of fresh air. Microsoft recently previewed Outlook redesigns for Mac and Windows that are nearly as clean and intuitive as their mobile counterparts. You can still have a customizable “ribbon” at the top, but it’s stripped down and less intimidating to newcomers. The navigation panel (on the left) also takes its cues from Outlook’s mobile apps, making it much easier to switch folders or entire accounts. Mac users may notice the difference the most. This time around, Microsoft is aiming for an “authentically Mac” look instead of shoehorning the Windows interface into a Mac app. This won’t matter much if you’re interested in features above all else, but it could help you adjust if you’re switching from Apple Mail or another Mac-native email program. There’s no mention of when the new Outlook will hit your PC, although it wouldn’t be surprising if Microsoft rolls this into Office 2019’s release next year. Whenever it arrives, it’ll reflect how much Microsoft’s software priorities have changed in the past few years. Where Outlook’s desktop version has largely focused on business users circulating memos and scheduling meetings, it now has to court home users who may just be looking for an app similar to what they have on their phones. Microsoft’s challenge will be to please these relative newcomers without alienating the corporate crowd. Via: MSPowerUser , The Verge Source: Microsoft Ignite (YouTube)

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Outlook for desktops will behave a lot like the mobile app

According To Star Trek: Discovery, Starfleet Still Runs Microsoft Windows

AmiMoJo shares a report from The Verge: The third episode of Star Trek: Discovery aired this week, and at one point in the episode, Sonequa Martin-Green’s Michael Burnham is tasked with reconciling two suites of code. In the show, Burnham claims the code is confusing because it deals with quantum astrophysics, biochemistry, and gene expression. And while the episode later reveals that it’s related to the USS Discovery’s experimental new mycelial network transportation system, Twitter user Rob Graham noted the code itself is a little more pedestrian in nature. More specifically, it seems to be decompiled code for the infamous Stuxnet virus, developed by the United States to attack Iranian computers running Windows. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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According To Star Trek: Discovery, Starfleet Still Runs Microsoft Windows

Critical EFI Code in Millions of Macs Isn’t Getting Apple’s Updates

Andy Greenberg, writing for Wired:At today’s Ekoparty security conference, security firm Duo plans to present research on how it delved into the guts of tens of thousands of computers to measure the real-world state of Apple’s so-called extensible firmware interface, or EFI. This is the firmware that runs before your PC’s operating system boots and has the potential to corrupt practically everything else that happens on your machine. Duo found that even Macs with perfectly updated operating systems often have much older EFI code, due to either Apple’s neglecting to push out EFI updates to those machines or failing to warn users when their firmware update hits a technical glitch and silently fails. For certain models of Apple laptops and desktop computers, close to a third or half of machines have EFI versions that haven’t kept pace with their operating system system updates. And for many models, Apple hasn’t released new firmware updates at all, leaving a subset of Apple machines vulnerable to known years-old EFI attacks that could gain deep and persistent control of a victim’s machine. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Critical EFI Code in Millions of Macs Isn’t Getting Apple’s Updates

Microsoft and Facebook’s massive undersea data cable is complete

Last year, we reported that Microsoft and Facebook were teaming up to build a massive undersea cable that would cross the Atlantic , connecting Virginia Beach to the northern city of Bilbao in Spain. Last week, Microsoft announced that the cable, called Marea, is complete. Marea, which means “tide” in Spanish, lies over 17, 000 feet below the Atlantic Ocean’s surface and is around 4, 000 miles long. It weighs 10.25 million pounds. The data rates (which let’s face it, that’s what we’re all really interested in) are equally staggering: Marea can transmit at a rate of 160 TB/second. And it was finished in less than two years. What’s really interesting about Marea, though, is that it has an open design. This means that Microsoft and Facebook are trying to make the cable as future proof as possible. It can evolve as technology changes and demands increase for more data and higher speeds. Its flexibility means that upgrading the cable and its equipment to be compatible with newer technology will be easier. If you’re interested in learning more about Marea, you can watch the recorded livestream of a celebration of the cable that happened last Friday. It’s nice to see tech companies working together, and on big projects that will help them meet future demands for Internet usage. Source: Microsoft

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Microsoft and Facebook’s massive undersea data cable is complete

Popular Chrome Extension Embedded A CPU-Draining Cryptocurrency Miner

An anonymous reader writes: SafeBrowse, a Chrome extension with more than 140, 000 users, contains an embedded JavaScript library in the extension’s code that mines for the Monero cryptocurrency using users’ computers and without getting their consent. The additional code drives CPU usage through the roof, making users’ computers sluggish and hard to use. Looking at the SafeBrowse extension’s source code, anyone can easily spot the embedded Coinhive JavaScript Miner, an in-browser implementation of the CryptoNight mining algorithm used by CryptoNote-based currencies, such as Monero, Dashcoin, DarkNetCoin, and others. This is the same technology that The Pirate Bay experimented with as an alternative to showing ads on its site. The extension’s author claims he was “hacked” and the code added without his knowledge. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Popular Chrome Extension Embedded A CPU-Draining Cryptocurrency Miner

Python’s Official Repository Included 10 ‘Malicious’ Typo-Squatting Modules

An anonymous reader quotes BleepingComputer: The Slovak National Security Office (NBU) has identified ten malicious Python libraries uploaded on PyPI — Python Package Index — the official third-party software repository for the Python programming language. NBU experts say attackers used a technique known as typosquatting to upload Python libraries with names similar to legitimate packages — e.g.: “urlib” instead of “urllib.” The PyPI repository does not perform any types of security checks or audits when developers upload new libraries to its index, so attackers had no difficulty in uploading the modules online. Developers who mistyped the package name loaded the malicious libraries in their software’s setup scripts. “These packages contain the exact same code as their upstream package thus their functionality is the same, but the installation script, setup.py, is modified to include a malicious (but relatively benign) code, ” NBU explained. Experts say the malicious code only collected information on infected hosts, such as name and version of the fake package, the username of the user who installed the package, and the user’s computer hostname. Collected data, which looked like “Y:urllib-1.21.1 admin testmachine”, was uploaded to a Chinese IP address. NBU officials contacted PyPI administrators last week who removed the packages before officials published a security advisory on Saturday.” The advisory lays some of the blame on Python’s ‘pip’ tool, which executes arbitrary code during installations without requiring a cryptographic signature. Ars Technica also reports that another team of researchers “was able to seed PyPI with more than 20 libraries that are part of the Python standard library, ” and that group now reports they’ve already received more than 7, 400 pingbacks. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

HP Users Complain About 10-Minute Login Lag During ‘Win 10 Update’

A number of HP device owners are complaining of seeing black screens for around five to 10 minutes after entering their Windows login information. From a report: They appear to be pointing the finger of blame at Windows 10 updates released September 12 for x64-based systems. One, a quality update called KB4038788, offered a whopping 27 bullet points for general quality improvements and patches, such as an “issue that sometimes causes Windows File Explorer to stop responding and causes the system to stop working.” Another, KB4038806, was a “critical” patch for Adobe Flash Player that allowed remote code execution. Read more of this story at Slashdot.