open source – Page 6 – Tech Today w/ Ken May

Over 400 of the World’s Most Popular Websites Record Your Every Keystroke

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Motherboard: The idea of websites tracking users isn’t new, but research from Princeton University released last week indicates that online tracking is far more invasive than most users understand. In the first installment of a series titled “No Boundaries, ” three researchers from Princeton’s Center for Information Technology Policy (CITP) explain how third-party scripts that run on many of the world’s most popular websites track your every keystroke and then send that information to a third-party server. Some highly-trafficked sites run software that records every time you click and every word you type. If you go to a website, begin to fill out a form, and then abandon it, every letter you entered in is still recorded, according to the researchers’ findings. If you accidentally paste something into a form that was copied to your clipboard, it’s also recorded. These scripts, or bits of code that websites run, are called “session replay” scripts. Session replay scripts are used by companies to gain insight into how their customers are using their sites and to identify confusing webpages. But the scripts don’t just aggregate general statistics, they record and are capable of playing back individual browsing sessions. The scripts don’t run on every page, but are often placed on pages where users input sensitive information, like passwords and medical conditions. Most troubling is that the information session replay scripts collect can’t “reasonably be expected to be kept anonymous, ” according to the researchers. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

What Did 17th Century Food Taste Like?

Benjamin Breen, an assistant professor of history at UC Santa Cruz, looks at art history to figure out what people cooked in the 1600s, and wonders whether it is possible to ascertain the taste of food. From a blog post: What can we learn about how people ate in the seventeenth century? And even if we can piece together historical recipes, can we ever really know what their food tasted like? This might seem like a relatively unimportant question. For one thing, the senses of other people are always going to be, at some level, unknowable, because they are so deeply subjective. Not only can I not know what Velazquez’s fried eggs tasted like three hundred years ago, I arguably can’t know what my neighbor’s taste like. And why does the question matter, anyway? A very clear case can be made for the importance of the history of medicine and disease, or the histories of slavery, global commerce, warfare, and social change. By comparison, the taste of food doesn’t seem to have the same stature. Fried eggs don’t change the course of history. But taste does change history. Fascinating read. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Bitcoin Gold, the Latest Bitcoin Fork, Explained

Timothy B. Lee via Ars Technica explains Bitcoin Gold: A new cryptocurrency called Bitcoin Gold is now live on the Internet. It aims to correct what its backers see as a serious flaw in the design of the original Bitcoin. There are hundreds of cryptocurrencies on the Internet, and many of them are derived from Bitcoin in one way or another. But Bitcoin Gold — like Bitcoin Cash, another Bitcoin spinoff that was created in August — is different in two important ways. Bitcoin Gold is branding itself as a version of Bitcoin rather than merely new platforms derived from Bitcoin’s source code. It has also chosen to retain Bitcoin’s transaction history, which means that, if you owned bitcoins before the fork, you now own an equal amount of “gold” bitcoins. While Bitcoin Cash was designed to resolve Bitcoin’s capacity crunch with larger blocks, Bitcoin Gold aims to tackle another of Bitcoin’s perceived flaws: the increasing centralization of the mining industry that verifies and secures Bitcoin transactions. The original vision for Bitcoin was that anyone would be able to participate in Bitcoin mining with their personal PCs, earning a bit of extra cash as they helped to support the network. But as Bitcoin became more valuable, people discovered that Bitcoin mining could be done much more efficiently with custom-built application-specific integrated circuits (ASICs). As a result, Bitcoin mining became a specialized and highly concentrated industry. The leading companies in this new industry wield a disproportionate amount of power over the Bitcoin network. Bitcoin Gold aims to dethrone these mining companies by introducing an alternative mining algorithm that’s much less susceptible to ASIC-based optimization. In theory, that will allow ordinary Bitcoin Gold users to earn extra cash with their spare computing cycles, just as people could do in the early days of Bitcoin. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Bitcoin Gold, the Latest Bitcoin Fork, Explained

Amazon Is Making a ‘Lord of the Rings’ Prequel Series

Amazon is making a Lord of the Rings prequel TV series for its Amazon Instant streaming service. The show, which already carries a multi-season commitment, will “explore new storylines preceding J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Fellowship of the Ring.” TechCrunch reports: It’s possible the new series will mine the ponderous but rich Silmarillion for material, as fan fiction writers and lore aficionados have done for decades. The exploits of the Elf-Lords of old would make for a stirring epic, while many would thrill at the possibility of seeing Moria at the height of its grandeur. So much depends on the quality of the adaptation, though. Amazon has been pretty good about its Originals, but this will be an undertaking far beyond the scope of anything its studios and partners have yet attempted. Amazon is partnering with New Line Cinema, which of course was the film company behind the much-loved trilogy that began in 2001, and the Tolkien Estate, as well as HarperCollins for some reason. The deal also “includes a potential additional spin-off series, ” presumably if it’s popular enough. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Amazon Is Making a ‘Lord of the Rings’ Prequel Series

Linux 4.14 Has Been Released

diegocg quotes Kernel Newbies: Linux 4.11 has been released. This release adds support for bigger memory limits in x86 hardware (128PiB of virtual address space, 4PiB of physical address space); support for AMD Secure Memory Encryption; a new unwinder that provides better kernel traces and a smaller kernel size; support for the zstd compression algorithm has been added to Btrfs and Squashfs; support for zero-copy of data from user memory to sockets; support for Heterogeneous Memory Management that will be needed in future GPUs; better cpufreq behaviour in some corner cases; faster TBL flushing by using the PCID instruction; asynchronous non-blocking buffered reads; and many new drivers and other improvements. Phoronix has more on the changes in Linux 4.14 — and notes that its codename is still “Fearless Coyote.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Windows 10’s Version ofd AirDrop Lets You Quickly Share Files Between PCs

Microsoft is testing its “Near Share” feature of Windows 10 in the latest Insider build (17035) today, which will let Windows 10 PCs share documents or photos to PCs nearby via Bluetooth. The Verge reports: A new Near Share option will be available in the notification center, and the feature can be accessed through the main share function in Windows 10. Files will be shared wirelessly, and recipients will receive a notification when someone is trying to send a file. Microsoft’s addition comes just a day after Google unveiled its own AirDrop-like app for Android. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Windows 10’s Version ofd AirDrop Lets You Quickly Share Files Between PCs

MINIX: Intel’s Hidden In-chip Operating System

Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols, writing for ZDNet: Matthew Garrett, the well-known Linux and security developer who works for Google, explained recently that, “Intel chipsets for some years have included a Management Engine [ME], a small microprocessor that runs independently of the main CPU and operating system. Various pieces of software run on the ME, ranging from code to handle media DRM to an implementation of a TPM. AMT [Active Management Technology] is another piece of software running on the ME.” At a presentation at Embedded Linux Conference Europe, Ronald Minnich, a Google software engineer reported that systems using Intel chips that have AMT, are running MINIX. So, what’s it doing in Intel chips? A lot. These processors are running a closed-source variation of the open-source MINIX 3. We don’t know exactly what version or how it’s been modified since we don’t have the source code. In addition, thanks to Minnich and his fellow researchers’ work, MINIX is running on three separate x86 cores on modern chips. There, it’s running: TCP/IP networking stacks (4 and 6), file systems, drivers (disk, net, USB, mouse), web servers. MINIX also has access to your passwords. It can also reimage your computer’s firmware even if it’s powered off. Let me repeat that. If your computer is “off” but still plugged in, MINIX can still potentially change your computer’s fundamental settings. And, for even more fun, it “can implement self-modifying code that can persist across power cycles.” So, if an exploit happens here, even if you unplug your server in one last desperate attempt to save it, the attack will still be there waiting for you when you plug it back in. How? MINIX can do all this because it runs at a fundamentally lower level. According to Minnich, “there are big giant holes that people can drive exploits through.” He continued, “Are you scared yet? If you’re not scared yet, maybe I didn’t explain it very well, because I sure am scared.” Also read: Andrew S. Tanenbaum’s (a professor of Computer Science at Vrije Universiteit) open letter to Intel. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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MINIX: Intel’s Hidden In-chip Operating System

Hole In The Ozone Layer Smallest In 29 Years

An anonymous reader quotes the Weather Channel: The hole in the ozone layer over Antarctica is the smallest it’s been since 1988, NASA said. According to a press release, the hole in the Earth’s ozone layer is 1.3 million square miles smaller than last year and 3.3 million square miles smaller than 2015… This year, the hole grew to 7.6 million square miles. NASA and NOAA scientists said warmer temperatures and a stormier upper atmosphere helped keep damaging chemicals chlorine and bromine from eating ozone from the layer that protects the Earth’s surface from harmful ultraviolet rays… The hole that hovers over Antarctica has been slowly recovering, scientists say, due to an international ban on harmful chemicals that were previously used in refrigerants and aerosols. The hole was its largest in 2000 and measured 11.5 million square miles. Although recovery is underway, the size of the hole remains large compared to the 1980s, when the hole was first detected, NASA noted. And while there has been significant healing of the ozone layer in recent years, some scientists say full healing is a slow process and will not occur until sometime in the 22nd century, Yale Environment 360 reports. Others expect the Antarctic ozone hole to recover back to 1980 levels around 2070, NASA said. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Hole In The Ozone Layer Smallest In 29 Years

TorMoil Vulnerability Leaks Real IP Address From Tor Browser Users; Security Update Released

Catalin Cimpanu, reporting for BleepingComputer: The Tor Project has released a security update for the Tor Browser on Mac and Linux to fix a vulnerability that leaks users’ real IP addresses. The vulnerability was spotted by Filippo Cavallarin, CEO of We Are Segment, an Italian company specialized in cyber-security and ethical hacking. Cavallarin privately reported the issue — which he codenamed TorMoil — to the Tor Project last week. Tor Project developers worked with the Firefox team (Tor Browser is based on the Firefox browser) to release a fix. Today, the Tor team released version 7.0.9 to address the vulnerability. Tor Browser 7.0.9 is only available for Mac and Linux users. Tor Browser on Windows is not affected. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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TorMoil Vulnerability Leaks Real IP Address From Tor Browser Users; Security Update Released

Audacity 2.2.0 Released

Popular open-source audio editing software, Audacity, has received a significant update. The new version, dubbed Audacity 2.2.0, adds a range of features and options such as additional user interface themes, and the ability to customize themes for advanced users. It is also getting playback support for MIDI files, and better organised menus, the team wrote. You can find the complete changelog here. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Audacity 2.2.0 Released