Tag: score2

Facebook Messenger Hits 1B Monthly Active Users, Accounts For 10 Percent Of All VoIP Calls

Speaking of instant messaging and VoIP call apps, Facebook announced on Wednesday that Facebook Messenger has hit the 1 billion monthly active users milestone. The company adds that Messenger is just more than a text messenger — in addition to the ambitious bot gamble, a digital assistant, and the ability to send money to friends — Messenger now accounts for 10 percent of all VoIP calls made globally. Messenger’s tremendous growth also underscores Facebook’s mammoth capture of the world. The social network is used by more than 1.6 billion people actively every month. WhatsApp, the chat client it owns, is also used by more than one billion people. TechCrunch has a brilliant story on the growth of Messenger from the scratch. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Facebook Messenger Hits 1B Monthly Active Users, Accounts For 10 Percent Of All VoIP Calls

Intel ChromeBooks Can Now Run Wine and Steam

“With Google Play and Android app support hitting Chromebooks, it’s now possible to run Windows applications/games on Chromebooks via CrossOver For Android, ” reports Phoronix. Slashdot reader grungy writes: The first Intel ChromeBooks have access to the Play Store now, and the Android version of Wine apparently runs on them… Pictures show the Steam client running, and a clip of a D3D game. Of course, the Play Store is only available on the ChromeOS developer channel so far, but that should change later this year. CrossOver for Android also hasn’t been officially released, but Thursday CodeWeavers’ president blogged excitedly that “we are staring at a Leprechaun riding on the back of a Unicorn while taking a picture of a UFO. We are running CrossOver through Android on a ChromeBook running a Windows based game launched from the Steam client. THIS HAS NEVER BEEN DONE BEFORE…EVER!!!” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Intel ChromeBooks Can Now Run Wine and Steam

Encrypted DNA Storage Investigated by DOE Researchers

Biological engineers at a Department of Energy lab “are experimenting with encrypted DNA storage for archival applications.” Slashdot reader ancientribe shares an article from Dark Reading: Using this method, the researchers could theoretically store 2.2 petabytes of information in one gram of DNA. That’s 200 times the printed material at the Library of Congress… Instead of needing a 15, 000 square-foot building to store 35, 000 boxes of inactive records and archival documents, Sandia National Laboratories can potentially store information on much less paper, in powder form, in test tubes or petri dishes, or even as a bacterial cell… “Hard drives fail and very often the data can’t be recovered, ” explains Bachand. “With DNA, it’s possible to recover strands that are 10, 000 to 20, 000 years old… even if someone sneezes and the powder is lost, it’s possible to recover all the information by just recovering one DNA molecule.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Encrypted DNA Storage Investigated by DOE Researchers

Ubuntu Linux Forums Hacked — IP Address, Username, Email of 2M Accounts Compromised

Canonical announced on Friday that Ubuntu forums have been hacked. The company adds that data such as IP address, username, and email address of over two million users have been compromised. BetaNews reports: Keep in mind, this does not mean that the operating system has experienced a vulnerability or weakness. The only thing affected are the online forums that people use to discuss the OS. Still, such a hack is embarrassing as it happened due to Canonical’s failure to install a patch.In a blog post, Jane Silber, Chief Executive Officer, Canonical said, “after some initial investigation, we were able to confirm there had been an exposure of data and shut down the Forums as a precautionary measure. Deeper investigation revealed that there was a known SQL injection vulnerability in the Forumrunner add-on in the Forums which had not yet been patched.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Ubuntu Linux Forums Hacked — IP Address, Username, Email of 2M Accounts Compromised

Linux Mint 18 ‘Sarah’ Released, Supports Generic GTK X-Apps

Slashdot reader Type44Q writes: The Linux Mint team announced the immediate availability of their latest release, Mint 18 “Sarah, ” in Cinnamon and MATE flavors. These follow on the heels of their respective beta versions, which have been out for nearly a month. “Linux Mint 18 is a long-term support release which will be supported until 2021, ” the team announces on MATE’s “new features” page, adding they’ve improved their update manager, included support for the Debian syntax of “apt”, and are working on the “X-Apps” project to “produce generic applications for traditional GTK desktop environments…to replace applications which no longer integrate properly outside of a particular environment.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Linux Mint 18 ‘Sarah’ Released, Supports Generic GTK X-Apps

Physicists Confirm a Pear-Shaped Nucleus, and It Could Ruin Time Travel Forever

An anonymous reader writes from a report via ScienceAlert: Physicists have confirmed the existence of pear-shaped nuclei, which challenges the fundamental theories of physics that explain our Universe. “We’ve found these nuclei literally point towards a direction in space. This relates to a direction in time, providing there’s a well-defined direction in time and we will always travel from past to present, ” Marcus Scheck from the University of the West of Scotland told Kenneth MacDonald at BBC News. Until recently, it was generally accepted that nuclei of atoms could only be one of three shapes: spherical, discus, or rugby ball. The first discovery of a pear-shaped nucleus was back in 2013, when physicists at CERN discovered isotope Radium-224. Now, that find has been confirmed by a second study, which shows that the nucleus of the isotope Barium-144 is also asymmetrical and pear-shaped. In regard to time travel, Scheck says that this uneven distribution of mass and charge caused Barium-144’s nucleus to “point” in a certain direction in spacetime, and this bias could explain why time seems to only want to go from past to present, and not backwards, even if the laws of physics don’t care which way it goes. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Physicists Confirm a Pear-Shaped Nucleus, and It Could Ruin Time Travel Forever

A New ‘Quake’ Episode Appears 20 Years Later

An anonymous reader quotes this report from Motherboard: The months leading up to this year’s phenomenal reboot of Doom were stuffed with all kinds of fun developments surrounding the original series, whether it was mods that let you play as Duke Nukem or whole new levels from famed designer John Romero. There’s now a new Quake game in the works, and already it appears to be enjoying a similar renaissance. Yesterday MachineGames, the studio behind Wolfenstein: The New Order, released an entirely new episode for the original Quake in celebration of its 20-year anniversary, and you can play it entirely for free. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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A New ‘Quake’ Episode Appears 20 Years Later

South Australia Refuses To Stop Using An Expired, MS-DOS-Based Health Software

jaa101 writes: The Australian state of South Australia is being sued for refusing to stop using CHIRON, an MS-DOS-based software from the ’90s that stores patient records. Their license expired in March of 2015, but they claim it would be risky to stop using it. CHIRON’s vendor, Working Systems, says SA Health has been the only user of CHIRON since 2008 when they declined to migrate to the successor product MasterCare ePAS. SA Health has 64 sites across South Australia — all of which are apparently still using the MS-DOS-based health software from the 1990s. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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South Australia Refuses To Stop Using An Expired, MS-DOS-Based Health Software

GitHub Presses Big Red Password Reset Button After Third-Party Breach

John Leyden, writing for The Register: GitHub has reset the passwords of users targeted in an attack this week that relied on using stolen credentials from a breach at a third-party site. The software repository itself has not suffered a breach. Hackers behind the assault were trying to break into the accounts of users who had inadvisedly used the same login credentials on an unnamed site that had suffered a breach, as a statement by GitHub explains. GitHub said it had reset the passwords on all affected accounts before beginning the process of notifying those affected. “We encourage all users to practise good password hygiene and enable two-factor authentication to protect your account, ” GitHub sensibly advised. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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GitHub Presses Big Red Password Reset Button After Third-Party Breach

Access To Thousands Of Compromised Government Servers Selling For $6 On Black Market

An anonymous reader writes: Researchers have uncovered an underground market selling information of over 70, 000 compromised servers. Russia-based Kaspersky Lab revealed that the online forum, named xDedic, seems to be operated by a Russian-speaking organisation and allows hackers to pay for undetectable access to a wide range of servers, including those owned by government, corporate and academic groups in more than 170 countries. Access to a compromised server can be bought for as little as $6. This kit comes with relevant tools to instruct on launching denial-of-service attacks and spam campaigns on the targeted network, as well as allowing criminals to illegally produce bitcoin and breach online systems, such as retail payment platforms. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Access To Thousands Of Compromised Government Servers Selling For $6 On Black Market