Tag: vanity-fair

How an accountant created an entire RPG inside an Excel spreadsheet

A communique from the emperor, above, expresses interest at my formidable skill in killing bunnies and koalas with rocks. Sometimes it’s not always easy (or possible) to install your favorite games on your work computer. Sometimes, some Solitaire or maybe a little collaborative Bomberman is as much as you can get away with when you can’t install anything downloaded from the Internet. And you’d better make sure whatever you’re playing actually looks like work to any nearby screen snoopers around the office. Throughout a few months ending this past February, Cary Walkin created the perfect solution to this problem: an entire RPG made of a spreadsheet and many macros. The game, called  Arena.Xlsm , is a turn-based RPG encompassed entirely in an Excel file. Users can download that and use it to progress through levels, collect items, and battle enemies and bosses with melee and ranged attacks as well as spells. Read 8 remaining paragraphs | Comments

Visit site:
How an accountant created an entire RPG inside an Excel spreadsheet

New security protection, fixes for 39 exploitable bugs coming to Java

A dialog box presented by Java when it encounters an application that isn’t signed by a digital certificate. Java.com Oracle plans to release an update for the widely exploited Java browser plugin. The update fixes 39 critical vulnerabilities and introduces changes designed to make it harder to carry out drive-by attacks on end-user computers. The update scheduled for Tuesday comes as the security of Java is reaching near-crisis levels. Throughout the past year, a series of attacks hosted on popular websites has been used to surreptitiously install malware on unwitting users’ machines. The security flaws have been used to infect employees of Facebook and Apple in targeted attacks intended to penetrate those companies. The vulnerabilities have also been exploited to hijack computers of home and business users. More than once, attackers have exploited one previously undocumented bug within days or weeks of patching a previous “zero-day,” as such vulnerabilities are known, creating a string of attacks on the latest version of the widely used plugin. In all, Java 7 Update 21 will fix at least 42 security bugs, Oracle said in a pre-release announcement . The post went on to say that “39 of those vulnerabilities may be remotely exploitable without authentication, i.e., may be exploited over a network without the need for a username and password.” The advisory didn’t specify or describe the holes that will be patched. Security Exploration, a Poland-based security company that has discovered dozens of “security issues” in Java, has a running list of them here . Read 5 remaining paragraphs | Comments

Follow this link:
New security protection, fixes for 39 exploitable bugs coming to Java

A beginner’s guide to building botnets—with little assembly required

Original photo by Michael Kappel / Remixed by Aurich Lawson Have a plan to steal millions from banks and their customers but can’t write a line of code? Want to get rich quick off advertising click fraud but “quick” doesn’t include time to learn how to do it? No problem. Everything you need to start a life of cybercrime is just a few clicks (and many more dollars) away. Building successful malware is an expensive business. It involves putting together teams of developers, coordinating an army of fraudsters to convert ill-gotten gains to hard currency without pointing a digital arrow right back to you. So the biggest names in financial botnets—Zeus, Carberp, Citadel, and SpyEye, to name a few—have all at one point or another decided to shift gears from fraud rings to crimeware vendors, selling their wares to whoever can afford them. In the process, these big botnet platforms have created a whole ecosystem of software and services in an underground market catering to criminals without the skills to build it themselves. As a result, the tools and techniques used by last years’ big professional bank fraud operations, such as the ” Operation High Roller ” botnet that netted over $70 million last summer, are available off-the-shelf on the Internet. They even come with full technical support to help you get up and running. Read 63 remaining paragraphs | Comments

Read this article:
A beginner’s guide to building botnets—with little assembly required

Apple says VPN changes coming in iOS thanks to VirnetX verdict

Apple has been forced to change how iOS devices use VPN following a $368.2 million patent verdict in favor of patent and research firm VirnetX. The company wrote about the changes in a support document posted to its website on Thursday (hat tip to AppleInsider ), saying the behavior of VPN On Demand would be different from expected starting with iOS 6.1, and the changes would come in an update that will be released this April. “Due to a lawsuit by VirnetX, Apple will be changing the behavior of VPN On Demand for iOS devices using iOS 6.1 and later,” Apple wrote. “This change will be distributed in an update later this month.” The changes are relatively minor—devices with VPN On Demand configured to “always” will instead behave as if they’re set up to “establish [a connection] if needed.” Apple says the device in question will then only establish a new VPN On Demand connection if it’s not able to resolve the DNS of the host it wants to reach (these settings can currently be found within Settings > General > VPN). Read 3 remaining paragraphs | Comments

Continued here:
Apple says VPN changes coming in iOS thanks to VirnetX verdict

Report: Troubled Doom 4 being retargeted for next-generation systems

Nearly five years after it was officially announced and nine years after the release of Doom 3 , we’ve heard precious little about the development of Id Software’s Doom 4 . It seems that silence has masked a troubled development cycle that has been restarted at least once and is currently not all that close to being finished. Kotaku talked to a number of unnamed sources “with connections to the Id Software-developed game” and lays out a tale of mismanaged resources and distractions. Chief among these distractions was Rage , the 2011 release that developer Id thought would put it back on top of the first-person shooter heap. When that game was  savaged by harsh reviews and low sales, Id reportedly halted plans for DLC and a sequel and refocused the entire company on Doom 4 , which had largely languished during the work on Rage . “I kinda think maybe the studio heads were so distracted on shipping Rage that they were blind to the happenings of Doom , and the black hole of mediocrity [the team] was swirling around,” one source told Kotaku. Read 2 remaining paragraphs | Comments

See the original post:
Report: Troubled Doom 4 being retargeted for next-generation systems

Solid electrolyte may end the catastrophic failures of lithium batteries

Batteries like this one with liquid electrolytes may eventually get a run for their money. pinkyracer Lithium batteries have become a very popular technology, powering everything from cell phones to cars. But that doesn’t mean the technology is without its problems; lithium batteries have been implicated in some critical technological snafus, from exploding laptops to grounded airplanes . Most of these problems can be traced back to the electrolyte, a liquid that helps ions carry charges within the battery. Liquid electrolytes can leak, burn, and distort the internal structure of the battery, swelling it in ways that can lead to a catastrophic failure. The solution, of course, would be to get rid of the liquids. But ions don’t tend to move as easily through solids, which creates another set of problems. Now, researchers have formulated a solid in which lithium ions can move about five times faster than any previously described substance. Better yet, the solid—a close chemical relative of styrofoam—helps provide structural stability to the battery. Don’t expect to see a styrofoam battery in your next cellphone though, as the material needs to be heated to 60°C in order to work. The problem with liquid electrolytes has to do with the fact that, during recharging, lithium ions end up forming deposits of metal inside the battery. These create risks of short circuits (the problem that grounded Boeing’s Dreamliner 787) and can damage the battery’s structure, causing leaks and a fire risk. Solid electrodes get around this because the lithium ions will only come out of the electrolyte at specific locations within the solid, and can’t form the large metal deposits that cause all of the problems. Read 6 remaining paragraphs | Comments

Excerpt from:
Solid electrolyte may end the catastrophic failures of lithium batteries

Internet Explorer 10 almost doubles its users thanks to Windows 7 release

Net Marketshare There were no big changes in the browser landscape in March. The top three held their positions, and Windows 8 continues to grow at a sluggish pace. The biggest change? Internet Explorer 10 almost doubled its market share, thanks to the late February release of its Windows 7 version. Net Marketshare Net Marketshare On the desktop, Internet Explorer saw no meaningful change, at 55.83 percent for the month compared to 55.82 last month. Firefox and Chrome both edged up a little, gaining 0.09 and 0.18 points for shares of 20.21 and 16.45 percent respectively. Safari and Opera both nudged downward, losing 0.11 and 0.08 points to drop to 5.31 and 1.74 percent respectively. Net Marketshare Net Marketshare In the mobile space, Safari bounced back, up 6.38 points to 61.79 percent. After a surprising high last month, Opera Mini fell 4.32 points to 8.4 percent. Symbian likewise dropped from an unusual high, losing about two thirds of its February usage. It fell 0.83 points to 0.54 percent. Android Browser was down, losing 0.96 points for a share of 21.86 percent. Read 6 remaining paragraphs | Comments

View article:
Internet Explorer 10 almost doubles its users thanks to Windows 7 release

Bullseye from 1,000 yards: Shooting the $17,000 Linux-powered rifle

1000 yards is a long, long way away. Steven Michael My photographer, Steve, squints through a computerized scope squatting atop a big hunting rifle. We’re outdoors at a range just north of Austin, Texas, and the wind is blowing like crazy—enough so that we’re having to dial in more and more wind adjustment on the rifle’s computer. The spotter and I monitor Steve’s sight through an iPad linked to the rifle via Wi-Fi, and we can see exactly what he’s seeing through the scope. Steve lines up on his target downrange—a gently swinging metal plate with a fluorescent orange circle painted at its center—and depresses a button to illuminate it with the rifle’s laser. “Good tag?” he asks, softly. “Good tag,” replies the spotter, watching on the iPad. He leaves the device in my hands and looks through a conventional high-powered spotting scope at the target Steve has selected. The wind stops momentarily. “Send it,” he calls out. Read 64 remaining paragraphs | Comments

Visit site:
Bullseye from 1,000 yards: Shooting the $17,000 Linux-powered rifle

A flood of prank iMessage texts shows the app can be crashed easily

Human can’t be blamed for thinking this show of affection comes off as a little clingy. Adam Bell/The Next Web On Friday, The Next Web reported that a group of iOS developers were experiencing rapid-fire texts over iMessage, causing bothersome and repetitious messages and notifications. While the prank wasn’t serious on the level of, say, a full-scale DDoS of a bank website , and concern over spam via iMessage is not new either, the unwanted messages were fresh proof of some problems with the iMessage app, specifically in the lack of good spam-detection in iMessage, and in the lack of a way for users to block a message sender. One of the recipients of the spam, an iOS jailbreak tool and app developer who goes by the moniker iH8sn0w , informed The Next Web of the prank when it happened. iH8sn0w told Ars over Twitter that he simply disabled the handle that was getting flooded. “It’s just a bunch of kids bored playing with AppleScript,” he said. Another app and extension developer for iOS devices, Grant Paul, reported on Twitter that he was getting spammed on iMessage with very large messages, causing his iMessage app to crash. “The iMessage spammer has now completely locked me out of my iOS Messages app, by sending long strings of Unicode chars. Definitely a DoS,” Paul wrote on his Twitter account . Ars reached out to Paul but has not yet heard back from him. Read 3 remaining paragraphs | Comments

Visit site:
A flood of prank iMessage texts shows the app can be crashed easily

Frustrated with iCloud, Apple’s developer community speaks up en masse

Aurich Lawson Apple’s iCloud is marketed to us end users as a convenient and centralized way to manage data on all of our Macs and iOS devices: sync contacts and bookmarks, re-download music and apps, back up iOS devices, and sync documents and data for third-party apps as MobileMe did. The last item, syncing of documents and data, is one of the least glossy features of iCloud, but it is one of the most important, and it should be among the most straightforward. Right? Perhaps not. Almost a year after Apple shut down MobileMe for good in favor of iCloud , third-party developers have begun to speak out about the difficulty involved in working with Apple’s cloud service. A piece published at The Verge this week highlights many of those complaints, with quotes coming from well-known developers and anonymous sources alike about the challenges faced by the developer community. From data loss and corruption to unexpected Apple ID use cases, developers have seen it all—but are stymied by the persistence of problems that prevent them from shipping products with working iCloud support. What’s the big problem, exactly? According to Bare Bones Software’s Rich Siegel, there are a number of moving parts to iCloud that all affect how things come out on the other end. Read 10 remaining paragraphs | Comments

See the original post:
Frustrated with iCloud, Apple’s developer community speaks up en masse