windows – Page 3 – Tech Today w/ Ken May

San Diego Comic-Con Wins Trademark Suit Against ‘Salt Lake Comic Con’

The Deseret News reports: A jury has found that Salt Lake Comic Con founders Dan Farr and Bryan Brandenburg, along with their company, violated a trademark when they named their fan convention a “comic con.” However, the jury decided that the trademark was not willfully violated, and only awarded $20, 000 of the $12 million that San Diego Comic-Con had asked for in damages. The decision came at the end of an eight-day jury trial and three years of legal maneuvering… And with an estimated 140 other fan conventions across the country calling themselves comic cons, the impact of the decision could be felt nationwide… The Salt Lake group also has an ongoing action with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office seeking to invalidate San Diego’s “comic-con” trademark… San Diego Comic-Con, which has been holding events since 1970, has a trademark on “comic-con” with a hyphen, but was unsuccessful in its 1995 bid to trademark “comic con, ” with a space. The unhyphenated name “Comic Con International, ” as well as the event’s iconic “eye logo, ” are also protected by trademark. The event maintains that its trademarks cover the term “comic con” in all its forms… San Diego Comic-Con wanted more than $12 million in damages from Salt Lake, including over $9 million for a three-month “corrective advertising campaign” to dispel confusion… In his closing arguments, Michael Katz, an attorney for Salt Lake Comic Con, questioned the amount San Diego was seeking, noting that San Diego authorities said during trial the organization generally spends between $20, 000 and $30, 000 for a month of advertising. Slashdot reader AlanBDee writes: When I attended the Salt Lake City Comic Con I did assume it was the same organization that put on San Diego Comic-Con… But now I have to wonder how that will affect other Comic Cons around the nation? What should these comic based fan conventions be called if not Comic Con? Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Microsoft’s latest Windows 10 experiment: Running apps in tabs

When it comes to multitasking, few UI upgrades were as helpful as browser tabs. Instead of juggling dozens of windows on your computer, they let you place multiple websites in a single pane. It’s the sort of thing we take for granted today — especially if you don’t remember the pre-tab dark ages. With its latest feature in Windows 10, currently dubbed “Sets, ” Microsoft has taken some major cues from what browser makers learned years ago. Basically, it lets you group together Windows apps in tabs. That might sound simplistic, but Sets (which isn’t the final name yet) could fundamentally change the way we work in Microsoft’s OS. If you’ve seen the way the Edge browser handles tabs, you’ve already got a handle on Sets. You open a new tab within a window by clicking the plus button in the title bar. Once you’ve done that, you’ll see a landing page listing your most frequently used apps, recent documents and a search bar for local files and the web. As you’d expect, whatever you end up opening appears right alongside the original app you were using. So, if you started with a Word document, you could easily have a Powerpoint file, web pages and your Mail app sitting alongside it. It feels similar to how Chromebooks handle multitasking, an OS that has an interface almost entirely made up of browser tabs. Conceptually, Sets goes hand-in-hand with the upcoming Windows Timeline , which lets you jump backwards to continue working on past projects. While the two features were conceived separately, according to Microsoft, they could make for a powerful combination. It’s easier for the OS to tell that a collection of tabs within a single window are related to one project, which in turn makes it simpler for Timeline to get you back up and running. Additionally, Windows will also be able to open up the Set you typically use with a particular document. While Sets might seem like an obvious UI evolution for Windows, it’s still a significant move for Microsoft. For one, it marks the biggest change we’ve seen to the title bar since Windows 95. Even the drastic UI overhaul in Windows 8 didn’t affect that much. Perhaps that’s why Microsoft is clearly positioning it as an experiment. Initially, only a handful of Windows Insider participants will get access to it. The company will also perform a controlled study on how people use the feature. While Microsoft says everyone in the Insider Program will eventually have access, it’ll likely be a while before that happens. Initially, Sets will work with Universal Windows apps like Mail, Calendar and Edge. After that, the company will work on bringing simpler apps like Notepad onboard, and it’s also developing a Sets-compatible version of office. Supporting more complex apps, like Photoshop and Premiere, will take even longer. And if none of this sounds compelling, you’ll also be able to turn off Sets (or whatever it ends up being called) in your Control Panel. Microsoft also plans to offer granular control for the feature, allowing you to turn it off for specific apps. What’s most interesting about Sets is how Microsoft is carefully rolling it out. Unlike Windows 8, which dramatically killed off the Start Menu and replaced it with something slower and clunkier, the company is taking care not to disrupt how we normally work in its OS. It’s a humbling admission by Microsoft that it might not always know what’s best for its users. But this time, at least, it’s prepared to learn.

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Microsoft’s latest Windows 10 experiment: Running apps in tabs

PC vendors scramble as Intel announces vulnerability in firmware

Enlarge / All the Cores are affected by a major vulnerability in management firmware—as are Xeon servers and Atom, Celeron and Pentium devices. (credit: Intel ) Intel has issued a security alert that management firmware on a number of recent PC, server, and Internet-of-Things processor platforms is vulnerable to remote attack. Using the vulnerabilities, the most severe of which was uncovered by Mark Ermolov and Maxim Goryachy of Positive Technologies Research, remote attackers could launch commands on a host of Intel-based computers, including laptops and desktops shipped with Intel Core processors since 2015. They could gain access to privileged system information, and millions of computers could essentially be taken over as a result of the bug. The company has posted a detection tool on its support website for Windows and Linux to help identify systems that are vulnerable. In the security alert, members of Intel’s security team stated that “in response to issues identified by external researchers, Intel has performed an in-depth comprehensive security review of its Intel® Management Engine (ME), Intel® Trusted Execution Engine (TXE), and Intel® Server Platform Services (SPS) with the objective of enhancing firmware resilience.” Four vulnerabilities were discovered that affect Intel Management Engine firmware versions 11.0 through 11.20. Two were found in earlier versions of ME, as well as two in Server Platform Services version 4.0 firmware and two in TXE version 3.0. Read 3 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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PC vendors scramble as Intel announces vulnerability in firmware

iMac Pro Will Have An A10 Fusion Coprocessor For ‘Hey, Siri’ Support and More Secure Booting, Says Report

According to Apple firmware gurus Steven Troughton-Smith and Guilherme Rambo, the upcoming iMac Pro will feature an A10 Fusion coprocessor to enable two interesting new features. “The first is the ability for the iMac Pro to feature always-on ‘Hey, Siri’ voice command support, similar to what’s currently available on more recent iPhone devices, ” reports The Verge. “[T]he bigger implication of the A10 Fusion is for a less user-facing function, with Apple likely to use the coprocessor to enable SecureBoot on the iMac Pro.” From the report: In more practical terms, it means that Apple will be using the A10 Fusion chip to handle the initial boot process and confirm that software checks out, before passing things off to the regular x86 Intel processor in your Mac. It’s not something that will likely change how you use your computer too much, like the addition of “Hey, Siri” support will, but it’s a move toward Apple experimenting with an increased level of control over its software going forward. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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iMac Pro Will Have An A10 Fusion Coprocessor For ‘Hey, Siri’ Support and More Secure Booting, Says Report

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.

After 12 Years, Mozilla Kills ‘Firebug’ Dev Tool

An anonymous reader quotes InfoWorld: The Firebug web development tool, an open source add-on to the Firefox browser, is being discontinued after 12 years, replaced by Firefox Developer Tools. Firebug will be dropped with next month’s release of Firefox Quantum (version 57). The Firebug tool lets developers inspect, edit, and debug code in the Firefox browser as well as monitor CSS, HTML, and JavaScript in webpages. It still has more than a million people using it, said Jan Honza Odvarko, who has been the leader of the Firebug project. Many extensions were built for Firebug, which is itself is an extension to Firefox… The goal is to make debugging native to Firefox. “Sometimes, it’s better to start from scratch, which is especially true for software development, ” Odvarko said. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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After 12 Years, Mozilla Kills ‘Firebug’ Dev Tool

Kaspersky Admits To Reaping Hacking Tools From NSA Employee PC

Kaspersky has acknowledged that code belonging to the US National Security Agency (NSA) was lifted from a PC for analysis but insists the theft was not intentional. From a report: In October, a report from the Wall Street Journal claimed that in 2015, the Russian firm targeted an employee of the NSA known for working on the intelligence agency’s hacking tools and software. The story suggested that the unnamed employee took classified materials home and operated on their PC, which was running Kaspersky’s antivirus software. Once these secretive files were identified — through an avenue carved by the antivirus — the Russian government was then able to obtain this information. Kaspersky has denied any wrongdoing, but the allegation that the firm was working covertly with the Russian government was enough to ensure Kaspersky products were banned on federal networks. There was a number of theories relating to what actually took place — was Kaspersky deliberately targeting NSA employees on behalf of the Kremlin, did an external threat actor exploit a zero-day vulnerability in Kaspersky’s antivirus, or were the files detected and pulled by accident? According to Kaspersky, the latter is true. On Wednesday, the Moscow-based firm said in a statement that the results of a preliminary investigation have produced a rough timeline of how the incident took place. It was actually a year earlier than the WSJ believed, in 2014, that code belonging to the NSA’s Equation Group was taken. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Kaspersky Admits To Reaping Hacking Tools From NSA Employee PC

First Class Travel, 1930s-Style: What Were the Interiors/Floorplan Like Inside the Hindenburg?

In the 1920s, if you wanted to cross the Atlantic you got on a ship. Then Germany set up the world’s first transatlantic air service for passengers, launching the Graf Zeppelin , the world’s largest airship at the time. In 1930 it could fly you all the way from Germany to Brazil. You’d leave Friedrichshafen on Saturday night and arrive in Rio de Janeiro on Thursday morning. By 1936 Germany had produced an even bigger blimp, the Hindenburg , which began shuttling passengers, cargo and mail from Frankfurt to New Jersey and back. The ship could carry 50 (later 72) passengers and had a crew of 40 to 60 people. The trip took about four days in each direction, and make no mistake, it was for rich passengers only; a one-way ticket was $400, which translates to about $7, 050 in 2017 dollars. It’s bizarre seeing the swastika flying over New York City. 1937, folks. So what did you get for your money? First off, the travel time was almost a day faster than going by ship, plus there was no chance you’d get seasick. The lift-off procedure was so gentle that passengers who weren’t paying attention reportedly didn’t realize that they’d left the ground. Once in flight, the voyage was said to be so smooth that you could balance a pencil on a table. Speaking of tables, you ate the kind of luxury chow that “one might find at a traditional, high-end European hotel, ” according to Atlas Obscura , pointing out that the chef on the final Hindenburg voyage was from the Ritz in Paris. NPR lists “Beef Broth with Marrow Dumplings and Rhine Salmon a la Graf Zeppelin” as an example of a typical Hindenburg meal. The tables could alternatively be arranged in banquet style The tables could alternatively be arranged in banquet style If you had a European palate, the food probably tasted delicious. Airplane food sucks because the high altitudes deaden our taste buds. But the Hindenburg flew just 330 to 650 feet off of the ground! The passenger areas were not pressurized (except for a single room, we’ll get to that in a moment) and you could even open the windows. Those windows were on the promenades locating on the port and starboard sides, inbound of which were a lounge and the dining room. The lounge even contained a grand piano, made from aluminum to save weight. The lounge The lounge Downside of being in the lounge: Portrait of Hitler on the wall Although weight was spared wherever possible–you’ll note further down that they’re using ladders perforated with holes–it wasn’t to keep the blimp in the air, it was presumably so that they could haul more cargo. The lifting capacity of the blimp was such that they could even transport cars. The kitchen was downstairs, and all heat sources were electric. Food was shuttled upstairs by a dumbwaiter that led to a pantry off of the dining room. The passenger cabins were pretty tight and utilitarian, featuring two bunks, like in the sleeper compartment of a train. Each room did, however, have its own sink with both hot and cold running water. The toilets and a shower were downstairs, as was the bar. Yes, you could booze on this baby. The bar The bar Beyond the bar was a two-door airlock that led to the single pressurized room. This was, incredibly, a smoking room where you could puff on cigarettes, cigars or pipes–while riding in something that was kept aloft by 5, 000, 000 cubic feet of highly flammable hydrogen. The room was pressurized so that hydrogen could not enter it. Even still, the lighters provided were electric, as they didn’t want to risk open flame. The smoking room The smoking room The smoking room The Hindenburg’s operators were experimenting with a very cool feature: They rigged up a trapeze-like aircraft hook-on point. The idea was that as they approached their destination, customs officials would fly out to them, board, and process the passengers in the air, so that the passengers wouldn’t have to wait to do it on the ground. Two experiments with the aircraft hook-up, in March and April of 1937, ran into problems with turbulence. Then, before they had a chance to iron those kinks out, this happened in May: The ship was carrying 36 passengers and 61 crew members; what’s amazing is that 23 passengers and 39 crew members actually survived that. To this day, no one knows precisely what caused the initial explosion. The Hindenburg Disaster, as it came to be known, put an end to the era of blimp passenger flights. But for a short while you could cruise a couple of hundred feet above the Atlantic Ocean at 80 miles per hour, chowing down on marrow dumplings and salmon. See Also: What You Didn’t Know About Dirigibles

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First Class Travel, 1930s-Style: What Were the Interiors/Floorplan Like Inside the Hindenburg?

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

Super NES Classic hacks are now oh, so easy to pull off—you can even add features

Enlarge / The clean look of the SNES Classic gets ruined a bit the second you plug stuff in. (credit: Kyle Orland) After guesses, estimations, and positive early tests, the Super NES Classic has emerged as a hackable little piece of gaming nostalgia—and quite an easy one to hack, at that. This weekend saw the September device receive a simple exploit in the form of hakchi2 , a Windows program designed by a Russian hacker who calls himself “ClusterM,” and, among other things, it allows fans to add far more games to the system than its default set of 21. If any of that sounds familiar, as opposed to gibberish, it’s because the same program and hacker emerged shortly after the launch of 2016’s Linux-powered NES Classic. ClusterM found a way to wrap that system’s FEL-mode exploit (read lots more about that here ) in a tidy Windows GUI, which allowed fans to use Windows Explorer menus to dump game ROMs, emulator cores, and even new art into their boxy ode to ’80s Nintendo bliss. ClusterM announced plans to repeat his trick well before the SNES Classic landed in stores, and his hacking hopes looked promising with the reveal, courtesy of Eurogamer , that the SNES Classic has a near-identical chipset and board compared to the NES Classic. Initial tests of the FEL-mode exploit, which requires booting into a telnet interface to talk to Nintendo’s Linux box, proved promising, and ClusterM returned eight days after the system’s launch with a new hakchi2 version—which now works with either “Nintendo classic” system. Read 4 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Super NES Classic hacks are now oh, so easy to pull off—you can even add features