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"gewg_" writes:

VentureBeat's 6News reports

Announced in September, Streaming Photoshop is Google's plan to bring desktop-only apps to its web-only Chrome OS. [...] For Streaming Photoshop, [however, Adobe and Google] actually run the full-fledged desktop app on a server, stream a video of that app to your browser, and use JavaScript to watch for click events.

What a workaround.

Right now, the experiment is being tested with 1,689 users, according to Chrome Web Store data, but Adobe tells us it's "ramping it up pretty quickly." Still, Adobe only let us watch the app in action--we couldn't play with it ourselves. The app is rolling out slowly to Adobe Education customers, and the company declined to share when it will become more widely available.

[...]The app "usually takes about 10 seconds" to launch, Adobe tells us.

"It's the full photoshop UI, [but] 3D is not available--the server we're using does not have GPU yet. Also printing, but in general you have the entire functionality," the company says.

Streaming Photoshop uses Google Drive to open and save files.
The web app runs on any computer that can run the Chrome browser, including Macs.
Standard image adjustments and effects, including "Brightness/Contrast," appeared snappy during the demo.

OMG! Chrome! notes

You don't download and install Photoshop locally. Instead, you install a small app from the Chrome Web Store [then open] Photoshop on a Google virtual machine in a Google data center--delivering high-end performance on a low-end device.

An Anonymous Coward claims that loginkit is the proposed replacement for logind as part of the Devuan fork of Debian. It is under development and not yet ready for general use.

It's still very early days, but the AC believes that Devuan will start out as a repository that can be added to Debian's sources.list file, but will eventually become a complete fork.

You can follow developments at #devuan @ FreeNode or check out https://github.com/dimkr/LoginKit

[Ed's Comment: As this item is submitted by an AC and contains no other links than that to the github page, we cannot verify this information as being accurate. Furthermore, it might be the precursor to yet another systemd troll - we shall have to wait and see.]

"gewg_" writes:

Military & Aerospace Electronics Magazine reports

Officials of the Marine Corps Systems Command at Quantico Marine Base, Va., announced a $10.2 million contract modification Wednesday to the Northrop Grumman Corp. Electronic Systems segment in Linthicum Heights, Md., to convert the Ground/Air Task-Oriented Radar (G/ATOR) operator command and control computer from Windows XP to [...] a Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA)-compliant Linux operating system.

[...]Linux [...] has become popular with the military because of its ease of use, reliability, and affordability.

Capital Gazette notes

Ingrid Vaughan, director of the program, said the change would mean greater [compatibility] for laptop computers used to control the system in the future.

In a statement released [December 5], she said Microsoft Windows XP is no longer supported by the software developer and the shift to a DOD-approved Linux operating system will reduce both the complexity of the operating system and need for future updates.

tonyPick writes:

phys.org is reporting that Stephen Hawking's new communication system software is being published under an open source license.

The new Intel system, ACAT (Assistive Context Aware Toolkit), is covered in more depth at Wired

Ting Model writes:

Donald McNeil writes in the NYT that this year’s flu season may be deadlier than usual because this year’s flu vaccine is a relatively poor match to a new virus that is now circulating. “Flu is unpredictable, but what we’ve seen thus far is concerning,” says Dr. Thomas R. Frieden. According to the CDC, five U.S. children have died from flu-related complications so far this season. Four of them were infected with influenza A viruses, including three cases of H3N2 infections. The new H3 subtype first appeared overseas in March but because it was not found in many samples in the United States until September, it is now too late to change the vaccine. Because of the increased danger from the H3 strain — and because B influenza strains can also cause serious illness — the CDC recommends that patients with asthma, diabetes or lung or heart problems see a doctor at the first sign of a possible flu, and that doctors quickly prescribe antivirals like Tamiflu or Relenza. “H3N2 viruses tend to be associated with more severe seasons,” said Dr. Tom Frieden. “The rate of hospitalization and death can be twice as high or more in flu seasons when H3 doesn’t predominate.”

Popeidol writes:

IBM's X-Force security research team have demonstrated an attack that leverages social login to gain access to targeted user accounts.

In a nutshell: The attack can exploit a site that has both local and social login enabled and uses email addresses as a unique identifier. By setting up an account with a social provider that doesn't verify the email address, you can then leverage it into accessing a local account set up under the same email address.

The full writeup is available here, and I think soylentils will appreciate the site they tested it on. IBM has also made available a full whitepaper on the attack.

[Ed note: Corrected link to the "full writeup" and added whitepaper link.]

blackest_k writes:

There is a gaping security flaw in the Chrome browser and I don't know what to do about it.

What happened was I wrote a couple of simple html5 pages and uploaded them to my web host. While testing them in Chrome on OSX a new tab opened claiming I wasn't running the latest chrome browser (I was) the url had some random letter .info address so I was suspicious but decided to play along a little where I was invited to download setup.exe (yes on a mac).

had I been on windows this might have been almost plausible.

So where had this tab come from as I only had my page open at the time.
Well, it was my page! Looking at the source in the browser it was identical to the source I had written. However downloading the webpage complete through the browser also downloaded app.js and when I loaded the html into my editor Ifound the header had acquired two additional javascript files and an additional css file.

This was also the case on Linux Mint with the Chrome browser but not with Firefox. with some googling I found one link was privacy badger and I joined the mailing list to find out they inject code into webpages to replace the Facebook like buttons. but the other 2 were not theirs.

In the meantime I found removing the Privacy Badger extension removed their injection but not the other 2

So at this point I removed all extensions from Chrome and it removed the other 2 injections.

It seems conclusive to me at least that Google's extension repository is not to be trusted.

While I was targeted with Windows malware of some description a little more work could have pushed a dmg or deb or rpm file instead.

To be fair the possibilities are endless, it would be fairly easy to log all of a persons web activity even the emails they write with these trojan extensions. Trouble is people trust Google's repository but Google can't be really maintaining any security if this is occurring.

I am very worried about this, as so many people use Chrome, extensions are for the most part cross platform
If you install an extension on one platform if you login to Google on another using Chrome your extensions get sync'd and that security hole is now on your Linux box or OSX box.

So what should be done about this?

NotSanguine writes:

Over at Phys.org they're reporting on a paper (abstract only, pay walled) published in Nature Communications last July.

From the Phys.Org writeup:

An odd, iridescent material that's puzzled physicists for decades turns out to be an exotic state of matter that could open a new path to quantum computers and other next-generation electronics.

Physicists at the University of Michigan have discovered or confirmed several properties of the compound samarium hexaboride that raise hopes for finding the silicon of the quantum era. They say their results also close the case of how to classify the material—a mystery that has been investigated since the late 1960s.

The researchers provide the first direct evidence that samarium hexaboride, abbreviated SmB6, is a topological insulator. Topological insulators are, to physicists, an exciting class of solids that conduct electricity like a metal across their surface, but block the flow of current like rubber through their interior. They behave in this two-faced way despite that their chemical composition is the same throughout.

I'm not a (quantum) materials scientist, but this sounds pretty interesting. Perhaps someone with real knowledge of the subject could chime in?

Ting Model writes:

On 30 August 2012, Hollywood star Clint Eastwood took the stage to lambast President Obama. What ensued was an odd, 11-minute monologue where Eastwood conversed with an empty chair upon which an imaginary Barack Obama sat. The evening of Eastwood’s speech the official campaign Twitter account @MittRomney did not mention the actor, while the Obama campaign deftly tweeted out from @BarackObama a picture of the president sitting in his chair with the words “This Seat’s Taken”. The picture was retweeted 59,663 times, favorited 23,887 times, and, as importantly, was featured in news articles across the country. According to Daniel Kress both campaigns sought to influence journalists in direct and indirect ways, and planned their strategic communication efforts around political events such as debates well in advance. Despite these similarities, staffers say that Obama’s campaign had much greater ability to respond in real time to unfolding commentary around political events (PDF) given an organizational structure that provided digital staffers with a high degree of autonomy.

Romney's social media team did well when it practiced its strategy carefully before big events like the debates. But Obama's social media team was often quicker to respond to things and more creative. According to Kress, at extraordinary moments campaigns can exercise what Isaac Reed calls “performative power,” influence over other actors’ definitions of the situation and their consequent actions through well-timed, resonant, and rhetorically effective communicative action and interaction. During the Romney campaign as many as 22 staffers screened posts for Romeny's social media accounts before they could go out. As Romney’s digital director Zac Moffatt told Kreiss, the campaign had “the best tweets ever written by 17 people. ... It was the best they all could agree on every single time.”

frojack writes:

As natural gas prices are falling over time, and regulations on coal fired power generation tighten, most of the energy industry and coal-producing states are projecting a wave of power plant closures in the in the next two years as Environmental Protection Agency regulations take hold.

The goal of the agency's campaign is to cut down on carbon pollution. However, EPA’s demands are simply too difficult to meet in many current generation plants, and will lead to powering down many of these older and less efficient facilities.

.
The number of projected closures, according to the Institute for Energy Research (PDF) will cover facilities 37 states and nearly 170 plants that have closed, or will need to be closed. This amounts to about 1/5th of U.S. Coal fired generation facilities.

Note: US total Electrical generation capacity from all sources in 2012 was 1,104 gigawatts, so the above mentioned 72 gigawatts represents about 6.5%, about the same amount as all hydro power capacity, and slightly exceeds all current solar and wind capacity in the US.

The EPA's plan is to cut carbon emissions to 30% of the levels allowed in 2005 by the year 2030. The new regulations still allow Coal generation, but impose efficiency and emissions improvements which older plants can't meet.

This essentially means that ALL of the wind and solar generation build-out in the US over the past decade is finally sufficient to take the worst polluters off line, probably for good.

anubi writes:

PC World is reporting that families of Sony employees are now being threatened, or at least being subjected to implied threats.

Hackers said to threaten Sony employees

The hack against Sony Pictures appeared to enter new territory on Friday when employees reportedly received messages threatening them and their families.

The message, reported by Variety, warned that “not only you but your family will be in danger.”

Sony’s computer system was attacked in late November and gigabytes of data, including unreleased movies, were stolen and leaked online. Embarrassing hacks have hit other companies in recent years, but threatening employees is highly unusual and will put extra pressure on law enforcement to find those responsible.

The message purports to be from the Guardians of Peace, the group that has claimed responsibility for the Sony hack. It’s written in patchy English and opens with further threats against Sony.

“Removing Sony Pictures on earth is a very tiny work for our group which is a worldwide organization. And what we have done so far is only a small part of our further plan,” the message reads in part, according to Variety, which says it obtained a copy.

It then turns to Sony employees.

“Many things beyond imagination will happen at many places of the world. ... Please sign your name to object the false [sic] of the company at the email address below if you dont want to suffer damage. If you dont, not only you but your family will be in danger,” the message reads.

This incident is precisely why I am so worked up about trustworthy computing and leery of having others aggregating personal information on me. Its not that I am trying to hide anything I am doing, but leaving all my personal information laying around is just an invite for someone to come in and make a mess in my life.

darkfeline writes:

A WSJ story details how Apple, in 2007-2009, deleted music from users' iPods if it hadn't been downloaded from their own service

Apple deleted music that some iPod owners had downloaded from competing music services from 2007 to 2009 without telling users, attorneys for consumers told jurors in a class-action antitrust suit against Apple Wednesday.

“You guys decided to give them the worst possible experience and blow up a user’s music library", attorney Patrick Coughlin said in U.S. District Court in Oakland, Calif. When a user who had downloaded music from a rival service tried to sync an iPod to the user’s iTunes library, Apple would display an error message and instruct the user to restore the factory settings, Coughlin said. When the user restored the settings, the music from rival services would disappear, he said.

Apple directed the system “not to tell users the problem,” Coughlin said.

To plaintiffs in the case, the move showed how Apple had stifled competition for music players and downloads. They are seeking $350 million in damages in the decade-old suit, claiming Apple’s actions forced them to pay more for iPods. The damages could be tripled under antitrust laws.

Apple contends the moves were legitimate security measures. Apple security director Augustin Farrugia testified that Apple did not offer a more detailed explanation because, “We don’t need to give users too much information,” and “We don’t want to confuse users.”

Ting Model writes:

Andrew Higgins reports in the NYT that Romanian officials including the prime minister point to a mysteriously well-financed and well-organized campaign of protests over fracking in Europe and are pointing their fingers at Russia's Gazprom, a state-controlled energy giant, that has a clear interest in preventing countries dependent on Russian natural gas from developing their own alternative supplies of energy and preserving a lucrative market for itself — and a potent foreign policy tool for the Kremlin.

“Russia, as part of their sophisticated information and disinformation operations, engaged actively with so-called non-governmental organizations (NGOs) — environmental organizations working against shale gas — to maintain dependence on imported Russian gas,” says NATO’s former secretary general, Anders Fogh Rasmussen.

A wave of protest against fracking began three years ago in Bulgaria, a country highly dependent on Russian energy. Faced with a sudden surge of street protests by activists, many of whom had previously shown little interest in environmental issues, the Bulgarian government in 2012 banned fracking and canceled a shale gas license issued earlier to Chevron.

Russia itself has generally shown scant concern for environmental protection and has a long record of harassing and even jailing environmentalists who stage protests. On fracking, however, Russian authorities have turned enthusiastically green, with Putin declaring last year that fracking “poses a huge environmental problem.” Places that have allowed it, he said, “no longer have water coming out of their taps but a blackish slime.” For their part Green groups have been swift to attack Rasmussen’s views, saying that they were not involved in any alleged Russian attempts to discredit the technology, and were instead opposed to it on the grounds of environmental sustainability. “The idea we’re puppets of Putin is so preposterous that you have to wonder what they’re smoking over at Nato HQ,” says Greenpeace, which has a history of antagonism with the Russian government, which arrested several of its activists on a protest in the Arctic last year.

tt0081455 writes:

A government surplus vendor has Rapiscan Backscatter Body scanners listed for sale on ebay. The price - just $8K. Brand new they were $160K. These are the same units that were affectionately dubbed "porno scanners" before the TSA bowed to public pressure and yanked them out of commission. You might remember Rapiscan as the company that hired former Department of Homeland Security secretary Michael Chertoff as a way to guarantee their place at the trough full of sweet, sweet tax dollars.

Pav writes:

The fifth NSA whistleblower, or the second Snowden if you prefer, has disappeared without trace as far as my limited Google-fu can tell. The raid reported in the link was conducted by the FBI in late October, but there has been no reporting since of what they found or any subsequent arrests. Is anyone in Soylent-world more aware of what's going on in this case?