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janrinok writes:

The BBC reports:

A historic machine used to swap top secret messages between Hitler and his generals has been found languishing in a shed in Essex.

Volunteers from The National Museum of Computing at Bletchley Park used eBay to track down the keyboard of the Lorenz machine. It was advertised as a telegram machine and was for sale for £9.50.

The museum, in Buckinghamshire, is now asking people to search for the motor, another key piece of the equipment.

"My colleague was scanning eBay and he saw a photograph of what seemed to be the teleprinter," said John Wetter, a volunteer at the museum. He then went to Southend to investigate further where he found the keyboard being kept, in its original case, on the floor of a shed "with rubbish all over it". "We said 'Thank you very much, how much was it again?' She said '£9.50', so we said 'Here's a £10 note - keep the change!'"

The teleprinter, which resembles a typewriter, would have been used to enter plain messages in German. These were then encrypted by a linked cipher machine, using 12 individual wheels with multiple settings on each, to make up the code.

Original Submission

-- OriginalOwner_ writes:

The European Union's interoperability page reports

Sweden should bolster its competence on the use of open source and open standards in public administrations, a study for the country's Ministry of Enterprise and Innovation recommends. Public administrations must also be required to consider switching to free and open source alternatives, when procuring [Information and communications technology (ICT)] solutions, and justify why they continue to use proprietary software.

These are three of the seven recommendations listed in the report by Ramboll Management Consulting, submitted to the ministry in late April. The other four are:

• Require an assessment of the total costs of ownership for larger ICT procurements;
• Select national open standards (such as the Open Document Format ODF);
• Disseminate best practices of the use of open source software;
• Rid schools and universities of IT vendor lock-in, by requiring the use of open source alternatives.

[...] The use of open source by Sweden's public administrations is widespread and increasing, the report summarises. Open source is implemented pragmatically--whenever it is the best solution. In general, open source is common in data centre environments, where it is used for web and application servers. Open source is more prevalent in central government organisations than in local administrations.

[...] [Besides the typical use of existing FOSS apps,] there are a handful of projects where local and regional public administrations are working together [to build their own] open source solutions.

Original Submission

-- OriginalOwner_ writes:

Softpedia reports

Linux Steam Integration (or LSI for short) [is] a small and straightforward utility that promises to solve the issue of the Steam runtime not working correctly on various Linux kernel-based operating systems, such as Solus, because of the old Ubuntu 12.04 LTS libraries [which] Steam for Linux client requires.

Running Steam on some distributions that have nothing to do with Debian packaging has always been a pain in the neck, but now, thanks to this little open-source project, which any OS vendor can integrate into its GNU/Linux operating system, things should run more smoothly for gamers.

This is from Ikey Doherty and the Solus Project, whose announcement says

Linux Steam Integration, or LSI, is a configurable shim I've developed to solve the issue of the Steam runtime. With this shim, one may force Steam to run in 32-bit mode, to combat issues such as seen with the latest CS:GO 64-bit update, as well as to enable or disable the Steam runtime at will.

The shim binary is extremely lightweight and completely leak-free, and is designed to be used in place of the existing /usr/bin/steam, meaning adopters must move the existing Steam binary elsewhere.

This will be expanded in [the] future to address further limitations in the Steam client, in order to bring per-game runtime configuration settings, as well as steadily removing Steam's requirement for [its] own SDL libraries.

The repo is on GitHub, and in the next few hours I'll cut a 0.1 release. It's designed to be distro-agnostic, and to finally address the headaches we've put up with for so long now, such as setting the LD_PRELOAD or LD_LIBRARY_PATH.

With this new shim, we can even run Steam with its own runtime without doing any hacks, and letting LSI take care of it for us.

Original Submission

GungnirSniper writes:

A recent study published in the American Journal of Preventative Medicine and expanded upon by The Washington Post finds that providing sliced apples, rather than whole ones, increases the odds students will eat them and reduces waste.

A pilot study conducted at eight schools found that fruit consumption jumped by more than 60 percent when apples were served sliced. And a follow-up study, conducted at six other schools, not only confirmed the finding, but further strengthened it: Both overall apple consumption and the percentage of students who ate more than half of the apple that was served to them were more than 70 percent higher at schools that served sliced apples.

This mirrors McDonald's experience with Happy Meals.

In 2004, before any other fast food company was offering apple slices, McDonald's was adding them to its menu. At the time, the company was looking to introduce healthier options that would be attractive to children, and pre-sliced apples seemed like a good place to start.

"Sliced apples are often easier for children, especially young children, to eat," said Christina Tyler, a company spokesperson. "We simply wanted to make enjoying fruit easier and more fun for our youngest customers."

For years, the apples were offered as an optional side. But in 2012, the company began automatically serving them as part of Happy Meals. And the impact has been enormous.

While McDonald's wouldn't disclose how many apples it sold in the early years, it confirmed that it has served more than 2 billion packages since they were first offered. In 2015 alone, the company served almost 250 million packages of sliced apples, which amounts to just over 60 million apples, or more than 10 percent of all fresh sliced apples sold in the United States.

DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.amepre.2013.02.003

Original Submission

Teckla writes:

How software development managers can do their part to stop and reverse the quiet crisis unfolding in software development leading to low quality applications, unhappy employees and unhappy users.

The reason I'm sharing this is because over the last ten to fifteen years I've noticed a quiet crisis unfolding in software development leading to low quality applications, unhappy employees and unhappy users. Silver bullet solutions keep creeping into our awareness (Scrum, anyone?) and predictably keep letting us down.

This is almost entirely the fault poor management — or perhaps it should be called fad management. In the past I was to blame as much as anyone until I discovered and refined a basic set of practices that for the most part cause everything else to fall into place — at least in my experience. No promises. Here we go.

Original Submission

http://www.channelnewsasia.com/mobile/singapore/mas-orders-bsi-bank-to/2811530.html

In a press release, the bank responded:

The decision by MAS to withdraw the Bank's status as a merchant bank will take place only at a future time given that MAS "will allow the transfer of the Singapore's subsidiary's assets and liabilities to the Singapore branch of EFG or the parent entity, BSI SA". Also, MAS has stated that "the Bank is solvent and has assets in excess of its liabilities and commitments".

The Bank is not affected by the financial penalties levied by MAS and FINMA as they will be paid by using the BSI's General Reserves for Banking Risks. Furthermore, the Bank is in a very comfortable position in terms of liquidity.

Original Submission

Phoenix666 writes:

Laws to permit the colour "blaze pink" for hunters have been proposed in five states in the US. How did this become a legislative trend?

As the legislative session drew to a close last week at the Minnesota state capitol, a curious piece of legislation became the focus of ire for lawmakers - a bill to make something called "blaze pink" legal for hunters to wear.
...
Last spring, Wisconsin Representative Nick Milroy had the idea that "blaze pink" might also be an acceptable safety colour as well as a way to get some new blood into the sport.

He even got a textile scientist at a local university to investigate whether there were any safety concerns.

"The fastest growing segment in new recruits into hunting are females, and that's one of the big reasons that companies have been marketing things like pink camouflage, pink guns, pink knives," he says.

Participation in hunting in the US has been on the decline for decades, and the sport is overwhelmingly dominated by men.

Safety Orange to become Safety Pink?

Original Submission

MrPlow writes:

Submitted via IRC for Bytram

VThe completion of China's latest glass bridge, the Zhangjiajie Grand Canyon Glass Bridge designed by Haim Dotan Architects, has been delayed, but thrill-seekers won't mind the wait. Vice General Manager Joe Chen of the Zhangjiajie Canyon Tourism Management Co. confirmed to Inhabitat the Zhangjiajie Grand Canyon Bridge will include not one swing, but three. He also hinted when the bridge could open.

...

The Zhangjiajie Grand Canyon Bridge will be the highest glass bridge in the world at "300 meters vertical height," which is about 984 feet; and the longest at 430 meters long, or a little over 1,410 feet. According to the Zhangjiajie Canyon Tourism Management Co., the bridge "holds 10 world records."

Source: http://inhabitat.com/worlds-highest-glass-bridge-in-china-to-include-three-crazy-swings/

Original Submission

takyon writes:

As Disney prepares to open its sixth theme park — this one in Shanghai — at a cost of $5.5 billion, China's richest man has opened a competing theme park with an emphasis on Chinese culture:

China's richest man has opened a massive entertainment complex to compete with US giant Disney. "Wanda City", in south-eastern city Nanchang, features rides, shopping centres and an aquarium, and cost more than $3bn (just over £2bn).

Its owner, Wang Jianlin, said he wanted to move away from western imports and to establish a global brand based on Chinese culture. Disney is planning to open its own theme park in Shanghai next month.

The new entertainment complex includes an $800m China-themed park filled with twirling "porcelain teacup rides" and bamboo forests, as well as a huge indoor shopping mall, and what is claimed to be the world's largest ocean park.

Original Submission

An Anonymous Coward writes:

Opera, once known for revolutionizing web browsing and pushing boundaries has suffered greatly the last few years.

First their origin engine [Presto] was abandoned in favor of Chromium so as to be able to be competitive again. Many users did not like this as many features were taken away. Then the possible news of a sale and now this.

What will the future bring for Opera? Nobody knows, there is only once constant: Many people dislike that Chinese investors are taking control over the company and will leave Opera.

http://www.ghacks.net/2016/05/26/opera-software-sale-greenlighted-by-shareholders/

Original Submission

MrPlow writes:

Submitted via IRC for TheMightyBuzzard

A group of researchers has discovered 184 HTTPS servers that are wide open to attackers looking to inject seemingly valid content into encrypted sessions. Some of these servers belong to the credit card company VISA, the Polish banking association ZBP, and the German stock exchange.

They are vulnerable to these attacks because they used a duplicate cryptographic nonce with the AES-GCM cipher during the TLS handshake between the browser and the HTTPS-protected sites. This means attackers that are able to monitor the connection could reconstruct the authentication key and misuse it to, let's say, inject malicious code in the site or bogus forms to harvest user data.

The user, i.e. the browser, would have no way of noticing the attack.

[...]

The researchers have also found over 70,000 HTTPS servers using random nonces, which theoretically puts them in danger of nonce reuse attacks. Such an attack would be much more difficult to pull off – but not impossible.

Original Submission

We receive our fair share of slashvertisements. Not daily, certainly, but when we get one we often get a handful. Most get a cursory read by the editors, are identified for what they are, and go straight into the bin. But not all.

Recently we have also covered the enforced Windows 10 upgrade currently being pushed by Microsoft. If there is anyone out there who has not seen such stories you really haven't been paying attention. The effort being expended by MS to make sure that you upgrade - whether intentionally or not - is matched only by that being expended by users trying to avoid the upgrade while still being able to use their licensed software. Even the Chinese are getting in on the act.

And today, both of these things, have come together.

An Anonymous Coward writes:

Spybot Anti-Beacon: block and stop the various tracking (telemetry) issues present in Windows 7/8/8.1/10

https://www.safer-networking.org/spybot-anti-beacon/

"Spybot Anti-Beacon is a standalone tool which was designed to block and stop the various tracking (telemetry) issues present in Windows 10. It has since been modified to block similar tracking functionality in Windows 7, Windows 8 and Windows 8.1 operating systems.

Anti-Beacon is small, simple to use, and is provided free of charge. It was created to address the privacy concerns of users of Windows 10 who do not wish to have information about their PC usage sent to Microsoft. Simply clicking "Immunize" on the main screen of Anti-Beacon will immediately disable any known tracking features included by Microsoft in the operating system.

If any issues occur with your PC while using Anti-Beacon, undoing the changes made can be done by clicking the "Undo" button in the main window. This will re-enable all tracking services. If you experience any issues using Anti-Beacon or have any suggestions/recommendations, please be sure to let us know on the forum thread relating to this tool."

We are not making any claims as the the efficacy of this piece of software, nor are we supporting it or suggesting that you should download it. It might work perfectly or may be as bad as the problem that it claims to cure. We simply do not know. But if anyone has tried it we would welcome any comments that you wish to make. You will understand that the community is likely to be a little skeptical regarding comments submitted as Anonymous Coward - that is how we received the slashvertisement in the first instance.

Original Submission

Phoenix666 writes:

SoylentNews covers cyborg/transhumanist stories from time to time. This particular concept, of a sensor that tells you true magnetic north, has arisen before. The story is a promo for a crowd-funded project, but it's interesting to check in on where the thinking on tech-based body augmentation is headed:

North Sense is a miniature Artificial Sense, vibrating each time it faces the Magnetic North. Your North Sense will not depend on an internet connection and will come with a dedicated app so you can make personal adjustments. It's a standalone artificial sensory organ, coated in the highest quality body-compatible materials.

Fitting North Sense to the body is not complicated and requires the installment of two dedicated surface-to-surface barbells. Its small size and unique design makes sure North Sense will co-exist comfortably with your body.

In a few months, you'll be able to experience new memories, maps and life moments, created and influenced by a new spiritual layer—your North Sense.

The sensor itself is external, but anchored to you by implantable metal posts--nothing more extreme than the piercings people already get. You have to recharge it, though.

Original Submission

-- OriginalOwner_ writes:

El Reg reports

The US state of Oregon says it will charge Comcast tens of millions of dollars in taxes after revoking a tax break the cable giant had claimed on its broadband service.

The state's Department of Revenue (DOR) has denied a request by Comcast that it be granted an exemption reserved for companies that offer gigabit internet service in the state.

Written to lure Google's Fiber service to Portland after years of courtship, the tax break would give exemptions to reward the installation of high-speed fiber broadband.

Comcast [claimed] its "Gigabit Pro" service tops out at 2Gbit/s and thus made the cable giant eligible to claim the same breaks as Google.

The DOR, however, did not agree, and it ruled earlier this week that Comcast will have to pay the taxes.

[...] Critics of Comcast have previously argued that the Gigabit Pro service is prohibitively expensive (up to $4,600 a year) and only reaches a small number of Oregon residents.

[...] Both Google and Frontier also had their applications denied because neither has an active gigabit service in the state.

Original Submission

An Anonymous Coward writes:

https://lwn.net/Articles/688751/

"Worth a read: this paper [PDF][1][2] From Kaiyuan Yang et al. on how an analog back door can be placed into a hardware platform like a CPU. "In this paper, we show how a fabrication-time attacker can leverage analog circuits to create a hardware attack that is small (i.e., requires as little as one gate) and stealthy (i.e., requires an unlikely trigger sequence before effecting [sic] a chip's functionality). In the open spaces of an already placed and routed design, we construct a circuit that uses capacitors to siphon charge from nearby wires as they transition between digital values. When the capacitors fully charge, they deploy an attack that forces a victim flip-flop to a desired value. We weaponize this attack into a remotely-controllable privilege escalation by attaching the capacitor to a wire controllable and by selecting a victim flip-flop that holds the privilege bit for our processor.""

[1] Link to PDF in article: http://static1.1.sqspcdn.com/static/f/543048/26931843/1464016046717/A2_SP_2016.pdf
[2] Read PDF online as images: (Large print) https://archive.is/n43DY
[3] Read PDF online as images: (Small print) https://archive.is/7vbNp

Original Submission