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Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

Experimental support for Microsoft's Linux containers on Windows (LCOW) feature has been available for Windows Server 1709 via the Docker EE "Preview" release. The same functionality is now available for Windows 10 Fall Creators Update with the release of Docker for Windows 17.11. In fact, it's been available since Docker for Windows 17.10.

That's right. Docker for Windows can run Linux or Windows containers, with support for Linux containers via a Hyper-V Moby Linux VM (as of Docker for Windows 17.10 this VM is based on LinuxKit).

When configured to use Linux containers for Windows, try running a simple Linux container:

When disabled, the existing options for switching between traditional Docker for Windows Linux containers and Windows containers will be available in the whale systray icon.

The LCOW feature is under active development.

Original Submission

An Anonymous Coward writes:

A new Free and Open-Source project called "Exodus" scans Android apps and already has found many advertising trackers:

"Researchers at Yale Privacy Lab and French nonprofit Exodus Privacy have documented the proliferation of tracking software on smartphones, finding that weather, flashlight, rideshare, and dating apps, among others, are infested with dozens of different types of trackers collecting vast amounts of information to better target advertising.

Exodus security researchers identified 44 trackers in more than 300 apps for Google's Android smartphone operating system. The apps, collectively, have been downloaded billions of times. Yale Privacy Lab, within the university's law school, is working to replicate the Exodus findings and has already released reports on 25 of the trackers.

Yale Privacy Lab researchers have only been able to analyze Android apps, but believe many of the trackers also exist on iOS, since companies often distribute for both platforms. To find trackers, the Exodus researchers built a custom auditing platform for Android apps, which searched through the apps for digital "signatures" distilled from known trackers. A signature might be a tell-tale set of keywords or string of bytes found in an app file, or a mathematically-derived "hash" summary of the file itself.

The findings underscore the pervasiveness of tracking despite a permissions system on Android that supposedly puts users in control of their own data. They also highlight how a large and varied set of firms are working to enable tracking."

The statement by Yale Privacy Lab summarizes the situation, and the story has seen coverage by Cory Doctorow and Le Monde. Private search engine Qwant has removed trackers in its app and Protonmail is under fire.

Original Submission

janrinok writes:

An international team made up of scientists from Brazil, Australia, USA, Ecuador, Germany and Sweden has published the results of an extensive database constructed for snakes of the American tropics. This database is made up of museum collections from the past 150 years and demonstrates that some Neotropical regions, such as the Cerrado in the central Brazil, contain a disproportionately high diversity. Furthermore, some other diverse regions are disproportionally under sampled, such as the Amazon. For the first time all factors, such as distribution patterns, collection records and frequency of occurrence are recorded from a total of 147,515 contributions to 886 snake species. Thus, the database covers 74 per cent of all snake species from 27 countries. The database, which has been so far unique in this form, will serve as a solid basis for conservation concepts, to biodiversity and evolution models in the future, as well as to design research agendas. The study was recently published in the journal "Global Ecology and Biogeography."

About 10,500 species of reptiles (animals such as lizards and snakes) are found around the world and about 150 to 200 new species are also discovered every year. Snakes make up about 34 percent of this group of animals. "We assume that there are still many snake species that we still do not know. However, the identification of areas poorly-sampled, where probably new species can be found, must come from data and mapping of the known species" explains leading author Dr. Thaís Guedes from the University of Gothenburg and adds: "We realize that the very rich Amazonian area is, for example, one of the least explored areas -

Most of the area is of high inaccessibility, the low investments in local research sum to relative shortage of experts to explore this huge area explain this result. Besides that, the centers of research, as scientific collections, are limited to the geographic area of major cities and universities."

Thaís B. Guedes, Et. Al. Patterns, biases and prospects in the distribution and diversity of Neotropical snakes. Global Ecology and Biogeography, 2017; DOI: 10.1111/geb.12679

Original Submission

janrinok writes:

Original URL: A growing number of young Americans are leaving desk jobs to farm

Liz Whitehurst dabbled in several careers before she ended up here, crating fistfuls of fresh-cut arugula in the early-November chill.

The hours were better at her nonprofit jobs. So were the benefits. But two years ago, the 32-year-old Whitehurst — who graduated from a liberal arts college and grew up in the Chicago suburbs — abandoned Washington for this three-acre farm in Upper Marlboro, Md.

[...] This new generation can't hope to replace the numbers that farming is losing to age. But it is already contributing to the growth of the local-food movement and could help preserve the place of midsize farms in the rural landscape.

"We're going to see a sea change in American agriculture as the next generation gets on the land," said Kathleen Merrigan, the head of the Food Institute at George Washington University and a deputy secretary at the Department of Agriculture under President Barack Obama. "The only question is whether they'll get on the land, given the challenges."

The number of farmers age 25 to 34 grew 2.2 percent between 2007 and 2012, according to the 2014 USDA census, a period when other groups of farmers — save the oldest — shrunk by double digits. In some states, such as California, Nebraska and South Dakota, the number of beginning farmers has grown by 20 percent or more.

Original Submission

An Anonymous Coward writes:

https://api.cointelegraph.com/amp/v1/news/bitcoin-account-holder-loses-100k-over-public-wireless-network

An unidentified 36-year-old man who owns a Bitcoin account has lost more than 100,000 euros ($117,000) worth of Bitcoins while he was logged in on a public wireless network in a restaurant in Vienna, Austria.

The Austrian police, however, claimed that they are still investigating whether the victim's account was already hacked before he opened his account on the unsecured network, CBS reports.

This latest case reflects the growing concern over the security of digital currencies like Bitcoin and Ethereum amidst their growing popularity as a mode of payment.

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Intel Announces XMM 8060 5G & XMM 7660 Category 19 LTE Modems, Both Due in 2019

Intel last week announced that its first commercial 5G modem, the XMM 8060, is now under development and will ship in a couple of years. As part of the announcement, the company reiterated its plans to offer a top-to-bottom XMM 8000 family of 5G modems for various applications, including smartphones, PCs, buildings and vehicles. In addition, the company announced its XMM 7660 Cat-19 LTE modem that supports download speeds of up to 1.6 Gbps, which will be available in 2019.

At present, Intel's 5G Mobile Trial Platform is used to test 5G technologies in different locations around the world. For example, one of such devices installed aboard the Tallink Silja Europa cruise ship is used to enable Internet connectivity to passengers while in port in Tallinn, Estonia, (where another 5G MTP is installed) and the nearby area. Meanwhile, Intel's 5G Modem for client applications is evolving as well. Intel said that devices powered by the silicon can now make calls over the 28 GHz band. The 5G MTP will be used for its purposes for a while and will even gain new capabilities over time, but the company is working on a family of commercial modems that will be used for mass applications sometimes in 2019 and onwards. The Intel XMM 8000-series multi-mode modems will operate in both sub-6 GHz and millimeter wave global spectrum bands, combining support for existing and next-gen radios. Intel does detail the whole lineup two years before the launch but indicates that it will be able to address smartphones, PCs, vehicles, and fixed wireless consumer premise equipment (CPE).

Previously: ITU Defines "5G" as up to 20 Gbps, 2018 Olympics Demo Planned
5G Gets a Shot in the Arm From the FCC
3GPP Sets 2018 as Freeze Date for 5G Air Interfaces
5G Draft Technical Requirements Announced

Original Submission

takyon writes:

US to stop arming anti-IS Syrian Kurdish YPG militia - Turkey

The US is to stop supplying arms to the Syrian Kurdish militia the YPG, Turkey has said. Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said President Donald Trump had made the promise in a phone call to his Turkish counterpart, Recep Tayyip Erdogan. The White House said it was making "adjustments" to its support for partners inside Syria but did not explicitly name the YPG.

Turkey has long complained about US support for the group. Washington has viewed the YPG as a key player in the fight against so-called Islamic State (IS), but Ankara brands the group's fighters as terrorists. Turkey says the YPG is as an extension of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), a group it has been fighting for decades in south-eastern Turkey. The US, however, has seen the YPG as distinct from the PKK. In May it announced it would supply arms to the Kurdish elements of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), which were poised to drive IS from its stronghold of Raqqa. It had previously armed only Arab elements of the SDF.

Goodbye, Kurdistan?

Also at Reuters, NPR, Daily Sabah, and RT.

Original Submission

An Anonymous Coward writes:

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-volkswagen-emissions-sentencing/vw-engineer-sentenced-to-40-month-prison-term-in-diesel-case-idUSKCN1B51YP

WASHINGTON/DETROIT (Reuters) - A federal judge in Detroit sentenced former engineer James Liang to 40 months in prison on Friday for his role in Volkswagen AG's (VOWG_p.DE) multiyear scheme to sell diesel cars that generated more pollution than U.S. clean air rules allowed.

U.S. District Court Judge Sean Cox also ordered Liang to pay a $200,000 fine, 10 times the amount sought by federal prosecutors. Cox said he hoped the prison sentence and fine would deter other auto industry engineers and executives from similar schemes to deceive regulators and consumers.

Original Submission

takyon writes:

The IceCube experiment in Antarctica has found that the Earth absorbs high-energy neutrinos:

Thanks to work at the IceCube instrument in Antarctica, we have learned that Earth has an appetite for high-energy neutrinos: they're more likely to be "swallowed" by the planet in collisions with matter than those at lower energies.

The bad news: sorry about "new physics" expectations. The result is in line with the boring old Standard Model of physics, and the observations seem to rule out more exotic theories involving compact spatial dimensions or the still-hypothetical leptoquark.

[...] The IceCube experiment was first frozen in 2010, and since then its 5,160 basketball-sized detectors have sought out tiny blue flashes of Cherenkov radiation emitted when a neutrino collides with the ice and releases particles such as muons.

In the Nature paper, the IceCube collaboration examined around 10,800 neutrino-related interactions to estimate the objects' direction of travel and energy.

Also at Interactions.org.

Measurement of the multi-TeV neutrino interaction cross-section with IceCube using Earth absorption (DOI: 10.1038/nature24459) (DX)

Original Submission

takyon writes:

The rise of a new species of finch has been observed on a Galapagos island:

A population of finches on the Galapagos has been discovered in the process of becoming a new species.

This is the first example of speciation that scientists have been able to observe directly in the field.

Researchers followed the entire population of finches on a tiny Galapagos island called Daphne Major, for many years, and so they were able to watch the speciation in progress.

The research was published in the journal Science [DOI: 10.1126/science.aao4593] [DX].

Also at BGR and Phys.org (heavy on comments).

Original Submission

An Anonymous Coward writes:

https://amosbbatto.wordpress.com/2017/11/21/mozilla-market-share/

When Firefox was introduced in 2004, it was designed to be a lean and optimized web browser, based on the bloated code from the Mozilla Suite. Between 2004 and 2009, many considered Firefox to be the best web browser, since it was faster, more secure, offered tabbed browsing and was more customizable through extensions than Microsoft's Internet Explorer. When Chrome was introduced in 2008, it took many of Firefox's best ideas and improved on them. Since 2010, Chrome has eaten away at Firefox's market share, relegating Firefox to a tiny niche of free software enthusiasts and tinkerers who like the customization of its XUL extensions.

According to StatCounter, Firefox's market share of web browsers has fallen from 31.8% in December 2009 to just 6.1% today. Firefox can take comfort in the fact that it is now virtually tied with its former arch-nemesis, Internet Explorer and its variants. All of Microsoft's browsers only account for 6.2% of current web browsing according to StatCounter. Microsoft has largely been replaced by Google, whose web browsers now controls 56.5% of the market. Even worse, is the fact that the WebKit engine used by Google now represents over 83% of web browsing, so web sites are increasingly focusing on compatibility with just one web engine. While Google and Apple are more supportive of W3C and open standards than Microsoft was in the late 90s, the web is increasingly being monopolized by one web engine and two companies, whose business models are not always based on the best interests of users or their rights.

Original Submission

tonyPick writes:

Spotted at Hackernews is a link to this Context Information Security blog post on reverse engineering an IOT connected Furby toy:
Site may be down. Archive

With Christmas almost upon us and "pester season" in full swing, we thought it high time to have a prod at some of the connected toys that'll inevitably end up nestled beneath trees across the nation in just a few weeks time.

We've been working in collaboration with Which? to review the Furby Connect from Hasbro, which is currently priced at around £32.00, and comes with a smartphone app that offers to "connect you to a world of surprises."

The idea of Furbies being sold with companion apps is not a new one: the Furby Connect's predecessor, the Furby Boom, also featured an accompanying app, however communication between it and the Furby was accomplished by means of high-frequency audio. This time around, Hasbro have equipped the Furby Connect with a Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) connection, allowing it to interface more reliably with its companion app - named "Furby Connect World"

The TL;DR is that security is not great:

This content is distributed in the form of proprietary DLC files, and seemed to contain new songs, dances, and actions for the Furby Connect to perform. If any new content is found, the associated DLC file is downloaded by the app, then pushed to the Furby Connect over its BLE connection
...
By sniffing the BLE connnection during one such DLC update, we immediately discovered that the security situation was bad. Right off the bat, none of the standard Bluetooth LE security features (e.g. authenticated pairing or link encryption) were in use by either the app or the Furby Connect. This meant that anyone within range of the communication could intercept unencrypted packets, inject their own content, or establish their own connection with the toy - all without any physical interaction required on the part of the user or the attacker.

The post then details hacking through the format of DLC files that are uploaded to the toy and generating custom audio and animations. The post contains a link to an example of the hacked toy in action, as well as response from Hasbro (the manufacturer).

Original HackerNews Thread.

Original Submission

frojack writes:

According to the AP, NY Times and a boat load of other AP carriers, the country boasting the loudest about how much of their energy needs are fulfilled by renewable sources, coal may be about to win out over one of the oldest forests still standing in Germany:

BERLIN (AP) — A court in western Germany says an ancient forest near the Belgian border can be chopped down to make way for a coal strip mine.

Cologne's administrative court ruled Friday against a legal complaint brought by the environmental group BUND that wanted to halt the clearance of much of the Hambach forest.

Hambach forest has become a focus of environmental protests against the expansion of a vast mine that supplies much of the coal used in nearby power plants.

The coal, a light brown variety called lignite, is considered one of the most polluting forms of fossil fuel.

Meanwhile their reactors are being systematically shut down and dismantled. But dirty coal use shows almost no decline.

Original Submission

An Anonymous Coward writes:

http://blog.backslasher.net/ssh-openvpn-tunneling.html

The Story

I was asked to take care of a security challange - setup Redis replication between two VMs over the internet.
The VMs were in different continents, so I had keep the bandwidth impact to a minimum. I thought of 3 options:

        stunnel, which uses tunnels TCP connections via SSL
        SSH, which has TCP tunneling over it's secure channel (amongst its weponary)
        OpenVPN, which is designed to encapsulate, encrypt and compress traffic among two machines

I quickly dropped stunnel because its setup is nontrivial compared to the other two (no logging, no init file...), and decided to test SSH and OpenVPN.
I was sure that when it comes to speed, OpenVPN will be the best, because:

        The first Google results say so (and they even look credible)
                http://superuser.com/a/238801
                http://security.stackexchange.com/a/68367
                http://support.vpnsecure.me/articles/tips-tricks/comparison-chart-openvpn-pptp-ssh-tunnel
        Logic dictates that SSH tunneling will suffer from TCP over TCP, since SSH runs over TCP, [while] OpenVPN, being a VPN software, is solely designed to move packets from one place to another.

I was so sure of that, that I almost didn't test [but, after testing, the results showed that as] long as you only need one TCP port forwarded, SSH is a much faster choice, because it has less overhead. I was quite surprised.

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Shares of Amazon rose enough to make Jeff Bezos worth an estimated $100.3 billion:

The Amazon.com Inc. founder's fortune is up $2.4 billion to $100.3 billion, as the online retailer's shares jumped more than 2 percent on optimism for Black Friday sales. Online purchases for the day are up 18.4 percent over last year, according to data from Adobe Analytics, and investors are betting the company will take an outsized share of online spending over the gifting season.

The $100 billion milestone makes Bezos, 53, the first billionaire to build a 12-figure net worth since 1999, when Microsoft Corp. co-founder Bill Gates hit the mark.

Meanwhile, Amazon merchants are scrambling to cheat each other as they peck at Bezos's scraps. Even (e-)books aren't safe.

Original Submission