feed on feeds - 2016/10/26 - items 0 to 15

Misleading "live" video from the International Space Station stuns the internet.

Verizon is treading carefully with Yahoo, but still wants to seal the deal. From a CNET report: "The deal makes strategic sense," said Marni Walden, the executive vice president of business innovation for Verizon and the person who pushed for the acquisition. "We won't jump off of a cliff blindly." She continues to believe there's value in the Yahoo name, noting that it won't go away if Verizon completes its acquisition. Brands like Yahoo Mail and Yahoo Finance still draw plenty of eyeballs, and offer the kind of audience that Verizon and AOL lack, she said during a keynote session at The Wall Street Journal Digital conference on Wednesday. Her comments come just weeks after Yahoo disclosed a 2014 breach exposed at least 500 million accounts, making it the worst hack in history. Shortly after, reports found that Yahoo had participated in a government program to sniff user emails, further eroding trust. Verizon said this all had the potential to cause a "material impact" to the deal, which could mean Yahoo takes a reduced price or the deal falls through altogether.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Verizon is treading carefully with Yahoo, but still wants to seal the deal. From a CNET report: "The deal makes strategic sense," said Marni Walden, the executive vice president of business innovation for Verizon and the person who pushed for the acquisition. "We won't jump off of a cliff blindly." She continues to believe there's value in the Yahoo name, noting that it won't go away if Verizon completes its acquisition. Brands like Yahoo Mail and Yahoo Finance still draw plenty of eyeballs, and offer the kind of audience that Verizon and AOL lack, she said during a keynote session at The Wall Street Journal Digital conference on Wednesday. Her comments come just weeks after Yahoo disclosed a 2014 breach exposed at least 500 million accounts, making it the worst hack in history. Shortly after, reports found that Yahoo had participated in a government program to sniff user emails, further eroding trust. Verizon said this all had the potential to cause a "material impact" to the deal, which could mean Yahoo takes a reduced price or the deal falls through altogether.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

While nobody knows exactly who was responsible for the internet outrage last Friday, business risk intelligence firm FlashPoint released a preliminary analysis of the attack agains Dyn DNS, and found that it was likely the work of "script kiddies" or amateur hackers -- as opposed to state-sponsored actors. TechCrunch reports: Aside from suspicion falling on Russia, various entities have also claimed or implied responsibility for the attack, including a hacking group called the New World Hackers and -- bizarrely -- WikiLeaks, which put a (perhaps joke) tweet suggesting some of its supporters might be involved. FlashPoint dubs these claims "dubious" and "likely to be false," and instead comes down on the side of the script kidding theory. Its reasoning is based on a few factors, including a detail it unearthed during its investigation of the attack: namely that the infrastructure used in the attack also targeted a well-known video game company. The attack on Dyn DNS was powered in part by a botnet of hacked DVRs and webcams known as Mirai. The source code for the malware that controls this botnet was put on Github earlier this month. And FlashPoint also notes that the hacker who released Mirai is known to frequent a hacking forum called hackforums[.]net. That circumstantial evidence points to a link between the attack and users and readers of the English-language hacking community, with FlashPoint also noting the forum has been known to target video games companies. It says it has "moderate confidence" about this theory. The firm also argues that the attacks do not seem to have been financially or politically motivated -- given the broad scope of the targets, and the lack of any attempts to extort money. Which just leaves the most likely being motivation to show off skills and disrupt stuff. Aka, script kiddies.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

While nobody knows exactly who was responsible for the internet outrage last Friday, business risk intelligence firm FlashPoint released a preliminary analysis of the attack agains Dyn DNS, and found that it was likely the work of "script kiddies" or amateur hackers -- as opposed to state-sponsored actors. TechCrunch reports: Aside from suspicion falling on Russia, various entities have also claimed or implied responsibility for the attack, including a hacking group called the New World Hackers and -- bizarrely -- WikiLeaks, which put a (perhaps joke) tweet suggesting some of its supporters might be involved. FlashPoint dubs these claims "dubious" and "likely to be false," and instead comes down on the side of the script kidding theory. Its reasoning is based on a few factors, including a detail it unearthed during its investigation of the attack: namely that the infrastructure used in the attack also targeted a well-known video game company. The attack on Dyn DNS was powered in part by a botnet of hacked DVRs and webcams known as Mirai. The source code for the malware that controls this botnet was put on Github earlier this month. And FlashPoint also notes that the hacker who released Mirai is known to frequent a hacking forum called hackforums[.]net. That circumstantial evidence points to a link between the attack and users and readers of the English-language hacking community, with FlashPoint also noting the forum has been known to target video games companies. It says it has "moderate confidence" about this theory. The firm also argues that the attacks do not seem to have been financially or politically motivated -- given the broad scope of the targets, and the lack of any attempts to extort money. Which just leaves the most likely being motivation to show off skills and disrupt stuff. Aka, script kiddies.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Michael Barbaro at the New York Times got access to a set of audio interviews in 2014 with Donald Trump, his ex-wife Ivana and his kids.

It was presented in a two-part Run-up podcast.

It's totally worth a listen with the caveat that some of it is cringe-worthy.

In some ways Trump seems normal to me, for a guy raised in Queens in the 50s. But not all guys from Queens end up running for President after hosting a hit reality TV show, and all the other things Trump has done.

Some of the judgements by the commentators are pretty harsh and condescending. But some, especially near the end of the second part, are insightful.

There hasn't been anything else like this. I wonder if they're going to make the source audio available. It seems like a good idea.

Michael Barbaro at the New York Times got access to a set of audio interviews in 2014 with Donald Trump, his ex-wife Ivana and his kids.

It was presented in a two-part Run-up podcast.

It's totally worth a listen with the caveat that some of it is cringe-worthy.

In some ways Trump seems normal to me, for a guy raised in Queens in the 50s. But not all guys from Queens end up running for President after hosting a hit reality TV show, and all the other things Trump has done.

Some of the judgements by the commentators are pretty harsh and condescending. But some, especially near the end of the second part, are insightful.

There hasn't been anything else like this. I wonder if they're going to make the source audio available. It seems like a good idea.

I’ve long thought that a desktop OS can’t be unified with a touchscreen OS. A desktop OS needs all kinds of things that touchscreen OSes don’t tend to provide.

In the Mac world that’s menus, AppleScript, multiple windows, drag and drop, and so on — all these things you need to be able to comfortably work eight hours and get a bunch of things actually done. Boring stuff, maybe, compared to the fun of iOS, but important stuff.

And especially you don’t need to be holding your arms up all day long to touch a screen.

Then Microsoft shows this video of the Surface Studio, and now I’m wondering.

* * *

What if — and it’s a big if — Microsoft made Swift a peer with C# and provided some good app frameworks?

Two things come to mind:

iOS developers are loosely tied to Apple. (I’m speaking generally, of course.) They love iPhones, but many of them came here from some other platform. They’ll go to whatever platform looks like fun and has some business opportunities. These developers tend to love Swift, and would be delighted to be able to preserve that investment in the language.

Mac developers, on the other hand, tend to be more closely tied to Apple. They’ve been doing development on Apple platforms since long before iOS. They’re more likely to stay put.

Except — and this part shouldn’t be underestimated — many of these Mac developers are here because Macs are the computer for creative professionals and artists. That’s what attracted us to Macs in the first place.

It’s more than a niche. It’s our identity as Mac developers: we write apps for people who make things. But what if the Surface Studio takes over as the computer for people who make things? And what if we could bring over some of our investment (such as learning Swift) with us?

I never thought to even consider that as a possible future.

* * *

Tomorrow’s going to be a weird day, as new Macs will inevitably be compared to the Surface Studio, on the Surface Studio’s terms.

Dogs and cats. The apocalypse. Zombie date night. It‘s all happening.

Sounds, especially those made by other humans, have ranked as the top distraction in the workplace, according to design expert Alan Hedge of Cornell. A staggering 74 percent of workers say they face "many" instances of disturbances and distractions from noise. Hedge says the noise is generally coming from another person, though it's much more disturbing when it's a machine that is making it. NPR reports: The popularity of open offices has exacerbated the problem. The University of California's Center for the Built Environment has a study showing workers are happier when they are in enclosed offices and less likely to take sick days. This does not bode well for some workers facing cold and flu season, when hacking coughs make the rounds. [...] Rue Dooley, an adviser at the Society for Human Resource Management, says HR professionals often call in, asking how to manage co-worker complaints about various bodily noises.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.