Windows

Microsoft Is Finally Ditching Its Windows 95-Era Icons (theverge.com) 108

Posted by BeauHD from the out-with-the-old-in-with-the-new dept.
Microsoft is now planning to refresh the Windows 95-era icons you still sometimes come across in Windows 10. The Verge reports: Windows Latest has spotted new icons for the hibernation mode, networking, memory, floppy drives, and much more as part of the shell32.dll file in preview versions of Windows 10. This DLL is a key part of the Windows Shell, which surfaces icons in a variety of dialog boxes throughout the operating system. It's also a big reason why Windows icons have been so inconsistent throughout the years. Microsoft has often modernized other parts of the OS only for an older app to throw you into a dialog box with Windows 95-era icons from shell32.dll. Hopefully this also means Windows will never ask you for a floppy disk drive when you dig into Device Manager to update a driver. That era of Windows, along with these old icons, has been well and truly over for more than a decade now. These new changes are part of Microsoft's design overhaul to Windows 10, codenamed Sun Valley. "We're expecting to hear more about Sun Valley at Microsoft's Build conference later this month, or as part of a dedicated Windows news event," notes The Verge.
The Courts

Humble Bundle Creator Brings Antitrust Lawsuit Against Valve Over Steam (arstechnica.com) 90

Posted by BeauHD from the monopolistic-behavior dept.
Indie developer (and Humble Indie Bundle originator) Wolfire Games has filed a proposed class-action lawsuit against Steam creator Valve, saying that the company is wielding Steam's monopoly power over the PC gaming market to extract "an extraordinarily high cut from nearly every sale that passes through its storeâ"30%." Ars Technica reports: The lawsuit, filed in a Washington state federal court, centers on what it considers an illegal tying of the Steam gaming platform (which provides game library management, social networking, achievement tracking, Steam Workshop mods, etc.) and the Steam game store (which processes online payments and delivers a copy of the game). After years of growth, the vast majority of PC gamers are locked into the Steam platform thanks to "immense network effects" and the high switching costs to move to a new PC platform, the suit argues. That makes the platform "a must-have for game publishers," who need access to the players on Steam to succeed. But games that use the Steam platform also have to be sold on the Steam Store, where Valve takes its 30 percent cut of all sales. By leveraging its monopoly platform power into a "gatekeeper role" for the store, Valve "wield[s] extreme power over publishers of PC Desktop Games" that leads to a "small but significant and non-transitory increase in price" for developers compared to a truly competitive market, the suit argues.

The suit includes a laundry list of competitors that have tried to create their own platforms to take on Steam's monopoly, including CD Projekt Red, EA, Microsoft, Amazon, and Epic (not to mention "pure distributors" with platform-free stores like GameStop, Green Man Gaming, Impulse, and Direct2Drive). But the lawsuit argues that Steam's lock-in effects mean none of these stores have been able to make much of a dent in Valve's monopoly position, despite plenty of well-funded attempts. Even the Epic Games Store, which has spent hundreds of millions of dollars securing exclusives and free game giveaways, has a market share of only "a little above 2 percent," according to one cited analysis (in an interview last June, Epic's Tim Sweeney estimated a more robust 15 percent market share for EGS).

"The failure of these companies to meaningfully compete against the Steam Gaming Platform shows it is virtually impossible as an economic matter to compete against the Steam Gaming Platform," the suit argues. "The Steam Gaming Platform has well-cemented dominance in the PC Desktop Gaming Platform Market, and given its unique and strong network effects, that is unlikely to change." The only meaningful way to avoid [Valve's] anticompetitive measures, the suit argues, is "to avoid using the Steam Gaming Platform at all." But Valve's monopoly position means that "there are no economically viable alternatives to the Steam Gaming Platform" for most PC games. While the suit acknowledges a few counterexamples (Riot's League of Legends is cited by name), such titles "typically require a long history of recognition and success before they can attempt to thrive without the Steam Gaming Platform," the suit says.
IT

Mighty's Plan To Reignite the Future of Desktop Computing (mightyapp.com) 219

Posted by msmash from the how-about-that dept.
New submitter oblom writes about Mighty, a new approach to web browsing: In short, server-side web navigation, with client-side rendering. Per Y Combinator founder Paul Graham: "Usually when people talk about grand things like changing "the future of computing," they're full of it. But not this time. Suhail [founder of Mighty] has been working on this for 2 years. There's a good chance it's the new default infrastructure. Suhail writes in a blog post: After 2 years of hard work, we've created something that's indistinguishable from a Google Chrome that runs at 4K, 60 frames a second, takes no more than 500 MB of RAM, and often less than 30% CPU with 50+ tabs open. This is the first step in making a new kind of computer. [...] When you switch to Mighty, it will feel like you went out and bought a new computer with a much faster processor and much more memory. But you don't have [to] buy a new computer. All you have to do is download a desktop app.

To make Mighty work, we had to solve a lot of complex engineering problems, including designing a custom server to keep costs low, building a custom low-latency networking protocol, forking Chromium to integrate directly with various low-level render/encoder pipelines, and making the software interoperate with a long list of macOS features. We are working hard at ramping up server capacity across the world as we roll it out to users. You might be thinking: "Yeah but what about the lag?" Lag would have been a real problem 5 years ago, but new advances since then have allowed us to eliminate nearly all of it: 5 Ghz WiFi bands, H.265 hardware-accelerated low-latency encoders, widespread 100 Mbps Internet, and cheaper, more powerful GPUs. We also designed a new low-latency network protocol, and we locate servers as close to users geographically as possible. As a result, a user with 100 Mbps internet will rarely notice lag while using Mighty. Watch this demo video and see for yourself.
Google

4chan Founder Chris 'Moot' Poole Has Left Google (cnbc.com) 91

Posted by BeauHD from the greener-pastures dept.
Chris Poole, who founded controversial online community 4chan before joining Google in 2016, has left the search giant after jumping among several groups within the company, CNBC has learned. From the report: Poole's last official day at Google was April 13th, according to an internal repository viewed by CNBC, which described his last role as a product manager. Oftentimes, employee shares attached to hiring vest at the five-year mark, though it's unclear if that's a reason for Poole's departure now. Poole, who goes by the moniker "Moot," founded 4chan in 2003 at age 15. It grew into one of the most influential and controversial online communities to date. Rolling Stone famously called him a boy-genius and the "Mark Zuckerberg of the online underground." [...]

Poole revealed in 2016 that he'd joined Google as a continuation of his work, and in a now-removed post, stated he'd use his "experience from a dozen years of building online communities" and "grow in ways one simply cannot on their own." He joined as product manager in the photos and streams unit, which oversaw social networking efforts under VP Bradley Horowitz at the time. That sparked speculation that the company hired him to help it revamp its social media ambitions, some of which aimed to compete with Facebook. Poole jumped between several different roles during his five years. At one point, he reportedly became a partner at Google's in-house start-up incubator, Area 120, which was just getting off the ground in 2016. He then became a product manager in Google's Maps division, according to Crunchbase.
Unix

FreeBSD 13 Released (phoronix.com) 66

Posted by BeauHD from the latest-and-greatest dept.
"FreeBSD, the other Linux, reached version 13," writes long-time Slashdot reader undoman. "The operating system is known for its stable code, native ZFS support, and use of the more liberal BSD licenses." Phoronix highlights some of the major new improvements: FreeBSD 13.0 delivers on performance improvements (particularly for Intel CPUs we've seen in benchmarks thanks to hardware P-States), upgrading to LLVM Clang 11 as the default compiler toolchain, POWER 64-bit support improvements, a wide variety of networking improvements, 64-bit ARM (AArch64) now being a tier-one architecture alongside x86_64, EFI boot improvements, AES-NI is now included by default for generic kernel builds, the default CPU support for i386 is bumped to i686 from i486, and a variety of other hardware support improvements. Various obsolete GNU tools have been removed like an old version of GNU Debugger used for crashinfo, obsolete GCC 4.2.1 and Binutils 2.17 were dropped from the main tree, and also switching to a BSD version of grep. The release announcement can be found here.
Security

NAME:WRECK Vulnerabilities Impact Millions of Smart and Industrial Devices (therecord.media) 21

Posted by msmash from the security-woes dept.
Catalin Cimpanu, reporting at Record: Security researchers have found a new set of vulnerabilities that impact hundreds of millions of servers, smart devices, and industrial equipment. Called NAME:WRECK, the vulnerabilities have been discovered by enterprise IoT security firm Forescout as part of its internal research program named Project Memoria -- which the company describes as "an initiative that aims at providing the cybersecurity community with the largest study on the security of TCP/IP stacks." Although never visible to end-users, TCP/IP stacks are libraries that vendors add to their firmware to support internet connectivity and other networking functions for their devices. These libraries are very small but, in most cases, underpin the most basic functions of a device, and any vulnerability here exposes users to remote attacks. The NAME:WRECK research is the fifth set of vulnerabilities impacting TCP/IP libraries that have been disclosed over the past three years, and the third set disclosed part of Project Memoria.
Intel

Intel CEO Calls for 'Moonshot' To Boost US Role in Chipmaking (axios.com) 143

Posted by msmash from the moving-forward dept.
Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger called Monday for the U.S. to spend billions of dollars over the next few years as part of a "moonshot" designed to regain lost ground in semiconductor manufacturing. The goal, he said, is to see the U.S. again account for a third of global output, up from about 12% today. From a report: Investments made now will take several years to bear fruit, so they won't do much to ease the current semiconductor shortage, but are vital to America's long-term economic future and national security, Gelsinger told Axios on Monday. The White House met with tech leaders in a virtual summit on Monday discussing the need for investment in chip manufacturing. With demand for broad categories of chips exceeding supply, makers of everything from cars to computers and networking gear are having to slow factories and cut output. Automakers have been hit especially hard. At the very leading edge, the vast majority of chip production today is done in Taiwan, an island that remains imperiled by China's longstanding claims. "I would argue the most important building block for our economic livelihood and every aspect of human life is now increasingly not in our control," Gelsinger told Axios in an interview after the White House meeting.
Facebook

FTC Urges Courts Not To Dismiss Facebook Antitrust Case (arstechnica.com) 9

Posted by msmash from the fighting-the-good-fight dept.
The Federal Trade Commission has urged a federal judge in DC to reject Facebook's request to dismiss the FTC's high-stakes antitrust lawsuit. In a 56-page legal brief, the FTC reiterated its arguments that Facebook's profits have come from years of anticompetitive conduct. From a report: "Facebook is one of the largest and most profitable companies in the history of the world," the FTC wrote. "Facebook reaps massive profits from its [social networking] monopoly, not by offering a superior or more innovative product because it has, for nearly a decade, taken anticompetitive actions to neutralize, hinder, or deter would-be competitors." The FTC's case against Facebook focuses on two blockbuster acquisitions that Facebook made early in the last decade. In 2012, Facebook paid $1 billion for the fast-growing startup Instagram. While Instagram the company was still tiny -- it had only about a dozen employees at the time of the acquisition -- it had millions of users and was growing rapidly. Mark Zuckerberg realized it could grow into a serious rival for Facebook, and the FTC alleges Zuckerberg bought the company to prevent that from happening.
Wireless Networking

Broadband Use Surged More Than 30% During Pandemic (cnet.com) 13

Posted by BeauHD from the cause-and-effect dept.
Broadband use surged 30% to 40% during the COVID-19 pandemic in the US, and even reached 60% in some areas, an industry group has concluded. CNET reports: The Broadband Internet Technical Advisory Group released data this week that it gathered from internet service providers, broadband analytics firms, and networking companies that help deliver data. We all consumed more downstream data -- the flow from the internet to the home -- but upstream use grew faster. That's an important consideration given that most cable and DSL services offer much higher downstream capacity. All those videoconferences for work meetings and online schooling likely were involved in the upstream data traffic. "Some networks saw more than 300% increase in the amount of video conferencing traffic from February to October 2020," the report said.

Though the internet itself held up well overall, there are problems. "Rural and low-income households have struggled" with broadband access to online services, the report said, and some households suffered with older equipment that couldn't handle heavy traffic or the increase in networked devices in the home. If you're having problems at home, you should consider an Ethernet cable connection to your network router, upgrading to a mesh network with multiple network access points, upgrading your PC or phone, or paying for a faster internet connection if it's available.
Bitcoin

Inside BitClout, the Dystopian Social Network With Big Backers and Vocal Critics (decrypt.co) 49

Posted by BeauHD from the decentralized-social-network dept.
An anonymous reader shares a report from Decrypt about BitClout, an ambitious decentralized social network that tokenizes Twitter personalities. Here's an excerpt from the report: At first glance, BitClout looks and feels like primitive mashup of Twitter and Robinhood, including a stream of messages and buttons to like or share what other people post. Anyone can create a profile and begin participating in the network by providing a phone number. But BitClout has already created 15,000 profiles based on popular Twitter personalities, including ones for Elon Musk and influencers in the cryptocurrency world -- all without asking anyone's permission. Diamondhands [the man behind BitClout who asked for anonymity even though his real identity is well known] says BitClout created the profiles to prevent impostors from creating fake accounts and squatting on them.

Every BitClout account is also tied to a "coin" that rises and falls in value depending on how many people use it. Anyone can follow a given account -- as they would on Twitter or Instagram -- but the coin means they can also own an asset that is hypothetically tied to the person's public reputation. "What you get to do is monetize yourself," says Diamondhands. "All the positive things you put out in the world will cause people to like you and buy your coin. You can monetize pent up enthusiasm for you, and let fans ride the rocket ship with you." BitClout users who feel inclined to being bought and sold in this way can create a profile to earn a portion of the coins associated with their image. In the case of those Twitter personalities whom BitClout already added to the platform, they can claim their profile (and a portion of the coins associated with it) by tweeting that they have joined the network -- a requirement that conveniently provides free marketing for BitClout. [...] A tracking site called BitClout Pulse has already sprung up to track the value of more popular coins.

BitClout's unusual twist on social networking extends beyond adding people without their permission. The project also stands out for its technical operations, which rely on dozens of autonomous blockchain-based nodes scattered around the world -- a very different architecture than Facebook or Twitter, which rely on centralized servers to keep their networks running. Every message or transaction is recorded to BitClout's blockchain, which Diamondhands describes vaguely as custom-built software similar to Bitcoin's, but with greater capacity for social networking functions. He says BitClout's code is open source and the team will soon publish it. All of this, says Diamondhands, will eventually lead to brand-name organizations hosting BitClout nodes that will display feeds tailored to various interests. For instance, he says, ESPN could run a node that displays a feed heavily populated with sports figures, while Politico might do the same with a focus on political leaders. But Bitclout's node structure also means it will lack centralized moderation policies like those found on platforms like Twitter or Facebook. Yes, we're on BitClout: bitclout.com/u/slashdotorg
Cloud

Amazon Hires Former Executive Adam Selipsky To Run AWS (cnbc.com) 18

Posted by BeauHD from the out-with-the-old-in-with-the-new dept.
Amazon has chosen Adam Selipsky to run its Amazon Web Services division. Currently, Selipsky is CEO of Salesforce-owned data-visualization software maker Tableau. Andy Jassy made the decision as the current head of AWS, after he was chosen to replace Jeff Bezos as CEO of Amazon. CNBC reports: Amazon rules the market for public cloud infrastructure that companies use to run internal and external applications, a modern alternative to relying on in-house servers, storage and networking equipment. In 2019 industry research company Gartner estimated that Amazon had 45% of the market, more than any other company, including Microsoft and Google. As such, Selipsky becomes the most visible person in the growing industry, perhaps second only to Jassy, who enters a bigger job when he becomes Amazon CEO in the third quarter.

Selipsky is one of the people several insiders had identified as a possible successor to Jassy. Selipsky had held a prominent position inside AWS, as vice president for sales, marketing and support, before leaving to run then-public Tableau in 2016. Salesforce bought Tableau for $15.7 billion in 2019.
Microsoft

Gen Z Is Getting Screwed By Remote Work, Microsoft Survey Finds (cnet.com) 110

Posted by BeauHD from the we-don't-seem-to-know-what-we-want dept.
"A new study from Microsoft, released Monday, found that among the more than 31,000 workers it surveyed, 73% hoped remote work options would continue when the pandemic ends," reports CNET. "Even Gen Z applicants were slightly more likely to apply for a job with remote options than for one strictly in an office," even though they feel that they're losing out on the career growth that happens in the office. CNET reports: Gen Z workers, born roughly between the mid-1990s and mid-2010s, responded to Microsoft's surveys generally by saying they're more stressed and find they're struggling more than their peers. They tend to be single, since they're younger, leading them to feel isolated. And since they're early in their careers, they don't have financial means to create a good workspace at home if their employer won't pay for it. And they're not having those in-person meetings that sometimes help them land in career advancing projects, or even to get in good with the boss.

"Without hallway conversations, chance encounters, and small talk over coffee, it's hard to feel connected even to my immediate team, much less build meaningful connections across the company," wrote Hannah McConnaughey, a product marketing manager at Microsoft who's a Gen Z worker. "Networking as someone early in their career has gotten so much more daunting since the move to fully remote work -- especially since switching to a totally different team during the pandemic!"

Employees also say they want flexibility rather than fully remote jobs. Of the workers Microsoft surveyed, 73% said they want remote work options to stay, with 46% saying they plan to move now that they can work remotely. Still, 67% said they want more in-person work or collaboration too. In short: We don't seem to know what we want yet. [...] In its conclusions, Microsoft suggests companies invest in technology that helps bridge the physical and digital worlds, so teams can work remotely and in the office. Additionally, it says Gen Z employees need more career support.
Apple

Huawei To Start Demanding 5G Royalties From Apple, Samsung (bloomberg.com) 75

Posted by msmash from the how-about-that dept.
Huawei will begin charging mobile giants like Apple a "reasonable" fee for access to its trove of wireless 5G patents, potentially creating a lucrative revenue source by showcasing its global lead in next-generation networking. From a report: The owner of the world's largest portfolio of 5G patents will negotiate rates and potential cross-licensing with the iPhone maker and Samsung Electronics, Chief Legal Officer Song Liuping said. It aims to get paid despite U.S. efforts to block its network gear and shut it out of the supply chain, but promised to charge lower rates than rivals like Qualcomm, Ericsson AB and Nokia Oyj. Huawei should rake in about $1.2 billion to $1.3 billion in patent and licensing fees between 2019 and 2021, executives said without specifying which of those stemmed from 5G. It's capping per-phone royalties at $2.50, according to Jason Ding, head of Huawei's intellectual property department. China's largest technology company by revenue wants a seat at the table with tech giants vying to define the rapidly evolving field of connected cars, smart homes and robotic surgery. Battles are unfolding over who profits from 5G that may dwarf the size and scope of the tech industry's first worldwide patent war -- the one over smartphones. But having only just become a major player in 5G standards boards, Huawei is now grappling with U.S. sanctions that have all but crippled its smartphone business and threaten to hamstring its networking division abroad.
IBM

IBM's Patent Income Slips as Companies Resist 'Godfather' Deals (spokesman.com) 114

Posted by EditorDavid from the offers-you-can't-refuse dept.
"Even as IBM has sued an increasing number of companies, its IP income has shrunk," reports Bloomberg: Intellectual property rights historically brought in more than $1 billion a year, on average, helping offset massive research and development costs and shrinking revenue. Last year, IBM's income from intellectual property was $626 million, its lowest point since 1996, and 2019 wasn't much higher. While it continues to secure license deals, they are fewer and harder-won, with companies like Airbnb Inc. and Chewy Inc. waging battles in court...

In February, online pet-food seller Chewy requested a court order to block a $36 million patent fee IBM is demanding. Chewy accused IBM of "seeking exorbitant licensing fees for early internet patents having no value." IBM's claims against Chewy include years-old inventions such as targeted advertising and content resizing based on cursor activity, both ubiquitous on the web. Chewy said IBM doesn't make or sell products covered by the vast majority of the thousands of patents it has received over the past 20 years, but instead just threatens to sue if companies don't agree to pay for licenses. IBM has not answered Chewy's complaint, and no trial date has been set.

Companies that use their IP licensing aggressively as a way to make money are often referred to as patent trolls. However, IBM's position as the largest aggregator of U.S. intellectual property is more akin to being a patent godfather, says Robin Feldman, a law professor at the University of California, Hastings. With more than 38,000 active patents in its portfolio, and thousands of license agreements bolstering its legitimacy, IBM's demands have traditionally gone unchallenged, Feldman said. Such patent godfathers, with large portfolios, are "able to make offers that can't be refused." Even some of the most innovative technology giants have licensed IBM patents over the years. Alphabet Inc.'s Google, Amazon.com Inc. and LinkedIn are among countless companies that have had to pony up.

IBM also has long served as a patent bank for young companies to jump-start their portfolios. Facebook Inc. was not yet public in 2012 when it bought 750 patents on software and networking from IBM. As Instacart Inc. prepares to go public, it purchased almost 300 IBM patents in January ranging from e-commerce to smart shopping bags.
Noting a series of Supreme Court verdicts making it easier to invalidate a patent, Feldman, the law professor, told Bloomberg that "Being the godfather isn't what it used to be. It's not that patent aggregation as a business is over. You just make less money."
Social Networks

MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell Is Trying To Launch a Social Media Site, and It's Already Resulted In a Legal Threat (thedailybeast.com) 229

Posted by BeauHD from the off-to-a-great-start dept.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Daily Beast: MyPillow founder and staunch Trump ally Mike Lindell plans to launch a social network of his own in the next few weeks, creating a haven for the kind of pro-Trump conspiracy theories that have been banned on more prominent social-media sites. On Lindell's "Vocl" social media platform, users will be free to claim that a supercomputer stole the election from Donald Trump, or that vaccines are a tool of the devil. Any new social media network faces serious challenges. But Vocl must grapple with a daunting problem before it even launches: a website called "Vocal," spelled with an "A," already exists.

On Thursday, lawyers for Vocal's publicly traded parent company, Creatd, Inc., warned Lindell, in a letter reviewed by The Daily Beast, to change his social media network's name and surrender ownership of the Vocl.com domain name. If Lindell refuses to change the name, he could face a lawsuit. While Lindell has promised to turn Vocl into a "cross between Twitter and YouTube," Vocal is a publishing platform similar to Medium where writers can post and monetize articles. "It is clear that you are acting with bad faith and with intent to profit from Creatd's mark," the letter reads, claiming Lindell's Vocl would "tarnish" the Vocal brand. Creatd owns the trademark for using "Vocal" in a number of ways related to social networking, including creating "virtual communities" and "online networking services." Along with surrendering ownership of the Vocl.com domain name, Creatd wants Lindell to destroy any products with Vocl branding and never use the name again. "Creatd is prepared to take all steps necessary to protect Creatd's valuable intellectual property rights, without further notice to you," the letter reads. On Friday morning, the MyPillow CEO said: "It has nothing to do with their trademark. I haven't even launched yet. But it has nothing to do with us." He claims Vocl is also an acronym that stands for "Victory of Christ's Love."

Early Friday afternoon, Lindell told The Daily Beast to say, "We looked into it, and we believe it would be confusing, so we are going to announce a different name and URL by Monday."
Google

Google Denies Data Centre Fire Caused Russia Outage (bbc.com) 6

Posted by msmash from the closer-look dept.
Google has denied that recent problems with its services in Russia were the result of a fire at cloud provider OVH data centres in Strasbourg. From a report: The Russian authorities had directly blamed the blaze for disruptions to Google and YouTube. Google believes an unrelated networking issue was responsible for the problems, which lasted for about two hours. It suggests it is a coincidence the two events were in the same timeframe. In a statement Google said: "At 02:00 Pacific Time on 10 March we became aware of an upstream network issue that partially impacted internet service for users in Russia. We believe the cause of this incident was a misconfiguration of the routers at a local third-party internet service provider. Following extensive investigation we have no evidence to indicate that the fire in OVHCloud's data centre, or Google's own infrastructure, was the root cause of this incident." Russia's media watchdog the Federal Service for Supervision in Telecom, IT and Mass Communications - also known as Roskomnadzor- told news agency TASS that access to Google, YouTube and a number of other services were "caused by an accident in a major European data centre in Strasbourg."
Microsoft

LinkedIn Pauses New Sign-Ups in China To Review Compliance (bloomberg.com) 9

Posted by msmash from the tussle-continues dept.
Microsoft's professional networking site LinkedIn is pausing new member sign-ups for its service in China while it works to ensure it's in compliance with local law. From a report: "We're a global platform with an obligation to respect the laws that apply to us, including adhering to Chinese government regulations for our localized version of LinkedIn in China," the company said in a statement Tuesday. LinkedIn, which entered China in 2014, is one of the few U.S. social networking companies allowed in the country as it has agreed to restrict some content to adhere to state censorship rules. Currently, the service has 52 million users in Mainland China.
Microsoft

Despite Microsoft Patch, US Gov't Warns of 'Active Threat Still Developing' From Open Back Doors (reuters.com) 26

Posted by EditorDavid from the post-patch-problems dept.
Reuters reports: The White House on Sunday urged computer network operators to take further steps to gauge whether their systems were targeted amid a hack of Microsoft Corp's Outlook email program, saying a recent software patch still left serious vulnerabilities. "This is an active threat still developing and we urge network operators to take it very seriously," a White House official said, adding that top U.S. security officials were working to decide what next steps to take following the breach...

While Microsoft released a patch last week to shore up flaws in its email software, the remedy still leaves open a so-called back door that can allow access to compromised servers and perpetuating further attacks by others. "We can't stress enough that patching and mitigation is not remediation if the servers have already been compromised, and it is essential that any organization with a vulnerable server take measures to determine if they were already targeted," the White House official said...

The back channels for remote access can impact credit unions, town governments and small business, and have left U.S. officials scrambling to reach victims, with the FBI on Sunday urging them to contact the law enforcement agency. Those affected appear to host Web versions of Microsoft's email program Outlook on their own machines instead of cloud providers, possibly sparing many major companies and federal government agencies, records from the investigation suggest... So far, only a small percentage of infected networks have been compromised through the back door, the source previously told Reuters, but more attacks are expected.
The Internet

Starlink Will Hit 300Mbps and Expand To 'Most of Earth' This Year (arstechnica.com) 161

Posted by msmash from the up-next dept.
Starlink broadband speeds will double to 300Mbps "later this year," SpaceX CEO Elon Musk wrote on Twitter this week. SpaceX has been telling users to expect speeds of 50Mbps to 150Mbps since the beta began a few months ago. From a report: Musk also wrote that "latency will drop to ~20ms later this year." This is no surprise, as SpaceX promised latency of 20ms to 40ms during the beta and had said months ago that "we expect to achieve 16ms to 19ms by summer 2021." It sounds like the speed and latency improvements will roll out around the same time as when Starlink switches from beta to more widespread availability. Two weeks ago, Starlink opened preorders for service expected to be available in the second half of 2021, albeit with limited availability in each region. Reader xonen writes: Starlink has become available in my country, The Netherlands. I verified pricing -- it's the same prices in Euros as in the USA in dollars, which was to be expected due to sales taxes being about equal the difference in value between dollars and euro's, so 99 euro monthly, and 499 up front for the hardware. From the email:

Starlink is now available for order to a limited number of users in your coverage area. Placing your order now will hold your place in line for future service. Orders will be fulfilled on a first-come, first-served basis. During beta, users can expect to see data speeds vary from 50Mb/s to 150Mb/s and latency from 20ms to 40ms in most locations over the next several months as we enhance the Starlink system. There will also be brief periods of no connectivity at all. As we launch more satellites, install more ground stations and improve our networking software, data speed, latency and uptime will improve dramatically. The Starlink team will provide periodic updates on availability as we launch more satellites and expand our coverage area. Depending on your location, some orders may take 6 months or more to fulfill. To check availability for your location, visit Starlink.com and re-enter your service address. Thank you for your interest in Starlink and your continued support!
Facebook

Facebook Is Said to Be Building a Product to Compete With Clubhouse (nytimes.com) 27

Posted by msmash from the how-about-that dept.
Facebook is building an audio chat product that is similar to the popular young app Clubhouse, The New York Times reported Wednesday, citing two people with knowledge of the matter, as the social network aims to expand into new forms of communication. From the report: Clubhouse, a social networking app, has gained buzz for letting people gather in audio chat rooms to talk about various topics. Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook's chief executive, has been interested in audio communication forms, said the people with knowledge of the matter, and he appeared in the Clubhouse app on Sunday to chat about augmented and virtual reality. Facebook executives have ordered employees to create a similar product, said the people, who were not authorized to speak publicly. The product is in its earliest stages of development, they said. Facebook has a history of breaking into new technologies and chasing different mediums that have attracted users, especially if those audiences are young. Mr. Zuckerberg bought the photo-sharing site Instagram, the messaging app WhatsApp and the virtual reality company Oculus when all were small start-ups.

Slashdot Top Deals