News & Features
Thursday, 23 May 2013
A code sent by SMS, in addition to the standard password, will improve security for Twitter accounts - not a bad idea, after recent problems with hacked accounts sending out false reports
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Seneca College has released Pidora 18, its Fedora remix optimised for the Raspberry Pi mini-computer. It features a special headless mode that makes it easy to install the distribution over the network
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Wednesday, 22 May 2013
Chrome 27.0.1453.93 closes 17 security vulnerabilities for which Google has paid out almost $15,000. The newest version of the browser also improves page load speed for pages with many assets
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Digia is bringing Android's base layer and Qt's UI framework together to make a platform that's aimed at embedded device makers who want a slick user interface on their systems
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Unscrupulous profiteers are openly offering DDoS attacks as a service. They have no fear of being prosecuted - according to a reputable US blogger, the prosecutors themselves might be on board
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In his personal blog, open source advocate Simon Phipps has pointed out that Google's proposed cross-licence for the VP8/WebM video codec patents is incompatible with multiple parts of the open source definition
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Available free of charge, the Clueful app exposes Android programs that don't take users' privacy seriously enough, for example by sending personal information to advertising networks
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The developers of the Debian project have released the first major version of the Debian userland with the GNU Hurd kernel. Even though it is not an official Debian release, it is in "a very decent state" say the developers
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The memory-mapped I/O can potentially double the performance of the embeddable SQL engine but care needs to be taken with its use. Other enhancements make SQLite databases easier to identify and improve error reporting
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Microsoft's Skype division has released a new version of its proprietary voice, video and text messaging client for Linux that includes user interface improvements and fixes a number of bugs including a crashing problem when using the call window
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The hacker attacks on Google in late 2009 may have had a greater impact than previously thought. The attackers reportedly had access to information on foreign agents collected by the US counterintelligence service
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Tuesday, 21 May 2013
A first stable series 2.2 version of the PHP web framework is now available. The new release includes additions such as a new diagnostic feature for ZFTool and supports dynamic DDL queries
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Sony has released proprietary drivers and libraries of its Xperia S smartphone, Xperia Z smartphone and Xperia Tablet Z along with source code from the Android Open Source Project (AOSP) to make building custom firmare easier
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The latest version of the Jira issue tracker revamps the web interface, adds new ways of tracking issues, integrates a mobile interface and adds pre-configured workflows for agile developers
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At the Google I/O conference, developer Ilya Grigorik gave some advice on how to optimise mobile applications for the maximum energy efficiency and gave an overview of how various mobile radio networks interact with web protocols
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Alerted by the levels of outgoing traffic, Yahoo Japan believes that 22 million user IDs were leaked from their systems but it is confident that no password or other verification data was involved in the exfiltration
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Back in February, a report by cybersecurity firm Mandiant exposed a Chinese military unit that targeted companies and media in the US. When the New York Times ran a feature on the APT1 group, things went quiet around the group. Now, APT1 has resumed operation
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The latest version of the live Debian Linux distribution for anonymity and privacy especially in repressive environments is now available with on the fly package updating and support for the latest obfuscation bridges
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The latest version of the open source SQL client for Windows brings a query history function, supports search and replace in results and introduces folders that allow users to organise the software's user interface better
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The new QEMU supports KVM virtualisation on the Cortex A15 series of ARM cores and can use VFIO to pass through graphics chips from the host to the guest
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Arduino has launched a new family of development boards and its first full robotics platform. The Arduino Yún is a Wi-Fi enabled board running Linux and the Arduino Robot is the company's first robotics platform that is fully functional out of the box
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Monday, 20 May 2013
With a new slicker x264 set of controls, the latest version of the open source video transcoder is easier to use. New betas show developments using Intel GPUs and OpenCL too
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The developers of the open source web frontend framework Bootstrap are designing the next version of their software to be adaptable to mobile form factors by default. Development work on Bootstrap 3 is almost complete
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In this edition: Meteor goes all WebSockets, IntelliJ IDEA goes all Android, Pythonic progress, development kits for Hadoop, and standards for lifecycle software
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The new Hangouts is designed to put an end to the proliferation of Google chat services and promises to provide interesting features - but its missing XMPP support potentially means that numerous Google Talk contacts could be irretrievably lost
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