“Ubuntu developers have fixed a series of vulnerabilities that made it easy for standard users to gain coveted root privileges,” reports Ars Technica: “This blog post is about an astonishingly straightforward way to escalate privileges on Ubuntu,” Kevin Backhouse, a researcher at GitHub, wrote in a post published on Tuesday. “With a few simple commands in the terminal, and a few…
Tag: desktop
Net Applications Will No Longer Track the Browser Wars
Emil Protalinski, reporting for VentureBeat: For more than a decade, I’ve used Net Applications’ NetMarketShare tool to track the desktop browser and operating system markets. The monthly reports have been critical in gauging which browsers and new versions of operating systems are gaining or losing market share. Last week, Net Applications released its final NetMarketShare report. The loss could not come…
Proctoring Software Company Used DMCA To Take Down a Student’s Critical Tweets
A series of tweets by one Miami University student that were critical of a proctoring software company have been hidden by Twitter after the company filed a copyright takedown notice. TechCrunch reports: Erik Johnson, a student who works as a security researcher on the side, posted a lengthy tweet thread in early September about Proctorio, an Arizona-based software company that several…
Why Do Printers Still Suck?
Just when we need them the most, with print shops locked down, online schooling in session, and everyone working from home, they fail to step up. From a column: Printers have been my enemy ever since I can remember. My first office job involved an evil printer that suffered daily paper jams. Tasked with fixing it, I suffered frequent burns and…
Maze, a Notorious Ransomware Group, Says It’s Shutting Down
One of the most active and notorious data-stealing ransomware groups, Maze, says it is “officially closed.” From a report: The announcement came as a waffling statement, riddled with spelling mistakes, and published on its website on the dark web, which for the past year has published vast troves of stolen internal documents and files from the companies it targeted, including Cognizant,…
Security Blueprints of Many Companies Leaked in Hack of Swedish Firm Gunnebo
Brian Krebs: In March 2020, KrebsOnSecurity alerted Swedish security giant Gunnebo Group that hackers had broken into its network and sold the access to a criminal group which specializes in deploying ransomware. In August, Gunnebo said it had successfully thwarted a ransomware attack, but this week it emerged that the intruders stole and published online tens of thousands of sensitive documents…
Does Python Need to Change?
The Python programming language “is a big hit for machine learning,” read a headline this week at ZDNet, adding “But now it needs to change.” Python is the top language according to IEEE Spectrum’s electrical engineering audience, yet you can’t run Python in a browser and you can’t easily run it on a smartphone. Plus no one builds games in Python…
ClipDrop Lets You ‘Cut-and-Paste’ Real Life Objects Using Your Phone Camera Into Desktop Apps
An anonymous reader shares a report: Apple has boasted a lot about the AR capabilities of its new LiDAR equipped iPhone 12 Pro. It means that your new iPhone will be able to ‘map’ the room better to place objects. However, I hadn’t found an AR app that I might use regularly — until now. A few months ago, developer Cyril…
ClipDrop Lets You ‘Copy-and-Paste’ Real Life Objects Using Your Phone Camera Into Desktop Apps
An anonymous reader shares a report: Apple has boasted a lot about the AR capabilities of its new LiDAR equipped iPhone 12 Pro. It means that your new iPhone will be able to ‘map’ the room better to place objects. However, I hadn’t found an AR app that I might use regularly — until now. A few months ago, developer Cyril…
Ubuntu Linux 20.10 ‘Groovy Gorilla’ is Here With Renewed Raspberry Pi Focus
An anonymous reader shares a report: As stated earlier, new Ubuntu versions come April and October, and wouldn’t you know it, we are at the end of the latter. With Halloween a bit more than a week away, Canonical today releases Ubuntu 20.10. Ubuntu’s version numbering scheme is based on year (YY), a period, and the month (MM). For instance, the…