Independent – Page 246 – Computer Security Articles

Credit to Author: Gregg Keizer| Date: Mon, 06 Nov 2017 03:09:00 -0800

Microsoft’s motivation for pushing customers to run Windows 10 previews is obvious: It gains a huge pool of testers and millions of amateur quality control workers who help shake out software bugs before the code reaches the wild.

But is there anything in it for the customer?

“Absolutely,” said Wes Miller, an analyst with Directions on Microsoft, in a recent interview when asked whether customers benefit from participating in the Insider program. “You’re testing the quality of those bits vis-a-vis your infrastructure.”

Windows Insider, which Microsoft launched in the fall of 2014 as its first-ever ongoing beta program, delivers pre-release versions of the next Windows 10 feature upgrade. As Microsoft creates an upgrade, it periodically releases builds to the Insider audience. Just before the upgrade’s actual ship date, Microsoft freezes the code, then begins work on the next version, with betas of that build reaching participants soon thereafter.

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November 4, 2017 admin

Watch the Casting of a Giant Mirror for the First Extremely Large Telescope

Credit to Author: Daniel Oberhaus| Date: Sat, 04 Nov 2017 16:00:00 +0000

A look inside the Mirror Lab, where astronomers go when they need some serious glass.

Independent MotherBoard Security

November 4, 2017 admin

Undraining the Swamp

Credit to Author: Ankita Rao| Date: Sat, 04 Nov 2017 15:00:00 +0000

Florida is trying to undo decades of damage to the Everglades.

ComputerWorld Independent

November 4, 2017 admin

Critics are wrong to slam iPhone X’s new face tech

Credit to Author: Mike Elgan| Date: Sat, 04 Nov 2017 03:00:00 -0700

Apple’s new iPhone X reads faces. And privacy pundits are gnashing their teeth over it.

The phone’s complex TrueDepth image system includes an infrared projector, which casts 30,000 invisible dots, and an infrared camera, which checks where in three-dimensional space those dots land. With a face in view, artificial intelligence on the phone figures out what’s going on with that face by processing locations of the dots.

Biometrics in general and face recognition in particular are touchy subjects among privacy campaigners. Unlike a password, you can’t change your fingerprints — or face.

Out of the box, the iPhone X’s face-reading system does three jobs: Face ID (security access), Animoji (avatars that mimic users’ facial expressions), and also something you might call “eye contact,” to figure out if the user is looking at the phone (to prevent sleep mode during active use).

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Independent Krebs

November 3, 2017 admin

2nd Breach at Verticalscope Impacts Millions

Credit to Author: BrianKrebs| Date: Fri, 03 Nov 2017 22:00:26 +0000

For the second time in as many years, hackers have compromised Verticalscope.com, a Canadian company that manages hundreds of popular Web discussion forums totaling more than 45 million user accounts. Evidence of the breach was discovered just before someone began using that illicit access as a commercial for a new paid search service that indexes consumer information exposed in corporate data breaches.

Independent MotherBoard Security

November 3, 2017 admin