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Atari Online News, Etc. Volume 17 Issue 43
Volume 17, Issue 43 Atari Online News, Etc. November 13, 2015
Published and Copyright (c) 1999 - 2015
All Rights Reserved
Atari Online News, Etc.
A-ONE Online Magazine
Dana P. Jacobson, Publisher/Managing Editor
Joseph Mirando, Managing Editor
Rob Mahlert, Associate Editor
Atari Online News, Etc. Staff
Dana P. Jacobson -- Editor
Joe Mirando -- "People Are Talking"
Michael Burkley -- "Unabashed Atariophile"
Albert Dayes -- "CC: Classic Chips"
Rob Mahlert -- Web site
Thomas J. Andrews -- "Keeper of the Flame"
With Contributions by:
Fred Horvat
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=~=~=~=
A-ONE #1743 11/13/15
~ Gmail To Issue Warning! ~ People Are Talking! ~ "Fallout 4" Review!
~ JP Morgan Hacking Bust! ~ Attack the Hyperlink? ~ Updates to Chrome?
~ Apple Certificates Goof ~ Facebook Blocking Tsu! ~ NSA Disclosures, Huh?
~ Windows 10 Major Update ~ Chrome Support Update! ~ Chrome Patch Pulled!
-* The Rise of the Tomb Raider! *-
-* Microsoft Tries To Evade US Spying! *-
-* Belgium to Facebook: Stop Tracking Them! *-
=~=~=~=
->From the Editor's Keyboard "Saying it like it is!"
""""""""""""""""""""""""""
If you've been following today's international news, you're aware of
the terrorist attacks that occurred in Paris this evening. It's
been difficult keeping my eyes off of the television trying to keep
updated. If I heard correctly, the terrorists have been caught
(and/or taken out) and continued investigations are ongoing. With
all that has been occurring in the world recently (the Russian plane
beeing blown up, attacks in Lebanon, the attacks on ISIS, etc.) one
has to wonder about possible retaliations.
Our thoughts and prayers go out to the people of France, especially
to the victims and their families.
Until next time...
=~=~=~=
->In This Week's Gaming Section - Fallout 4: A Fanboys Op-ed Review!
""""""""""""""""""""""""""""" The De-Objectification Of Lara Croft Is Complete!
=~=~=~=
->A-ONE's Game Console Industry News - The Latest Gaming News!
""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""
Fallout 4: A Fanboys Op-ed Review
When I finished Fallout 3, the game left me with one desire:
please let there be another installment soon.
Fallout New Vegas tried to fill the need, but opinions among
Fallout fans were split. Some loved "West Coast Fallout," replete
with motorcycle gangs, delusional wannabe Romans, and one
super-depressed kid named Boxcars. Others hoped for something
more evolutionary, something that didn't just add to the Fallout
universe but deeply improved upon it. For that sort of game,
fans had to wait for Fallout 4. So we waited... for more than
half a decade. And the wait was indeed worth it.
We've already run our review of the new game, but I wanted to
offer a slightly different perspective: how Fallout 4 feels to
someone who is deeply invested in the Fallout universe. That is,
how it feels to a Fallout fanboywhich I'm proud to be. As such,
I will look at the game only as it relates to Fallout 3 and to
New Vegas, with no regard for how it stacks up to other titles in
the RPG genre.
Bottom line: if you did not like Fallout 3, you are not going to
like Fallout 4. The two games are built around the Fallout
pillars of random wasteland events, wild side quests,
challenging character development, and imagining the post-nuclear
apocalyptic world. But if you're a Fallout series fan, it's time
to clear some serious space on your calendar.
A winner
Fallout 4 looks and plays significantly better than Fallout 3,
which is not a knock on Fallout 3 (now seven years old). Playing
on the Xbox One, I tested Fallout 4 on both a 48-inch HD Samsung
TV (five years old) and a 78-inch 4K Samsung TV (brand new).
Performance is better than Fallout 3 was at its release, but
Fallout 4 is not without its glitches, particularly in the
clipping department. I was saved from being totally annihilated
by a Sentry Bot simply because it got stuck on a rock and I ran
away. Once I got stuck in a pile of car parts while in Power
Armor. I couldn't get out. Autosave to the rescue.
The overall environment looks terrific. Downtown Boston is more
colorful than the Capitol Wasteland, and its outskirts have more
foliage. The environment exhibits changing weather, from storms
to fallout to fog. The visual glitches that pop up don't bother
me much, in part because I expect they will be fixed quickly. As
for what won't be changed, yes, some of the scenery is bland and
some of it is repetitive. But I think that's an acceptable
trade-off. I can't think of any game this packed with content
that doesn't reuse textures, buildings, etc. to some degree, and
I'd rather have 100+ hours of repeatable gameplay than have a
world constrained by new art.
The world of Fallout 4 is massive compared to Fallout 3, and
Fallout 3 was breathtaking in its expanse. I've read the reviews
that say that the new graphics are unacceptable, but I can't
agree. The graphics could be better, sure, but nothing about the
game's visual design has diminished my enjoyment.
...no, really. You can find retro-themed games to load on Pip-Boy
throughout Fallout 4.
As for the story, I think it's great. It didn't take me long to
get invested in my character and my questsprobably two hours. I
certainly did find it difficult to stay on one course because I
was constantly running off one direction or another to check out
a weird playground, an abandoned house, a cave, a really loud
explosion, or whatever other strange phenomenon the game would
throw my way. But the overwhelming variety of subquests and
distractions is simply part of the series' appeal.
As the game evolves, you will meet different factions, and those
factions are frankly a little more interesting than those from
Fallout 3 (with the exception perhaps of the vampires, which were
awesome). The factions also load you up with things to do, so
there's rarely a dull moment that Fast Travel can't solve by
taking you someplace else.
There are a few enhancements worth noting. In Fallout, you are
essentially a scavenger. You open lockers, boxes, and the pockets
of dead people. In the past, searching would open a transfer UI,
you'd select what you wanted and then hit "exit" (B on the Xbox)
to back out. At minimum, you had two button presses to look and
then exit, and then another set of presses if you wanted to take
anything. In Fallout 4, you merely point your reticule over a
dead body or a file cabinet and the UI reveals its contents. You
can take it all quickly (push X) and move on, or you can pick
through it (push A). This is a huge time saver, effectively
eliminating two button presses on everything you look into. In
Fallout, that should be nearly everything.
While the first-person action is better this time around, my
scav-minded self was mostly in ammo conservation mode, preferring
to use V.A.T.S. Thankfully, V.A.T.S. no longer stops time.
Instead, you enter slow-motion, something akin to "Bullet Time."
This removes a real crutch (stopping time to shoot), while at the
same time making V.A.T.S. more enjoyable to use. You can watch a
shot develop (watch as the raider foolishly lifts his head), or
you can watch a pack of feral ghouls bear down on you even in
slow motion, thereby increasing the panic of the ghoul rush.
Where V.A.T.S. might have saved you in the past by giving you a
ton of time to calculate your move, now it might not be enough.
(It's worth noting that popping up your PipBoy does still stop
time, but now boosters like eating, using stimpacks, etc., do not
take instant effect. Their application will come after you exit
the PipBoy.)
Another quick point about V.A.T.S.: luck is now useful to
cultivate, as you can choose when to apply a critical hit while
in V.A.T.S. It's a nice touch that can save your hide.
The D-Pad also sports a deeper favorite items system, allowing
you to store multiple items in each direction. I found this
extremely useful, using "Right" for handguns, "Left" for rifles
(with the sniper rifle far left), and "Up" for close-quarter
weapons. I then stashed my aids in the "Down" menu and found
that I simply didn't need to get into the Pip-Boy as often.
These tweaks make the game that much more viable as a
first-person shooter.
The new SPECIAL system is also an improvement. Our official
review saw it as confusing and unnecessarily complex, but I
actually feel that it is simplified from previous incarnations.
While you do have fewer points to spend at each level (one
instead of two, usually), I think this ultimately adds up to a
better experience. In Fallout 3, it was often the case that you
would just pick the best perks from the small handful that had
been unlocked. You had to wait for level increases and other
boosts before other perks were even available to ponder. This
new system provides a lot more flexibility in character
development, allowing you to see all of the options and the
effects, even letting you to put extra points into the perks.
When I first played Fallout 3, I remember being confused about
how I should develop my character. Now I can look at the new,
illuminating visual presentation of SPECIAL and perks and easily
chart where I want to go next.
Then there's the soundtrack, something that's sacred to most
Fallout fans. The soundtrack has gone in a direction that I
really appreciate. While New Vegas took the soundtrack to a very
Western/country/cowboy theme, with Fallout 4 we are back in a
world filled with GNN, Billy Holiday, Danny Kane, and most of the
classics from Fallout 3. There are plenty of new songs, too, but
there's just something amazing about being in an irradiated cave
jamming, "Bongo, bongo, bongo, I don't wanna leave the Congo..."
Some of the songs created just for Fallout 4 are fairly humorous.
Also humorous is the hilarious stuff raiders talking about when
chatting with one another: substance abuse, significant others,
fear of fire, and so on. The game is again replete with great
writing, particularly when you're checking out the logs on
various terminal screens. Holotape audio recordings are more
interesting now, too.
The game isn't without issues. Much has been written online,
including here at Ars, about poor facial animations and the like.
These have never been a strong point of any Fallout title, and
they are certainly a weaker point of this game. That said, it
feels to me more like a minor issue than anything fans of the
series will find off-putting.
Here's my take: if you are a fan of the Fallout series,
particularly in its modern incarnations, you are going to be a
fan of this game. The graphics are better, the user interface is
smartly improved, combat feels tighter, crafting is both easier
and more meaningful, and the quota of wacky, crazy side quests
and events has definitely been increased.
This is the kind of game that you live with, that you make a part
of your life for a very long time. It's a game in which you are
totally free to jump between quests, to go off on bizarre
expeditions that at first seem meaningless, or to spend some time
just tightening up your settlement. In the week I've had my copy,
it keeps calling to me, and I keep playing Fallout 4 over a host
of other new games I have sitting around. And I suspect that
isn't going to change for a while.
With 'Rise of the Tomb Raider,'
The De-Objectification Of Lara Croft Is Complete
You might not know this, but a really good video game came out
today. No, not Fallout 4, which is currently drowning the world
in hype and stellar review scores, but Rise of the Tomb Raider,
the timed Xbox exclusive from Square Enix/Crystal Dynamics that
marks a return to the recently rebooted series with a younger,
fresher Lara Croft.
While I understand that holiday season is a crowded time and last
week was Black Ops 3 and next week is Battlefront, I still think
Tomb Raider could have found a better date so it didnt get
totally drowned out. But with those good reviews, hopefully
people will pick it up all the same.
Ill save thoughts on gameplay for another time, but I really was
struck by how with Rise of the Tomb Raider, Lara Croft has now
fully transformed from the comically proportioned sexpot of the
video game world to possible one of its most progressive, feminist
icons. In this new game, Crystal Dynamics have effectively done
away with objectifying Lara Croft at all.
There was progress made in the last game, the original reboot that
had a teenaged Lara wearing pants and let her keep her athletic
build, but shrunk her chest down a few cup sizes from past
installments. And yet, most of the game did have her soaking wet
in a tank top, and put her in situations where the camera seemed
trained on her rear end. The game also had an almost weird
obsession with seeing Croft die in horribly graphic ways after
failing gameplay segments or quicktime events. That wasnt
explicitly sexual, but it was a bit creepy all the same.
In Rise of the Tomb Raider, pretty much all remnants of the past
objectification of Lara have been banished. Out of about ten
different outfits I unlocked for Croft over the course of the
game, only one was her classic tank top (which manages to be less
revealing than ever), and the vast majority of choices were bulky
jackets that were more than weather appropriate given that the
game mostly takes place in Siberia. And the outfits that actually
gave you bonus perks like faster health regen were ones that put
Lara in full military camo like Solid Snake. While a
completionist reward outfit for someone like Croft in other
games probably would have been a bikini, when you clear all the
games tombs to unlock one final ensemble, youre given whats
essentially a full suit of medieval plate armor.
Gone are the butt-focused camera shots, and there are only a
couple of graphic deaths as opposed to the dozens that were
present in the last game. Though the game also features male
characters, Croft isnt forced into a love story, focusing on the
mission at hand of, you know, not dying. Nor is she ever made a
damsel, as at different points in the game she rescues each of
the two main guys in the story.
Its not that Lara Croft is no longer attractive. She still is,
at least by CG-animated beauty standards. But her appearance is
not relevant to the narrative, nor is it spotlighted as eye-candy
for the player. Lara Croft used to be the literal pin-up girl for
video game vixens, but now shes just a badass, not meant to
titillate in the least.
Has the series lost anything because of this transformation? No,
and Tomb Raider is now actually better than its ever been, both
in terms of narrative and gameplay. Its not without its
lingering issues, but whatever the problems are, they have
nothing to do with whether or not Croft is sexualized for the
player.
Im definitely not in the no woman should show skin or have sex
appeal camp of game design, but I do recognize that more often
than not, when modern games are trying to make sexy characters
the way they used to in years past, it just falls flat. Im
thinking of Quiet from Metal Gear Solid 5, a pretty great
character completely ruined by Hideo Kojimas junior high-level
interest in boobs. Then in contrast, here we have Lara Croft who
went from the most objectified woman in gaming to now one of the
least. Thats a pretty significant development.
Im not saying there should never be a situation where Croft is
allowed to act seductively or dress provocatively if its
relevant to the story (charming an antiques dealer at a black tie
party, maybe? Just spit-balling). But if her story is about
raiding tombs in Siberia and defending an ancient treasure from
evil mercenaries, sex and sex appeal really does not factor into
that.
In this sense, Rise of the Tomb Raider is a pretty significant
achievement for Lara Croft as a character, and gaming at large.
Obviously representation of women in games still has a long way
to go, but with games like this, it does feel like its getting
better.
=~=~=~=
A-ONE's Headline News
The Latest in Computer Technology News
Compiled by: Dana P. Jacobson
NSA Discloses 91% of Bugs It Finds But
Doesn't Say When It Discloses Them
With one answer from the NSA comes a myriad of questions.
In an effort to increase transparency, the U.S. National Security
Agency (NSA) revealed in a press release last month it discloses
91% of vulnerabilities it finds in software made and/or used in
the U.S. to developers. But the NSA doesn't say what it does
before it discloses those vulnerabilities, or when it discloses
them.
The NSA's press release notes that the remaining 9% of
vulnerabilities are either spotted and patched by the developers
before the NSA discloses, or are "not disclosed for national
security reasons."
The NSA says that disclosure means it forgoes the opportunity to
gather foreign intelligence, prevent theft of U.S. intellectual
property and find more security bugs, but that its "bias" is to
disclose regardless.
However, the NSA is careful to not say when it discloses, or
what it does before it discloses security flaws.
However, the NSA is careful to not say when it discloses, or what
it does before it discloses security flaws.
Based on information from current and former U.S. government
officals, Reuters reports that the NSA only discloses bugs after
it creates its own vulnerability-exploiting attacks.
In the documents Edward Snowden leaked in 2013, it was revealed
that the NSA spent $25 million in 2013 to buy "zero-day" software
vulnerabilities from "private malware vendors." Zero-days are
software flaws that have yet to be disclosed to the public or the
companies that developed the software, opening up the potential
for exploitation. The name refers to the severity of the
vulnerability, meaning that if a company was made aware of a
zero-day, it would need to disclose and issue a fix immediately.
Reuters reported in 2013 that the U.S. government was the largest
buyer of zero-day vulnerabilities.
Speaking to Reuters, a former White House official said that it's
"reasonable" to assume the NSA exploited most of vulnerabilities
it found before disclosing them to their respective developers.
Additionally, the official said that the 91% of disclosures
likely includes vulnerabilities it bought.
In a post-Snowden world, the NSA is under increased scrutiny about
the data it collects and the means by which it collects it, hence
press releases are designed to paint the organization in a good
light. In being vague, this particular press release has raised
more questions.
Microsoft To Host Data in Germany To Evade US Spying
Microsoft's new plan to keep the US government's hands off its
customers' data: Germany will be a safe harbor in the digital
privacy storm.
Microsoft on Wednesday announced that beginning in the second
half of 2016, it will give foreign customers the option of
keeping data in new European facilities that, at least in
theory, should shield customers from US government surveillance.
It will cost more, according to the Financial Times, though
pricing details weren't forthcoming.
Microsoft Cloud - including Azure, Office 365 and Dynamics CRM
Online - will be hosted from new datacenters in the German
regions of Magdeburg and Frankfurt am Main.
Access to data will be controlled by what the company called a
German data trustee: T-Systems, a subsidiary of the independent
German company Deutsche Telekom.
Without the permission of Deutsche Telekom or customers,
Microsoft won't be able to get its hands on the data. If it does
get permission, the trustee will still control and oversee
Microsoft's access.
Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella dropped the word "trust" into the
company's statement:
Microsofts mission is to empower every person and every
individual on the planet to achieve more. Our new datacenter
regions in Germany, operated in partnership with Deutsche
Telekom, will not only spur local innovation and growth, but
offer customers choice and trust in how their data is handled and
where it is stored.
On Tuesday, at the Future Decoded conference in London, Nadella
also announced that Microsoft would, for the first time, be
opening two UK datacenters next year. The company's also expanding
its existing operations in Ireland and the Netherlands.
Officially, none of this has anything to do with the
long-drawn-out squabbling over the transatlantic Safe Harbor
agreement, which the EU's highest court struck down last month,
calling the agreement "invalid" because it didn't protect data
from US surveillance.
No, Nadella said, the new datacenters and expansions are all about
giving local businesses and organizations "transformative
technology they need to seize new global growth."
But as Diginomica reports, Microsoft EVP of Cloud and Enterprise
Scott Guthrie followed up his bosss comments by saying that yes,
the driver behind the new datacenters is to let customers keep
data close:
We can guarantee customers that their data will always stay
in the UK. Being able to very concretely tell that story is
something that I think will accelerate cloud adoption further in
the UK.
Microsoft and T-Systems' lawyers may well think that storing
customer data in a German trustee data center will protect it
from the reach of US law, but for all we know, that could be
wishful thinking.
Forrester cloud computing analyst Paul Miller:
To be sure, we must wait for the first legal challenge. And
the appeal. And the counter-appeal.
As with all new legal approaches, we dont know it is
watertight until it is challenged in court. Microsoft and
T-Systems lawyers are very good and say it's watertight. But we
can be sure opposition lawyers will look for all the holes.
By keeping data offshore - particularly in Germany, which has
strong data privacy laws - Microsoft could avoid the situation
it's now facing with the US demanding access to customer emails
stored on a Microsoft server in Dublin.
The US has argued that Microsoft, as a US company, comes under
US jurisdiction, regardless of where it keeps its data.
Running away to Germany isn't a groundbreaking move; other US
cloud services providers have already pledged expansion of their
EU presences, including Amazon's plan to open a UK datacenter in
late 2016 that will offer what CTO Werner Vogels calls "strong
data sovereignty to local users."
Other big data operators that have followed suit: Salesforce,
which has already opened datacenters in the UK and Germany and
plans to open one in France next year, as well as new EU
operations pledged for the new year by NetSuite and Box.
Can Germany keep the US out of its datacenters? Can Ireland?
Time, and court cases, will tell.
Belgium to Facebook: Stop Tracking Non-Facebook Users
or Face $267K Daily Fines
Max Schrems must be pleased.
He who rose up from the ranks of Facebook's privacy-ravaged users
to file complaints against what he said was Facebook's illegal
data collection/retention is now witnessing the fruits of his
labor.
Or, as he tweeted in response to the Belgian court giving Facebook
48 hours to stop tracking those without Facebook accounts, lest it
face substantial penalties, "*WOW*":
Max Schrems @maxschrems
*WOW* @SophieKwasny: episode Belgium v. Facebook. Judge gives
48 hours to conform to law or will be fined 250000 euros / day
As the AFP reports, Belgium set the clock ticking on Monday,
saying that Facebook would face fines of up to 250,000 EUR
($267,000 USD) a day if it doesn't comply within 48 hours.
Facebook said it will appeal.
The AFP quotes the court decision:
Today the judge... ordered the social network Facebook to stop
tracking and registering internet usage by people who surf the
internet in Belgium, in the 48 hours which follow this statement.
If Facebook ignores this order it must pay a fine of 250,000
euros a day to the Belgian Privacy Commission.
The court order is the latest salvo in the Europe v. Facebook
privacy battle.
It follows a case lodged by Belgium's privacy watchdog - the
Belgian Privacy Commission (BPC) - which dragged Facebook into
court in June for allegedly "trampling" over Belgian and European
privacy law.
In June, the court said that Facebook indiscriminately tracks
internet users - even non-Facebook users - when they visit its
pages or pages on other sites with "like" or "share" buttons.
Since then, the BPC's lawyers have called Facebook "as bad as the
NSA [National Security Agency]."
This 48 hours or-else decision is only the latest EU action
against private data flowing into Facebook.
Last month, the EU's highest court struck down the transatlantic
Safe Harbor agreement, which had allowed companies to transfer
European citizens' personal data to the US, calling the agreement
"invalid" because it didn't protect data from US surveillance.
At the heart of the recent Belgian court case is a move Facebook
made in June 2014 to give advertisers more ammunition to target
users, by mixing data about what we do on its site with data about
what we do on other sites.
The Belgian court on Monday said that Facebook does indeed use a
special cookie that visitors pick up if they visit a friend's page
on Facebook or any other page on the web with Facebook like or
share code in it - all without the visitor having ever signed up
for a Facebook account.
That cookie stays on a given device for up to two years, enabling
Facebook to keep track of people and what they've looked at on the
web.
AFP quotes the court's statement:
The judge ruled that this is personal data, which Facebook can
only use if the internet user expressly gives their consent, as
Belgian privacy law dictates.
Facebook calls that cookie the "datr" cookie and says it's safe.
Safe, or maybe even some type of prophylactic infosec wonder
cookie.
In the recent "Facebook is as bad as the NSA" rhetoric swap,
Facebook claimed that its cookies keep Belgium from becoming "a
cradle for cyber terrorism."
AFP quotes a statement from Facebook about its appeal of Monday's
court decision:
We've used the datr cookie for more than five years to keep
Facebook secure for 1.5 billion people around the world.
We will appeal this decision and are working to minimize any
disruption to people's access to Facebook in Belgium.
Meanwhile, back on its home turf, Facebook is having a much easier
time of it with a US regulator - the Federal Communications
Commission (FCC) - having recently shrugged off the notion that it
should trouble Google or Facebook with demands to honor "Do not
track" requests.
The FCC dismissed a petition from rights group Consumer Watchdog,
which had called on the commission to require "edge providers" - a
catch-all term covering websites and apps, including Google,
Facebook, YouTube, Pandora, Netflix, and LinkedIn - to honor such
requests from consumers.
The FCC's rationale: it doesn't have the authority.
Consumer Watchdog thinks otherwise, and it's reportedly
considering an appeal.
Three Indicted for Massive Hack and Fraud
Scheme That Targeted JPMorgan
US federal prosecutors, on Tuesday, unveiled criminal charges
against three men accused of orchestrating the biggest theft of
customer data from financial institutions in the country's
history - encompassing personal data belonging to more than 100
million people.
Unsealing a 23-count indictment in Manhattan, the Justice
Department charged Gery Shalon, Joshua Samuel Aaron and Ziv
Orenstein with computer hacking crimes against JPMorgan, as well
as other financial institutions, brokerage firms and financial
news reporters, including The Wall Street Journal. The trio stand
accused of stealing as many as 83 million customer records.
Speaking at a press conference, US Attorney Preet Bharara said:
The charged crimes showcase a brave new world of hacking for
profit. It is no longer hacking merely for a quick payout, but
hacking to support a diversified criminal conglomerate.
This was hacking as a business model. The alleged conduct
also signals the next frontier in securities fraud
sophisticated hacking to steal nonpublic information, something
the defendants discussed for the next stage of their sprawling
enterprise.
The news finally puts to bed long-standing rumours of Russian
shenanigans, instead painting a picture of good, old-fashioned
greed. The scam centred around the tried and tested pump-and-dump
stock scam that's still very much alive and kicking, as we learned
on Monday, when Lisa told us about James Alan Craig who had been
using Twitter to manipulate stock prices.
This case is unusual though - pump-and-dumpers usually just spread
misinformation in order to drive stock prices in which ever
direction serves their needs; they don't hack their way into
systems to steal business data.
That's exactly what happened in this case though and the reasons
for it are simple. Not only were the alleged hackers able to glean
more intel on the companies they were targeting, which would have
given them additional insight into future stock values, they were
also able to pick up personal information on specific individuals
- a useful tactic in tailoring attacks against them.
And both avenues proved to be extremely lucrative for them, as
prosecutors claim they made upwards of $100m through hacking 7
large banks, running their own illegal Bitcoin trading operation
and from an online casino.
In fact, according to law enforcement, the operation was so
successful that it employed hundreds of people across 75 shell
companies created in a number of countries via fake passports.
Prosecutors claim Shalon was the mastermind of the whole
operation, saying he was the owner of US-based Bitcoin exchange
Coin.mx which he operated with fellow Israeli, Orenstein.
With the help of Aaron, an American, the group allegedly bought up
the type of penny stocks so often used in pump-and-dump scams.
They then blasted out emails to dupe the unwary into jumping on a
bandwagon so full of hype that they reportedly walked out of one
deal alone with $2m.
It's here that the information stolen from JPMorgan, Dow Jones,
Scottrade and others came in useful - client and subscriber lists
offered up a long line of potential marks.
As for how the trio allegedly broke into JPMorgan and other banks,
the indictment says very little. However, it did reference a
mutual fund in Boston whose tardiness left the doors to its
network wide open in April 2014, when it failed to install a patch
for the Heartbleed bug in good time.
According to Attorney Bharara, the sophisticated nature of the
scheme was such that many companies could yet be unaware that they
have also been targeted:
Even the most sophisticated companies like those victimized
by the hacks in this case have to appreciate the limits of their
ability to uncover the full scope of any cyber-intrusion and to
stop the perpetrators before they strike again.
If they have been hacked, most likely others have been as
well, and even more will be. The best bet to identify, stop and
punish cybercriminals is to work closely, and early, with law
enforcement. That happened here, and today's charges are proof of
that.
JPMorgan - which confirmed it was "Victim 1" in the superseding
indictment - agreed that strong cooperation with law enforcement
had been essential "in bringing the criminals to justice" with
Scottrade, which had 4.6 million client accounts compromised,
and Dow Jones both nodding in mutual agreement.
Shalon and Orenstein were arrested by Israeli Police in July 2015
on an indictment that charged the underlying securities fraud,
and both remain in custody in Israel as prosecutors continue to
negotiate their extradition to the US.
Aaron, meanwhile, remains at large, with prosecutors declining to
confirm or deny whether they know where he is currently hiding.
Gmail Will Now Warn You Of Unencrypted Incoming Emails
Google has announced that Gmail will soon offer users a warning
when they receive messages that were not sent over encrypted
connections. The news comes as there is a big push for
encryption in emails.
Internet security is becoming increasingly important, and to help
warn users if they're not using encrypted connections, Google has
announced that it will introduce a feature in Gmail warning if an
email has arrived over a connection that wasn't encrypted.
Gmail itself already uses HTTPS encryption as a default for
connections between browsers and servers, but for a long time the
standard for emails was to leave them unencrypted. This made
emails easy to intercept.
"Many email providers don't encrypt messages while they're in
transit. When you send or receive emails with one of these
providers, these messages are as open to snoopers as a postcard
in the mail," said Google in a blog post.
Despite this, over the last few years Google and other email
providers are beginning to change this, as more than 62 percent
of emails sent to Gmail addresses by other users are now being
encrypted. Emails sent from a Gmail address to another Gmail
address are always encrypted, and emails sent from Gmail to other
providers are encrypted 82 percent of the time.
Unencrypted messages are a problem because they make for a great
target for hackers. In a joint project between Google, the
Univeristy of Michigan and the University of Illinois that
studied how email security has evolved since 2013, it was found
that 94 percent of messages sent to Gmail can now be
authenticated, making it much harder for phishers to intercept
messages. Despite this, researchers also found that there are
"regions of the Internet actively preventing message encryption
by tampering with requests to initiate SSL connections."
Given the fact that there are still plenty of email providers
that do not encrypt emails by default, it's likely that most
users will begin to see the warnings within the next few months.
It's important to note that most providers, however, do encrypt
messages, including Yahoo, Microsoft, and so on.
Facebook Is Blocking an Upstart Rival But Its Complicated
Tsu is a new social network that promises to pay its users for
posting content to its site. But if want to share your Tsu profile
with your Facebook friends, too bad. Facebook is blocking all
mentions of Tsu.co, the companys web address. You cant share a
post to a Facebook feed, leave an Instagram comment or send a
Facebook Messenger message containing the URL. Tsus CEO claims
Facebook went so far as to retroactively remove any mention of the
site from its archives.
You cant even share news stories about Tsu, something Xeni
Jardin, who wrote about the situation for Boing Boing, discovered
Friday when she couldnt share the story to her own Facebook
feed. On Monday, Tech News Today, covered Facebooks ban on all
things Tsu.co, and just like the Boing Boing story, readers soon
found themselves unable to share it on Facebook.
On first glance it looks like a conspiracy to keep an upstart
social network down. But the situation is far more complicated.
Tsu promises to pay users a percentage of its advertising
revenue. But it doesnt base those payouts merely on the number
of times someone views your content. It also offers you a cut of
the revenue generated by content posted by people you refer to
the site. CEO Sebastian Sobczak says the idea is to pay users
for the content they post and reward them for helping build the
network.
But this model also means users are incentivized to share links
to the site not just to increase page views, but to attract new
users. That sounds a lot like multi-level marketing, and its
not hard to imagine people taking advantage of the system. Its
not surprising then that Facebook might flag the site for spam,
especially if the number of people posting spam far outnumbered
the legitimate posts.
As of Tuesday evening we still couldnt share the Boing Boing and
Tech News Today stories on Facebook without getting an error, but
several other stories about Facebook blocking links to Tsu were
allowed, so its clear that Facebook isnt blocking all news
coverage of the site. As of Wednesday morning, its possible to
share the two stories on Facebook again.1
Facebook is within its rights to prevent spam, but its
scorched-earth policy of retroactively removing posts seems
overkill. Either way, the companys decision underscores the power
Facebook, which is for many people synonymous with the Internet,
has over what users can or cant see. Run afoul of Facebooks spam
algorithms, even accidentally, and you can be practically
disappeared from the web.
For its part, Facebook says it blocked Tsu because it violated the
companys policies. We require all websites and apps that
integrate with Facebook to follow our Platform Policy, Facebook
spokeswoman Melanie Ensign told WIRED. We do not allow developers
to incentivize content sharing on our platform because it
encourages spammy sharing and creates a bad experience for people
on Facebook.
She said she wasnt aware of errors when sharing Boing Boing and
Tech News Daily stories, but said someone probably flagged those
links as spam separately from Tsu and the engineering team will
look into it.
Facebook, however, has offered to unblock Tsu if the company
disables the ability to automatically share posts from Tsu to
Facebook. Our automated systems flagged your app for producing
spam on our Platform, a Facebook engineer wrote in an email to
Tsu, which provided it to WIRED. Our investigation found your
app is incentivizing people to share content to both tsu and
Facebook concurrently.
'We would just like to be treated equally and fairly.' Sebastian
Sobczak, Tsu CEO
In order to come into compliance with this policy, we ask that
you remove your apps ability to share to Facebook, the email
read. Let us know when you remove this functionality and we will
lift the restriction.
Sobczak says the company has no plans to remove the apps
ability to post to Facebook. We would just like to be treated
equally and fairly, he says. We maintain we do not violate any
of their terms and conditions.
Sobczak argues that the analytics dashboard Facebook offers to
developers suggested that Tsu had a lower-than-average spam rate
compared to other apps. He also doesnt understand why getting
flagged for spam would prompt the removal of old posts
containing links to Tsu. And he argues that Tsu doesnt actively
incentivize users to post to Facebook, because Tsu users are
paid only if someone visits their Tsu page. They arent paid
simply for posting content to Facebook. In that sense, he
argues, the service is similar to sites like YouTube, which
offer revenue sharing to content creators.
Facebook declined to clarify just how it flagged Tsu for spam;
why it blocked all links to Tsu.co instead of simply blocking
the app; or why it aruges that Tsu is incentivizing sharing
but YouTube isnt. Note, however, that YouTube removed the
option to automatically post newly uploaded videos to Facebook
in April.
Sobczak says he believes Facebook is blocking links to Tsu
because it sees Tsu as a threat to its business model. Their
model is based on taking other peoples content, wrapping ads
around it, he says. Whats making Facebook worry, its not
that were so big, its the growth rate, and the philosophy that
theres a better way to do things, a model where the content
owners have complete ownership.
But the idea that Facebook feels threatened by Tsu seems
unlikely. Facebook allows links from many other competitors,
including Twitter, Tumblr, Pinterest and Ello. It also allows
users to post links to social networks that promise to pay users
to post, such as Bubblews. And the idea of sharing revenue with
users is hardly a revolutionary. The model has been tried as far
back as the mid-1990s by companies like the defunct Suite101,
but it didnt stop the rise of sites like Wikipedia, LiveJournal
and, eventually, Facebook, which invited users to post content
for free. The idea of sharing wealth with users, however great
it may be, is probably not keeping Mark Zuckerberg up at night.
In all likelihood, Tsu, Boing Boing and Tech News Today fell
victim to an overzealous and under-supervised spam algorithm
provoked by pyramid schemers. But the fact Facebook might not
have knowingly acted to suppress a rival and unfavorable press
coverage is of little comfort. Regardless of its reasons, the
fact remains that Facebook did prevent people from sharing
content that didnt violate its terms of service, including news
stories and non-spam Tsu links posted manually.
Much has been made in recent months of Facebooks increasing
control over what we see online. The rise of social movements
like Black Lives Matter are heavily dependent on social media,
but Facebooks algorithms didnt initially surface many posts
about the early days of the Ferguson, Missouri, protests last
year. Publishers, meanwhile, depend upon Facebook to get their
articles seen by their readers, and questions abound about what
thats going to mean for the future of journalism. For example,
what will happen if journalists use the companys Instant
Articles program to publish pieces critical of Internet.org or
the companys political lobbying or the Instant Articles program
itself? Will publishers that arent part of the Instant Articles
program still be able to find an audience at all?
This power affects more than just journalists and activists.
Facebook also is one of the primary platforms for getting word
out about new apps, startups, and businesses of all types. To be
banned from the platform could mean doom. Thats an even bigger
concern in developing countries where Facebooks Internet.org
acts a sort of gatekeeper for the mobile internet. Although some
have proposed regulating Google like a public utility, the
Federal Communications Commissions new network neutrality
regulations, which require Internet service providers to treat
all traffic equally, will have no bearing on the likes of Google
and Facebook, even as they amass more power to control what we
see and do on the web.
Of course, all is not lost. Ferguson became an international news
story despite Facebooks algorithmic apathy, largely in part
through competitors like Twitter and Tumblr. Tsu will likely get
more attention thanks to this snafu than it would have otherwise.
If you can read this article, it means something is going right.
But it could all go wrong in a hurry if were not vigilant.
Google To Pull Chrome's Patch Plug for 1-in-7 Windows and Mac Users
Google on Tuesday said it will switch off Chrome security updates
in under five months for about one-in-seven Windows users and
around the same portion of those running Apple's OS X.
As of April 2016, Google will stop patching known Chrome
vulnerabilities on 2001's Windows XP and 2007's Windows Vista.
Together the two operating systems powered 14.8% of all Windows
PCs last month.
The browser won't suddenly refuse to work, but fixes for security
flaws, including those that may already be in a hacker's toolkit,
will not be offered to Windows XP and Vista customers. Once April
arrives, users running those operating systems will not be served
any Chrome updates, which often include not only bug fixes but
also feature and functionality changes.
By dropping support for older editions of Windows and OS X,
Chrome could lose about 14% of its user share if all those
abandoned switched to another browser.
Google will also axe support for three older editions of OS X,
the operating system exclusive to Apple's Macs: OS X Snow
Leopard, Lion and Mountain Lion. The trio, also labeled as OS X
10.6, 10.7 and 10.8, respectively, were introduced in 2009, 2011
and 2012.
Last month, Snow Leopard, Lion and Mountain Lion accounted for
14.6% of all OS X editions whose users went online, according to
Web analytics company Net Applications.
"Such older platforms are missing critical security updates and
have a greater potential to be infected by viruses and malware,"
said Marc Pawliger, the director of engineering for Chrome, in a
brief post on a Google blog. "If you are still on one of these
unsupported platforms, we encourage you to move to a newer
operating system to ensure that you continue to receive the
latest Chrome versions and features."
With the exception of Windows Vista, all the operating systems
facing the Chrome support guillotine have already been abandoned
by their maker. Microsoft retired Windows XP, for instance, in
April 2014, while Apple put Snow Leopard, Lion and Mountain Lion
out to pasture in September of 2013, 2014 and 2015, respectively.
Only Windows Vista continues to receive security updates from
Microsoft; it won't get the heave-ho until April 2017.
Even Microsoft's and Apple's own browsers have been largely
retired for their outdated OSes. Microsoft no longer patches bugs
in Internet Explorer 8 (IE8) on Windows XP, although it still
updates IE9 on Windows Vista. Apple last refreshed its Safari
browser on Snow Leopard in May 2012, on Lion in August 2014, and
on Mountain Lion in August 2015.
Beginning in April, Google will patch and upgrade the desktop
version of Chrome only on Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows 8.1,
Windows 10, OS X Mavericks, OS X Yosemite and OS X El Capitan.
Chrome's desertion of Windows XP was expected - in fact, Google
had previously pegged the end of this year as the retirement
timeline - but the abandonment of Vista and the three OS X
editions had not been hinted at earlier.
Google likely believed purging the still-supported Vista was a
no-brainer because of its low user share, a Net Applications
estimate that serves as a proxy for the portion of the world's
desktop and notebook personal computers that run a specific OS.
In October, Vista's user share was just 2% of all
Windows-equipped machines.
Mozilla's Firefox browser supports all the operating systems that
Chrome will leave in the ditch, and so will become - assuming
Mozilla doesn't mimic Google before April - the best option for
most of those left behind by Chrome.
Mozilla is typically the most cautious of the top four browser
makers in pulling support. It didn't retire Firefox on Windows
2000, for example, until April 2012, more than a dozen years after
its debut and nearly two years after Microsoft stopped updating
the once-widely-used OS.
Chrome has been on a remarkable run since the beginning of 2015,
accumulating 8.5 percentage points in user share since Jan. 1.
That represented an increase of more than a third. In October,
Chrome's user share stood at 31.1%, a record.
So while Google's decision to end support for the five operating
systems next year may dampen growth as OS laggards move on to,
say, Firefox, the impact will probably be minor because of
Chrome's strong position. If the kill switch had been thrown now,
not slated for April, Google's browser would face a maximum
downturn of 4.5 percentage points if all Chrome users on Windows
XP, Vista, and OS X Snow Leopard, Lion and Mountain Lion,
suddenly deserted the browser. That's very unlikely: Those users
are probably as indifferent to using an obsolete browser as they
are to running an outdated OS.
Although a decline of that magnitude would be an embarrassing
reverse for Google, it would not unseat Chrome from its
second-place spot in the browser standings.
Lapsed Apple Certificate Triggers Massive Mac App Fiasco
A lapsed Apple digital certificate today triggered a massive app
fiasco that prevented Mac users from running software they'd
purchased from the Mac App Store.
"Whenever you download an app from the Mac App Store, the app
provides a cryptographically-signed receipt," explained Paul
Haddad, a co-founder of Tapbots, the company behind the popular
Tweetbot Twitter client, in an email reply to questions today.
"These receipts are signed with various certificates with
different expiration dates. One of those is the 'Mac App Store
Receipt Signing;' that expires every two years. That certificate
expired on 'Nov 11 21:58:01 2015 GMT,' which caused most
existing App Store receipts to no longer be considered valid."
Whoops.
The result: Bedlam.
Until Apple replaced the expired certificate, users who booted up
their Macs today were unable to launch the apps they had bought
through the Mac App Store, the OS X version of the iPhone's
distribution portal.
But even after Apple replaced the outdated certificate, many apps
still refused to run or threw off scary error messages, including
one that said the app was "damaged and can't be opened," and
others that said the app was already being used on another Mac,
when it was, in fact, not.
Some Computerworld staffers instead were asked to re-enter their
Apple account credentials - those used to originally buy the
apps - in a too-fleeting dialog, or were stymied when clicking on
an app in the Dock simply did nothing and displayed no alert,
warning or error message.
Most users were forced to delete the dysfunctional apps, then
download and reinstall them from the Mac App Store to restore
them to working order.
The problem impacted most if not all paid apps bought through
the Mac App Store; the bulk of paid apps regularly check with
Apple's servers to make sure that a receipt exists for the
purchase before running. "I'm guessing most paid Mac App Store
apps will do this. Free ones may not bother," said Haddad, when
explaining why some users haven't been affected.
Haddad also said that some underlying problems remained in
Apple's e-store infrastructure. "Apple is now creating receipts
which will expire in 2017, [but] for some reason some part of the
Store infrastructure on [OS X] is either not requesting these new
receipts until after a reboot or not properly validating them
[emphasis added]. Either way, there's still a bug somewhere in
OS X."
As Haddad mentioned, the certificates Apple uses have a two-year
lifespan. In fact, the problem cropped up two years ago and will
likely reoccur in 2017.
Craig Hockenberry, a partner at the development firm IconFactory,
pointed out a similar issue in October 2013, and filed a bug
report with Apple.
In a Thursday tweet, Haddad noted that the new certificate will
expire on Oct. 23, 2017. "Hopefully, Apple fixes whatever caching
issues by then," he said.
Haddad's advice for afflicted Mac users was to first reboot their
machine, before going doing the delete-reinstall dance. "After a
reboot OS X will grab a new receipt and that likely requires at
least one log-in to your iTunes account," he said.
Apple did not immediately reply to questions about the snafu.
Ancillary Copyright 2.0: The European Commission Is Preparing
A Frontal Attack on the Hyperlink
The European Commission is preparing a frontal attack on the
hyperlink, the basic building block of the Internet as we know
it. This is based on an absurd idea that just wont die: Making
search engines and news portals pay media companies for
promoting their freely accessible articles.
Earlier attempts at establishing this principle resulted in
Germanys and Spains ancillary copyright laws for press
publishers. These attempts backfired with tremendous collateral
damage. In the European Parliament I was able to defeat repeated
attempts by EPP MEPs to sneak into my copyright report text
passages asking for an extension of these laws to the European
level. But this newest attempt is the most dangerous yet.
According to a draft communication on copyright reform leaked
yesterday (via IPKat), the Commission is considering putting the
simple act of linking to content under copyright protection. This
idea flies in the face of both existing interpretation and spirit
of the law as well as common sense. Each weblink would become a
legal landmine and would allow press publishers to hold every
single actor on the Internet liable.
In the draft at hand, the Commission bemoans a lack of clarity
about which actions on the Internet need a permission and which
ones do not: in legal terms, they put forward the question when
something is an act of communication to the public.
This is a reference to a ruling of the European Court of Justice
in the Svensson case. While on one hand the judges established
that the simple act of linking to publicly available content is
no copyright infringement, because it does not reach a new
public, a few questions were left open bis this ruling, however:
For example when exactly content can be seen as accessible by the
public and how e.g. links surpassing paywalls are to be treated.
The key point is that the Commission frames ancillary copyright
laws for press publishers as an attempt by a few member states to
solve this problem legally. Instead of criticizing the substance
of these laws they only bemoan the possible fragmentation of
European law by these different implementations. A coherent
European answer to the problem behind all this is a neccessity.
The reform of the executive rights on an EU-level is aparantly
another attempt to fulfil the goals also pursued through the
introduction of ancillary copyright law.
However, the depiction of this goal by the Commission is playinly
wrong: Ancillary copyright laws do not answer the questions poised
by the European Court of Justice. It is rather an attempt to
cross-finance struggling publishing houses by asking thriving
internet companies such as google to pay up for linking to
publicly available articles to give price tags to exactly the
same act of linking that has been clearly pronounced
non-infringing by the European Court of Justice.
The Commission seems to want to reach the same by defining
exclusive rights further, so the clarity it seeks can only mean:
sheer linking to content protected by copyright shall be seen as
providing access to them, and require therefore explicit
permission. This plan is a departure from the basic principle
behind the Svensson ruling, which permitted free linking on the
Internet, without the need for active examination of whom the
linked material belongs to.
Digital commissioner Günther Oettinger (CDU EPP), afiirmed
dozens of times over the last months that he is considering the
introduction of an instrument on the European level to
compensate the publishing houses sinking income caused by lower
sales and less income through advertisement:
Even Martin Schulz (SPD S&D), President of the European
Parliament, struck a similair tone this week at the Publishers
Summit when he confirmed that we need to clarify the relation
between press publishers and digital platforms in the matter of
copyright.
The publishers are clearly wielding so much influence through
lobbying that there is nothing that can stop big-party
politicians from trying to misapply copyright law in order to
support obsolete business models:
Not the complete failure of pushed-through legislation like
the one in Germany where not only the hoped-for increase in
revenue stayed away, but where the fast and meek introduction of
a free licence for google, a grand backpedalling by the publishing
houses, is a possible violation of German law.
Not the collateral damage done to Spains IT-economy, where
the ancillary copyright law forbid granting free licences, making
the collection of newspaper articles by non-profit organizations
illegal even when publishers would like to support it; and forcing
Google to completely shut off its news service in Spain due to
lack of profitability.
Not the vast majority of thousands of Europeans asking for
the freedom of linking in the Commissions copyright consultation.
Not the exclamation of our IT-industry and warnings from
scientists.
Not the repeated distinct rejection of introducing such plans
into the report on the copyright directive by the European
Parliament.
The prospective instrument Needing permission to link to
something would be the bluntest tool yet employed for a
completely mistaken cause that is being pushed through against
all odds. This would have even more dramatic effects than
everything seen so far regarding ancillary copyright laws in
Germany and Spain.
Posting, sharing and sending links is a trivial every-day
activity. It is impossible for both users and internet platforms
to examine the legal status of every link. Content can change
constantly online, so these examinations would actually have to
take place constantly. What is more, every link leads to texts or
pictures copyrighted by someone no matter whether they know it
or not; no matter whether they want to profit from this or not.
Subsequently there will be legal uncertainty, confusion, and
waves of dissuasion carrying legal fees for everybody it would
sever the Internets neurons in order to promote the interests
of the few. We can not let that happen!
The leaked text is not a law proposal, but just a summary of the
Commissions plans for next year. The plan is supposed to go
public on the 9th of December. Affecting change in the now-known
versions is nigh impossibly until then. But sometimes
controversial proposals are leaked to test them if there is no
protest, the plan can be unworriedly pursued.
It is hence even more important to become active now! Tell the
Commission that pursuing the introduction of ancillary copyright
law means barking up the wrong tree no matter whether it is
introduced as a privilege, or a restriciton to free linking is
enacted. Do not allow the vested interests of the publishers
lobby to destroy free communication on the Internet! Remind your
representatives of them having rejected such approaches to
introduce ancillary copyright laws with clear majorities in the
past. Many representatives are worried about the competitiveness
of European companies explain to them that liability for
linking brings uncalculable risks with it for the European
IT-industry and threatens to nip innovation in the bud! Encourage
them to make clear once and for all:
Stop breaking the Internet!
To the extent possible under law, the creator has waived all
copyright and related or neighboring rights to this work.
Windows 10's First Major Update Is Arriving Today
Microsoft has been testing a fresh update to Windows 10 for the
past few months, and now its ready to release it to everyone.
More than 110 million machines are now running Windows 10, and
theyll all be offered the update today. The update includes a
number of fixes and UI changes that were originally planned for
the final version of Windows 10.
One of the noticeable differences is a new colored title bar for
desktop apps. All apps now feel a little more similar to the ones
designed specifically for Windows 10, and Microsoft has also
improved the context menus throughout the OS to make them a little
bigger and darker to match the general theme. Another big change
is the introduction of Skype integration with dedicated Messaging
and Skype Video apps. Theyre both available from the Windows
Store, and theyre designed to offer basic access to messaging,
audio, and video calls without having to download the full
version of Skype.
Most other changes are fairly minor, including improved system
icons. Microsoft is allowing Windows 10 users to now install apps
to external storage, and some tablet mode improvements allow you
to swipe down to close apps and snap apps more easily. Microsoft
is also improving its Edge browser and Cortana in the Windows 10
Fall Update. Edge now syncs favorites, settings, and the reading
list, alongside a new tab preview feature. Cortana will now work
without a Microsoft Account, and the digital assistant can now
understand inked notes in the Windows 10 Fall Update. The update
is rolling out today from Windows Update.
Updates to Chrome Platform Support
Earlier this year, we announced that Google Chrome would continue
support for Windows XP through the remainder of 2015. At that
time, we strongly encouraged users on older, unsupported platforms
such as Windows XP to update to a supported, secure operating
system. Such older platforms are missing critical security updates
and have a greater potential to be infected by viruses and
malware.
Today, were announcing the end of Chromes support for Windows
XP, as well as Windows Vista, and Mac OS X 10.6,
10.7, and 10.8,
since these platforms are no longer actively supported by
Microsoft and Apple. Starting April 2016, Chrome will continue
to function on these platforms but will no longer receive
updates and security fixes.
If you are still on one of these unsupported platforms, we
encourage you to move to a newer operating system to ensure that
you continue to receive the latest Chrome versions and features.
=~=~=~=
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