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Atari Online News, Etc. Volume 18 Issue 19
Volume 18, Issue 19 Atari Online News, Etc. May 13, 2016
Published and Copyright (c) 1999 - 2016
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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Visit the Atari Advantage Forum on Delphi!
http://forums.delphiforums.com/atari/
=~=~=~=
A-ONE #1819 05/13/16
~ Atari To Make Movies! ~ People Are Talking! ~ Google/AV Shake-up!
~ "Catch Me If You Can"! ~ Test Pilot Re-hashed! ~ Atari ST Demoscene!
~ Facebook Reactions: Meh ~ Mozilla Wants FBI Info ~ Windows Auto-update!
~ Civilization 6 for PC! ~ Google Has Black Links ~ 2DS $50 Price Cut!
-* Twitter Cut Off Spy Agencies? *-
-* Hacker Arrested After Finding Flaws *-
-* Facebook: Accusations of Political Bias! *-
=~=~=~=
->From the Editor's Keyboard "Saying it like it is!"
""""""""""""""""""""""""""
Happy Friday the 13th! If you're the superstitious type, you
may as well stay indoors (but away from mirrors) today to avoid
the chance of bad luck. Well, some people believe in this stuff!
No politics this week, I promise! Instead, let's go with, finally,
some nice Spring weather for a change. After about nine days of
cool and wet weather, the sun finally showed itself here in New
England, and the temperatures climbed seasonably. Yes, we're
having some showers now, but they held off until the evening.
The leaves are finally coming out quickly, and Spring blooms are
abundant! Even my [front] lawn is looking like a meadow needing
a herd of sheep to thin out! Gotta love it!
Until next time...
=~=~=~=
Catch Me If You Can - Now Free!
Hello !
I decided to give for free the game "Catch me if you Can" which
was used in 2012 for a contest and which allowed to a french guy
called ManuM to win a Falcon 030.
...so everybody can now enjoy it !
This game works from ST machines to Falcon 030, and there are
400 levels to clear.
http://media.demozoo.org/screens/s/2d/ea/f7da.107058.png
The game is available here:
http://demozoo.org/productions/136315/
Don't hesitate to leave me a little message if you enjoyed the
game!
*****************
Cooper/Paradize
STe / STf / Lynx
Atari ST Demoscene
Welcome! This is the first book especially written about the
Atari ST Demoscene and its origins. Unlike any other retro book
it combines a continuous essayistic storyline with a lithographic
art book presentation. This full-coloured hardback book contains
over 200 pages of Demoscene history and is just the beginning.
The first volume enfolds the timespan from 1986 to 1990 and
focuses on the development and transformation of the early core of the scene.
https:///www.kickstarter.com/projects/901494542/the-atari-st-and-the-creative-people-rise-of-the-d
=~=~=~=
->In This Week's Gaming Section - Sid Meierís Civilization 6 Is Coming to PC!
""""""""""""""""""""""""""""" Nintendo 2DS Price Cut, New Games Announced!
Atari Developing Centipede, Missile Command Movies
=~=~=~=
->A-ONE's Game Console Industry News - The Latest Gaming News!
""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""
Sid Meierís Civilization 6 Is Coming to PC This October
A new Civilization strategy game is in the works by long-time
developer Firaxis. Surprisingly, the unveiling of Sid Meierís
Civilization VI isnít some nebulous teaser for a game players
wonít get for another five years: The $60 title is coming out
October 21, in just five short months.
Sid Meierís Civilization VI doesnít seem like itís out to rock
the boat. It will still fundamentally be a hex-based,
turn-driven, history-themed strategy game. It will, once again,
allow gamers to play as a famous leader (in opposition to
various others) and take a stab at building an empire. They will
do so through diplomacy, research andódepending on a playerís
diplomatic proclivitiesóinteracting with other civilizations by
way of olive branch or sword.
Whatís new seems centered on the way the game handles cities,
whose municipal features can now spread across multiple tiles
(creating, presumably, scenarios in which parts of a city could
become contested).
But the studioís also highlighting significant changes to other
long-standing systems. Players can now unlock boosts to speed up
research. Diplomatic options now evolve in tandem with the
evolutionary status of a civilization. And unit stacking, which
was possible in earlier iterations of the series, is back, sort
of. You can merge complementary units (say anti-tank support with
infantry) in Civilization VI to form more powerful combinations.
The only downside? Like Firaxisí acclaimed sci-fi strategy game
XCOM 2, released last February, Civilization VI is for PC only.
Nintendo 2DS Price Cut, New Games Announced
News from Nintendo today, as the company announced that the
Nintendo 2DS will drop in price to $80 starting on May 20. The
system launched in 2013, priced at $130. The first price cut, in
August 2015, brought the system down to $100. This will be the
second price cut for the entry-level device.
The 2DS plays almost the entire library of Nintendo 3DS games, but
of course without the 3D effect. The system's standout feature is
its design. Unlike past models, this one does not have any hinges.
Nintendo says, "the unique design is built to make it easy for
smaller hands to hold." The price cut is for all 2DS systems,
including the bundle that comes with Mario Kart 7.
In addition to the price drop, Nintendo announced two new games
today aimed at younger gamers: Style Savvy: Fashion Forward and
Disney Magical World 2.
Fashion Forward, the latest entry in the Style Savvy series,
launches on August 19. The game includes more than 19,000
different articles of clothing, items, and accessories. The game
also includes Amiibo support, allowing players to access Nintendo
character-themed clothing and accessories.
Note that the 2DS does not have built-in NFC-reading technology
like the New 3DS does, though there is a reader accessory sold
separately that allows this to work on the 2DS.
As for Magical World 2, the sequel takes players on adventures in
six Disney-themed worlds, one of which is based on the popular
animated movie "Frozen." Some of the characters who will appear
in the game include Mickey Mouse, Minnie Mouse, Goofy, Elsa, Anna,
Olaf, Ariel, Donald Duck and Daisy Duck. Magical World 2 arrives
on October 14.
The 2DS is considered part of the 3DS family, which has sold
58.85 million units as of March 31. However, there is no word on
how many 2DS systems specifically have been sold.
Nintendo's next system, code-named NX, is rumored to be a
console/mobile hybrid, though the company has yet to share
specifics. The system goes on sale in March 2017; it is not
expected to show up at E3.
=~=~=~=
->A-ONE Gaming Online - Online Users Growl & Purr!
"""""""""""""""""""
Atari Is Developing Centipede and Missile Command Movies
Old-school video games Centipede and Missile Command are making
the leap from the arcade cabinet to the big screen:
Emmett/Furla/Oasis Films and Atari are partnering to produce and
finance two feature films based on the 8-bit shoot ëem up
adventures over the next two years, the companies have announced.
Centipede tasks players with sniping waves of cascading insects,
while the Cold War-inflected Missile Command involves protecting
cities from raining ICBMs. Both games launched in 1980.
The films are in the early stages of development, with no word
yet on plot details, writers, or directors. Randall Emmett and
George Furla will produce.
ìCentipede and Missile Command are part of Atariís unparalleled
and rich library of popular games and we cannot wait to see these
classic favorites come to life in the movies,î Atari CEO Fred
Chesnais said in a statement.
While video game-based movies are common in Hollywood ó other
upcoming examples include Assassinís Creed, Warcraft, and Tomb
Raider ó properties like Centipede and Missile Defense are less
obvious candidates for adaptation because they donít offer much
in the way of story or characters. Then again, studios are
increasingly trying to leverage recognizable intellectual
property to help sell tickets, even if the source material isnít
narrative in nature. That strategy has produced hits (The Lego
Movie) and flops (Battleship) and doesnít look to be going away
anytime soon.
=~=~=~=
A-ONE's Headline News
The Latest in Computer Technology News
Compiled by: Dana P. Jacobson
Hacker Arrested After Exposing Flaws in Elections Site
A security researcher responsibly disclosed vulnerabilities in the
poorly secured web domains of a Florida county elections, but he
ended up in handcuffs on criminal hacking charges and jailed for
six hours Wednesday.
Security researcher David Michael Levin, 31, of Estero, Florida
was charged with three counts of gaining unauthorized access to a
computer, network, or electronic instrument.
On 19 December last year, Levin tested the security of Lee County
website and found a critical SQL injection vulnerability in it,
which allowed him to access siteís database, including username
and password.
Levin was reportedly using a free SQL testing software called
Havij for testing SQL vulnerabilities on the state elections
website.
According to Levin, he responsibly reported vulnerabilities to
the respective authorities and helped them to patch all loopholes
in the elections website.
Meanwhile, Levin demonstrates his finding via an interview, but
he published that video interview on YouTube in late January when
authorities had already patched the reported flaws.
Levin recorded the video together with Dan Sinclair, detailing
how a simple SQL injection launched against the election website
led to the theft of data from the Elections' database that had no
encryption at all.
As proof of concept, Levin showed him entering the username and
password of Sharon Harrington, the county's Supervisor of
Elections, that allowed him to gain control of a content
management system (CMS) used to control the official website of
Florida's Office of Elections.
However, this video was misunderstood and used as an evidence by
the Florida Department of Law Enforcement officials to backfire
Levin.
Almost two weeks after the video was posted on YouTube, Florida
police raided Levin's house and seized his computers.
Levin was arrested and charged with allegedly breaking into a
couple of elections websites in Florida. He spent six hours in
jail last Wednesday before being released on a $15,000 bond, the
Florida Department of Law Enforcement officials said.
Though Florida Police claimed Levin never asked for permission
prior to performing his penetration testing on any state-owned
server, Sinclair said that Levin was the one who helped the
authority fix the security holes in the website.
"He took usernames and passwords from the Lee County website
and gained further access to areas that were password-protected,"
FDLE Special Agent Larry Long told the Herald Times. "The state
statute is pretty clear. You need to have authorization before
you can do that."
However, Sinclair reached out to The Hacker News, revealing that
Mr. Levin contacted the authorities while performing his
research.
"The FDLE came to Dave, and then to me about the case,"
Sinclair said. "We believed they were investigating the holes in
the servers and the Gross Negligence. We both gave them the only
information they have now that is accurate. While interviewing
me, and Agent Chris Tissot kept cutting me off when I answered
his questions."
"I quickly realized Tissot was not investigating any of the
claims. His sole goal was to find an obscure law they could hit
Dave with, to discredit the information Dave went public with
(after he helped them fix the holes)."
At this point it seems that federal agents are not adequately
investigating the matter, rather they are trying to prove Levin
culprit in this whole event.
Conservatives Accuse Facebook of Political Bias
Facebook scrambled on Monday to respond to a new and startling
line of attack: accusations of political bias.
The outcry was set off by a report on Monday morning by the
website Gizmodo, which said that Facebookís team in charge of the
siteís ìtrendingî list had intentionally suppressed articles from
conservative news sources. The social network uses the trending
feature to indicate the most popular news articles of the day to
users.
Facebook denied the allegations after a backlash ó from both
conservative and liberal critics ó erupted. ìNOT LEANING INÖ
LEANING LEFT!î blared the top story on The Drudge Report, a
widely read website. A headline on RedState, a conservative blog,
posed a question to readers: ìIs Facebook Suppressing RedState
Content?î
The journalist Glenn Greenwald, hardly a conservative ally,
weighed in on Twitter: ìAside from fueling right-wing
persecution, this is a key reminder of dangers of Silicon Valley
controlling content.î And Alexander Marlow, the editor in chief
of Breitbart News, a conservative-leaning publication, said the
report confirmed ìwhat conservatives have long suspected.î
Facebook, in response, says that it follows rigorous guidelines
ìto ensure consistency and neutralityî and that it works to be
inclusive of all perspectives. ìWe take allegations of bias very
seriously,î a Facebook spokeswoman said in a statement.
ìFacebook is a platform for people and perspectives from across
the political spectrum.î
The back-and-forth highlights the extent to which Facebook has now
muscled its way into Americaís political conversation ó and the
risks that the company faces as it becomes a central force in news
consumption and production.
With more than 222 million monthly active users in the United
States and Canada, the site has become a place that people flock
to to find out what is going on. Last year, a study by the Pew
Research Center, in collaboration with the Knight Foundation,
found that 63 percent of Facebookís users considered the service
a news source.
In April, Facebook embraced this role openly, releasing a video
to implore people to search Facebook to discover ìthe other side
of the story.î Politicians have increasingly shared their
messages through the social network.
ìItís not that Facebook has changed fundamentally over the past
four, eight years,î said Paul Brewer, director of the University
of Delaware Center for Political Communication. ìItís the sheer
volume of communication thatís taking place, and itís that
politicians know that they need to be using Facebook now more
than ever before to communicate.î
As it has become more influential, Facebook has taken pains to
say that it is not an echo chamber of similar opinions. In a
peer-reviewed study published last year, Facebookís data
scientists analyzed how 10.1 million of the most partisan
American users on the social network navigated the site over a
six-month period. They found that peopleís networks of friends
and the articles they saw were skewed toward their ideological
preferences ó but that the effect was more limited than the worst
case some theorists had predicted, in which people would see
almost no information from the other side.
Yet Gizmodoís report raises questions about the effects that
Facebookís staff members and their biases ó even unconscious ones
ó have on the social network.
While Facebook has pledged to sponsor both the Democratic and
Republican national conventions, the companyís top executives
have not been shy about expressing where their political
sympathies lie.
At a Facebook conference in April, Mark Zuckerberg, the
companyís chief executive, warned of ìfearful voices building
walls,î in reference to Donald Trump, the probable Republican
presidential candidate.
The allegations against Facebook also put the spotlight on how
it chooses which news articles to show users under the trending
function ó on desktop computers, ìtrendingî displays on the right
side of screens; on cellphones, it appears when users search.
Facebook has long described its trending feature as largely
automatic. ìThe topics you see are based on a number of factors
including engagement, timeliness, pages youíve liked and your
location,î according to a description on Facebookís site.
The trending feature is curated by a team of contract employees,
according to two former Facebook employees who worked on it and who
spoke on the condition of anonymity because of nondisclosure
agreements. They said they considered themselves members of a
newsroom-like operation, where editorial discretion was not novel
but was an integral part of the process.
Any ìsuppression,î the former employees said, was based on
perceived credibility ó any articles judged by curators to be
unreliable or poorly sourced, whether left-leaning or
right-leaning, were avoided, though this was a personal judgment
call.
The perception of Facebook as a more conventional news operation
opens it to a more familiar line of criticism, which has been
mounted against news organizations left and right, large and
small, for decades. According to a report last year by Pew, only
17 percent surveyed said that technology companies had a negative
influence on the country. For the news media, that number was
65 percent ó and rising.
ìThe agenda-setting power of a handful of companies like Facebook
and Twitter should not be underestimated,î said Jonathan
Zittrain, a professor of computer science and law at Harvard
University. ìThese services will be at their best when they are
explicitly committed to serving the interests of their users
rather than simply offering a service whose boundaries for
influence are unknown and ever-changing.î
By late Monday, users on the social network looking for more
information about the Gizmodo report did not have to look far:
It was among the top articles trending on Facebook.
Twitter May Have Cut Spy Agencies Off From Its Flood of Data
At Twitterís behest, US intelligence agencies have lost access to
Dataminr, a company that turns social media data into an advanced
notification system, according to the Wall Street Journal. While
that may sound like a win for privacy, itís a bit more
complicated in practice.
The move leaves government officials without a valuable tool.
Somewhat less clear is what sort of stand, if any, Twitter is
taking.
There are a few threads to untangle here, and plenty of
unanswered questions. Dataminr has been in business since 2009,
and its main gig is scouring social media for patterns that might
indicate breaking news, using algorithms to give those patterns a
context and identity, and delivering the result in the form of a
real-time breaking news alert. Itís like when you get NYT news
alerts on your phone, but on big-data steroids, and only
available to clients with a big enough checkbook.
Until recently, according to the Journal, various US defense
agencies were among those clients.
ìFrom the government perspective, itís a good tool, because it
gives real-time alerts to things that are happening before anyone
really knows whatís going on,î says Aki Peritz, a former CIA
counterterrorism expert and current adjunct professor at American
University. ìWe want to allow law enforcement and the
intelligence services to know bad things are happening in real
time.î
In addition to those real-time benefitsóthe Journal reports that
Dataminr, in fact, alerted the US intelligence committee to last
fallís Paris attacksóitís important to note that those agencies
are also indirect investors in Dataminr, through a
venture-capital program called In-Q-Tel. That investment
reportedly allowed for a ìpilot program,î which has concluded.
When Twitter tells Dataminr to jump, its algorithms calculate
exactly how high.
So whatís the issue, and more specifically, where does Twitter
come in? Like the intelligence community, Twitter is an investor
in Dataminr, though its five-percent stake doesnít carry nearly
as much weight as the firehose it provides. Dataminr is the only
outside company with full access to Twitterís real-time data and
permission to sell that data. Without that access, its business
model would be directly threatened. So when Twitter tells it to
jump, its algorithms calculate exactly how high.
ìDataminr uses public Tweets to sell breaking news alerts to
media organizations such as Dow Jones and government agencies
such as the World Health Organization, for non-surveillance
purposes,î says a Twitter spokesperson. ìWe have never authorized
Dataminr or any third party to sell data to a government or
intelligence agency for surveillance purposes. This is a
longstanding Twitter policy, not a new development.î
Further complicating matters is that the Department of Homeland
Security reportedly has an existing contract with Dataminr as
well, unaffected by the current imbroglio. Neither Dataminr nor
DHS immediately responded to inquiries.
If Twitter wants to distance itself from the governmentís
surveillance apparatus, itís picked an opportune time to do so.
Apple recently won a high-stakes face-off with the FBI over
whether the feds could compel it to write software that
undermines an iPhoneís safety, and WhatsApp turned on end-to-end
encryption by default for a billion users worldwide. Pushing
back against the intelligence community is trending.
Yet there are substantive differences between Twitterís actions
and those of its contemporaries. Apple was fighting a potentially
dangerous legal precedent, and the encryption wave protects
digital conversations that have a reasonable expectation of
privacy. Dataminr, though, packages tweets, which are public.
ìItís merely a way to sort tweets into a way that makes sense
for the clients, whether itís a hedge fund, or the media, or an
intelligence service,î says Peritz. The information is searchable
to anyone; Dataminr has just concocted a better way to search,
and to draw conclusions from the results.
Privacy advocates argue that itís not so simple, and that
severing Dataminrís ties with the intelligence community is
clearly in line with Twitterís long-time stance on user
protection.
ìThe company has responsibilities to respect human rights,î says
Peter Micek, a lawyer with digital rights group Access Now.
ìTwitter does not want to aid surveillance beyond what itís
legally required to.î
Micek notes that this position isnít just fluff; itís part of
Twitterís developer agreement. It states, along with a few other
restrictions designed to safeguard users, that its partners ìwill
not conduct and your services will not provide analyses or
research that isolates a small group of individuals or any single
individual for any unlawful or discriminatory purposes.î
This, though, somehow manages to raise even more questions. If
Twitter has this clause, why did Dataminr partner with defense
agencies in the first place? Why does it still contract with DHS?
Does an early-notification system, still widely available to
private companies, constitute the sorts of abuses Twitterís
developer agreement specifies? And what does cutting off the
intelligence community accomplish beyond making them slower to
respond to international incidents?
If Twitter has this clause, why did Dataminr partner with defense
agencies in the first place?
ìLetís say Dataminr works with CNN, and then CNN puts something
up on the screen, and people in the government see it and learn
about it that way,î says Peritz. ìWhy cut out the US government
in the first place? Itís internally illogical.î
That the data is both public and beneficial is not enough to sway
Micek, who says that while the data is technically public, the
sort of intelligence garnered by Dataminr should require a
warrant for the government to attain.
ìItís easy to say that this information is already out there, but
access to that fire hose of data allows upstream collection that
the government does, and provides an unprecedented scope and
scale of surveillance.î
Itís a thorny issue, made even more so by the lack of clarity
from the involved parties. If Dataminr simply sorts public
knowledge, then denying the intelligence community that
information makes little sense, especially given that DHS still
has access. If, on the other hand, Dataminr provides a level of
insight that should only be accessible with a warrant, giving
that same information to an unregulated hedge fund seems
problematic as well.
For now, at least, the government will have to go back to combing
through Twitter on its own. Itís not the worst fate. Itís just an
odd one.
Mozilla Asks Court To Disclose Firefox
Exploit Used by FBI To Hack Tor Users
Mozilla has filed a brief with a U.S. District Court asking the FBI
to disclose the potential vulnerabilities in its Firefox browser
that the agency exploited to unmask TOR users in a criminal
investigation.
Last year, the FBI used a zero-day flaw to hack TOR browser and
de-anonymize users visiting child sex websites.
Now, Mozilla is requesting the government to ask the FBI about
the details of the hack so that it can ensure the security of its
Firefox browser.
TOR is an anonymity software that provides a safe haven to human
rights activists, government, journalists but also is a place
where drugs, child pornography, assassins for hire and other
illegal activities has allegedly been traded.
TOR Browser Bundle is basically an Internet browser based on
Mozilla Firefox configured to protect the user's anonymity via
Tor and Vidalia.
In 2015, the FBI seized computer servers running the worldís
largest dark web child pornography site ëPlaypení from a web
host in Lenoir, North Carolina. However, after the seizure, the
site was not immediately shut down.
Instead, the FBI agents continued to run Playpen from its own
servers in Newington, Virginia, from February 20 to March 4.
During that period, the agency deployed its so-called Network
Investigative Technique (NIT) to identify the real IP addresses
of users visiting this illegal site.
Recently, an investigation revealed that Matthew J. Edman, a
former employee of TOR Project, created malware for the FBI that
has been used by US law enforcement and intelligence agencies in
several investigations to unmask Tor users.
The FBI hacked more than a thousand computers in the US alone and
over three thousand abroad. The Internet Service Providers (ISPs)
were then forced to hand over the target customerís details,
following their arrest.
Two months back, a judge ordered the FBI to reveal the complete
source code for the TOR exploit that not only affected the Tor
Browser, which would have likely been used to hack visitors of
PlayPen, but also Firefox.
Hereís what Mozillaís top lawyer Denelle Dixon-Thayer explained
in a blog post:
"The Tor Browser is partially based on our Firefox browser
code. Some have speculated, including members of the defense
team, that the vulnerability might exist in the portion of the
Firefox browser code relied on by the Tor Browser. At this point,
no one (including us) outside the government knows what
vulnerability was exploited and whether it resides in any of our
code base."
Mozilla has now filed a motion with a US district court in
Washington, asking the government to disclose the vulnerability
within 14 days before any disclosure to the Defendant requiring
the FBI to hand over the source code of the exploit to the
defense team.
It is because Mozilla wants time to analyze the vulnerability,
prepare a patch, and update its products before any malicious
actor could exploit the flaw to compromise its Firefox browser,
which is being used by millions of people.
Google Shakes Up Antivirus Industry
Google is in the process of limiting access to a widely used
database of computer viruses and malicious software in a move
that is having a ripple effect across the cybersecurity industry.
VirusTotal, a subsidiary of the search giant, said last week that
it was attempting to curtail abuses of the database by mandating
that any companies that access it must also participate in the
service to help it grow.
VirusTotal receives about 1.2 million files each day from its
free, public website that will scan against some 60 antivirus
programs from leading makers such as Kaspersky Lab, Symantec,
and Intel.
Companies pay to receive access to those files full of potentially
new viruses and data on the consistency of malware scanners. Until
the policy change, VirusTotal did not require companies to
participate in scanning new files, meaning they did not add to the
larger pool of malware information for the industry.
Many cybersecurity industry experts say that amounted to getting
something for nothing.
What's more, industry insiders worry that access to VirusTotal let
some antivirus companies develop software that only checked to see
if VirusTotal had encountered the file before, rather than root
out new strains of malware to protect their customers.
"If the rumors are true, these companies are selling a false sense
of security," said Bogdan Botezatu, a senior analyst at
BitDefender, an antivirus firm that participates on VirusTotal.
Ideally, he said, the community of cybersecurity firms would
collaborate on creating the most up-to-date information on viruses
in service of improving the overall industry, and keeping
consumers safer. "VirusTotal is so important because antiviruses
only work on trust and cooperation."
"For this ecosystem to work," VirusTotal said in a May 4 blog post,
"everyone who benefits from the community also needs to give back
to the community."
VirusTotal did not say how many current companies it would limit
from accessing the library, and Google did not respond to a request
for additional comment about the new VirusTotal policies. But the
changes are already having a tangible effect on the cybersecurity
industry.
According to Reuters, VirusTotal has shut out the cybersecurity
firm SentinelOne, which promoted its use of the tool in marketing
materials. Representatives from Crowdstrike told Reuters it was
currently negotiating a way to continue using the service.
Some firms have no qualms about leaving VirusTotal.
"People were saying that we were using VirusTotal to scan files,
which we donít," said Stuart McClure, chief executive officer of
Cylance, a firm that promotes its use of artificial intelligence
to detect cyberthreats. "This is good chance for us to educate
people on what we actually do. VirusTotal's policies wonít affect
us at all."
Still, he said, many companies may have had good reason not to
share results of their own virus scans (often called
"convictions") with the competition. "They would steal all of our
convictions without giving us credit,î he said.
The changes to VirusTotal will not effect how the public can use
the service to search files and websites for viruses and other
malicious software.
Reaction to Facebook Reactions: Meh
According to a new study, Facebook reactions, like love and anger,
are not being widely used at this point.
Facebook users have some new reactions to work with, but most are
sticking to the tried and true "Like" button, according to a new
study from social media analytics firm Quintly.
Quintly analyzed 130,000 Facebook posts and found that, 97 percent
of interactions were likes, comments, and shares, rather than the
new options that allow folks to convey love, laughter, happiness,
shock, sadness, or anger about a particular post.
"It is clear that Facebook Reactions are not used very frequently
by the average [person] at this point," Quintly Communication
Manager Julian Gottke writes in a blog post. Of the interactions
Quintly analyzed, 76.4 percent were likes, 14 percent were shares,
and 7.2 percent were comments, while just 2.4 percent were
something else.
That's not great news for marketers, which may be counting on
those new reactions to get a better sense of how their content is
perceived, Quintly points out.
The social network officially rolled out the new symbols in
February; "love" is the most popular, Quintly reports.
Videos, however, receive more varied reactions than other types
of posts. Users, for instance, react to videos with the "wow"
reaction "significantly more often" compared to images, Quintly
says. The same is true for the "angry" reaction, which users are
twice as likely to use after watching a video.
Another interesting finding about the angy reaction: Users are
hesitant to post it and other negative reactions.
"Until the launch of Facebook Reactions it was hardly possible to
express a negative perception. Now it is, but the share of people
using it is very low," Gottke writes. "Facebook users prefer to
interact with content that entertains, is funny or just generates
positive emotions."
Mozilla Rehashes Firefox Feature-testing Program
Mozilla yesterday cranked up Test Pilot - restoring a 2015 project
with a name from 2009 - to collect feedback on proposed new
features for its flagship Firefox browser.
Test Pilot, which Mozilla dabbled with six years ago, was then
aimed at gathering data on how people were using the web in
general, Firefox in particular. In its original format, Test
Pilot used a Firefox add-on to collect browsing and usage data,
and provide tools to answer feedback questions.
Mozilla's goal this time around the Test Pilot block is
different.
"Test Pilot is a way for you to try out experimental features and
let us know what you think," Nick Nguyen, vice president of
Firefox, wrote in a Tuesday post to a company blog.
In fact, while Test Pilot is the project's name, it's actually
based on a 2015 concept that Mozilla called "Idea Town." Mozilla
renamed Idea Town as Test Pilot in January.
Idea Town was billed as a way for Firefox users to try out new
features, and for developers to evaluate user reaction before
deciding whether to stick the proposed tools into the browser.
The first three features run through Test Pilot were a
visual-heavy new tab page, dubbed "Activity Stream," that
displayed thumbnails of both frequently-visited sites and selected
past pages from the browser's history and bookmark lists; "Tab
Center," which shoved tabs into a vertical stack on the left
rather than show them along the top; and "Universal Search," which
combined Firefox's current dual search fields.
Other browsers adopted a single search field long ago; Firefox was
the last of the top five to stick with the old-school split
search.
Desktop Firefox users, whether running the browser in Windows,
OS X or Linux, can participate in Test Pilot by downloading the
add-on. A Firefox Account - typically used for synchronizing the
browser across multiple devices and platforms - is required.
Nguyen warned users to expect problems with the features put
through the Test Pilot mill. "As you're experimenting with new
features, you might experience some bugs or lose some of the
polish from the general Firefox release, so Test Pilot allows
you to easily enable or disable features at any time," he said.
Although Mozilla, like all browser makers, distributes more than
one version of Firefox at a time - running from the
least-polished Nightly build to the production-quality Release
edition - neither the original Test Pilot or the later Idea Town
were popular among users.
Test Pilot aims to change that. "Feedback and data from Test
Pilot will help determine which features ultimately end up in a
Firefox release for all to enjoy," Nguyen said.
More information about Test Pilot has been published on
Mozilla's website.
Windows Has Finally Fixed Its Awful Auto-update System
Anyone who's used a Windows PC for more than 20 minutes has
probably run into the scheduled updater. This evil snippet of
code will, on occasion, forcibly restart your PC, no matter how
urgent a piece of work might be.
In the latest beta version of Windows 10, Microsoft has revealed
how it will fix the auto-install with a new feature called
"Active Hours." It still doesn't allow you to turn off
auto-install - Microsoft is determined that you stay up to date
- but it does the next best thing.
When enabled, Active Hours lets you set the hours during which
you most use your computer, and no updates will ever be
installed during that time period. No, you can't just set your
Active Hours to be 23 hours and 59 minutes of the day - it tops
out at 10 hours, which should nonetheless be enough to cover most
people's day jobs.
To set up Active Hours, you first need to be on the Insider beta
program. Assuming you're running the latest beta build, follow
these steps:
Go to the Settings app (Windows +I)
Open Updates and Security
Click "change active hours" to set your preferred period of time
I think this strikes a decent balance between user-friendliness,
and still keeping everyone's systems up to date. I've been shafted
by a Windows Update at a highly inconvenient time before (nothing
like a spontaneous reboot in the middle of a Samsung press
conference!). But I also appreciate the value of keeping everyone
up to date, especially at a time when Windows zero-day security
flaws pop up with alarming regularity.
Why Internet Links Are Blue,
And What Google's 'Black' Experiment Means
Googleís search experiment ó where text links in search results
appear black and not the traditional blue ó is freaking people
out, and with good reason. The blue link (underlined or not) has
been around for so long that it's become borderline dogma for
web design.
For as long as there has been a public Internet, links or, more
accurately, hyperlinks have been blue and often underlined. In
1993 (or '94), at the dawn of the modern World Wide Web, Tim
Berners-Lee, who is often regarded as the father of the Internet,
chose blue underlined text because, it is believed, it stood out
from all the black text surrounding it.
The earliest web browsers, including Mosaic, used blue link text.
Berners-Lee, though, did not invent hyperlink text. That concept
goes back another 30 years to roughly 1965 and Ted Nelson, who
came up with the term ìhypertextî and, while a professor at Vassar
College, used it in the title of a paper, The Hypertext
Proceedings of the World Documentation Federation, 1965.
Nelson is a brilliant technologist (though not a programmer),
prolific speaker, writer and famously spearheaded the ill-fated
Project Xanadu, which actually predates the term ìHypertext,î a
universal hypertext library that was intended to be a better
Internet organizing principle than the World Wide Web.
You're asking the wrong question
Now in his late 70s and working with The Internet Archive, Nelson
also still posts regularly on Twitter, which is how I tracked him
down. I wondered if Nelson had any thoughts on Google's
experiments with black links and sent him an exploratory email
that read, in part:
You're often recognized as the father of hyperlink text, so I
was wondering if I could chat with you today about the origin of
hyperlink text and, more specifically, the default style (blue,
often underlined).
To my surprise, Nelson answered quickly, but was not inspired by
my query. He wrote.
No time to chat. Today's web has so little to do with my
concepts that there is no possible answer to the question.
Undeterred, I tried a different angle.
That's fair, but in your original hyperlink concepts, were
the links always blue and, if so, does that have more to do with
early computer programming than a stylistic choice?
This turned out to be a poorly considered question and, in
hindsight, his response makes perfect sense.
Links were visible straps between pages.
Color screens were not on the horizon.
Your thoughts area (sic) really trapped in today.
Sorry, but cannot reply again.
He was right, of course. Iíd sent him an embarrassingly myopic
query. For Nelson, hyperlinks were about organizing and connecting
associated information. It was before the dawn of the Internetís
predecessor Arpanet (1969) and decades before we saw the web as an
information superhighway. Whatís more, a computer screen in 1965
was monochromatic ó usually black and white or black and green. At
best, you could represent hypertext by underlining the text.
Colors were impossible.
By 1994, though, Berners-Lee was blessed with color screens. Most
of his early screenshots include blue links and an image of the
Mosaic Browser, the National Center for Supercomputing
Applicationís cross-platform web browser used blue links and, when
you opened it, actually explained what you were supposed to do
with the blue, underlined text:
Each highlighted phrase (underlined or color) is a hyperlink
to another document or information resource somewhere on the
Internet. Single click on any hyperlinked phrase to follow the
link.
As for Berners-Lee, whom I tried to contact for this article, he
really doesnít know where the blue came from. In a lengthy FAQ
that Berners-Lee on The World Wide Web Consortium, he explained:
There is no reason why one should use color, or blue, to
signify links: it is just a default. I think the first WWW
client (WorldWideWeb I wrote for the NeXT) used just underline to
represent link, as it was a spare emphasis form which isn't used
much in real documents. Blue came in as browsers went color ó I
don't remember which was the first to use blue...
My guess is that blue is the darkest color and so threatens
the legibility least. I used green whenever I could in the early
WWW design, for nature and because it is supposed to be relaxing.
Robert Cailliau made the WWW icon in many colors but chose green
as he had always seen W in his head as green.
Even though Berners-Lee clearly preferred green, the folklore that
he chose blue because it's the darkest color (aside from black)
persists.
What is certain though, is that blue links have been the default
link style on the web for more than 20 years. Beyond aesthetics,
itís shorthand for ìclick here.î Links inside paragraphs of gray
text serve as online escape portals to more valuable or
interesting text and graphics. Hiding them behind similarly
colored text, as Googleís search experiment appears to do, may be
a bridge too far for many. However, considering Googleís vast
influence on our collective Internet experience, it could start a
link revolution that weíll be powerless to stop.
A Google spokesperson more or less confirmed the existence of
these tests with this official comment, "We're always running
many small-scale experiments with the design of the results page.
We're not quite sure that black is the new blue."
As for the fathers of hypertext and the Internet, they appear to
be staying mum on the matter.
=~=~=~=
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