Expert Insights, Tips, & Perspectives
Hacker News 2.0 – One Week Later
10 days ago I launched HN2.0. Some loved it, and some hated it. But few, it seems, ignored it. Since then the site has gotten tens of thousands of hits with essentially no promotional effort on my part, except for posting to HN, Twitter, Quora, and my blog about it (all free of charge).
Most of the feedback that I’ve gotten has been very positive, and a couple of site owners have even contacted me personally to ask about terms for getting their content featured prominently on the page or for wanting to establish an advertising arrangement.
I’m not… Continue reading
Facebook Unveils Details of Downtime
Facebook Unveils Details of Downtime
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An anonymous reader writes “Facebook officially gave out more technical details on the endless loop in a database control mechanism that forced a 2.5-hour shutdown of the social site, and the resulting combination of a productivity burst, increased fertility (check back on June 25, 2011) and mass hysteria all around the world.”
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
DuckDuckGo Search Engine Erects Tor Hidden Service
DuckDuckGo Search Engine Erects Tor Hidden Service
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An anonymous reader writes “Viewable with Tor installed, search engine DuckDuckGo has erected a hidden service for secure, encrypted searches through the Tor network. While past attempts at hidden service search engines failed due to uptime or quality issues, DuckDuckGo marks the first time a real company operating a public search engine has offered a solid search engine as a hidden service for Tor users.”
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Man Gets 12-Year Jail Sentence For Planting Child Porn On Enemy’s Computer
Man Gets 12-Year Jail Sentence For Planting Child Porn On Enemy’s Computer
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An anonymous reader writes with an update to a story we discussed in August about Neil Weiner, a man who sought to ruin the life of a school caretaker by planting child pornography on his computer. Weiner has now been convicted on two counts of possession of child pornography and one count of perverting the course of justice. He was sentenced to 12 years in jail.
“The judge told Weiner that his plot to have Mr. Thompson sacked and prosecuted very nearly succeeded. Police had been… Continue reading
DX11 Coming To Linux (But Not XP)
DX11 Coming To Linux (But Not XP)
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gr8_phk writes “As reported over at Phoronix, the Direct X 11 API now has an open source implementation on top of Gallium3d which should ease porting of games to Linux with or without Wine. While still in its infancy, you can see where this is heading. All this while Microsoft hasn’t offered DX11 for their own aging WindowsXP. Could it be that Linux may soon support this Microsoft API better than Microsoft itself?”
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
The Real Truth About Oracle’s ‘New’ Kernel
The Real Truth About Oracle’s ‘New’ Kernel
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An anonymous reader writes “Yesterday at OpenWorld, Oracle announced a ‘new’ Enterprise kernel for its so-called Unbreakable Linux. What’s the real truth? The company is simply sticking a 2.6.32-based kernel on top of its re-branded Red Hat Enterprise Linux clone and trying to spin it as a new and innovative development.”
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Linux Kernel Exploit Busily Rooting 64-Bit Machines
Linux Kernel Exploit Busily Rooting 64-Bit Machines
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An anonymous reader writes “Running 64-bit Linux? Haven’t updated yet? You’re probably being rooted as I type this. CVE-2010-3081, this week’s second high-profile local root exploit in the Linux kernel, is compromising machines left and right. Almost all 64-bit machines are affected, and ‘Ac1db1tch3z’ (classy) published code to let any local user get a root shell. Ac1db1tch3z’s exploit is more malicious than usual because it leaves a backdoor behind for itself to exploit later even if the hole is patched. Luckily, there’s a tool you can run to see if you’ve… Continue reading
Swiss Canton Abandons Linux Migration
Swiss Canton Abandons Linux Migration
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An anonymous reader writes “The Swiss canton Solothurn has put a stop to their ongoing migration to Linux. [Original, in German.] The project started in 2001, and has been under harsh public criticism ever since. The responsible CIO resigned this summer. Solothurn plans to convert all desktop computers to Windows 7 in 2011.”
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Microsoft’s Chief Exec For Latin America Says ‘Open’ Means ‘Incompetent’
Microsoft‘s Chief Exec For Latin America Says ‘Open’ Means ‘Incompetent’
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An anonymous reader writes “The President of Microsoft Latin America, in criticizing the Brazilian government for its support of open source software, claimed that declaring something open is how you ‘mask incompetence.’ That seems especially funny coming from Microsoft, who has used ‘closed’ to mask incompetence for years. I thought ‘open’ meant that people could find and fix (or ignore) incompetence, whereas closed meant you were stuck with the incompetence.”
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Introducing the Invulnerable Evercookie
Introducing the Invulnerable Evercookie
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An anonymous reader writes “Using eight different techniques and locations, a ‘security’ guy has developed a cookie that is very, very hard to delete. If just one copy of the cookie remains, the other locations are rebuilt. My favorite storage location is in ‘RGB values of auto-generated, force-cached PNGs using HTML5 Canvas tag to read pixels (cookies) back out’ — awesome.”
Read more of this story at Slashdot.