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The latest version of Google Chrome has launched, bringing a host of new developer features like JavaScript modules and WebUSB support. An anonymous Slashdot reader shares a report from VentureBeat: Google has launched Chrome 61 for Windows, Mac, and Linux. Additions in this release include JavaScript modules and WebUSB support, among other developer features. You can update to the latest version now using the browser's built-in silent updater or download it directly from google.com/chrome. Google also released Chrome 61 for Android today. In addition to performance and stability fixes, you can expect two new features: Translate pages with a more compact toolbar and pick images with an improved image picker.

Chrome now supports JavaScript modules natively via the new element, letting developers declare a script's dependencies. Modules are already popular in third-party build tools, which use them to bundle only the required scripts. Native support means the browser can fetch granular dependencies in parallel, taking advantage of caching, avoiding duplications across the page, and ensuring the script executes in the correct order, all without a build step. Google recommends these two blog posts for more information: ECMAScript modules in browsers and ES6 Modules in Depth. Speaking of JavaScript, Chrome 61 also upgrades the browser's V8 JavaScript engine to version 6.1. Developers can expect performance improvements and a binary size reduction. The WebUSB API meanwhile allows web apps to access user-permitted USB devices. This enables all the functionality provided by hardware peripherals such as keyboards, mice, printers, and gamepads, while still preserving the security guarantees of the web.

An anonymous reader sends this report form the Google Research blog on the effectiveness of D-Wave's 2X quantum computer: We found that for problem instances involving nearly 1000 binary variables, quantum annealing significantly outperforms its classical counterpart, simulated annealing. It is more than 10^8 times faster than simulated annealing running on a single core. We also compared the quantum hardware to another algorithm called Quantum Monte Carlo. This is a method designed to emulate the behavior of quantum systems, but it runs on conventional processors. While the scaling with size between these two methods is comparable, they are again separated by a large factor sometimes as high as 10^8. A more detailed paper is available at the arXiv.

LichtSpektren writes: Google Chrome version 47 is now available for download. This release features 41 security fixes, very tiny UI changes (except for the built-in PDF viewer, which was redone entirely), and the removal of the desktop notification center. The iOS version has added new keyboard shortcuts and support for 3D touch.

An anonymous reader writes: With kicking off ACM SIGGRAPH '15, The Khronos Group came out with several big announcements, including the release of OpenGL ES 3.2 (which incorporates Android AEP functionality), confirmation that Google will support Vulkan on Android (when released), new desktop OpenGL extensions, and updates to the existing OpenCL 2.0 specification. They stopped short of releasing the heavily anticipated Vulkan Graphics API and also refrained from releasing a new desktop OpenGL version. They hope to have the Vulkan specification and its implementations released before year's end.

badger.foo writes: Get your facts straight before reporting, is the main takeaway from Peter Hansteen's latest piece, The OpenSSH Bug That Wasn't. OpenSSH servers that are set up to use PAM for authentication and with a very specific (non-default on OpenBSD and most other places) setup are in fact vulnerable, and fixing the configuration is trivial.

An anonymous reader writes: Former Mozilla software engineer Monica Chew and Computer Science researcher Georgios Kontaxis recently released a paper (PDF) that examines Firefox's optional Tracking Protection feature. The duo found that with Tracking Protection enabled, the Alexa top 200 news sites saw a 67.5 percent reduction in the number of HTTP cookies set. Furthermore, performance benefits included a 44 percent median reduction in page load time and 39 percent reduction in data usage.

retroworks writes: Two stories appear today which feature close up photos of young African men surrounded by scrap metal in the city of Accra. The headlines state that this is where our computers go to die (Wired). The Daily Mail puts it in even starker terms, alleging "millions of tons" are dumped in Agbogbloshie.

The stories appear the same day as a press release by investigators who returned this week from 3 weeks at the site. The release claims that Agbogbloshie's depiction as the worlds "largest ewaste dump site" to be a hoax. It is a scrap automobile yard which accounts for nothing more than local scrap from Accra. Three Dagbani language speaking electronics technicians, three reporters, Ghana customs officials and yours truly visited the site, interviewed workers about the origins of the material, and assessed volumes. About 27 young men burn wire, mostly from automobile scrap harnesses. The electronics — 20 to 50 items per day — are collected from Accra businesses and households. The majority of Accra (population 5M) have had televisions since the 1990s, according to World Bank metadata (over 80% by 2003).

The investigation did confirm that most of the scrap was originally imported used, and that work conditions were poor. However, the equipment being recycled had been repaired and maintained, typically for a decade (longer than the original OECD owner). It is a fact that used goods will, one day, eventually become e-waste. Does that support a ban on the trade in used goods to Africa? Or, as the World Bank reports, is the affordable used product essential to establish a critical mass of users so that investment in highways, phone towers, and internet cable can find necessary consumers?

cryptoz (878581) writes Apple is now adding barometers to its mobile devices: both new iPhones have valuable atmospheric pressure sensors being used for HealthKit (step counting). Since many Android devices have been carrying barometers for years, scientists like Cliff Mass have been using the sensor data to improve weather forecasts. Open source data collection projects like PressureNet on Android automatically collect and send the atmospheric sensor data to researchers.

badger.foo (447981) writes Peter Hansteen reports that a new distributed and slow-moving password guessing effort is underway, much like the earlier reports, but this time with a twist: The users they are trying to access do not exist. Instead, they're taken from the bsdly.net spamtrap address list, where all listed email addresses are guaranteed to be invalid in their listed domains. There is a tiny chance that this is an elaborate prank or joke, but it's more likely that via excessive automation, the password gropers have finally hit Peak Stupid.

badger.foo writes "Have you ever wanted to know what's really going on in your network? Some free tools with surprising origins can help you to an almost frightening degree. Peter Hansteen shares some monitoring insights, anecdotes and practical advice in his latest column on how to really know your network. All of it with free software, of course." From the article: " The NetFlow protocol was invented at Cisco in the early 1990s. It's designed to collect traffic metadata, where the basic unit of reference is the flow, defined as the source and destination IP address pair, the matching source and destination port for protocols that use them, the protocol identifier, time started and ended, number of packets sent, number of bytes sent, and a few other fields that have varied somewhat over the NetFlow versions. ... On OpenBSD, various netflow sensors and collectors had been available for a while when the new network pseudo device pflow debuted in OpenBSD 4.5."

hypnosec writes "Snapchat's security troubles continue as a security researcher has managed to hack its account registration CAPTCHA system with a program of less than 100 lines that took 30 minutes to develop. Steve Hickson, a computer engineer by education, wrote a small computer program with very little effort that identifies Snapchat's ghost from the given set of images. Hickson equates Snapchat's ghost very particular and calls it a template that can be matched easily using a computer program. Hickson used a combination of Open Source Computer Vision Library (OpenCV), SURF points and FLANN matching "with a uniqueness test to determine that multiple keypoints in the training image weren't being singularly matched in the testing image.""

An anonymous reader writes "Google today released Chrome version 32 for Windows, Mac, and Linux. The new version includes tab noise indicators, a new look for Windows 8 Metro mode, and automatic blocking of malware downloads. You can update to the latest release now using the browser's built-in silent updater, or download it directly from google.com/chrome."

A few days ago, we mentioned that the UK's ISP-level censorware software not only does a poor job of its stated job (blocking porn), but blocks at least some sex education sites, too; now, reader badger.foo writes to say that's not all: "It fell to the UK Tories to actually implement the Nanny State. Too bad Nanny Tory does not want kinds to read up on tech web sites such as slashdot.org, or civil liberties ones such as the EFF or Amnesty International. Read on for a small sample of what the filter blocks, from a blocked-by-default tech writer."

badger.foo writes "Against ridiculous odds and even after gaining some media focus, the botnet dubbed The Hail Mary Cloud apparently succeeded in staying under the radar and kept compromising Linux machines for several years. This article sums up the known facts about the botnet and suggests some practical measures to keep your servers safe."

badger.foo writes "When you publicly assert that somebody sent spam, you need to ensure that your data is accurate. Your process needs to be simple and verifiable, and to compensate for any errors, you want your process to be transparent to the public with clear points of contact and line of responsibility. Here are some pointers from the operator of the bsdly.net greytrap-based blacklist."

Today Google launched 'Google Keep', a mobile note-taking service to rival software like Evernote. It works on devices running Android 4.0 or later, and there's also a web interface (which is struggling under launch load as of this writing). Google describes the service thus: "With Keep you can quickly jot ideas down when you think of them and even include checklists and photos to keep track of what’s important to you. Your notes are safely stored in Google Drive and synced to all your devices so you can always have them at hand. If it’s more convenient to speak than to type that’s fine—Keep transcribes voice memos for you automatically. There’s super-fast search to find what you’re looking for and when you’re finished with a note you can archive or delete it." Fans of Google Reader will probably be a bit hesitant to pick this up.

rueger writes "Right now there's an election happening in British Columbia. A desperate government is flooding Facebook with "Sponsored Post" spam (example) extolling the wonderful things that they plan to do if re-elected. There's one problem though. Every one of these posts is followed by hundreds of extremely negative comments added by people who either dislike the party in question, or Facebook spam in general. Desperate moderators are trying to control the 'discussion,' but seem to have no hope of doing so. What was thought to be a cool marketing tool has turned into a public relations disaster. Is this the worst use of social media in an election?"

An anonymous reader writes "Google on Thursday released Chrome version 25 for Windows, Mac, and Linux. While Chrome 24 was largely a stability release, Chrome 25 is all about features, including voice recognition support via the newly added Web Speech API and the blocking of silent extension installation. You can update to the latest release now using the browser's built-in silent updater, or download it directly from google.com/chrome." But if you're more interested in the growing raft of Google-branded hardware than running Google OSes, some good news (via Liliputing) about the newly released Pixel: Bill Richardson of Google posted on Thursday that the Pixel can boot Linux Mint, and explained how users can follow his example, by taking advantage of new support for a user-provided bootloader.

badger.foo writes "You thought you had successfully avoided the tiresome password guessing bots groping at your SSH service by moving the service to a non-standard port? It seems security by obscurity has lost the game once more. We're now seeing ssh bruteforce attempts hitting other ports too, Peter Hansteen writes in his latest column." For others keeping track, have you seen many such attempts?

badger.foo writes "You thought you had successfully avoided the tiresome password guessing bots groping at your SSH service by moving the service to a non-standard port? It seems security by obscurity has lost the game once more. We're now seeing ssh bruteforce attempts hitting other ports too, Peter Hansteen writes in his latest column." For others keeping track, have you seen many such attempts?

An anonymous reader writes "Google has recently announced changes to its image search. The search provides larger views of the images with direct links to the full-sized source image. Although this new layout is being praised by users for its intuitiveness, it has raised concerns amongst image copyright holders and webmasters. Large images can now easily be seen and downloaded directly from the Google image search results without sending visitors to the hosting website. Webmasters have expressed concerns about a decrease in traffic and an increase in bandwidth usage since this change was rolled out. Some have set up a petition requesting Google remove the direct links to the images."

An anonymous reader writes "Google has released Chrome version 24 for Windows, Mac, and Linux. You can update to the latest release now using the browser's built-in silent updater, or download it directly from google.com/chrome. The biggest improvement on the user side of things is the speed increase. Google's own Octane JavaScript test shows that this is the fastest Chrome release yet. When the beta came out in November, the company was touting that Chrome had become 26 percent faster on Octane than it was last year. Now it's even faster. Google also announced it is introducing a new Chrome beta channel for phones and tablets running Android 4.0 or higher. You can download version 25.0.1364.8 right now directly from Google Play (since this is a beta, it's not available via search; you'll need to use the link). The release of version 25 is significant because it means Google is attempting to bring Chrome for Android in line with the desktop version. The current release of Chrome for Android is version 18, last updated in November."

An anonymous reader writes "Google has released Chrome version 24 for Windows, Mac, and Linux. You can update to the latest release now using the browser's built-in silent updater, or download it directly from google.com/chrome. The biggest improvement on the user side of things is the speed increase. Google's own Octane JavaScript test shows that this is the fastest Chrome release yet. When the beta came out in November, the company was touting that Chrome had become 26 percent faster on Octane than it was last year. Now it's even faster. Google also announced it is introducing a new Chrome beta channel for phones and tablets running Android 4.0 or higher. You can download version 25.0.1364.8 right now directly from Google Play (since this is a beta, it's not available via search; you'll need to use the link). The release of version 25 is significant because it means Google is attempting to bring Chrome for Android in line with the desktop version. The current release of Chrome for Android is version 18, last updated in November."

An anonymous reader writes "Joerg Sprave is at it again. This time, in order to bring in the New Year, he's got something with a bit more bang to it: a firecracker-launching slingshot. Being German, Joerg has built a slingshot that will accommodate the largest legal firecracker in that country. '2 grams of black powder in a tight cardboard "cigar" make a pretty loud bang! In order to make these bangs more spectacular, it is desirable to shoot them as high into the air as possible. A special slingshot crossbow has been designed, chambered for the strongest legal firecrackers. The weapon is a breech loader, and an integrated storm lighter allows the shooter to light the fuse when the weapon is all ready for the shot. The weapon launches the firecracker with tremendous force. The blunt object easily crashes through a moving card board box, and — equipped with a wooden tip — even goes in all the way into a block of ballistic gelatin.' His two videos are available on YouTube: part 1, part 2." This is the same gentleman who made a slingshot that launches machetes.

badger.foo writes "When you're hit with a DDOS, what do you do? In his most recent column, Peter Hansteen narrates a recent incident that involved a DNS based DDOS against his infrastructure and that of some old friends of his. He ends up asking: should we actively publish or 'name and shame' DDOS participants (or at least their IP addresses)? How about scans that may or may not be preparations for DDOSes to come?"

badger.foo writes "When you're hit with a DDOS, what do you do? In his most recent column, Peter Hansteen narrates a recent incident that involved a DNS based DDOS against his infrastructure and that of some old friends of his. He ends up asking: should we actively publish or 'name and shame' DDOS participants (or at least their IP addresses)? How about scans that may or may not be preparations for DDOSes to come?"

An anonymous reader writes "Google on Friday announced it is shutting down a slew of features and services as part of its winter cleaning. Google Calendar will be losing a few features, Google Sync will be axed (on the consumer side), as will Google Calendar Sync, SyncML, the Issue Tracker Data API, and the Punchd app."

50000BTU_barbecue writes "Usually sci-fi provides adventure with happy endings for everyone. But what story have you read that resonates years later because of some insight about human nature or society that's basically cynical or pessimistic? For me it's Fred Pohl's Jem, with its sharply divided resource-constrained future world driven by politics, and its conclusion that humans are just too destructive to handle contacting alien life, especially if humans have the technological upper hand. I'm wondering what other stories have stuck in people's minds. It can be a short story, a novel or an entire series of books."

yoink! writes "It looks like Google is selling off SketchUp or, conversely, Trimble is acquiring it. Despite several indications there will continue to be a free version of the 3D modelling software, users are unsure about what this will mean for the SketchUp community at large as indicated by the comments on the official Google SketchUp Blog post. They are, however, rejoicing that they will be freed from Groups for SketchUp discussions."