If at least Skype had some interesting business features, it would not be so dead. But right now, the unability to have even a decent voicemail system (last time I tried it the message quality was worse than that of a 50 years old scratched vinyl) tells me that it's not going in the right direction. Audio call quality is poor, and video call quality is worse. And since Microsoft's takeover, it went down the drain. Not even able to pick a nickname anymore, you have to refer to a cryptic, hard to find account ID to make a link to your Skype account on your website.
If it's not dead, the direction they are giving it will put the final nail in the coffin. You can already do messaging and social sharing on other platforms without having to install a crappy product. FB Messenger works great out of the box even in the Web interface. Skype's web interface has never been up to the task, I think it's even still in beta and lacks functionalities over the Windows app.
You realize that all this data "shared" between your devices is stored somewhere on Google servers? I don't trust anyone with my data, except me. I'll sure not trust a company that has been proven to provide all its data to 3-letter agencies.
At least with Firefox, I can disable all the call-home features. On Chrome? Hahaha! Google's core business is your data. You think they provide Chrome for the sake of having an open Internet? Nope. It's for them to retrieve all the data they can about you and sell it to their advertisers.
You mean the stamina to do a 5 seconds search on Google and post meaningful links in their submission? I don't call this "stamina", I call this non-laziness.
If you did a minimal install and installed all your stuff manually, never installed samba, you are safe. BUT just to make sure, issue the command: smbstatus
If you get an output other than -bash: smbstatus: command not found, double validate if it is running.
Using systemd: systemctl status smb
If you get an output different than Unit smb.service could not be found., you can assume samba is installed. You either make sure it is disabled (systemctl disable smb), or you update it.
For these critical info, a quick search on Google news got me this.
Extract:
All versions of Samba from 3.5.0 onwards are vulnerable to a remote code execution vulnerability, allowing a malicious client to upload a shared library to a writable share, and then cause the server to load and execute it.
A patch addressing this defect has been posted to
http://www.samba.org/samba/security/
Additionally, Samba 4.6.4, 4.5.10 and 4.4.14 have been issued as security releases to correct the defect. Patches against older Samba versions are available at http://samba.org/samba/patches.... Samba vendors and administrators running affected versions are advised to upgrade or apply the patch as soon as possible.
You have to dig deep in the summary to get to know that Samba is the vulnerable piece of software, and the article has no technical detail. Would have been nice to get a real news title like "Critical vulnerability found in Samba on Linux", and yes, with a link the the CVE.
It looks like the typical clickbait article. That's not what/. users want. We want some gravy, Crunch tech detail, specs, version numbers, and the most important thing, what version numbers are vulnerable and is it patched in the most recent releases.
I also wish I had a job like "today will be sunny, tomorrow will be rainy". And if the exact opposite happens, it doesn't matter. You keep your 6 digit job anyway.
100% agree. The Internet is the interconnecting pipes. And to correct one part of the summary, "A lot of tech companies are flailing around looking for ways to fix this problem" should be read as "ways to make more profit"
Big companies don't want to fix anything. They want good numbers for their shareholders. Selling stuff to "fix the problems" is their core business.
If a device only check for one thing, in this case, iris pattern, the device cannot know if it is a real eye for sure. Validating the iris and fingerprint, or iris and voice recognition, or iris and DNA would already be more secure, but as I come up with these ideas, I always find a way these things can be fooled together. It just makes it more complicated to fool 2 sensors at a time, but absolutely not out of reach of 3 letters agencies. I think iris scan combined with voice and a plain old password would already be some sort of security.
We must assume that only the Chinese governement will have access to change how these settings behave. You really think the Chinese government is going to authorize anyone to put any settings in these magical boxes?
cops and courts can make you put your finger on things to unlock them.
I know Apple is probably too rigged for that, but a very good idea for this would be to have 2 different fingerprints recorded. That of your choice would really unlock your device, while another one would make believe it is unlocked, with only a subset of the content accessible (user-chosen apps, files and messages history, and phone of course, so the decoy would do its job).
Too bad I have no money for this, I would patent it!
Interesting view. Fishing expedition. But I guess any buyer will be careful enough not to reveal his real identity, and will for sure hide behind strong anonymization services. Then how would they really catch their fish? It's a pretty risky way to go fishing...
What they want is that you abandon MP3 format in favor of DRM rigged formats, like MPEG4. MPEG2 layer 3 (MP3) does not have this "feature" built-in. This way they can control what your are allowed to listen to.
If [ step1 is applied ]
then
-- you are pretty safe from this shit
elif [ step1 is applied && step2 is applied ]
then
-- you are safer from this shit
else
-- you will never be safe from this shit. Points 3 and 4 are general purpose self defense advice.
fi
I remember of PDF files that could have you pwned. I remember of Flash files that could get you pwned. All this by opening not-executable files using a supposedly safe executable file.
I say that ANYTHING looking even a little fishy should raise suspicion. As much as humanly possible, when you receive an unexpected file, confirm with a phone call or a reply to the known email address of the sender.
100% agree with you on this. If the case was that Linux costs a lot of money to run, and that you want people developping for it, it would be a good way. But people developping on Linux usually run Linux.
I don't think they'll get any more adoption of Win 10 because they offer to run the Bash on Windows. I abandonned Win 10 not because it doesn't run Bash, but because of the Nagware, lack of control over the OS and updates, and the plain sight ads they put in my face on the login screen. Oh and because of all the tracking they do.
I was with Windows up until 7. Now I'm out, for good.
If it wasn't for Microsoft, many of us here would not have a job. I am migrating a lot of Win servers to Linux, and I cut the maintenance time / effort by 75%. I would be more trembling if MS disappeared. What would be left to do once everything is perfect?
Slashdot Mirror
If at least Skype had some interesting business features, it would not be so dead. But right now, the unability to have even a decent voicemail system (last time I tried it the message quality was worse than that of a 50 years old scratched vinyl) tells me that it's not going in the right direction. Audio call quality is poor, and video call quality is worse. And since Microsoft's takeover, it went down the drain. Not even able to pick a nickname anymore, you have to refer to a cryptic, hard to find account ID to make a link to your Skype account on your website.
If it's not dead, the direction they are giving it will put the final nail in the coffin. You can already do messaging and social sharing on other platforms without having to install a crappy product. FB Messenger works great out of the box even in the Web interface. Skype's web interface has never been up to the task, I think it's even still in beta and lacks functionalities over the Windows app.
Doom and King Quest V. They need Turbo.
You realize that all this data "shared" between your devices is stored somewhere on Google servers? I don't trust anyone with my data, except me. I'll sure not trust a company that has been proven to provide all its data to 3-letter agencies.
At least with Firefox, I can disable all the call-home features. On Chrome? Hahaha! Google's core business is your data. You think they provide Chrome for the sake of having an open Internet? Nope. It's for them to retrieve all the data they can about you and sell it to their advertisers.
You mean the stamina to do a 5 seconds search on Google and post meaningful links in their submission? I don't call this "stamina", I call this non-laziness.
If you did a minimal install and installed all your stuff manually, never installed samba, you are safe. BUT just to make sure, issue the command: smbstatus
If you get an output other than -bash: smbstatus: command not found, double validate if it is running.
Using systemd:
systemctl status smb
If you get an output different than Unit smb.service could not be found., you can assume samba is installed. You either make sure it is disabled (systemctl disable smb), or you update it.
For these critical info, a quick search on Google news got me this.
Extract:
All versions of Samba from 3.5.0 onwards are vulnerable to a remote code execution vulnerability, allowing a malicious client to upload a shared library to a writable share, and then cause the server to load and execute it. A patch addressing this defect has been posted to http://www.samba.org/samba/security/ Additionally, Samba 4.6.4, 4.5.10 and 4.4.14 have been issued as security releases to correct the defect. Patches against older Samba versions are available at http://samba.org/samba/patches.... Samba vendors and administrators running affected versions are advised to upgrade or apply the patch as soon as possible.
You have to dig deep in the summary to get to know that Samba is the vulnerable piece of software, and the article has no technical detail. Would have been nice to get a real news title like "Critical vulnerability found in Samba on Linux", and yes, with a link the the CVE.
/. users want. We want some gravy, Crunch tech detail, specs, version numbers, and the most important thing, what version numbers are vulnerable and is it patched in the most recent releases.
It looks like the typical clickbait article. That's not what
Then it was not "research". It was "gambling".
I also wish I had a job like "today will be sunny, tomorrow will be rainy". And if the exact opposite happens, it doesn't matter. You keep your 6 digit job anyway.
100% agree. The Internet is the interconnecting pipes. And to correct one part of the summary, "A lot of tech companies are flailing around looking for ways to fix this problem" should be read as "ways to make more profit"
Big companies don't want to fix anything. They want good numbers for their shareholders. Selling stuff to "fix the problems" is their core business.
If a device only check for one thing, in this case, iris pattern, the device cannot know if it is a real eye for sure. Validating the iris and fingerprint, or iris and voice recognition, or iris and DNA would already be more secure, but as I come up with these ideas, I always find a way these things can be fooled together. It just makes it more complicated to fool 2 sensors at a time, but absolutely not out of reach of 3 letters agencies. I think iris scan combined with voice and a plain old password would already be some sort of security.
We must assume that only the Chinese governement will have access to change how these settings behave. You really think the Chinese government is going to authorize anyone to put any settings in these magical boxes?
cops and courts can make you put your finger on things to unlock them.
I know Apple is probably too rigged for that, but a very good idea for this would be to have 2 different fingerprints recorded. That of your choice would really unlock your device, while another one would make believe it is unlocked, with only a subset of the content accessible (user-chosen apps, files and messages history, and phone of course, so the decoy would do its job).
Too bad I have no money for this, I would patent it!
Interesting view. Fishing expedition. But I guess any buyer will be careful enough not to reveal his real identity, and will for sure hide behind strong anonymization services. Then how would they really catch their fish? It's a pretty risky way to go fishing...
Why would anyone in the foreseeable future build an audio player and not include MP3 support?
Lobbying from the music industry.
There's literally no reason not to.
Yes there's one. DRM. And this is why the music industry wants you to believe the MP3 format is dead.
What they want is that you abandon MP3 format in favor of DRM rigged formats, like MPEG4. MPEG2 layer 3 (MP3) does not have this "feature" built-in. This way they can control what your are allowed to listen to.
If [ step1 is applied ]
then
-- you are pretty safe from this shit
elif [ step1 is applied && step2 is applied ]
then
-- you are safer from this shit
else
-- you will never be safe from this shit. Points 3 and 4 are general purpose self defense advice.
fi
My 2 cents pseudocode.
Your first point is 100% wrong. You do not need an executable file to get infected. A little over a month ago, a zero-day exploit did not even require a Word document to have macros enabled to get you infected.
I remember of PDF files that could have you pwned. I remember of Flash files that could get you pwned. All this by opening not-executable files using a supposedly safe executable file.
I say that ANYTHING looking even a little fishy should raise suspicion. As much as humanly possible, when you receive an unexpected file, confirm with a phone call or a reply to the known email address of the sender.
The first 2 steps are the most important. The second one alone should protect you.
Even Hitler did not.
Are you totally out of your Sean Spicer brainwashed mind? Ever heard of Zyclon B?
Maybe you are being sarcastic, but I just don't get it in your post (English is not my first language)
You don't READ braille, you TOUCH braille, you insensitive clod!
100% agree with you on this. If the case was that Linux costs a lot of money to run, and that you want people developping for it, it would be a good way. But people developping on Linux usually run Linux.
I don't think they'll get any more adoption of Win 10 because they offer to run the Bash on Windows. I abandonned Win 10 not because it doesn't run Bash, but because of the Nagware, lack of control over the OS and updates, and the plain sight ads they put in my face on the login screen. Oh and because of all the tracking they do.
I was with Windows up until 7. Now I'm out, for good.
running bash.exe
There's blood coming out of my eyes just by reading this part.
If it wasn't for Microsoft, many of us here would not have a job. I am migrating a lot of Win servers to Linux, and I cut the maintenance time / effort by 75%. I would be more trembling if MS disappeared. What would be left to do once everything is perfect?