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Comment Re:WordPress (Score 0) 64

I'd go even further and call it the Visual Basic of CMSes.

It's a playground for amateurs, and I'm amazed every time I see a well known business or organisation using it.

WordPress quickly degenerates into a mess of plugins and crappy hacks to do any remotely useful content management outside of a banal blog.

- greger

Education

Efforts Grow To Help Students Evaluate What They See Online (apnews.com) 166

Alarmed by the proliferation of false content online, state lawmakers around the country are pushing schools to put more emphasis on teaching students how to tell fact from fiction. From a report: Lawmakers in several states have introduced or passed bills calling on public school systems to do more to teach media literacy skills that they say are critical to democracy. The effort has been bipartisan but has received little attention despite successful legislation in Washington state, Connecticut, Rhode Island and New Mexico. Several more states are expected to consider such bills in the coming year, including Arizona, New York and Hawaii.

Advocates say the K-12 curriculum has not kept pace with rapid changes in technology. Studies show many children spend hours every day online but struggle to comprehend the content that comes at them. For years, they have pushed schools to incorporate media literacy -- including the ability to evaluate and analyze sources of information -- into lesson plans in civics, language arts, science and other subjects.

Comment Rollback protection. (Score 4, Interesting) 45

I thought commonly used TrustZone firmwares do have revocation/rollback protection but the OEMs doesn't use it when upgrading the OS. E.g. they bundle a new Widevine version in the update but they don't actually revoke old vulnerable ones.

As explored in depth by Google's Project Zero here:

https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fgoogleprojectzero.blog...

Or is this a real bypass that allows installing a revoked trustlet? The article was light on details.

/ greger47

Comment Re:Opera Mini is Webcore, not Presto (Score 1) 71

Opera Mini is Webcore, not Presto

No, Opera Mini uses both.

With data savings set to extreme it runs everything through Opera servers that run Presto. This is the traditional Mini mode that has been around since the beginning.

With data savings set to high it will indeed use WebView on the phone. This is a rather new feature introduced last year. The traffic is still directed through Opera servers, now using the "Opera Turbo" mode from Opera's desktop browser and the Opera for Android mobile browser.

/greger

Comment Re:Why were the updates problematic? (Score 1) 156

I ny case the OEM driver is simply stupid.

I have a Lenovo laptop with 3 buttons next to the touchpad. I prefer using the center button as just button 3, same as clicking the mouse wheel. The default simple mouse driver included in Windows works just like this.

However Windows 10 will detect that there is an "enhanced" Lenovo provided Synaptics driver and insist on installing that. This driver changes the center button to some "scroll" mode, hold the button and swipe the touchpad and it will send scroll events. This behaviour is not configurable.

To add extra insult to injury the touchpad is perfectly capable of 2-finger multitouch scrolling. The center button scroll mode is some leftover mouse-wheel emulation crap from 10 years ago before multitouch touchpads where common. It's totally not needed.

If I uninstall the "enhanced" driver Windows 10 will forcibly reinstall it for me in the evening. Gee thanks!

Nowadays I run Fedora on the laptop.

- greger

Comment Autonomous car charging (Score 1) 61

Gruzen envisions a future in which EV owners can send autonomous cars to charging stations remotely, a future that would only be possible with wireless charging stations.

This dude and his garage begs to differ http://www.theverge.com/2016/6....

GM if anyone would have the engineering resources to put together a reliable and automatic physical charging connection.

/greger

Comment I'm dissapointed... (Score 1) 118

I expected Elliot to be elite enough to be part of the top site scene, grabbing his warez of choice through chained ftp-bouncers. All while enjoying free leech thanks to services rendered like writing up a couple of SecuROM and C-Dilla unpackers on the side of his regular network intrusion schtick.

The thought of him crawling in the BitTorrent muck with us regular plebs just makes me sad. :(

/greger

Comment No chained vulnerabilities? Really? (Score 4, Interesting) 45

It is also notable in that it is a single clean exploit that does not require multiple chained vulnerabilities to work, the researchers say.

I have a hard time believing that. On Android V8 and the rest of the layout engine run in a restricted sandbox service that has no permissions to install apps.

In addition to exploiting V8 they must be using a separate privilege escalation in the Android userspace or Linux kernel to install the APK, especially if there is no interaction needed like accepting the standard install dialog.

I'm sure curious to hear the real story when Google releases a fix.

/greger

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