All the News that Matters

• Slackware: 2016-266-01: openssl: Security Update
  LinuxSecurity.com: New openssl packages are available for Slackware 14.0, 14.1, 14.2, and -current to fix security issues. [More Info...]

• Slackware: 2016-266-02: pidgin: Security Update
  LinuxSecurity.com: New pidgin packages are available for Slackware 13.0, 13.1, 13.37, 14.0, and 14.1 to fix security issues. [More Info...]

• Debian: 3674-1: firefox-esr: Summary
  LinuxSecurity.com: Security Report Summary

• Debian: 3673-1: openssl: Summary
  LinuxSecurity.com: Security Report Summary

• Slackware: 2016-265-03: irssi: Security Update
  LinuxSecurity.com: New irssi packages are available for Slackware 13.0, 13.1, 13.37, 14.0, 14.1, 14.2, and -current to fix security issues. [More Info...]

• Slackware: 2016-265-01: pidgin: Security Update
  LinuxSecurity.com: New pidgin packages are available for Slackware 13.0, 13.1, 13.37, 14.0, 14.1, 14.2, and -current to fix security issues. [More Info...]

• Slackware: 2016-265-02: mozilla-firefox: Security Update
  LinuxSecurity.com: New mozilla-firefox packages are available for Slackware 14.1, 14.2, and -current to fix security issues. [More Info...]

• Debian: 3672-1: irssi: Summary
  LinuxSecurity.com: Security Report Summary

• Debian: 3671-1: wireshark: Summary
  LinuxSecurity.com: Security Report Summary

• Ubuntu: 3084-4: Linux kernel (Qualcomm Snapdragon) vulnerabilities
  LinuxSecurity.com: Several security issues were fixed in the kernel.

• Ubuntu: 3084-3: Linux kernel (Raspberry Pi 2) vulnerabilities
  LinuxSecurity.com: Several security issues were fixed in the kernel.

• Ubuntu: 3084-2: Linux kernel (Xenial HWE) vulnerabilities
  LinuxSecurity.com: Several security issues were fixed in the kernel.

• BeagleBone Black Wireless SBC taps Octavo SiP, has “open” design
  BeagleBoard.org’s “BeagleBone Black Wireless” SBC uses Octavo’s OSD335x SiP module and replaces the standard BBB’s Ethernet with 2.4GHz WiFi and BT 4.1 BLE. BeagleBone Black Wireless is the first SBC to incorporate the Octavo Systems OSD335x SiP (system-in-package) module, “which integrates BeagleBone functionality into one easy-to-use BGA package,” according to BeagleBoard.org. Announced on Sep. 26, […]

• Gorgeous Apricity OS Linux Distro Now Works on 32-bit PCs, Build 09.2016 Is Out
  Softpedia was informed by Apricity OS developer Alex Gajewski that the Apricity OS 09.2016 release is now available for download and it's the first to come with a 32-bit version as well.

• Unity 5.5 on Linux, Halcyon 6, and more gaming news
  In this month's open gaming roundup, we take a look at the Unity 5.5 Linux beta and some exciting new releases for Linux and SteamOS.

• Bug that hit Firefox and Tor browsers was hard to spot-now we know why
  A recently fixed security vulnerability that affected both the Firefox and Tor browsers had a highly unusual characteristic that caused it to threaten users only during temporary windows of time that could last anywhere from two days to more than a month.

• Linux Foundation Certified System Administrator: Muneeb Kalathil
  The Linux Foundation offers many resources for developers, users, and administrators of Linux systems. One of the most important offerings is its Linux Certification Program, which is designed to give you a way to differentiate yourself in a job market that's hungry for your skills.

• The best way to develop software with effective security
  Regardless of the level at which you're doing your programming, security is going to get in the way. No amount of application abstraction or modern development process seems capable of shielding developers from...

• Linux Kernel 4.8 Lands October 2 as Linus Torvalds Outs Last Release Candidate
  It's still Sunday in U.S. so Linus Torvalds has just published his weekly announcement to inform us all about the availability of the eighth and last RCdevelopment snapshot of the upcoming Linux 4.8 kernel.

• How to install WooCommerce plugin on an Ubuntu 16.04 VPS
  In this tutorial we are going to provide you with step by step instructions on how to install WooCommerce plugin on an Ubuntu 16.04 VPS.

• Exactly What Is OpenStack? Red Hat's Rich Bowen Explains
  You've probably heard of OpenStack. It's in the tech news a lot, and it's an important open source project. But what exactly is it, and what is it for? Rich Bowen of Red Hat provided a high-level view of OpenStack as a software project, an open source foundation, and a community of organizations in his talk at LinuxCon North America.

• Announcing the KDE Advisory Board
  KDE e.V. hereby introduces the KDE e.V. Advisory Board as a means to offer a space for communication between organizations which are allied with KDE, from both the corporate and the non-profit worlds.One of the core goals of the Advisory Board is to provide KDE with insights into the needs of the various organizations that surround us.

• The Linux Foundation Partners with Girls in Tech to Increase Diversity in Open Source
  Title: The Linux Foundation Partners with Girls in Tech to Increase Diversity in Open Source26 SepLearn more

• SDN and NFV integration, updated API documentation, and more OpenStack news
  Are you interested in keeping track of what is happening in the open source cloud? Opensource.com is your source for news in OpenStack, the open source cloud infrastructure project.OpenStack around the webThere is a lot of interesting stuff being written about OpenStack. Here's a sampling from some of our favorites:read more

• Improving Fuzzing Tools for More Efficient Kernel Testing
  Fuzz testing (or fuzzing) is a software testing technique that involves passing invalid or random data to a program and observing the results, such as crashes or other failures.

• How to install OpenSC on IPFire firewall
  In this tutorial, hardware token (such as a smart card) and their readers (CCID compliance) support are integrated with the IPFire project. This article is the continuation of our previous work on IPFire firewall.

• Epiq Solutions' Sidekiq M.2
  Following on its resounding success with its Sidekiq MiniPCIe card,wireless communications systems specialist Epiq Solutions recently addedthe Sidekiq M.2 state-of-the-art, small form-factor, software-defined radio(SDR) card.

• Why Open Beats Closed
  When the Internet was opened up to allow commercial applications in 1994, some enterprising entrepreneurs set up companies host corporate websites. It was an exciting time, with the power of technology unleashing a torrent of new possibilities.

• How to throw a tarball over the wall
  It costs a lot of money to open source a mature piece of commercial software, even if all you are doing is "throwing a tarball over the wall." That's why companies abandoning software they no longer care about so rarely make it open source, and those abandoning open source projects rarely move them to new homes that benefit others.If all you have thought about is the eventual outcome, you may be surprised how expensive it is to get there.read more

• Skylable releases new versions of its Open Source storage and Dropbox alternative
  Skylable announced availability of SX 2.2, its flagship Open Source solution for building data clouds and a new project - SXScout, which joins the SXDrive family of file sync&share applications.

• New Firefox 49 features in Fedora
  The latest release 49 of Firefox comes with some interesting new features. Here’s what they mean for Fedora users and how to enable them beyond default setup. Make a safe playground When you’re testing Firefox, you should create a new fresh profile. If something goes wrong, you... Continue Reading →

• Easiest ways to install LAMP server on Debian/Ubuntu/LinuxMint
  Whoever new to Linux, who don’t have much experience on Linux, web developers, who’s very lazy to run morethan one command to install LAMP Server, then you are in the right place to achive your target.

• Roller Coasters Could Help People Pass Kidney Stones, Says Study
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from NBC News: Two researchers who took science to the amusement park say they've found that a thrilling roller coaster ride just might help people shake out pesky kidney stones. Dr. David Wartinger of Michigan State University said he'd heard patient after patient tell him about how they had passed kidney stones after riding one particular ride: the Big Thunder Mountain Railroad roller coaster at Walt Disney World in Orlando. He and a colleague, Dr. Marc Mitchell, had also seen some media reports about people who passed kidney stones while bungee jumping and riding roller coasters. So they decided to leave East Lansing to head to Orlando in the name of medical research. To simulate the human body as best they could, they made an artificial human kidney model out of clear silicone gel and loaded it up with real human kidney stones. They rode the roller coaster holding their kidney contraption between them in a backpack positioned at kidney height. They took 20 rides and noted what happened to each kidney stone. Riding in the back of the roller coaster train seemed to really knock the kidney stones out, they reported in The Journal of the American Osteopathic Association. "Front seating on the roller coaster resulted in a passage rate of four of 24," they wrote. "Rear seating on the roller coaster resulted in a passage rate of 23 of 36." They mainly tested the one roller coaster ride, and it's a fairly simple one. "The Big Thunder Mountain roller coaster is not a terribly dynamic ride," Wartinger said. "It's not very fast. It is not very tall. It makes sharp left and right turns that have some vibration." Wartinger suspects many different thrill rides would have the same effect. "It's not like there anything unique about this one coaster," he said. The pair have now run their test 200 more times and say the findings are consistent. Now they want to try other amusement park rides.
           
  
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• US Department of Labor Is Suing Peter Thiel's Startup 'Palantir' For Discriminating Against Asians
  Palantir Technologies is a secretive start-up in Silicon Valley that specializes in big data analysis. It was founded in 2004 by Peter Thiel, Alex Karp, Joe Lonsdale, Stephen Cohen, and Nathan Gettings, and is backed by the FBI and CIA as it "helps government agencies track down terrorists and uncover financial fraud," according to Reuters. Today, the U.S. Department of Labor filed a lawsuit against the company, alleging that it discriminated against Asian job applicants. Reuters reports: The lawsuit alleges Palantir routinely eliminated Asian applicants in the resume screening and telephone interview phases, even when they were as qualified as white applicants. In one example cited by the Labor Department, Palantir reviewed a pool of more than 130 qualified applicants for the role of engineering intern. About 73 percent of those who applied were Asian. The lawsuit, which covers Palantir's conduct between January 2010 and the present, said the company hired 17 non-Asian applicants and four Asians. "The likelihood that this result occurred according to chance is approximately one in a billion," said the lawsuit, which was filed with the department's Office of Administrative Law Judges. The majority of Palantir's hires as engineering interns, as well as two other engineering positions, "came from an employee referral system that disproportionately excluded Asians," the lawsuit said. Palantir denied the allegations in a statement and said it intends to "vigorously defend" against them. The lawsuit seeks relief for persons affected, including lost wages.
           
  
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• Study: Earth Is At Its Warmest In 120,000 Years
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from Washington Post: As part of her doctoral dissertation at Stanford University, Carolyn Snyder, now a climate policy official at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, created a continuous 2 million year temperature record, much longer than a previous 22,000 year record. Snyder's temperature reconstruction, published Monday in the journal Nature, doesn't estimate temperature for a single year, but averages 5,000-year time periods going back a couple million years. Snyder based her reconstruction on 61 different sea surface temperature proxies from across the globe, such as ratios between magnesium and calcium, species makeup and acidity. But the further the study goes back in time, especially after half a million years, the fewer of those proxies are available, making the estimates less certain, she said. These are rough estimates with large margins of errors, she said. But she also found that the temperature changes correlated well to carbon dioxide levels. Temperatures averaged out over the most recent 5,000 years -- which includes the last 125 years or so of industrial emissions of heat-trapping gases -- are generally warmer than they have been since about 120,000 years ago or so, Snyder found. And two interglacial time periods, the one 120,000 years ago and another just about 2 million years ago, were the warmest Snyder tracked. They were about 3.6 degrees (2 degrees Celsius) warmer than the current 5,000-year average. Snyder said if climate factors are the same as in the past -- and that's a big if -- Earth is already committed to another 7 degrees or so (about 4 degrees Celsius) of warming over the next few thousand years. "This is based on what happened in the past, Snyder noted. "In the past it wasn't humans messing with the atmosphere."
           
  
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• Trump Takes On 'Crooked Hillary' With Snapchat Geofilter
  In an effort to appeal to more young voters, U.S. Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump has unveiled a "geofilter" ad campaign for Snapchat that slaps on the banner phrase "Donald J. Trump vs. Crooked Hillary" to a user's photo and video Snaps. Ars Technica reports: "The ad rolled out to American Snapchat users today, just ahead of the 2016 presidential election's first major debate between Trump and Hillary Clinton (the debate starts tonight at 9pm EDT). The ad joins the usual geofilter available to Snapchat users, which usually list the name of a city or a nearby event as determined by GPS and time information. The campaign differs from the deluge of text, photo, and video ads that politicans have relied on in recent years, as it doesn't publish or display to the public without a personal photo or video attached. While other political campaigns have paid for geofilter ad campaigns on Snapchat in the past, including Clinton and Bernie Sanders, those have been timed and targeted for smaller-scale events like political conventions and primary voting periods. In a statement to CNN, the Clinton campaign said that Trump was "throwing his money into a fire pit," and it pointed out the ad's potential for backfiring, since "given Trump's deep unpopularity with young voters, [the ad's phrasing] will be used mainly at [his] own expense."
           
  
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• Windows 10 Will Soon Run Edge In a Virtual Machine To Keep You Safe
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Microsoft has announced that the next major update to Windows 10 will run its Edge browser in a lightweight virtual machine. Running the update in a virtual machine will make exploiting the browser and attacking the operating system or compromising user data more challenging. Called Windows Defender Application Guard for Microsoft Edge, the new capability builds on the virtual machine-based security that was first introduced last summer in Windows 10. Windows 10's Virtualization Based Security (VBS) uses small virtual machines and the Hyper-V hypervisor to isolate certain critical data and processes from the rest of the system. The most important of these is Credential Guard, which stores network credentials and password hashes in an isolated virtual machine. This isolation prevents the popular MimiKatz tool from harvesting those password hashes. In turn, it also prevents a hacker from breaking into one machine and then using stolen credentials to spread to other machines on the same network. Credential Guard's virtual machine is very small and lightweight, running only a relatively simple process to manage credentials. Application Guard will go much further by running large parts of the Edge browser within a virtual machine. This virtual machine won't, however, need a full operating system running inside it -- just a minimal set of Windows features required to run the browser. Because Application Guard is running in a virtual machine it will have a much higher barrier between it and the host platform. It can't see other processes, it can't access local storage, it can't access any other installed applications, and, critically, it can't attack the kernel of the host system. In its first iteration, Application Guard will only be available for Edge. Microsoft won't provide an API or let other applications use it. As with other VBS features, Application Guard will also only be available to users of Windows 10 Enterprise, with administrative control through group policies. Administrators will be able to mark some sites as trusted, and those sites won't use the virtual machine. Admins also be able to control whether untrusted sites can use the clipboard or print.
           
  
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• Researcher Modifies Sieve of Eratosthenes To Work With Less Physical Memory Space
  grcumb writes: Peruvian mathematician Harald Helfgott made his mark on the history of mathematics by solving Goldbach's weak conjecture, which states that every odd number greater than 7 can be expressed as the sum of three prime numbers. Now, according to Scientific American, he's found a better solution to the sieve of Eratosthenes: "In order to determine with this sieve all primes between 1 and 100, for example, one has to write down the list of numbers in numerical order and start crossing them out in a certain order: first, the multiples of 2 (except the 2); then, the multiples of 3, except the 3; and so on, starting by the next number that had not been crossed out. The numbers that survive this procedure will be the primes. The method can be formulated as an algorithm." But now, Helfgott has found a method to drastically reduce the amount of RAM required to run the algorithm: "Now, inspired by combined approaches to the analytical 100-year-old technique called the circle method, Helfgott was able to modify the sieve of Eratosthenes to work with less physical memory space. In mathematical terms: instead of needing a space N, now it is enough to have the cube root of N." So what will be the impact of this? Will we see cheaper, lower-power encryption devices? Or maybe quicker cracking times in brute force attacks? Mathematician Jean Carlos Cortissoz Iriarte of Cornell University and Los Andes University offers an analogy: "Let's pretend that you are a computer and that to store data in your memory you use sheets of paper. If to calculate the primes between 1 and 1,000,000, you need 200 reams of paper (10,000 sheets), and with the algorithm proposed by Helfgott you will only need one fifth of a ream (about 100 sheets)," he says.
           
  
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• ISP To FCC: Using The Internet Is Like Eating Oreos
  New submitter Rick Schumann shares with us a report highlighting an analogy presented by an ISP that relates Double Stuf Oreos to the internet. Specifically, that Double Stuf Oreos cost more than regular Oreos, and therefore you should pay more for internet: The Consumerist reports: "Ars Technica first spotted the crumbly filing, from small (and much-loathed) provider Mediacom. Mediacom's comment is in response to the same proceeding that Netflix commented on earlier this month. However, while Netflix actually addressed data and the ways in which their customers use it, Mediacom went for the more metaphor-driven approach. The letter literally starts out under the header, 'You Have to Pay Extra For Double-Stuffed,' and posits that you, the consumer, are out for a walk with $2 in your pocket when you suddenly develop a ferocious craving for Oreo cookies." Of course their analogy is highly questionable, since transmitting data over a network doesn't actually consume anything, now does it? You eat the cookie, the cookie is gone, but you transmit data over a network, the network is still there and can transmit data endlessly. Mediacom's assertion that the Internet is like a cookie you eat, is like saying copying a file on your computer somehow diminishes or degrades the original file, which of course is ridiculous.
           
  
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• Mozilla's Proposed Conclusion: Game Over For WoSign and Startcom?
  Reader Zocalo writes: Over the last several months Mozilla has been investigating a large number of breaches of what Mozilla deems to be acceptable CA protocols by the Chinese root CA WoSign and their perhaps better known subsidiary StartCom, whose acquisition by WoSign is one of the issues in question. Mozilla has now published their proposed solution (GoogleDocs link), and it's not looking good for WoSign and Startcom. Mozilla's position is that they have lost trust in WoSign and, by association StartCom, with a proposed action to give WoSign and StartCom a "timeout" by distrusting any certificates issued after a date to be determined in the near future for a period of one year, essentially preventing them issuing any certificates that will be trusted by Mozilla. Attempts to circumvent this by back-dating the valid-from date will result in an immediate and permanent revocation of trust, and there are some major actions required to re-establish that trust at the end of the time out as well.This seems like a rather elegant, if somewhat draconian, solution to the issue of what to do when a CA steps out of line. Revoking trust for certificates issued after a given date does not invalidate existing certificates and thereby inconvenience their owners, but it does put a severe -- and potentially business-ending -- penalty on the CA in question. Basically, WoSign and StartCom will have a year where they cannot issue any new certificates that Mozilla will trust, and will also have to inform any existing customers that have certificate renewals due within that period they cannot do so and they will need to go else where -- hardly good PR! What does Slashdot think? Is Mozilla going too far here, or is their proposal justified and reasonable given WoSign's actions, making a good template for potential future breaches of trust by root CAs, particularly in the wake of other CA trust breaches by the likes of CNNIC, DigiNotar, and Symantec?
           
  
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• Japanese To Pay Utility Bills Using Bitcoin
  An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Stack: Japanese citizens will soon be able to pay their utility bills using bitcoin. The facility is being provided by Coincheck Denki, a new service offered by the Japanese bitcoin company, which will be available to users in November. Coincheck outlined the new plan on its website. Also called 'Coincheck Electricity,' it will allow users to pay their electricity bills directly from their Coincheck bitcoin wallet. It also offers a discount plan for heavy users of electricity, with 4-6% of the total bill discounted for heavy users of electricity who pay in bitcoin. Coincheck's parent company, Reju Press, initially partnered with Mitsuwa Inc., to create the bitcoin payment system. Coincheck now works with Mitsuwa subsidiary E-Net Inc., and has formed a partnership with Marubeni Power Retail Corporation, which operates power plants in 17 locations in central Japan. Marubeni has offices in 66 countries worldwide, although no plans have been announced to take the bitcoin payment option outside of Japan. While the initial bitcoin payment rollout is for electricity bills, Coincheck plans to expand its offerings to bitcoin payment for 'life infrastructure,' to include payment of gas, water and mobile phone bills. It may even partner with landlords to allow customers of Coincheck to pay rent using bitcoin. The bitcoin payment plan will be rolled out in Chubu, Kanto (including Tokyo) and Kansai regions to start, with additional areas to be added sequentially. The company hopes to offer bitcoin payment options to one million electric customers within the first year.
           
  
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• China's Giant Radio Telescope Begins Searching For Signals From Space
  Years of work and millions of dollars later, China finished its alien-hunting telescope in May this year. Now the country says its telescope has begun its operation. The company flipped the switch over the weekend, hoping to find signals from stars and galaxies -- and more importantly from extraterrestrial life. The telescope also illustrates China's growing ambition to stay among the frontrunners in space efforts. AP reports: Beijing has poured billions into such ambitious scientific projects as well as its military-backed space program, which saw the launch of China's second space station earlier this month. Measuring 500 metres in diameter, the radio telescope is nestled in a natural basin within a stunning landscape of lush green karst formations in southern Guizhou province. It took five years and $180 million to complete and surpasses that of the 300-meter Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico, a dish used in research on stars that led to a Nobel Prize. The official Xinhua News Agency said hundreds of astronomers and enthusiasts watched the launch of the Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical Telescope, or FAST, in the county of Pingtang. Researchers quoted by state media said FAST would search for gravitational waves, detect radio emissions from stars and galaxies and listen for signs of intelligent extraterrestrial life. "The ultimate goal of FAST is to discover the laws of the development of the universe," Qian Lei, an associate researcher with the National Astronomical Observatories of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, told state broadcaster CCTV. "In theory, if there is civilization in outer space, the radio signal it sends will be similar to the signal we can receive when a pulsar (spinning neutron star) is approaching us," Qian said.
           
  
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• As We Speak, Teen Social Site Is Leaking Millions Of Plaintext Passwords
  Dan Goodin, reporting for ArsTechnica: A social hangout website for teenage girls has sprung a leak that's exposing plaintext passwords protecting as many as 5.5 million user accounts. As this post went live, all attempts to get the leak plugged had failed. Operators of i-Dressup didn't respond to messages sent by Ars informing them that a hacker has already downloaded more than 2.2 million of the improperly stored account credentials. The hacker said it took him about three weeks to obtain the cache and that there's nothing stopping him or others from downloading the entire database of slightly more than 5.5 million entries. The hacker said he acquired the e-mail addresses and passwords by using a SQL injection attack that exploited vulnerabilities in the i-Dressup website. The hacker provided the 2.2 million account credentials both to Ars and breach notification service Have I Been Pwned?. By plugging randomly selected e-mail addresses into the forgotten password section of i-Dressup, both Ars and Have I Been Pwned? principal Troy Hunt found that they all were used to register accounts on the site. Ars then used the contact us page on i-Dressup to privately notify operators of the vulnerability, but more than five days later, no one has responded and the bug remains unfixed.
           
  
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• Planes, Trains, and Automobiles Have Become Top Carbon Polluters
  Transportation is likely to surpass the electricity sector in 2016 as the largest source of carbon dioxide emissions in the United States, according to a new analysis of government data, MIT Technology reports. From the article: In 2008, the global financial crisis caused widespread declines in energy use. In the U.S., that coincided with the early stages of a large-scale shift away from coal toward cleaner-burning natural gas as a way to generate electricity. As a result, carbon dioxide emissions from the electricity sector have continued to decline from their 2007 peak, even as the economy has resumed growing. The trend line for the transportation sector is less encouraging. Transportation emissions have begun rising as the economy rebounds. John DeCicco at the University of Michigan Energy Institute, who wrote the study, attributes the rebound we've seen during the past four years to straightforward causes: economic recovery and more affordable fuel prices. Vehicle sales numbers have been rising for several years, in particular for trucks and SUVs, and people are traveling more miles.
           
  
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• Plex Cloud Means Saying Goodbye To the Always-On PC
  Finally, you don't need an always-on PC or any other network-attached storage device if you want to use Plex's media player. The company has announced that it now allows you to stream TV shows and movies from your own collection via a new online option called Plex Cloud. From a report on The Verge: Plex is giving the world another reason to subscribe to Plex Pass subscriptions today with the launch of Plex Cloud. As the name suggests, Plex Cloud eliminates the need to run the Plex Media Server on a computer or Networked Attached Storage (NAS) in your house. It does, however, require a subscription to Amazon Drive ($59.99 per year for unlimited storage) and the aforementioned Plex Pass ($4.99 per month or $39.99 per year). Plex Cloud functions just like a regular Plex Media Server giving you access to your media -- no matter how you acquire it -- from an incredibly broad range of devices. Most, but not all Plex features are available in today's beta.
           
  
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• UK's Top Police Warn That Modding Games May Turn Kids into Hackers
  Joseph Cox, writing for Motherboard: Last week at EGX, the UK's biggest games event, attendees got a chance to play upcoming blockbusters like Battlefield 1, FIFA 17, and Gears of War 4. But budding gamers may also have spotted a slightly more unusual sight: a booth run by the National Crime Agency (NCA), the UK's leading law enforcement agency. Over the last few years, the NCA has attempted to reach out to technologically savvy young people in different ways. EGX was the first time it's pitched up to a gaming convention; the NCA said it wanted to educate young people with an interest in computers and suggested that those who mod online games in order to cheat may eventually progress to using low level cybercrime services like DDoS-for-hire and could use steering in the right direction. "The games industry can help us reach young people and educate them on lawful use of cyber skills," Richard Jones, head of the NCA's National Cyber Crime Unit's 'Prevent' team, told Motherboard in an email. "Through attendance at EGX and various other activities, we are seeking to promote ethical hacking or penetration testing, as well as other lawful uses of an interest in computers to young people," Jones said.
           
  
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• Windows 10 Now On 400 Million Active Devices, Says Microsoft
  Microsoft announced today that Windows 10 is now running on over 400 million active devices. This is up from 300 million as of May, and 207 million as of end of the March. The company says that it deems devices that have been active in the past 28 days as "active." Microsoft added that this 400 million active devices figure include tablets and phones as well as Xbox One consoles, HoloLens, and Surface Hubs running Windows 10. Paul Thurrott adds:Microsoft last provided a Windows 10 usage milestone on June 29, when it said that there were 350 million active Windows 10 devices. At that time, I noted that the Windows 10 adoption had accelerated from the previous milestone, hitting an average of almost 29 million new devices per month. But 50 million additional devices over three months is a much slower pace of about 17 million per month. This is the slowest rate since Windows 10 was first announced. Again, no surprise there: Windows 10 was free for its first year, and over that time period it averaged roughly 31.25 million new devices per month (if you assume a figure of 375 million after one year, as I do). Does this mean that Windows 10 will see fewer than 20 million new devices each month, on average, going forward? No, of course not. There's no way to accurately gauge how things will go, given that most future devices will be new PCs purchased by businesses or consumers, or business PCs upgraded to Windows 10.
           
  
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Linux.com offline for now

Engadget

• Roller coasters might help you pass a kidney stone
  
  According to an new study from Michigan State University's College of Osteopathic Medicine, roller coasters can, in fact, do more than just give you a temporary thrill. Specifically, study author David Wartinger and his co-author Marc Mitchell set out to test the experience of one patient who claimed to have passed three kidney stones after taking three rides on Disney's Big Thunder Mountain Railroad.
  
  While that patient's experience may seem coincidental, Wartinger and Mitchell set out to test it in the most scientific way possible: They built a 3D printed silicone model of a kidney, filled it with urine and three kidney stones, and then tossed the whole contraption in a backpack that rode Thunder Mountain along with them a total of 20 times. According to a statement from Wartinger, the team's findings, "support the anecdotal evidence that a ride on a moderate-intensity roller coaster could benefit some patients with small kidney stones." And where you're sitting on the train can also make a difference. As a VR coaster, obviously.)
  
  Of course, riding a roller coaster isn't a surefire way to get ride of a kidney stone, but when used in addition to standard treatments, the research team believes it could be useful therapy for the 300,000 people who suffer from kidney stones in the US every year. "If you have a kidney stone, but are otherwise healthy and meet the requirements of the ride, patients should try it," Wartinger said. "It's definitely a lower-cost alternative to health care."
  
  Via: CNET
  
  Source: MSU Today
  

• Best Buy's new project highlights tech startups' creations
  
  You'll soon see curious spots in Best Buy stores that aren't hawking any big-brand company's products. Instead, they will be stocked with electronics from companies you probably never heard of before. See, the big-box store has launched a new initiative dubbed "Ignite," and it takes a leaf out of Amazon Launchpad's book.
  
  Under the project, startups chosen by Best Buy will get a chance to work with multinational product innovation company PCH. It will help them with product development, marketing and other aspects that will get their creations out of the lab and into buyers' hands, so to speak. It will also give you the chance to see new products you might never have heard of otherwise, as well as test them out before buying.
  
  Best Buy has already opened its first Ignite space in its new Silicon Valley HQ, and it has quite a few products we've talked about before on display. You'll see Muzik's Spotify- and social media-connected headphones there, as well as Noke's Bluetooth padlock, the Zuli smartplug, the Tangram smartrope, among other crowdfunded and unusual wireless and audio electronics. BB didn't say when its other locations will get their own Ignite space. But you'll at least be able to look at its partner startups' devices when it launches the project's official web page later this fall.
  
  Via: Star Tribune
  
  Source: Best Buy
  

• Microsoft puts AI to work in Office 365
  
  Microsoft isn't just trying out artificial intelligence through bots and voice assistants -- it's going all-in. The crew in Redmond has revealed that Office 365 is wielding cloud-based AI to automate many tasks. Tap for Word and Outlook surface relevant content from your company to help finish a project, for instance. PowerPoint and Sway will have a QuickStarter feature that gives you curated outlines for given topics, saving you the trouble of creating the foundation of a presentation from scratch. Excel, meanwhile, will have a way to turn raw geographic data into Bing-based maps.
  
  Some of these intelligent features are available now, although you'll have to wait until later this year to get the Excel and PowerPoint helpers.
  
  There are some more behind-the-scenes uses of AI as well. Microsoft's sales service, Dynamics 365, will use AI assistance to bring up relevant data and point sales reps in the right direction when they're trying to clinch a deal. The company is even using an AI agent in its American call centers to help staff answer your questions. While you might not notice these as much as the Office upgrades, they're evidence that Microsoft sees machine learning as useful in many parts of the computing world.
  
  Source: Official Microsoft Blog
  

• Canada's main answer to Netflix shuts down November 30th
  
  It's tough to compete against the Netflix juggernaut, even if you throw a ton of money at the problem... just ask Shomi. The Canadian streaming video service is shutting down on November 30th, a little over two years after it got off the ground. Rogers, one of the two cable giants running Shomi, isn't shy about the reasons for the prompt exit. Simply put, the service's subscriber base "just isn't big enough" -- Rogers is expecting a loss of up to $140 million Canadian (about $106 million US), and its partner Shaw is likely to be hurting as well.
  
  As to why Shomi didn't reel people in? It's hard to say for sure, but it's not for a lack of licensed content. The service is closer to Hulu than Netflix through its focus on conventional TV, but it occasionally has an advantage over both. You get access to TV shows that simply aren't available on Netflix (such as Shomi (Yahoo Finance), Canada Newswire
  

• Google Pixel render shows off its software tweaks
  Along with its leak of the 4K Chromecast earlier today, potential $649 starting price is also raising eyebrows, but previous leaks from Android Police indicate that the most notable feature will be software built to maximize Google's new Assistant AI. We're expecting to find out all of these details and more at Google's October 4th event, as well as news about a new router and Google Home. Of course, if you just can't wait, third parties like Nova Launcher and Action Launcher have already pushed out updates that can give your phone the Pixel look, if not its tight Google integration.
  Source: VentureBeat
  

• Facebook briefly suspended accounts of Palestinian journalists
  
  Last week, seven Palestinian editors from two different publications reported that they had been locked out of their personal Facebook accounts without notice or reason. The social giant told The Electronic Intifada that it was accidental and restored access to six of them by Saturday, though one remains suspended as of press time. But employees from both Shehab News Agency and Quds News Network doubt that their colleagues were banned in error. Rather, they have pointed to Facebook's recent agreement with Israel earlier this month to jointly crack down on "incitement" by Palestinians on social media.
  
  Accidental or not, temporarily banning journalist accounts chills a social media platform's assumption of freedom of speech, especially if the suspensions are one-sided. Under the Israeli government's conviction that some posts on networks have directly inflamed a new wave of attacks against Israelis since last October, they have pressured Facebook to delete such content. Soon, they might progress past asking, as the Israeli government continues drafting a law legally compelling social media companies to comply with their takedown requests.
  
  As expected, the collaboration has raised concerns that Facebook has become complicit in silencing portions of its userbase. Facebook, along with Google and YouTube, has reportedly complied with 95 percent of the Israeli government's requests to take down content it deemed would inspire more attacks. At least 100 Palestinians have been arrested for posting similar content since last November, according to the Israeli military. Sentences have varied, from days of house arrest to months in jail and the equivalent of thousands of dollars in fines.
  
  Facebook has certainly been thrust into a complex geopolitical situation, but it's been accused of censoring viewpoints before. No less than a Congressional committee and an internal investigation determined that, no, the network's Trending Topics was not biased in its selections, and wasn't muffling conservative voices. The censorship anxiety was so acute that Mark Zuckerberg himself came out to defend the news digest's neutrality.
  
  Seeing him stand up for equal conservative and liberal representation in Trending Topics while Facebook takes down most of the content that the Israeli government wants removed seems conflicting. But they aren't the same: According to praising a bus bombing that injured 20 settlers to instructions on "how best to stab an Israeli." Other statements fall more into what is usually considered free speech, from poems calling for resisting Israel to simply "disparaging authorities." And the government legislation being developed would lower the threshold even further for what content they consider inflames further violence.
  
  Under these circumstances of scrutiny, mistakenly suspending social media accounts from separate Palestinian news outlets is unfortunate at best. Ultimately, only those in legal control of the digital space can truly say whether the content of their posts got them banned. Facebook says the pages were accidentally removed after being flagged, and mistakes happen when their team processes millions of reports per week. When they realized the error, they restored access. But this is the fourth time Shehab News Agency''s accounts have been taken down in a year, they told Al Jazeera. Twice, those suspensions were permanent, and they had to entirely recreate their Facebook pages.
  
  Engadget reached out to Facebook, which did not respond at press time.
  
  Source: Al Jazeera
  

• Debate venue offering journalists $200 'bargain' for WiFi
  At one point or another, we've all paid too much to access Wifi when we're out and about. Well, ahead of tonight's first presidential debate of the general election between Republican candidate Donald Trump and Democrat Hillary Clinton, journalists will apparently have to shell out $200 to connect to Hofstra University's wireless network. That's according to a tweet from Slate political reporter Jim Newell. Personal WiFi hotspots are prohibited as well, with Newell adding that he isn't sure exactly how the venue will enforce the edict.
  As a bit of confirmation, Vocativ's social media specialist Ryan Beckler posted a tweet with the following image, presumably from within the university:
  $200 for WiFi at tonight's debate. $600 for a seat, WiFi, and Ethernet. #Debates2016 pic.twitter.com/U1LPVzSGc0
  — Ryan Beckler (@RyanBeckler) September 26, 2016
  $200 for WiFi access, $75 for a seat in the media filing room (without internet access) or $325 for a hardline connection and a seat in the media filing center. Sounds like a veritable circus of value. However, given that nearly every modern smartphone can act as a modem, the chances of this keeping journalists offline are pretty slim. That doesn't mean the event's staffers aren't trying.
  
  A tweet from Politico's Kenneth P. Vogel shows an Aircheck WiFi Tester in use for detecting any unauthorized networks. If you're on the ground and reading this, know that using USB tethering will sidestep the $2,000 tool's methods.
  Technicians patrolling #debatenight press file using this device to detect & shut down hotspots, so they can sell $200 wifi accounts instead pic.twitter.com/JzbkzlZR1g
  — Kenneth P. Vogel (@kenvogel) September 26, 2016
  Source: Ryan Beckler (Twitter), Jim Newell (Twitter), Kenneth P. Vogel (Twitter)
  

• What's on your HDTV: 'Luke Cage,' 'Forza,' 'Westworld'
  
  It's time: Netflix is back with the next entry in its line of Marvel-character TV series with first presidential debate, and if you need another reason to watch, don't forget that you can use it to compare the HD feeds from different networks. New movie releases on Blu-ray include Ultra HD versions of Warcraft, Everest, Central Intelligence and The Shallows, and on TV don't forget about a new season of Drunk History. There's also a Final Fantasy XV side-scrolling prequel, and XCOM 2 on consoles. Look after the break to check out each day's highlights, including trailers and let us know what you think (or what we missed).
  
  Blu-ray & Games & Streaming
  Warcraft (3D, 4K) The Shallows (4K) Central Intelligence (4K) Everest 4K The Neon Demon Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates Ripper Street (S4) Lady in White Bill & Ted's Most Excellent Collection An American Werewolf in London (35th Anniversary Collection) Forza Horizon 3 (PC, Xbox One) FIFA 17 (PC, PS4, PS4, Xbox 360, Xbox One) XCOM 2 (PS4, Xbox One) ATV Renegades (PS4, Xbox One) Hitman Episode 5: Freedom Fighters (PC, PS4, Xbox One) Quantum Break (PC - 9/29) A King's Tale: Final Fantasy XV (PS4, Xbox One -- 9/30)
  Monday
  Monday Night Football: Falcons vs. Saints, ESPN, 8:15PM The Big Bang Theory, CBS, 8PM Gotham, Fox, 8PM The Voice, NBC, 8PM Dancing With the Stars, ABC, 8PM Sacred Sites, Smithsonian Channel, 8PM WWE Raw, USA, 8PM X Factor UK, Axs, 8PM Kevin Can Wait, CBS, 8:30PM The First Presidential Debate (ABC, CBS, Fox, NBC, PBS, CNN), 9PM Mary + Jane, MTV, 10PM Sacred Steel, Discovery, 10PM Loosely Exactly Nicole, MTV, 10:30PM StarTalk, National Geographic Channel, 11PM
  Tuesday
  Brooklyn Nine-nine , Fox, 8PM NCIS, CBS, 8PM The Voice, NBC, 8PM 16 for '16: Dukakis/Romney, PBS, 8PM WWE Smackdown, USA, 8PM Undrafted, NFL Network, 8PM New Girl, Fox, 8:30PM Bull, CBS, 9PM Scream Queens, Fox, 9PM Inside the NFL, Showtime 9PM Deadliest Catch: Dungeon Cove, Discovery, 9PM From Dusk till Dawn, El Rey, 9PM Forged in Fire, History, 9PM MadTV (season finale), CW, 9PM Aftermath (series premiere), Syfy, 10PM Tosh.0 (fall premiere), Comedy Central, 10PM Halt and Catch Fire, AMC, 10PM Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., ABC, 10PM NCIS: NO, CBS, 10PM This is Us, NBC, 10PM Black Market, Viceland, 10PM Atlanta, FX, 10PM A Season with Florida State Football, Showtime, 10PM Adam Ruins Everything, TruTV, 10PM One Shot, BET (season finale), 10PM Drunk History (season premiere), Comedy Central, 10:30PM The Meltdown with Jonah Kumail (season premiere), Comedy Central, 12AM
  Wednesday
  Blindspot, NBC, 8PM The Goldbergs, ABC, 8PM Penn & Teller: Fool Us, CW, 8PM Lethal Weapon, Fox, 8PM Survivor, CBS, 8PM The Timeline, NFL Network, 8PM Forces of Nature, PBS, 8PM Lucha Underground, El Rey, 8PM Speechless, ABC, 8:30PM Criminal Minds (season premiere), CBS, 9PM Empire, Fox, 9PM Modern Family, ABC, 9PM Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, NBC, 9PM Dual Survival, Discovery, 9PM Whose Line is it Anyway? (season finale), CW, 9PM America's Got Talent, NBC, 9PM Black-ish, ABC, 9:30PM Code Black (season premiere), CBS, 10PM Designated Survivor, ABC, 10PM Chicago PD, NBC, 10PM You're the Worst, FXX, 10PM Catfish, MTV, 10PM American Horror Story FX, 10PM South Park, Comedy Central, 10PM Still Alive, Discovery, 10PM Weediquette, Viceland, 10PM Any Given Wednesday with Bill Simmons, HBO, 10PM American Gothic, CBS, 10PM Full Frontal with Samantha Bee, TBS, 10:30PM Legends of Chamberlain Heights, Comedy Central, 10:30PM Unlocking the Truth, MTV, 11PM
  Thursday
  Dolphins/Bengals football, CBS, 8:25PM Grey's Anatomy, ABC, 8PM Superstore, NBC, 8PM Rosewood, Fox, 8PM The Good Place, NBC, 8:30PM Pitch, Fox, 9PM Chicago Med, NBC, 9PM Notorious, ABC, 9PM The Blacklist, NBC, 10PM How to Get Away With Murder, ABC, 10PM Better Things, FX, 10PM Wonderland, MTV, 11PM
  Friday
  Marvel's Luke Cage (S1), Netflix, 3AM Amanda Knox, Netflix, 3AM Crisis in Six Scenes (S1), Amazon Prime, 3AM Macgyver, CBS, 8PM Last Man Standing, ABC, 8PM Masters of Illusion (season finale), CW, 8PM Dr. Ken, ABC, 8:30PM America Divided, Epix, 9PM A Football Life: Chad Johnson, 9PM The Exorcist, Fox, 9PM Hawaii Five-0, CBS, 9PM Shark Tank, ABC, 9PM Z Nation, Syfy, 9PM Van Helsing, Syfy, 10PM Quarry, Cinemax, 10PM Blue Bloods, CBS, 10PM High Maintenance, HBO, 11PM The Eric Andre Show, Cartoon Network, 12AM The Half Hour: Martha Kelly/Nick Turner, Comedy Central, 12AM
  Saturday
  Baylor/Oklahoma State college football, Fox, 7PM My Husband is Missing, Lifetime, 8PM The Crooked Man, Syfy, 9PM Sebastian Maniscalco: Why Would You Do That?, Showtime, 10PM Saturday Night Live: Margot Robbie / The Weeknd (season premiere), NBC, 11:30PM
  Sunday
  F1 Malaysia GP, NBC Sports, 3AM Chiefs/Steelers Sunday Night Football, NBC, 7PM Bob's Burgers, Fox, 7:30PM America's Funniest Home Videos (season premiere), ABC, 7PM Ash vs. Evil Dead (season premiere), Starz, 8PM Once Upon a Time, ABC, 8PM The Simpsons, Fox, 8PM The Circus: Inside the Greatest Political Show on Earth, Showtime, 8PM Blunt Talk (season premiere), Starz, 8:30PM Son of Zorn, Fox, 8:30PM NCIS:LA, CBS, 8:30PM Westworld (series premiere), HBO, 9PM Madam Secretary (season premiere), CBS, 9PM Shameless (season premiere), Showtime, 9PM Poldark, PBS, 9PM Family Guy, Fox, 9PM Secrets & Lies, ABC, 9PM Fear the Walking Dead (season finale), AMC, 9PM The Last Man on Earth, Fox, 9:30PM Elementary (season premiere), CBS, 10PM Quantico, ABC, 10PM Masters of Sex, Showtime, 10PM The Strain, FX, 10PM Talking Dead (season finale), AMC, 11PM Last Week Tonight with John Oliver, HBO, 11:15PM Geeking Out (season finale), AMC, 11:59PM
  (All times listed are ET)
  

• Scientists catch a classic quantum experiment on camera
  
  If you know a bit about quantum physics, you've likely heard of the Schrödinger's Cat concept used to explain superpositions: a cat in a box with a poison flask is at once alive and dead until you look inside. Researchers have produced this oddball state in the lab before, but they're now using it to create the most detailed X-ray movies of molecules they've seen so far. A team at the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory first blasted an iodine molecule with an optical laser, splitting the molecule into simultaneous excited and relaxed states. When the scientists hit the molecule with X-rays afterward, the light scattering off of both states created an X-ray hologram showing the excited state. After that, the SLAC group only had to capture enough of these holograms to create a movie.
  
  And when we say detailed, we mean it. The footage captured the molecular activity down to a resolution of 0.3 angstrom (less than the width of an atom) at timescales so small (a few trillionths of a second) that you can watch the atoms build up to a frenzy and eventually relax. You see direct evidence of the Schrödinger's Cat paradox, too -- the atomic bonds in the molecule at once break and stay together.
  
  The technique could be used to image other molecular systems, which could help make sense of biological functions ranging from photosynthesis to vision. That, in turn, could help the scientific world harness molecular-level behavior and apply it in fields like energy and medicine. This is just a first step, but it's an important one.
  
  
  
  Via: Gizmodo
  
  Source: SLAC, ArXiv.org
  

• China's largest ride-hailing company is investing in bicycles
  
  The largest ride-hailing service in China just made a big investment in a different kind of transportation program: bicycle sharing. According to a report from TechCrunch, DiDi Chuxing is kicking off a "multi-layered partnership" with Ofo -- an app-based bicycle sharing outfit with a network of over 70,000 bikes in 20 cities. The details of the investment are pretty bare, but DiDi Chuxing says the companies will "explore strategic cooperation in urban rideshare, including offering a quality bike-sharing experience on DiDi's platform." In other words, the company's ride-hailing app may include a bicycle rental option in the near future.
  
  Bike sharing in China is nothing new -- the country is actually the world leader in bicycle share programs -- but a lot of those are state sponsored. DiDi Chuxing's investment in Ofo casts the company in a new light, pitting a major transportation firm as privatized competitor to the nation's public bike programs. Can a private bike sharing program integrated into a major platform outperform state-sponsored sharing services? At this point it's hard to say, but it'll be interesting to see how Ofo fares in the long term.
  
  Via: Fast Company
  
  Source: TechCrunch, Shanghai Daily
  

• German cars will share real-time data to help you find parking
  
  However smart your car might be, there's only so much it can tell you by itself. Wouldn't it be nice if cars regularly shared helpful driving info beyond what you offer in mobile apps? Here thinks so. It's launching services that will have cars automatically sharing real-time data to improve commutes for everyone. Vehicles (starting with those from Here owners Audi, BMW and Mercedes-Benz) will use their sensors and cameras to offer details on free parking spaces, traffic conditions, and road hazards. You'd know that a parking spot has opened up, or that heavy rain is forcing drivers ahead to slow down.
  
  The services will be available in the first half of 2017, and they won't be limited to either German car brands or even the car industry in general. And yes, Here is aware of the potential privacy issues. It's promising that the data will be anonymized, so there shouldn't be an easy way for hackers to identify individual motorists. The main challenge is simply time -- Here's solution won't give you a truly comprehensive view of the road until there are plenty of connected cars roaming the streets.
  
  Via: BBC
  
  Source: Here (PDF), Here 360
  

• NASA observes possible water geysers on Europa
  
  Hubble's extended mission continues to pay off: NASA announced today that a team of astronomers using the space telescope have spotted what appear to be plumes of high-altitude water vapor spewing from the icy surface of Jupiter's moon Europa. Researchers have long believed that Europa holds a global ocean beneath a thick, potentially miles-deep, layer of ice, but the new observation indicated it could be possible to sample the ocean without landing or drilling on the moon itself.
  
  "Europa's ocean is considered to be one of the most promising places that could potentially harbor life in the solar system," Geoff Yoder, the acting associate administrator for NASA's Science Mission Directorate said in a statement. "These plumes, if they do indeed exist, may provide another way to sample Europa's subsurface."
  
  
  
  According to NASA, the plumes are estimated to be around 125 miles (200 kilometers) high and were spotted by William Sparks of the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) in Baltimore as his team was looking for an extended atmosphere around Europa. In 10 different images taken over 15 months, Sparks' team saw evidence of plumes in three of them.
  
  In 2012, a team of researchers in San Antonio also detected evidence of vapor plumes on Europa using the Hubble Space Telescope's spectrograph, but used a different method to arrive at the same conclusion. While the size and location of the plumes seem to match between the two observations, NASA isn't ready to confirm that the observed phenomenon are jets of water vapor.
  
  However, the agency is already plotting out new missions to study the phenomenon. When it launches in 2018, NASA plans to use infrared camera on the James Webb Space Telescope to confirm the vapor activity. Looking even further into the future, NASA is mulling a plan to send a payload to Europa that could confirm and study the plumes from a much closer distance.
  
  Source: NASA
  

• Satellites could predict the next human-caused earthquake
  
  Back in March, the US Geological Survey (USGS) changed its method of tracking earthquakes to include human-induced seismic activity. Suddenly, Oklahoma looked as tremor-prone as California, mainly due to the spread of wastewater disposal wells in the state. A team of geophysicists set out to build a model to predict this seismic activity. In their report released today in the journal Science, they analyzed three years of satellite radar data linking land deformation above wastewater disposal to earthquakes in the surrounding area.
  
  The researchers found that wastewater injected in two Texas wells raised the land between them by as much as 3 millimeters every year. As far as they're aware, this is the first study to directly measure uplift. They put this data into their model of pore pressure, or how tightly water is squeezed into the cracks in subsurface rock, explained Scientific American. More of it means greater strain on underground faults, which can cause them to slip and voila, earthquake.
  
  In their study, the team tracked the land deformation between the Texas fluid deposits using data from May 2007 to November 2010; Two years later in 2012, a magnitude 4.8 quake hit the area. But there are still questions left to answer. For instance, the subsequent earthquakes happened 25 kilometers away from the original site, actually above different wells that were deeper but had less surface uplift. On the other hand, the study made interesting discoveries: For one, seismic activity continued even after the rate of wastewater injected had declined. "If you stop injection today, it's possible that earthquake activity goes on for the next decade or so," the team's lead scientist Manoochehr Shirzaei told Scientific American.
  
  Thus, the study is more a preliminary step adding a new tool in the geophysicist kit on the road to a fully-predictive model. The research team hopes that further analysis of their data will explain why some injection wells might induce seismic activity while others don't.
  
  Via: Scientific American
  
  Source: Science
  

• Why is the Oculus founder trying to bring hateful memes offline?
  
  Online abuse and bullying have existed as long as the internet has, but it's gone mainstream in a big way over the past few years. Perhaps not coincidentally, we've also spent the past year-plus subjected to Donald Trump's presidential campaign, an outing built on lies, harassment, intimidation and a whole host of other behavior not befitting a candidate for the country's highest office.
  
  These two trends collided late last week when it was revealed that Oculus VR founder and Facebook employee Palmer Luckey donated $10,000 to a pro-Trump group called Nimble America. The group's stated purpose is to prove that "shitposting is powerful and meme magic is real." Thus far, there's no evidence that Nimble America has been able to do anything aside from put up one insulting but fairly mild anti-Hillary Clinton billboard outside of Pittsburgh. Despite the group's lack of impact thus far, the fact that Luckey found Nimble America worth supporting shows just how widespread trolling has become.
  
  
  
  Luckey is, of course, well within his rights to support any group he sees fit. But the fact that he thinks that bringing Reddit's worst garbage to billboards for the world to see is, as he says in a Facebook post confirming his donation, a "fresh idea" speaks to just how ugly things have become in 2016 -- both online and in the "real world." In fact, there's barely any distinction between the two at this point. Hate speech, whether offline or online, is becoming the best way to get what you want. It got Trump to the doorstep of the presidency, when everyone assumed he was a reality TV joke that would get bounced in the primaries.
  
  If you haven't been paying attention to the Nimble America controversy, here's a quick recap. Last week, @PalmerLuckey, the founder of @Oculus. pic.twitter.com/CWlAA8ugMx
  — Cody Brown (@CodyBrown) September 23, 2016
  The following day, Luckey apologized on his Facebook page for his actions "negatively impacting the perception of Oculus and its partners." He also confirmed that he had donated $10,000 to Nimble America, said he was a Gary Johnson supporter and claimed that he had not written the NimbleRichMan Reddit posts. But emails between Daily Beast reporter Gideon Resnick and Luckey make it sound as if he wrote the posts and wanted them posted under that handle, even if it wasn't technically "his" Reddit account. The account may have been under the control of one of the Nimble America founders, but all evidence points to Luckey having written the posts in question.
  
  "A generous understanding of the situation is that in other instances, besides the donation one, he was given a password and used the account occasionally," grossly distorted image of her face. It's possibly a reference to her considerable political stature insulating her from prosecution for misuse of a personal email server -- but the picture makes it an attack on her looks as well. Nimble America's desire to push "shitposts" into the public consciousness makes it clear that this group is more interested in trolling than having any sort of informed debate, and apparently Luckey is on the same page.
  
  It's a position that has Oculus fans and developers alike shaking their heads. There's a thread on the Oculus Reddit with more than 4,000 posts discussing the subject, and a number of developers have come out against Luckey's statements. "Finding out last night that the founder of one of the main platforms for [virtual reality] basically thinks white supremacy is funny was a crystallizing moment," one unnamed developer FEC database shows no donations by Luckey directly to any campaign. This would indicate that he believes his money is better spent plastering shitty memes on billboards than it is directly supporting a candidate. That he dropped $10,000 on an organization that seems bent on lowering the level of political discourse even further -- when the bar for that is already horrifyingly low as it is -- says a lot about Luckey's judgement. It also highlights how concentrated abuse has become an effective strategy at silencing those you disagree with.
  
  Most recently, actor Leslie Jones was harassed and had her personal information hacked and released; gold medal Olympic gymnast Gabby Douglas faced a disproportionate and abusive backlash this summer for transgressions that should barely be on anyone's radar. Feminist writer and Guardian columnist Jessica Valenti quit social media altogether after receiving death and rape threats directed at her child, and superstar singer Adele quit Twitter temporarily back in 2012 after receiving death threats focused on her newborn son. And these are just a handful of high-profile cases; plenty of average internet users have dealt with similar things but had no platform from which to really make them known. (Charlie Warzel at Buzzfeed wrote an excellent feature on Twitter's abuse problem that has plenty more examples of this behavior.)
  
  Combine this behavior with the hate and anger that Trump has been stoking throughout his presidential campaign (we won't recount all his horrible statements, but Politico has a comprehensive roundup here) and it's not surprising to see someone like Luckey putting money toward Nimble America. Their "plan" is the logical outcome of internet abuse and political hate speech becoming normalized. The first presidential debate of the 2016 election is happening in just a few hours. From now until Election Day, all the hate planted over the past year will be on display for all to see. Here's hoping calmer, more peaceful minds win out -- and that Luckey's foolish donation ends up being a footnote to a turbulent election year.
  
  Images: Getty (Palmer Luckey, lead); AP Photo/ Evan Vucci (Trump closeup)
  

• Square is speeding up EMV chip card transactions
  
  Anyone who has encountered a "NO CHIP, PLEASE SWIPE" sign while trying to pay via credit or debit card has probably noticed the switch from magnetic stripes to EMV chips hasn't been the smoothest. According to one study cited by the contactless and chip reader.
  
  Square says it now takes a snappy 4.2 seconds from the moment you dip your chip until the transaction is completed. And they'd like to see that turnaround time driven down even further, to an even three seconds. Square does have a bit of an advantage in the space because they control both the hardware and software at Square registers, but according the New York Times, Wal-Mart also managed to save customers 11 seconds just by removing an amount confirmation screen.
  
  On the other hand, as the Wall Street Journal pointed out last month, all of this is driving towards a contactless payment future. And, as it turns outs, chip cards were not as secure as we thought in the first place.
  
  Via: TechCrunch
  
  Source: Square
  

• Uber explores offering short-hop flights across town
  
  Uber has already resorted to more than one unusual method to get you from one side of town to another, but you haven't seen anything yet. The ridesharing outfit's Jeff Holden tells Recode that Uber is researching the use of VTOL (vertical takeoff and landing) aircraft for short-hop urban flights. It'd potentially speed up long trips, especially in areas where traffic jams might make a conventional ride excruciatingly slow. You could travel from San Francisco to Oakland in 9 minutes, Holden suggests.
  
  There's no firm commitment to offering a VTOL choice, although Holden suggests it might happen within a decade. As it stands, any initial offering would be limited by modern technology and city layouts: you'd need piloted vehicles, and the combination of loud engines with limited landing areas would dictate just where these aircraft could touch down. The big breakthrough would come with autonomous, quiet (likely electric) vehicles that could fly almost anywhere. You could get a lift to a rooftop in the heart of downtown, for instance.
  
  And it's not as if either Uber or the industry are standing still. Remember how Uber recently teamed up with Airbus? Well, Airbus has been researching autonomous air taxis -- it's not a stretch to imagine a future collaboration where Uber uses those taxis to shuttle customers back and forth. While four-wheeled ridesharing isn't going away any time soon, it probably won't be your only choice at some point in the future.
  
  Via: TechCrunch
  
  Source: Recode
  

• Google's Android/Chrome laptop may be a year away
  We've long heard rumors that Google may be merging its Chrome and Android operating systems into a laptop platform, and we're now getting more substantive reports that point to a Q3 2017 time frame for the hybrid OS. According to run Android apps on a Chrome platform. Rather, Android Police speculates it will likely be the result of bringing Chrome features to Android, which likely means a version of the popular mobile OS tailored to desktop users. If the leak is true, we are about a year out from seeing the Andromeda-powered laptop. Google may still tease the OS at its upcoming October 4th event, but we're more likely to see a new WiFi router, 4K Chromecast and Pixel phones then.
  
  Source: Android Police
  

• Disney is reportedly considering a bid for Twitter
  
  buying Twitter. TechCrunch followed that up with its own report that the list of potential buyers included Microsoft and Verizon. The latest company to be mentioned as a potential suitor is Disney. a $1 billion investment in BAMTech this summer, the arm of Major League Baseball's Advancement Media division that powers streaming tech for the likes of HBO Now.
  
  Disney followed up that news by clarifying that it was working on a "direct-to-consumer" option for ESPN that wouldn't require cable. As much as Twitter has been pushing video streaming as of late, the combination of the social network and the media company could make quite the pair. In fact, Twitter is already using BAMTech to power its weekly NFL streams. What's more, Twitter's CEO Jack Dorsey is also on the board of Disney.
  
  Source: Bloomberg
  

• The Philadelphia 76ers just bought a pair of eSports teams
  
  The Philadelphia 76ers' ownership group announced on Monday that it has acquired two eSports teams, Team Apex and Team Dignatas, and will merge them into a single organization under the Dignatas banner. The team will compete in Manchester City and Valencia CF -- all own their own digital sports teams. A few NBA owners like Mark Cuban, Dan Gilbert and Steve Kaplan have invested in teams and leagues, none have flat out bought one. The closest we have to that is retired NBA star Rick Fox, who purchased team Gravity Gaming before renaming it Echo Fox.
  Via: The Verge
  
  Source: NBA
  

• Google's 4K Chromecast emerges in an image leak
  
  Those rumors of a 4K-capable Chromecast dongle just got more substantial. Evan Blass (who has a knack for accurate leaks) has posted an image of what he says is the Chromecast Ultra. The device itself isn't remarkable -- surprise, it's a puck with an HDMI cable attached. However, it might just say a lot about Google's plans. To start, its very existence corroborates talk that Google's October 4th event is about much more than new phones. And notice how it replaces the Chrome logo from earlier Chromecast models with Google's increasingly ubiquitous "G?" That lines up with the logo seen on the back of the company's leaked Pixel phones, as well as test versions of Chromecast firmware. Clearly, Google is aiming for more harmonious hardware branding.
  
  There's not much known about what's inside the Chromecast Ultra, although previous rumors suggested that 4K-friendly hardware might be the only major selling point. You'd have to pay a premium for it, too. The Ultra will supposedly cost $69, or about twice as much as the regular model. That's chump change next to the cost of a nice 4K set, but it'd show that Google isn't tied to the notion of Chromecast as a low-cost streaming peripheral.
  
  Source: VentureBeat
  

• The best GPS running watch
  By Jim McDannald
  This post was done in partnership with The Sweethome, a buyer's guide to the best things for your home. Read the full article here.
  
  We've run with more than 20 GPS running watches over the past three years, and we've found the Garmin Forerunner 230 is the best for both beginners and experienced runners. It carries the accuracy, long battery life, and light profile of our previous Garmin pick (the Forerunner 220), but has a larger screen with more information, offering quick-glance updates while running. The Forerunner 230 feels good enough to potentially wear as a day-to-day timepiece, and it can track steps and other metrics. It is easy enough to use as your first GPS watch, but it contains advanced running features and optional apps that expand its powers. It tracks runs better than most watches at its price and can work with cycling sensors. It's also waterproof down to 50 meters.
  How we picked
  Some of the GPS running watches we considered. From left: the Forerunner 235, the Forerunner 230, the Fitbit Surge, the Polar M400, and the TomTom Spark Music. Photo: Jim McDannald
  
  GPS devices and the companies behind them need to have a solid reputation for accuracy. Nothing on the market is 100% accurate, as mapping errors and signal drops occur under heavy tree cover. But the major players in this category (Garmin, Magellan, Timex, TomTom, Polar) each have a strong background in GPS and watch technology from their products in other fields. It's taken time even for these experienced and well-recognized companies to work out bugs and bring a viable product to market. So if you're intrigued by a new brand or crowdfunded device in this category, know that a sleek, first-generation product may be a little raw or unpolished.
  
  GPS watches can now be made small enough to pass as a regular "sports" watch, so watches that still resemble hockey pucks have to earn their heft. The same goes for watch displays; a GPS watch's ability to display and arrange information in an organized and readable fashion on the face cannot be overemphasized. It's a huge hassle to squint to figure out which number is which.
  
  The GPS running watch you choose should have a navigable, intuitive menu, starting with satellite connection and launching each new run. Some feature the ability to pre-cache satellite locations to avoid long waits before running. Once you push Stop, it should be easy to save data and review it right on the watch's screen. (You'd be surprised how many watches fail at this.) Likewise, the desktop or Web software that offloads and arranges your data should let you glimpse all your running data, and dig into details when needed.
  
  Pricing varies among GPS watches, from about $100 to $500. For about $100, you can get a GPS watch like the Garmin Forerunner 10 that records time, distance, and your route on a map, which may be just fine for some. Go up to $250, and watches can be waterproof, adaptable to other sports, and capable of working on longer runs. Go a little higher ($300 and up), and watches get even more durable, have built-in heart-rate sensors, and work with a wide variety of sensor accessories providing more detailed statistics. We sought to find watches that include as much useful stuff as they can in their price categories while ignoring features they could not perform well.
  Our pick
  The Garmin Forerunner 230 in idle mode. Photo: Jim McDannald
  
  The Garmin Forerunner 230 has everything we look for in a great GPS running watch. It takes the accuracy and long battery life of our previous pick, the Forerunner 220, and makes the screen larger and more readable during activities, and retaining a light and small profile that wouldn't feel too weird as an everyday watch. The interface and data syncing are easy enough to use if you are new to GPS watches, but the Forerunner 230 also contains deep features and optional app downloads that experienced runners and statistics wonks can dig into. It can track some advanced running metrics we've seen only in higher-priced models and can work with cycling monitors for speed and cadence. All these features rest on top of Garmin's unparalleled reputation for reliable GPS devices; adding up to a watch that, though currently right in the middle of the pricing curve at about $250, feels many product cycles ahead of its competitors.
  A cheaper fitness-tracking pick
  For the price, the chunkier feel and smaller screen of the Polar M400 may not be that much of a trade-off for more casual runners. Photo: Jim McDannald
  
  For $100 less than our top pick, the Polar M400 does most things well, though it requires more effort from you. It connects to satellites just a few seconds behind the Forerunner 230, it's less waterproof (to 30 meters), and its software, though improving, is not as fluid as Garmin's. It falters because of its less informative screen and its design, which will feel bulky on smaller wrists.
  The built-in heart-rate pick
  If you want to track your heart rate but don't want to wear an additional chest strap, the Forerunner 235 (farthest left) stands out as a thinner, more flexible option than the competition. Photo: Jim McDannald
  
  If you want to track your heart rate and can't stand wearing an extra monitor, the Garmin Forerunner 235 is a sibling to our top pick that's far more comfortable than other watches with wrist-based monitors. It features an optical heart-rate sensor and is thinner, lighter, and less bulky than the previous generation of heart-rate-sensing watches. It's not as accurate as a heart strap, but if you'd rather not run with extra equipment, the Forerunner 235 covers that need without much extra bulk or weight.
  If you need auto-syncing or music
  The TomTom Spark Music (pictured here in its heart-tracking Cardio+ variant) covers the basics of run tracking and can also stream directly to Bluetooth headphones. Photo: Jim McDannald
  
  If you want the best run-tracking and activity-syncing experiences, for about $150 more than our top pic, the Forerunner 630 adds a touchscreen, more advanced metrics during runs and after, and automatic Wi-Fi uploading of run data. And if you want to stream music to your Bluetooth exercise headphones without bringing along a phone, look at the TomTom Spark Music, a good-enough GPS running watch with unique music powers.
  
  This guide may have been updated by The Sweethome. To see the current recommendation, please go here.
  

• How to watch tonight's US presidential debate
  
  So you're determined to watch the first of 2016's US presidential debates, but you don't subscribe to TV... or you live in a country that won't have a live broadcast. What to do? Relax. This year, there are more choices than ever for watching online, and not just in the US. We've rounded up the main internet viewing sources for Clinton versus Trump, including the kind of commentary you'll get. Whichever option you choose, you'll probably want to keep our guide to the candidates on hand when things kick off at 9PM Eastern -- the odds are that the grand speeches and spirited arguments won't answer all your technology policy questions.
  Facebook
  
  This is the first American presidential debate where Facebook Live will play a part, and you'll have no shortage of choices for streaming the event on the world's largest social network. ABC News has a deal with Facebook to livestream the debate ad-free, complete with commentary before and after (including responses to viewer questions) as well as extra details on its Facebook page. You can also expect BuzzFeed, CNBC, C-SPAN, Fox News, the New York Times, PBS, Telemundo and Univision to stream on Facebook as well, although you won't necessarily get a TV-like broadcast.
  Twitter
  
  Twitter was a go-to place for live discussion of the national conventions, and it wants to be the cornerstone of your debate viewing, too. It's debates.twitter.com on the web as well as through its official mobile apps. Bloomberg will logically handle the on-air analysis and commentary, but the real star may be the flood of tweets from everyday viewers.
  YouTube
  
  YouTube is already big on live video, so you'd expect it to have plenty of streams, right? Sure enough, you're getting a smorgasbord. The Young Turks to have on-the-ground reporting if you're not as interested in the raw event.
  Conventional media outlets
  
  Old-school media sources may still revolve around TV, but they'll have their share of online viewing beyond the partnerships we've already mentioned. ABC will offer free streams through its ABC News apps, and access for some TV subscribers through the regular ABC app. CBS will offer feeds through CBSNews.com as well as its myriad mobile and set-top apps, while Reuters will show the debate through both its Reuters TV site and its own mobile clients. CNN is showing the debate through its site and mobile apps, too. And if you're the business sort, Fox Business will air the debate on both its website as well as FoxBusinessGo.
  
  Images: AP Photo/John Minchillo; AP Photo/Julio Cortez; AP Photo/J. David Ake
  

• Apple will start selling Sonos speakers today
  Sonos still offers one of the best experiences for those who want to keep music in sync throughout their home. But it's not a brand that everyone knows, and in a place like Best Buy or Target it has to fight a lot of other competitors for shelf space and attention (that's not the case in its massive NYC retail store, of course). Today, the company's retail presence is getting a boost thanks to a new partnership with Apple. Starting this afternoon, you'll be able to buy the Sonos Play:1 and Play:5 speakers on Apple's website in the US. By October 5th, the speakers will be on sale in 468 Apple retail stores around the world, and they'll be coming to more markets online in the following weeks.
  If you buy a Sonos speaker on either Apple's site or in a store, you'll also get a gift card that gives you three free months of Apple Music, which naturally will work with your new speakers. That'll work whether you're a new subscriber or already paying for the service. Apple will also have demo stations set up showing off how Sonos works in more than 140 of its stores. Given that Sonos isn't the easiest thing to explain right off the bat, being able to show potential customers just how it works could be a nice boon to the speaker company.
  
  With its grander vision of becoming the sound platform of choice for the connected home (the first step of which is Amazon Echo integration), giving buyers more places to both demo its products and buy them should be helpful. The company's gone through a bit of turmoil this year, but it seems its not ready to fade out just yet.
  
  Source: Sonos
  

• Fitbit's Charge 2 wearable is now available for $150
  
  It's been almost a month since wearable pioneer Fitbit unveiled a much-needed update to its Charge and Flex ranges, giving them a bunch of aesthetic and functional upgrades in the process. Customers have been able to secure their orders ahead of the loose "fall" release date but from today, anyone itching to get their hands on the new devices can now do so.
  
  With a bigger display, the $150/£130 Charge 2 allows for a wider selection of watch faces that display more information than before. The optical heart rate sensor can detect how much time you've spent in specific cardio zones and its bigger battery ensures it logs more data before it needs plugging in, which helps it cement itself as the leader in its price range.
  
  The Charge 2 is available with a Classic band in black, blue, plum or teal. However, the company also has a set of $30/£20 accessory bands available -- shipping next month -- that let you mix it up with blush pink, brown and indigo colorings. As usual, the tracker is available via Fitbit.com in all supported countries, as well as Amazon, Best Buy and Target in the US.
  
  Via: Fitbit (Businesswire)
  
  Source: Fitbit
  

• Plex Cloud lets you dump your home media server
  
  Thanks to streaming, physical formats like CDs and Blu-rays aren't as popular than they once were. Some people choose to sign up for a monthly subscription like Netflix or Spotify, while others take the DIY approach. For many years, Plex has helped people build their own media collections and stream that content to (nearly) every connected device they own. However, it required either a computer or Network Attached Storage (NAS) to do so. Today, the company has opened a new avenue in its media streaming strategy with the launch of Plex Cloud. Gone is the need for the server in the cupboard, replaced with an Amazon Drive subscription and a Plex Pass.
  
  Plex Cloud is basically a cloud version of the Plex Media Server, eliminating electricity and maintenance costs in the process. Amazon's reliable hosting platform takes care of the storage and Plex has "worked a little bit of magic" to enable the same transcoding options that some of the better home network storage solutions provide. An Amazon Drive subscription costs $60 for unlimited storage for a year, while the Plex Pass is either $4.99 per month or $39.99 per year. In comparison, you'll likely pay around the same total cost for a year of Netflix.
  
  While Plex has worked to enable many of the same features as the Plex Media Server, they aren't all ready for launch. The company says that Camera Upload, Mobile Sync, Cloud Sync, Media Optimizer, DLNA, and DVR are not available right away, but it will work to add them over time. Also, if you want to use your own cloud storage provider, you may have to wait. Amazon says it'll "continue to evaluate adding support for other cloud storage providers over time."
  
  Plex has opened the Plex Cloud Beta and is already inviting people to sign up. Be aware that Plex Pass holders will be given priority over casual streamers, so if you don't get in straight away, that might be why.
  
  Via: Plex Blog
  
  Source: Plex Cloud
  

• Epiq Solutions' Sidekiq M.2
      
  Following on its resounding success with its Sidekiq MiniPCIe card, wireless communications systems specialist Epiq Solutions recently added the Sidekiq M.2 state-of-the-art, small form-factor, software-defined radio (SDR) card.
     

• Nativ Disc
      
  Although most music lovers stream or download music today, the stubborn pre-millennials among us have legacy CD collections at home. This demographic is the perfect target group for Nativ Disc, a bit-perfect CD Ripper that allows users to import up to 12,000 CDs—in lossless FLAC, uncompressed WAV or lossy MP3 format—into their Nativ Vita high-resolution music player.  
     

• Android Browser Security--What You Haven't Been Told
      
  This article focuses on flaws in Android's stock web libraries, while acknowledging related exploits. Some modern Android browsers have critically weak encryption and other dangerous flaws that cannot be patched or otherwise corrected. This weakness extends to multiple browsers and applications and is determined by the linkage to the system webcore on older OS versions.
     

• The Many Paths to a Solution
      
  A project I'm involved with has made me think about how there are always many solution paths for any given problem in the Linux universe. For this other project, I wanted to cobble together a version of grep that let me specify proper regular expressions without having to worry about the -E flag and get a context for the matches too. 
     

• Synopsys' Coverity
      
  The new version 8.5 of Synopsys' Coverity extends the security umbrella of the static analysis tool to mitigate a wider range of security vulnerabilities.
     

• Naztech's Roadstar 5 Car Charger
      
  The "5" in Naztech's new Roadstar 5 Car Charger refers to the abundant five ports offered by the device, intended to end in-vehicle debates on who gets to charge their device next. Naztech says that its new charger delivers superior charging power and speed while protecting tablet and smartphone batteries and motherboards.  
     

• RPi-Powered pi-topCEED Makes the Case as a Low-Cost Modular Learning Desktop
      
  It's hard to go a day without seeing interesting and compelling Indiegogo or Kickstarter projects that feature the Raspberry Pi, Pine 64 or the Intel Edison inside some sort of embedded device or standalone computer or laptop. Last fall, I stumbled across one such project that billed itself as "the first $99 Raspberry Pi desktop", and I felt the need to have it. 
     

• Glass Padding
      
  When it comes to covering my cell phone, I tend toward minimalism. I like to buy the smallest (although still powerful) phone possible, so the thought of adding a bulky case seems wrong. I also don't like screen protectors, because they generally get cloudy, and they don't feel as nice when using the screen.
     

• Securing the Programmer
      
  I have a favorite saying: "If you are a systems administrator, you have the keys to the kingdom. If you are an open-source programmer, you don't know which or how many kingdoms you have the keys to." We send our programs out into the world to be run by anyone for any purpose. Think about that: by anyone, for any purpose.
     

• CodeLathe FileCloud Google Chrome Extension
      
  Nearly everyone in today's enterprises is connected throughout the day to a web browser, of which anywhere from 44–71% are Google Chrome. Seeking to make this vast number of users' work more productive is developer CodeLathe, whose new "amazingly easy-to-use" FileCloud extension for Google Chrome enables users to save documents, images and scre
     

• Ascensio System SIA's ONLYOFFICE
      
  Ascensio System SIA boasts that its ONLYOFFICE office and productivity suite combines the best from the MS Office and Google Docs worlds. ONLYOFFICE is a free and open-source solution and is distributed under the AGPL v.3 license.  
     

• Identity: Our Last Stand
      
  Linux has built countless cathedrals, but still no bazaar. 
     

• Non-Linux FOSS: Chrome, for One
      
  When I use OS X, I really like the Fluid app for making standalone Web applications. The problem is, Fluid isn't free unless you want the basic version. I don't mind paying for an application (and I did pay for Fluid), but it seems like something as simple as a single site browser shouldn't be something that costs money. 
     

• NordVPN for Android
      
  The prospect of privacy protection and occulting your smartphone's IP address with a VPN are sufficient selling points, but the ability to watch your Spanish-dubbed Turkish telenovellas while on the beach in Tahiti should seal the deal for real.
     

• iguaz.io
      
  An IT megatrend in progress involves the shift from legacy monolithic apps running on enterprise storage to systems of engagement that interact with users, collect real-time data from many sources and store it in elastic and shared data services.