Month: November 2014

Now, this is just CWAZY! Though I give him points for geekery!

Chinese Programmer Sticks Windows 95 On An iPhone 6 Plus

TechCrunch – By: John Biggs – “Today in ‘putting stuff onto things on which they don’t belong,’ we present a user, xyq058775, and his exciting admission that he installed Windows 95 on a brand new iPhone. He used a tool called iDos, an open source DOSBox-like app to install the OS. He found that most of it worked fine but he was unable to upgrade to Windows XP. And we can assume he was also able to play Doom.

There’s is very little new about this whole process – people have been putting emulators on things since the original VAX machines – but it’s cool to see resurrected software run so readily on new hardware. While I can’t imagine a real world use case for this (maybe you really need to run a copy of Mavis Beacon?) it’s a great theoretical exercise. Who knows, maybe someone can run POSDT next.

Here is the poorly translated FAQ:

1.Q: Can I install WINDOWS XP? A: The answer is yes you can, but certainly not by idos, because idos simply simulate the DOS environment is not the true sense of the virtual machine, so the system is more difficult to run the DOS and idos simulation environment and do not have XP running basic environmental needs, so later if transplanted XP system, then I will make use of their leisure time with friends ios platform to write a plug-in to run XP virtual machine system.

2.Q: Why are you doing this? Why not use Remote Desktop. A: First, to show that this kind of thing tall Remote Desktop is currently no support on win98 systems, not to use during system installation and tool methods have sent me here.

3.Q: Why is the process I installed the explorer process wrong? A: Because idos simulator only simulates the 16’s dos environment, although win98 16/32 hybrid system but Explorer and exe process large part needed is a 32-bit environment, so when they need 32 program calls some system environment variables and support libraries when an error occurs, LZ modify some of the resource is designed to allow him to run in idos environmental good, However, this modification will change the part of the machine, which has led some device errors when using LZ modify the good image. After LZ according to everyone’s feedback slowly improve!

There are full instructions on his post if you can read Chinese. If not, I leave the installation as an exercise for the reader.”

This claims to be open information, free to the world. Hummmm…

I guess my question is, who determines what information gets distributed?

Here’s more information on “Outernet.”

I am down with this!

News Feed FYI: Reducing Overly Promotional Page Posts in News Feed

Facebook – “One of the main reasons people come to Facebook is to see what’s happening in their News Feeds. Our goal with News Feed has always been to show people the things they want to see. That’s why we often look to people on Facebook to tell us how we can improve. As part of an ongoing survey we asked hundreds of thousands of people how they feel about the content in their News Feeds. People told us they wanted to see more stories from friends and Pages they care about, and less promotional content.

We dug further into the data to better understand this feedback. What we discovered is that a lot of the content people see as too promotional is posts from Pages they like, rather than ads. This may seem counterintuitive but it actually makes sense: News Feed has controls for the number of ads a person sees and for the quality of those ads (based on engagement, hiding ads, etc.), but those same controls haven’t been as closely monitored for promotional Page posts. Now we’re bringing new volume and content controls for promotional posts, so people see more of what they want from Pages.

According to people we surveyed, there are some consistent traits that make organic posts feel too promotional:

• Posts that solely push people to buy a product or install an app
• Posts that push people to enter promotions and sweepstakes with no real context
• Posts that reuse the exact same content from ads

Fewer Promotional Page Posts

Beginning in January 2015, people will see less of this type of content in their News Feeds. As we’ve said before, News Feed is already a competitive place – as more people and Pages are posting content, competition to appear in News Feed has increased. All of this means that Pages that post promotional creative should expect their organic distribution to fall significantly over time.

This change will not increase the number of ads people see in their News Feeds. The idea is to increase the relevance and quality of the overall stories – including Page posts – people see in their News Feeds. This change is about giving people the best Facebook experience possible and being responsive to what they have told us.

While Pages that post a lot of the content we mention above will see a significant decrease in distribution, the majority of Pages will not be impacted by this change.”

Since I am a Google Play Music subscriber, I am stoked! Yes!

Google says Play Music subscribers automatically get access to YouTube Music Key starting next week

9 to 5 Google – By: Stephen Hall – “When YouTube Music Key was announced earlier this week, we were left with many details about the service unexplained. Of these, was the question of whether or not current Google Play Music subscribers were going to have access to the service automatically. While the announcement said that subscribers of Music Key would be getting All Access subscriptions included, it wasn’t exactly clear whether or not it worked the other way around. Now we have the answer:

Starting next week, as a Google Play Music subscriber, you’ll get free and complete access to the YouTube Music Key beta, a new service from YouTube where you can watch ad-free music videos, and keep the music playing in the background or when you’re offline. The Google Play Music app will also include ad-free music videos alongside select tracks. Stay tuned for more information.

In an email sent out to Google Play Music subscribers this morning, the above snippet of text explained that those who already subscribe to Google’s music service will be getting access to the Music Key beta starting ‘next week.’ The service promises ad-free listening to music on YouTube, offline playback, and the ability to listen to music in the background on your mobile devices.

If you’re not a Google Play Music All Access subscriber and you still want to get access to the Music Key beta, head over to the Music Key splash page and hand over your email address.”

Yep, the end of the world, like I said. Microsoft is the safest phone. OK, did somebody not tell me and it is really April 1st?

Mobile Pwn2Own 2014: Windows Phone’s sandbox resists attack
https://www.net-security.org/secworld.php?id=17640

Help Net Security – “The Mobile Pwn2Own 2014 hacking competition, held at the PacSec Applied Security Conference in Tokyo, Japan, was concluded on Thursday, and not one of the targeted phones has survived completely unscathed.

Of the targets available for selection, Amazon Fire Phone, Apple iPhone 5S, Samsung Galaxy S5, and Google/LG Nexus were completely ‘pwned,” the Nokia Lumia 1520 running Windows Phone partially, and BlackBerry Z30, Apple’s iPad Mini and the Nexus 7 weren’t targeted at all.

Competitors were encouraged to come at the phones from a variety of sides – via the mobile web browser, through mobile app and OS holes, via Bluetooth, Wi-Fi or NFC, messaging services or, in limited cases, via baseband.

A successful exploitation of a bug in the latter carried with it a $150,000 prize, the others less: $100,000 for messaging services, $75,000 for short distance and $50,000 for the browser, apps or OS.

Not many details about the successful exploits were provided, as the information is first shared with vendors and will be shared with the public once the bugs are closed.

What we know is that the Apple iPhone 5S was owned via the Safari browser by exploiting two bugs, the Amazon Fire Phone was breached via three bugs in its browser, Samsung Galaxy S5 was successfully targeted via NFC by two different teams (one by triggering a deserialization issue in certain code, and the other by targeting a logical error), and the Nexus 5 was forced to pair with another phone via Bluetooth.

The two contestants that did their attacks on the second day were less successful: Jüri Aedla used Wi-Fi to target a Nexus 5, but was unable to elevate his privileges further than their original level. And Nico Joly tried to exploit Lumia’s browser, but didn’t manage to gain full control of the system as the sandbox held. He did, however, manage to extract the cookie database.

More details about the exploits can be expected in the coming weeks, as the vendors patch the bugs and the contestants are given leave to discuss their attacks publicly.”

Yep, must be here, the end of the world that is… Microsoft Open Sourcing .NET. Yep… we’re done.

How The Worm Turns — Microsoft Open Sources .NET

Forbes – Ben Kepes – “It seems like several lifetimes ago that Bill Gates, then CEO of Microsoft, declared that Linux (and, by extension, open source) was a cancer for the technology industry. The Microsoft of today increasingly embraces open source initiatives as a valid approach to some problem areas for technology. But embracing open source, and open sourcing some of the crown jewels of the organization are two different things and that is what Microsoft announced this week

The company announced that it places to open source most of the full server-side .NET core stack, beginning with the next version (note though, this does not include the client-side .NET). The .NET framework is an incredibly important programming language, while looking at young startups one might be forgiven for thinking that newer, more agile languages had removed the validity of old stalwarts like .NET, the truth is very different. There are many huge enterprises out there that run the bulk of their enterprise applications on .NET, and those organizations aren’t moving any time soon. Microsoft .NET had however lost a degree of credibility among the indie developer set and hence this move looks like an attempt to reinvigorate .NET among these folks. A reported six million developers build on top of the .NET framework, but Microsoft’s corporate VP of the developer division, Soma Somasegar, believes that open sourcing .NET will be the way to move the framework forward.

The open source .NET will be broadened to run on both Linux and Mac OS X. Microsoft is planning on working with the Xamarin-sponsored Mono community which already produces a cross-platform open source .NET framework – interestingly this is yet another coming together of Microsoft and Xamarin – I’ve long suggested that Xamarin will eventually be acquired by Redmond, as Microsoft deepens its open source commitment this looks ever more likely.

This move plays into many different hands – it both opens .NET up to more developers, but also across more partnerships. Two examples, Microsoft’s Cloud tsar Scott Guthrie admitted that “often tell Microsoft that while they like .NET, many don’t use it because it’s closed-source and only supports Windows. After [this move], all the reasons not to use it have disappeared”. And it even plays into the hands of the exciting Docker space. Said Docker’s head of business development Nick Stinemates, ‘a central value of the Docker open platform is application portability to any infrastructure via Docker containers. The delivery of an open-source .NET runtime across all major OS platforms means that Microsoft is extending the concept of portability to the application platform itself’.

In what would have been met with incredulity only a few short years ago, Somadegar suggests that developers will soon be able to run a .NET app in a Docker container in Linux on Microsoft Azure – that’s a Microsoft we’ve not seen before. It’s a positive sign that the old, black and white lenses about open source and proprietary software no longer hold true. An exciting day for the technology industry.”