The Insider News

Tudor Dumitras[^]:

In this paper, we describe a method for automatically identifying zero-day attacks from field-gathered data that records when benign and malicious binaries are downloaded on 11 million real hosts around the world. Searching this data set for malicious files that exploit known vulnerabilities indicates which files appeared on the Internet before the corresponding vulnerabilities were disclosed. We identify 18 vulnerabilities exploited before disclosure, of which 11 were not previously known to have been employed in zero-day attacks. We also find that a typical zero-day attack lasts 312 days on average and that, after vulnerabilities are disclosed publicly, the volume of attacks exploiting them increases by up to 5 orders of magnitude.

John Myles White[^]:

Testing an RNG is serious business. In total, we’ve considered using four different test suites: Diehard, Dieharder, STS and TestU01. All of these suites can be easily used to test uniform random numbers over unsigned integers. Some are also appropriate for testing uniform random numbers over floatint-point values. But we wanted to test a Gaussian RNG.

Strata[^]:

You don’t need a fancy distributed framework. You can just load the data into memory and explore it interactively in your favorite scripting language. Or, maybe, a different scripting language: data analysis is one of the few domains where special-purpose languages are very commonly used. Although in many respects these are similar to other dynamic languages like Ruby or Javascript, these languages have syntax and built-in data structures that make common data analysis tasks both faster and more concise. This article will briefly cover some of these core features for two languages that have been popular for decades — MATLAB and R — and another, Julia, that was just announced this year.

TechHive[^]:

Assisted GPS is used by millions of smartphone users every day to get driving directions, find places, and find themselves. As it turns out, the good old GPS satellite system, by itself, works very slowly and often not at all when you're indoors or walking beneath tall buildings. That's why the GPS software in your phone relies heavily on cellular and Wi-Fi networks to help it figure out where it is.

Dropbox[^]:

The Dropbox mobile client caches frequently-accessed files, so that viewing them doesn’t require a network call. Both our Android and iOS clients use the LRU caching algorithm, which often selects good files to cache. But while this is the usual algorithm for caching, I wondered: are there better algorithms, and if not, why is LRU the best option?

Wired.com[^]:

The heart beating beneath the surface of the re-imagined SimCity is the new GlassBox engine. “It’s a new simulation engine that was developed here at Maxis to support agent-based simulation,” Lead Producer Kip Katsarelis told Wired.co.uk. “It’s not necessarily related to cities, it’s a general engine; we’ve kept the code separate from SimCity. It lets you simulate very simple objects that, when composed together, can do very complex things.” “The genesis of GlassBox goes all the way back to SimCity 4,” added Creative Director Ocean Quigley, “when [engineer] Andrew Willmott and I imagined what the ultimate simulator might look like. At the time, computers weren’t powerful enough for us to implement that at any reasonable scale, so our ideas had to lie fallow until we finished Spore.”

PCWorld[^]:

When multitudes of Windows 8 users start playing with newly purchased hardware in the coming weeks and months, they'll encounter an indignity that once afflicted only smartphone and tablet users: dirty, smudgy, fingerprint-riddled touchscreens. Ah, yes, the dreaded smudge. It's a problem we've all come to grudgingly accept on mobile device screens, but PC users generally aren't so accepting of people touching—let alone leaving fingerprints on—their desktop displays.

The Verge[^]:

"Tape and strings literally made Surface." Panos Panay, general manager of the team behind the Microsoft Surface, touches an old mockup made of black and white plastic. He's forgetting glue, certainly – two panels appear to have been hot-glued to form the "tablet" part of the device — but tape and strings really are two key ingredients in this prototype, the one Panay's team used to show off what Surface would look like. It's crude and fragile, but it's also unmistakably Surface.

Microsoft[^]:

Surface delivers the power of amazing software and the feel of premium hardware in one exciting experience. Originally unveiled in June, Surface with Windows RT will initially be available in three SKUs: a 32GB version priced at US$499, a 32GB version bundled with a black Touch Cover priced at US$599, and a 64GB version bundled with a black Touch Cover priced at US$699.

Gamasutra[^]:

For the first time in the history of the PC, Microsoft is rolling out a new Windows ecosystem for which they will be the sole software distributor. If you buy Windows 8, the only place you will be able to download software that integrates with its new user interface will be the official Windows Store. Microsoft will have complete control over what software will be allowed there.... But how realistic is the assumption that the Windows desktop will still be a usable computing platform in the future? And what would be the consequences were it to disappear, leaving Windows users with only the closed software ecosystem introduced in Windows 8?

FierceCIO

The operating system's Metro interface is almost sure to cause a surge in calls to the enterprise help desk as users contend with tiles where the familiar 'Start' button and 'Explorer' icon used to be.

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With a host of new tools and capabilities--such as Secure Boot, Windows To Go and greatly improved file management--Windows 8 may have broad appeal in a variety of businesses.