Microsoft launches Teams for Linux
A blog post announcing the release confirmed the long-rumoured debut of an Office app on the open-source OS and says it’s “the first Microsoft 365 app that is coming to Linux desktops.” The company has not said whether other Office 365 apps will follow.
Microsoft has said that Teams on Linux “will support all of Teams’ core capabilities”.
Microsoft’s Teams product marketing manager Marissa Salazar wrote “Most of our customers have devices running on a variety of different platforms such as Windows 10, Linux and others. We are committed to supporting mixed environments across our cloud and productivity offerings”.
And also committed to ensuring that Teams can meet almost any communication requirement: Microsoft’s strategy for the product is to bundle chat, video meetings, voice and document collaboration in one app, and encourage users to deploy one tool instead of having silos dedicated to different modes of communication
Adding a Linux client means even the few Linux users inside an organisation can be brought into the same collaboration environment.
Mac Pro arrives in Australia – with top price of $85,600
- 5GHz 28‑Core Intel Xeon W processor with Turbo Boost up to 4.4GHz
- 1.5TB (12 × 128GB) of DDR4 ECC memory
- Two Radeon Pro Vega II Duo with 2 × 32GB of HBM2 memory each
- 4TB of SSD storage
- Apple Afterburner card
- Stainless steel frame with wheels
- Magic Mouse 2 + Magic Trackpad 2
- Magic Keyboard with Numeric Keypad — US English
- Final Cut Pro X
- Logic Pro X
If you want Apple’s Pro Display XDR to complement your Mac Pro, it costs $12,047
The prices may seem absurd, but they’re not: CRN played with Dell’s online PC-builder service and it was easy to send the price of its Precision 7920 Desktop Workstation past the $100,000 mark. That machine has a base price of $13,779, but offer a $204,663.80 option for three terabytes of 2666MHz DDR4 ECC LRDIMM memory.
Google founders step down from Alphabet leadership
Google co-founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page announced on Tuesday they would give up their leadership roles at holding company Alphabet Inc. to Google CEO Sundar Pichai.
Pichai, 45, has been CEO of Google since 2015 and a member of the company’s board since 2017. He previously served as Google’s senior vice president of products from 2014 to 2015, and as Google’s senior vice president of Android, Chrome and Apps from 2013 to 2014. Prior to joining Google, Pichai worked in engineering and product management at Applied Materials Inc., a semiconductor company, and in management consulting at McKinsey & Company.
Tesla Model 3 on Autopilot crashes into police car
A Tesla has crashed into a police car and another vehicle while on Autopilot in the US.
Both the police car and the other vehicle, which had broken down, were stationary at the time of the incident.
The driver told police that he put his Tesla Model 3 on Autopilot so that he could check on his dog in the back.
The driver was charged with reckless driving and reckless endangerment.
This is not the first time a Tesla has crashed while on Autopilot. In total, there have been at least five fatalities worldwide involving Tesla vehicles on Autopilot.
The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) in the US is currently investigating accidents caused by Autopilot.
Tesla did not immediately respond to a request for comment. However, the firm does not recommend that drivers remove their hands from the wheel while using the Autopilot feature.
George Laurer, co-inventor of the barcode, dies at 94
It was while working as an electrical engineer with IBM that George Laurer fully developed the Universal Product Code (UPC), or barcode.
He developed a scanner that could read codes digitally. He also used stripes rather than circles that were not practical to print.
In the early 1970s, grocery shops faced mounting costs and the labour-intensive need to put price tags on everything.
The UPC system used lasers and computers to quickly process items via scanning. This meant fewer pricing errors and easier accounting.
The first product scanned, in Ohio in June 1974, was a packet of Wrigley’s Juicy Fruit chewing gum. It is now on display at the Smithsonian National Museum of American History in Washington.
Fellow IBM employee, Norman Woodland, who died in 2012, is considered the pioneer of the barcode idea, which he initially based on Morse code.
Although he patented the concept in the 1950s, he was unable to develop it. It would take a few more years for Laurer to bring the idea to fruition with the help of low-cost laser and computing technology.
‘I am Jesus Christ’ video game causes stir
A trailer for “I am Jesus Christ” has been grabbing plenty of attention. Posted to YouTube by Polish game developer PlayWay, the trailer indicates that “I am Jesus Christ” includes miracle-working, crucifixion and resurrection storylines.
The trailer has been viewed more than 330,000 times since it was posted to YouTube on Dec. 6.
“‘I am Jesus Christ’ is a realistic simulator game inspired by stories from the New Testament of the Bible,” explains a description on the video game distribution site Steam. “Check if you can perform all famous miracles from the Bible like Jesus Christ. It is a simulation game and you can try to save the world as He did. Are you ready to fight with Satan in the desert, exorcising demons and curing sick people? Or calm the storm in the sea?”
No details of the game’s release date have been posted, although the description on Steam says that it is “coming soon.”
https://thisdayintechhistory.com/
Joes Podcast Notes for
12/12/2019
Chrome now warns you when your password has been stolen
- Google is rolling out Chrome version 79 today, and it includes a number of password protection improvements. The biggest addition is that Chrome will now warn you when your password has been stolen as part of a data breach.
- Google has been warning about reused passwords in a separate browser extension or in its password checkup tool, but the company is now baking this directly into Chrome to provide warnings as you log in to sites on the web.
- You can control this new functionality in the sync settings in Chrome so go in and have a look if you wanna start using it.
- Alongside password warnings, Google is also improving its phishing protection with a real-time option. Google has been using a list of phishing sites that updates every 30 minutes, but the company found that fraudsters have been quickly switching domains or hiding from Google’s crawlers. This new real-time protection should generate warnings for 30 percent more cases of phishing.
- Google is also improving Chrome multiple profiles support. If you use multiple profiles in Chrome or you share your PC with others, Chrome now has a better visual indicator of what profile is currently being used so you can ensure passwords are being saved to the correct profile. Now thats cool.
BMW is finally adding Android Auto to its infotainment system
https://arstechnica.com/cars/2019/12/bmw-is-finally-adding-android-auto-to-its-infotainment-system/
- Android owners take note: from next summer, you will finally be able to cast your phone to new BMWs. BMW revealed that at last it is going to add Android Auto support to its iDrive 7 infotainment system next year.
- At the same time the company is also abandoning its controversial decision to charge an annual fee to enable the similar Apple CarPlay feature used to cast iOS devices to a car’s infotainment system.
- You no longer need a USB cable to cast from the phone to the car, although currently there is wireless support to a select number of Google and Samsung devices.
- Also Android users will be delighted to learn that BMW’s integration will allow Android Auto to display stuff on the car’s main instrument panel and heads-up display, as well as the infotainment screen on the center console.
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An iOS bug in AirDrop let anyone temporarily lock-up nearby iPhones
https://techcrunch.com/2019/12/10/ios-airdrop-lock-up-iphones/
- Apple has fixed a bug in iOS 13.3, which is out today, which let anyone temporarily lock users out of their iPhones and iPads by forcing their devices into an inescapable loop.
(Check out the video in our show notes link.)
- What was happening was that a bug in AirDrop, allowed users to share files between iOS devices. The bug lets you repeatedly send files to all devices able to accept files within wireless range of an attacker.
- When a file is received, iOS blocks the display until the file is accepted or rejected. But because iOS didn’t limit the number of file requests a device can accept, an attacker can simply keep sending files again and again, repeatedly displaying the file accept box, which causes the device to get stuck in a loop.
- Its a bit like a “denial-of-service,” attack which effectively denies a user access to their device.
- Devices that had their AirDrop setting set to receive files from “Everyone” were mostly at risk. To can fix it by turning off Bluetooth which would effectively prevent the attack, but the bug causeing the file accept box is so persistent it’s near-impossible to turn off Bluetooth when an attack is underway.
- The only other way to stop an attack? Is simply run away from the bluetooth area. Once a user is out of the wireless range of the attacker, they then can turn off Bluetooth.
- Apple has fixed the bug by adding a rate-limit that prevents a barrage of requests over a short period of time. So do your updates to prevent this from happening to you if you got an iphone.
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Government reveals censorship overhaul, and stiffer privacy penalties for
Digital Platforms
- At the moment, pay and subscription television, terrestrial TV, Netflix and other on demand services ranging from Apple to Google all have different ways of grading content, with the government having essentially opted for a self-regulatory approach due to lack of resources
- The targets of the codes, the government says are “social media services (such as Facebook, Instagram and Twitter), instant messaging services (such as Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp and Viber), interactive online games, websites, and apps, and Internet Service Providers, among others.”
- The new code, especially after the early 2019 introduction of the Criminal Code Amendment (Sharing of Abhorrent Violent Material) Act 2019, which compelled ISPs, “content service providers” and “hosting service providers” to block such content if called upon to do so by the Australian Federal Police.
The government will now put content into two categories, Class 1 and Class 2.
- Their definitions are:
- Class 1 or seriously harmful content will include content that is illegal under the Commonwealth Criminal Code, such as child sexual abuse material, abhorrent violent material, and content that promotes, incites or instructs in serious crime.
- Class 2 content will be defined as content that would otherwise be classified as RC, X18+, R18+ and MA15+ under the National Classification Code. This includes high impact material like sexually explicit, high impact, realistically stimulated violent content, through to content that is unlikely to disturb most adults but is still not suitable for children, like coarse language, or less explicit violence. The most appropriate response to this kind of content will depend on its nature.