Larry Tesler, a computer scientist who created the terms "cut," "copy," and "paste," has passed away at the age of 74. Gizmodo reports: Born in 1945 in New York, Tesler went on to study computer science at Stanford University, and after graduation he dabbled in artificial intelligence research (long before it became a deeply concerning tool) and became involved in the anti-war and anti-corporate monopoly movements, with companies like IBM as one of his deserving targets. In 1973 Tesler took a job at the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) where he worked until 1980. Xerox PARC is famously known for developing the mouse-driven graphical user interface we now all take for granted, and during his time at the lab Tesler worked with Tim Mott to create a word processor called Gypsy that is best known for coining the terms "cut," "copy," and "paste" when it comes to commands for removing, duplicating, or repositioning chunks of text.

Xerox PARC is also well known for not capitalizing on the groundbreaking research it did in terms of personal computing, so in 1980 Tesler transitioned to Apple Computer where he worked until 1997. Over the years he held countless positions at the company including Vice President of AppleNet (Apple's in-house local area networking system that was eventually canceled), and even served as Apple's Chief Scientist, a position that at one time was held by Steve Wozniak, before eventually leaving the company.

In addition to his contributions to some of Apple's most famous hardware, Tesler was also known for his efforts to make software and user interfaces more accessible. In addition to the now ubiquitous "cut," "copy," and "paste" terminologies, Tesler was also an advocate for an approach to UI design known as modeless computing, which is reflected in his personal website. In essence, it ensures that user actions remain consistent throughout an operating system's various functions and apps. When they've opened a word processor, for instance, users now just automatically assume that hitting any of the alphanumeric keys on their keyboard will result in that character showing up on-screen at the cursor's insertion point. But there was a time when word processors could be switched between multiple modes where typing on the keyboard would either add characters to a document or alternately allow functional commands to be entered.

rastos1 writes: The 40th Root Key Signing Key Ceremony, originally scheduled for 12 February 2020 at 2100 UTC in El Segundo, California, is being postponed. "During routine administrative maintenance of our Key Management Facility on 11 February, we identified an equipment malfunction that will prevent us from successfully conducting the ceremony as originally scheduled. The issue disables access to one of the secure safes that contains material for the ceremony," ICANN's Kim Davies wrote.

Earlier this week, searching in Windows 10 was broken, "with a black bar showing where search results should be, even for those who tried to perform a local search of their files." Microsoft issued a fix and blamed the issue on a "third-party networking fiber provider".

But unfortunately, Microsoft's fix isn't working for everyone -- and that's just the beginning. Long-time Slashdot reader Futurepower(R) shares Forbes' report: Second, and more worryingly, Microsoft's explanation doesn't add up and it has prompted serious questions to be asked about how the operating system works and what personal data it is sharing. Popular Microsoft pundit Woody Leonard led the charge, writing: "If you believe that yesterday's worldwide crash of Windows 10 Search was caused by a bad third-party fiber provider, I have a bridge to sell you."

In an open letter to new Windows head Panos Panay, Susan 'Patch Lady' Bradley was similarly sceptical, noting that today "we all found out that our local search boxes are somehow dependent on some service working at Microsoft." She attacked the company for a lack of transparency and gave it a maximum 'Pinocchio score' for a lack of trust... Similarly, Engadget writer Richard Lawler revealed that users were now trying to hack the Windows 10 registry to disconnect their local file searches from Microsoft servers "and I can't say I blame them after this episode. Microsoft owes users a better explanation than this and should make sure it's impossible for offline features to get taken out when the cloud is having an issue."
In fact, Forbes writes that "the aforementioned Windows 10 registry hack appears to be the only 100% fix for this issue and it also disconnects Bing and Cortana online services from Windows 10 search."

And then on Saturday the Windows Latest blog also noticed that Microsoft's release notes for Windows 10 20H1 Build 19035 reveal that Microsoft is apparently now delaying the roll-out of a widely-anticipated "Optional Updates" option. "It appears that the new Optional updates experience will come out in October/November 2020, not this spring as previously planned."

Two smartphone makers canceled events at the world's biggest mobile technology showcase in response to the coronavirus outbreak, and organizers reinforced hygiene protocol for people still planning to attend. From a report: Delegates were warned to avoid handshakes and microphones will be changed for different conference speakers in an effort to avoid infections at MWC Barcelona, an annual event that's set to draw around 100,000 people from around the world to the Spanish city from Feb. 24 to 27. This year's conference is supposed to be a launch pad for a renewed push on 5G devices. However, South Korea's LG Electronics said it's withdrawing from exhibiting at the conference because most health experts advised against "needlessly" exposing hundreds of employees to international travel. Shenzhen, China-based ZTE, which makes smartphones and wireless networking equipment, cited difficulties in traveling out of China while virus-containment restrictions are in place, and so it's canceling its MWC press conference, though it will still send a delegation.

Microsoft's built-in Windows search went down for more than three hours today due to access and latency issues "with multiple Microsoft 365 services." While the issues have since been resolved, it comes just days after Microsoft's Teams service experienced a widespread outage after the company forgot to renew a SSL certificate. The Verge reports: Windows search is built into Microsoft's latest Windows 10 operating system, and it started presenting blank search results for apps or any other search queries at around 8AM ET today. Windows search uses the Bing backend to search for results across the web, and it appears that this was the source of the issue. Microsoft blames a "third-party networking fiber provider" for experiencing a network disruption resulting in multiple Microsoft 365 services issues. "This issue has been resolved for most users and in some cases you may need to reboot your machine," says a Microsoft spokesperson in a statement to The Verge.

Slashdot reader JustAnotherOldGuy quotes ZDNet: Security experts have published a report Tuesday warning that the new and fast-rising LoRaWAN technology is vulnerable to cyberattacks and misconfigurations, despite claims of improved security rooted in the protocol's use of two layers of encryption.

LoRaWAN stands for "Long Range Wide Area Network." It is a radio-based technology that works on top of the proprietary LoRa protocol. LoRaWAN takes the LoRa protocol and allows devices spread across a large geographical area to wirelessly connect to the internet via radio waves...

But broadcasting data from devices via radio waves is not a secure approach. However, the protocol's creators anticipated this issue. Since its first version, LoRaWAN has used two layers of 128-bit encryption to secure the data being broadcast from devices — with one encryption key being used to authenticate the device against the network server and the other against a company's backend application. In a 27-page report published Tuesday, security researchers from IOActive say the protocol is prone to misconfigurations and design choices that make it susceptible to hacking and cyber-attacks. The company lists several scenarios it found plausible during its analysis of this fast-rising protocol.
Some examples:

• "Encryption keys can be extracted from devices by reverse engineering the firmware of devices that ship with a LoRaWAN module."
• "Many devices come with a tag displaying a QR code and/or text with the device's identifier, security keys, or more."

"Cisco is urging customers to update its Firepower Management Center software," ZDNet reported Thursday, "after users informed it of a critical bug that attackers could exploit over the internet." Like many Cisco bugs, the flaw was found in the web-based management interface of its software. The bug has a severity rating of 9.8 out of a possible 10 and means admins should patch sooner rather than later.

The vulnerability is caused by a glitch in the way Cisco's software handles Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) authentication responses from an external authentication server. Remote attackers could exploit the flaw by sending specially crafted HTTP requests to the device. Devices are vulnerable if they've been configured to authenticate users of the web interface through an external LDAP server...

How customers should remediate the issue will depend on which release of Firepower Management Center (FMC) they're running. There is no workaround, but hotfix patches are available for several new releases of FMC, and maintenance releases that address the flaw are scheduled for later this year. "Customers may install a fix either by upgrading to a fixed release or by installing a hotfix patch," Cisco notes...

Cisco also disclosed seven high-severity flaws and 19 medium-severity security issues.

This FMC critical flaw follows updates made available earlier this month for three critical flaws affecting Cisco's Data Center Network Manager software. The researcher who reported the flaw has released proof-of-concept exploit code, but Cisco says it is not aware of any malicious use of the flaws.

The New York Times reports on "Ring Neighbors," a local social networking service launched by Amazon in 2018 where users "share videos of delivery people carelessly throwing packages, or failing to wait for an answer at the door; others share footage of mail people navigating treacherous ice, or merely waving at the camera." On a U.S. Postal Service forum, a mail carrier asked: "Anyone else feel kind of creeped out that people are recording and watching you, up close, deliver mail to their house or is it just me...?" The company also selects videos from its users to be shared on Ring TV, a video portal run by the company, under categories such as "Crime Prevention," "Suspicious Activity" and "Family & Friends." The videos are, essentially, free ads: The terrifying ones might convince viewers to buy cameras of their own; funny or sweet ones, at a minimum, condition viewers to understand front-door surveillance as normal, or even fun...

Ring videos also provide a constant stream of news and news-like material for media outlets. The headlines that accompany those videos portray an America both macabre and surreal: "Screams for Help Caught on Ring Camera," in Sacramento; "Man pleads for help on doorbell camera after being carjacked, shot in Arizona," in Phoenix; "WOMAN CAUGHT ON MEDFORD DOORBELL CAMERA WITH STOLEN GUN," in Oregon; "Alien abduction' caught on doorbell cam," in Porter, Tex. (it was a glitch); "Doorbell camera captures Wichita boy's plea for help after getting lost." And then there are videos like one shared by Rob Fox, in McDonough, Ga., in which his dog, locked out of the house, learns to use his doorbell. Mr. Fox posted the video to Facebook and then Reddit, from which the story drew news coverage. Ring contacted him, too, he said, to ask whether the company could use the footage in marketing materials.

Elsewhere, the footage is billed as entertainment. In early December, "America's Funniest Home Videos," which has been aggregating viewer videos since the 1980s, released a best-of compilation: "Funny Doorbell Camera Fails." It is composed almost entirely of people falling down...

Home surveillance means you're never quite home, but you're never completely away from home, either.
Footage from one Florida camera showed a bearded man who "licks the doorbell repeatedly. Then he stands back and stares," according to the Times.

And they also report that Ring cameras are now also being stolen, "leaving their owners with a final few seconds of footage — a hand, a face, a mask — before losing their connections."

Peter Kirstein, a British computer scientist who was widely recognized as the father of the European internet, died on Wednesday at the age of 86. According to his daughter Sara Lynn Black, the cause was a brain tumor. The New York Times reports: Professor Kirstein fashioned his pivotal role in computer networking the old-fashioned way: through human connections. In 1982, his collegial ties to American scientists working in the nascent field of computer networks led him to adopt their standards in his own London research lab. Those standards were called Transmission Control Protocol and Internet Protocol, or TCP/IP, which enable different computer networks to share information. Professor Kirstein embraced TCP/IP despite competing protocols being put forward at the time by international standards groups.

"Peter was the internet's great champion in Europe," said Vinton G. Cerf, an American internet pioneer who was a developer of TCP/IP and a colleague and friend of Professor Kirstein's. "With skill and finesse, he resisted enormous pressure to adopt alternatives." Professor Kirstein was so avid a fan of computer networking that he gave Queen Elizabeth II her own email address, HME2. In 1976, while christening a telecommunications research center in Malvern, England, the queen became one of the first heads of state to send an email.

China said Friday its Beidou Navigation Satellite System that emulates the U.S. Global Positioning System will be competed with the launch of its final two satellites in the first half of next year. From a report: Project director Ran Chengqi told reporters that the core of the positioning system was completed this month with the launch additional satellites bringing its total constellation to 24. That was up from 19 the year before, making it one of rising space power China's most complex projects. Ran described the system at a rare news conference as having "high performance indicators, new technology systems, high localization, mass production networking and a wide range of users." "Before June 2020, we plan to launch two more satellites into geostationary orbit and the Beidou-3 system will be fully completed," Ran said.

orange shares a report: The organization responsible for allocating internet addresses across Africa has yet again become embroiled in scandal, this time over long-standing claims of corruption. A founding employee of Afrinic resigned soon after allegations emerged that millions of its valuable public-facing IPv4 addresses had been stolen and sold or leased to others through companies he controlled. Soon after, Afrinic's external auditor PwC informed the organization it, too, was resigning from its role.

In both cases, Afrinic's board has attempted to place itself above the issue by ordering an investigation and sending a letter to PwC asking for an explanation. But internet insiders say the rot goes far deeper, and note that warnings of unusual activity at Afrinic, including misdirected organizational funds, have long gone unanswered by a series of CEOs and boards, despite a series of "investigations." In an explosive article earlier this month, the lease and sale of allegedly stolen blocks of IP addresses going back years was traced directly to the organization's second employee, Ernest Byaruhanga, Afrinic's policy coordinator.

Slashdot reader alaskana98 writes: In the February 2001 issue of Maximum PC, technical editor Will Smith described in his column what he would like to see in the "perfect set-top box". At a time when arguably the best 'PVR' experience was being provided by the first iterations of the Tivo (with no HDTV or LAN connectivity), Will's description of what a set-top box could and should be comes eerily close to what we now know as the Apple TV and other 'set-top' boxes such as Roku and Amazon Firestick...

To be fair, not every feature on his list would come to pass. For example, he envisioned this device as essentially serving as the main "broadband router of a household, sharing your Internet connection with any networkable device in your house". Also, he envisions the media box as providing a "robust web experience" for the whole family, something that today's set-top boxes aren't especially good at (anyone remember WebTV?).

Still, in wanting an "elusive magical box" that "will set on top of our HDTV's and do everything our computers, game consoles, and VCRs do, only better", he was prescient in his descriptions of what would eventually materialize as the Apple TV and other like-minded set-top boxes, impressive for a denizen of the year 2001.
Are you impressed with Smith's predictive ability? Here's what he wrote...

• On networking: "My set-top box will have to have a high-speed broadband connection...sharing your Internet connection with any networkable device in your house via standard Ethernet, Wi-Fi compatible wireless Ethernet, Bluetooth".

• On gaming: "[W]ill include state-of-the-art 3D acceleration and gaming support" and "will include Bluetooth-style wireless connections for all your controllers".

• On media playback: "[W]ill also serve as a media store, handing the duties of both my high-def personal video recorder (HD-PVR) and digital audio jukebox".

• On device collaboration: "integrating the ability to automatically synchronize with Bluetooth-enabled" devices. [Though the original article says "PDAs"]

An anonymous reader writes: Cisco on Wednesday outlined new details behind its strategy to build next-generation internet technology. As a set up for what it dubs its 'Internet for the Future' strategy, the networking giant announced a multi-year plan for building and investing in 5G internet technology, including silicon, optics and software. On the silicon side, Cisco announced Silicon One, a new switching and routing applications specific integrated circuit (ASIC) for the 5G internet era. The programmable networking chip is designed to provide significant improvements to performance, bandwidth, power efficiency, scalability and flexibility, according to Cisco. Cisco said the first first generation of the chip, Q100, surpassed the 10 Tbps routing milestone for network bandwidth.

In addition to the silicon, Cisco also outlined its focus on the optics space. As port rates increase from 100G to 400G, optics become a larger portion of the cost to build and operate internet infrastructure. To account for that, Cisco said its qualification program tests its optics and non-Cisco optics to comply with industry standards, and invests organically to make sure that its router and switch ports rates continue to increase. Cisco also announced plans to offer flexible consumption models for Silicon One that were first established with its optics portfolio, followed by the disaggregation of the Cisco IOS XR7 software. The Silicon One architecture will integrate into its new 8000 series carrier class routers, which is powered by Cisco's new IOS XR7 operating system. The OS will provide faster download speeds and security improvements, Cisco said.

According to the report, Cisco is currently working with Comcast and NTT Communications on ongoing deployments and trials of the 8000 series.

Facebook said it would not weaken end-to-end encryption across its messaging apps, despite pressure from world governments, in a letter to US Attorney General Bill Barr and UK and Australian leaders. From a report: The letter, sent Monday, came in response to an October open letter from Barr, UK Home Secretary Priti Patel, Australian Minister for Home Affairs Peter Dutton, and then-acting US homeland security secretary Kevin McAleenan, which raised concerns that Facebook's continued implementation of end-to-end encryption on its WhatsApp and Messenger apps would prevent law enforcement agencies from finding illegal activity such as child sexual exploitation, terrorism, and election meddling. The US, UK, and Australian governments asked the social networking company to design a backdoor in its encryption protocols, or a separate way for law enforcement to gain access to user content. "It is simply impossible to create such a backdoor for one purpose and not expect others to try and open it," wrote WhatsApp head Will Cathcart and Messenger head Stan Chudnovsky in Facebook's response. "People's private messages would be less secure and the real winners would be anyone seeking to take advantage of that weakened security. That is not something we are prepared to do."

The fastest-growing data center market segment returned to growth mode in the third quarter of 2019, with global hyperscale capex spending exceeding $31 billion, up 8 percent year over year. From a report: The $31 billion is the second-highest spending quarter in history in terms of the amount hyperscale operators -- led by Amazon, Apple, Google, Facebook and Microsoft -- are spending on building, expanding and equipping data centers, according to IT research and market firm Synergy Research Group. "Hyperscale companies are in growth mode and revenue growth rates remain in strong double-digit territory, with aggregated third quarter revenues up 14 percent over 2018," said John Dinsdale, a chief analyst at Synergy Research Group. "Amazon, Google, Facebook and Alibaba are all growing much more rapidly than that. These expanding companies are highly reliant on bigger and better data center operations, which will drive continued growth in capex levels." Hyperscale data centers are giant facilities containing tens of thousands of servers and other IT products such as storage, networking and UPS hardware.

Sam Klein: Ethos Capital, a new commercial investment firm founded in the past few months in Boston, has 2 staff and only one major investment: a deal to acquire the 501c3 non-profit that currently runs the .org domain (valued at a few $B), for an undisclosed sum. This was initiated immediately after ICANN decided in May, over almost universal opposition, to remove the price cap on .org registrations with no meaningful price protections for existing or future registrants. This seems to violate a range of ethical, ICANN, ISOC, and non-profit guidelines. It is certainly the privatisation of a not-for-profit monopoly into a for-profit one, which will benefit ISOC and a few individuals by inconveniencing millions of others. I have questions:


1. Do affected parties have recourse?
2. Other than polite letters, is anything being done? (Maybe: Official complaints have been filed, but don't expect results.)
3. Georgia Tech's Internet Governance Project has pointed ideas for ICANN. (You can .. join ISOC as a member to take part in future decisions.)
4. Has anyone currently at ICANN + ISOC made substantive comment? (Yes: Richard Barnes, ISOC trustee and netizen, explains why he voted to sell .org.) Vint Cerf said: 'Hard to imagine $60/year would be a deal breaker for even small non-profits.')
5. How did we reach the point of Net pioneers embracing 95% profit margins? Tim Berners-Lee adds, "I'm very concerned about the sale of .org to a private company. If the Public Interest Registry ends up not being required to act in the public interest, it would be a travesty. We need an urgent explanation."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: In April of this year, Intel cancelled its 5G-modem building plans. This week, it's announcing that they're back on the table -- but this time, with system-on-chip vendor MediaTek building the hardware. The partnership has Intel setting the 5G specifications, MediaTek developing the modem to match, and Intel optimizing and validating it afterwards. Intel will also lend its marketing and integration muscle to convince OEMs to use the new hardware and help them make sure it works well in final products. This also means Intel will be writing operating-system-level drivers for the modems.

The partnership looks like a sensible one for both parties: Intel has been struggling to get its own 10nm hardware out the door on time, so getting this hardware design task off its plate may relieve some pressure there, while still keeping the company in an emerging market. MediaTek, on the other hand, can definitely benefit from Intel's software development expertise and deep integration with OEM vendors in the PC space. Specifically, the companies will be adapting MediaTek's existing Helio M70 5G modem for use in PC hardware. The M70 modem is already being built into MediaTek's Dimensity family of ARM System-on-Chip (SoC) designs; the new partnership gives MediaTek a whole new platform to market to and gives Intel a foot back into the door in 5G. It also may represent a way for Intel to push back against ARM-based Windows hardware like Samsung's Galaxy Book S, built on Qualcomm's Snapdragon 8cx platform. We can expect to see the resulting hardware shipping some time in 2021, the report adds.

Kelerei writes: The RIPE NCC, the regional internet registry for Europe, West Asia, and the former USSR, has allocated the final /22 remaining in their address pool, and has stated that they have now run out of IPv4 addresses. RIPE will continue to recover IPv4 addresses from organisations that go out of business, close, or that return them due to lack of need, but expects these small amounts of recovered IPv4 addresses to fall well short of demand: RIPE will now only assign IPv4 addresses to entities that have never received any IPv4 allocation in the past, and even then will assign no more than a /24. RIPE puts out a call to action for IPv6 migration:

Taiwan's MediaTek has announced a partnership with U.S. chipmaking giant Intel to supply future Intel-powered PCs with fifth-generation networking modems from the start of 2021. From a report: The agreement marks a small step toward a big change in the way computing is done, as 5G promises to revolutionize both the speed and availability of cellular networks, creating dense coverage with bandwidth comparable to current Wi-Fi standards and beyond. Mobile computers stand to benefit greatly from this upgrade, and U.S. PC vendors Dell and HP have both been named by MediaTek among the likely first customers for the 5G-enabled, Intel-powered laptops that are to come. In July, Intel agreed to sell its cellular modem business to Apple for $1 billion, which the Cupertino, California company will use to speed up and improve design efforts around a 5G chip for its 2020 iPhones.

Google Maps will soon begin testing a new feature that's more common to social networks like Facebook, rather than a maps app: the ability to find and follow other users. From a report: In Google Maps' case, it's specifically rolling out the ability to follow top "Local Guides" -- its community members who actively review business and share to Google Maps photos and other knowledge as part of a larger rewards program. The Local Guides program launched in 2015 as a way to take on Yelp Elites by allowing the most active Maps contributors to earn status as a tastemaker of sorts for their own hometown. Guides write more in-depth business reviews and post photos in order to help other Google Maps users learn about the area.

In exchange, they receive a variety of perks, like early access to new features, exclusive local meetups, free access to Google services, discounts and coupons and more. Now, Google says, it's kicking off a pilot program that will allow Google Maps users in select markets to follow top Local Guides by clicking a new "Follow" button on these users' profile pages. By doing so, the Guides' recommendations will be surfaced for you when you're using Google Maps. In a new section on the "For You" tab in the app, you'll find the area recommendations from the Local Guides. Google is piloting the program in Bangkok, Delhi, London, Mexico City, New York, Osaka, San Francisco, Sao Paulo and Tokyo, for the time being. Presumably, if all goes well, it would expand to more markets. Further reading: Google Maps Has Introduced So Many New Features and Design Changes in Recent Months That Getting Directions On It is Becoming an Increasingly Challenging Task; and Ten Years of Google Maps, From Slashdot to Ground Truth (2015).