A major Windows bug — and Microsoft isn’t happy

Yesterday, Monday, Google’s Threat Analysis group disclosed a critical vulnerability in Windows in a public post on the company’s security blog. The bug itself is very specific — allowing attackers to escape from security sandboxes through a flaw in the win32k system — but it’s serious enough to be categorized as critical, and according to Google, it’s being actively exploited. As a result, Google went public just 10 days after reporting the bug to Microsoft, before a patch could be coded and deployed. The result is that, while Google has already deployed a fix to protect Chrome users, Windows itself is still vulnerable — and now, everybody knows it.

Google’s disclosure provides only a general description of the bug, giving users enough information to recognize a possible attack without making it too easy for criminals to replicate. Exploiting the bug also depends on a separate exploit in Adobe Flash, for which the company has also released a patch. Still, simply knowing that the bug exists will likely spur a lot of criminals to look for viable ways to exploit it against computers that have yet to update Flash.

Samsung Galaxy S5 Fingerprint feature handson

Samsung didn't shed many details about the fingerprint scanner on its new Galaxy S5 smartphone, but here is a detail setup and how it works.
First, the basics. Samsung's sensor is on the bottom portion of the screen, not integrated into the home button as originally thought. To unlock the phone with your finger, you swipe along the glowing path about half an inch from the bottom of the phone, going down and over the home button.
Setup took just a few minutes, after swiping your finger eight times along the sensitive portion of the screen to fully read yourprint. You're able to register only three profiles, for your own fingers or for someone else's.
The swiping area seems like it's pretty limited to a narrow, vertical strip. That means your finger has to be more or less vertical to succeed, which also means that you will probably need to hold the Galaxy S5 with one hand while unlocking it with the other. You may chose your index finger.
Scanning for prints worked pretty well, but you may experience some misfires if your finger wasn't correctly aligned or if you moved too quickly. If you do error out, you can also access the phone through a 4-digit backup PIN.
Overall, I like Samsung's approach to biometric unlocking, and it's something I'd use, especially if I were going to buy products through PayPal's fingerprint-scanning verification program. Check out the gallery below.

How to reclaim your email when LinkedIn’s Intro shuts down

LinkedIn’s attempt to wedge itself into iPhone users’ emails is being “shut down”—a euphemism for killed—as part of the professional network’s effort to focus “on fewer things.” But LinkedIn’s Deep Nishar said the company is still focused on email, so maybe its Intro product is going away because it was a little creepy. 

Intro launched in October as a way for LinkedIn to go beyond its own walls and be where you spend all your time: your email inbox. Intro placed a card with LinkedIn profile information in every email you received in the iOS Mail app, so if a stranger reached out to you by email, you could see their professional information and add them to your LinkedIn network.


Sounds like an easy way to verify if a stranger’s email is worth responding to, right? Well, security experts took LinkedIn to task for the tech behind Intro—LinkedIn acted as a middleman between you and the sender, rerouting emails to its own server to place the Intro card inside each message.
LinkedIn defended Intro, claiming that all information was fully encrypted and deleted from LinkedIn’s servers immediately. The network also never stored unencrypted email usernames or passwords or read the content of messages that passed between users.
It’s unclear if the controversy influenced LinkedIn’s decision to drop Intro, but Nishar said LinkedIn will “continue to look for ways to bring this kind of functionality to our members through existing partnerships.” It’s notable that Rapportive, a similar LinkedIn tool for Gmail users, was spared the wood-chipper.
If you installed Intro, there’s some bad news: Not only is the tool going away, but you have to uninstall it from your iPhone settings or your email will just stop working. As in, you won’t be able to send or receive emails at all. Removing Intro and restoring your old settings requires a little bit of effort. To uninstall: Settings > General > Profiles > Tap to remove all profiles that start with “Intro.”
Then you have to restore your regular account. Under Settings, tap Mail, then tap the account you want to restore and switch it back on. Remember, you have until March 7 to get your email situation squared away.

BlueStack App Player brings Android to the Desktop

BlueStacks App Player lets you run apps from your phone fast and fullscreen on Windows and Mac.

Over 5 million people around the world use top apps like Angry Birds Space, Kik Messenger, Where's My Water and more on their laptops with BlueStacks. It took 10 engineers two years to build the complex "LayerCake" technology that enables this to happen – but you get to experience it free while in beta. You can download App Player now at BlueStacks.com

If you’re not familiar with BlueStacks, the software basically allows you to run Android apps on AMD-powered desktops running Windows 7 or Windows 8.

FaceBook Home - Coming April 12

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg today unveiled a new way to integrate its network on Android devices. This tool called Facebook Home, involves a rethinking of how Facebook exists on Android phones, Zuckerberg said, putting people first instead of apps.

"You're going to be able to turn your Android phone into a great social device," Mark Zuckerberg said at the unveiling. "Our phones today are designed around apps, not people. We want to flip that around."

Facebook Home will put updates from the social network right on the home screen via a feature called Cover Feed similar to HTC One's live Flipboard-like interface. Content from Facebook takes up the entire screen, with no navigation or "chrome" whatsoever. Apps are still there, accessed through a launcher that is accessible by swiping up.

Another novel feature is Chatheads, a way to

Galaxy S4 vrs HTC One

Running over the entire spec sheet of each phone will take too long - both droids are impressively armed - so instead we'll just list the differences. Here's how one is better than the other and vice versa.

Samsung Galaxy S4 over HTC One

• Bigger screen; works with gloves and air gestures
• Higher resolution camera - 13MP vs. 4MP
• Newer Android version - 4.2.2 vs. 4.1.2
• Multi-window multitasking
• Higher clock speed chipset
• Expandable storage
• User-replaceable battery of higher capacity
• Additional sensors (barometer, thermometer, hygroscope)
• Exclusive software features
• Smaller, thinner, lighter

HTC One over Samsung Galaxy S4

• Brilliant-looking aluminum unibody
• Optical Image Stabilization, image sensor with 2µm pixel size
• HTC Zoe, BlinkFeed
• Front mounted stereo speakers, Beats Audio
• FM Radio

Looking at the two lists above, you'd think the Samsung Galaxy S4 has the upper hand. It's not that simple - not all bullet points have the same weight. For example, we'll take the sleek aluminum unibody over a hygroscope any day of the week. And the megapixel debate for the two cameras will probably take a huge chunk of this article to resolve.

Samsung Galaxy S4 - A quick preview

Number 4 was unveiled few days ago to set a new kind of fever brewing, after briefly easing some of the pre-announcement tension. Carriers are tripping over themselves to secure deals, while customers have been forming mile-long virtual queues at stores already taking preorders. We were impressed at the announcement event, and the S4 looks quite comfortable with the weight of expectations.

Here are some images:

Samsung Galaxy S4 Features at a glance:

• General: Optional 2G/3G/LTE connectivity
• Form factor: Touchscreen bar phone
• Dimensions: 136.6 x 69.8 x 7.9mm, 130 g
• Display: 4.99" 16M-color Super AMOLED HD capacitive touchscreen with a resolution of 1920 x 1080 pixels (441ppi)
• Chipset: Exynos 5410 Octa / Snapdragon 600
• CPU: 1.6 GHz Quad-core ARM Cortex-A15 and 1.2 GHz quad-core ARM Cortex-A7 / 1.9GHz Krait 300
• GPU: PowerVR SGX 544MP3 / Adreno 320
• RAM: 2GB
• OS: Android 4.2.2 (Jelly Bean)

5 stylish iPad cases for smart people

Do you always have trouble with choosing the best case for your iPad. If you are an iPad user who still finds the need for pen and notepad on the go, then we have the right picks for you. This is a collection of modern iPad cases enhances with old-fashioned paper. Let us know if this appeals to you in the comments.

1. Booqpad

In a range of colors each Booqpad ships with a 50-sheet A5 notepad. There is also a holder for a pen or stylus and business card slots. The Booqpad ranges from $49.95. The design is a perfect mix of past

Find your house in High-Res Satelight and 45 degree Aerial Imagery

Google Maps gets more awesome by the day. Earlier this week, the service started rolling out stunning underwater imagery- if you will, a seaview mode. Now Google took to the Google Maps blog to announces the inclusion of more high resolution images including a major build-out of 45-degree images.

This update brings a lot of new data to the mapping service. Google Maps and Earth now features 17 cities and 112 countries and regions with high-resolution aerial and satellite imagery. In addition, 51 cities can now be viewed in a 45-degree mode including 37 cities in the US and 14 abroad (full list below). It’s never been easier to burn a little time and escape from your cubical to a far away land.
Google constantly rolls out updates to its services but it seems this week has featured more news than usual.

Google Earth and Maps update images of cities with high-res and 45 degree aerial imagery

Google have refreshed the high resolution aerial and satellite imagery for many places around the world, and released some new 45 degree imagery as well.

 

Below is the full list of places with new or updated imagery from Google. Have fun exploring the new sites!
Cities with new high resolution 45° imagery:
United States: Ames, IA; Anderson, IN; Billings, MT; Bloomington, IL; Carmel Valley, CA; Cedar Rapids, IA; Coeur d’Alene, ID; Corvallis, OR; Danville, IL; Dayton, OH; Detroit, MI; Dubuque, IA; Elizabethtown, KY; Enid, OK; Florence, SC; Grand Forks, ND; Great Falls, MT; Gulfport, MS; Hartford, CT; Kankakee, IL; Kenosha, WI; Lafayette, IN; Lancaster, CA; Lansing, MI; Lewiston, ID; Los Banos, CA; Madison, WI; Medford, OR; Michigan City, IN; Olympia, WA; Pocatello, ID; Sheboygan, WI; Sioux City, IA; Sioux Falls, SD; South Bend, IN; Terre Haute, IN; Utica, NY.

International:
Angers, France; Clermont-Ferrand, France;

How to remove "Ad not by this site" malware

If you’re seeing ads on Wikipedia, your computer is probably infected with malware.
Once in a while you are seeing a lot more ads on most websites you visit, and the ads are what can be defined as not “family-friendly”. If you see “ads not by this site” below the ads in small gray font, then this post can help you fix it. I’m not sure if it is a virus or a spyware, but its just something you don’t want. This same issue show more ads on Facebook and it displays “ads not by Facebook”. It’s pretty simple to fix this.

The usual advice you receive on the web is to install Ad Blocker Plus

iPhone 5 : Samsung Galaxy SIII : Nokia Lumia 920 - How they stand back to back

Apple just announced its latest flagship smartphone and everyone is already wondering how it will fare against its high-profile competitors. The best-selling Galaxy S III is the leader of the droid gang, while the newly introduced Nokia Lumia 920 is seemingly the best that the WP8 camp will be able to offer.

Apple certainly managed to squeeze quite a lot of cool hardware under the hood of the super slim iPhone 5, but its competitors haven’t stood idle either. So is the iPhone 5 good enough to face those two behemoths in a fierce specs battle and come out victorious? Let's find out.

iPhone 5 : the biggest thing to happen to iPhone since iPhone

The Biggest Thing

The new YouTube App for iPhone and iPod touch

This is for the diehard YouTube fans out there who can’t get enough YouTube on their mobile devices. I’ve got some great news: starting tuesday, September 11, you can download the official YouTube app for iPhone and iPod touch from the App Store, bringing you more of the videos you love and more ways to share them with the people you care about.

YouTube engineers came up with this new app to give our iPhone and iPod touch users the best mobile experience on YouTube. Here’s what you’ll find:

Tens of thousands more videos: Watch official music videos like Taylor’s latest hit

Sell your iPhone now, and get iPhone 5

Let’s straighten it out first: no one knows anything for sure about the next iPhone, not even its name, though iPhone 5 is sure a good bet but it could be anything. There have been no official announcements from Apple. The best launch date report we have, September 12, is based on some (very good) guesswork.

However, here are some insights into the expected iPhone 5

Apple supplier has started manufacturing new handset

Sources in Apple's supply chain leak details

More leaks confirm that it WILL have a different connector

Device expected to launch in October

Could have slimmer screen with sensors built into glass