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An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: In research that will ensure the sitcoms of the future are as painful as those broadcast today, scientists have found that canned laughter makes bad jokes seem funnier. The impact of overlaid laughter emerged from a study with autistic and "neurotypical" people, all of whom agreed to endure 40 jokes that were read aloud with recorded laughter following the punchline. All of the volunteers found the jokes funnier when they were accompanied by the sound of others laughing, with the biggest gains produced by recordings of spontaneous laughter rather than more deliberate and controlled laughing, the study found. For the study, PhD student Qing Cai and others trawled the internet for what they describe as "weak" jokes and compiled a list for the comedian Ben van der Velde to read out to those taking part in the study. To get a baseline score for how funny the jokes were, each was assessed without any backing laughter by 20 students who rated them on a scale from one (not funny) to seven (hilarious). The scores ranged from 1.5 to 3.75. Armed with the list and their baseline funny ratings, the scientists asked 72 adults, of whom 24 had an autism diagnosis, to rate the jokes on the same seven-point scale. This time, the jokes were told with either posed or spontaneous canned laughter following the punchline. Writing in the journal Current Biology, the researchers described how any kind of canned laughter had boosted the average scores the jokes had received. Both neurotypical and autistic people reacted more to spontaneous laughter than controlled laughter. And while canned laughter appeared to improve some jokes more than others, controlled laughter raised ratings by an average of about 10%, compared with 15% to 20% for spontaneous laughter.

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Hackers have reportedly stolen about 7.5 terabytes of data from a major Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) contractor, thus exposing the secret projects the agency was working on to de-anonymize Tor browsing, scrape data from social media, and cut off Russia's internet from the rest of the world. Fossbytes reports: Russia's FSB is the successor agency to the infamous KGB and is similar to the FBI and MI5; a major part of their work includes electronic surveillance in the country and overseas as well. The attack on FSB took place on July 13 when a hacking group that goes by the name 0v1ru$ breached SyTech, a major FSB contractor that works on several internet projects. The hackers defaced SyTech's homepage and left a smiling Yoba Face and other pictures to indicate the breach. 0v1ru$ passed on the stolen data to the larger hacking group Digital Revolution, which in turn shared the files with various media outlets and posted on Twitter. BBC Russia outlines the project data that was stolen and lists the major ones, including Nautilus, a project to scrap data on social media platforms; Nautilus-S, a project to de-anonymize Tor users by creating exit nodes that are controlled by the Russian government; and Nadezhda, a project attempting to create a "sovereign internet" that is isolated from the rest of the internet.

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ESET unveils new version of File Security for Linux  Help Net Security

ESET, a global leader in cybersecurity, has launched Version 7.0 of their ESET File Security for Linux product. ESET File Security for Linux provides advanced ...

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A design flaw in Facebook's Messenger Kids app allowed children to enter group chats with unapproved strangers. "For the past week, Facebook has been quietly closing down those group chats and alerting users, but has not made any public statements disclosing the issue," reports The Verge. The alert reads as follows: "Hi [PARENT], We found a technical error that allowed [CHILD]'s friend [FRIEND] to create a group chat with [CHILD] and one or more of [FRIEND]'s parent-approved friends. We want you to know that we've turned off this group chat and are making sure that group chats like this won't be allowed in the future. If you have questions about Messenger Kids and online safety, please visit our Help Center and Messenger Kids parental controls. We'd also appreciate your feedback." From the report: The bug arose from the way Messenger Kids' unique permissions were applied in group chats. In a standard one-on-one chat, children can only initiate conversations with users who have been approved by the child's parents. But those permissions became more complex when applied to a group chat because of the multiple users involved. Whoever launched the group could invite any user who was authorized to chat with them, even if that user wasn't authorized to chat with the other children in the group. As a result, thousands of children were left in chats with unauthorized users, a violation of the core promise of Messenger Kids. It's unclear how long the bug was present in the app, which launched with group features in December 2017.

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Dropbox restores Linux support in new client beta  iTnews

Dropbox has walked back its November 2018 decision to stop working with filesystems popular among Linux users. That decision saw the sync 'n' share giant ...

Former Siemens contractor David Tinley faces up to 10 years in prison, a fine of $250,000, or both, for planting logic bombs inside spreadsheets he created for the company. The logic bomb would crash spreadsheets after a certain date, resulting in Siemens hiring the contractor to fix the latest bugs. ZDNet reports: According to court documents, Tinley provided software services for Siemens' Monroeville, PA offices for nearly ten years. Among the work he was asked to perform was the creation of spreadsheets that the company was using to manage equipment orders. The spreadshees included custom scripts that would update the content of the file based on current orders stored in other, remote documents, allowing the company to automate inventory and order management. But while Tinley's files worked for years, they started malfunctioning around 2014. According to court documents, Tinley planted so-called "logic bombs" that would trigger after a certain date, and crash the files. Every time the scripts would crash, Siemens would call Tinley, who'd fix the files for a fee. The scheme lasted for two years, until May 2016, when Tinley's trickery was unraveled by Siemens employees. According to a report from Law360, the scheme fell apart when Tinley was out of town, and had to hand over an administrative password for the spreadsheets to Siemens' IT staff, so they could fix the buggy scripts and fill in an urgent order. Siemens IT employees found the logic bomb, and it all went downhill from there. Tinley was charged this May, and pled guilty last week, on July 19. The contractor's sentencing hearing is scheduled for November 8.

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Quick Change in CEO's at SUSE Linux  ITPro Today

In two weeks, a new chief executive officer will be taking the reins at SUSE, the Germany-based software company best known for its SUSE Linux Enterprise line ...

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: When you order food through an app and tip the worker who delivers it, you'd be forgiven for thinking that the money you give goes directly to that person. But in reality, some delivery apps use your tip to make up the worker's base pay -- essentially stealing the money you're trying to give someone to maximize their profits. This isn't a new practice by any means, but a recent report from The New York Times highlights how DoorDash, the most popular food delivery app in the U.S., enforces it. Here's Times reporter Andy Newman: "DoorDash offers a guaranteed minimum for each job. For my first order, the guarantee was $6.85 and the customer, a woman in Boerum Hill who answered the door in a colorful bathrobe, tipped $3 via the app. But I still received only $6.85. Here's how it works: If the woman in the bathrobe had tipped zero, DoorDash would have paid me the whole $6.85. Because she tipped $3, DoorDash kicked in only $3.85. She was saving DoorDash $3, not tipping me." "DoorDash's policy is the equivalent of a 'tipped wage,' a common practice in America where employers pay workers less than the minimum wage and rely on tips to make up the payments they owe," the report adds. "Apps like DoorDash are essentially just extending established bad labor practices into the world of tech." Amazon Flex also uses tips to make up pay, even after being heavily criticized for it. Instacart was the same way, but it scrapped the policy and promised to retroactively compensate workers following outcry. Postmades, Grubhub, Seamless, and Uber Eats all confirmed to The Verge that customer tips are not used to subsidize workers' pay.

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Melissa Di Donato, SAP's former COO, has been named SUSE's new CEO. ZDNet reports: London-based Di Donato is a well-known technology leader. In particular, she has a proven track record in sales and business operations. Besides being SAP's COO, she was also the company's chief revenue officer. In SAP's latest quarter, SAP saw an increase of 11% year-over-year revenues. Much of that came from the cloud -- where SAP saw 40% year-over-year growth. SAP's cloud is built on SUSE's Linux servers and OpenStack cloud. Di Donato succeeds Nils Brauckmann. While officially Brauckmann is retiring, there seems to be more to the story. On LinkedIn, Brauckmann wrote: "I care very deeply for the SUSE business and its employees, and this difficult decision is based entirely on personal reasons. I am pleased to be handing over the reins to such a talented and accomplished leader as Melissa Di Donato." In his SUSE statement, Brauckman added: "She is a proven and dynamic change agent, and many of her achievements have occurred in subscription businesses that exist in high-growth cloud environments." In April, then-CEO Nils Brauchmann said his company would soon be the largest independent Linux company. This comes after Brauckmann delivered eight years of continuous expansion during his tenure, including record-breaking revenues in FY18, reports ZDNet. "Under Di Donato's leadership, SUSE will continue to focus on growth and expansion. What that means is she's expected to advance SUSE's core business and emerging technologies, both organically and through add-on acquisitions."

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One Mix 1S Yoga mini laptop Linux test  Liliputing

The One Mix 1S Yoga mini laptop ships with Windows 10… but like most modern PCs you can also a different operating system on it. And like most mini laptops ...

Google Announces Spinnaker For Google Cloud Platform | Linux.com | The source for Linux information  Linux.com

Google has announced Spinnaker for Google Cloud Platform, a *service* that brings the popul.

According to The Wall Street Journal, Apple is in advanced talks to buy Intel's smartphone-modem chip business (Warning: source paywalled; alternative source), "a move that would jump-start the iPhone maker's push to take control of developing the critical components powering its devices." From the report: A deal, covering a portfolio of patents and staff valued at $1 billion or more, could be reached in the next week, the people said -- assuming the talks don't fall apart. Though the purchase price is a rounding error for companies valued in the hundreds of billions of dollars, the transaction would be important strategically and financially. It would give Apple access to engineering work and talent behind Intel's yearslong push to develop modem chips for the crucial next generation of wireless technology known as 5G, potentially saving years of development work. For Intel's part, a deal would allow the company to shed a business that had been weighing on its bottom line: The smartphone operation had been losing about $1 billion annually, a person familiar with its performance has said, and has generally failed to live up to expectations. Though it would exit the smartphone business, Intel plans to continue to work on 5G technology for other connected devices. Earlier this year, it was reported that Apple began discussing plans to acquire parts of Intel's smartphone modem chip business last summer, around the time former Intel Chief Executive Brian Krzanich resigned. "Mr. Krzanich championed the modem business and touted 5G technology as a big future revenue stream," reports The Wall Street Journal. "When Bob Swan was named to that job in January, analysts said the odds of a deal rose because his focus on cleaning up Intel would require addressing the losses in the modem business."

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