U.S. cloud services provide Box is exploring a sale amid pressure from hedge fund Starboard Value over its stock performance, Reuters citing people familiar with the matter. From the report: Redwood City, California-based Box has discussed a potential deal with interested buyers, including other companies and private equity firms, the sources said, cautioning that no sale of the company is certain. Reuters reported last month that Starboard was preparing to launch a board challenge against Box unless it took steps to boost value for shareholders. It has privately expressed disappointment that the company has failed to capitalize on the work-from-home trend during the COVID-19 pandemic, as many of its cloud computing peers have done.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Newshub: Victoria University of Wellington has accidentally deleted all files stored on its desktop computers affecting a "significant" number of staff members -- as well as some students. A spokesperson for the University confirmed to Newshub on Thursday that an unexpected issue wiped all files saved on the desktops. "The University's Digital Solutions team continues to work with all affected staff and students to recover access to files and in many cases the issues have been resolved," they said. "There are however, some affected staff and students who have not been able to recover access to files."

The aim of the data wipe was to clear inactive users' data by getting rid of profiles of students who no longer studied, reports student magazine Critic. Critic spoke to one Masters student who had heard of PHD students losing an entire year's worth of data. The university spokesperson said they apologized for the inconvenience caused and is investigating the issue to ensure it doesn't happen again.

"Three recently unearthed vulnerabilities in the Linux kernel, located in the iSCSI module used for accessing shared data storage facilities, could allow root privileges to anyone with a user account," reports SC Media: "If you already had execution on a box, either because you have a user account on the machine, or you've compromised some service that doesn't have repaired permissions, you can do whatever you want basically," said Adam Nichols, principal of the Software Security practice at GRIMM. While the vulnerabilities "are in code that is not remotely accessible, so this isn't like a remote exploit," said Nichols, they are still troublesome. They take "any existing threat that might be there. It just makes it that much worse," he explained. "And if you have users on the system that you don't really trust with root access it, it breaks them as well."

Referring to the theory that 'many eyes make all bugs shallow,' Linux code "is not getting many eyes or the eyes are looking at it and saying that seems fine," said Nichols. "But, [the bugs] have been in there since the code was first written, and they haven't really changed over the last 15 years...." That the flaws slipped detection for so long has a lot to do with the sprawl of the the Linux kernel. It "has gotten so big" and "there's so much code there," said Nichols. "The real strategy is make sure you're loading as little code as possible."

The bugs are in all Linux distributions, Nichols said, although the kernel driver is not loaded by default. Whether a normal user can load the vulnerable kernel module varies. They can, for instance, on all Red Hat based distros that GRIMM tested, he said. "Even though it's not loaded by default, you can get it loaded and then of course you can exploit it without any trouble...."

The bugs have been patched in the following kernel releases: 5.11.4, 5.10.21, 5.4.103, 4.19.179, 4.14.224, 4.9.260, and 4.4.260. All older kernels are end-of- life and will not receive patches.

An official version of the popular 7-zip archiving program has been released for Linux for the first time. Bleeping Computer reports: Linux already had support for the 7-zip archive file format through a POSIX port called p7zip but it was maintained by a different developer. As the p7zip developer has not maintained their project for 4-5 years, 7-Zip developer Igor Pavlov decided to create a new official Linux version based on the latest 7-Zip source code. Pavlov has released 7-Zip for Linux in AMD64, ARM64, x86, and armhf versions, which users can download [via their respective links].

"These new 7-Zip binaries for Linux were linked (compiled) by GCC without -static switch. And compiled 32-bit executables (x86 and armhf) didn't work on some arm64 and amd64 systems, probably because of missing of some required .so files." "Please write here, if you have some advices how to compile and link binaries that will work in most Linux systems," Pavlov stated on his release page.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Car and Driver: Canoo, an electric automotive startup based in California, has expanded its lineup of forthcoming electric vehicles by revealing this snub-nosed pickup. The pickup, which sports a design similar to Canoo's passenger van, will offer more than 200 miles of range and as much as 600 horsepower and 550 pound-feet of torque with the dual-motor configuration; a rear motor configuration will also be offered. That power and range, and a full six-to-eight-foot pickup bed, all have to fit into a vehicle with a 112.2-inch wheelbase -- an inch shorter than the Tesla Model 3 -- and an overall length, at 184 inches, that makes it more than two feet shorter than the Ford Ranger pickup.

The pickup rides on Canoo's multi-purpose platform architecture and will be the third Canoo vehicle to do so. [...] The new pickup emphasizes modularity and looks to maximize its utility. It has tables folding down around the vehicle, various hidden storage areas, and numerous charging points on the exterior of the truck. In a video exploring the ins and outs, Tony Aquila, executive chairman of Canoo, said that the goal was to make something that was very functional and could also be personalized. On either side of the six-foot bed, tables fold down to function as a workspace, and there is also a table that folds down from the front of the truck. That table exposes a small storage area as well as various points to charge or power electronics. The pickup bed can also be extended, as well as enclosed, to eight feet long to fit bigger items. Steps with storage within them can be pulled out of the sides of the truck to make it easier to access anything on the roof rack. And to answer the question any truck owner would ask, yes, there's a taillamp setup in the bed extension, so it's okay to drive the truck with the bed extended to fit longer cargo.

The interior of the pickup, shown in the video, shows it fits two people, but Aquila said it could be adapted for a three-person setup. Information such as speed and battery levels appear to be on a broad screen just below the windshield. Canoo's pickup will be available for pre-order beginning in the second quarter of this year, but production isn't slated to begin until 2023.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from MacRumors: Apple will soon be making a significant change to its serial number format for future products that will see some key information stripped out. In an internal AppleCare email this week, obtained by MacRumors, Apple said the new serial number format will consist of a randomized alphanumeric string of 8-14 characters that will no longer include manufacturing information or a configuration code. Apple said the serial number format transition is scheduled for "early 2021," and confirmed that IMEI numbers will not be affected by this change.

Any currently shipping Apple products will continue to use the current serial number format, while future products will use the new format, according to Apple. The new serial numbers will initially be 10 characters, the company indicated. Apple's current serial number format has long allowed both customers and service providers to determine the date and location that a product was manufactured, with the first three characters representing the manufacturing location and the following two indicating the year and week of manufacture. The last four characters currently serve as a "configuration code," revealing a device's model, color, and storage capacity. Apple initially planned to transition to the new serial number format in late 2020, but delayed. Apple hasn't explained the reasons for the change, but the new format will effectively make it impossible to view details about when and where a device is manufactured.

LG's battery division is planning to build advanced battery cells for Tesla's electric vehicles in 2023 and is considering potential production sites in the U.S. and Europe, according to Reuters. From the report: Tesla has not yet agreed to a deal that would expand LG's role in its supply chain beyond China, one of the sources said. Last week, the Korean battery maker told Korean reporters it plans to build a U.S. factory where it would make battery cells for EVs and energy storage systems, to cater to U.S. and global customers as well as startups. It did not identify potential customers then, but one of the sources said it was hoping Tesla would buy the batteries.

In September, Tesla Chief Executive Elon Musk announced an ambitious plan to develop new cells in-house, prompting suppliers like LG and Panasonic to embrace the unproven technology or face risks of losing a major customer for the longer term. The Korean supplier, a unit of LG Chem, has made samples for the so-called 4680 large-format cylindrical cells, said the sources, who asked not to be identified. It faces technological hurdles and the challenge of scaling up production, people familiar with the matter said.

"LG plans to produce 4680 cells at its new U.S. factory. They plan to build a new 4680 cell line to supply Tesla's Giga Berlin in Europe," one of the sources said, adding Spain is one of candidate for the European plant. One of the sources said LG has never mass produced such large-format cylindrical cells, although increasing battery capacity is the correct call. "Tesla is a major customer, and LG can take risks," another source said. He said LG has not yet secured orders from Tesla for the 4680 cells, still under development. For now, Tesla is sharply boosting orders for 2170 cells used in the Model 3 and Model Y vehicles made in China, the source said.

Dropbox announced today that it plans to acquire DocSend for $165 million. The company helps customers share and track documents by sending a secure link instead of an attachment. From a report: "We're announcing that we're acquiring DocSend to help us deliver an even broader set of tools for remote work, and DocSend helps customers securely manage and share their business critical documents, backed by powerful engagement analytics," Houston told me. When combined with the electronic signature capability of HelloSign, which Dropbox acquired in 2019, the acquisition gives the company an end-to-end document sharing workflow it had been missing. "Dropbox, DocSend and HelloSign will be able to offer a full suite of self-serve products to help our millions of customers manage the entire critical document workflows and give more control over all aspects of that," Houston explained.

A security vulnerability in a popular iPhone call recording app exposed thousands of users' recorded conversations. From a report: The flaw was discovered by Anand Prakash, a security researcher and founder of PingSafe AI, who found that the aptly named Call Recorder app allowed anyone to access the call recordings from other users -- by knowing their phone number. But using a readily available proxy tool like Burp Suite, Prakash could view and modify the network traffic going in and out of the app. That meant he could replace his phone number registered with the app with the phone number of another app user, and access their recordings on his phone. TechCrunch verified Prakash's findings using a spare phone with a dedicated account. The app stores its user's call recordings on a cloud storage bucket hosted on Amazon Web Services. Although the public was open and lists the files inside, the files could not be accessed or downloaded. The bucket was closed by press time.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: Elon Musk is getting into the Texas power market, with previously unrevealed construction of a gigantic battery connected to an ailing electric grid that nearly collapsed last month. The move marks Tesla's first major foray into the epicenter of the U.S. energy economy. A Tesla subsidiary registered as Gambit Energy Storage LLC is quietly building a more than 100 megawatt energy storage project in Angleton, Texas, a town roughly 40 miles south of Houston. A battery that size could power about 20,000 homes on a hot summer day. Workers at the site kept equipment under cover and discouraged onlookers, but a Tesla logo could be seen on a worker's hard hat and public documents helped confirm the company's role. Property records on file with Brazoria County show Gambit shares the same address as a Tesla facility near the company's auto plant in Fremont, California. A filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission lists Gambit as a Tesla subsidiary. According to a document on the city of Angleton's website, the installation will use lithium iron phosphate batteries that are expected to last 10 to 20 years. The document says that it will generate around $1 million in property tax revenue for the city and the site will be unmanned but remotely monitored.

Thunderbolt, Intel's super-speedy connection technology, isn't widely used. But that may change in the coming year, as more computer makers incorporate the USB competitor into their new models. From a report: Intel has hoped Thunderbolt, which debuted in 2011 on Apple's 2011 MacBook Pro, would become commonplace for computer users. A year later, the chipmaker forecast that "most PCs" would have Thunderbolt by 2015 to 2017. Despite the hype, only premium PCs carry the fast connection. To get a boost in adoption, Intel has built Thunderbolt into its newest Core processors, code-named Tiger Lake, which means laptop makers get Thunderbolt without having to pay extra for separate controller chips. Because Intel chips are so widely used, the company says Thunderbolt will now have its moment to shine.

"I would expect by 2022 Thunderbolt will be in more than 50% of the PCs sold," said Jason Ziller, who runs Intel's connectivity products, adding that more than half of laptops that ship in the next year will "definitely" carry the technology. Ziller has led Thunderbolt work since before it debuted in Apple's 2011 MacBook Pro laptops almost exactly 10 years ago. PC ports don't capture the imagination the way fast processors or smartphone cameras do. But they're a crucial part of most people's computing experience. Thunderbolt ports provide fast and versatile connections to external storage devices, monitors, network adapters and other peripherals. They can replace ports for HDMI, DisplayPort, Ethernet and power. The new Thunderbolt 4 lets multiport docks and hubs offer three Thunderbolt ports instead of just one.

"I am curious as to what other Slashdotters use for backing up of home machines," asks long-time Slashdot reader serviscope_minor: I moved away from the "bunch of disks with some off site" method. I found most of the methods generally had one or more of the following problems: poor Linux support, weak security (e.g. leaking file names), outrageously expensive, hard to set up, tied to a single storage supplier I don't fully trust, entirely proprietary (which makes me doubt long term stability), lack of file history, reputation for slowness, and so on.

My current solution is Unixy: separate tools for separate jobs. Borg for backups to a local machine. Rclone for uploading to business cloud storage, versioned cloud storage to provide resistance against bitrot and other corruption.
They're interested in "what other Slashdotters use," as well as "why and what your experience has been given more than superficial testing." So share you own thoughts in the comments.

What do you use for backups at home?

"iCloud has had the occasional service issue, but its latest problem appears to be highly... specific," writes Engadget: Actor and author Rachel True claims iCloud has effectively locked her out of her account due to the way her last name was written. Reportedly, her Mac thought lower-case "true" was a Boolean (true or false) flag, leading the iCloud software on the computer to seize up. The problem has persisted for over six months, she said.

True said she'd spent hours talking to customer service, and that Apple hadn't stopped charging her for service. She could switch to the free tier, although she'd also lose most of her online storage if she did.
True has apparently resorted to imploring desperately in tweets to both @Apple and @AppleSupport. "Now that I a layman have explained problem to you a giant computer company, could u fix...?"

"A thing I've learned about life so far is I hate being the test case."

"When I get a dog I'm naming it Boolean Bobby Drop Tables True"

An anonymous reader quotes a report from MacRumors: Apple this week introduced a new service that's designed to make it quick and easy for iCloud users to transfer their stored photos and videos to Google Photos. As outlined in an Apple support document, you can go to Apple's privacy website and sign in to see the "Transfer a copy of your data" option. If you select this and go through all the steps, Apple will transfer your iCloud photos and videos to Google Photos. Transferring photos and videos from iCloud Photos does not remove the content you have stored with Apple, but it provides a backup method and stores a copy of the content on Google Photos.

The transfer process takes between three and seven days, with Apple verifying that the request was made by you. To do the transfer, you must have two-factor authentication turned on for your Apple ID account and you must have a Google Photos account with enough storage to complete the transfer. Smart Albums, Live Photos, photo stream content, some metadata, and some RAW photos are not able to be transferred.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: /e/ OS, the "open-source, pro-privacy, and fully degoogled" fork of Android, is coming to Canada and the USA. Of course, you've always been able to download the software in any region, but now (as first spotted by It's Foss News) the e Foundation will start selling preloaded phones in North America. Previously, /e/ only did business in Europe. Like normal, the e Foundation's smartphone strategy is to sell refurbished Samsung devices with /e/ preloaded. In the US, there are only two phones right now: the Galaxy S9 for $379.99 or a Galaxy S9+ for $429.99. North Americans still have reason to be jealous of Europe, where you can get /e/ preloaded on a Fairphone, which is also Europe-exclusive. These Samsung phones are used devices, but the site says the devices have "been checked and reconditioned to be fully working at our partner's facilities." The phones have a one-year warranty and are described as "Good-as-New" with "no surprises." An /e/ device means you'll be getting a fork of Android 10, and for ongoing support, the e Foundation says, "We aim to support with at least 3 years of software updates and security patches."

/e/ OS was founded by Gael Duval, the creator of Mandrake Linux, and the project describes itself as a "non-profit project in the public interest." /e/ is built a lot like a Linux distribution, in that it takes a curated collection of other open source projects, merges them into a single product, and does its best to fill in the remaining gaps. In this case, /e/ is based on LineageOS, the Android community's open source, device-ready version of Google's Android source code. The primary contribution of /e/ is filling in all the gaps left by the lack of Google apps, so there's an /e/ app store, an /e/ cloud storage and account system, and various Google-replacement apps like a Chromium-based browser, a fork of K-9 Mail for email, contacts, search, photos, etc. The company is even trying to build a Google Assistant replacement. Actually getting regular Android apps to run on a forked version of Android is a challenge. Google Play Services is built into many apps for things like push notifications, and there's a good chance that functionality won't work on /e/ OS. These apps will at least run on /e/ OS instead of exiting outright, thanks to the inclusion of MicroG, an open source project that hijacks Google API calls.

PayPal is said to be in the process of buying Curv, a technology firm that powers the secure storage of cryptocurrency, news outlet CoinDesk reported Tuesday, citing three sources familiar with the situation. From the report: Israeli news outlet Calcalist reported Tuesday that Curv was being sold for between $200 million and $300 million, without naming the buyer. "PayPal is buying Curv for $500 million," a source from within the digital asset custody space told CoinDesk on Monday. "From where I'm hearing it, I'm pretty sure it's true." Several people in the cryptocurrency space have said PayPal, which made an entrance to the crypto space last year, turned its attention to Curv after talks to buy crypto custody and trading firm BitGo fell through last year. PayPal offered $750 million in cash for BitGo, two sources familiar with the deal told CoinDesk. Bloomberg has corroborated the talks.

An anonymous reader writes: NASA's Perseverence rover, which is currently exploring Mars, has as it's CPU a BAE Systems RAD 750 running at a 200 Mhz and featuring 256 Megabytes of RAM with 2 Gigabytes of storage. This is a radiation hardened version of the PowerPC G3, with specs roughly equivalent to the Clamshell Ibook that Reese Witherspoon used in Legally Blond back in 2001. This follows a tradition of old tech on space rovers — the Sojourner rover which explored Mars in 1997 used an Intel 80C85 running at 2 Mhz, similar to what could have been found in the classic Radio Shack TRS-80 model 100 portable from 1983.
In a comment on the original submission, long-time Slashdot reader Mal-2 argues "There's not as much distance between the actual capabilities of a CPU now and twenty years ago as there would be if you made the same comparison a decade ago." In the last 12 years or so, the CPUs have gotten more efficient and cooler-running (thus suitable for portable devices) to a much greater degree than they've actually gained new functionality. Retro computing is either going to stay stuck in the 1990s, or it's not going to be very interesting in the future.

Toshiba this week announced the industry's first hard drive featuring flux-control microwave-assisted magnetic recording (FC-MAMR) technology. The new MG09-series HDDs are designed primarily for nearline and enterprise applications, they offer an 18 TB capacity along with an ultra-low idle power consumption. From a report: The Toshiba MG09-series 3.5-inch 18 TB HDD are based on the company's 3rd generation nine-platter helium sealed platform that features 18 heads with a microwave-emitting component which changes magnetic coercivity of the platters before writing data. The HD disks are made by Showa Denko K.K. (SDK), a long-time partner of Toshiba. Each aluminum platter is about 0.635 mm thick, it features an areal density of around 1.5 Tb/inch2 and can store up to 2 TB of data. The MG09 family also includes a 16 TB model which presumably features a lower number of platters (based on the same performance rating).

For modern enterprise and nearline 3.5-inch HDDs, Toshiba's MG09-series drives uses a motor with a 7200-RPM spindle speed. The HDDs are also equipped with a 512 MB buffer and are rated for a 281 MB/s maximum sustained data transfer rate. Unfortunately, Toshiba has not updated the random access performance of the new products, though it is likely that their per-TB IOPS performance is lower when compared to predecessors. The manufacturer will offer its new drives both with SATA 3.3 (6 Gbps) and SAS 3.0 (12 Gbps) interfaces as well as a selection of logical data block length.

One of the noteworthy things about Toshiba's MG09-series FC-MAMR HDDs is their power consumption. In active idle mode, they typically consume 4.16/4.54 Watts (SATA/SAS models), which is considerably lower when compared with Seagate's Exos X18 as well as Western Digital's Ultrastar DC HC550. As far as power consumption efficiency at idle (large hard drives could spend plenty of time idling) is concerned, the 18 TB MG09 is an undeniable champion consuming just 0.23 Watts per TB (in case of the SATA version). Meanwhile, the new drives are rated for 8.35/8.74 Watts (SATA/SAS SKUs) during read/write operations, which is higher when compared to the DC HC550 as well as predecessors from the MG07 and the MG08-series.

Over the past week, some M1 Mac users have been reporting alarming SSD health readings, suggesting that these devices are writing extraordinary amounts of data to their drives. From a report: Across Twitter and the MacRumors forums, users are reporting that M1 Macs are experiencing extremely high drive writes over a short space of time. In what appear to be the most severe cases, M1 Macs are said to be consuming as much as 10 to 13 percent of the maximum warrantable total bytes written (TBW) value of its SSD. Flash memory on solid-state drives, such as those used in Macs, can only be written to a certain number of times before they become unstable. Software ensures that load is spread evenly across the drive's memory cells, but there is a point when the drive has been written to so many times that it can no longer reliably hold data. So while SSD wear is normal, expected behavior, drives should not be exhausting their ability to hold data as quickly as some M1 Macs seem to be. One user showed that their M1 Mac had already consumed one percent of its SSD after just two months, while another M1 Mac with a 2TB SSD had already consumed three percent. The total data units written for these machines is running into many terabytes, when they would normally be expected to be considerably lower.

As part of its war on web tracking, Mozilla is adding a new tool to Firefox aimed at stopping cookies from keeping tabs on you across multiple sites. From a report: The "Total Cookie Protection" feature is included in the web browser's latest release -- alongside multiple picture-in-picture views -- and essentially works by keeping cookies isolated between each site you visit. Or, in Mozilla's words: "By creating a separate cookie jar for every website." Firefox's new feature pares with last month's network partitioning tool, which works by splitting the Firefox browser cache on a per-website basis to prevent tracking across the web, itself targeted at blocking more stubborn "supercookies." According to Mozilla, these types of cookies are more difficult to delete and block as they are stored in obscure parts of the browser, including in Flash storage, ETags, and HSTS flags. Both tools are available as part of Firefox's enhanced tracking protection suite in "strict mode" on desktop and Android.