Massive Microsoft Machinations For Makers

If you’re not stuck in the tech news filter bubble, you may not have heard the Microsoft Build Developers Conference is going on right now. Among the topics covered in the keynotes are a new Office API and a goal to have Windows 10 running on a Billion devices in a few years.

There are, however, some interesting things coming out of the Build conference. Windows 10 is designed for hackers, with everything from virtual Arduino shields running on phones, Windows 10 running on Raspberry Pis, and Visual Code Studio running on OS X and Linux.

This is not the first time in recent memory Microsoft has courted the maker market. Microsoft begrudgingly supported the hardware dev scene with the PC version of the Microsoft Kinect, and a year or two ago, Microsoft rolled out drivers for 3D printers that were much more capable than the usual serial interface (read: the ability for printer manufacturers to add DRM). To the true, tie-die wearing, rollerblade-skating, acoustic coupler-sporting, Superman III-watching hackers out there, these efforts appear laughable – the product of managers completely out of touch with their audience.

Depending on your perspective, the new releases for the Arduino, Raspberry Pi, and other ‘maker-themed’ hardware could go one way or the other.

As far as educational efforts go, the Windows Remote Arduino and Windows Virtual Shields for Arduino are especially interesting. Instead of filling a computer lab up with dozens of Arduinos and the related shields, the WVSA uses the sensors on a Windows 10 smartphone with an Arduino. Windows Remote Arduino allows makers to control an Arduino not through the standard USB port, but a Bluetooth module.

If Arduinos aren’t your thing, the Windows 10 IoT preview for the Raspberry Pi 2 and Minnowboard Max is out now. The Win10 IoT distribution does not yet have working WiFi or Bluetooth, making it the single most useless operating system for Internet of Things devices. It was, however, released at the Build conference.

Also announced was a partnership with a fabulous hardware project hosting site, Hackster.io. Microsoft and Hackster.io will be collaborating with hackathons and other events focused on Windows technology. I get why they wouldn’t want another, vastly more popular project hosting site doing this, but I’m a little confused at why Instructables wasn’t the top Microsoft pick.

As always, you may express your infinite derision in the comments below. Spelling Microsoft with a dollar sign will result in a ban.

Filed under: Arduino Hacks, Raspberry Pi

Spam-blasting malware infects thousands of Linux and FreeBSD servers

Several thousand computers running the Linux and FreeBSD operating systems have been infected over the past seven months with sophisticated malware that surreptitiously makes them part of a renegade network blasting the Internet with spam, researchers said Wednesday. The malware likely infected many more machines during the five years it's known to have existed.

Most of the machines infected by the so-called Mumblehard malware are believed to run websites, according to the 23-page report issued by researchers from antivirus provider Eset. During the seven months they monitored one of its command and control channels, 8,867 unique IP addresses connected to it, with 3,000 of them joining in the past three weeks. The discovery is reminiscent of Windigo, a separate spam botnet made up of 10,000 Linux servers that Eset discovered 14 months ago.

The Mumblehard malware is the brainchild of experienced and highly skilled programmers. It includes a backdoor and a spam daemon, which is a behind-the-scenes process that sends large batches of junk mail. These two main components are a are written in Perl and they're obfuscated inside a custom "packer" that's written in assembly, an extremely low-level programming language that closely corresponds to the native machine code of the computer hardware it runs on. Some of the Perl script contains a separate executable with the same assembly-based packer that's arranged in the fashion of a Russian nesting doll. The result is a very stealthy infection that causes production servers to send spam and may serve other nefarious purposes.

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Microsoft bringing Windows 10 to Arduino with open source libraries

Microsoft is teaming up with Arduino to bring Windows 10 to the company's microcontroller boards, with the first step being the release of two open source libraries that connect Arduinos to Windows 10 devices.

The news follows a prior announcement that a free version of Windows 10 for creating "Internet of Things" applications is coming to Raspberry Pi. Microsoft yesterday released a preview of what it calls Windows 10 IoT Core for the Raspberry Pi 2. Once a device is running Windows 10 IoT Core, it can be remotely configured and managed using Windows PowerShell.

Microsoft and Arduino said that Windows 10 will be "the world's first Arduino-certified operating system." Arduino isn't running Windows 10 directly, though: As of now, Arduino boards have gained the ability to access Windows 10 devices through Windows Remote Arduino and Windows Virtual Shield for Arduino, the two open source libraries. Here's what Microsoft said yesterday:

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Vaccine campaign leads to elimination of rubella in the Americas

Yesterday, the World Health Organization got together with the Pan American Health Organization to announce some promising news: the have been no new transmissions of the rubella virus in the entire western hemisphere since 2009. As a result, the virus has been declared eliminated in this region, joining smallpox and polio on that elite list.

Rubella, commonly called the German measles, doesn't cause severe symptoms in the vast majority of infected individuals. If a pregnant woman is infected, however, it can cause miscarriages or a suite of birth defects. Before the advent of an effective vaccine, the WHO says that up to 20,000 children a year in Latin America and the Caribbean were born with rubella-related birth defects; that's also the number that occurred during the last major outbreak in the US.

The widespread use of the MMR vaccine (measles, mumps, and rubella) is partly to thank for the virus' elimination. Caribbean countries also used an adult vaccination program to help cut transmission in their populations. As a result, the last infection of a local origin occurred in 2009. Since then, several cases have been reported within the hemisphere, but all have traced back to infections overseas.

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More Hackathon Tickets Just Made Available

We had a number of people tell us they weren’t able to get tickets to our Hackathon in New York on Saturday. A block of tickets was just made available. Head on over and grab yours right now!

We’re bringing a mini-van-load of hardware along with us for this one. Our hope is to see a hardware hacker claim the top prize of $5000, but we do other prizes just for the teams that create something with hardware. You can team up with other creative hackers from the area, all while being wined and dined (well, fed and hydrated anyway) through the entire thing. We can’t wait to see what you can get working with just twenty-hours of build time! You can find out a bit more about the hardware we’re supplying and what we have planned over on our event page.

That’s on Saturday, but the fun actually starts this evening. Join us at 7pm this evening at Antler Wine & Beer Dispensary. We’d appreciate a quick RSVP if you’re coming, and don’t forget to bring some hardware you been working on lately. See you there!

Filed under: cons

Rogue Silk Road DEA agent arrested with “go bag,” 9mm pistol

SAN FRANCISCO—Federal prosecutors successfully argued Wednesday that Carl Mark Force, the former Drug Enforcement Administration agent who allegedly went rogue during the investigation of Silk Road founder Ross Ulbricht, should not be granted bail.

"I am not prepared to release him today," United States Magistrate Judge Elizabeth Laporte said during the Wednesday hearing.

She heard 90 minutes of argument from government lawyers and from one of Force’s defense attorneys. After the hearing, Force was transferred from Santa Rita Jail in nearby Alameda County to San Francisco County Jail.

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Google champions responsive Web design in page ranking update

Google has deprecated the desktop Web. It's still here, but for Google it just got less important.

At least that's the implicit message in Google's recent mobile search update. The company is now judging how "mobile-friendly" a site is and is using that metric to weight search results served to mobile devices.

This is the third update in Google's slow push for Web developers to start building mobile-friendly sites. First, Google announced that it would start calling out sites that used Flash and at the same time rewarding mobile-friendly sites. Initially, that was just a little label next to search results on mobile devices that told viewers the site was "Mobile-friendly."

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