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Should tech workers settle “no-poach” case for $324M? Judge has real doubts

A group of big tech companies including Apple, Google, Adobe, and Intel recently settled a lawsuit over their "no poach" agreement for $324 million. The CEOs of those companies had agreed not to do "cold call" recruiting of each others' engineers, until they were busted by the Department of Justice, which saw the deal as an antitrust violation.

The government action was followed up by a class-action lawsuit from the affected workers, who claimed the deal suppressed their wages. That lawsuit settled in April, just before a trial that could have been embarrassing for the tech companies.

One of the lead plaintiffs, a former Adobe employee named Michael Devine, has vocally dissented from the deal. Devine claims the deal is convenient for the lawyers, but an injustice to the workers, who won't get even one percent of their salaries for the period in question.

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A few weeks in deep space with the Elite: Dangerous premium beta

Approaching Freeport, the lone spot of civilization in the anarchy of system LP 98-132.


We wrote about the upcoming semi-private alpha and beta releases of both Chris Roberts' Star Citizen and David Braben's Elite: Dangerous a couple of weeks ago. Star Citizen's dogfighting module missed its scheduled release by a few days but became available on June 4, while Elite: Dangerous' premium beta opened up right on time on May 30, flooding what was previously a small alpha test with about 10,000 new players. Though the current version of the game is only a fraction of what Elite: Dangerous hopes to be at release, what's playable today was more than enough to keep me totally engrossed for days.

Participants in the E:D premium beta are playing essentially the same game that alpha testers had their hands on since mid-May. There are a number of single-player combat scenarios that players can use to familiarize themselves with the game's ship controls, and then a multiplayer area consists of five star systems where the "real" part of the premium beta takes place. Players can fly around and between the five systems, trading goods and shooting NPCs—or each other.

Video: a musical interlude with the Elite: Dangerous premium beta. Soundtrack is "Arrival," by Lee Rosevere. (video link)

Greetings, Commander Jameson

1984's original Elite saw players taking on the role of the faceless "Commander Jameson" (though the name could be changed in some versions), docked in orbit around the planet Lave with nothing to your name but a new Cobra Mk. III spacecraft and 100 credits. Although the eventual release of Elite: Dangerous will include a variety of starting ships and positions, the current premium beta version of the game takes a page from the original. Players all start out in the same, small one-man Sidewinder fighter, which can carry a tiny amount of cargo. You get 1,000 credits to start trading and a single laser to start blasting.

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At least 32,000 servers broadcast admin passwords in the clear, advisory warns

An alarming number of servers containing motherboards manufactured by Supermicro continue to expose administrator passwords despite the release of an update that patches the critical vulnerability, an advisory published Thursday warned.

The threat resides in the baseboard management controller (BMC), a motherboard component that allows administrators to monitor the physical status of large fleets of servers, including their temperatures, disk and memory performance, and fan speeds. Unpatched BMCs in Supermicro motherboards contain a binary file that stores remote login passwords in clear text. Vulnerable systems can be detected by performing an Internet scan on port 49152. A recent query on the Shodan search engine indicated there are 31,964 machines still vulnerable, a number that may not include many virtual machines used in shared hosting environments.

"This means at the point of this writing, there are 31,964 systems that have their passwords available on the open market," wrote Zachary Wikholm, a senior security engineer with the CARInet Security Incident Response Team. "It gets a bit scarier when you review some of the password statistics. Out of those passwords, 3,296 are the default combination. Since I'm not comfortable providing too much password information, I will just say that there exists a subset of this data that either contains or just was 'password.'"

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After 47 years in print, Computerworld finally goes digital-only

Next Monday, the last print issue of Computerworld will roll off the presses after 47 years in print.

In some ways, Computerworld is the spiritual ancestor to Ars Technica. It proudly declared itself as the "first newspaper for the full computer community," gearing itself towards IT decision makers.

While the print version may be going away, its editor-in-chief, Scot Finnie, says that its online version will not.

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Android 4.4.4 is rolling out to devices; contains OpenSSL fix

Google has a surprise for us today in the form of a new (minor) version of Android. Android 4.4.4 is rolling out to Nexus devices and is available for download on the Nexus Factory Image page. A changelog available over at Sprint lists nothing other than "security fixes."

Sascha Prüter, an Android Engineering Program Manager, posted on Google+ that the update is "Primarily addressing CVE-2014-0224," which is a flaw discovered in OpenSSL after Heartbleed was widely publicized. Prüter says the update addresses "some other (not quite as severe) security issues" and that an AOSP code drop should happen in "the next 48h."

4.4.4 comes hot on the heels of 4.4.3, which came out earlier this month.

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Thursday Dealmaster has a curved 55” Samsung 4K 3D Smart TV for $2,429

Greetings, Arsians! Our partners at LogicBuy are back with even more deals for this week. The top deal for today checks all the high-end TV boxes—it's a curved 55-inch Samsung 4K 3D Smart TV for $2,429. Just look at that feature list—whatever you want this TV to do, it can do that thing. Plus, with an MSRP of $3,999.99, you're getting over $1,500 off the regular price.

Featured deal

HDTV and home theater

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Observations reveal how a supermassive black hole went into hiding

NGC 5548, which harbors an active supermassive black hole.
Dr. Misty Bentz

Now you see it, now you don't. In 2002, observations from the Chandra X-ray observatory showed about what you'd expect for a nearby galaxy with an active supermassive black hole at its center: intense emissions in the UV and X-ray regions of the spectrum. By 2003, however, follow-up observations showed that emissions of energetic photons had dropped off precipitously. This odd disappearance led scientists to organize a massive campaign of follow-up observations, the results of which were released by Science today.

The new observations suggest that a large cloud of gas has walled off the black hole from Earth's line of sight to the galaxy. But the cloud is moving so fast and has persisted so long that it must be drawing material away from the environment around the black hole.

The galaxy in question, NGC 5548, belongs to a class of objects called Seyfert galaxies. These have active black holes that are feeding on gas, creating a highly energetic accretion disk. These galaxies don't emit as much radiation as a quasar (the brightest objects in the Universe), but they have the advantage of being found much closer to Earth than quasars, making them more amenable to study.

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Swipeup Utility Launches Any App With Google Now's Swipe Gesture

Android: Swipe up from the bottom of your handset's screen, and Google Now springs into action. Swipeup Utility lets you use the same gesture to start a different app, if you prefer. More »
   
 
 

Killer Interview Question: If You Were An Animal, What Would You Be And Why?

Another favourite of interviewers everywhere — and another addition to the list of killer questions: If you were an animal, what would you be and why? More »
   
 
 
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