Google Chrome and Chromium add protection against malicious downloads

google chrome malicious download
Google Chrome already sports a number of security-minded features, from Incognito mode to a software sandbox which makes exploiting the browser a Herculean task. Now, Google has announced additional protection for Chromium and Chrome users.

Built upon the Safe Browsing API, the new feature introduces protection against malicious downloads. If a download link appears in the Safe Browsing blacklist, Chrome and Chromium will warn users against downloading -- a save button is still presented, of course, in case you're convinced a file is perfectly safe to download.

We'd like to see something a bit more eye-catching than the red warning icon -- like perhaps painting the entire bar red. Many of the people a feature like this aims to protect probably won't notice the icon or change in wording as they'll be focused on clicking the save button.

Google is initially making download protection available to Chrome dev channel users, and you'll likely see it in Canary and Chromium snapshot builds as well. After thorough testing, beta and stable users will be next in line.

Google Chrome and Chromium add protection against malicious downloads originally appeared on Download Squad on Tue, 05 Apr 2011 15:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Source: http://downloadsquad.switched.com/2011/04/05/google-chrome-and-chromium-add-protection-against-malicious-down/

Nathalie Donnerhacke Anna-Lena Baumgärtel Sabine Kinzler Frieda Falkner

CERN Needs YOUR Help to Discover the Elusive God Particle [Science]

CERN are the multi-national keepers of the Large Hadron Collider, which is the most powerful particle accelerator on the planet. But they need your help in their quest to find the Higgs Boson particle, otherwise known as the God Particle. More »


Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/gizmodo/full/~3/rLmGWCyoGX0/cern-needs-your-help-to-discover-the-elusive-god-particle

Emma Knebel Jason Randow Benjamin Schötz Johannes Liebl

Mozilla publishes name and shame list of slow Firefox add-ons, cracks down on tardy devs

Firefox slow-addons list
Mozilla, continuing its year-long crusade to speed up Firefox startup and shutdown times, has published a name and shame list of the Firefox's slowest add-ons.

The list is just one part of Mozilla's new efforts to highlight slow add-ons, and to help developers make their add-ons more efficient. Over the next two weeks, 'slow performance warnings' will be introduced in the add-on gallery so that users can see, before installation, which add-ons will slow down their browser. If that isn't enough to spur developers into cleaning up their add-ons, Mozilla has also begun reaching out to developers of slow add-ons with tips on how to improve add-on performance. Finally, add-on developers will soon have the ability to perform 'on-demand performance testing,' so that they can test their add-on before it's deployed publicly.

Mozilla reports that the average Firefox add-on slows down Firefox's start-up time by 10% -- which means, if you install 10 add-ons, you will double your start-up time. On fast desktop PCs that kind of slowdown might be negligible, but on older computers, laptops and smartphones, it could be the difference between a 5 and 10 second startup. Mozilla has obviously realized that while massive performance gains might've been made with Firefox 4, the addition of third-party add-ons can destroy any user-perceived improvements.

In other news, Mozilla says that a future build of Firefox will block the installation of add-ons (such as toolbars) by third-party software. Add-ons and toolbars that are bundled in this way will require explicit approval when you next open up Firefox. Hooray!

Mozilla publishes name and shame list of slow Firefox add-ons, cracks down on tardy devs originally appeared on Download Squad on Mon, 04 Apr 2011 05:15:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Source: http://downloadsquad.switched.com/2011/04/04/mozilla-publishes-name-and-shame-list-of-slow-firefox-add-ons/

Emily Trautmann Charlotte Kadelbach Hugo Ruß Edith Hupertz

Tasty Planet is a fun flash game where you eat everything in sight

tastyplanet
So this professor comes up with a new toilet cleaner that works by "eating" the dirt; or so he thinks. That's how the plot starts for Tasty Planet. You play the role of the toilet cleaner, but you're not really a toilet cleaner after all -- you're a blob of gray goo that can eat anything that's smaller than yourself.

As you chomp away, you grow -- and as you grow, you can eat bigger and bigger stuff. The first level pits you against microscopic particles; by the time I stopped playing, I got all the way to eating cats and dogs. I know that sounds disturbing, but it's a really cute game, and there's no gore or anything like that.

Supposedly you keep growing and growing until you're able to eat whole planets (hence the name). The challenge factor comes when you realize you can't touch any critter larger than yourself - you'll get "bitten" and become smaller. In the beginning you're so small, that a single touch can kill you. Later on, you're big enough that touching larger animals doesn't kill you on the spot, but it does reduce your size. Each level is timed, so if you're not large enough by the time your clock runs out, you need to start again. As long as you don't touch the larger animals, you should be fine.

All in all, a fun, addictive little game. It's available for iOS, too.

Tasty Planet is a fun flash game where you eat everything in sight originally appeared on Download Squad on Tue, 08 Mar 2011 17:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Source: http://downloadsquad.switched.com/2011/03/08/tasty-planet-is-a-fun-flash-game-where-you-eat-everything-in-sight/

Nicola Kohnen Laura Ungricht Edith Berner Lea Linden

Deal of the Day ? Alienware m11X 11.6? Gaming Laptop Core i3 with 8GB RAM

Today?s LogicBUY Deal is the 11.6? Dell Alienware m11x Core i3-330UM ULV gaming laptop for $699.  Features:  1GB GeForce GT 335M discrete GPU, 8GB RAM, 1.3MP webcam, 802.11n WiFi, 320GB hard drive, and Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit OS. $1019 – $270 off – $50 coupon code = $699 with free shipping This deal expires [...]

Source: http://the-gadgeteer.com/2011/08/08/deal-of-the-day-%e2%80%93-alienware-m11x-11-6%e2%80%9d-gaming-laptop-core-i3-with-8gb-ram/

Ingeburg Liebermann Elsa Alexander Furtmann Siegrid Holstein Michael Vollmar

Another Twist in AT&T's Bid to Buy T-Mobile [Blip]

The FCC announced yesterday that it's suspending its 180-day decision deadline regarding AT&T's recent offer for Qualcomm's 700 MHZ spectrum. The FCC will review both this and AT&T's T-mobile takeover simultaneously to determine if either serves the public interest. [FCC.gov] More »


Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/gizmodo/full/~3/9AyHobopfSw/another-twist-in-atts-bid-to-buy-t+mobile

Sabine Kinzler Frieda Falkner Hans-Joachim Kammann Antonio Fellberg

ChromeLite: experience the ASCII Web of yesteryear

ChromeLite ASCII extension
Have you ever wondered what the Web was like before the Mosaic Web browser? If you were born in the last 20-odd years, or you only discovered your inner geek recently, did you miss out on monochrome monitors and the dial-up BBS era? Well, here's your chance to get a sneak peek at history: grab the ChromeLite extension and marvel as the entire Web is transformed into ASCII characters.

Now, ChromeLite isn't really all that functional. For the most part, it simply strips images and converts text into a monospaced terminal font. There are a few Easter eggs inserted -- such as a fun message at the bottom of YouTube (image after the break) -- and some fun ASCII art, but that's about it. Rather oddly, most JavaScript continues to work -- so you can still enjoy Google Instant Search!

ChromeLite was actually made by Google as an April Fools' joke -- and indeed, an annoying 'you can uninstall this!' message appears at the top of every page -- but we're kind of hoping that Google, or another developer, takes ChromeLite and turns it into a real ASCII browsing extension with configurable settings. If anything, it will provide an easy way to save bandwidth and CPU time.

Continue reading ChromeLite: experience the ASCII Web of yesteryear

ChromeLite: experience the ASCII Web of yesteryear originally appeared on Download Squad on Mon, 04 Apr 2011 07:15:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Source: http://downloadsquad.switched.com/2011/04/04/chromelite-experience-the-ascii-web-of-yesteryear/

Nathalie Füllgraf Janine Harrer Emilia Münchow Claus Rehberg

Microsoft's KinectFusion research project offers real-time 3D reconstruction, wild AR possibilities

It's a little shocking to think about the impact that Microsoft's Kinect camera has had on the gaming industry at large, let alone the 3D modeling industry. Here at SIGGRAPH 2011, we attended a KinectFusion research talk hosted by Microsoft, where a fascinating new look at real-time 3D reconstruction was detailed. To better appreciate what's happening here, we'd actually encourage you to hop back and have a gander at our hands-on with PrimeSense's raw motion sensing hardware from GDC 2010 -- for those who've forgotten, that very hardware was finally outed as the guts behind what consumers simply know as "Kinect." The breakthrough wasn't in how it allowed gamers to control common software titles sans a joystick -- the breakthrough was the price. The Kinect took 3D sensing to the mainstream, and moreover, allowed researchers to pick up a commodity product and go absolutely nuts. Turns out, that's precisely what a smattering of highly intelligent blokes in the UK have done, and they've built a new method for reconstructing 3D scenes (read: real-life) in real-time by using a simple Xbox 360 peripheral.

The actual technobabble ran deep -- not shocking given the academic nature of the conference -- but the demos shown were nothing short of jaw-dropping. There's no question that this methodology could be used to spark the next generation of gaming interaction and augmented reality, taking a user's surroundings and making it a live part of the experience. Moreover, game design could be significantly impacted, with live scenes able to be acted out and stored in real-time rather than having to build something frame by frame within an application. According to the presenter, the tech that's been created here can "extract surface geometry in real-time," right down to the millimeter level. Of course, the Kinect's camera and abilities are relatively limited when it comes to resolution; you won't be building 1080p scenes with a $150 camera, but as CPUs and GPUs become more powerful, there's nothing stopping this from scaling with the future. Have a peek at the links below if you're interested in diving deeper -- don't be shocked if you can't find the exit, though.

Microsoft's KinectFusion research project offers real-time 3D reconstruction, wild AR possibilities originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 09 Aug 2011 14:48:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Source: http://www.engadget.com/2011/08/09/microsofts-kinectfusion-research-project-offers-real-time-3d-re/

Margarethe Lachner Lutz Yalcin Birte Höß Kerstin Klos

Daily Crunch: Scope Edition

Nikon Displays Mysterious Prototypes At French Exhibition Sweet-Looking Bike Tool Roll Made From My Favorite Material, Waxed Canvas Dodocase Puts Out Some J. Crew Exclusive iPad 2 Cases SocialBicycles Bike Sharing Is Now A Kickstarter Project Thanko Starts Selling The USB Butt Cooler Cushion (Ver. 2)

Source: http://www.crunchgear.com/2011/06/28/daily-crunch-scope-edition/

Frieda Falkner Hans-Joachim Kammann Antonio Fellberg Emma Knebel

Nokia's U.S. Customers Will Only Get WP7 Devices [Nokia]

Realizing that U.S. consumers have by and large abandoned Symbian, Nokia will no longer release Meego or Symbian-based devices in the U.S. That means no N9 over here, unless it's running Windows Phone 7. [All Things D] More »


Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/gizmodo/full/~3/58ah5smiXfM/nokia-will-only-release-wp7-products-in-the-us

Olga Kreibich Nathalie Donnerhacke Anna-Lena Baumgärtel Sabine Kinzler