news.buyenne.com

The Lumia 950, and its larger sibling, the Lumia 950XL, have just received a software update, taking them from Windows 10 Mobile build 10586.0 to build 10586.29. This is a minor update to fix some bugs and improve some upgrade scenarios (and it's the update that will form the basis of our review of the operating system) but the content of the update itself is not really the important bit.

What's remarkable about the update is two things. First, that it exists and is apparently being rolled out by Microsoft, at Microsoft's discretion, on Microsoft's timeline. Second, and related, that this update has a corresponding update for Windows 10 on the PC: Microsoft's mobile and desktop systems are aligned. Windows 10 receives an update on Patch Tuesday and so Windows 10 Mobile receives an update on Patch Tuesday.

Windows 10 Mobile build 102586.29 was distributed to members of the Windows Insider program late last week, and opened up to Insiders using the 950 and 950XL, including AT&T units, yesterday. That much is unexceptional. The Windows Insider program, and before it, the Developer Preview program have for a few years now enabled Microsoft to push out new builds of Windows Phone 8.1 and Windows 10 Mobile to any Windows device, even if it's carrier-branded and carrier-locked.

Both Wired and Gizmodo have claimed to have discovered the identity of "Satoshi Nakamoto," the anonymous creator of Bitcoin. Unlike previous attempts at identifying the Bitcoin creator, the story is backed by a mound of convincing evidence, which points to an Australian man named Craig Steven Wright.

"We still can’t say with absolute certainty that the mystery is solved," write Andy Greenberg and Gwern Branwen in their report for Wired. "But two possibilities outweigh all others: Either Wright invented bitcoin, or he’s a brilliant hoaxer who very badly wants us to believe he did."

The report is based on a trove of documents leaked to both Branwen and Gizmodo last month, as well as some publicly available evidence. The Gizmodo report, published about an hour after Wired's, includes copies of some of the documents. They include:

One of the shooters in last week's deadly attack pledged her allegiance to ISIS on Facebook the same day she and her husband went on a shooting rampage, killing 14 people in a San Bernardino County government building. In response, high-ranking Senators revived legislation Tuesday requiring the tech sector, like Facebook and Twitter, to report to the authorities suspected online terror activity.

"We’re in a new age where terrorist groups like ISIL are using social media to reinvent how they recruit and plot attacks," Sen. Dianne Feinstein, a Democrat from California, said in a statement about the legislation she is sponsoring with Sen. Richard Burr, a Republican of North Carolina. "That information can be the key to identifying and stopping terrorist recruitment or a terrorist attack, but we need help from technology companies. This bill doesn’t require companies to take any additional actions to discover terrorist activity, it merely requires them to report such activity to law enforcement when they come across it. Congress needs to do everything we can to help intelligence and law enforcement agencies identify and prevent terrorist attacks, and this bill is a step in the right direction."

The development comes nearly three months after Feinstein and Burr tabled the legislation because of a dispute with Sen. Ron Wyden, the Oregon Democrat who had placed a procedural hold on the bill. Wyden again took issue with the reintroduction of the "Requiring Reporting of Online Terrorist Activity Act."

Today, Microsoft issued three new security advisories and a dozen new patches in the company’s monthly round of security updates. And one of the advisories was apparently the result of a security fumble by Microsoft's internal IT team—the inadvertent disclosure of the private encryption keys for a wildcard SSL/TLS certificate.

The certificate, which was used for Microsoft's xboxlive.com domain, has been revoked on Microsoft's Certificate Trust list, but it could potentially be used to attack systems that haven't been updated in man-in-the-middle attacks that "spoof" the Xbox Live network. Microsoft isn't saying how the certificate was "inadvertently disclosed", but it's likely that the "wildcard" certificate was accidentally shared with a partner. It's unlikely that the certificate will be used for an attack now that it's been revoked, but systems that don't regularly get their certificate trust lists updated might still be vulnerable.

System administrators have a bigger headache to deal with: an update issued today for Microsoft Windows DNS that patches a remote code execution vulnerability. Rated "critical" by Microsoft, the bug in DNS affects Windows Server 2008 and later. It could allow an attacker to send a "specially-crafted" Domain Name Service request to a Windows DNS server that can run commands on the server with the permissions of the Local System account—giving the attackers a wide range of access to the server that could easily be escalated.

Apple today released updates for the operating systems that power iPhones, iPads, Macs, Apple Watches, and Apple TVs. iOS 9.2, OS X El Capitan 10.11.2, WatchOS 2.1, and tvOS 9.1 are all available on their respective devices.

iOS 9.2: Apple Music is now slightly better

Available for devices going back to the iPhone 4S, iPod Touch 5th generation, and iPad 2, this iOS update includes a few minor improvements for Apple Music:

• You can now create a new playlist when adding a song to a playlist
• Your most recently changed playlist is now listed at the top when adding songs to playlists
• Download albums or playlists from your iCloud Music Library by tapping the iCloud download button
• See which songs have been downloaded with the new download indicator next to each song in My Music and Playlists
• See works, composers, and performers while browsing Classical music in the Apple Music catalog

iBooks has a couple of improvements, including support for 3D Touch on the iPhone 6S "to peek and pop pages from the table of contents, your notes and bookmarks, or from search results inside a book." iBooks also now supports listening to an audiobook while you read other books or search for books in your library or the store.