ZFS filesystem will be built into Ubuntu 16.04 LTS by default

(credit: Canonical)

A new long-term support (LTS) version of Ubuntu is coming out in April, and Canonical just announced a major addition that will please anyone interested in file storage. Ubuntu 16.04 will include the ZFS filesystem module by default, and the OpenZFS-based implementation will get official support from Canonical.

ZFS support was already available “as a technology preview” in Ubuntu 15.10, where it’s installable via an apt-get command and has to be compiled from source code first. This is no longer the case in 16.04, though you’ll still need to download and install the zfsutils-linux package to create and manage ZFS volumes. Putting an official, installed-by-default, fully supported version into an LTS version of Ubuntu is a big vote of confidence, especially since people running Ubuntu-based servers often stick to LTS releases for maximum stability.

ZFS is used primarily in cases where data integrity is important—it’s designed not just to store data but to continually check on that data to make sure it hasn’t been corrupted. The oversimplified version is that the filesystem generates a checksum for each block of data. That checksum is then saved in the pointer for that block, and the pointer itself is also checksummed. This process continues all the way up the filesystem tree to the root node, and when any data on the disk is accessed, its checksum is calculated again and compared against the stored checksum to make sure that the data hasn’t been corrupted or changed. If you have mirrored storage, the filesystem can seamlessly and invisibly overwrite the corrupted data with correct data.

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ZFS filesystem will be built into Ubuntu 16.04 LTS by default

Hospital pays $17k for ransomware crypto key

Hollywood Presbyterian Medical Center, the Los Angeles hospital held hostage by crypto-ransomware, has opted to pay a ransom of 40 bitcoins—the equivalent of $17,000—to the group that locked down access to the hospital’s electronic medical records system and other computer systems. The decision came 10 days after the hospital lost access to patient records.

“HPMC has restored its EMR on Monday, February 15th,” President & CEO of Hollywood Presbyterian Medical Center Allen Stefanek wrote in a statement published by the hospital late Wednesday. “All clinical operations are utilizing the EMR system. All systems currently in use were cleared of the malware and thoroughly tested. We continue to work with our team of experts to understand more about this event.”

The first signs of trouble at HPMC came on February 5, when hospital employees reported being unable to get onto the hospital’s network. “Our IT department began an immediate investigation and determined we had been subject to a malware attack,” Stefanek wrote. “The malware locked access to certain computer systems and prevented us from sharing communications electronically.

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Hospital pays $17k for ransomware crypto key

Would you buy a phone for the thermal camera?

Cat, the maker of extremely rugged phones that you might have seen in the hands of construction workers or your car mechanic, is out with its newest darling – the S60. Not only is the Cat S60 the most advanced and elegant (well, comparatively) such gear that the company has ever devised, but it has also outfitted it with a unique differentiator in the form of an embedded thermal imaging camera.
Cat is using FLIR, the standard in commercialized thermal imaging, so that you can use the phone for stuff like “detecting heat loss around windows and doors, spotting moisture and missing … – Source

Would you buy a phone for the thermal camera?

Chromecast Support Finally Comes To The Vimeo App In Version 2.1

When Vimeo got its much needed interface revamp update at the end of last year, plenty of things got better in the app. It was faster, smoother, less of an offense to good design, and generally really better. However, it was missing an important feature for any Android video streaming app: Chromecast support.

At the time, we were told that we’d have to wait until Q1 2016 for Chromecast support to be built into the app, and lo-and-behold, the team is honoring its original timeline.

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Chromecast Support Finally Comes To The Vimeo App In Version 2.1 was written by the awesome team at Android Police.

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Chromecast Support Finally Comes To The Vimeo App In Version 2.1

ReFlex is the smartphone that you're allowed to bend

There is a smartphone being developed that you can bend, and no, not like the iPhone 6 Plus.

ReFlex uses a Flexible OLED display from LG, similar to some of the rollable screens recently shown at CES this year, allowing you to bend it at your will. It’s the first flexible phone that combines bend input with standard multitouch capabilities, meaning you can use touch interaction like a typical smartphone as well as interact with certain apps by bending the phone.

See also: The world’s cheapest smartphone is cheaper than expected, launches in India for $4

The research team from Queen’s University’s Human Media Lab uses the example of bending ReFlex to play Angry Birds and flip through a comic book. …

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ReFlex is the smartphone that you're allowed to bend

Indonesia reverses Tumblr ban, for now

A day after it declared a site-wide ban on Tumblr, Indonesia decided Thursday to take a more measured approach to censoring objectionable content on the site.

On Wednesday local time, a government official told the BBC that authorities would block Tumblr because it hosted pages that carried porn.

But after users were outraged by the news, the government appears to have reversed its outright ban. Instead, officials plan to reach out to Tumblr’s owner, Yahoo, to figure out how to restrict access to adult content on the blogging site.

The ministry of communication and information …

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Indonesia reverses Tumblr ban, for now

New firmware finally fixes Surface Pro 4, Surface Book bugs, but Microsoft should do better

Microsoft has released a firmware update to the Surface Pro 4 and Surface Book that, at long last, fixes significant power management and sleep bugs that saw Microsoft’s latest systems draining their batteries and getting extremely hot when they should have been in ultra low power mode. Power management and driver problems are an unfortunately common feature of Windows systems, but these newest Surface devices have been a little more troublesome than most. With Microsoft responsible for both the hardware and the software, this has been a disappointment to many.

The Surface Book was one of my favorite machines from 2015, with its sleek, elegant package, pleasing hinge and solid specs. The review unit had a very raw firmware and driver loadout; in fact, the Windows Hello facial recognition wasn’t working in the review system. I also had some issues with detaching the screen. I assumed that all these issues would be ironed out by the time the hardware hit the market, and certainly shipping machines did have proper support for Hello, but niggling issues persisted.

I wasn’t alone with this; the Surface Book and Surface Pro 4 have both suffered a range of problems with, among other things, Wi-Fi, sleep, and the display drivers. The sleep problem—which, oddly, didn’t seem to affect me with the pre-release firmware—was probably the most serious and persistent issue. The systems are supposed to support Connected Standby, aka S0ix power saving modes, which lets the system sleep while still being able to do things like check for e-mails, fetch new tweets, or receive Skype calls. This mode should be a very low power mode, but Surface Pro 4 and Book owners were finding that their systems would drain their batteries within a few hours. When doing so in laptop bags, they’d get very hot, too.

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New firmware finally fixes Surface Pro 4, Surface Book bugs, but Microsoft should do better

Do I need to upgrade to Ultra HD Blu-ray? - CNET

We’ll soon get to see the upcoming Ultra HD “4K” Blu-rays. But will they really look better than regular Blu-rays — or streaming?

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Do I need to upgrade to Ultra HD Blu-ray? - CNET

Living in America as a black Muslim woman

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Living in America as a black Muslim woman

Explaining Apple’s Fight With the F.B.I.

Technologists and legal experts are dissecting what the company can’t, or won’t, do to help unlock the iPhone of a San Bernardino attacker.

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Explaining Apple’s Fight With the F.B.I.

Deal: buy three months of Spotify Premium, get a free Google Chromecast

Although Spotify only added support for Google Chromecast streaming back in October, it looks like the music streaming service is now fully beyond Google’s popular streamer.
In an attempt to tempt free listeners with a Premium subscription, Spotify is now holding a promotion in which customers can get a free Google Chromecast by making an advance three-month payment.

The basic rule is that you have to buy a three-month Spotify Premium subscription – priced at $29.97 – to get the free Google Chromecast. Unfortunately, a couple of caveats also apply. To get the free Chromecast, … – Source

Deal: buy three months of Spotify Premium, get a free Google Chromecast