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It took several high profile hacks, but Twitter is finally rolling out two-step authentication to insure a modicum of user security. The microblogging platform played down account compromises as occasional occurrences in its announcement today, saying that every so often account owners alert it to email phishing schemes or password breaches taking place elsewhere on the web.After the Associated Press saw a false tweet rock the U.S. stock market, not to mention hits on Burger King, Jeep and The Onion, Twitter is ready to do the two-step security dance. "When you sign in to twitter.com, there's a second check to make sure it's really you," Twitter's announcement assured. One, two stepThe feature can be enabled by heading over to account settings and selecting "require a verification code when I sign in." With a confirmed mobile number and email address, any user can get the two-stop system up and running. After enrolling in login verification, users will be sent - and need to enter - a 6-digit login code via SMS every time they sign into Twitter. Existing apps will continue to work uninterrupted even after verification is enabled, Twitter said. To make it all a little more digestible, the Twitter team has laid out it's new policy in a snappy one-minute video:YouTube : https://blog.twitter.com/2013/getting-started-login-verification

For a while now, I've been plagued with this ridiculous problem of the keyboard becoming "stuck" in my Fedora 17 VM running under VirtualBox. Keys would stop working until you held them down for several seconds, making typing close to impossible. Of course, my first thought was to blame VirtualBox, since it has a lot to do with the keyboard. I found out some interesting things, like you can send scan-codes directly to virtual-machines with something like $ VBoxManage controlvm UUID keyboardputscancode aa (get the UUID via VBoxManage list vms; figuring out scan-codes is left to the reader!). I noticed the problem primarily happening while emacs was in the foreground, meaning I was working on code or an email ... my theory was when I typed too fast some race got hit and put the keyboard into a weird state that a reboot fixed. Well it turns out the problem is almost the exact opposite. Luckily, today I noticed "slow keys enabled" warning that sprung-up and went away quickly just before the keyboard stopped. Once I saw that the game was up; turns out this is a well-known bug that is easily fixed with xkbset -sl. It happens because I was typing too slowly; holding down the shift-key while I thought about something probably. Hopefully this saves someone else a few hours!

New features:* ooldtp python client* Support setting text on combo box* Added simple command line options* Support state.editable in hasstate* Handle valuepattern in click API* Support ToolBar type on click* Write to log file if environment variable is set (set LDTP_LOG_FILE=c:\ldtp.log)* Support control type Table, DataItem in Tree implementation* Added scrollbar as supported typeNew API:* MouseMove* setcellvalue* guitimeout* oneup* onedown* oneleft* oneright* scrollup* scrolldown* scrollright* scrollleftBugs fixed:* Fix to support taskbar with consistent index* istextstateenabled API* Fallback to object state enabled if value pattern is not available* Fix to support InvokePattern on Open button* Use width, height if provided while capturing screenshot* Work around for copying text to clip board* QT 5.0.2 specific changes* Check errno attribute to support cygwin environment* Fix keyboard APIs with new supported key controls (+, -, :, ;, ~, `, arrow up, down, right, left)* Don't grab focus if type is tab itemJava client:* Fixed selectRow arguments* Fixed compilation issuesPython client:* Fix optional argument issue in doesrowexistC# client:* Added new APIs (scrollup, scrolldown, scrollleft, scrollright, oneup, onedown, oneleft, oneright)Ruby/Perl client: No changesCredit:Nagappan Alagappan, John Yingjun Li, Helen Wu, Eyas Kopty, VMware colleaguesPlease spread the word and also share your feedback with us (email me).About LDTP:Cross Platform GUI Automation tool Linux version is LDTP, Windows version is Cobra and Mac version is PyATOM.* Linux version is known to work on GNOME / KDE (QT >= 4.8) / Java Swing / LibreOffice / Mozilla application on all major Linux distribution.* Windows version is known to work on application written in .NET / C++ / Java / QT on Windows XP SP3 / Windows 7 / Windows 8 development version.* Mac version is currently under development and verified only on OS X Lion. Where ever PyATOM runs, LDTP should work on it.Download source / binary (Windows XP / Vista / 7 / 8)System requirement: .NET 3.5, refer README.txt after installationDocumentation references: For detailed information on LDTP framework and latest updates visit http://ldtp.freedesktop.orgLDTP API doc / Java docReport bugs

(Posted 22 May 2013 by finid)

It is with huge pleasure that the Debian GNU/Hurd team announces the release of Debian GNU/Hurd 2013. This is a snapshot of Debian "sid" at the time of the Debian "wheezy" release (May 2013), so it is mostly based on the same sources. It is not an official Debian release, but it is an official Debian GNU/Hurd port release. The installation ISO images can be downloaded from Debian Ports in the usual three Debian flavors: NETINST, CD, DVD. Besides the friendly Debian installer, a pre-installed disk image is also available, making it even easier to try Debian GNU/Hurd. Debian GNU/Hurd is currently available for the i386 architecture with more than 10.000 software packages available (more than 75% of the Debian archive, and more to come!). Please make sure to read the configuration information, the FAQ, and the translator primer to get a grasp of the great features of GNU/Hurd. Due to the very small number of developers, our progress of the project has not been as fast as other successful operating systems, but we believe to have reached a very decent state, even with our limited resources. We would like to thank all the people who have worked on GNU/Hurd over the past decades. There were not many people at any given time (and still not many people today, please join!), but in the end a lot of people have contributed one way or another. Thanks everybody! This article appeared originally at GNU Hurd news and it's under the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2 or any later version.

In many scientific disciplines, the research you may be doing is completely new. It may be so new that there isn't even any instrumentation available to make your experimental measurements. In those cases, you have no choice but to design and build your own measuring devices. more>>

Functions In PHP Functions are considered to be a complicated topic in programming and many newbies think it will cost them a hand and a leg to master them. But mark my words and mark them well - functions are your friends and they are one of the easiest and most effective things in programming to learn.

Not so long ago I read Dmitrijs' blog post on how to configure apt-cacher-ng to advertise it's service using avahi. As I normally use my laptop in my home and at work, and both networks have apt-cacher-ng running, I decided to give it a try.I have been administering apt-cacher-ng for three networks so far, and I really find it a useful tool. Then, thanks to the aforementioned blog post, I discovered squid-deb-proxy. I don't use squid, so it's not for my normal use case, but some people will surely find it interesting.But I found it's client package to be really interesting. It will discover any service providing _apt_proxy._tcp through avahi and let apt use it. But then the package wasn't available in Debian. So, I contacted Michael Vogt to see if he was interested in putting at least the client in Debian's archive. He took the opportunity to upload the full squid-deb-proxy, so thanks a lot Michael :-)I then filled a wishlist bug against apt-cacher-ng to provide the avahi configuration for publishing the service, which Eduard included in the last version of it. So thanks a lot Eduard too!tl;drYou know only need apt-cacher-ng >= 0.7.13-1 and avahi-daemon installed on your server and your mobile users just need squid-deb-proxy-client. Then the proxy autoconfiguration for apt will just work.One again, thanks a lot to the respective maintainers for allowing this into Jessie :-)GotchasYes, there are still some rough edges. On one of the networks I'm behind a proxy. While configuring my machine to use apt-cacher-ng's service as a proxy trough apt.conf, apt-listbugs would just work. But now, using the service as discovered by squid-deb-proxy-client, apt-listbugs just times out. Maybe I need to fill some other bug yet...

Just tagged a 1.0.0 release for libmbim, a library which helps you talk to MBIM-capable modems. You can read more about the MBIM protocol in the libmbim introduction blogpost I wrote some months ago. The 1.0.0 tarball is ready for download from freedesktop.org:   http://www.freedesktop.org/software/libmbim/libmbim-1.0.0.tar.xz If you want to easily talk to a MBIM device from a GLib-based application, you may want to check the libmbim API documentation. libmbim is currently used by ModemManager (git master), but you can also now use it in standalone mode with either mbimcli (the command line utility) or mbim-network (a helper script to launch a connection): # echo "APN=Internet" > /etc/mbim-network.conf   # mbim-network /dev/cdc-wdm0 start Loading profile...     APN: Internet Starting network with 'mbimcli -d /dev/cdc-wdm0 --connect=Internet --no-close'... Network started successfully   # mbim-network /dev/cdc-wdm0 status Loading profile...     APN: Internet Getting status with 'mbimcli -d /dev/cdc-wdm0 --query-connection-state --no-close'... Status: activated   # mbim-network /dev/cdc-wdm0 stop Loading profile...     APN: Internet Stopping network with 'mbimcli -d /dev/cdc-wdm0 --disconnect'... Network stopped successfully As with libqmi’s qmi-network script, you’ll still need to run a DHCP client on the wwan interface after getting connected through MBIM. Note that your modem may not support DHCP… if that’s your case then patches are welcome to update the script to dump the IP configuration Or just use ModemManager, which works nicely with the static IP setup. Enjoy! Filed under: Development, FreeDesktop Planet, GNOME Planet, Lanedo Planet, Planets Tagged: libmbim, MBIM, ModemManager

cowbuilder can call lintian via hook script, but piuparts needs to be run under privilege, then failed. umm...