boot13Steve Ballmer’s replacement as CEO of Microsoft is Satya Nadella, formerly in charge of the company’s enterprise and cloud products. Perhaps more interestingly, Nadella asked Bill Gates to get more involved in the company, and Gates agreed: he is stepping down as Chairman of the Board, and is expected to provide guidance for the company’s technology development.
Firefox 27 stealth release
Another new version of Firefox slid quietly off the production line yesterday. Version 27 improves interactivity with certain social web sites, and fixes a few bugs, including a dozen security vulnerabilities.
As usual, the only announcement of the new version was in the form of a post on the Mozilla Blog, which fails to mention that the post is actually about a new version of Firefox. The official release notes for the new version are as usual a total mess, barely even mentioning the new version identifier.
Critical security update for Flash
Yesterday Adobe released a new version of Flash (12.0.0.44) that addresses a critical security vulnerability. There is some evidence that the vulnerability is already being exploited in the wild, so everyone should update their browsers ASAP.
As usual, Internet Explorer 10 for Windows 8 and Internet Explorer 11 for Windows 8.1 will receive the new Flash version via Windows Update, and Chrome will update to the new Flash automatically.
Minor update for Opera 19
Opera 19.0.1326.59 was released yesterday. Apparently the browser engine forming the basis of the browser (WebKit, also the basis of Google Chrome) since version 15 was updated.
Chrome 32.0.1700.107 released
A new version of the Chrome web browser was released by Google yesterday. The announcement for version 32.0.1700.107 does not list any changes.
Problems with Opera 19 auto-update
Anyone running Opera 18 with auto-updates enabled may have found their Speed Dial entries replaced with default entries when Opera updated itself to version 19 in the past day or so. The problem was detected and resolved quickly, but for some users, the damage had already been done.
Yahoo email accounts compromised
Yahoo announced yesterday that some Yahoo Mail account addresses and passwords were being used in a coordinated attempt to gain access to those accounts. The source of the account information remains unclear, but Yahoo claims that it was not obtained from Yahoo’s services directly.
Yahoo is resetting the passwords of affected accounts and informing the associated account holders.
Since it’s difficult to know, at this point, the full extent of this problem, anyone with a Yahoo Mail account is advised to immediately change its password.
Opera 19 released
The Webkit-based version of Opera is finally starting to look like it may once again distinguish itself from Google Chrome. Version 19 now has a bookmark toolbar; still no bookmark sidebar, but hopefully that’s on the way. The bookmark programming interface has been opened up, so even if Opera developers don’t add a sidebar, someone will.
Chrome version 32.0.1700.102 released
The latest version of Google’s web browser includes fixes for fourteen security vulnerabilities, as well as some other minor user interface bug fixes.
Another wrinkle in the demise of Windows XP support
According to NCR, who make 95% of them, most of their ATMs run on Windows XP. It’s difficult to predict whether the lack of security patches for that O/S after April will make those ATMs more vulnerable. Financial institutions are aware of this, and are planning to either upgrade their ATMs to Windows 7 or pay Microsoft for a support contract that includes patches for Windows XP after April.