iamvego writes: Later than the typical release cadence, PostgreSQL 9.5 has finally been released, and brings with it a slew of new features including UPSERT functionality, row-level security, and some big data features (CUBE/ROLLUP, join pushdown for foreign data wrappers, TABLESAMPLE, BRIN indexing and more). The previous release had brought about some new JSON functions and operators, but they only queried the data; 9.5 comes with new operators which now allow modification of JSON values, so it no longer has to be manipulated outside of the database. PostgreSQL's wiki has a more detailed overview of the new features.

An anonymous reader writes: A $5 million lawsuit filed in New York federal court alleges that Apple's iOS 9 mobile operating software significantly slows down the iPhone 4S. According to the complaint: "The update significantly slowed down their iPhones and interfered with the normal usage of the device, leaving Plaintiff with a difficult choice: use a slow and buggy device that disrupts everyday life or spend hundreds of dollars to buy a new phone. Apple explicitly represented to the public that iOS 9 is compatible with and supports the iPhone 4S. And Apple failed to warn iPhone 4S owners that the update may or will interfere with the device's performance."

An anonymous reader writes: FCC filings published today are offering a glimpse of the "Enterprise Edition" of Google Glass. According to Engadget: "...The work-focused eyepiece touts a much slicker (and likely more durable) design with both a larger display prism and a hinge that lets you fold it up for travel. The test photos also reveal a spot for a magnetic battery attachment and what looks to be a speedier Atom processor. There's still no word on when Google will announce this headset, although the FCC presence hints that it might not take long."

MojoKid writes: We all know what Microsoft wants to do with Windows 10. It's supposedly the last monolithic release of Windows and the ultimate plan is to unite hardware from different device categories under a single, universal ecosystem. That includes smartphones, which is an area where Microsoft has historically struggled hard to compete. The release of a premium "Surface Phone" of some sort, however, could prove to be a game changer. Microsoft is aggressively pushing Windows 10 upgrades, and makes no bones about it, all in an effort to get developers on board to build universal Windows 10 cross-platform apps and spur mobile development. In that respect, Microsoft needs to finally make an impact in the handset space and Windows 10 Mobile is the company's one shot to do just that. And it appears that Microsoft is working on what could be essentially a true Surface Phone, or at least something very similar. In a recent interview, Mary Jo Foley pushed Microsoft's Chief Marketing Officer Chris Capossela on the prospect of a Surface Phone and he confirmed the company is working on a "breakthrough" phone that is the "spiritual equivalent" of their very successful line of Surface branded products. Capossela has been with Microsoft for over two decades. He used to write speeches for Bill Gates and is intimately familiar with Microsoft's many products and strategies.

Earlier this month, we noted the Perl 6 advent calendar. Now, an anonymous reader writes to note that, right on schedule, and after 15 years of work, Perl 6 has been released. The top two bullet points in the linked description say that the newest Perl "retains the core values of Perl: expressiveness, getting the job done, taking influences from natural language, and pushing the boundaries of language design," and that is "has clean, modern syntax, rooted in familiar constructs but revisiting and revising the things that needed it." However, while it's nice to see Perl 6 reach official release, the team behind it takes pains to note that work goes on: "We will continue to ship monthly releases, which will continue to improve performance and our user’s experience." Further, "[T]his Rakudo release is not considered the primary deliverable for this Christmas; it is the language specification, known as “roast” (Repository Of All Spec Tests), that is considered the primary deliverable."

An anonymous reader writes: The Payment Card Industry Security Standards Council (PCI SSC) has announced (PDF) that it will push back the mandatory implementation of TLS 1.1+ encryption, over the very insecure SSL 3.0 and TLS 1.0 protocols, subject to POODLE attacks. PCI SSC cites "complications" that may come from dealing with EMV chip&PIN cards in the US, the new mobile payment platforms, and browser upgrades for the insecure SHA-1 algorithm.

An anonymous reader writes: Wine 1.8.0 is now the latest stable release of Wine Is Not An Emulator and available from WineHQ.org. Wine 1.8 features include support for DirectWrite, Direct2D support, very limited Direct3D 11 support, simple application support of DIrect3D 10, support for process jobs, 64-bit architecture support on OS X, networking updates, and over 13,000 other individual changes.

An anonymous reader with news of the newest release of open source WordPress, which adds a slew of new features to the blog management tool that will "make your site more connected and responsive." You can download the new release now from WordPress.org/Download (7.3MB). WordPress is a content management system (CMS) that powers 25 percent of the Web. The latest version is dubbed "Clifford" in honor of jazz trumpeter Clifford Brown.

linuxscreenshot writes: Just in time for the holidays, it's a new release of elementary OS. Freya 0.3.2 is a minor release, mostly focused around solving some issues folks have had with UEFI & SecureBoot, but we've also managed to sneak in some internationalization updates and a couple new features. Screenshots are available.

MojoKid writes: AMD's Radeon Technologies Group has announced a couple of new features for Radeon graphics support in 2016. FreeSync over HDMI support will be coming to all Radeons that currently support FreeSync. FreeSync over HDMI, however, will require new displays. The HDMI specification doesn't currently have support for variable refresh rates, but it does allow for vendor specific extensions. Radeon Technologies Group is using these vendor specific extensions to enable the technology. A number of FreeSync over HDMI compatible displays are slated to arrive early next year from brands including LG, Acer, and Samsung. The first notebook with FreeSync has also launched. Lenovo's Y700 gaming notebook is the first with a validated, FreeSync-compatible panel. The Radeon Technologies Group also announced that support for DisplayPort 1.3, HDMI 2.0a and HDR displays was coming in the 2016 pipeline as well. With current 8-bit panels, the range of colors, contrast, and brightness presented to users is only a fraction of what the human eye can see. When source material is properly mapped to an HDR panel, colors are more accurately displayed representing more closely what the human eye would see in the real world.

LichtSpektren writes: After previously apologizing on October 16th for forcing Windows 10 on some users of Windows 7 and 8.1 via the Windows Update mechanism, Microsoft disabled the default update option for Windows 10, so that users eligible for the new OS would have to opt in manually. Gregg Keizer at ComputerWorld reports today that Microsoft will soon switch the default option back to "on" again, possibly as early as tomorrow's "Patch Tuesday" update. Users who do not want Windows 10 are strongly advised to turn off automatic updating to avoid accidentally installing the OS.

itwbennett writes: The OpenSSL Software Foundation has released new patches for the popular open-source cryptographic library, but for two of its older branches, OpenSSL 1.0.0t and 0.9.8zh, they will likely be the last security updates because support for these these two branches will end on Dec. 31. Previous research has shown that many companies using in-house built software keep poor records of which library versions their developers used in which of their applications. 'This makes it very likely that some systems and applications with OpenSSL 0.9.8 and 1.0.0 will never be updated, leaving them exposed to any critical vulnerabilities found in the library in the future,' writes Lucian Constantin.

An anonymous reader writes: A "useful and usable distribution of Perl 6" was released Saturday, a new beta version of the Rakudo compiler to support the coming production release this Christmas. And there's already 467 Perl 6 modules on the new archive at proto.perl6.org (though Perl 6 will also be able to load modules written in other languages). "Perl has a huge community of avid users that continues to thrive in spite of detractors," says one developer, pointing to new applications for big data, in a new article reporting that over one million people have downloaded ActivePerl's own Perl distribution just in 2015. And this week also saw the release of two new "Advent Calendars" of programming tips, one for Perl 5 and one for Perl 6.

An anonymous reader writes: DragonFlyBSD 4.4 is now available for download (x86_64 ISO) and is a feature release that presents many improvements and new features. DragonFlyBSD now uses the Gold Linker by default rather than GNU Ld, updates the Intel and Radeon graphics support against the Linux 3.18 kernel, improves its experimental HAMMER2 file-system updates the locale system and provides collation for named locales, changes out its regex library, and has new hardware drivers. More details on the 4.4 release page.

MojoKid writes: It's been discovered that some third-party heat sinks can physically damage Intel's new Skylake CPUs, along with the pins in the accompanying motherboard socket. The problem has prompted at least one cooler maker to change the design of its Socket 1151 heat sinks and it wouldn't be surprising if others soon followed suit. The apparent issue is the substrate Intel used for its Skylake chips. A close-up shot of a Skylake CPU sitting side-by-side with a Broadwell processor (Google translation of German original) shows that the substrate is noticeably thinner on Skylake, and thus prone to bending from the force that some third-party heat sinks exert. Intel has addressed the issue by saying, “The design specifications and guidelines for the 6th Gen Intel Core processor using the LGA 1151 socket are unchanged from previous generations and are available for partners and 3rd party manufacturers. Intel can’t comment on 3rd party designs or their adherence to the recommended design specifications. For questions about a specific cooling product we must defer to the manufacturer.”

prisoninmate writes: The current daily build of the Ubuntu 16.04 LTS (Xenial Xerus) remains based on the Linux 4.2 kernel packages of the stable Ubuntu 15.10 (Wily Werewolf) operating system, while the latest and most advanced Linux 4.3 kernel is tracked on the master-next branch of the upcoming operating system. In the meantime, the Ubuntu Kernel Team announced plans for moving to Linux kernel 4.4 for the final release of the Ubuntu 16.04 LTS (Xenial Xerus) operating system.

An anonymous reader writes: AMD Windows customers were greeted this week to the new "Crimson" Radeon Software that brought many bug fixes, performance improvements, and brand new control panel. While AMD also released this Crimson driver for Linux, it really doesn't change much. The control panel is unchanged except for replacing "Catalyst" strings with "Radeon" and there's been no performance changes but just some isolated slowdowns. The Crimson Linux release notes only mention two changes: a fix for glxgears stuttering and mouse cursor corruption.

An anonymous reader writes: Yesterday marked the launch of AMD's 'Crimson' driver software. It replaces the old Catalyst driver software, and represents a change in how AMD develops bug fixes, improves performance, and adds features. AnandTech took a detailed look at the new driver software. They say, "By focusing feature releases around the end of the year driver, AMD is able to cut down on what parts of the driver they change (and thereby can possibly break) at other times of the year, and try to knock out all of their feature-related bugs at once. At the same time it makes the annual driver release a significant event, as AMD releases a number of new features all at once. However on the other hand this means that AMD has few features launching any other time of the year, which can make it look like they're not heavily invested in feature development at those points." On a more positive note, the article adds, "Looking under the hood there's no single feature that's going to blow every Radeon user away at once, but overall there are a number of neat features here that should be welcomed by various user groups. ... Meanwhile AMD's radical overhaul of their control panel via the new Radeon Settings application will be quickly noticed by everyone."

MarkWhittington writes: NASA announced that it is sending copies of its R5 Valkyrie humanoid robot to two universities for software upgrades and other research and development. The effort is part of a continuing project to develop cybernetic astronauts that will assist human astronauts in exploring other worlds. The idea is that robot astronauts would initially scout potentially hazardous environments, say on Mars, and then actively collaborate with their human counterparts in exploration. NASA is paying each university chosen $250,000 per year for two years to perform the R&D. The university researchers will have access to NASA expertise and facilities to perform the upgrades. Spoiler alert: the robots are both going to Greater Boston, to teams at MIT and Northeastern University respectively.

An anonymous reader writes: NASA announced that MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) is one of just two institutions that will receive "R5," a six-foot, 290-pound humanoid robot also known as "Valkyrie" that will serve on future space missions to Mars and beyond. A group led by CSAIL principal investigator Russ Tedrake will develop algorithms for the robot as part of NASA's upcoming Space Robotics Challenge, which aims to create more dexterous autonomous robots that can help or even take the place of humans "extreme space" missions. While R5 was initially designed to complete disaster-relief maneuvers, its main goal is now to prove itself worthy of even trickier terrain — deep space exploration.