Lunarsoft

Bill Gates is currently (as of this news post) doing his first ever Ask Me Anything on Reddit. He has already posted his verification image and even a video of a few of the common and popular questions he has received which you can see below.

Gates message currently reads as follows:

Hi, I’m Bill Gates, co-chair of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Ask me anything.

Many of you know me from my Microsoft days. The company remains very important to me and I’m still chairman. But today my full time work is with the foundation. Melinda and I believe that everyone deserves the chance for a healthy and productive life – and so with the help of our amazing partners, we are working to find innovative ways to help people in need all over the world.

I’ve just finished writing my 2013 Annual Letter http://www.billsletter.com. This year I wrote about how there is a great opportunity to apply goals and measures to make global improvements in health, development and even education in the U.S.

VERIFICATION: http://i.imgur.com/vlMjEgF.jpg

I’ll be answering your questions live, starting at 10:45 am PST. I’m looking forward to my first AMA.

UPDATE: Here’s a video where I’ve answered a few popular Reddit questions - http://youtu.be/qv_F-oKvlKU

Join our ongoing discussion on the Lunarsoft Forums about Bill Gates AMA.

Software giant Microsoft has sold 60 million licences and upgrades for its new Windows 8 operating system in the 10 weeks since its launch.

Tami Reller, chief financial officer of the Windows division, said at the Consumer Electronics Show that Windows 8 sales are growing in line with those of Windows 7, Microsoft's last operating system, launched in 2009.

According to the Sydney Morning Herald, the figure marks a solid, but unspectacular start for Microsoft's new flagship product, which has not managed to revive lagging personal computer sales, while new touch-screen Windows devices have not yet captured consumers' imaginations.

The latest Windows 8 figure means Microsoft sold around 20 million Windows 8 licences and upgrades since the end of November, when it announced 40 million sales in the first month on the market, the paper said. That puts sales broadly in line with Windows 7, which averaged 19.4 million sales per month in its first nine months on the market, when PC sales were running at a lower level than today, it added.

 Source: MSFN

Inside a small bungalow on the street separating Kansas City, Kan., from its sister city in Missouri, a small group of entrepreneurs are working on their ideas for the next high-tech startup, tapping Google Inc.'s new superfast Internet connection that has turned the neighborhood into an unlikely settlement dubbed the "Silicon Prairie."

The home on State Line Road is one of several startup-friendly locations that have sprouted up in Kansas City in recent months. The catalyst is Google Fiber, the search-engine giant's fiber-optic network being tested in the Kansas City area that advertises speeds of up to a gigabyte per second — a rate that massively exceeds the average Internet speeds at homes hooked up with cable modems.

The advantage here for startups is simple: A fast Internet pipe makes it easier to handle large files and eliminates buffering problems that plague online video, live conferencing or other network-intensive tasks. Though the Kansas City location presents challenges for startups, including the ability to raise money outside the traditional Silicon Valley venture capital scene, entrepreneurs like Synthia Payne believe it's the place to be right now for up-and-coming tech companies.

Payne is one of those entrepreneurs hoping to launch her startup dream — an Internet subscription service for musicians who want to collaborate online — on the cheap. She shares the State Line Road house, known as the "Home for Hackers," with other startups under a deal that allows them to live rent-free while they develop their business plans.

A previously unknown and currently unpatched security hole in the latest version of the Java software framework is under attack online, according to security researchers and bloggers.

Attack code that exploits vulnerability in Java's browser plugin has been added to the Blackhole, Cool, Nuclear Pack, and Redkit exploit kits, according to the Malware Don't Need Coffee blog, prompting its author to say that the bug is being "massively exploited in the wild." Miscreants use these products to turn compromised websites into platforms for silently installing keyloggers and other types of malicious software on the computers of unsuspecting visitors. KrebsOnSecurity reporter Brian Krebs said the curators of both Blackhole and Nuclear Pack have taken to the underweb to boast of the addition to their wares. It's not yet clear how many websites have been outfitted with the exploits.

According to researchers at Alienvault Labs, the exploits work against fully patched installations of Java. Attack files are highly obfuscated and are most likely succeeding by bypassing security checks built in to the program. KrebsOnSecurity said the malware authors say the exploits work against all versions of Java 7.

Analysis from antivirus provider Kaspersky Lab indicates the exploits are already deployed on a variety of websites.

Microsoft said it will patch at least 14 vulnerabilities next week, including four in Internet Explorer (IE), making it three months in a row that the company has plugged holes in its browser.

Of the nine updates set for Aug. 14, five will be labeled "critical," the most serious of the four ratings Microsoft uses. The other four will be pegged "important," the next-lower threat ranking.

The big story for next week will be the one-two punch of patches for Exchange and SQL Server.

"Those are two of the three things that are most important to IT in enterprises," said Andrew Storms, director of security operations at nCircle Security. "Thank goodness SharePoint's not included. But Microsoft is hitting two out of three in just one month."

In the advanced notification of next week's updates, Microsoft outlined patches for Exchange, the email server software used by most companies, and SQL Server, the database that runs many corporations' internal and external processes, including powering websites and providing workers with everything from business intelligence to financial information.