1. GitHub suffered a major outage on Sunday, October 21, 2018 and is still undergoing repair. According to the GitHub team, the site was "affected by a network partition and subsequent database failure" and readers can monitor status updates here. In response, the platform paused internal processing systems such as webhook events, but the team reassures users that no data was lost. While GitHub.com was affected by the incident, the self-hosted GitHub Enterprise server was not, so enterprise repositories were unaffected.  - GITHUB

2. Hackers managed to breach HealthCare.gov, thus compromising the data of roughly 75,000 people and shutting down the system linked to the website. Technicians are currently working to repair and restore the hacked system before Americans start signing up for health care coverage on November 1, 2018. Customers affected by the breach will be notified and receive credit protection. The front-facing portal of the public website is working fine, however, and open enrollment will not be affected. - TECH CRUNCH

1. Apple launched an online privacy portal that allows American users to download a copy of all the data they have stored with the tech giant. Before creating the portal, US consumers had to contact Apple directly for such information. Apple also released a privacy website revealing which of its user's data it stores. - BLOOMBERG

2. Firefox Nightly now supports encryption for the TLS Server Name Indication (SNI) extension. By introducing this feature, Firefox users can better protect their browsing history from network attackers. At present, only sites hosted by Cloudflare can enable the encryption. - MOZILLA

3. Google's censored search engine will likely have to carry out China's new speech suppression laws persecuting the country's Muslim minority population. The region just passed new laws mandating tech companies to censor, police, silence, and heavily monitor the country's Muslim Uighur ethnic minority. If they find unlawful activity and communication, they are required to report it to Chinese officials. Google, who is working on a censored search engine for China, will likely be subject to such rules, sparking further controversy on a product that's already caused an uproar amongst many. - BUSINESS INSIDER

3. Angular 7.0.0 is now available. This latest release introduces new components for the framework's tool chain, dependency updates, and more. Angular also partnered with the likes of NativeScript and others to launch a variety of new features, such as nativescript-schmatics, a "schematic collection that enables you to build both web and mobile apps" from one project. For further details, readers can check out the release notes here. - GITHUB

4. Linux announced the release of Linux 4.19, codenamed the "People's front." The community also revealed its founder, Linus Torvalds, will be back to work on Linux 4.20 after taking a break to work on improving his relationship skills upon continuously exhibiting "bad behavior." To learn about Linux 4.19's new features, click here.  - FOSSBYTES

5. The jQuery team is taking steps to address a zero-day exploited by hackers in the jQuery File Upload. Attackers abused the vulnerability, which affects all jQuery File Upload versions 9.22.1, for at least three years now in an attempt to control web servers. While the team recently released a fix, security experts remain concerned as patching could take a long time given how widely used the plugin is. American Homeland Security center, the United States Computer Emergency Readiness Team -- also known as US Cert -- has also been alerted of the issue. - ZDNET

JARGON WATCH:

11. Daemon: Refers to those multi-tasking operating system activities taking place in the background.

4. Google's IPv6 tracker reveals 25% of users accessing Google worldwide have adopted IPv6, the Internet Protocol's latest version. For many, this is good news. IPv6 boasts a number of features, offering more IP addresses than IPv4, which has already run out of them. It is also considered far more secure, faster, and powerful than its predecessor.  -GOOGLE

5. Ubuntu 18.10 "Cosmic Cuttlefish" is now available. This latest version focuses on multi-cloud deployments, AI software development, a new community desktop theme, boasts an upgraded OpenSSL 1.1.1 and more. For further details, click here. - UBUNTU

6. JetBrains is currently offering its entire suite of developer tools for free to college and high school students, as well as faculty members. Products include a range of tools for Java, PHP, Ruby, Python, JavaScript, Kotlin, Objective-C, or .NET technologies, including IntelliJ IDEA Ultimate, ReSharper Ultimate, and more. While this deal does not apply to those attending bootcamps, there are some discounts available for such students. For more information about eligibility, click here. - JETBRAINS

1. PostgreSQL 11 is now available. The PostgreSQL team says this version boasts a number of improvements designed to improve its ability to manage very large databases. Other features include support for stored procedures capable of transaction management, query parallelism improvement, just-in-time (JIT) compilation, and more. For further details, click here. - POSTGRESQL

2. Google Chrome 70 has been released. The new version gives users the option to prevent automatic sign-ins into their Gmail accounts after logging in a Google app. In addition, Chrome 70 allows the public to restrict the browsers' host access to specific websites. Finally, this latest version also features support for Progressive Web Apps on Windows. - GOOGLE

3. A 2014 bug in Libssh, a Secure Shell (SSH) implementation library, could allow hackers to circumvent authentication and take administrative control over a server without requiring a password. While this has left 6,500 internet-facing servers vulnerable to attack in the past four years, the widely used OpenSSH and Github's implementation of libssh is safe. The updated libssh versions 0.8.4 and 0.7.6 -- released on October 16, 2018 -- addresses this issue, so readers are advised to update as soon as possible. - THE HACKER NEWS