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takyon writes:

Insurance crime investigators are raising alarms over a device that not only lets thieves break into cars that use keyless entry systems but also helps start and steal them.

Investigators from the National Insurance Crime Bureau, a not-for-profit organization, said in an interview they obtained what they called the "mystery device" from a third-party security expert at an overseas company.

So far, the threat here may be mostly theoretical. The crime bureau said it heard of the device being used in Europe and had reports that it had entered the U.S., but said there are no law enforcement reports of a car being stolen using it in the United States.

During a two-week time period, NICB investigators tested 35 different makes and models of cars using the car-hacking device and were able to start and drive away about half the vehicles.

Among the vulnerable cars were the 2015 Ford Edge, 2016 Chevrolet Impala, 2013 Volkswagen Jetta Hybrid and the 2017 Toyota Camry, NICB Chief Communication Officer Roger Morris said.

[...] Representatives from Volkswagen declined to comment. Representatives from Toyota, Ford and Chevrolet did not respond to inquiries.

Original Submission

stormwyrm writes:

The BBC reports that supporters of US President-elect Donald Trump are urging a boycott of the Star Wars film, Rogue One, next week, over claims that scenes had been reshot after the election to make the film more of a thinly-veiled jab linking the president-elect to racism.

Supporters of Donald Trump are urging a boycott of the Star Wars film, Rogue One, due for US release next week.

The campaign began with a series of tweets from activist Jack Posobiec, who claimed the writers changed the film to add scenes linking Mr Trump to racism.

Screenwriter Chris Weitz said that this was "completely fake", though he and another writer have tweeted their opposition to the US president-elect.

#DumpStarWars has been retweeted 120,000 times in the past 24 hours.

In a Periscope video, Jack Posobiec, who is an activist with Citizens for Trump, claimed the writers had said the Empire in the film "is a white supremacist organization like the Trump administration and the diverse rebels are going to defeat them".

"They're trying to make the point of using this movie to push the false narrative... that Trump is a racist." he said.

Original Submission

Phoenix666 writes:

It's a sign of the times that automotive companies are releasing major new concept cars at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES), and in years to come, as robotics and artificial intelligence converge with the automobile, Las Vegas in the New Year may become the premier such showcase of intelligent vehicles in the world. Honda's NeuV concept vehicle will be appearing at the show and is being promoted as "harnessing the power of artificial intelligence, robotics, and big data to transform the mobility experience."

CES 2017 will also see the unveiling of a concept motorcycle that will apparently feature in the keynote address of Honda President & CEO Yoshiyuki Matsumoto. At this stage, all we know is that Matsumoto will "unveil a concept motorcycle demonstrating an application of the company's robotics technology."

Honda's newly announced "Cooperative Mobility Ecosystem" will be shown for the first time at CES 2017, with Honda promising to announce collaboration with global brands and startups.

Original Submission

An Anonymous Coward writes:

Should judges be allowed to overrule a jury's decision for sentencing?

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/08/us/politics/alabama-ronald-bert-smith-execution-supreme-court.html?0p19G=c&_r=0

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

Intel's Alloy headset, unveiled earlier this year, aims to offer VR without ungainly cables hooked up to a PC. Ever eager to keep you buying PCs, Microsoft and Intel are cooperating to bring virtual reality to the masses.

Today's more advanced virtual reality setups, like Facebook's Oculus Rift and HTC's Vive, require a high-powered PC with enough graphics horsepower to generate a convincing artificial 3D game for you to play or world to explore. There's progress to pare back the hardware requirements, but Microsoft and Intel are going farther with a project called Evo.

Project Evo's goal is to bring VR and related immersive technology to midrange laptops with the workable but unspectacular graphics performance of built-in Intel graphics. It's geared to handle VR and related augmented reality and mixed reality technology that blends computer-generated imagery with the real world.

Indeed, it's no coincidence the companies chose the Project Evo name: Evolution is famously unforgiving for entities that can't keep up with competitive challenges.

The project is "a deep collaboration with Microsoft to further push the boundaries of personal computing," Navin Shenoy, general manager of Intel's PC group, said in a statement. Microsoft and Intel will cooperate to ensure VR and mixed reality can fully exploit the power of Intel's sixth-generation "Skylake" Core processors and newer seventh-generation "Kaby Lake" models and their built-in graphics hardware.

It's also designed to improve other areas where mobile devices could struggle to keep up, like artificial intelligence and very detailed big-screen 4K graphics. Evo-class PCs will need at least 8GB of memory, USB 3.0 ports, an HDMI 1.4 graphics port and Bluetooth 4.0 wireless connections.

Original Submission

Fnord666 writes:

The Economist has an interesting story about how the DEA has been paying transportation employees a percentage of the results of any seizures or confiscations.

There are many reasons why you might have been stopped at an American transport hub and your bag searched by officials. You might have be[sic] chosen at random. Perhaps you matched a profile. Or you could have been flagged by an airline, railroad or security employee who was being secretly paid by the government as a confidential informant to uncover evidence of drug smuggling.

A committee of Congress heard remarkable testimony last week about a long-running programme by the Drug Enforcement Administration. For years, officials from the Department of Justice testified, the DEA has paid millions of dollars to a variety of confidential sources to provide tips on travellers who may be transporting drugs or large sums of money. Those sources include staff at airlines, Amtrak, parcel services and even the Transportation Safety Administration.

The testimony follows a report by the Justice Department that uncovered the DEA programme and detailed its many potential violations. According to that report, airline employees and other informers had an incentive to search more travellers' bags, since they received payment whenever their actions resulted in DEA seizures of cash or contraband.

Original Submission

Fnord666 writes:

Silly Putty is not just for making stretchy faces any more. Scientists have found that by adding graphene you get a very sensitive strain detector.

It's easy to dismiss Silly Putty as a kid's toy. But the stretchy material actually exhibits some surprising properties: It's one of the softest plastics around, and it can behave like both a liquid and a solid, oozing when gently stretched but bouncing off surfaces like a rubber ball when hurled. And when you mix Silly Putty with graphene—strong, conductive carbon sheets with unusual physical properties—it becomes an incredibly sensitive strain detector that can track blood pressure, heart rate, and even a spider's footsteps.

[...] That change makes g-putty about 500 times more sensitive than other deformation-detecting materials, which would respond to a similar compression with a mere one-percent change in electrical resistance. The results were published in the journal Science.

[...] This type of material could be used in the electromechanical sensors that measure vibrations. Specifically, the soft putty is a perfect candidate for measuring bodily motion. A squishy, unobtrusive sensor could track a baby's breathing, for example, without irritating or disturbing the child. Placed over a pulse point, a similar sensor could measure not only heart rate, Coleman claims, but blood pressure as well.

Changes in blood pressure often precede negative changes to a patient's status. So, Coleman says, "If you could continuously measure blood pressure, you would have a fantastic way of measuring the wellness of someone. This sensor can do that, and it can do it cheaply."

Original Submission

aristarchus writes:

Business Insider features a column that tries to connect some dots between Thiel and Zuckerberg.

All groundless speculation, no doubt, but the author, Jim Edwards, does provide a timeline that is interesting, to say the least. The issue comes up because of a recent shareholder lawsuit against Facebook's board that forced release of the aforementioned texts.

As Alice said in Wonderland, "curiouser and curiouser".

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Scientists have found evidence of a tumor in a 255-million-year-old synapsid fossil:

When paleontologists at the University of Washington cut into the fossilized jaw of a distant mammal relative, they got more than they bargained for — more teeth, to be specific. As they report in a letter [open, DOI: 10.1001/jamaoncol.2016.5417] [DX] published Dec. 8 in the Journal of the American Medical Association Oncology, the team discovered evidence that the extinct species harbored a benign tumor made up of miniature, tooth-like structures. Known as a compound odontoma, this type of tumor is common to mammals today. But this animal lived 255 million years ago, before mammals even existed.

"We think this is by far the oldest known instance of a compound odontoma," said senior author Christian Sidor, a UW professor of biology and curator of vertebrate paleontology at the Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture. "It would indicate that this is an ancient type of tumor." Before this discovery, the earliest known evidence of odontomas came from Ice Age-era fossils.

Original Submission

CoolHand writes:

From NPR:

President Obama has ordered the intelligence community to conduct a "full review" of "malicious cyber activity" timed to U.S. elections, the White House said Friday.

The review will go all the way back to the 2008 campaign when China was found to have hacked both the Obama and McCain campaigns, White House spokesman Eric Schultz said at a Friday press briefing.

In the 2016 election, U.S. intelligence officials charged that Russia had interfered. In early October, they released a strongly worded statement saying they were "confident that the Russian Government directed the recent compromises of e-mails from U.S. persons and institutions, including from U.S. political organizations." The statement went on to say "these thefts and disclosures are intended to interfere with the U.S. election process."

Shortly after that, WikiLeaks began posting emails hacked from Clinton campaign Chairman John Podesta's Gmail account. The slow drip of those emails, including transcripts of Clinton's remarks to Goldman Sachs, hung over the campaign in its closing weeks and proved embarrassing at times. Podesta said he spoke to the FBI about the hacking, and intelligence experts blamed Russia for that as well.

Original Submission

An Anonymous Coward writes:

Greg Lake passed away December 7 after "a long and stubborn battle with cancer"; he was 69.

Lake was the singer and guitarist in the English "supergroup" Emerson, Lake, and Palmer, which he co-founded in 1970, after an earlier stint in King Crimson. ELP and a rival band Yes (as well as Crimson) helped spark the progressive rock craze in the early '70s; both bands remained active, with intermittent gaps, well into the 21st century as fans flocked to arenas to see them perform.

Keith Emerson died from suicide earlier this year; he suffered from both heart disease and depression, the latter aggravated by a nervous condition which apparently made him lose confidence in his ability to perform the keyboards on tour.

Rolling Stone has a decent write-up on Lake's career. Ironically, critics such as those writing for Rolling Stone were never fans of ELP, Yes, or the other '70s prog rock bands; the article quotes Lake's (2013) response:

Original Submission

takyon writes:

In an effort to remain the center of U.S. automotive development, Michigan has passed the most comprehensive self-driving vehicle regulations in the country:

Michigan, in a race with Silicon Valley for supremacy in autonomous autos, today enacted legislation that it said is the first in the U.S. to establish comprehensive regulations for testing, use and eventual sale of self-driving cars.

Governor Rick Snyder signed a law that defines how self-driving cars can be used on public roads in testing and commercial deployment, the Michigan Economic Development Corp. said in a statement. The law allows public road testing of vehicles without steering wheels, gas or brake pedals or any need for human control. It lets auto and tech companies operate driverless ride-sharing services and also lays out rules for how self-driving cars can be sold to the public once the technology has been tested and certified. "Michigan is the global center for automotive technology and development," Snyder said in the statement. "By establishing guidelines and standards for self-driving vehicles, we're continuing that tradition."

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

On Friday morning, Bloomberg reported that it had seen a copy of a questionnaire sent by the Trump transition team to the Department of Energy (DOE). The questionnaire includes 75 questions directed at the DOE and the Energy Information Agency (EIA), as well as any labs underneath the DOE's purview. The New York Times then obtained and published a copy of the document.

Although the questions are broad in nature, they seem to set the department up for budget and staffing cuts. They also appear to favor nuclear power and fossil fuel.

Questions that address cuts to the DOE's mission include: "Which Assistant Secretary positions are rooted in statute and which exist at the discretion and delegation of the Secretary?", as well as "If the DOE's topline budget in accounts other than the 050 account were required to be reduced 10% over the next four fiscal years (from the FY17 request and starting in FY18), does the Department have any recommendations as to where those reductions should be made?" A 050 account indicates national defense spending.

With respect to renewables and research, the questionnaire asks the DOE to provide a complete list of the projects shouldered by the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E), which funds early-stage energy technology that would otherwise not be funded on the private market. ARPA-E opened its doors in 2009 under President Obama and works on battery research, biofuel production, and wind turbine projects.

Efforts to modernize the US' aging and inefficient grids also seemed to get a critical eye. "What is the goal of the grid modernization effort?" the questionnaire asks. "Is there some terminal point to this effort? Is its genesis statutory or something else?"

[Continues...]

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

The president of the European Patent Office has responded to a formal rebuke of efforts to impose his will on the organization by asking for more power.

The man who last week was called a disgrace to his country in the French National Assembly has been accused of targeting EPO staff who opposed his reforms and of running sham disciplinary hearings as part of a campaign of intimidation.

Some of Benoit Battistelli's reforms have been enacted, whereas others – especially those that grant the president additional powers and effectively place him above the EPO's independent review and appeal processes – have been bitterly fought.

Several staff members, including the staff union's secretary, were placed on administrative leave by Battistelli over a year ago and have been put through what many claim have been a series of illegal and irregular hearings.

[...] In a letter to the EPO's ruling Administrative Council following the ILO decisions, Battistelli painted himself as the victim and argued the only solution is to give him yet more power.

[...] In a formal proposal to the EPO's General Consultative Committee, Battistelli has attempted to reintroduce a change to the EPO's "service regulations" that he previously put forward, but which was rejected.

Original Submission

Phoenix666 writes:

Russia's telecom operator on Friday said that it had blocked a series of cyber attacks on the country's leading banks this week, the latest to target the country's financial sector.

Rostelecom said in a statement that it "successfully thwarted DDoS (distributed denial of service) on the five biggest banks and financial organisations in Russia" on December 5.

"The most sustained attack lasted more than two hours," it said.

Russia's FSB security service last week said it had uncovered plans by foreign intelligence services to carry out massive cyber attacks targeting the country's financial system from December 5.

Original Submission