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takyon writes:

Toshiba continues to look for a buyer for its memory business:

South Korea's SK Hynix Inc has entered the running for a stake in Toshiba Corp's memory chip business, seeing an opportunity to gain on rivals in the booming NAND market, a person familiar with the matter said on Tuesday.

The world's No. 2 memory chip maker had submitted an initial bid, although the size of the stake it wanted to acquire had not been decided, the source told Reuters, requesting anonymity as they were not authorized to speak publicly on the deal.

[...] Toshiba aims to raise more than 200 billion yen ($1.7 billion) from the less-than 20 percent stake in its memory business, sources have said. The sale is part of a broader sell-off to cover multi-billion dollar writedowns stemming from its U.S. nuclear power unit.

Previously: Toshiba Teasing QLC 3D NAND and TSV for More Layers
Toshiba Envisions a 100 TB QLC SSD in the "Near Future"
Toshiba Considers NAND Business Split; Samsung Delays Release of 4 TB SSDs

Original Submission

-- OriginalOwner_ writes:

Youness Alaoui of Purism reports:

The good news is: Coreboot is working on the Librem 13. The laptop boots into Linux and most things are working! The only issue I have found so far is that the M.2 SATA port doesn't seem to work properly yet (see below for more info).

- Getting video output

[...] On the BeagleBone Black [...] I figured, "Maybe it's a configuration issue", [...] So I changed that, and flashed Coreboot and when I booted the machine, the video controller worked and I saw the SeaBIOS prompt. Hurray!

- The Curious Case of the M.2 SSD

Unfortunately, once I tried booting Linux, it failed with a "Read Error".

[...] I tried booting PureOS from the USB installation drive instead, and I was able to boot into the live environment without any problems. Wow, first success! PureOS is booting with Coreboot! There was much rejoicing.

[...] SeaBIOS [with] the M.2 SSD [gave wildly inconsistent results].

[...] My current theory is that since the PCI subsystem ID is different when using the vendor BIOS than from using the Coreboot BIOS, it's possible that the subsystem ID somehow tells SeaBIOS/Linux that this specific SATA controller has a quirk that changes the initialization timings. [...]

- Summarizing

My current status is that PureOS boots and is perfectly usable, however the M.2 controller doesn't work reliably. Also, the MEI PCI device as well as the USB EHCI device have disappeared from the "lspci" output (both USB ports are working though). The lspci output is also different for most of the other devices when compared to the original BIOS.

[...] Here is [my] Acceptance Test Matrix [...] where I've stricken whatever I have had time to test and confirm as working, and made bold anything known not to work.

[...] At least 22 out of 32 items [...] are considered tested and done.

[...] I hope to have the M.2 issues fixed within the next couple of weeks, then, after making sure it is perfectly safe to flash Coreboot to any Librem 13, we'll probably release a beta image for people to test (it will come with plenty of disclaimers though!) After that, I'll work on disabling the Intel [Management Engine].

Previous:
Are Purism's Goals for the Librem Laptop Possible to Achieve?
An Early Review of the Purism Librem 15 Laptop (Which Uses 100 Percent Free Software)

Original Submission

Fnord666 writes:

The Dark Web is having a rough time right now... although the victims in this case won't earn too much sympathy. An Anonymous-linked hacker speaking to Motherboard brought down about a fifth of the Tor network's 'secret' websites (over 10,000 of them) in a claimed vigilante move. The intruder decided to attack a Dark Web hosting service, Freedom Hosting II, after discovering that it was managing child porn sites it had to be aware of -- they were using gigabytes of data each when the host officially allows no more than 256MB. Each site had its usual pages replaced with a message that not only chastised FH2, but offered a data dump (minus user info) and explained the nature of the hack.

Reportedly, the attack wasn't difficult. The hacker only needed to have control over a site (new or existing) to get started. After that, it was mostly a matter of modifying a configuration file, triggering a password reset and getting root access.

From early indications, the perpetrator is handling the data relatively responsibly. It's going to a security researcher who'll hand it over to law enforcement, which might just use it to bust the porn peddlers.

Source:

https://www.engadget.com/2017/02/05/hack-knocks-out-fifth-of-dark-web/

Original Submission

Fnord666 writes:

A U.S. judge has ordered Google to hand over emails stored outside the country in order to comply with an FBI search warrant. The warrant in question pertains to a domestic fraud probe.

The ruling is notable because it goes against an appeals court judgement last year — recently upheld — pertaining to Microsoft customer data held in servers outside the US. In that instance a federal court ruled the company did not have to hand over data stored on its servers in Ireland to the US government, declining to "disregard the presumption against extraterritoriality," as the judge put it.

However in the Google case, U.S. Magistrate Judge Thomas Rueter ruled on Friday that the act of transferring emails from a foreign server did not qualify as a seizure. According to Reuters, the judge ruled there is no "meaningful interference" with the account holder's "possessory interest", going on to assert that any privacy infringement occurs "at the time of disclosure in the United States", rather than when the data itself is transferred.

Google's legal team had sought to use the Microsoft ruling as precedent to challenge the warrant's scope. The company had turned over data that was stored in the US only. In a statement it said it will be appealing the judgement. "The magistrate in this case departed from precedent, and we plan to appeal the decision. We will continue to push back on overbroad warrants," it said.

Both cases involve warrants issued under a 1986 federal law called the Stored Communications Act, which — as you can imagine, given its date-stamp — has long been described as a "woefully outdated" piece of legislation vs the technology it is now being used to regulate.

Source:

https://techcrunch.com/2017/02/04/google-told-to-hand-over-foreign-emails-in-fbi-search-warrant-ruling/

Original Submission

AnonTechie writes:

Forget super-AI. Crappy AI is more likely to be our downfall, argues researcher.

[...] It's not that computer scientists haven't argued against AI hype, but an academic you've never heard of (all of them?) pitching the headline "AI is hard" is at a disadvantage to the famous person whose job description largely centers around making big public pronouncements. This month that academic is Alan Bundy, a professor of automated reasoning at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland, who argues in the Communications of the ACM that there is a real AI threat, but it's not human-like machine intelligence gone amok. Quite the opposite: the danger is instead shitty AI. Incompetent, bumbling machines.

Bundy notes that most all of our big-deal AI successes in recent years are extremely narrow in scope. We have machines that can play Jeopardy and Go—at tremendous cost in both cases—but that's nothing like general intelligence.

https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/the-real-threat-is-machine-incompetence-not-intelligence

An interesting take on the AI question. What do Soylentils think of this scenario ?

Original Submission

Fnord666 writes:

On Monday, The Washington Post reported one of the most stunning breaches of security ever. A former NSA contractor, the paper said, stole more than 50 terabytes of highly sensitive data. According to one source, that includes more than 75 percent of the hacking tools belonging to the Tailored Access Operations. TAO is an elite hacking unit that develops and deploys some of the world's most sophisticated software exploits.

Attorneys representing Harold T. Martin III have previously portrayed the former NSA contractor as a patriot who took NSA materials home so that he could become better at his job. Meanwhile, investigators who have combed through his home in Glen Burnie, Maryland, remain concerned that he passed the weaponized hacking tools to enemies. The theft came to light during the investigation of a series of NSA-developed exploits that were mysteriously published online by a group calling itself Shadow Brokers.

[...] An unnamed US official told the paper that Martin allegedly hoarded more than 75 percent of the TAO's library of hacking tools. It's hard to envision a scenario under which a theft of that much classified material by a single individual would be possible.

Source:

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/02/former-nsa-contractor-may-have-stolen-75-of-taos-elite-hacking-tools/

Original Submission

CoolHand writes:

http://www.curbed.com/2017/2/6/14521102/highway-the-ray-solar-power-transportation From the article:

Highways have never been the sexiest infrastructure projects, but Allie Kelly, the executive director of The Ray, believes that preconception will shift dramatically over the next few years due to rapid technological shifts. With politicians in Washington discussing the administration's ambitious infrastructure plans, now is the time to make investments in our transportation system. As far as Kelly is concerned, that vision should focus on achieving zero deaths, zero carbon, and zero waste. She hopes The Ray can serve as the laboratory where new ideas and revenue models are tried, tested, and proven possible.

"We're at a tipping point in transportation," says Kelly. "In five to ten years, we won't remember a time when we invested a dime in infrastructure spending for a road that only did one thing."

[...] Initially, the vision for The Ray was to add a solar installation in the median, along with a wildflower garden, to remind drivers about the environmental costs of the transportation system. But the results of the study suggested a more dramatic plan was needed. Since then, The Ray, in concert with the Georgia Department of Transportation, has slowly rolled out a number of new initiatives to improve both safety and sustainability. In 2015, a new electric charging station powered in part by photovoltaic panels, a joint project with funding from Kia Motors, became the first in the state.

This past year, the Ray added a strip of Wattway solar panels to an entrance ramp, and installed a WheelWright tire pressure sensor at a rest stop right next to the Alabama state line. The new British device helps drivers quickly test and maintain proper tire pressure, a leading cause of crashes.

Over the next year, the foundation plans to add more new tests that will help build out a more holistic roadway. A one megawatt solar installation will be installed in a right-of-way as part of a joint effort with Georgia Power to turn the highway into a place for power generation, and a series of bioswales—landscaped drainage ditches that naturally filter pollution—will turn the areas adjacent to the highway into more clean, sustainable, and natural landscapes.

"We're pushing the idea that these kind of installations can become widespread energy generation system for state departments of transportation," says Kelly. "Highways can eventually make money, and even serve as a power grid for the future."

Previous stories on solar roads and pathways:
Solar Generating Roads
SolaRoad Cycle Path Electricity Yield Exceeds Expectations

Original Submission

PiMuNu writes:

The Sun's surface mysteriously rotates more slowly than its interior. Now researchers have observed the phenomenon with high resolution and proposed an explanation for the behavior. Using a new technique that tracks waves moving through the outer layers of the Sun, the team confirmed the speed difference and attributed the slowdown to the Sun's outer, 70-km "skin." Their model proposes that photons radiated from this layer extract angular momentum, slowing down the rotation. According to the researchers, such a slowdown should occur in all stars and could have a greater effect on larger stars.

The rotation rate of the Sun's plasma varies with latitude—faster at the equator than at the poles—and with distance from the core. Solar researchers noticed the core-surface speed difference decades ago but do not yet have a widely-accepted explanation.

Editorial summary

PRL Article

This rotational anomaly has been implicated in solar flares... so nice to know the cause.

Original Submission

So, in previous posts, I've talked about the fact that SoylentNews currently is powered on Ubuntu 14.04 + a single CentOS 6 box. Right now, the sysops have been somewhat deadlocked on what we should do going forward for our underlying operating system, and I am hoping to get community advice. Right now, the "obvious" choice of what to do is simply do-release-upgrade to Ubuntu 16.04. We've done in-place upgrades before without major issue, and I'm relatively certain we could upgrade without breaking the world. However, from my personal experience, 16.04 introduces systemd support into the stack and is not easily removable. Furthermore, at least in my personal experience, working with journalctl and such has caused me considerable headaches which I detailed in a comment awhile ago.

Discounting systemd itself, I've also found that Ubuntu 16.04 seems less "polished", for want of a better word. I've found I've had to do considerably more fiddling and tweaking to get it to work as a server distro than I had to do with previous releases, as well as had weird issues with LDAP. The same was also true when I worked with recent versions with Debian. As such, there's been a general feeling with the sysops that it's time to go somewhere else.

Below the fold are basically the options as we see them, and I hope if the community can provide some interesting insight or guidance.

Fnord666 writes:

The U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) today announced that smart TV maker Vizio has agreed to pay $2.2 million to settle a case involving the TVs' data collection techniques. Vizio allegedly collected data on what people viewed on 11 million of its TVs and then shared the data with third parties without informing people about the data collection or receiving consent.

As part of the settlement with the FTC and the New Jersey Attorney General, Vizio must also delete data that it collected prior to March 1, 2016, and implement a data privacy program that is to be evaluated twice a year, according to a statement. The commission voted 3-0 in favor of the ruling, according to the statement.

Additionally, Vizio must "prominently disclose and obtain affirmative express consent for its data collection and sharing practices, and prohibits misrepresentations about the privacy, security, or confidentiality of consumer information they collect," the ruling states.

Source:

http://venturebeat.com/2017/02/06/leecos-vizio-settles-with-ftc-will-pay-2-2-million-and-delete-user-data/

Original Submission

Phoenix666 writes:

What is Unity 8 and why's it a big deal?

Unity as a name and project began life in 2010 as a new UI for desktops and laptops and it arrived swiftly – in the following year. However, the idea morphed to offer the same screen and user experience on all devices regardless of mouse or touch. Put Ubuntu running Unity 8 on a phone and it'll render as a phone, put it on a PC and it'll render as a PC, put it on a tablet and it'll render as a tablet. That's the idea anyway, and it was analogous to ideas floating around Redmond for a single version of Windows running on PCs, phones and tablets – the same UI and same "experience". One brand, development and runtime.

That was part of the idea of Windows 8 anyway, and the Metro UI.

Coming with Unity 8 is Mir, the planned display server replacement to the predominant X Windows[sic] System, which Canonical announced in March 2013.

X Windows[sic] System is an industry standard for bitmap displays in Unix-like systems such as Ubuntu and is the product of Stanford University, MIT and IBM. Canonical wants to build its own display server, however.

Four years on, though, the dream remains unrealised with Mir like Unity 8 available only as a preview.

Unity 8 is, by the reckoning of Ubuntu daddy Mark Shuttleworth, a year late.

Windows 8 was an amazing innovation and totally worth replicating?

Original Submission

Fnord666 writes:

InterContinental Hotels Group (IHG), the parent company for thousands of hotels worldwide including Holiday Inn, acknowledged Friday that a credit card breach impacted at least a dozen properties nationwide. News of the breach was first reported by KrebsOnSecurity more than a month ago.

In a statement issued late Friday, IHG said it found malicious software installed on point of sale servers at restaurants and bars of 12 IHG-managed properties between August and December 2016. The stolen data included information stored on the magnetic stripe on the backs of customer credit and debit cards — the cardholder name, card number, expiration date, and internal verification code.

A list of the known breached locations is here. IHG said cards used at the front desk of these properties were not affected.

According to IHG, we may not yet know the full scope of this breach: The company advised that its investigation into other properties in the Americas region is ongoing.

Source:

https://krebsonsecurity.com/2017/02/intercontinental-confirms-breach-at-12-hotels/

Original Submission

Phoenix666 writes:

A method based on the north-south atmospheric pressure gradient along the Atlantic coast of Europe could lead to enhanced forecasting of extreme wave conditions and increased preparedness within coastal communities, a new study suggests.
...
It is based on the atmospheric pressure difference between the Canary Islands and Ireland, and is very strongly linked to the winter wave variability along most of the west coast of Europe.

Initial tests have shown it significantly outscores existing functions, particularly an index called the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO), which has long been known to affect climate variability in the Northern Hemisphere and wave climate arriving at the coasts of the UK, Portugal, France and Ireland.

The NAO index is computed based on the difference in atmospheric pressure between the well-known 'Azores High' and 'Icelandic Low', and more energetic wave conditions are generally associated with a large atmospheric pressure difference.

More information:Bruno Castelle et al. A new climate index controlling winter wave activity along the Atlantic coast of Europe: The West Europe Pressure Anomaly, Geophysical Research Letters (2017). DOI: 10.1002/2016GL072379

If Dennis Quaid was lead author of the study, authorities need to listen.

Original Submission

Fnord666 writes:

When Google popped out Chrome 56 at the end of January it was keen to remind us it's making the web safer by flagging non-HTTPS sites. But Google made little effort to publicise another feature that's decidedly less friendly to privacy, because it lets websites connect to Bluetooth devices and harvest information from them through the browser.

[...Pete] LePage, in the video, says: "Until now, the ability to communicate with Bluetooth devices has been possible only for native apps. With Chrome 56, your Web app can communicate with nearby Bluetooth devices in a private and secure manner, using the Web Bluetooth API. "The Web Bluetooth API uses the GATT protocol, which enables your app to connect to devices such as light bulbs, toys, heart-rate monitors, LED displays and more, with just a few lines of JavaScript."

Let's start with LePage's security-and-privacy claims: what Google means is that the server-to-browser connection is over TLS, and users have to allow connection with a touch or a mouse click. To reiterate: as a user, you have to explicitly grant the remote web app access to your Bluetooth gadgets before anything happens. Then you select a device to pair with the webpage, and away you go. The webpage can filter for devices, so for example, a health site can ask to be paired with gadgets that have a heart rate sensor. A site can't see any device until it is paired.

Source:

https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/02/05/chrome_56_quietly_added_bluetooth_snitch_api/

Original Submission

Phoenix666 writes:

American greatness was long premised on the common assumption was that each generation would do better than previous one. That is being undermined for the emerging millennial generation.

The problems facing millennials include an economy where job growth has been largely in service and part-time employment, producing lower incomes; the Census bureau estimates they earn, even with a full-time job, $2,000 less in real dollars than the same age group made in 1980. More millennials, notes a recent White House report, face far longer period of unemployment and suffer low rates of labor participation. More than 20 percent of people 18 to 34 live in poverty, up from 14 percent in 1980.

They are also saddled with ever more college debt, with around half of students borrowing for their education during the 2013-14 school year, up from around 30 percent in the mid-1990s. All this at a time when the returns on education seem to be dropping: A millennial with both a college degree and college debt, according to a recent analysis of Federal Reserve data, earns about the same as a boomer without a degree did at the same age.

[...] Like medieval serfs in pre-industrial Europe, America's new generation, particularly in its alpha cities, seems increasingly destined to spend their lives paying off their overlords, and having little to show for it.

Capital must be extracted.

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Scientists theorize that Ceres's cryovolcanoes slowly flatten over time:

A recently discovered solitary ice volcano on the dwarf planet Ceres may have some hidden older siblings, say scientists who have tested a likely way such mountains of icy rock – called cryovolcanoes – might disappear over millions of years. NASA's Dawn spacecraft discovered Ceres's 4-kilometer (2.5-mile) tall Ahuna Mons cryovolcano in 2015. Other icy worlds in our solar system, like Pluto, Europa, Triton, Charon and Titan, may also have cryovolcanoes, but Ahuna Mons is conspicuously alone on Ceres. The dwarf planet, with an orbit between Mars and Jupiter, also lies far closer to the sun than other planetary bodies where cryovolcanoes have been found.

Now, scientists show there may have been cryovolcanoes other than Ahuna Mons on Ceres millions or billions of years ago, but these cryovolcanoes may have flattened out over time and become indistinguishable from the planet's surface. They report their findings in a new paper accepted for publication in Geophysical Research Letters, a journal of the American Geophysical Union.

[...] Ceres has no atmosphere, so the processes that wear down volcanoes on Earth – wind, rain and ice – aren't possible on the dwarf planet. Sori and his colleagues hypothesized that another process, called viscous relaxation, could be at work. Viscous relaxation is the idea that just about any solid will flow, given enough time. For example, a cold block of honey appears to be solid. But if given enough time, the block will flatten out until there is no sign left of the original block structure. On Earth, viscous relaxation is what makes glaciers flow, Sori explained. The process doesn't affect volcanoes on Earth because they are made of rock, but Ceres's volcanoes contain ice – making viscous relaxation possible. On Ceres, viscous relaxation could be causing older cryovolcanoes to flatten out over millions of years so they are hard to discern. Ceres's location close to the sun could make the process more pronounced, Sori said.

The vanishing cryovolcanoes of Ceres (open, DOI: 10.1002/2016GL072319) (DX)

Original Submission

Fnord666 writes:

It's been barely two months since Netflix added its long-awaited download feature, and the online streaming company has already been sued over it. The plaintiff is a company few have heard of: Blackbird Technologies, a company with no products or assets other than patents. Blackbird's business is to buy up patent rights and file lawsuits over them, a business known colloquially as "patent trolling."

Blackbird was founded by two former big-firm patent attorneys, Wendy Verlander and Chris Freeman. The organization owns US Patent No. 7,174,362, which it hopes will result in payouts from internet video companies with offline-viewing features. On Wednesday, Blackbird (who tells potential clients about being "able to litigate at reduced costs and achieve results") filed lawsuits against Netflix (PDF), Soundcloud (PDF), Vimeo, Starz, Mubi, and Studio 3 Partners, which owns the Epix TV channel. All of the companies have some type of app that allows for downloading content and watching it offline.

The patent-holding company, which filed the lawsuits in Delaware federal court, has good reason to hope for success. The '362 patent already has a track record of squeezing settlement cash out of big companies. The patent was originally issued in 2000 to Sungil Lee, a San Jose entrepreneur and business instructor. In 2011, Lee sold his patent to Innovative Automation LLC, a patent troll that filed dozens of lawsuits in East Texas and California. Innovative Automation said that the '362 patent covered various "methods and systems of digital data duplication" and used it to sue services like "Target Ticket" and "DirecTV Everywhere." Court records suggest most of those cases settled within months.

Source:

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/02/patent-troll-sues-netflix-over-offline-downloads/

Original Submission