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butthurt writes:

ITworld has a story about certain Hewlett-Packard laptop computers:

The keylogger is found within the PCs' audio driver software and has existed since at least Dec. 2015, the security firm Modzero said in a Thursday blog post.

The audio driver was designed to identify when a special key on the PC was used. But in reality, the software will capture all the keystrokes and write them in an unencrypted file located on the laptop.

The problematic driver is called MicTray64.exe — versions 1.0.0.31 through 1.0.0.46 are known to be affected. The logged keystrokes are written either to the world-readable file C:\Users\Public\MicTray.log or through the OutputDebugString API. The latter can be observed using Microsoft's debugview utility.

The Modzero website has the technical details.

ThreatPost adds:

ModZero is warning the issue (CVE-2017-8360) could lead to the leaking of sensitive user information, such as passwords. Anyone with access to the unencrypted file system could recover the data. Furthermore, since the program isn't considered malicious, malware authors wouldn't have trouble capturing victim's keystrokes either. Researchers say the keylogger comes registered as a Microsoft Scheduled Task, so it runs after each user login. While the file is overwritten each time, ModZero says it could easily be recruited by a running process or analyzed by someone with forensic tools.

Researchers surmised the software has been recording keystrokes since version 1.0.0.31 was released, on Christmas Eve 2015, but stress that the same problem exists in the most recent version, 1.0.0.46, released last October.

ModZero also warns the audio driver comes installed on a slew of HP machines, including its EliteBook, Elite x2, ProBook, and ZBook lines, but could exist in other machines. The company also delivers audio drivers for Dell, Lenovo, and Asus machines although at this point it's not certain they feature the same audio driver.

The firm says the following HP products are affected however:

Phoenix666 writes:

Start-up Impossible Objects on Tuesday unveiled its Model One 3D printer, which it claims is the first such printer that can build parts from composite materials including carbon fiber, Kevlar and fiberglass.

The Northbrook, Ill.-based company said its technology can compete with injection molding "in terms of speed and price" to create production parts.

Because of the composite makeup, customers will be able to customize a part's properties, so parts can have heat and/or chemical resistant properties, the company said.

Along with the ability to print with non-traditional composite materials, Impossible Objects said its printer sports faster build speeds -- up to 100X faster -- than other additive manufacturing (3D printing) technologies, as well as traditional composite "lay-up" techniques. "Lay up" manufacturing involves placing sheets of woven fabrics, such as fiber glass, atop another in a mold, painting each successive sheet with resin to bond them together.

Original Submission

takyon writes:

The final frontier is in your rear:

New research shows that an 18-mm magnetized capsule colonoscope, which can be paired with standard medical instruments, successfully performed intricate maneuvers inside the colon while guided by an external magnet attached to a robotic arm. Researchers believe this technology will reduce the potential discomfort of colonoscopies and lead to more people undergoing the life-saving screening test. [...] Researchers hope the capsule robot, which is inserted rectally, could be used safely and effectively in the future on humans to identify and remove pre-cancerous lesions and tumors detected during colonoscopy.

[...] Dr. Obstein and his team tested the capsule robot, which has a tether that is smaller in diameter than conventional endoscopes, 30 times in the colon of a pig. They reported that it successfully completed the maneuver of retroflexion, in which it bends backward to give the endoscopist a "reverse-view" of the colon wall, on its own (i.e. autonomously/autopilot) at the press of a button.

"Not only is the capsule robot able to actively maneuver through the GI tract to perform diagnostics, it is also able to perform therapeutic maneuvers, such as biopsies of tissue or polyp removal, due to the tether -- something that other capsule devices are unable to do," added Dr. Obstein. "Since the external magnet pulls the capsule robot with the tether segment from the front or head of the capsule, instead of a physician pushing the colonoscope from behind as in traditional endoscopy, we're able to avoid much of the physical pressure that is placed on the patient's colon -- possibly reducing the need for sedation or pain medication."

[Besides the obvious medical benefits, I had to run this story because it nearly writes its own jokes — have fun! --martyb]

Original Submission

butthurt submitted a story which became:

Geekwire reports that Puppet, the company behind the eponymous configuration management software, is set to expand to Seattle, Sydney and Singapore. The company already has offices in Belfast and Portland.

Related stories:
GitHub Open-Sources Its Tool to Track and Preview Puppet Changes
Better Get Used to It: The Cloud is Becoming Enterprise IT's Home
MS Releases Powershell SDC - to Manage Config for.... Linux

If you have used either or both of Puppet or Chef, how has it worked out for you? If you've tried both, which did you decide to use and what influenced your decision?

Original Submission

MrPlow writes:

Submitted via IRC for TheMightyBuzzard

No need to sell off your minions to make a quick buck, as Dungeon 2 is currently completely free on the Humble Store.

Source: https://www.gamingonlinux.com/articles/dungeons-2-is-currently-free-on-the-humble-store-for-a-limited-time-has-a-linux-version.9643

That's pretty much it. Happy gaming. -cmn32480

Here is link for game at the Humble Store - just under 22 hours left... -- I got it yesterday and it worked for me -- CoolHand

Original Submission

takyon writes:

http://newsroom.unsw.edu.au/news/science-tech/oldest-evidence-life-land-found-348-billion-year-old-australian-rocks

Fossils discovered by UNSW scientists in 3.48 billion year old hot spring deposits in the Pilbara region of Western Australia have pushed back by 580 million years the earliest known existence of microbial life on land. Previously, the world's oldest evidence for microbial life on land came from 2.7- 2.9 billion-year-old deposits in South Africa containing organic matter-rich ancient soils.

"Our exciting findings don't just extend back the record of life living in hot springs by 3 billion years, they indicate that life was inhabiting the land much earlier than previously thought, by up to about 580 million years," says study first author, UNSW PhD candidate, Tara Djokic. "This may have implications for an origin of life in freshwater hot springs on land, rather than the more widely discussed idea that life developed in the ocean and adapted to land later."

Scientists are considering two hypotheses regarding the origin of life. Either that it began in deep sea hydrothermal vents, or alternatively that it began on land in a version of Charles Darwin's "warm little pond". "The discovery of potential biological signatures in these ancient hot springs in Western Australia provides a geological perspective that may lend weight to a land-based origin of life," says Ms Djokic.

Earliest signs of life on land preserved in ca. 3.5 Ga hot spring deposits (open, DOI: 10.1038/ncomms15263) (DX)

Previously:
3.7 Billion-Year-Old Fossil Found
Oldest Evidence of Life on Earth Found in 3.77-4.28 Billion Year Old Fossils
Researchers Use Genetic Analysis to Determine That Comb Jellies Were the Earliest Animals

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Transit events have been used to study the atmosphere of a "warm Neptune" planet located 437 light years away:

A study combining observations from NASA's Hubble and Spitzer space telescopes reveals that the distant planet HAT-P-26b has a primitive atmosphere composed almost entirely of hydrogen and helium. Located about 437 light years away, HAT-P-26b orbits a star roughly twice as old as the sun.

The analysis is one of the most detailed studies to date of a "warm Neptune," or a planet that is Neptune-sized and close to its star. The researchers determined that HAT-P-26b's atmosphere is relatively clear of clouds and has a strong water signature, although the planet is not a water world. This is the best measurement of water to date on an exoplanet of this size.

The discovery of an atmosphere with this composition on this exoplanet has implications for how scientists think about the birth and development of planetary systems. Compared to Neptune and Uranus, the planets in our solar system with about the same mass, HAT-P-26b likely formed either closer to its host star or later in the development of its planetary system, or both.

"Astronomers have just begun to investigate the atmospheres of these distant Neptune-mass planets, and almost right away, we found an example that goes against the trend in our solar system," said Hannah Wakeford, a postdoctoral researcher at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, and lead author of the study published in the May 12, 2017, issue of Science. "This kind of unexpected result is why I really love exploring the atmospheres of alien planets."

HAT-P-26b: A Neptune-mass exoplanet with a well-constrained heavy element abundance (DOI: 10.1126/science.aah4668) (DX)

Original Submission

takyon writes:

The new, temporary FBI Director Andrew G. McCabe says that employees loved Comey:

Acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe Thursday rejected assertions by the White House that FBI employees had lost faith in James Comey and that the bureau's probe into Russian election meddling was one of its most minor concerns. "I hold Director Comey in the absolute highest regard. I have the highest respect for his considerable abilities and his integrity," McCabe told members of the Senate intelligence committee. He said Comey, who was fired by President Donald Trump on Tuesday, enjoyed "broad support within the FBI and still does to this day." He added, "The majority, the vast majority of FBI employees enjoyed a deep, positive connection to Director Comey."

Furthermore, he will inform the Senate of any interference with the Russia investigation:

Acting FBI director Andrew McCabe vowed Thursday that he would tell the Senate Intelligence Committee if the White House tried to interfere with the bureau's probe of possible coordination between the Kremlin and the Trump campaign to influence the 2016 presidential election — though he asserted that there had "been no effort to impede our investigation to date."

Meanwhile, President Trump has undermined the White House's messaging on Comey's firing, saying that he planned to fire "showboat" and "grandstander" James Comey regardless of any recommendation from Attorney General Jeff Sessions or Deputy Attorney General Ron Rosenstein. The President also insists that he is not under FBI investigation.

Original Submission

takyon writes:

http://www.k-state.edu/media/newsreleases/2017-05/spaceflight5917.html

Astronauts aboard the International Space Station have decreased physical fitness because of a decrease in the way oxygen moves through the body, according to a Kansas State University kinesiology study.

Carl Ade, assistant professor of exercise physiology, and collaborators partnered with the Johnson Space Center to find that astronauts' exercise capacity decreases between 30 and 50 percent in long-duration spaceflight because the heart and small blood vessels are not as effective at transporting oxygen to the working muscle.

"It is a dramatic decrease," Ade said. "When your cardiovascular function decreases, your aerobic exercise capacity goes down. You can't perform physically challenging activities anymore. While earlier studies suggest that this happens because of changes in heart function, our data suggests that there are some things happening at the level of the heart, but also at the level of the microcirculation within capillaries."

Space: Not Even Once.

Decreases in maximal oxygen uptake following long-duration spaceflight: Role of convective and diffusive O₂ transport mechanisms (open, DOI: 10.1152/japplphysiol.00280.2016) (DX)

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Intel has released the final Itanium chips, the generation codenamed Kittson, with up to 8 cores on a 32nm process:

One of Intel's ventures into the historic mainframe space was Itanium: a 64-bit capable processor designed in conjunction with Hewlett Packard. The main reason for Itanium was to run HP-UX and compete against big names, such as Oracle, using a new IA-64 instruction set. The appeal for the original Itanium parts was support for RAS features, ECC, and cores focus on a wide, parallel architecture - the latest cores support 12-wide execution for example. For a short while, there was success: HP's systems based on Itanium are advertised as high-uptime mission critical servers, and a number of customers cling to these systems like a child clings to their favorite blanket due to the way they are integrated at the core of the company. The main purpose was to compete against other mission critical servers and mainframes based on SPARC and IBM Power.

So when the processors were initially delivered to customers, there was potential. However the initial impression was not great - they consumed too much power, were noisy, and needed over the top cooling. Over the years and generations of Itanium, the march into the x86 enterprise space with x86-64 drew potential Itanium customers away, then followed the drop of Microsoft's support for Itanium in 2008, and Oracle's dropped support in 2011. Xeon offerings were becoming popular, with CPUs incorporating the RAS/ECC features required, and Intel decided to slow down Itanium development as a result. In the meantime, due to the way the market was moving, HP transitioned a good part of its product stack to Xeons. Despite this, legal battles between HP and Oracle ensued given predicted support for HP-UX customers. At this point, there were fewer potential Itanium customers each quarter, although existing customers required support.

takyon writes:

NVIDIA has detailed the full GV100 GPU as well as the first product based on the GPU, the Tesla V100:

The Volta GV100 GPU uses the 12nm TSMC FFN process, has over 21 billion transistors, and is designed for deep learning applications. We're talking about an 815mm² die here, which pushes the limits of TSMC's current capabilities. Nvidia said it's not possible to build a larger GPU on the current process technology. The GP100 was the largest GPU that Nvidia ever produced before the GV100. It took up a 610mm² surface area and housed 15.3 billion transistors. The GV100 is more than 30% larger.

Volta's full GV100 GPU sports 84 SMs (each SM [streaming multiprocessor] features four texture units, 64 FP32 cores, 64 INT32 cores, 32 FP64 cores) fed by 128KB of shared L1 cache per SM that can be configured to varying texture cache and shared memory ratios. The GP100 featured 60 SMs and a total of 3840 CUDA cores. The Volta SMs also feature a new type of core that specializes in Tensor deep learning 4x4 Matrix operations. The GV100 contains eight Tensor cores per SM and deliver a total of 120 TFLOPS for training and inference operations. To save you some math, this brings the full GV100 GPU to an impressive 5,376 FP32 and INT32 cores, 2688 FP64 cores, and 336 texture units.

[...] GV100 also features four HBM2 memory emplacements, like GP100, with each stack controlled by a pair of memory controllers. Speaking of which, there are eight 512-bit memory controllers (giving this GPU a total memory bus width of 4,096-bit). Each memory controller is attached to 768KB of L2 cache, for a total of 6MB of L2 cache (vs 4MB for Pascal).

The Tesla V100 has 16 GB of HBM2 memory with 900 GB/s of memory bandwidth. NVLink interconnect bandwidth has been increased to 300 GB/s.

Note the "120 TFLOPS" for machine learning operations. Microsoft is "doubling down" on AI, and NVIDIA's sales to data centers have tripled in a year. Sales of automotive-oriented GPUs (more machine learning) also increased.

IBM Unveils New AI Software, Will Support Nvidia Volta

Also at AnandTech and HPCWire.

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Google has acquired Owlchemy Labs, the studio that created games such as Job Simulator and Rick and Morty: Virtual Rick-ality:

Owlchemy is known for developing games that closely mimic using real hands, and a blog post assures readers that it's "continuing to focus on hand interactions and high quality user experiences, like with Job Simulator." Schwartz says that full-motion hand tracking is "kind of our key factor." That stands in contrast to Google's current VR platform, Daydream — which uses a remote with limited motion controls. "We have a pretty big vision" for virtual and augmented reality, says Google VR and AR engineering director Relja Markovic. "Daydream's a great product — I love my Daydream. But there will be many, many things that come after that."

Meanwhile, Oculus has closed its own in-house "Story Studio", which made short VR films such as Lost, Henry, and Dear Angelica.

Also at VentureBeat and Tom's Hardware.

Original Submission

takyon writes:

http://www.alphagalileo.org/ViewItem.aspx?ItemId=175144&CultureCode=en

The average consumer would be willing to pay $4,900 more for a car that had self-driving technologies, and $3,500 more for crash avoidance, according to a new study published in Transportation Research Part C: Emerging Technologies.

The researchers, from Cornell University in the US, also found a big difference in what people would be willing to pay: some would stretch to more than $10,000 for automation, while others would pay nothing at all. Car manufacturers should consider this as technologies develop and give people flexible options.

Today it's possible to buy a car that can park itself, stay in lane and maintain a constant speed. The technology is developing fast and many companies are already testing self-driving cars; it's likely we will soon see fully automated cars on the market. But will people be willing to pay for this technology and how can manufacturers and policy makers make sure it is rolled out to our roads smoothly? This is what Dr. Ricardo Daziano and his colleagues wanted to find out.

Are consumers willing to pay to let cars drive for them? Analyzing response to autonomous vehicles (DOI: 10.1016/j.trc.2017.03.003) (DX)

Original Submission

butthurt writes:

The Register (protected by Cloudflare; archived copy) reports:

A UK firm found responsible for orchestrating 99.5 million nuisance calls has been fined a record £400,000 (US$517,550) by the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO).

[...] The calls, made over an 18-month period, punted services related to road traffic accident claims and PPI compensation. Some people received repeat calls, sometimes during unsociable hours. Keurboom routinely hid its identity [...]

The BBC's coverage notes:

Keurboom director Greg Rudd told the Mirror newspaper that he found cold-calling "annoying" but said it was "part of life".

"I don't enjoy receiving them but that doesn't make them illegal," he said.

However the ICO said making automatic marketing calls without people's consent was illegal.

[...] In October, the government announced plans to let the ICO fine company directors as well as their businesses.

"Making directors responsible will stop them avoiding fines by putting their company into liquidation," the ICO said.

According to the stories, the company "has been placed in liquidation."

Original Submission

An Anonymous Coward writes:

Dr. Lowe, from In the Pipeline, writes of how the efficacy requirements of the FDA save US taxpayers money:

Note: Bold added by submitter.

http://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2017/05/09/there-are-failures-you-know
http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMp1701047
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solanezumab
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alzheimer%27s_disease
https://soylentnews.org/article.pl?sid=16/11/27/0147228
https://soylentnews.org/article.pl?sid=17/02/16/0116248

Original Submission

butthurt writes:

The Burlington Free Press, via USA Today, reports that Vermont's legislature has approved a bill to legalise cannabis for recreational use. The bill has not been signed by the state's governor, Republican Phil Scott. According to the article

Vermont's bill, which would legalize small amounts of marijuana possession in 2018 and anticipate the possibility of a taxed and regulated legal marijuana market, was approved in the Vermont House of Representatives on Wednesday afternoon by a vote of 79-66. The state Senate already passed the bill, so it will go directly to GOP Gov. Phil Scott.

Eight states — Alaska, California, Colorado, Maine, Massachusetts, Nevada, Oregon and Washington — and the District of Columbia have legalized marijuana following a voter referendum, but no state yet has legalized marijuana solely through the legislative process, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. Legalization advocates said bills were pending in other state legislatures.

"I think it reflects that Vermont elected officials are more in touch with our constituents than a lot of elected officials in other states," said Vermont Lt. Gov. David Zuckerman, a member of the Vermont Progressive Party who has worked on marijuana issues for the majority of his political career. "I think the public is ahead of us, but elected officials tend to be cautious when it comes to change."

Original Submission

MrPlow writes:

Submitted via IRC for TheMightyBuzzard

Five months ago, Google launched its free OSS-Fuzz service with the purpose to help open source developers locate bugs in their code. "It is important," said Google at the time, "that the open source foundation be stable, secure, and reliable, as cracks and weaknesses impact all who build on it."

Since then, the cloud service has attracted 47 open-source projects and has uncovered more than 1,000 bugs (264 of which are potential security vulnerabilities) while processing 10 trillion test inputs per day.

Google now wishes to attract more OSS projects to the initiative, and is offering a reward to do so. "We believe that user and internet security as a whole can benefit greatly if more open source projects include fuzzing in their development process," the company announced in a blog post yesterday. "To this end, we'd like to encourage more projects to participate and adopt the ideal integration guidelines that we've established."

Google is expanding its Patch Rewards program to include rewards for the integration of fuzz targets into OSS-Fuzz. It will pay projects $1,000 for the initial integration, and up to $20,000 (at its own discretion) for what it describes as an 'ideal integration'.

Source: http://www.securityweek.com/google-offers-20000-join-oss-fuzz-program

Original Submission