SoylentNews

Fnord666 writes:

Need for Speed and Burnout are completely different franchises. Both are arcade racers, sure, but the former kind of starts and stops with outrunning the cops in Lamborghinis and other supercars at extremely high speeds. The latter used unlicensed knock-offs for its races because its main dynamic was portraying car accidents with near-pornographic detail. Something you just can't do when a game developer is essentially "borrowing" cars from their real-world owners. Enter the just-debuted Need for Speed: Payback which blurs the lines between the two divergent franchises in its depiction of vehicular mayhem, pushing the boundaries of how much carnage is possible with a real-world car.

Car manufacturers can impose strict rules on just what a game designer can do to their four-wheeled babies in exchange for a studio having access to virtual versions of the vehicles. For example, Chevy might tell Game Studio A that if it wants to have a Corvette in its game, then under no circumstances can the vehicle flip over or have body parts fall off. Based on what Electronic Arts has shown of Payback, it looks like the team at Ghost Games has persuaded manufacturers to give them more freedom.

When you crash in the game, everything happens in slow motion. The camera zooms in on the "goon" car you just shunted, the sound drops out, colors oversaturate, sparks fly and fire engulfs the enemy vehicle as it spins on its front bumper. If you've played Burnout: Paradise this will look familiar, but in Payback it happens with a BMW versus a ride from one of the game's made-up automakers. How is that even possible?

"We have close communications with [car manufacturers]," Executive Producer Marcus Nilsson said. "We show them everything, and they can absolutely go back and say, 'We don't like the way you treat our brand in this specific situation; we won't approve that.' And we'd have to change it."

Source: Engadget

Original Submission

An Anonymous Coward writes:

The previously mentioned Turing Tumble educational game has achieved its funding goal. It will now be possible to produce molds and distribute the game to its thousands of crowdfunders and beyond. The game has similarities to Castle Turing in Neal Stephenson's book The Diamond Age and a manual which has a passing similarity to educational electronics kits but with the unnecessary storyline of a space escape with manga styling.

The Turing Tumble has this description on the project's Kickstarter page:

Turing Tumble is a new type of game where players (ages 8+) build mechanical computers powered by marbles to solve logic puzzles. It's fun, addicting, easy-to-learn, and while you're playing, you discover how computers work.

I'm all about teaching kids to code. When I was a professor at the University of Minnesota, I saw how valuable it is for all students to be coders. I have three young kids and I've tried all sorts of games to build their interest in coding. The problem is that they all treat computers like abstract, black boxes. They overlook the fundamental, most amazing concept: how simple switches, connected together in clever ways, can do incredibly smart things.

Kids learn best when they use their senses to explore concepts. Turing Tumble is the only game that lets kids see and feel how computers work. The logic isn’t hidden inside a computer chip – it’s all right there in front of them. It builds logic and critical thinking skills, fundamental coding concepts, and grounds their understanding of computers.

Original Submission

Fnord666 writes:

The US Air Force's 56^th Fighter Wing at Luke Air Force Base in Arizona today cancelled "local flying operations" for F-35A fighters after five incidents in which pilots "experienced hypoxia-like symptoms," an Air Force spokesperson said in a statement. Hypoxia is a deficiency in oxygen reaching the body through the circulatory system.

"In order to synchronize operations and maintenance efforts toward safe flying operations we have cancelled local F-35A flying," said 56^th Fighter Wing commander Brigadier General Brook Leonard. "The Air Force takes these physiological incidents seriously, and our focus is on the safety and well-being of our pilots. We are taking the necessary steps to find the root cause of these incidents."

The cancellation of F-35A operations is currently restricted to Luke Air Force Base, the primary pilot training base for the F-35A. The Air Force also trains F-35A pilots at Eglin Air Force Base in Florida. The 56^th Fighter Wing's squadrons at Luke train pilots from the US Air Force as well as from other nations buying the F-35A, including Norway, Italy, and Australia. All the pilots training at Luke will be briefed on the incidents and on the procedures the pilots affected used to successfully restore oxygen and land the aircraft safely, a 56^th Fighter Wing spokesperson said. The 56^th's Air Operations Group will also hold a forum with pilots to discuss their concerns.

Source: ArsTechnica

According to Wikipedia:

The Lockheed Martin F-35 Lightning II is a family of single-seat, single-engine, all-weather stealth multirole fighters. The fifth-generation combat aircraft is designed to perform ground attack and air defense missions. It has three main models: the F-35A conventional takeoff and landing (CTOL) variant, the F-35B short take-off and vertical-landing (STOVL) variant, and the F-35C carrier-based Catapult Assisted Take-Off Barrier Arrested Recovery (CATOBAR) variant. On 31 July 2015, the United States Marines declared ready for deployment the first squadron of F-35B fighters after intensive testing. On 2 August 2016, the U.S. Air Force declared its first squadron of F-35A fighters combat-ready.

The F-35 development program has been plagued with cost overruns and delays. Current estimated costs per unit vary from $95m for the F35-A to $120m for the F35-B and F35-C.

Original Submission

Fnord666 writes:

Criminal hackers have started using a novel malware attack that infects people when their mouse hovers over a link embedded in a malicious PowerPoint file.

The method—which was used in a recent spam campaign that attempted to install a bank-fraud backdoor alternately known as Zusy, OTLARD, and Gootkit—is notable because it didn't rely on macros, visual basic scripts, or JavaScript to deliver its payload. Those methods are so widely used that many people are able to recognize them before falling victim.

Instead, the delivery technique made use of the Windows PowerShell tool, which was invoked when targets hovered over a booby-trapped hyperlink embedded in the attached PowerPoint document. Targets using newer versions of Microsoft Office would by default first receive a warning, but those dialogues can be muted when users are tricked into turning off Protected View, a mode that doesn't work when documents are being printed or edited. Targets using older versions of Office that don't offer Protected View are even more vulnerable.

"While features like macros, [object linking and embedding], and mouse hovers do have their good and legitimate uses, this technique is potent in the wrong hands," researchers from antivirus provider Trend Micro wrote in a blog post published Friday morning. "A socially engineered e-mail and mouse hover—and possibly a click if the latter is disabled—are all it would take to infect the victim."

Source: ArsTechnica

See also a report at Dodge This Security.

Original Submission

Fnord666 writes:

The board of directors at Uber Technologies is meeting today to discuss CEO Travis Kalanick stepping aside for a period, according to reports published this morning by Reuters, The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal.

Kalanick taking a leave of absence is one of several recommendations coming out of an internal report on Uber headed up by Eric Holder, who served as Attorney General during the Obama Administration. The Holder inquiry also recommends that Emil Michael, Uber's senior vice president of business, be asked to leave the company, according to the Times.

Uber hasn't publicized today's meeting and didn't respond to requests for comment.

It will be hard to implement the changes unless Kalanick himself goes along with them. Along with two close allies, Reuters reports, Kalanick has voting control of the company. Uber hasn't publicized today's meeting and didn't respond to requests for comment.

Source: ArsTechnica

Original Submission

martyb writes:

An article in Physics Today delved into the question of which would be faster: rowing in phase with all of your teammates, or rowing out-of-phase:

Rowing is a challenging sport, and not just for athletes. It mixes physiology, mechanics, and fluid dynamics, so from a physicist's perspective, the sport is much more complex than the elegant movement of a rowing shell might suggest.

Many scientists have tried to work out the details of rowing propulsion, often with a view to improving the performance of rowing crews. For example, in a 1971 Science paper (volume 173, page 349), Thomas McMahon showed that the speed of a racing boat scales as the number of rowers to the power 1/9. In our research, we have taken a closer look at the boat speed within one rowing cycle. In a single stroke, a propulsive phase is followed by a gliding phase. As the figure shows, for racing boats, the variation in speed during the stroke is typically around 20% of the mean speed of 5 m/s or so. Such a variation is a consequence of the synchronized rowing of the crew, a technique that seems to be essential for success in top-level rowing competitions. Consider, however, that for a boat moving through water, larger fluctuations about the boat's average speed imply increased friction on the hull. As a consequence, the mean power dissipated due to fluid friction for speed variations typical of a racing boat is about 5% higher than it would be if the boat could somehow be propelled steadily at the same mean speed.

The investigators suspected that reducing the variation in speed would result in less friction and a higher average speed. To test this, they created a 'bot boat' where they could programmatically control the phase at which each mechanical rower placed their oars into the water — anywhere from 0 to 45° out of phase. Initial results showed that out-of-phase rowing was smoother. Yay! But the boat was slower! Why?

*SPOILER* (click to show) *SPOILER* (click to hide)

Supplement: The great row bot race

In rowing races, a crew's synchronized motion forcefully propels the rowing shell forward. But the jerky motion of the boat creates a lot of friction on the hull. Can the crew gain an advantage by rowing out of sync? The video shows two trials conducted at the École Polytechnique in Paris using a 1/10-scale boat and robot rowers. In the top panel each robot rows 45° out of phase with its neighbor. In the bottom panel the row bots simulate conventional synchronized rowing. The asynchronous rowing is smoother, but in this case, slow and steady loses the race.

Download Original Video (7.1 MB)

An old adage humorously suggested that "Scientists frequently find that a week in the library can save an hour in the lab." What experiments have you been involved in where the results were counter to your expectations?

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Microsoft's mid-cycle refresh for the Xbox One, the Xbox One X, has been announced. Graphics performance is quadrupled (and then some) to allow for 2160p gaming:

As far as the hardware itself goes, thanks to Microsoft's ongoing campaign, we already know the bulk of the details of the console. The 16nm SoC at the heart of the new Xbox One design is meant to be significantly more powerful than the original and S versions of the Xbox One, vaulting MS from having the least powerful console to the most powerful console. All told, the Xbox One X will offer almost 4.3x the GPU compute throughput of the Xbox One S, while the CPU cores have received a healthy 31% clockspeed boost (Interesting aside: Microsoft is still not calling it Jaguar, unlike the XB1/XB1S). The memory feeding the beast has also gotten a great deal faster as well, with Microsoft switching out their 8GB of DDR3 for a large and very fast 12GB of GDDR5, which has a combined memory bandwidth of 326GB/sec.

AKA the X-OX. Can it run NetHack in 4K?

Previously: PlayStation Neo and Xbox "Project Scorpio" to Bring 4K Resolution and VR to Console Gaming
The Race for 4K: How Project Scorpio Targets Ultra HD Gaming
More Details About the "Project Scorpio" Xbox One Successor

Original Submission

An Anonymous Coward writes:

The Lubuntu 17.04 Desktop/Live CD(ISO) is missing the package: net-tools[1]

It's troubling to find a LiveCD today that does not have something as simple as netstat and other important tools available.

It's also quite pathetic to discover the recent Debian LiveCDs are missing UFW[2].

[1] "This package includes the important tools for controlling the network subsystem of the Linux kernel. This includes arp, ifconfig, netstat, rarp, nameif and route."

[2] "The Uncomplicated FireWall is a front-end for iptables, to make managing a Netfilter firewall easier. It provides a command line interface with syntax similar to OpenBSD's Packet Filter. It is particularly well-suited as a host-based firewall."

[Ed note: Assuming one has an internet connection, can't one just do something along the lines of apt-get $package_name to fill in what is missing? Is this just whining on the part of the submitter or an actual shortcoming? What are your thoughts on this?]

Original Submission

BK writes:

According to Fox News:

Puerto Rico's governor announced that the U.S. territory has overwhelmingly chosen statehood in a nonbinding referendum Sunday held amid a deep economic crisis that has sparked an exodus of islanders to the U.S. mainland.

Nearly half a million votes were cast for statehood, more than 7,600 for free association/independence and nearly 6,700 for independence, according to preliminary results. The participation rate was just 23 percent with roughly 2.26 million registered voters, leading opponents to question the validity of a vote that several parties had boycotted.

Also covered by AP.

Original Submission

martyb writes:

Cracked Labs has just released a report on Corporate Surveillance in Everyday Life:

Report: How thousands of companies monitor, analyze, and influence the lives of billions. Who are the main players in today's digital tracking? What can they infer from our purchases, phone calls, web searches, and Facebook likes? How do online platforms, tech companies, and data brokers collect, trade, and make use of personal data?

In recent years, a wide range of companies has started to monitor, track and follow people in virtually every aspect of their lives. The behaviors, movements, social relationships, interests, weaknesses and most private moments of billions are now constantly recorded, evaluated and analyzed in real-time. The exploitation of personal information has become a multi-billion industry. Yet only the tip of the iceberg of today's pervasive digital tracking is visible; much of it occurs in the background and remains opaque to most of us.

This report by Cracked Labs examines the actual practices and inner workings of this personal data industry. Based on years of research and a previous 2016 report, the investigation shines light on the hidden data flows between companies. It maps the structure and scope of today's digital tracking and profiling ecosystems and explores relevant technologies, platforms and devices, as well as key recent developments.

While the full report is available as PDF download, this web publication presents a ten part overview.

The online paper has 10 sections on everything from "Analyzing People" through "Towards a society of pervasive digital social control?"

In short, these companies are relying on information asymmetry — they know what they are getting and what they plan on doing with data about you, while you are left to your limited imagination as to what they might be planning.

Original Submission

BK writes:

From Reuters:

A Pakistani counter-terrorism court has sentenced to death a man who allegedly committed blasphemy on Facebook, a government prosecutor said on Sunday, the first time someone has been handed the death penalty for blaspheming on social media.

[...] Shafiq Qureshi, public prosecutor in Bahawalpur, about 500km (300 miles) south of provincial capital Lahore, said Raza was convicted for allegedly making derogatory remarks against Prophet Mohammad, his wives and companions.

"An anti terrorism court of Bahawalpur has awarded him the death sentence," Qureshi told Reuters." It is the first ever death sentence in a case that involves social media."

Original Submission

MrPlow writes:

Submitted via IRC for TheMightyBuzzard

Japan has passed legislation paving the way for 83-year-old Emperor Akihito to abdicate. The law sets the stage for the first abdication of a reigning monarch in two centuries, in a royal family which has a history stretching back 2,600 years.

[...] According to the 1947 Imperial House Law that regulates the line of imperial succession, the emperor cannot step down. The last Japanese monarch to abdicate was Emperor Kokaku, who left in favor of his son back in 1817.

Another issue the Japanese government will discuss is the continuity of the heirs, as women are not allowed to inherit the throne. Additionally, a woman from the imperial family who marries outside the family is then excluded. Akihito has another son, Prince Akishino, and a grandson, Hisahito, aged just 10. All the other members of the royal family are female.

Source: RT

Original Submission

requerdanos writes:

HotHardware.com is reporting that there's a Linux malware in the wild that takes over Raspberry Pi devices and uses them to mine for cryptocurrency...

Linux.MulDrop.14 [scans] for RPis with an open (and default) SSH port, the "pi" user is logged into (if the password is left default), and the password is subsequently changed. After that, the malware installs ZMap and sshpass software, and then it configures itself... to make digital money for someone else, namely the author or the malware, using your Raspberry Pi.

The article focuses on how much your power bill will go up in the course of making money for someone else due to the 100%-CPU-usage nature of mining software.

The existence of such a malware raises the question: Are there enough Raspberry Pi devices connected to the network, but not really monitored, such that there are enough to mine a single unit of cryptocurrency? ARM dev boards are not known for processing power, and the RPIs are no exception.

On the subject of default root passwords for devices intended to be connected to Internet, must this be the case with the RPI, or could they take the route of having an actually installable GNU/Linux instead of an image of an already installed system with insecure passwords?

Original Submission

Phoenix666 writes:

In the June 1969 issue of Civil War History — Volume 5, Number 2, pages 116-132 — a renowned Southern historian attacked the legacy of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee.

"No single war figure stands in greater need of reevaluation than Lee," wrote Thomas L. Connelly, the late University of South Carolina professor. "One ponders whether the South may not have fared better had it possessed no Robert E. Lee."

Connelly's essay was among the first academic musket shots fired on Lee's standing as an outmatched but not outwitted military genius presiding over a Lost Cause — a reputation celebrated in fawning biographies and monuments like the one removed Friday in New Orleans.

Was General Lee overrated? Get your armchair historian on...

Original Submission

-- OriginalOwner_ writes:

fit-PC sells a box (the Intense PC) that is rebranded as the MintBox 2, which has Linux Mint preinstalled, with the Linux Mint project getting a cut of the profits.

Clement Lefebvre, the honcho at Linux Mint, notes[1] that the firmware has a security vulnerability which needs to be patched. Hilariously, the manufacturer's instructions call out a MS Windows-only tool.

[1] In the comments there, Clem responds to Kim, saying that Linux Mint has the tools available to get the job done. In the comments attached to a clickbait article at BetaNews, it was mentioned that dd (sometimes referred to as Data Dump), an app that comes with pretty much every Linux distro, will also do the task.

Original Submission