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Fnord666 writes:

Diebold Nixdorf Inc and NCR Corp, two of the world's largest ATM makers, have warned that cyber criminals are targeting U.S. cash machines with tools that force them to spit out cash in hacking schemes known as "jackpotting."

The two ATM makers did not identify any victims or say how much money had been lost. Jackpotting has been rising worldwide in recent years, though it is unclear how much cash has been stolen because victims and police often do not disclose details.

The attacks were reported earlier on Saturday by the security news website Krebs on Security, which said they had begun last year in Mexico.

The companies confirmed to Reuters on Saturday they had sent out the alerts to clients.

Source: Reuters

Article at Krebs on Security.

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Fnord666 writes:

The Montana governor's office has a message for the Federal Communications Commission and Internet service providers: the state can't be stopped from protecting net neutrality, and ISPs that don't like it don't have to do business with state agencies.

Governor Steve Bullock signed an executive order to protect net neutrality on Monday, as we reported at the time. But with questions raised about whether Bullock is exceeding his authority, the governor's legal office prepared a fact sheet that it's distributing to anyone curious about potential legal challenges to the executive order.

ISPs are free to violate net neutrality if they only serve non-government customers—they just can't do so and expect to receive state contracts. "Companies that don't like it don't have to do business with the State—nothing stops ISPs from selling dumpy Internet plans in Montana if they insist," the fact sheet says.

The FCC's repeal of net neutrality rules attempts to preempt states and localities from issuing their own similar rules. But Bullock's executive order doesn't directly require ISPs to follow net neutrality rules. Instead, ISPs that accept contracts to provide Internet service to any state agency must agree to abide by net neutrality principles throughout the state.

Source: Ars Technica

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Fnord666 writes:

Engadget is reporting that the Flacon Heavy demo flight has been scheduled:

It looks as though it's finally happening. SpaceX's Falcon Heavy rocket may have a launch date, according to Chris G. of NASASpaceflight.com. The rocket will launch no earlier than February 6th, with a window of 1:30 PM ET to 4:30 PM ET. There's a backup window on February 7th, just in case. We've reached out to SpaceX for confirmation.

Update 1/27: Elon Musk has confirmed that SpaceX is "aiming for" a February 6th launch.

Aiming for first flight of Falcon Heavy on Feb 6 from Apollo launchpad 39A at Cape Kennedy. Easy viewing from the public causeway.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) January 27, 2018

Spaceflight Now has these launch details:

Launch window: 1830-2130 GMT (1:30-4:30 p.m. EST)
Launch site: LC-39A, Kennedy Space Center, Florida
A SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket will launch on its first demonstration flight. The heavy-lift rocket is formed of three Falcon 9 rocket cores strapped together with 27 Merlin 1D engines firing at liftoff. The first Falcon Heavy rocket will attempt to place a Tesla Roadster on an Earth escape trajectory into a heliocentric orbit.

Previously:
SpaceX Conducts Successful Static Fire Test of Falcon Heavy
SpaceX Falcon Heavy Testing Delayed by Government Shutdown
Falcon Heavy Readied for Static Fire Test
SpaceX's Falcon Heavy Rocket Sets Up at Cape Canaveral Ahead of Launch

SpaceX Successfully Tests Falcon Heavy First Stage Cores

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Fnord666 writes:

On Wednesday night, an Ariane 5 booster took off from Kourou, a launch site in French Guiana operated by a European rocket company. The launch proceeded normally until shortly before nine minutes and 26 seconds into the flight, when ground tracking stations lost contact with the rocket. It was feared that the launch vehicle and its two satellites were lost.

But later Wednesday night, and again on Thursday, both of the satellite operators, SES and Eutelsat, separately confirmed that they were in contact with their respective spacecraft, the SES-14 satellite and the Al Yah 3 satellite. They were not in their proper geostationary orbits, but that could be fixed, the satellite companies said.

Just how far off those orbits became clear publicly later on Thursday, when data about them started appearing in satellite trackers. According to one orbital expert, Jonathan McDowell, each of the satellites had reached near the 45,000km heights where they need to be, but the inclinations were way off.

[...] "I characterize this as a major anomaly, but I score it a partial success for launch vehicle statistics," McDowell said. "The orbit is usable but will require several years worth of satellite station-keeping propellant to get the payloads to the right final orbit." This is obviously preferable to losing the satellites entirely.

Source: ArsTechnica

See also:
http://spacenews.com/breaking-ariane-5-loses-contact-with-ground-control-after-upper-stage-ignition/
http://spacenews.com/satellites-placed-into-incorrect-orbits-by-ariane-5-can-be-recovered-owners-say/

Previously: NASA's GOLD Makes It Into Orbit After Fears It Was Lost

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takyon writes:

Initial tests of NASA's Kilopower nuclear power system have been successful, and full-power testing will be done in March. Each Kilopower unit is expected to provide between 1 kW to 10 kW of electric power:

Months-long testing began in November at the energy department's Nevada National Security Site, with an eye toward providing energy for future astronaut and robotic missions in space and on the surface of Mars, the moon or other solar system destinations.

A key hurdle for any long-term colony on the surface of a planet or moon, as opposed to NASA's six short lunar surface visits from 1969 to 1972, is possessing a power source strong enough to sustain a base but small and light enough to allow for transport through space. "Mars is a very difficult environment for power systems, with less sunlight than Earth or the moon, very cold nighttime temperatures, very interesting dust storms that can last weeks and months that engulf the entire planet," said Steve Jurczyk, associate administrator of NASA's Space Technology Mission Directorate. "So Kilopower's compact size and robustness allows us to deliver multiple units on a single lander to the surface that provides tens of kilowatts of power," Jurczyk added.

[...] Lee Mason, NASA's principal technologist for power and energy storage, said Mars has been the project's main focus, noting that a human mission likely would require 40 to 50 kilowatts of power. The technology could power habitats and life-support systems, enable astronauts to mine resources, recharge rovers and run processing equipment to transform resources such as ice on the planet into oxygen, water and fuel. It could also potentially augment electrically powered spacecraft propulsion systems on missions to the outer planets.

NASA's next Mars mission is InSight, a stationary lander scheduled to launch in May. It will use two MegaFlex solar arrays from Orbital ATK. NASA's Mars 2020 rover is scheduled to launch in July 2020. It will use 4.8 kg of plutonium dioxide to provide no more than 110 Watts of power.

The Juno mission is the first mission to Jupiter to use solar panels. Juno uses 72 square meters of solar panels to generate a maximum of just 486 Watts at Jupiter. Mars receives about 12 times more solar radiation per m² than Jupiter. The New Horizons mission to Pluto and Cassini–Huygens mission to Saturn both used radioisotope thermoelectric generators (RTGs). Cassini used three RTGs originally rated for 300 W each. A spare Cassini RTG was used for New Horizons, which provided 245.7 W at launch (~200 W by the Pluto encounter).

The Fission System Gateway to Abundant Power for Exploration

Also at NASA and Popular Science.

Previously: NASA's Kilopower Project Testing a Nuclear Stirling Engine

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takyon writes:

Strava, a smartphone app that tracks "athletic activity" using GPS, published an interactive heatmap of user activity around the world. That heatmap included some U.S. military bases:

Military personnel around the world have been publicly sharing their exercise routes online - including those inside or near military bases.

Online fitness tracker Strava has published a "heatmap" showing the paths its users log as they run or cycle. It appears to show the structure of foreign military bases in countries like Syria and Afghanistan, as soldiers move around inside.

The US military is examining the heatmap, a spokesman said. Air Force Colonel John Thomas, a spokesman for US Central Command, told the Washington Post that the US military was reviewing the implications.

Strava said it had excluded activities marked as private from the map. Users who record their exercise data on Strava have the option of making their movements public or private. Private data, the company said, has never been included.

The "private" option is for people who like to track their step count during sexual activity, not protecting the operational security of the military base you're stationed at.

Also at The Guardian, which contains more examples than the BBC for those who don't want to enable JavaScript to view the interactive one linked to above.

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Arthur T Knackerbracket writes:

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

Hackers from the Dutch intelligence service AIVD have provided the FBI with crucial information about Russian interference with the American elections. For years, AIVD had access to the infamous Russian hacker group Cozy Bear. That's what de Volkskrant and Nieuwsuur have uncovered in their investigation.

It's the summer of 2014. A hacker from the Dutch intelligence agency AIVD has penetrated the computer network of a university building next to the Red Square in Moscow, oblivious to the implications. One year later, from the AIVD headquarters in Zoetermeer, he and his colleagues witness Russian hackers launching an attack on the Democratic Party in the United States. The AIVD hackers had not infiltrated just any building; they were in the computer network of the infamous Russian hacker group Cozy Bear. And unbeknownst to the Russians, they could see everything.

That's how the AIVD becomes witness to the Russian hackers harassing and penetrating the leaders of the Democratic Party, transferring thousands of emails and documents. It won't be the last time they alert their American counterparts. And yet, it will be months before the United States realize what this warning means: that with these hacks the Russians have interfered with the American elections. And the AIVD hackers have seen it happening before their very eyes.

The Dutch access provides crucial evidence of the Russian involvement in the hacking of the Democratic Party, according to six American and Dutch sources who are familiar with the material, but wish to remain anonymous. It's also grounds for the FBI to start an investigation into the influence of the Russian interference on the election race between the Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton and the Republican candidate Donald Trump.

_{Translated by: Lisa Negrijn}

It's quite an interesting read.

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takyon writes:

Testing Director says the expensive F-35s are not combat-ready, unreliable, and components need redesign

Overall fleet-wide monthly availability rates remain around 50 percent, a condition that has existed with no significant improvement since October 2014, despite the increasing number of new aircraft. One notable trend is an increase in the percentage of the fleet that cannot fly while awaiting replacement parts – indicated by the Not Mission Capable due to Supply rate.

[...] Total acquisition costs for Lockheed Martin Corp.'s next-generation fighter may rise about 7 percent to $406.5 billion, according to figures in a document known as a Selected Acquisition Report. That's a reversal after several years of estimates that had declined to $379 billion recently from a previous high of $398.5 billion in early 2014.

$122 billion has been spent on the F35 program up until the end of 2017. $10-15 billion will be spent each year through 2022. This is detailed in a 100 page F-35 spending summary report.

FY17 DOD PROGRAMS: F-35 Joint Strike Fighter (JSF)

Related: The F-35 Fighter Plane Is Even More of a Mess Than You Thought
The F-35: A Gold-Plated Turkey
Flawed and Potentially Deadly F-35 Fighters Won't be Ready Before 2019
Lockheed Martin Negotiating $37 Billion F-35 Deal
Does China's J-20 Rival Other Stealth Fighters?

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mrpg writes:

10 new VM escape vulnerabilities discovered in VirtualBox

Oracle has released patches for ten vulnerabilities in VirtualBox which allow attackers to break out of guest operating systems and attack the host operating system that VirtualBox runs on. Exploits using this method, known as a "virtual machine escape," have been the subject of intense interest among security researchers following the disclosure of the Venom vulnerability in 2015.

The vulnerabilities are collectively published as CVE-2018-2676, CVE-2018-2685, CVE-2018-2686, CVE-2018-2687, CVE-2018-2688, CVE-2018-2689, CVE-2018-2690, CVE-2018-2693, CVE-2018-2694, and CVE-2018-2698. While they all share the same resultant effect, the method involved—and subsequently the ease with which attackers can leverage the vulnerability—varies.

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takyon writes:

Scientists develop new technology standard that could shape the future of electronics design

In a study published in the journal Scientific Reports [open, DOI: 10.1038/s41598-017-17785-1] [DX], researchers show how they have pushed the memristor – a simpler and smaller alternative to the transistor, with the capability of altering its resistance and storing multiple memory states – to a new level of performance after experimenting with its component materials.

[...] The University of Southampton team has demonstrated a new memristor technology that can store up to 128 discernible memory states per switch, almost four times more than previously reported.

In the study, they describe how they reached this level of performance by evaluating several configurations of functional oxide materials – the core component that gives the memristor its ability to alter its resistance.

[...] Professor Prodromakis and his colleagues will be showcasing the technology, and presenting seven original research papers, at ISCAS 2018, an international circuits and systems conference, in Florence, Italy, in May.

"Almost four times more"?

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Arthur T Knackerbracket writes:

Cloud Seeding For Snow: Does It Work? Scientists Report First Quantifiable Observations

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

For the first time, scientists have obtained direct, quantifiable observations of cloud seeding for increased snowfall -- from the growth of ice crystals, through the processes that occur in clouds, to the eventual snowfall.

[...] Throughout the Western U.S. and in other semi-arid mountain regions across the globe, water supplies are maintained primarily through snowmelt. Growing human populations place a higher demand on water, while warmer winters and earlier springs reduce snowpack and water supplies. Water managers see cloud seeding as a potential way of increasing winter snowfall.

"But no one has had a comprehensive set of observations of what really happens after you seed a cloud," says Jeff French, an atmospheric scientist at the University of Wyoming (UW) and SNOWIE principal investigator. "There have only been hypotheses. There have never been observations that show all the steps in cloud seeding."

French is the lead author of a paper reporting the results, published in today's issue of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Co-authors of the paper are affiliated with the University of Colorado- Boulder, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, the National Center for Atmospheric Research, and the Idaho Power Company.

[...] "This research shows that modern tools can be applied to longstanding scientific questions," says Nick Anderson, a program director in NSF's Division of Atmospheric and Geospace Sciences, which funded the study. "We now have direct observations that seeding of certain clouds follows a pathway first theorized in the mid-20th century."

[...] "In the long-term, we will be able to answer questions about how effective cloud seeding is, and what conditions may be needed," says French. "Water managers and state and federal agencies can make decisions about whether cloud seeding is a viable option to add additional water to supplies from snowpack in the mountains."

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takyon writes:

Archaeologists find 10,000-year-old crayon in Scarborough

An ochre crayon thought to have been used to draw on animal skins 10,000 years ago has been found by archaeologists. The crayon, which is just 22mm long, was discovered near the site of an ancient lake which is now covered in peat near Scarborough, North Yorkshire.

An ochre pebble was found at another site on what would have been the opposite side of the lake. The area is near one of the most famous Mesolithic sites in Europe, Star Carr. [...] The ochre - a pigment made from clay and sand - pebble has a heavily striated surface that is likely to have been scraped to produce a red pigment powder.

[...] Lead author of the study Dr Andy Needham said the latest discoveries help further our understanding of Mesolithic life. [...] He added: "One of the latest objects we have found looks exactly like a crayon, the tip is faceted and has gone from a rounded end to a really sharpened end, suggesting it has been used."

Also at University of York.

The application of micro-Raman for the analysis of ochre artefacts from Mesolithic palaeo-lake Flixton (DOI: 10.1016/j.jasrep.2017.12.002) (DX)

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Alphabet/Google has launched "Chronicle", a company that combines cybersecurity with machine learning. It was started under Google's X "moonshot"-producing group:

Alphabet—the parent company of Google, Nest, Waymo, and a million other companies—is launching a new company under the Alphabet umbrella. It's called "Chronicle," and the new company wants to apply the usual Google tenets of machine learning and cloud computing to cybersecurity.

The company is already up and running with an absolutely awesome URL, "chronicle.security," along with two introductory blog posts (1, 2), a logo, a Twitter account, and a vague sales pitch for some kind of security analysis product. The Chronicle team started in February 2016 under Alphabet's "Moonshot factory" X group and, before now, had been in stealth mode.

Stephen Gillett, the new CEO of Chronicle, explained the company best by writing:

We want to 10x the speed and impact of security teams' work by making it much easier, faster and more cost-effective for them to capture and analyze security signals that have previously been too difficult and expensive to find. We are building our intelligence and analytics platform to solve this problem.

10x? We verbed that. Google that fact.

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

Short sellers are in Nirvana with these creatures that had surged by hundreds or even thousands of percent in days after they announced a switch to "blockchain" in their business model or added "Blockchain" to their name. Their shares are now crashing.

I have written about a number of these outfits and their crazy share-price moves and their silly stock manipulation schemes on the way up. Now, not much later, here's an update on how they're doing on the way down.

This is a true gem. On January 9, the SEC halted trading in UBIA shares, citing two reasons: "accuracy" in UBI's disclosures and very funny trading activity. This froze the share price at $22. The trading halt came 11 days after I'd lambasted the shenanigans by the company and its executives. On Tuesday (January 23), shares trading resumed – and have since plunged to $8.25.

What caused the surge was the December 15 announcement – a mix of gobbledygook, hype, and silliness, as I called it – that it had acquired a "Blockchain-empowered solutions provider," etc. etc. What was not in the announcement was that the acquired "assets" belonged to a Singapore corporation that is 95% owned by Longfin's CEO and chairman. This was disclosed in the SEC filings, but no one betting on this crazy stuff reads SEC filings.

[...] For speculators that were able to get into and out of these scams in time, it worked. A 1,000% gain obtained in a few days by hook or crook is nothing to sneeze at. But it's ending in tears for those who got into these scams too late and whose despised fiat currency just ended up providing the exit grease for early speculators. And short sellers, the lucky ones that got the timing right, are laughing all the way to the hated legacy banks.

But not all will get the timing right. Short sellers, when they want to take profits, have to buy their shares back in order to cover their short position, and many of the stocks are thinly traded, and covering a big short position can cause shares to bounce violently. So there will be some serious snap-backs, which might take the fun out of shorting these stocks.

Original Submission

Fnord666 writes:

A number of states are considering right to repair bills, legislation which if passed would make it easier for individuals and repair shops to replace or repair electronics parts. Repair.org reports that 17 states have already introduced bills this year and while most aim to make repair parts and manuals accessible, Washington's proposed legislation would straight up ban electronics that prevent easy repair. "Original manufacturers of digital electronic products sold on or after January 1, 2019, in Washington state are prohibited from designing or manufacturing digital electronic products in such a way as to prevent reasonable diagnostic or repair functions by an independent repair provider," says the bill. "Preventing reasonable diagnostic or repair functions includes permanently affixing a battery in a manner that makes it difficult or impossible to remove."

[...] Naturally, tech groups have jumped to make their opposition clear. In a letter to Morris, groups such as the Consumer Technology Association, the Telecommunications Industry Association and the Computer Technology Industry Association said the bill was "unwarranted" and added, "With access to technical information, criminals can more easily circumvent security protections, harming not only the product owner but also everyone who shares their network."

Source: Engadget

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takyon writes:

NASA's Imager for Magnetopause-to-Aurora Global Exploration, which was launched in 2000 and unexpectedly ceased operations in 2005, may still be operational and transmitting data:

After years in darkness, a NASA satellite is phoning home. Some 12 years since it was thought lost because of a systems failure, NASA's Imager for Magnetopause-to-Aurora Global Exploration (IMAGE) has been discovered, still broadcasting, by an amateur astronomer. The find, which he reported in a blog post this week, presents the possibility that NASA could revive the mission, which once provided unparalleled views of Earth's magnetosphere.

The astronomer, Scott Tilley, spends his free time following the radio signals from spy satellites. On this occasion, he was searching in high-Earth orbit for evidence of Zuma, a classified U.S. satellite that's believed to have failed after launch. But rather than discovering Zuma, Tilley picked up a signal from a satellite labeled "2000-017A," which he knew corresponded to NASA's IMAGE satellite. Launched in 2000 and then left for dead in December 2005, the $150 million mission was back broadcasting. It just needed someone to listen.

After Tilley revealed the discovery, word rocketed around to former members of IMAGE's science team, says Patricia Reiff, a space plasma physicist at Rice University in Houston, Texas, who was a co-investigator on the mission. "The odds are extremely good that it's alive," Reiff says. There also appears to be data beyond telemetry in the signal, perhaps indicating some of the satellite's suite of six instruments are working.

Original Submission