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What was highest label on your first car speedometer?

  • 80 mph
  • 88 mph
  • 100 mph
  • 120 mph
  • 150 mph
  • it was in kph like civilized countries use you insensitive clod
  • Other (please specify in comments)

[ Results | Polls ]
Comments:47 | Votes:101

posted by martyb on Friday July 20 2018, @11:01PM   Printer-friendly
from the sue-or-be-suet? dept.

Rolling Stone:

When a U.S. citizen heard he was on his own country’s drone target list, he wasn’t sure he believed it. After five near-misses, he does – and is suing the United States to contest his own execution
...
With Reprieve’s help, Kareem did what the system asks a law-abiding American citizen with a grievance to do. He sued, filing a complaint in district court in Washington, D.C., on March 30th, 2017, asking the U.S. government to take him off the Kill List, at least until he had a chance to challenge the evidence against him.

The case, still unresolved more than a year later, has awesome implications not just for Kareem but for all Americans – all people everywhere, for that matter.

It’s not a stretch to say that it’s one of the most important lawsuits to ever cross the desk of a federal judge. The core of the Bill of Rights is in play, and a wrong result could formalize a slide into authoritarianism that began long ago, but accelerated after 9/11.

He needs to take the matter to Information Retrieval, but heaven help him if he doesn't get his receipt stamped first.

[Ed note: It's a long read, but provides extensive background on the US government's kill list development, implementation, and complications in trying to do anything about it.]


Original Submission

posted by martyb on Friday July 20 2018, @09:24PM   Printer-friendly
from the All-your-Health-data-are-belong-to-us-dept dept.

The Australian government online medical health record system is failing due to the number of people trying to opt out. The MyHealthRecord was introduced to store patients health records online so multiple doctors can access them. Many privacy and IT security advocates have warned that this type of system can be compromised. For most people it does not provide a great benefit. A key criticism is that users can't delete data only a provider can mark data as being hidden, and data is never actually deleted. With the Australian government throwing millions at this system to try to make it relevant this opt out may put a nail in its coffin. The government plans to sell data from this system to third parties, a fact which has not endeared it to the public with the recent government data breaches and census fiasco. People in Australia are voting with their feet to not be a part of it before it evens starts which says a lot about how people in Australia value their privacy.


Original Submission

posted by martyb on Friday July 20 2018, @07:47PM   Printer-friendly
from the they've-come-a-long-way dept.

Bloomberg:

Best Buy, the last national electronics chain, is counting on these advisors to distinguish it from Amazon.com Inc., the company’s competitor, partner, and would-be vanquisher. With more than 1,000 big-box stores in North America and about 125,000 employees, Best Buy was supposed to have succumbed to the inevitable. “Everyone thought we were going to die,” says Hubert Joly, who was hired as chief executive officer in August 2012 after profits shrunk about 90 percent in one quarter and his predecessor resigned amid an investigation into his relationship with an employee.

Instead, Best Buy has become an improbable survivor led by an unlikely boss. Joly was raised and educated in France, trained at McKinsey & Co., and previously employed by hospitality company Carlson, based outside Minneapolis, and media conglomerate Vivendi SA, where he greenlighted a little game called World of Warcraft. He’s the first outside CEO in the chain’s 52-year history. He had no retail experience—Best Buy’s stock fell 10 percent the day he was named CEO—but Joly understands how to value, and capture, customers’ time. Comparable sales rose 5.6 percent last year and 9 percent during the Christmas season, the biggest holiday gain since 2003. The stock price has quadrupled. Even Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos is impressed. “The last five years, since Hubert came to Best Buy, have been remarkable,” he said at an appearance in April.

Geek Squad to the rescue?


Original Submission

posted by martyb on Friday July 20 2018, @06:09PM   Printer-friendly
from the Windows-TCO dept.

Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks have been getting more polished, in what, who, and how they target their victims. Threatpost has an article looking at some of the changes over the recent years regarding new techniques, new targets, and a new class of attackers.

Several new themes are emerging in the 2018 distributed denial of service (DDoS) threat landscape, including a shift in tactics to reach new heights in volumetric campaigns, attacks that rely on a sheer wall of large amounts of packet traffic to overwhelm the capacity of a website and take it town.

However, while these traditional, opportunistic brute-force DDoS attacks remain a menace has emerged. These DDoS threats are more sophisticated and micro-targeted attacks. They take aim at, say, a specific application rather than a whole website. These type DDoS attacks are a rapidly growing threat, as are “low and slow” stealthier offensives. At the same time, bot herders are working on expanding their largely IoT-based botnet creations, by any means possible, often to accommodate demand from the DDoS-as-a-service offerings that have created a flood of new participants in the DDoS scene. Those new entrants are all competing for attack resources, creating a demand that criminals are all too happy to fulfill.

[...] One of the most notable evolutions in the DDoS landscape is the growth in the peak size of volumetric attacks. Attackers continue to use reflection/amplification techniques to exploit vulnerabilities in DNS, NTP, SSDP, CLDAP, Chargen and other protocols to maximize the scale of their attacks. Notably however, in February the world saw a 1.3 Tbps DDoS attack against GitHub—setting a record for volume (it was twice the size of the previous largest attack on record) and demonstrating that new amplification techniques can give unprecedented power to cybercriminals. Just five days later, an even larger attack launched, reaching 1.7 Tbps. These showed that DDoS attackers are more than able to keep up with the growing size of bandwidth pipes being used by businesses.


Original Submission

posted by chromas on Friday July 20 2018, @04:32PM   Printer-friendly
from the critical-hit dept.

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

July’s critical patch update addresses 334 security vulnerabilities (including 61 rated critical) covering a vast swathe of the Oracle enterprise portfolio.

Oracle has released a massive Critical Patch Update (CPU) for July, addressing 334 security vulnerabilities covering a vast swathe of its enterprise portfolio.

Of the 334 vulnerabilities covered this month, 61 are rated critical, with a CVSS rating between nine and 10. Oracle said in its advisory Tuesday that it has observed several exploits operating in the wild, across the spectrum of security holes, so applying the update should be at the top of the to-do list for administrators.

The update marks an all-time high for CPU fixes for the vendor, overtaking its previous record of 308 in July 2017. Not that large numbers of fixes are uncommon: In its previous CPU in April, it fixed 251 flaws; and before that, in January, it addressed 233.

Oracle’s business-critical applications are heavily represented, with the majority of the patches in the CPU issued for the widely deployed PeopleSoft enterprise resource planning platform, the E-Business Suite, the MySQL database, Siebel CRM, the Fusion middleware, JD Edwards products and more. Taken together, these systems house the most sensitive information for any company, including financial information, HR data, vertical-specific information like student grades and loans or healthcare PHI, plus strategic operational data on business processes and intellectual property.

[...] In all, Oracle credited 43 independent researchers as well as analysts from Apple, GE, Google, Pulse Security, Trend Micro, Secunia and others.

[...] The Zero Day Initiative said that the number of bugs reported in 2018 is on track to trump its previous busiest year, 2017.

-- submitted from IRC


Original Submission

posted by martyb on Friday July 20 2018, @02:55PM   Printer-friendly
from the never-surf-alone dept.

Roblox[*] blames 'gang rape' on hacker adding code to game

A popular children's video game has blamed a virtual "gang rape" on a hack of its systems. Amber Petersen's seven-year-old daughter was playing Roblox, when [her online avatar] was attacked by two male characters staging violent sexual acts.

The firm said the incident was caused by an attack on one of its computer servers that has been dealt with. But experts have cautioned parents not to let young children play online without supervision. They warn it is unlikely this will be the last time such a hack occurs.

After Ms Petersen witnessed the attack on her family iPad, she posted screenshots and an account of the event on her Facebook page, detailing the experience. Ms Petersen said that when her daughter had asked what was happening on the screen, she had viewed a "horrific" scene of her child's avatar being sexually assaulted by two male characters. Towards the end of the incident, she said, a third, female character interfered by jumping on the victim's body.

The BBC understands that the hacker responsible managed to subvert the California-based company's cyber-protection systems, allowing them to upload code that changed the game's rules and made customised animations appear. Roblox previously confirmed that it had identified the account responsible and blocked it from its platform.

[*] From the company web site, Roblox:

Roblox is the best place to Imagine with Friends. With the largest user-generated online gaming platform, and over 15 million games created by users, Roblox is the #1 gaming site for kids and teens (comScore). Every day, virtual explorers come to Roblox to create adventures, play games, role play, and learn with their friends in a family-friendly, immersive, 3D environment.

A victim of dank memes? Or the powerful scripting system?

Original Facebook post. Also at TechCrunch and The Washington Post.


Original Submission

posted by martyb on Friday July 20 2018, @01:18PM   Printer-friendly
from the mermaid:-a-fishy-tail-tale dept.

Phys.org:

Fossil discoveries from the Devonian rocks of Scotland and Australia first revealed that the earliest jawed fishes, the placoderms, reproduced using copulation in much the same way as sharks and rays do today.

They also had the first paired pelvic skeletons, the precursor to the hind paired fins – and legs – of all animals. Their paired reproductive organs, called "claspers", probably developed in the same way as limbs.

The appearance of jaws and teeth in the first vertebrates was thus intimately linked to the origin of paired hind limbs (pelvic girdles) and an advanced kind of sexual reproduction.

The researchers found evidence that anatomical developments that enable copulation appeared earlier, in jawless fishes.


Original Submission

posted by martyb on Friday July 20 2018, @11:41AM   Printer-friendly
from the maybe-he-is-just-up-in-the-air-about-them dept.

The Verge:

One flying car seems absurd; Larry Page has three.

He started with Cora, a two-seater flying taxi, then added a sporty flying boat called Flyer, both developed by a company called Kitty Hawk. And last week, The Verge discovered a third: Opener, which just came out of stealth mode. There was no mention of the Google co-founder in the startup’s announcement, but when confronted with evidence of Page’s involvement, Opener quickly issued a press release admitting it.

Flying cars (more formally known as eVTOLs — for electric vertical takeoff and landing) are the electric scooters of aviation. Everyone from Uber to Airbus is working to build the lightweight aircraft and the aerial networks they will require, to say nothing of a host of well-funded startups, including Joby in the US, Volocopter in Germany, and China’s EHang.

Just last week the airline companies got upset at how disruptive SpaceX and Blue Origin are to their flight plans.


Original Submission

posted by martyb on Friday July 20 2018, @10:04AM   Printer-friendly
from the story-not-written-by-Ernest-Hemingway dept.

Hackaday:

It’s with a heavy heart that we must report Printrbot has announced they are ceasing operations. Founded in 2011 after a wildly successful Kickstarter campaign, the company set out to make 3D printing cheaper and easier. Their first printer was an amalgamation of printed parts and wood that at the time offered an incredible deal; when the Makerbot CupCake was selling for $750 and took 20+ hours to assemble, the Printrbot kit would only run you $500 and could be built in under an hour.

Printrbot got their foot in the door early, but the competition wasn’t far behind. The dream of Star Trek style replicators fueled massive investment, and for a while it seemed like everyone was getting into the 3D printing game. Kit built machines gave way to turn-key printers, and the prices starting coming down. Printrbot’s products evolved as well, dropping wood in favor of folded steel and pioneering impressive features like automatic bed leveling. In 2014 they released the Printbot Simple Metal, which ultimately became their flagship product and in many ways represents the high water mark for the company.

Too bad they couldn't have used them to print money.


Original Submission

posted by martyb on Friday July 20 2018, @08:27AM   Printer-friendly
from the silence-is-golden^Wgreen dept.

Phys.org:

Noise barriers muffle the transmission of traffic noise and constitute a relevant factor in urban action plans. However, their effectiveness varies according to multiple factors. The new green noise barrier developed by two researchers from the School of Building at UPM [(Universidad Politécnica de Madrid)] use the raw material resulting from the pruning of plants and gardens. The combination of this vegetable waste with a local substrate and water result in a new mixture of suitable acoustic and structural characteristics for these types of barriers.

Today, the commercial noise barriers are made of different materials such as concrete, brick, wood, and glass that consume material resources in the manufacturing process and generate a large amount of waste at the end of their useful life.

Researchers have now developed barriers made of recycled elements that reduce the use of materials and reuse carpet waste, scraps of paper and fibrous materials. In this study, the raw materials used by UPM researchers come from garden waste, specifically palm leaves. Using local materials provides savings for both transport and environmental impact, offering a solution to the excessive amount of waste.

This one comes with electrolytes.


Original Submission

posted by martyb on Friday July 20 2018, @06:50AM   Printer-friendly
from the oh-chute! dept.

Phys.org:

The parachute system for Orion, America's spacecraft that will carry humans to deep space, deployed as planned after being dropped from an altitude of 6.6 miles on July 12, at the U.S. Army Proving Ground in Yuma, Arizona. Data from the successful seventh drop in a series of eight qualification tests will help NASA engineers certify Orion's parachutes for missions with astronauts.

[...] To demonstrate the system's robustness, this test evaluated parachute deployment under conditions that exceeded the requirements for a system carrying crew. Engineers dropped the dart-shaped test article from an altitude that allowed it to generate enough speed to simulate almost twice as much force on the main chutes as would be expected under normal conditions. Orion's full parachute system includes 11 parachutes—three forward-bay cover parachutes, two drogue parachutes, three pilot parachutes, and three main parachutes that will reduce the capsule's speed after reentry in support of a safe landing in the ocean.

[...] For storage, the parachutes are compacted with hydraulic presses at forces of up to 80,000 pounds, baked for two days and vacuumed sealed. Once packed, they have a density of about 40 pounds per cubic foot, which is roughly the same as wood from an oak tree.


Original Submission

posted by martyb on Friday July 20 2018, @05:13AM   Printer-friendly
from the layoffs-are-no-fun-for-anyone dept.

Fortune:

In a notice to the California Employment Development Department, eBay said that it plans to slash nearly 300 jobs from Bay Area locations by July 20. The company, which called the cuts a “mass layoff,” said that it informed those being laid off at the end of June, according to The Mercury News, which obtained a copy of the notice. The layoffs will span eBay’s locations in San Jose, San Francisco, and Brisbane, according to the report. The San Jose office has been affected most by the layoffs, with 224 of the cuts coming to that location.

The online auction site’s decision comes after eBay has been experiencing some problems in its business. While the company’s revenue was up to $9.6 billion last year from $9 billion in the prior year, it took a loss of $1 billion. In the first quarter of this year, eBay’s profits slipped 60.7% year over year to $407 million.

In online retailing, there can be only one.


Original Submission

posted by martyb on Friday July 20 2018, @03:36AM   Printer-friendly
from the but-they-do-work-to-raise-ticket-income dept.

Phys.org:

Red-light cameras don't reduce the number of traffic accidents or injuries at intersections where the devices are installed, according a new analysis by Case Western Reserve University.

Touted by supporters as a way increase public safety by ticketing drivers who continue through red lights, the cameras actually shift traffic patterns: More drivers tend to brake harder and more abruptly, increasing fender-benders and other so-called "non-angle" collisions.

"Once drivers knew about the cameras, they appeared to accept a higher accident risk from slamming on their brakes at yellow lights to avoid an expensive traffic citation—thereby decreasing safety for themselves and other drivers," said Justin Gallagher, an assistant professor of economics at Weatherhead School of Management at Case Western Reserve.

Accidents didn't decrease, only shift.


Original Submission

posted by martyb on Friday July 20 2018, @01:59AM   Printer-friendly
from the when-nano-is-not-small-enough dept.

Phys.org:

Image resolution in electron microscopy has traditionally been improved by increasing both the numerical aperture of the lens and the energy of the electron beam, which does for the microscope what light does for a camera or an optical microscope – illuminates the subject.

Previous records for resolution were achieved with an aberration-corrected lens and super-high beam energy – 300 kiloelectronvolts (keV) – to obtain sub-ångström resolution. Atomic bonds are generally between 1 and 2 ångströms (Å) long – an ångström is 0.1 nanometers – so sub-ångström resolution would allow one to easily see individual atoms. The Muller group was able to reach a resolution of 0.39 Å – a new world record – and at a lower, less damaging beam energy where resolution from the aberration corrected lenses alone was 0.98 Å.

Muller's group used the EMPAD and a technique known as ptychography: As the electron beam scans the sample, the detector collects both full-position and momentum distributions of the scattered electrons in overlapping steps. The image is reconstructed from the resulting 4-dimensional data set.

The group used a beam energy of just 80 keV so as not to destroy the MoS2. Despite the low beam energy, the resolution using EMPAD is so good, the microscope is able to detect with startling clarity a missing sulfur atom – "a defect in the lattice," Gruner said – in a 2-D material. "That's astounding to me," he said.

Ptychography on Wikipedia

The new resolution will be useful in nanotechnology.


Original Submission

posted by martyb on Friday July 20 2018, @12:22AM   Printer-friendly
from the just-put-the-VMs-in-the-cloud dept.

The Register:

There are rumblings that Azure is having capacity issues once again, with customers in the UK South region reporting problems getting new VMs provisioned.

[...] In case there was any doubt as to what the problem was, the message went on: "To ensure that all customers can access the services they need, we are working through approving quota requests as we bring additional capacity online."

According to the update, the capacity constraints apply to the A, BS, Dv2, DSv2, Dv3 and DSv3 series machines in the UK South region. A-series VMs are typically used for development and testing, B-series are similiar[sic], but are geared to short bursts of high CPU utilisation. The D-series are heftier beasts, aimed at running enterprise applications. The 'S' moniker indicates support for SSDs.

Microsoft introduced the Dv3 VM sizes last July, with the cloudy machines featuring up to 64vCPUs and 256GiB RAM. Assuming you can actually provision the things.

Customers are feeling blue about Azure.


Original Submission