SoylentNews

Freeman writes:

As part of Gaming Week, we wanted to resurface our definitive guide to the state of VR in 2019, which was published earlier this year in June 2019.

Is 2019 the right year to buy into VR?

My simple, biased answer is "yes," and that's largely because the Oculus Quest has finally nailed the top-to-bottom "welcome to VR" experience. From first-time setup to basic-use tutorials to app purchases to general gameplay, this system has enough that I can hand a new bundle to a tech-fluent person and not feel like I need to hang out and coach them through the rough bits.

https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2019/08/guidemaster-is-valve-index-the-best-virtual-reality-system-to-buy-in-2019/

I've greatly enjoyed my HTC Vive VR headset and wouldn't recommend the Oculus Quest due to it's limitations + Facebook phone home. What has your experience been?

Original Submission

takyon writes:

The five technical challenges Cerebras overcame in building the first trillion transistor chip

Superlatives abound at Cerebras, the until-today stealthy next-generation silicon chip company looking to make training a deep learning model as quick as buying toothpaste from Amazon. Launching after almost three years of quiet development, Cerebras introduced its new chip today — and it is a doozy. The "Wafer Scale Engine" is 1.2 trillion transistors (the most ever), 46,225 square millimeters (the largest ever), and includes 18 gigabytes of on-chip memory (the most of any chip on the market today) and 400,000 processing cores (guess the superlative).

It's made a big splash here at Stanford University at the Hot Chips conference, one of the silicon industry's big confabs for product introductions and roadmaps, with various levels of oohs and aahs among attendees. You can read more about the chip from Tiernan Ray at Fortune and read the white paper from Cerebras itself.

Also at BBC, VentureBeat, and PCWorld.

Original Submission

An Anonymous Coward writes:

NASA has already begun preparations for the arrival of asteroid 99942 Apophis - dubbed the 'God of Chaos' asteroid - which will skim past the earth in 10 years. The asteroid measures 340 meters across and will pass within just 19,000 miles of Earth's surface. Apophis is one of the largest asteroids to pass so close to the Earth's surface and a collision with the planet has the potential to be devastating for all life on Earth.

[...] The asteroid is set to get closer to the earth than communication and weather satellites in orbit. Most satellites in Earth's orbit are geostationary orbit 36,000 km away (22,236 miles) from the planet.

Apophis is travelling at almost 25,000 mph meaning a slight detour from its trajectory could be catastrophic.

Apophis' size and proximity to Earth have resulted in it being categorised as a Potentially Hazardous Asteroid (PHA) and NASA is keen to learn as much from the asteroid as possible to help prevent further asteroid issues in the future.

NASA scientist are aware that as the asteroid flies by the planet in 2029, its orbit trajectory may also change thus raising fears that in the future the massive rock could collide with the planet.

[...] According to some researchers, the immense size of the rock is not a cause for concern as there is a 1 to 100,000 chance of the asteroid striking the earth.

[...] Astronomer Davide Farnocchia added: "We already know that the close encounter with Earth will change Apophis' orbit.

"But our models also show the close approach could change the way this asteroid spins and it is possible that there will be some surfaces changes, like small avalanches."

https://www.express.co.uk/news/science/1167554/asteroid-news-hit-earth-nasa-apophis-god-of-chaos-asteroids-space-asteroid-impact

See also

• https://www.mirror.co.uk/science/nasa-preparing-god-chaos-asteroid-18961642
• https://metro.co.uk/2019/08/19/nasa-preparing-arrival-god-chaos-asteroid-apophis-10595647/
• https://www.businessinsider.in/elon-musk-says-we-have-no-defence-against-asteroid-god-of-chaos/articleshow/70748251.cms

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

Phishing is still the most common way for cyber attackers to gain entry into networks. Whether it's crooks looking for financial gain or state-backed hacking operations engaging in cyber espionage, it almost always starts with a message designed to make someone click a link or give away sensitive information. Just one person falling victim can be enough to provide hackers with the foothold they need to gain access to the whole corporate network and the confidential information stored within.

But blaming the victim rarely solves anything – especially given how phishing emails can be so highly tailored towards victims, meaning it can be almost impossible to distinguish a real message from a spoofed one created as part of an attack.

"It's fairly easy for an attacker to get hold of an email address and pretend to be somebody," says Amanda Widdowson, cybersecurity champion for the Chartered Institute of Ergonomics & Human Factors and human factors capability lead for Thales Cyber & Consulting.

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

In August last year, the AFP obtained a warrant under section 3LA of the Crimes Act to unlock a gold-coloured Samsung phone found in the centre console of the man’s car when he was pulled over and searched.

The man supplied the password for a laptop also in the car, and a second phone did not have a pin to unlock, but when asked about the gold phone, he answered “no comment” and would not provide a password for the phone.

He later claimed it wasn’t his phone and he didn’t know the password to access it.

The federal court last month overturned the magistrate’s decision to grant a warrant forcing the man to provide assistance in unlocking the phone.

The decision was overturned on several grounds, notably judge Richard White found that the Samsung phone was not a computer or data storage device as defined by the federal Crimes Act.

The law does not define a computer, but defines data storage devices as a “thing containing, or designed to contain, data for use by a computer”.

White found that the phone could not be defined as a computer or data storage device.

“While a mobile phone may have the capacity to ‘perform mathematical computations electronically according to a series of stored instructions called a program’, it does not seem apt to call such an item a computer,” he said.

“Mobile phones are primarily devices for communicating although it is now commonplace for them to have a number of other functions ... Again, the very ubiquity of mobile phones suggests that, if the parliament had intended that they should be encompassed by the term ‘computer’ it would have been obvious to say so.”

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

The same artificial intelligence technique typically used in facial recognition systems could help improve prediction of hailstorms and their severity, according to a new study from the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR).

Instead of zeroing in on the features of an individual face, scientists trained a deep learning model called a convolutional neural network to recognize features of individual storms that affect the formation of hail and how large the hailstones will be, both of which are notoriously difficult to predict.

The promising results, published in the American Meteorological Society's Monthly Weather Review, highlight the importance of taking into account a storm's entire structure, something that's been challenging to do with existing hail-forecasting techniques.

"We know that the structure of a storm affects whether the storm can produce hail," said NCAR scientist David John Gagne, who led the research team. "A supercell is more likely to produce hail than a squall line, for example. But most hail forecasting methods just look at a small slice of the storm and can't distinguish the broader form and structure."

upstart writes:

Submitted via IRC for SoyCow2718

Unique Kaspersky AV User ID Allowed 3rd-Party Web Tracking

Kaspersky antivirus solutions injected in the web pages visited by its users an identification number unique for each system. This started in late 2015 and could be used to track a user's browsing interests.

Versions of the antivirus product, paid and free, up to 2019, displayed this behavior that allows tracking regardless of the web browser used, even when users started private sessions.

Signaled by c't magazine editor Ronald Eikenberg, the problem was that a JavaScript from a Kaspersky server loaded from an address that included a unique ID for every user.

Scripts on a website can read the HTML source and glean the Kaspersky identifier, which Eikenberg determined to remain unchanged on the system.

"In other words, any website can read the user's Kaspersky ID and use it for tracking. If the same Universally Unique Identifier comes back, or appears on another website of the same operator, they can see that the same computer is being used."

The purpose of the script is perfectly legitimate. One of its uses is to warn users which search results are dangerous to follow by applying a corresponding checkmark next to them. Kaspersky is not the only antivirus to do this.

Kaspersky acknowledged the issue and that it could be leveraged by third parties to "potentially compromise user privacy by using unique product id."

The company released a patch in early June. According to an advisory from July 11, an attacker could take advantage of this through a script deployed on a server they control.

Before reporting the problem to Kaspersky, Eikenberg tested the potential of his discovery by spending about half an hour creating a website that automatically copied the visitors' Kaspersky IDs.

Eikenberg argues that if he could find this issue, which is now identified as CVE-2019-8286, it is possible that marketers, malicious actors, and companies specializing in profiling website visitors have discovered this user data leak years ago and exploited it; there is no evidence to support this, though.

Also at ArsTechnica

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Submitted via IRC for SoyCow7671

4G Router Vulnerabilities Let Attackers Take Full Control

Multiple vulnerabilities were found by security researchers in 4G routers manufactured by several companies, with the flaws exposing users to information leaks and command execution attacks.

Pen Test Partners researcher 'G Richter' shared the flaws found in 4G devices during this year's DEF CON hacking conference, saying that "a lot of existing 4G modems and routers are pretty insecure."

"We found critical remotely-exploitable flaws in a selection of devices from variety of vendors, without having to do too much work," Richter said.

"Plus, there’s only a small pool of OEMs working seriously with cellular technologies, and their hardware (& software dependencies) can be found running in all sorts of places."

The worst part is that the security flaws were discovered after examining a limited set of 4G routers, covering the entire prices spectrum, from consumer-grade routers and dongles to very pricey devices designed to be used in large enterprise networks.

All the security flaws found were reported to the vendors who fixed most of the discovered issues before the Pen Test Partners report was published but, unfortunately, the disclosure process didn't go as smooth as expected.

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

On an August morning in Paris, when most of the city is in an advanced state of summer torpor, hundreds of young men and women are sweating it out in the third week of a gruelling month-long endurance test.

While the trial is called the "piscine" (swimming pool) and towels dot the ultra-modern building, the contest is not about physical prowess.

Welcome instead to the tryouts for Ecole 42, a free computer coding college founded by French telecoms billionaire Xavier Niel in 2013 to help young people find work in IT or, better still, become their own bosses.

Named after the offbeat answer to "the ultimate question of life" in Douglas Adam's comic classic "The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy," the ultra-modern college, with neither teachers nor conventional tuition, quickly gained cult status.

Around 40,000 people apply each year for one of roughly 1,000 spots on the programme.

Around 3,000 make it to the daunting "piscine" stage, in which the candidates spend 10 to 16 hours a day over four weeks completing projects and doing exams.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Submitted via IRC for SoyCow7671

Nmap 7.80 DEF CON Release: First Stable Version in Over a Year

In a post to the "Nmap Announce" mailing list, developer Gordon Lyon announced the release of Nmap 7.80 while attending the DEF CON security conference.

"I'm here in Las Vegas for Defcon and delighted to release Nmap 7.80.  It's the first formal Nmap release in more than a year, and I hope you find it worth the wait!"

With this release, Nmap is updated to version 7.80 and contains numerous improvements to the Npacp[sic] packet capture library, which provides better support for Windows 10 compared to the previous Winpcap library.

[...] Also included in Nmap 7.80 are eleven additional Nmap Scripting Engine (NSE) scripts that were contributed by 8 different authors.

Download page

Original Submission

RandomFactor writes:

This past Wednesday (and about 900 million years ago), for the first time according to scientists at Australian National University (ANU) gravitational-wave discovery machines detected a black hole swallowing a neutron star

Professor Susan Scott, from the ANU Research School of Physics, said the achievement completed the team's trifecta of observations on their original wish list, which included the merger of two black holes and the collision of two neutron stars.

"About 900 million years ago, this black hole ate a very dense star, known as a neutron star, like Pac-man—possibly snuffing out the star instantly," said Professor Scott, Leader of the General Relativity Theory and Data Analysis Group at ANU and a Chief Investigator with the ARC Centre of Excellence for Gravitational Wave Discovery (OzGrav).

Professor Scott notes that there is an alternative, but unlikely, possibility as well

there is the slight but intriguing possibility that the swallowed object was a very light black hole—much lighter than any other black hole we know about in the Universe. That would be a truly awesome consolation prize.

[...] The ANU SkyMapper Telescope responded to the detection alert and scanned the entire likely region of space where the event occurred, but we've not found any visual confirmation.

The scientists continue to analyze the data and search for the event in the sky and expect to publish the final results once complete.

Also at c|net.

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Apple reportedly ups TV spending by $5 billion to compete with Amazon and Netflix

Apple has reportedly committed an eye-popping $5 billion dollars more to its original video content budget in a bid to better compete with Amazon, Disney, HBO, Netflix, and Hulu, according to a new report from the Financial Times.

The company had originally set aside $1 billion for former Sony Pictures Television executives Jamie Erlicht and Zack Van Amburg to court well-known creators and Hollywood stars to its platform. According to the FT, that number has jumped to $6 billion as more shows have moved through production and budgets have ballooned.

One production — a high-profile comedy-drama about morning television featuring Jennifer Aniston, Reese Witherspoon, and Steve Carrell called The Morning Show — has cost Apple hundreds of millions of dollars, the FT reports. Separately, Bloomberg reports that Apple is spending $300 million on just the first two seasons of the show.

That makes it more expensive on a per episode basis than the final season of HBO's Game of Thrones, which enjoyed a budget of roughly $15 million per episode and ranks as the most expensive season of television ever.

Also at 9to5Mac and Cord Cutters News.

Previously: Apple Investing $1 Billion in Acquiring and Producing TV Shows
Apple Inks Deal With Ex Machina Maker A24 Studio to Create Original Films

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

The bitcoin scam worked — almost too well. In 2012, back when almost no one had heard of the digital coin, he’d started modestly, asking people he found on the dark web for $200 or $300 worth of bitcoin as a way to test out his investment scheme. He told them he could exploit the then huge price differences between various bitcoin exchanges and promised huge rewards. But once they sent the funds, he vanished into the ether to find his next stooge.

There was a certain genius criminal irony to it: He would hype an untraceable anonymous digital currency, then get paid in it.

[...] But he had a problem. It was getting harder to turn the most overhyped currency since the tulip into actual cash.

[...] All of this means that people like our guy who are very rich on paper (or, more accurately, on the blockchain) must devise highly complex methods to convert their ill-gotten gains, or risk losing quite a bit of value, said Tom Robinson, co-founder of the blockchain analytics company Elliptic. “Funds from illicit activities are just lying dormant, and they are waiting to find effective means of cashing out,” he said.

Yet if we know anything about criminals, it’s that they’re resourceful. As financial institutions and regulators the world over grapple with bitcoin’s adaptation to mainstream use, some of these criminals have devised ingenious hacks for converting their money; still others are turning to alternative coins as they seek greater privacy for their transactions and to stay ahead of the law.

Original Submission

MrPlow writes:

Submitted via IRC for SoyCow2718

Most employees have some awareness about malware attacks. Many probably know that you should never open an executable file from a stranger or install a thumb drive found in the parking lot, for example. But videos, or links to videos, can deliver malware just like that executable or thumb drive. Do your employees know this too? And even if they do know it, will they be tricked into chasing malicious videos anyway?

Here's why it's time to start focusing on video malware.

[...] The video habit (or addiction) in our culture has paved the way for video malware — malicious code embedded into video files. Video malware is part of a larger trend toward more effective stealth in the delivery of malware. It's also the latest, and probably the most interesting, example of malicious steganography — the embedding of something secret inside some other medium. When the medium is an executable file, it's called stegware.

Malware has been embedded in still-image file formats, such as JPG, PNG and BMP formats, for years. Now, it appears that video malware is having a moment.

Source: https://securityintelligence.com/articles/how-video-became-a-dangerous-delivery-vehicle-for-malware-attacks/

Original Submission

MrPlow writes:

Submitted via IRC for AndyTheAbsurd

The proposal is part of Sanders' broader plan for police reform.

Wait, they used WOODY HARRELSON as a template? And I'm not sure why facial recognition is the focus here, when I feel that the end of providing military equipment to police forces is much more impactful a change.

Source: https://www.theverge.com/2019/8/19/20812032/bernie-sanders-facial-recognition-police-ban-surveillance-reform

Original Submission