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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:45 | Votes:98

posted by martyb on Tuesday October 13 2020, @09:59PM   Printer-friendly
from the fox-conned? dept.

Wisconsin denies Foxconn tax subsidies after contract negotiations fail:

Foxconn isn't building what it promised and failed to hire enough people

Through the many twists and turns of Foxconn's troubled Wisconsin project, one thing has long been clear: the company is not building the promised 20 million-square-foot Gen 10.5 LCD factory specified in its contract with the state. Even before President Trump broke ground on the supposed factory in June 2018, Foxconn said it would instead build a far smaller factory than it had proposed.

The discrepancy between what Foxconn is doing and what it said it would do in its contract has only grown since then, and it has brought Wisconsin and the company to an impasse. Documents obtained by The Verge show that attempts to renegotiate that contract have so far failed, and today, the Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation (WEDC), which oversees the deal, rejected Foxconn's application for tax subsidies on the grounds that Foxconn had not carried out the Gen 10.5 LCD factory project described in its original contract.

WEDC also noted that even if whatever Foxconn is currently doing had been eligible under the contract, it had failed to employ the minimum number of people needed to get subsidies. Foxconn needed to employ at least 520 people at the end of 2019 to receive subsidies and claimed to have hired 550, but WEDC estimated that only 281 would qualify under the terms of the contract.


Original Submission

posted by martyb on Tuesday October 13 2020, @07:49PM   Printer-friendly
from the great-imagination dept.

Imagination has announced new B-series GPU designs focused on automotive and high-performance computing use cases, as it has become difficult for the company to compete in the mobile GPU market:

It's almost been a year since Imagination had announced its brand-new A-series GPU IP, a release which at the time the company called its most important in 15 years. The new architecture indeed marked some significant updates to the company's GPU IP, promising major uplifts in performance and promises of great competitiveness. Since then, other than a slew of internal scandals, we've heard very little from the company – until today's announcement of the new next-generation of IP: the B-Series.

The new Imagination B-Series is an evolution of last year's A-Series GPU IP release, further iterating through microarchitectural improvements, but most importantly, scaling the architecture up to higher performance levels through a brand-new multi-GPU system, as well as the introduction of a new functional safety class of IP in the form of the BXS series.

[....] Imagination's current highest-end hardware implementation in the BXT series is the BXT 32-1024, and putting four of these together creates an MC4 GPU. In a high-performance implementation reaching up to 1.5GHz clock speeds, this configuration would offer up to 6TFLOPs of FP32 computing power. Whilst this isn't quite enough to catch up to Nvidia and AMD, it's a major leap for a third-party GPU IP provider that's been mostly active in the mobile space for the last 15 years.

[....] Beyond the addition of safety critical features on the BXS series, the automotive IP also features some specific enhancements in the microarchitecture that allows for better performance scaling for workloads that are more unique to the automotive space. One such aspect is geometry, where automotive vendors have the tendency to use absurd amounts of triangles. Imagination says they've tweaked their designs to cover these more demanding use-cases, and together with some MSAA specific optimisations they can reach up to a 60% greater performance for these automotive edge-cases, compared to the regular non-automotive IP.

Related: Imagination Technologies Group Up for Sale


Original Submission

posted by Fnord666 on Tuesday October 13 2020, @05:41PM   Printer-friendly
from the very-sneaky dept.

Watch Out — Microsoft Warns Android Users About A New Ransomware:

Microsoft has warned about a new strain of mobile ransomware that takes advantage of incoming call notifications and Android's Home button to lock the device behind a ransom note.

The findings concern a variant of a known Android ransomware family dubbed "MalLocker.B" which has now resurfaced with new techniques, including a novel means to deliver the ransom demand on infected devices as well as an obfuscation mechanism to evade security solutions.

The development comes amid a huge surge in ransomware attacks against critical infrastructure across sectors, with a 50% increase in the daily average of ransomware attacks in the last three months compared to the first half of the year, and cybercriminals increasingly incorporating double extortion in their playbook.

[...] "This new mobile ransomware variant is an important discovery because the malware exhibits behaviors that have not been seen before and could open doors for other malware to follow," Microsoft 365 Defender Research Team said.

"It reinforces the need for comprehensive defense powered by broad visibility into attack surfaces as well as domain experts who track the threat landscape and uncover notable threats that might be hiding amidst massive threat data and signals."


Original Submission

posted by Fnord666 on Tuesday October 13 2020, @03:32PM   Printer-friendly
from the just-so-wrong dept.

Grounded airline planes turned into pop-up restaurants sell out in 30 minutes:

Amidst plunging revenues due to the pandemic, Singapore Airlines is turning two of its Airbus A380 planes parked at Changi Airport into impromptu restaurants on October 24th and 25th, and it's proved surprisingly popular. Bloomberg reports that all seats at the restaurants sold out within 30 minutes of bookings opening, as people rushed to recapture the excitement of balancing a tiny meal on an even tinier fold-down airline table.

I admit I normally quite like airplane food, but that's probably because it's something to focus my attention on beyond an endless series of films I was never interested enough in to see in the cinema. Singapore Airlines is selling four different tiers of meals according to Bloomberg, ranging from a meal in a suite for around $474, right down to an economy experience for the equivalent of $39. Around half the planes' seats will be available for dining to allow for social distancing.

[...] Although seats on the A380 have now sold out, Bloomberg notes that Singapore Airlines plans to open a wait list and will investigate how it can accommodate the extra demand.


Original Submission

posted by Fnord666 on Tuesday October 13 2020, @01:23PM   Printer-friendly
from the hidden-features dept.

https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2020/10/a-watch-designed-exclusively-for-kids-has-an-undocumented-spying-backdoor/

A popular smartwatch designed exclusively for children contains an undocumented backdoor that makes it possible for someone to remotely capture camera snapshots, wiretap voice calls, and track locations in real time, a researcher said.

The X4 smartwatch is marketed by Xplora, a Norway-based seller of children's watches. The device, which sells for about $200, runs on Android and offers a range of capabilities

[...] [Norwegian security company Mnemonic's researcher, Harrison] Sand's suspicions were further aroused when he found intents with the following names:

  • WIRETAP_INCOMING
  • WIRETAP_BY_CALL_BACK
  • COMMAND_LOG_UPLOAD
  • REMOTE_SNAPSHOT
  • SEND_SMS_LOCATION

After more poking around, Sand figured out the intents were activated using SMS text messages that were encrypted with the hardwired key. System logs showed him that the key was stored on a flash chip, so he dumped the contents and obtained it—"#hml;Fy/sQ9z5MDI=$" (quotation marks not included). Reverse engineering also allowed the researcher to figure out the syntax required to activate the remote snapshot function.

"Sending the SMS triggered a picture to be taken on the watch, and it was immediately uploaded to Xplora's server," Sand wrote. "There was zero indication on the watch that a photo was taken. The screen remained off the entire time."


Original Submission

posted by Fnord666 on Tuesday October 13 2020, @11:14AM   Printer-friendly
from the why-we-can't-have-nice-things dept.

Five Eyes nations plus Japan and India call for Big Tech to bake backdoors into everything

The nations of the Five Eyes security alliance – Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the USA and the UK – plus Japan and India, have called on technology companies to design their products so they offer access to encrypted messages and content.

A joint "International Statement" issued on Sunday frames the issue as a matter of public safety.

"We, the undersigned, support strong encryption, which plays a crucial role in protecting personal data, privacy, intellectual property, trade secrets and cyber security," the Statement commences, adding: "Encryption is an existential anchor of trust in the digital world and we do not support counter-productive and dangerous approaches that would materially weaken or limit security systems."

But the Statement also says: "Particular implementations of encryption technology ... pose significant challenges to public safety, including to highly vulnerable members of our societies like sexually exploited children." The document then quotes statistics about the extent of child exploitation activity online and asserts that if law enforcement agencies can be allowed to view encrypted communications, it will enhance public safety.


Original Submission

posted by Fnord666 on Tuesday October 13 2020, @09:05AM   Printer-friendly
from the someone-else's-computer dept.

Only 13 percent of businesses use public cloud across the organization:

Despite 77 percent of businesses using public cloud in some form, a new survey reveals that just 13 percent have a fully-fledged public cloud program across the entire business.

The study from transformation consultancy Contino finds 42 percent have multiple apps and projects deployed in the cloud, 24 percent are still working on initial proofs-of-concept and 18 percent are in the planning stage.

Security and compliance remain the biggest barriers for not adopting cloud even in uncertain times. 48 percent say that their biggest barrier for not using the cloud is security and 37 percent cied the need to remain compliant as the most prevalent blocker.

[...] You can get the full report from the Contino site.


Original Submission

posted by Fnord666 on Tuesday October 13 2020, @06:56AM   Printer-friendly
from the package-phishing dept.

Spam texts from FedEx and USPS not linked to sex trafficking:

People across the US are getting text messages as part of a phishing scheme that claims to be giving updates about a package from USPS, UPS, or FedEx. Some viral social media posts have claimed that these messages are related to a sex trafficking operation that uses the links to track potential victims, though there is no evidence behind those claims.

Texts come from a random unknown number, claiming some problem with a package delivery, usually something needing urgent attention like an "important alert" or "final notice."

The messages are easy to mistake for genuine updates. In many cases, they have the correct first name of the recipient, and include potentially legitimate information that might seem real, like a tracking number. Clicking the link is supposed to help resolve the issue with the package, but it actually just infects a device with malware, Shoshana Wodinsky at Gizmodo reported.

[...] In other cases, the scammer behind the phony text is after other security information, including a credit card number or social security number.

These scams are common enough that the Better Business Bureau and FTC both put out alerts earlier this year warning people, with tips on how to avoid getting scammed. As a general rule, the FTC advises "If you get an unexpected text message, don't click on any links. If you think it could be legit, contact the company using a website or phone number you know is real. Don't use the information in the text message."


Original Submission

posted by martyb on Tuesday October 13 2020, @04:47AM   Printer-friendly
from the penguin++ dept.

Linux 5.9 Released With Initial AMD RDNA 2 GPU Enablement, Other New Hardware Support

Linus Torvalds has just released Linux 5.9 as stable.

Linux 5.9 is out as the 2020 autumn kernel update. Linux 5.9 has a number of exciting improvements including initial support for upcoming Radeon RX 6000 "RDNA 2" graphics cards, initial Intel Rocket Lake graphics, NVMe zoned namespaces (ZNS) support, various storage improvements, IBM's initial work on POWER10 CPU bring-up, the FSGSBASE instruction is now used, 32-bit x86 Clang build support, and more. See our Linux 5.9 feature overview for the whole scoop on the many changes to see with this kernel.

Announcement.

See also: Linux 5.9 - Linux Kernel Newbies
Linux 5.9 Release – Main Changes, Arm, MIPS & RISC-V Architectures
There Are Many Changes To Look Forward To With The Linux 5.10 Kernel
Many Intel/AMD x86 Changes Kick Off Linux 5.10 Development From Zen 3 To SERIALIZE
Linux 5.10 Scheduler Updates Bring SMT Balancing Tweaks

Previously: Linux 5.8 Released


Original Submission

posted by Fnord666 on Tuesday October 13 2020, @02:38AM   Printer-friendly

Carnival Corp. Confirms Personal Information Compromised in Ransomware Incident:

Leisure travel company Carnival Corporation last week confirmed that personal information pertaining to guests, employees, and crew was compromised in an August 2020 ransomware attack.

[...] In mid-August, the company announced that it detected a ransomware attack that resulted not only in some of its systems being encrypted, but also in the unauthorized download of some files.

[...] "On August 15, 2020, we detected a ransomware attack and unauthorized access to our information technology systems," the filing reads. "While the investigation is ongoing, early indications are that the unauthorized third-party gained access to certain personal information relating to some guests, employees and crew for some of our operations."

In the filing, Carnival also notes that it is not aware of the compromised data being misused.

Carnival Corporation operates 10 different cruise lines and is based in both the US and the UK.


Original Submission

posted by martyb on Tuesday October 13 2020, @12:29AM   Printer-friendly
from the hot-stuff dept.

Laptops are on fire! In a good way (if you're selling). PC sales race to highest growth rate since 2011:

Fuelled by the pandemic, demand for notebooks continued to go through the roof in Q3 as the PC industry grew at its fastest pace in almost nine years - Dell was the only major top five player to report declines.

According to global stats collated by analyst Canalys, shipments to retailers and distributors rocketed 12.7 per cent year-on-year to 79.2 million units, with notebook and mobile workstations leaping 28.3 per cent to a little over 64 million. The rest of the sales came from desktops and desktop workstations, representing a fall for that segment of 26 per cent.

Overall, this was the highest growth rate since the holiday period in Q4 2011 and was caused by the work- and learn-from-hometrends seen across vast swathes of the world in response to coronavirus.

[...] "Vendors, the supply chain, and the channel have now had time to find their feet and allocate resources towards supplying notebooks, which continue to see massive demand from both businesses and consumers," said Ishan Dutt, analyst at Canalys.

"After prioritising high-value markets and large customers in Q2, vendors have now been able to turn their attention to supplying a wider range of countries as well as SMBs that faced difficulty securing devices earlier this year. Governments, which have realised the importance of PC access in maintaining economic activity during this time, have intervened with financial support or even full-scale device deployments," he added.

This was particularly noticeable in the education sector, for example, where the UK government allocated 100,0000 notebooks for students to facilitate the returns to classrooms, he said.

Sales were up for all major vendors, except for Dell which saw a slight decrease.


Original Submission

posted by janrinok on Monday October 12 2020, @10:08PM   Printer-friendly
from the successful-bid dept.

Nobel Prize 2020 in Economics awarded to Paul Milgrom and Robert Wilson for improvements to auction theory. The award caps a week of Nobel Prizes and is technically known as the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel. Since its establishment in 1969, it has been awarded 51 times and is now widely considered one of the Nobel prizes.

"This year's Laureates, Paul Milgrom and Robert Wilson, have studied how auctions work. They have also used their insights to design new auction formats for goods and services that are difficult to sell in a traditional way, such as radio frequencies," The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said in a press release. "Their discoveries have benefitted sellers, buyers and taxpayers around the world," it added.

Robert Wilson developed the theory for auctions of objects with a common value – a value which is uncertain beforehand but, in the end, is the same for everyone. Examples include the future value of radio frequencies or the volume of minerals in a particular area. Wilson showed why rational bidders tend to place bids below their own best estimate of the common value: they are worried about the winner's curse – that is, about paying too much and losing out.

Paul Milgrom formulated a more general theory of auctions that not only allows common values, but also private values that vary from bidder to bidder. He analysed the bidding strategies in a number of well-known auction formats, demonstrating that a format will give the seller higher expected revenue when bidders learn more about each other's estimated values during bidding.

Nobel Prize 2020 in Economics

Nobel Press Release


Original Submission

posted by janrinok on Monday October 12 2020, @07:45PM   Printer-friendly

https://appleinsider.com/articles/20/10/05/apples-mac-t2-chip-has-an-unfixable-vulnerability-that-could-allow-root-access

Information about the vulnerability was provided to Niels H. by security researcher Rick Mark and the checkra1n team, which first discovered the flaw. According to Mark, the checkm8 flaw exists in USB handling in DFU mode.

Normally, the T2 chip's Secure Enclave Processor (SEP) will exit with a fatal error if it detects a decryption call when in DFU mode. That's a security mechanism baked into both Mac and iOS devices through the SEP. However, the exploit can be paired with the Blackbird SEP vulnerability, developed by Pangu, to that security mechanism.

Once an attacker gains access to the T2 chip, they will have full root access and kernel execution privileges. Although they can't decrypt files protected by FileVault 2 encryption, they can inject a keylogger and steal passwords since the T2 chip manages keyboard access.


Original Submission

posted by Fnord666 on Monday October 12 2020, @05:21PM   Printer-friendly

Facebook algorithm flags onions as "overtly sexualized":

Facebook's automated anti-nudity filters finally stopped impressionable children from seeing unimaginable filth on their timelines: a pile of onions that was flagged for being inappropriate.

Gaze Seed Company tried to advertise on Facebook using a picture of a pile of onions in a basket to market its seeds, CBC reports, but was blocked by Facebook's algorithm. The official reason? Facebook's algorithms decided that the picture was "overtly sexualized." It's a funny error, sure, and one that raises questions about the sorts of things these algorithms are into — but at a more basic level, it also illustrates that AI content moderation still isn't ready for prime time.

So we just got notified by Facebook that the photo used for our Walla Walla Onion seed is "Overtly Sexual" and therefore cannot be advertised to be sold on their platform... 😂 Can you see it?

Posted by The Seed Company by E.W. Gaze on Saturday, October 3, 2020


Original Submission

posted by Fnord666 on Monday October 12 2020, @02:59PM   Printer-friendly

'Long Covid': Why are some people not recovering?

For most people, Covid-19 is a brief and mild disease but some are left struggling with symptoms including lasting fatigue, persistent pain and breathlessness for months.

The condition known as "long Covid" is having a debilitating effect on people's lives, and stories of being left exhausted after even a short walk are now common.

So far, the focus has been on saving lives during the pandemic, but there is now a growing recognition that people are facing long-term consequences of a Covid infection.

Yet even basic questions - such as why people get long Covid or whether everyone will fully recover - are riddled with uncertainty.


Original Submission