Michèle B. Nuijten and co’s statcheck program re-examines the datasets in peer-reviewed science and flags anomalies that are associated with fakery, from duplication of data to internal inconsistencies. (more…)
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Statcheck: a data-fakery algorithm that flagged 50,000 articles
A new white paper from Microsoft claims that “devices running Windows 10 are 58% less likely to encounter ransomware than when running Windows 7”. But an anonymous reader brings more news from Windows-watcher Paul Thurrott: in a separate blog post, it also makes its case for why Windows 10 version 1607 — that is, Windows 10 with the Anniversary Update installed — is the most secure Windows version yet. Improvements in this release include: Microsoft Edge runs Adobe Flash Player in an isolated container, and Edge exploits cannot execute other applications… [And] the Windows Defender signature delivery channel works faster than before so that the in-box anti-virus and anti-malware solution can help block ransomware, both in the cloud and on the client. Additionally, Windows Defender responds to new threats faster using improved cloud protection and automatic sample submission features, plus improved behavioral heuristics aimed at detecting ransomware-related activities. Interestingly, the paper also touts Microsoft’s “Advancing machine-learning systems in our email services to help stop the spread of ransomware via email delivery.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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Microsoft Says Windows 10 Version 1607 is The Most Secure Windows Ever
Cray has a new supercomputer called the XC50, the successor to its XC40 model and the first supercomputer from the company that can deliver one petaflop of performance (at peak) in a single cabinet. The XC50 supports the NVDIA Tesla P100 GPU accelerator, as well as nex-gen Intel Xeon and Xeon Phi processors, and is targeted at uses including deep learning algorithms, which Cray says are… Read More
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Cray’s new XC50 supercomputer hits one petaflop of computing in a single cabinet
Ready to feel anger and resentment towards your younger self for not taking better care of your Hot Wheels toys? Bruce Pascal has been collecting them since he was seven years old, and now that he’s all grown up his collection, with over 3, 000 tiny cars in it , is worth well north of a million dollars. Read more…
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This Guy’s Hot Wheels Collection Is Worth Over $1 Million
Hitting “ reply all ” on a mass email is generally a bad idea, but a meltdown at the UK’s National Health Service (NHS) is the worst reply allpocalypse we’ve ever seen. According to The Guardian , more than 186 million useless emails were sent out, after a technician sent a “test” message to all 1.2 million employees of the NHS. Read more…
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This Is the Worst Reply Allpocalypse We’ve Ever Seen
Image: Kishjar/Flickr CC In a welcome reminder that not everything is terrible always, global carbon emissions barely grew at all in 2016. It marks the third year in a row that humanity’s carbon footprint has been stable. They’re still much higher than they should be, but at least they are stable. Read more…
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Global Carbon Emissions Are Stable For Third Year in a Row: Report
Enlarge (credit: EnGoPlanet) A New York-based startup called EnGoPlanet has installed four streetlights in a plaza off the Las Vegas Strip that are powered exclusively by solar and kinetic energy. The installations aren’t mere streetlights though—they also power a variety of environmental monitors, support video surveillance, and, for the masses, offer USB ports for device charging. The streetlights are topped by a solar panel crest, and have “kinetic tiles” on the ground below them. These panels reportedly can generate 4 to 8 watts from people walking on them , depending on the pressure of the step. The renewable energy is then collected by a battery for use at night. The solar-plus-kinetic energy design is useful on those rare Vegas days without too much sun—as long as there is still plenty of foot traffic. The four streetlights have a host of sensors that collect information, and details on what kind of information is collected are sparse. In EnGoPlanet’s promotional video , a quick slide lists the streetlights’ additional capabilities: environmental monitoring, air quality monitoring, video surveillance, and the ever-vague “smart analytics.” If the bright side of progress is more environmentally-friendly streetlights, the dark side is that as you replace those old analog streetlights you get the addition of video surveillance from a private company. Read 2 remaining paragraphs | Comments
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Las Vegas gets “kinetic tiles” that power lights with foot traffic
You can’t keep Hayao Miyazaki away from what he loves. The celebrated anime director announced during a television special that he wants to come out of retirement to turn his 20-year pet project into a full-length animated feature. Read more…
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Hayao Miyazaki is Stepping Out of Retirement for One Final Film
“Almost every account password was cracked, thanks to the company’s poor security practices, ” reports ZDNet — even for “deleted” accounts. An anonymous reader quotes their article: The hack includes 339 million accounts from AdultFriendFinder.com, which the company describes as the “world’s largest sex and swinger community [and] also includes over 15 million “deleted” accounts that weren’t purged from the databases. On top of that, 62 million accounts from Cams.com, and 7 million from Penthouse.com were stolen, as well as a few million from other smaller properties owned by the company. The data accounts for two decades’ worth of data from the company’s largest sites, according to breach notification LeakedSource, which obtained the data… The three largest site’s SQL databases included usernames, email addresses, and the date of the last visit, and passwords, which were either stored in plaintext or scrambled with the SHA-1 hash function, which by modern standards isn’t cryptographically as secure as newer algorithms. The attack apparently coincides with the discovery of “a local file inclusion flaw on the AdultFriendFinder site, which if successfully exploited could allow an attacker to remotely run malicious code on the web server. ” Ironically, Friend Finder Networks doesn’t even own Penthouse.com anymore. They sold the site to a new owner last February. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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Hack Exposes 412 Million Accounts on AdultFriendFinder Sites