September 2017 – Page 10 – Tech Today w/ Ken May

Chatbot Lets You Sue Equifax For Up To $25,000 Without a Lawyer

Shannon Liao reports via The Verge: If you’re one of the millions affected by the Equifax breach, a chatbot can now help you sue Equifax in small claims court, potentially letting you avoid hiring a lawyer for advice. Even if you want to be part of the class action lawsuit against Equifax, you can still sue Equifax for negligence in small claims court using the DoNotPay bot and demand maximum damages. Maximum damages range between $2, 500 in states like Rhode Island and Kentucky to $25, 000 in Tennessee. The bot, which launched in all 50 states in July, is mainly known for helping with parking tickets. But with this new update, its creator, Joshua Browder, who was one of the 143 million affected by the breach, is tackling a much bigger target, with larger aspirations to match. He says, “I hope that my product will replace lawyers, and, with enough success, bankrupt Equifax.” Not that the bot helps you do anything you can’t already do yourself, which is filling out a bunch of forms — you still have to serve them yourself. Unfortunately, the chatbot can’t show up in court a few weeks later to argue your case for you either. To add to the headache, small claims court rules differ from state to state. For instance, in California, a person needs to demand payment from Equifax or explain why they haven’t demanded payment before filing the form. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Chatbot Lets You Sue Equifax For Up To $25,000 Without a Lawyer

Alleged Intel i7-8700K Coffee Lake benchmarks leak online

Enlarge Alleged benchmarks for Intel’s as yet unannounced Core i7-8700K have leaked online courtesy of a tech YouTuber and an unguarded HP Omen PC at DreamHack 2017. The i7-8700K—the rumoured flagship six-core, 12-thread processor of Intel’s upcoming eighth generation Coffee Lake desktop CPUs—was put through popular benchmarking program Cinebench R15, scoring a cool 1230 points in a multithreaded test. That’s a significant leap over the previous-generation Intel Core i7-7700K (4C/8T), which typically posts a score around 950 points. That score also puts the i7-8700K neck and neck with AMD’s 6C/12T Ryzen 1600X , which we scored at 1234 points, but behind AMD’s 8C/12T Ryzen 7 1700 with its score of 1422. Meanwhile, AMD’s flagship Ryzen 7 1800X is significantly faster with a score of 1616 points. YouTuber Karl Morin was also able to run a single-threaded benchmark, which shows the i7-8700K posting a score of 196. That would make it fastest single-threaded chip around, beating the pervious generation i7-7700K’s score of around 185 points, although it’s still far from a compelling improvement in instructions per clock. Read 6 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Alleged Intel i7-8700K Coffee Lake benchmarks leak online

This tiny sensor could sleep for years between detection events

It’s easy enough to put an always-on camera somewhere it can live off solar power or the grid, but deep in nature, underground, or in other unusual circumstances every drop of power is precious. Luckily, a new type of sensor developed for DARPA uses none at all until the thing it’s built to detect happens to show up. That means it can sit for years without so much as a battery top-up. Read More

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This tiny sensor could sleep for years between detection events

Equifax Blames Open-Source Software For Its Record-Breaking Security Breach

The blame for the record-breaking cybersecurity breach that affects at least 143 million people falls on the open-source server framework, Apache Struts, according to an unsubstantiated report by equity research firm Baird. The firm’s source, per one report, is believed to be Equifax. ZDNet reports: Apache Struts is a popular open-source software programming Model-View-Controller (MVC) framework for Java. It is not, as some headlines have had it, a vendor software program. It’s also not proven that Struts was the source of the hole the hackers drove through. In fact, several headlines — some of which have since been retracted — all source a single quote by a non-technical analyst from an Equifax source. Not only is that troubling journalistically, it’s problematic from a technical point of view. In case you haven’t noticed, Equifax appears to be utterly and completely clueless about their own technology. Equifax’s own data breach detector isn’t just useless: it’s untrustworthy. Adding insult to injury, the credit agency’s advice and support site looks, at first glance, to be a bogus, phishing-type site: “equifaxsecurity2017.com.” That domain name screams fake. And what does it ask for if you go there? The last six figures of your social security number and last name. In other words, exactly the kind of information a hacker might ask for. Equifax’s technical expertise, it has been shown, is less than acceptable. Could the root cause of the hack be a Struts security hole? Two days before the Equifax breach was reported, ZDNet reported a new and significant Struts security problem. While many jumped on this as the security hole, Equifax admitted hackers had broken in between mid-May through July, long before the most recent Struts flaw was revealed. “It’s possible that the hackers found the hole on their own, but zero-day exploits aren’t that common, ” reports ZDNet. “It’s far more likely that — if the problem was indeed with Struts — it was with a separate but equally serious security problem in Struts, first patched in March.” The question then becomes: is it the fault of Struts developers or Equifax’s developers, system admins, and their management? “The people who ran the code with a known ‘total compromise of system integrity’ should get the blame, ” reports ZDNet. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Equifax Blames Open-Source Software For Its Record-Breaking Security Breach

Xiaomi’s stunning Mi Mix gets a sequel, the Mi Mix 2

Fresh off the launch of its first Android One phone , Xiaomi has a sequel to its high-profile Mi Mix. Meet the Mi Mix 2. When the Mi Mix came out last year, it featured a stunning slim-bezel design that we called ” the future of smartphones. ” Xiaomi’s “concept” phone threw out a lot of the smartphone conventions—like the location of the earpiece and the front facing camera—and came up with a few other unique features like a ceramic back and a screen with curved corners. In 2017, we found out Xiaomi wasn’t the only company with the idea for a slim-bezel phone. Samsung and LG both quickly came out with phones that maximized screen space, and soon it looks like Apple will follow this trend, too. The Mi Mix was the vanguard for this movement, though, and it still has the most extreme design. Read 8 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Xiaomi’s stunning Mi Mix gets a sequel, the Mi Mix 2

This admin helped music pirates pilfer 1 billion copyrighted tracks

Enlarge / ShareBeast piracy site visitors are greeted with this FBI anti-piracy warning today. The admin for a prolific file-sharing site that helped pirates score more than 1 billion tracks now faces five years in prison after pleading guilty to a single count of criminal copyright infringement. Artur Sargsyan, the 29-year-old owner and operator of ShareBeast, is to be sentenced in Atlanta federal court in December for operating (PDF) what the Recording Industry Association of America said was the most prolific US-based file-sharing site. The defendant also forfeited $185,000 in ill-gotten gains, the government said. The authorities in 2015 seized the ShareBeast domain and a few others connected to the site, which regularly allowed users to score pre-release music. Sargsyan was charged last month. Read 5 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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This admin helped music pirates pilfer 1 billion copyrighted tracks

‘Super Mario 64’ is an online multiplayer thanks to hero modders

Super Mario 64 turned 21 years old back in June, but the classic title lives on in the hearts and minds of players. A new fan project has taken that collective nostalgia to another level with a downloadable version of the game allowing up to 24 friends to play through the (formerly) single-player adventure. But given Nintendo’s extremely low tolerance for unauthorized versions of its games, play it now before the company DMCA’s it off the internet. Built by modders Kaze Emanuar, Melonspeedruns and Marshivolt, the Super Mario 64 Online project is a downloadable ROM, so you’ll need emulator software that plays N64 games. The project requires a little tinkering with settings (tutorial video here ) and drawing straws to see who will host your game session. After that, it’s off to the races for you and your friends to fiddle around Super Mario 64 ‘s original levels with a sprawling cast of characters, all with different abilities. Sure, the game’s content is unchanged, so having multiple players likely makes acquiring stars and advancing through the story easier — if that’s your only goal. But idle hands are the devil’s playground, and stuffing a bunch of your friends in what’s supposed to be a single-player game makes for a wild sandbox. Think of it like Mario Party where you make the rules. If you’re planning to boot up Super Mario 64 Online , do so now. The last time somebody released a computer-playable version of the classic N64 platformer, Nintendo shut it down within days. And if you come to this post too late, just remember: People have tried to give Super Mario 64 multiplayer before , and they will probably do so again. The dream lives on. Via: Mashable Source: ‘Super Mario 64 Online’ (YouTube)

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‘Super Mario 64’ is an online multiplayer thanks to hero modders

iPhone X: Software leak appears to confirm name, features, and specs

Enlarge (credit: Marques Brownlee ) Apple’s latest and greatest iPhone is called the iPhone X, according to information pulled from a leaked “Gold Master” of iOS 11, the operating system said to power the new phone. The same software leak also reveals the existence of the iPhone 8 and and iPhone 8 Plus, which are based on a similar design to the existing iPhone 7 and 7 Plus. According to 9to5Mac , which was one of two blogs able to download iOS 11 before it was pulled from Apple’s servers, the iPhone 8 and 8 Plus feature a faster processor, wireless charging, and a new glass back panel. Unlike the iPhone 8, the iPhone X features an all-new design with an edge-to-edge 5.8-inch OLED display that removes the chunky bezels and home button. The design—which was originally shown in a separate software leak earlier this year—is a dramatic departure from iPhones to date, which have largely kept the same front-facing aesthetic since the launch of the original in 2007. By shrinking the bezels, much like Samsung did with the Galaxy S8 , Apple can cram a larger display into a smaller body, making the device more comfortable to use with one hand. Read 9 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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iPhone X: Software leak appears to confirm name, features, and specs

Rare translucent ‘ghost’ lobster caught by Maine lobsterman

After more than 40 years on the job, 10th generation lobsterman Alex Todd of Chebeague Island, Maine recently pulled in a crustacean even he had never seen: a translucent lobster. He’s quoted in the Guardian as saying , “I was definitely surprised,” and “It was like it was clear but with white under the clearness and a blue tint, but you couldn’t see organs or anything under the shell, it wasn’t to that level.” The Maine Coast Fishermen’s Association shared a little info about the lobster’s unusual pearly look, on their Facebook page: A normal lobster gets its color by mixing yellow, blue, and red protein pigments. Through different genetic mutations you can get a blue, yellow, or red (uncooked) lobster. You can also get strange mixtures of those colors as well. This lobster probably has a genetic condition called Leucism which isn’t a total loss of pigment (which would make it an albino) but instead a partial loss. This is why you can still see some hints of blue on the shell and color on the eyes. Todd threw the lobster back into the ocean because it is an egg-bearing female . Such lobsters are protected under strict conservation laws.

TechCrunch: Equifax Hack-Checking Web Site Is Returning Random Results

An anonymous reader quotes security researcher Brian Krebs: The web site that Equifax advertised as the place where concerned Americans could go to find out whether they were impacted by this breach — equifaxsecurity2017.com — is completely broken at best, and little more than a stalling tactic or sham at worst. In the early hours after the breach announcement, the site was being flagged by various browsers as a phishing threat. In some cases, people visiting the site were told they were not affected, only to find they received a different answer when they checked the site with the same information on their mobile phones. TechCrunch has concluded that “the checker site, hosted by Equifax product TrustID, seems to be telling people at random they may have been affected by the data breach.” One user reports that entering the same information twice produced two different answers. And ZDNet’s security editor reports that even if you just enter Test or 123456, “it says your data has been breached.” TechCrunch writes: The assignment seems random. But, nevertheless, they were still asked to continue enrolling in TrustID. What this means is not only are none of the last names tied to your Social Security number, but there’s no way to tell if you were really impacted. It’s clear Equifax’s goal isn’t to protect the consumer or bring them vital information. It’s to get you to sign up for its revenue-generating product TrustID. Meanwhile, one web engineer claims the secret 10-digit “security freeze” PIN being issued by Equifax “is just a timestamp of when you made the freeze.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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TechCrunch: Equifax Hack-Checking Web Site Is Returning Random Results