November 2017 – Page 4 – Tech Today w/ Ken May

Google voice recognition could transcribe doctor visits

Doctors work long hours, and a disturbingly large part of that is documenting patient visits — one study indicates that they spend 6 hours of an 11-hour day making sure their records are up to snuff. But how do you streamline that work without hiring an army of note takers? Google Brain and Stanford think voice recognition is the answer. They recently partnered on a study that used automatic speech recognition (similar to what you’d find in Google Assistant or Google Translate) to transcribe both doctors and patients during a session. The approach can not only distinguish the voices in the room, but also the subjects. It’s broad enough to both account for a sophisticated medical diagnosis and small talk like the weather. Doctors could have all the vital information they need for follow-ups and a better connection to their patients. The system is far from perfect. The best voice recognition system in the study still had an error rate of 18.3 percent. That’s good enough to be practical, according to the researchers, but it’s not flawless. There’s also the matter of making sure that any automated transcripts are truly private and secure. Patients in the study volunteered for recordings and will have their identifying information scrubbed out, but this would need to be highly streamlined (both through consent policies and automation) for it to be effective on a large scale. If voice recognition does find its way into doctors’ offices, though, it could dramatically increase the effectiveness of doctors. They could spend more time attending patients and less time with the overhead necessary to account for each visit. Ideally, this will also lead to doctors working more reasonable hours — they won’t burn out and risk affecting their judgment through fatigue. Via: 9to5Google Source: Google Research Blog , ArXiv.org

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Google voice recognition could transcribe doctor visits

DOJ names Iranian as hacker who stole unaired episodes from HBO

Enlarge / Acting US Attorney Joon H. Kim speaks during a press conference at the US Attorney’s Office, Southern District of New York, on September 26, 2017. (credit: Kevin Hagen/Getty Images ) On Tuesday, federal authorities in New York indicted Behzad Mesri, an Iranian citizen, accusing him of hacking HBO earlier this year. Seeing as Iran and the United States lack an extradition treaty, it is unlikely that Mesri will be sent to the United States to face the charges, unless he somehow decides to come to the states of his own volition. According to prosecutors, Mesri stole unaired episodes of Game of Thrones , Curb Your Enthusiasm , and other popular shows. He then allegedly demanded a ransom of $5.5 million, payable in Bitcoin. Read 3 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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DOJ names Iranian as hacker who stole unaired episodes from HBO

Report: Uber paid hackers $100,000 to keep 2016 data breach quiet

Enlarge (credit: Jaap Arriens/NurPhoto via Getty Images ) In a public statement, Uber has announced that it sustained a massive data breach in 2016: 57 million customers’ and drivers’ names, e-mail addresses, and phone numbers were compromised. According to Bloomberg , no trip location info, credit card information, or Social Security numbers was taken. Uber did not immediately respond to Ars’ request for comment. Read 7 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Report: Uber paid hackers $100,000 to keep 2016 data breach quiet

PC vendors scramble as Intel announces vulnerability in firmware

Enlarge / All the Cores are affected by a major vulnerability in management firmware—as are Xeon servers and Atom, Celeron and Pentium devices. (credit: Intel ) Intel has issued a security alert that management firmware on a number of recent PC, server, and Internet-of-Things processor platforms is vulnerable to remote attack. Using the vulnerabilities, the most severe of which was uncovered by Mark Ermolov and Maxim Goryachy of Positive Technologies Research, remote attackers could launch commands on a host of Intel-based computers, including laptops and desktops shipped with Intel Core processors since 2015. They could gain access to privileged system information, and millions of computers could essentially be taken over as a result of the bug. The company has posted a detection tool on its support website for Windows and Linux to help identify systems that are vulnerable. In the security alert, members of Intel’s security team stated that “in response to issues identified by external researchers, Intel has performed an in-depth comprehensive security review of its Intel® Management Engine (ME), Intel® Trusted Execution Engine (TXE), and Intel® Server Platform Services (SPS) with the objective of enhancing firmware resilience.” Four vulnerabilities were discovered that affect Intel Management Engine firmware versions 11.0 through 11.20. Two were found in earlier versions of ME, as well as two in Server Platform Services version 4.0 firmware and two in TXE version 3.0. Read 3 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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PC vendors scramble as Intel announces vulnerability in firmware

Uber fined $8.9 million for hiring drivers with criminal records

Uber has notorious issues when it comes to its background checks for its drivers. The company has missed (or outright ignored) criminal records in the past; earlier this year, over 8, 000 Uber and Lyft drivers failed a Massachusetts background check . It appears that these issues haven’t improved much; this week, Colorado regulators fined Uber for allowing 57 people with criminal offenses to drive for the company. The penalty totals $8.9 million, reports the Denver Post . Back in 2014, the San Francisco and Los Angeles District Attorneys offices sued Uber for misleading consumers by claiming that the company conducts thorough background checks of its drivers . The company has gotten in hot water countless times due to its lax approach when it comes to this issue. The organization in charge of the Colorado investigation, the Public Utilities Commission (PUC), determined that Uber had the necessary background information on these drivers, yet chose to do nothing. Instead, the drivers should have been disqualified. The investigation started because the police department in Vail referred a case to the PUC in which an Uber driver dragged a passenger out of the car and kicked him in the face. The PUC then asked Uber and Lyft for all records of drivers accused, arrested or convicted of any crimes that would prevent them from being accepted as a driver. Lyft provided 15–20 records; there were no problems there. Uber provided 107 records of drivers that had been removed from its system; when the PUC cross-checked the names, they found multiple aliases for 57 of the drivers with criminal records. The fine based on $2, 500 per driver per day they were working for Uber. The real issue here is that these drivers with criminal background checks (the PUC set aside people who only had drivers license issues) are being entrusted to drive passengers around. These kinds of problems are putting passengers in danger, and it’s well past time that Uber did something about it. Source: Denver Post

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Uber fined $8.9 million for hiring drivers with criminal records

Over 400 of the World’s Most Popular Websites Record Your Every Keystroke

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Motherboard: The idea of websites tracking users isn’t new, but research from Princeton University released last week indicates that online tracking is far more invasive than most users understand. In the first installment of a series titled “No Boundaries, ” three researchers from Princeton’s Center for Information Technology Policy (CITP) explain how third-party scripts that run on many of the world’s most popular websites track your every keystroke and then send that information to a third-party server. Some highly-trafficked sites run software that records every time you click and every word you type. If you go to a website, begin to fill out a form, and then abandon it, every letter you entered in is still recorded, according to the researchers’ findings. If you accidentally paste something into a form that was copied to your clipboard, it’s also recorded. These scripts, or bits of code that websites run, are called “session replay” scripts. Session replay scripts are used by companies to gain insight into how their customers are using their sites and to identify confusing webpages. But the scripts don’t just aggregate general statistics, they record and are capable of playing back individual browsing sessions. The scripts don’t run on every page, but are often placed on pages where users input sensitive information, like passwords and medical conditions. Most troubling is that the information session replay scripts collect can’t “reasonably be expected to be kept anonymous, ” according to the researchers. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

iMac Pro Will Have An A10 Fusion Coprocessor For ‘Hey, Siri’ Support and More Secure Booting, Says Report

According to Apple firmware gurus Steven Troughton-Smith and Guilherme Rambo, the upcoming iMac Pro will feature an A10 Fusion coprocessor to enable two interesting new features. “The first is the ability for the iMac Pro to feature always-on ‘Hey, Siri’ voice command support, similar to what’s currently available on more recent iPhone devices, ” reports The Verge. “[T]he bigger implication of the A10 Fusion is for a less user-facing function, with Apple likely to use the coprocessor to enable SecureBoot on the iMac Pro.” From the report: In more practical terms, it means that Apple will be using the A10 Fusion chip to handle the initial boot process and confirm that software checks out, before passing things off to the regular x86 Intel processor in your Mac. It’s not something that will likely change how you use your computer too much, like the addition of “Hey, Siri” support will, but it’s a move toward Apple experimenting with an increased level of control over its software going forward. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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iMac Pro Will Have An A10 Fusion Coprocessor For ‘Hey, Siri’ Support and More Secure Booting, Says Report

Intel Planning To End Legacy BIOS Support By 2020, Report Says

Michael Larabel, writing for Phoronix: Intel is planning to end “legacy BIOS” support in their new platforms by 2020 in requiring UEFI Class 3 or higher. Making rounds this weekend is a slide deck from the recent UEFI Plugfest. Brian Richardson of Intel talked about the “last mile” barriers to removing legacy BIOS support from systems. By 2020, they will be supporting no less than UEFI Class 3, which means only UEFI support and no more legacy BIOS or CSM compatibility support mode. But that’s not going to force on UEFI Secure Boot unconditionally: Secure Boot enabled is considered UEFI Class 3+. Intel hasn’t removed legacy BIOS / CSM support yet due to many customers’ software packages still relying upon legacy BIOS, among other reasons. Removing the legacy BIOS support will mitigate some security risks, needs less validation by vendors, allows for supporting more modern technologies, etc. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Intel Planning To End Legacy BIOS Support By 2020, Report Says

US Navy sends underwater robots to assist in search for Argentine sub [Updated]

U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class Arthurgwain L. Marquez US Navy P-8 Poseidon patrol planes have joined an international search for the Argentine Armada submarine San Juan , and the Navy has prepared submarine rescue vehicles and four uncrewed underwater vehicles (UUVs) to assist in the search as well. The Argentine sub has been missing in the Argentine Sea, and the subsequent search is entering its fifth day. One Naval P-8 arrived in Argentina over the weekend, and another is arriving today. Additional rescue systems are now on their way, including a NATO submarine rescue system. Thus far, rough weather and high seas have been hindering the search, and hopes for the missing crew are fading. Read 10 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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US Navy sends underwater robots to assist in search for Argentine sub [Updated]

First-known interstellar visitor is a bizarre, cigar-shaped asteroid

Enlarge / An artist’s impression of the oddly shaped interstellar asteroid `Oumuamua. (credit: ESO/M. Kornmesser ) Since mid-October, the astronomy community has been buzzing about what might be our Solar System’s first confirmed interstellar visitor. An automated telescope spotted an object that appeared as if it had been dropped on the Solar System from above, an angle that suggests it arrived from elsewhere. Now, a team of astronomers has rushed out a paper that describes the object’s odd properties and gives it the name “1I/2017 U1 ‘Oumuamua.” In Hawaiian, ‘Oumuamua roughly means “first messenger,” and the 1I indicates that it’s the first interstellar object. ‘Oumuamua was first spotted on October 19 by the Pan-STARRS1 automated telescope system. Pan-STARRS1 turned out to have captured images of the object the day previously, but the automated analysis software hadn’t identified it. Further images over the next few days allowed researchers to refine its travel through our Solar System, confirming that ‘Oumuamua was making the most extreme approach toward the inner Solar System of any object we’ve ever seen. In essence, it appeared to have been dropped onto the Solar System from above, plunging between the Sun and the orbit of Mercury. It was also moving extremely quickly. The Solar System was formed from a flattened disk of material, and all of the planets orbit roughly in the plane of that disk. Smaller objects, like dwarf planets and comets, may take somewhat more erratic approaches with orbits tilted out of that plane, but they still roughly aligned with it. We had literally never seen anything like ‘Oumuamua. Read 8 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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First-known interstellar visitor is a bizarre, cigar-shaped asteroid