Author: kenmay

The Gates Foundation Just Invested Millions in Technology to Stop the Spread of HIV

Image: WikiMedia Commons Over the past two decades, HIV has gone from a lethal diagnosis to a manageable condition. And yet, the virus continues to spread as some 1.9 million new people are infected each year. HIV is no longer always the fatal disease it once was, but catching it is still common. An implant that offers to do for HIV what the IUD did for birth control now seeks to change that. Read more…

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The Gates Foundation Just Invested Millions in Technology to Stop the Spread of HIV

Duolingo’s clubs make language learning a competition

Duolingo debuted chat bots to help you learn a new language back in October, but now the company is looking to offer a bit more human interaction. Today, it introduced a new feature called Language Clubs so you can band together with friends and other users who are attempting to tackle another language. Think of it like how you compare accomplishments with your friends in fitness apps and you’ll get the idea. Inside the Duolingo apps for Android and iOS, the company now offers users the option of joining a group where you’ll see a shared news feed that lists members’ accomplishments. There’s a weekly leaderboard as well, because bragging rights are always a good motivator. Language Clubs are available in 20 different languages just in time to offer some added incentive for you to keep that New Year’s resolution. Via: TechCrunch Source: App Store

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Duolingo’s clubs make language learning a competition

Automatic Brakes Stopped Berlin Truck During Christmas Market Attack

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Deutsche Welle: The truck that plowed into a Berlin Christmas market, killing 12, came to a halt due an automatic braking system, according to German media reports on Wednesday. The automatic braking system potentially saved the lives of many more people in the recent terrorist attack. An investigation by newspaper “Suddeutsche Zeitung” and broadcasters “NDR” and “WDR” found the Scania R 450 semi-trailer stopped after between 70 and 80 meters (250 feet). The system was reportedly engaged after sensing a collision. Previous reports speculated that the truck had driven erratically and stopped due to the heroic actions of the truck’s Polish driver, who lay fatally wounded in the cabin. In 2012 the European Union adopted regulations requiring all new trucks exceeding 3, 500 kilograms be fitted with advanced emergency braking systems. The systems initially alert drivers and then take evasive action. The regulation was adopted to reduce the number of rear end collisions by trucks. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Automatic Brakes Stopped Berlin Truck During Christmas Market Attack

Scientists Develop a Breathalyzer That Detects 17 Diseases With One Breath From a Patient

randomErr quotes a report from Quartz: In the last 10 years, researchers have developed specific sniff tests for diagnosing tuberculosis, hypertension, cystic fibrosis, and even certain types of cancer. A group of global researchers led by Hossam Haick at the Israel Institute of Technology have taken the idea a step further. They’ve built a device — a kind of breathalyzer — that is compact and can diagnose up to 17 diseases from a single breath of a patient. The breathalyzer has an array of specially created gold nanoparticles, which are sized at billionths of a meter, and mixed with similar-sized tubes of carbon. These together create a network that is able to interact differently with each of the nearly 100 volatile compounds that each person breaths out (apart from gases like nitrogen, oxygen, and carbon dioxide). Haick’s team collected 2, 800 breaths from more than 1, 400 patients who were each suffering from at least one of 17 diseases (in three classes: cancer, inflammation, and neurological disorders). Each sample of the disease was then passed through the special breathalyzer, which then produced a dataset of the types of chemicals it could detect and in roughly what quantities. The team then applied artificial intelligence to the dataset to search for patterns in the types of compounds detected and the concentrations they were detected at. As they report in the journal ACS Nano, the data from the breathalyzer could be used to accurately detect that a person is suffering from a unique disease nearly nine out of ten times. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Scientists Develop a Breathalyzer That Detects 17 Diseases With One Breath From a Patient

Watch Rope Get Made From a Tree Using a Thousand-Year-Old Technique

Making rope is hard. Making rope the way the Vikings did it over a thousand years ago is even harder. First, you have to find the right tree. Then, you have to strip the bark of the tree when the sap is rising. And then, you soak the bark you just harvested in the sea for three to four months before you can even think about turning it into rope. Read more…

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Watch Rope Get Made From a Tree Using a Thousand-Year-Old Technique

Nevada site bug leaks medical marijuana applicant data

Nevada residents applying to sell medical marijuana got just got an unpleasant surprise. The state’s Department of Health and Human Services has confirmed that a vulnerability in a website portal leaked the data of more than 11, 700 applicants, including their driver’s license and social security numbers. Officials have taken down the relevant site until they fix the flaw, but there’s a concern that fraudsters might have seen the info and used it for malicious purposes. The scale of the leak might be modest. A spokesperson tells ZDNet that the data represented just a “portion” of one data base among several. And when Nevada voted to legalize medical marijuana in 2000, it’s possible that some of the information is outdated. Even so, this underscores a common problem with government data: frequently, agencies are their own worst enemies thanks to avoidable security holes and imperfect policies. Source: ZDNet

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Nevada site bug leaks medical marijuana applicant data

Windows 10 Getting a Game Mode That Would Improve Game Performance – Report

Microsoft may have plans to improve gaming experience on Windows 10. The speculation comes after long time watcher @h0x0d found a new “gamemode.dll” in the latest Windows 10 developer build, reports GameSpot. The feature appears to allow Windows 10 to adjust CPU and GPU resources when running a game to allocate more power for the game that’s running instead of toward any background apps. From the article: The feature will reportedly launch as part of the Creators update and will be enabled for Windows Insider users soon. What’s unclear is exactly which games this is compatible with. It’s possible it could be limited to only to those downloaded from the Windows Store, or it might be much more far-reaching. We should know more once Windows Insiders testers get their hands on the feature. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Windows 10 Getting a Game Mode That Would Improve Game Performance – Report

Takata expected to settle deadly airbag scandal for $1 billion

For their part in the largest US auto recall ever , the Takata Corporation is expected to pay up to a $1 billion financial penalty and plead guilty to criminal misconduct, the Wall Street Journal reports today . The National Highway Highway Traffic Safety Administration recalled some 42 million vehicles in the US alone after discovering Takata’s faulty airbag systems could deteriorate over time and risk causing an explosion of hot metal shrapnel upon inflation. The Takata systems were responsible for 11 deaths and over 100 injuries worldwide. In addition to the criminal misconduct charges, prosecutors at the US Justice Department may also try to hit the company with wire fraud, claiming Takata faked test information and intentionally hid information about the dangerous airbags. While the settlement is not finalized yet, the Journal notes that Takata will like be allowed to pay part of the penalty up front and spread the rest out over time. The final cost could range anywhere from the “high hundreds of millions” up to a billion and the Justice Department is eager to wrap up the case in January before the new administration takes over.

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Takata expected to settle deadly airbag scandal for $1 billion

Android Ransomware Infects LG Smart TV, Company ‘Refuses’ To Help

Security firms have been warning us for more than a year about the possibility of Android malware jumping from phones and tablets to other Android-powered devices, such smart TVs. The latest incident involving ransomware on a smart TV involves software engineer Darren Cauthon, who revealed that the LG smart TV of one of his family members was infected with ransomware right on Christmas day. What’s worse? He claims LG wouldn’t help him with perform factory reset of the device. From a report: Based on a screenshot Cauthon posted online, the smart TV appears to be infected with a version of the Cyber. Police ransomware, also known as FLocker, Frantic Locker, or Dogspectus. The infected TV is one of the last generations of LG smart TVs that ran Google TV, a smart TV platform developed by Google together with Intel, Sony, and Logitech. Google TV launched in 2010, but Google discontinued the project in June 2014. In the meantime, LG has moved on from Google TV, and the company’s TVs now run WebOS. Cauthon says he tried to reset the TV to factory settings, but the reset procedure available online didn’t work. When the software engineer contacted LG, the company told him to visit one of their service centers, where one of its employees could reset his TV. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Android Ransomware Infects LG Smart TV, Company ‘Refuses’ To Help

Bigger Than Mirai: Leet Botnet Delivers 650 Gbps DDoS Attack

Reader Mark Wilson writes: Earlier in the year, a huge DDoS attack was launched on Krebs on Security. Analysis showed that the attack pelted servers with 620 Gbps, and there were fears that the release of the Mirai source code used to launch the assault would lead to a rise in large-scale DDoS attacks. Welcome Leet Botnet. In the run-up to Christmas, security firm Imperva managed to fend off a 650 Gbps DDoS attack. But this was nothing to do with Mirai; it is a completely new form of malware, but is described as “just as powerful as the most dangerous one to date”. The concern for 2017 is that “it’s about to get a lot worse”. Clearly proud of the work put into the malware, the creator or creators saw fit to sign it. Analysis of the attack showed that the TCP Options header of the SYN packets used spelled out l33t, hence the Leet Botnet name. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Bigger Than Mirai: Leet Botnet Delivers 650 Gbps DDoS Attack