Author: kenmay

Hackers steal $12 million from an Ecuadorian bank via SWIFT

Earlier this week reports showed another round of SWIFT-related cyber heists , this time targeting banks in Ecuador. A new report in Reuters sheds light on what actually happened to the high-tech thieves’ $12-million loot. Apparently, they moved $9 million to 23 banks in Hong Kong and $3 million to Dubai and other parts of the world. Wells Fargo transfered sums with the total value of $9 million to the accounts of four companies at HSBC and Hang Seng Bank based on authenticated SWIFT transactions. The hackers then distributed the money to what are believed to be phoney business accounts. Similar to the recent Bangladesh and Vietnam bank attacks, the thieves’ scheme involved the use of the SWIFT messaging platform. Banks use SWIFT’s platform to make financial transfers between each other, and cyber thieves typically send out fraudulent SWIFT messages requesting for funds to be routed to dummy accounts. In Bangladesh Bank’s case, the thieves used the SWIFT credentials of the institution’s employees to request several transfers to accounts overseas. They got off with $80 million, which would have been much larger ($1 freaking billion) if they didn’t misspell the word “foundation.” The hackers could have easily accessed the employees’ credentials, because the bank lacked a proper firewall. It’s not clear if that’s also what happened in Ecuador, but the thieves obviously had the same MO. American banks are now looking more closely into SWIFT’s security after news of these cyber heists surfaced. SWIFT (which stands for Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication) itself is working on a five-point security plan to prevent similar events in the future. Source: Reuters

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Hackers steal $12 million from an Ecuadorian bank via SWIFT

Reddit forsakes Imgur with launch of native image upload tool

How Reddit’s native image/gif upload tool appears when you want to post (credit: Reddit) A big change is rolling out on Reddit that will affect the way you post and view images on the site. Through a thread created by a Reddit product team member named Andy (u/amg137), the site announced it’s launching an image-upload tool for single photos and gifs on select subreddits. This means the site is shifting away from its informal partner Imgur, which currently hosts the majority of Reddit’s uploaded images. With the tool, users will be able to upload images up to 20MB and gifs up to 100MB in size directly to Reddit. When viewing a thread that started with an image or a gif, users will click on the thread and be taken to the thread page with the media at the top and the comments below. With Imgur-hosted images, clicking on the Reddit link takes you directly to that image on Imgur’s site. To see thread discussion, you had to click on the “comments” link directly below it. Andy explains in the post that the company is hoping the native image tool will make the Reddit experience more seamless. “For a long time, other image hosting services have been an integral part of how content is shared on Reddit—we’re grateful to those teams, but are looking forward to bringing you a more seamless experience with this new feature,” he writes. Read 4 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Reddit forsakes Imgur with launch of native image upload tool

FCC Formalizes Massive Fines For Selling, Using Cell-Phone Jammers

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Network World: Two years ago the FCC announced its intention to fine a Chinese electronics maker $34.9 million and a Florida man $48, 000 for respectively selling and using illegal cell-phone jammers. Today the agency has issued press releases telling us that those fines have finally been made official, without either of the offending parties having bothered to mount a formal defense of their actions. From the press release announcing the fine against CTS. Technology: ” The company’s website falsely claimed that some jammers had been approved by the FCC, and advertised that the company could ship signal jammers to consumers in the United States.” The company did not respond to the FCC’s allegations, although the agency does report that changes were made to its website that appear to be aimed at complying with U.S. law. Next up is Florida man, Jason R. Humphreys, who is alleged to have used a jammer on his commute: “Mr. Humphreys’ illegal operation of the jammer continued for up to two years, caused interference to cellular service along Interstate 4, and disrupted police communications.” Last Fall, a Chicagoan was arrested for using a cell-phone jammer to make his subway commute more tolerable. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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FCC Formalizes Massive Fines For Selling, Using Cell-Phone Jammers

Former McDonald’s USA CEO: $35K Robots Cheaper Than Hiring at $15 Per Hour

An anonymous reader shares an article on Fox Business: As fast-food workers across the country vie for $15 per hour wages, many business owners have already begun to take humans out of the picture. “I was at the National Restaurant Show yesterday and if you look at the robotic devices that are coming into the restaurant industry — it’s cheaper to buy a $35, 000 robotic arm than it is to hire an employee who’s inefficient making $15 an hour (warning: autoplaying video) bagging French fries — it’s nonsense and it’s very destructive and it’s inflationary and it’s going to cause a job loss across this country like you’re not going to believe, ” said former McDonald’s USA CEO Ed Rensi during an interview on the FOX Business Network’s Mornings with Maria. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 1.3 million people earned the current minimum wage of $7.25 per hour with about 1.7 million having wages below the federal minimum in 2014. These three million workers combined made up 3.9 percent of all hourly paid workers. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Former McDonald’s USA CEO: $35K Robots Cheaper Than Hiring at $15 Per Hour

Smartphone maker Foxconn replaces 60,000 workers with robots

A Chinese government official told the South China Morning Post that a Foxconn factory has “reduced employee strength from 110,000 to 50,000 thanks to the introduction of robots. It has tasted success in reduction of labour costs. More companies are likely to follow suit.” As many as 600 major companies in Kunshan have similar plans, according to a government survey. The job cuts do not augur well for Kunshan, which had a population of more than 2.5 million at the end of 2014, two-thirds of whom were migrant workers.

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Smartphone maker Foxconn replaces 60,000 workers with robots

HP splits again, as Hewlett Packard Enterprise spins off IT services

In 2014, Hewlett-Packard announced that it was splitting into two separate companies: Hewlett Packard Enterprise, selling servers and enterprise services, and HP Inc, selling PCs and printers. That split completed last year at the cost of more than 30,000 jobs . In a surprise announcement today, the company is about to embark on a second split: Hewlett Packard Enterprise is spinning off its IT services business. The low-margin outsourced IT services business, which HP got into with its $14 billion acquisition of EDS in 2008, is to be merged with Computer Sciences Corp (CSC) to create a new company currently known only as SpinCo. HPE will own half of the new company, HPE CEO Meg Whitman will be on the new company’s board, and HPE and CSC will each nominate half of the board members. CSC’s current CEO, Mike Lawrie, will become CEO of the new company. HPE says that the deal will save around $1 billion in operating costs. HPE shareholders will own shares in both companies, owning half of the combined company, with their stake valued at around $4.5 billion. They’ll also receive a $1.5 billion cash dividend. Additionally, the merger will see some $2.5 billion in debt moved to SpinCo’s books. Read 3 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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HP splits again, as Hewlett Packard Enterprise spins off IT services

Intel’s quad-core “Skull Canyon” NUC is a workstation for the size-obsessed

Andrew Cunningham Intel’s quad-core “Skull Canyon” NUC. 10 more images in gallery Every year when Intel refreshes its NUC mini PCs, it releases more models meant to cover a wider range of needs. There are cheap fanless NUCs, NUCs that can fit in full-size hard drives, and mainstream NUCs that are essentially little Ultrabooks inside boxes. This year is the first where Intel has tried to release a quad-core workstation-class NUC itself instead of leaving that field to OEM partners . This PC, also known as “Skull Canyon” because of Intel’s history of using skulls to promote performance-focused products, is quite a bit different from the other NUCs. It needs more space for cooling, so it’s around twice as wide as standard NUCs (though it’s a little shorter). But with that increased size comes a lot more flexibility and performance. Pricing and building Like other NUCs, the Skull Canyon version is sold as a “PC kit,” which means you have to add your own RAM, SSD, and operating system before you can actually use the thing. Assuming you want to equip it with fast PCI Express SSDs and a healthy amount of RAM, you’ll end up spending near $1,000—around $650 for the NUC itself, another $180 or so for a 256GB Samsung 950, $60-ish for 16GB of DDR4 RAM (Skylake supports up to 64GB), and $100 for your Windows 10 license if that’s the operating system you prefer to use. Read 21 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Intel’s quad-core “Skull Canyon” NUC is a workstation for the size-obsessed

Google Now Handles At Least 2 Trillion Searches Per Year

Danny Sullivan, reporting for Search Engine Land: How many searches per year happen on Google? After nearly four years, the company has finally released an updated figure today of “trillions” per year. How many trillions, exactly, Google wouldn’t say. Consider two trillion the starting point. Google did confirm to Search Engine Land that because it said it handles “trillions” of searches per year worldwide, the figure could be safely assumed to be two trillion or above. Is it more than two trillion? Google could be doing five trillion searches per year. Or 10 trillion. Or 100 trillion. Or presumably up to 999 trillion, because if it were 1, 000 trillion, you’d expect Google would announce that it does a quadrillion searches per year. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Google Now Handles At Least 2 Trillion Searches Per Year

E Ink announces a color breakthrough, but it’s only for signs

There’s a small glimmer of hope for the seemingly doomed dream of color electronic paper . E Ink, which helped pioneer ePaper by providing the technology for Amazon’s Kindle, announced today that it’s finally developed a display that can show up to 32, 000 colors. Dubbed Advanced Color ePaper (ACeP), it’s a huge leap above the company’s aging Triton tech , which could only display around 4, 000 colors. Basically, it’ll be clear enough to be practically indistinguishable from color printed onto real paper. But don’t get your hopes up for an e-reader with ACeP just yet — for now, E Ink is positioning it for in-store signage as 20-inch panels. While it’s just as low-power as you’d expect, ACeP isn’t as sharp as E Ink’s black and white technology yet, which can reach up to 300 pixels per inch. ACeP only has a resolution of 1600 x 2500 pixels, which clocks in at 150ppi. It also takes a full two seconds for the display to refresh. Still, ACeP is a significant move for E Ink, which for years has been struggling to develop color displays that can go against increasingly sharp OLED and LCD screens. With Qualcomm’s Mirasol technology floundering, ACeP could end up being the color ePaper solution we’ve been waiting for. Source: E Ink (PR)

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E Ink announces a color breakthrough, but it’s only for signs