kenmay

Linux Mint hit by malware infection on its website, forum after hack attack

(credit: Wired UK/Shuttershock) Linux Mint forum users, and anyone who downloaded and installed a copy of the 17.3 Cinnamon edition on Saturday have probably been compromised by hackers and need to take action immediately, the distro’s creator has warned. Clem Lefebvre, confirmed in a blog post that the “intrusion” had taken place over the weekend. He said: “Hackers made a modified Linux Mint ISO, with a backdoor in it, and managed to hack our website to point to it.” He added that the resultant malware infection had only affected ISOs downloaded from the Linux Mint site on Saturday, February 20. “As far as we know, the only compromised edition was Linux Mint 17.3 Cinnamon edition,” Lefebvre said. However, by Sunday it was a different story , with Linux Mint confirming that its forums database had also been targeted in the hack of its systems. Read 6 remaining paragraphs | Comments

Nvidia Pascal GP100 GPU To Rock 4 TFLOPS Double Precision, 12 TFLOPS Single Precision Processing Power

New information emerged regarding Nvidia’s Pascal GPU, covering the total compute performance of the much-anticipated FinFET-based chip. Based on a number of slides from an independent researcher, the Nvidia Pascal GPU100 features Stacked DRAM (1 TB/s) giving it as much as 12 TFLOPs of Single-Precision (FP32) compute performance. The flagship GPU is purportedly able to provide four TFLOPs of Double-Precision (FP64) compute performance as well. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Nvidia Pascal GP100 GPU To Rock 4 TFLOPS Double Precision, 12 TFLOPS Single Precision Processing Power

HTC-Valve’s Vive VR Headset Will Cost $799, Bundled With Two Controllers

HTC has just dropped the most salient detail for anyone wanting to immerse themselves in the virtual reality experience it’s been cooking up with Valve for the past year: the price. The forthcoming Vive headset will cost $799, the two companies confirmed today. So $200 more expensive than the rival Oculus Rift headset. Read More

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HTC-Valve’s Vive VR Headset Will Cost $799, Bundled With Two Controllers

LG jumps on the VR bandwagon with the LG 360 VR

Jennifer Hahn The LG 360 VR. I can see the future! 6 more images in gallery LG’s biggest announcement today is undoubtedly the LG G5 , but next to the company’s flagship smartphone, it was also demoing this crazy VR headset called the “LG 360 VR.” It requires a smartphone to work, but unlike Galaxy Gear-style headsets that require you to slot the phone into the headset, this headset is just tethered to the LG G5 via a USB cable. The device is basically an external display for the G5, allowing the headset to have a slimmer profile while cutting the weight down to only 118g. LG isn’t offering many specifics about the display inside the headset, only saying it has a resolution of 639 ppi. LG also isn’t saying much in the way of pricing, a launch date, or even capabilities, but it does mention that it “is compatible with 360-degree images as well as all Google Cardboard content.” We were able to briefly check out prototype hardware at LG’s G5 event, and we can say the big, face-engulfing VR headsets are that size for a reason—namely blocking out the light in the room. This was more like wearing a pair of opaque eyeglasses; allowing light to gush in from the top and bottom of the device. For the most part, the headset didn’t work yet, but it did briefly mirror the G5’s home screen when we plugged in the USB cable. The display area is about what you would expect from looking at the outside of the device. It’s a long, thin screen the fills maybe half your vertical vision. It won’t be a device for immersion, but LG says it will “simulate a 130-inch TV viewed from two meters.” Read 2 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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LG jumps on the VR bandwagon with the LG 360 VR

HP’s Elite x3 Is a Beastly Smartphone…Running Windows

When Microsoft announced its goal of unifying Windows 10 software across PC, tablets, phones, game consoles, and even Pi-powered micro computers, the future seemed promising. But there was one big problem with that vision: no one really wants a Windows smartphone. Read more…

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HP’s Elite x3 Is a Beastly Smartphone…Running Windows

Enable This Built-In Keyboard on iOS for Tons of New Emoticons

At this point, everyone knows how to get to the emoji keyboard on iOS . But if you prefer a fancy unicode emoticon instead, you’ll need to dig in and enable a different keyboard. Read more…

A 19-Year-Old Made A Free Robot Lawyer That Has Appealed $3M In Parking Tickets

schwit1 writes: Hiring a lawyer for a parking-ticket appeal is not only a headache, but it can also cost more than the ticket itself. Depending on the case and the lawyer, an appeal — a legal process where you argue out of paying the fine — can cost between $400 to $900. But with the help of a robot made by British programmer Joshua Browder, 19, it costs nothing. Browder’s bot handles questions about parking-ticket appeals in the UK. Since launching in late 2015, it has successfully appealed $3 million worth of tickets. He is cutting into the government trough and lawyers’ jobs. That’s a double whammy. How long is it before the bar association and government get automated lawyers disqualified? Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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A 19-Year-Old Made A Free Robot Lawyer That Has Appealed $3M In Parking Tickets

Yahoo Closes Lab – Among Other Things

mikejuk writes: In its recent earnings call, Yahoo revealed plans to cut its workforce by 15% — around 1, 600 employees by the end of the year. Yahoo Labs is another victim of the cuts as revealed in a Tumbler post by Yoelle Maarek who reports that both Yahoo’s Chief Scientist, Ron Brachman, and VP of Research Ricardo Baeza-Yates, will be leaving the company and that going forward: Our new approach is to integrate research teams directly into our product teams in order to produce innovation that will drive excellence in those product areas. We will also have an independent research team that will work autonomously or in partnership with product partners. The integrated and independent teams, as a whole, will be known as Yahoo Research. Maarek, formerly VP of Research now becomes leader of Yahoo Research. To anyone who has followed the story of research at Yahoo there will be a sense of deja vu. Back in 2012 Yahoo laid off many of its research team, many of whom found a new home with Microsoft. It was Marissa Meyer who in the following year recruited a substantial number of PhDs to Yahoo Labs which initiated some interesting projects. Meyer clearly thought research would save Yahoo!, but now it all seems a bit late and Yahoo! can’t save its research lab. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Yahoo Closes Lab – Among Other Things

Global Wind Power Capacity Tops Nuclear Energy For First Time

mdsolar writes: The capacity of wind power generation worldwide reached 432.42 gigawatts (GW) at the end of 2015, up 17 percent from a year earlier and surpassing nuclear energy for the first time, according to data released by global industry bodies. The generation capacity of wind farms newly built in 2015 was a record 63.01 GW, corresponding to about 60 nuclear reactors, according to the Global Wind Energy Council based in Brussels. The global nuclear power generation capacity was 382.55 GW as of Jan. 1, 2016, the London-based World Nuclear Association said. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

California parents: file this form to keep your kids’ school records private

There’s a hard-fought lawsuit underway about whether California schools failed in their duty to provide special ed to students, and as a part of that, the court has ordered disclosure of the school records of every California so the plaintiffs can analyze them. (more…)

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California parents: file this form to keep your kids’ school records private

Ken May

Author: kenmay