A zero-day exploit for Jeep Cherokees allows hackers to control everything from the engine to the air-conditioning over the Internet, overriding the driver at the dashboard. Read the rest
More here:
Hackers can pwn a Jeep Cherokee from the brakes and steering to the AC and radio
Areas of Southern California saw rare summer thunderstorms this weekend, with rainfall that broke July records all over the state. So much rainfall, in fact, that flash flooding dislodged a bridge and collapsed a section of the 10 Freeway—the major east-west freeway that links Los Angeles and Phoenix. Read more…
More:
Heavy Rains Destroy Major Freeway Bridge In Southern California
You ideally want to produce clean hydrogen fuel using clean sources, and Dutch researchers have taken a big step toward making that a practical reality. They’ve built a solar cell that uses a grid of gallium phosphide nanowires to make hydrogen gas from water. The approach gets a useful yield of about 2.9 percent in lab tests. That may not sound like much, but it’s about 10 times more effective than previous techniques and uses 10, 000 times less exotic material. It’s still going to take more refinements before this kind of technology is practical. Even hooking up silicon cells to a battery nets a 15 percent yield, for example. If scientists improve their methods, though, you could be driving hydrogen cars whose fuel is eco-friendly at every step, not just when it’s in your vehicle. [Image credit: AP Photo/Shizuo Kambayashi] Filed under: Transportation , Science Comments Source: TUE , Nature
View the original here:
Nanowires help produce hydrogen fuel using sunlight
Microsoft normally restricts its Windows updates to a monthly Patch Tuesday. So when the company pushes a critical update on a Monday, it’s a good sign that shit is hitting the fan. Read more…
See more here:
Go Update Windows Right Now
An anonymous reader points out The Register’s story that recent changes to the spam filters that Google uses to pare down junk in gmail evidently are a bit overzealous. Linus Torvalds, who famously likes to manage by email, and whose email flow includes a lot of mailing lists, isn’t happy with it. Ironically perhaps, it was only last week that the Gmail team blogged that its spam filter’s rate of false positives is down to less than 0.05 per cent. In his post, Torvalds said his own experience belies that claim, and that around 30 per cent of the mail in his spam box turned out not to be spam. “It’s actually at the point where I’m noticing missing messages in the email conversations I see, because Gmail has been marking emails in the middle of the conversation as spam. Things that people replied to and that contained patches and problem descriptions, ” Torvalds wrote. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Visit site:
Gmail Spam Filter Changes Bite Linus Torvalds
An anonymous reader writes: In past years the AMD Catalyst Linux driver has yielded better performance if naming the executable “doom3.x86” or “compiz” (among other choices), but these days this application profile concept is made more absurd with more games coming to Linux but AMD not maintaining well their Linux application profile database. The latest example is by getting ~40% better performance by renaming Counter-Strike: Global Offensive on Linux. If renaming the “csgo_linux” binary to “hl2_linux” for Half-Life 2 within Steam, the frame-rates suddenly increase across the board, this is with the latest Catalyst 15.7 Linux driver while CS:GO has been on Linux for nearly one year. Should driver developers re-evaluate their optimization practices for Linux? Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Original post:
AMD Catalyst Linux Driver Performs Wildly Different Based On Program’s Name
Japan anticipates that falling birth rates and negligible immigration will result in population decline —as much as 1m a year. Millions of homes are already empty, reports Nomura Research , with a million in bad shape. Read the rest
See the article here:
Japan’s population decline creates "housing glut"
Don’t look now, but Lockheed Martin just became an even larger aerospace powerhouse. The aircraft maker has acquired helicopter maker Sikorsky (best known for the UH-60 Blackhawk) for $9 billion. The two have already been partners on programs like the MH-60, but this gives Lockheed its very own rotary-wing team. If a customer wants something that flies, the company will have it covered. The buyout is poised to close by late 2015 or early 2016, provided everything goes smoothly. The union might come at a stiff price, however. Lockheed says it’s conducting a “strategic review” of both its information systems group and a chunk of its missile division — tough times in the market have led Lockheed to believe that these segments would be better-off either spun out or sold to someone else. That puts the future of more than 17, 000 workers in doubt, and that’s not including whatever jobs might be cut when the Sikorsky deal wraps up. [Image credit: AP Photo/Wilfredo Lee] Filed under: Transportation Comments Source: Lockheed Martin
Original post:
Lockheed Martin buys helicopter maker Sikorsky
Spotify just added a load of new features with a recent update and now it’s looking to help you find new music. To do just that, a new tool called Discover Weekly builds a two-hour playlist of suggestions based on your listening habits and those of folks with similar preferences. What’s more, the collection of tunes — basically a mixtape — is refreshed every Monday so that you’re greeted with new material on the regular. In fact, my collection was updated early this morning. Spotify says the more you use it, the better it’ll get, adapting as your musical taste evolves. Soon, Discover Weekly with appear at the top of your saved playlists for easy access. And yes, you can save individual songs you like or share the whole lot with your pals. I’ve had access to the tool for a few days, and based on the first set of tracks Spotify selected, I’m cautiously optimistic. Meek Mill, Run the Jewels, Of Monsters and Men and Miguel are getting the bulk of my attention these days, so the tool built my first playlist of songs from Caribou, Modest Mouse, Action Bronson, Flying Lotus and more. Understandably, this group of initial picks is a bit of a mixed bag — similar to my tastes — but I’m looking forward to seeing how the feature changes during weeks when I lean more towards one genre. In this morning’s update, for example, I received mostly hip-hop picks as my listening last week centered around that genre during workouts. While Apple Music touts its human-curated playlists, Spotify is relying on its software here, and it seems to work just fine. You’ll be able to try it for yourself soon enough, as the curated playlist should appear across all of Spotify’s apps shortly. Filed under: Portable Audio/Video , Internet , Software Comments
See the article here:
Spotify’s Discover Weekly uses your habits to recommend new music
A magnetic power connector didn’t seem that revolutionary when first revealed, but over the years the Apple MacBook’s MagSafe connector has proven itself to be an invaluable feature. And as the Znaps magnetic adapter shows, it would be just as useful for your mobile devices too. Read more…
View article:
A Simple Magnetic Adapter Gives Your Charging Cables MagSafe Powers