Ransomware attacks are on the rise, and once your computer or network has been infected, it can be really difficult to recover. No More Ransom can help, and more importantly, help you now, before an infection, and later, after one. Read more…
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No More Ransom Helps You Prevent and Recover from Ransomware Attacks
Apple released new MacBook Pros yesterday that feature Intel’s year-old Skylake microarchitcure, as opposed to the newer Kaby Lake architecture. Two days earlier, Microsoft did the same thing when it released the Surface Studio. Given the improvements Kaby Lake processors have over Skylake processors, one would think they would be included in the latest and greatest products from Microsoft and Apple. Gizmodo explains why that’s not the case: In the case of the new 15-inch MacBook the answer is simple. “The Kaby Lake chip doesn’t exist yet, ” an Apple rep told Gizmodo. Kaby Lake is being rolled out relatively slowly, and it’s only available in a few forms and wattages. The 15-inch MacBook Pro uses a quad-core processor that has no Kaby Lake equivalent currently. That particular laptop really does have the fastest processor available. The same goes for the Microsoft Surface Studio and updated Surface Book — both also use a quad-core Skylake processor with no Kaby Lake counterpart. But the Studio and Surface Book are also using much older video cards from the Nvidia 900 series. Nvidia has much faster and less power-hungry chips (the 1000 series) available based on the Pascal architecture. Microsoft’s reasoning for going with older video cards is nearly identical to Apple’s for going with a slower processor in its 13-inch MacBook Pro: the Nvidia 1000 series came out too late. The major intimation was that Kaby Lake and Pascal came so late in the design process that it would have delayed the final products if they’d chosen to use them. New technology, no matter how amazing an upgrade it might be, still requires considerable testing before it can be shipped to consumers. One minor bug, particularly in a system as engineered as the Surface Studio or MacBook Pro, can turn catastrophic if engineers aren’t careful. In the case of Microsoft, it’s frustrating, because that old GPU is significantly slower than the Pascal GPUs available. It’s a little less frustrating in Apple’s case, largely because of the old processor microarchitecture that Apple elected to shove into its new 13-inch MacBook Pro. Apple went with a new Skylake dual core processor that draws a lot of power — more so than any Kaby Lake processor available. It then uses all that extra power to ramp up the speeds of the processor. Which means it is capable of pulling off speeds that can actually match those of the fastest Kaby Lake processor out there. The only downside to this decision is battery life. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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Why Apple and Microsoft Are Using Last Year’s Skylake Processors In Their New Computers
At Universal Studios in Los Angeles Tesla CEO Elon Musk showed off the company’s solar roof-top panels and new Energy initiative. It also showed off its new $5, 500 Powerwall 2 high-capacity residential batteries and Powerpack 2 for businesses. Musk and company have been teasing the photovoltaic cell-embedded rooftop panels for a few weeks . It’s also using the announcement of the new product as an explanation for why its acquiring Solar City. Musk said that if the merger doesn’t go through, the launch of the new tiles will be difficult. During the event, Musk sort of talked about the price of the panels. He said that when a house has these the “installed cost is less than a normal roof and the cost of electricity.” But there was no concrete pricing announced. The event was held on a Hollywood backlot where Solar City and Tesla had installed non-operating solar panels onto the houses you might recognize for the TV show, Desperate Housewives . The houses didn’t attract any attention before the event because they appeared so normal. He also showed off a house with a Tuscan style glass tiles that to the naked eye, you would be hard-pressed to notice that the roof was actually sucking up the energy of the sun. “People love their homes and we want them to be better, ” Musk said. Of course the entire equation requires batteries for a home to keep it lit up when the sun goes down. Tesla says the new Powerwall 2 will power a four bedroom house with lights, refrigerator and other appliances for an entire day. Musk said that they expect to start installing the glass tiles in summer 2017 and for the roofs to last a very very long time. “We expect this to have two or three times the longevity of asphalt. It’s really never going to wear out. It’s got a quasi-infinite lifetime. It’s made of quartz, ” he said. Tesla and Solar City are working with 3M on the coating on the glass tiles. Tesla has just come off an impressive quarter where it posted a profit for the first time in two years . It also announced earlier this month that all vehicles produced going forward would have the hardware capable of full autonomous driving . Developing. Source: Tesla
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Tesla unveils its solar roof and Powerwall 2
An anonymous reader writes: Mozilla is currently working on a new browser engine called Quantum, which will take parts from the Servo project and create a new core for the Firefox browser. The new engine will replace the aging Gecko, Firefox’ current engine. Mozilla hopes to finish the transition to Quantum (as in Quantum Leap) by the end of 2017. The first versions of Quantum will heavily rely on components from Servo, a browser engine that Mozilla has been sponsoring for the past years, and which shipped its first alpha version this June. In the upcoming year, Mozilla will slowly merge Gecko and Servo components with each new release, slowly removing Gecko’s ancient code, and leaving Quantum’s engine in place. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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Mozilla Announces Quantum, a New Browser Engine For Firefox
For the third month in a row the share of worldwide desktop computer users running Linux has been above two percent — up from one percent — according to data from web analytics company Net Market Share. From a OMGUbuntu report: We reported back in July that Linux marketshare had passed two percent for the first time, and that figure remains the highest they’ve ever reported for Linux, at 2.33 percent. But the share for September 2016 was almost as good at 2.23 percent. It’s the third consecutive month that Linux marketshare has been above 2 percent. Those of us who use Linux as our primary desktop computing platform can take a degree of pride in these figures. They do show a clear trend towards Linux, rather than away from it. But we should also remember that statistics, numbers and reporting methods vary between analytics companies and that all figures, however positive, remain open to interpretation and debate. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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Linux Marketshare is Above 2-Percent For Third Month in a Row
The new MacBooks Pros have been improved in nearly every way — except when it comes to RAM capacity. With faster, more energy efficient Skylake processors, faster SSDs, and better GPUs, one would think the amount of RAM wouldn’t be capped off at 16GB. However, that is the case. The reason why the MacBook Pros continue to max out at 16GB RAM is due to battery life concerns, according to marketing chief Phil Schiller. MacRumors reader David emailed Apple to get an explanation: Question from David: “The lack of a 32GB BTO option for the new MBPs raised some eyebrows and caused some concerns (me included). Does ~3GBps bandwidth to the SSD make this a moot issue? I.e. memory paging on a 16GB system is so fast that 32GB is not a significant improvement?” Schiller’s answer: “Thank you for the email. It is a good question. To put more than 16GB of fast RAM into a notebook design at this time would require a memory system that consumes much more power and wouldn’t be efficient enough for a notebook. I hope you check out this new generation MacBook Pro, it really is an incredible system.” For the 2016 MacBook Pro, Apple was able to reach “all-day battery life, ” which equates to 10 hours of wireless web use or iTunes movie playback. That’s an hour improvement over the previous generation in the 15-inch machine, and a small step back in the 13-inch machine. While none of Apple’s portable machines offer more than 16GB RAM, 32GB of RAM is a high-end custom upgrade option in the 27-inch iMac. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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New MacBook Pros Max Out At 16GB RAM Due To Battery Life Concerns
Although the FBI previously concluded that Hillary Clinton should not face charges over the usage of her personal email server, the Bureau apparently isn’t done looking into Clinton’s emails after all. “In previous congressional testimony, I referred to the fact that the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) had completed its investigation of former Secretary Clinton’s personal email server, ” FBI Director James Comey said in a letter sent out Friday . “Due to recent developments, I am writing to supplement my previous testimony.” “In connection with an unrelated case, ” Comey’s letter continues, “the FBI has learned of the existence of emails that appear to be pertinent to the investigation. I am writing to inform you that the investigative team briefed me on this yesterday, and I agreed that the FBI should take appropriate investigative steps designed to allow investigators to review these emails to determine whether they contain classified information, as well as to assess their importance to our investigation.” Comey concluded: “Although the FBI cannot yet assess whether or not this material may be significant, ” and I cannot predict how long it will take us to complete this additional work, I believe it is important to update your Committees about our efforts in light of my previous testimony.” Engadget will, of course, update as we know more. Update: The Associated Press has tweeted a clarification from an unnamed US official, stating that the newly discovered emails did not come from Clinton’s private email server. BREAKING: US official: Newly discovered emails related to Clinton investigation did not come from her private server. — AP Politics (@AP_Politics) October 28, 2016 Update: The New York Times is reporting that the new emails were discovered after the FBI seized electronic devices belonging to Clinton aide Huma Abedin and her husband Anthony Weiner. Update: John Podesta, the chairman of the Clinton campaign, has responded to Comey’s letter and has called on the FBI director to “immediately provide the American people more information than what is contained in his letter”. “The director owes it to the American people to immediately provide the full details of what he is now examining, ” Podesta continued. “We are confident this will not produce any conclusions different from the one the FBI reached in July.” Via: New York Times , CNBC
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Unearthed Clinton emails garner renewed FBI scrutiny (updated)
sciencehabit quotes a report from Science Magazine: A decade ago, a fossil hunter was combing the beach in southeastern England when he found a strange, brown pebble. The surface of it caught his eye: It was smooth and strangely undulating, and also slightly crinkly in some places. That oddly textured pebble, scientists report today, is actually an endocast — an impression preserved in the rock — that represents the first known evidence of fossilized brain tissue of a dinosaur (likely a close relative of Iguanodon, a large, herbivorous type of dinosaur that lived about 133 million years ago). Human brains and bird brains are packed tightly into the brain case, so that their convolutions leave an impression of the inside of the case. But dinosaur (and reptile) brains are more loosely fitted; they are surrounded within the brain case by membranes called meninges, tough sheaths that protect and support the brain. So an endocast of a dinosaur brain might be expected to show those structures — and it did. But beneath them, remineralized in calcium phosphate, the researchers also spied a pattern of tiny capillaries and other cortical tissues — the sort of fabric you’d expect for the cortex of a brain. That those textures were pressed up against the brain case doesn’t necessarily mean that dinosaurs were bigger-brained and smarter than we thought, however: Instead, the dinosaur had likely simply toppled over and been preserved upside down, its brain tissue preserved by surrounding acidic, low-oxygen waters that pickled and hardened the membranes and tissues, providing a template for mineralization. The structure of the brain, studied with scanning electron microscopes, reveal similarities to both birds and crocodiles. The researchers reported their findings in a Special Publication of the Geological Society of London. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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First-Ever Dinosaur Brain Tissue Found Preserved In a Pebble
Enlarge Recently a cache of 2,337 e-mails from the office of a high-ranking advisor to Russian president Vladimir Putin was dumped on the Internet after purportedly being obtained by a Ukrainian hacking group calling itself CyberHunta . The cache shows that the Putin government communicated with separatist forces in Eastern Ukraine, receiving lists of casualties and expense reports while even apparently approving government members of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic. And if one particular document is to be believed, the Putin government was formulating plans to destabilize the Ukrainian government as early as next month in order to force an end to the standoff over the region, known as Donbass. Based on reporting by the Associated Press’s Howard Amos and analysis by the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab , at least some of the e-mails—dumped in a 1-gigabyte Outlook .PST mailbox file—are genuine. Amos showed e-mails in the cache to a Russian journalist, Svetlana Babaeva, who identified e-mails she had sent to Surkov’s office. E-mail addresses and phone numbers in some of the e-mails were also confirmed. And among the documents in the trove of e-mails is a scan of Surkov’s passport (above), as well as those of his wife and children. A Kremlin spokesperson denied the legitimacy of the e-mails, saying that Surkov did not have an e-mail address. However, the account appears to have been used by Surkov’s assistants, and the dump contains e-mails with reports from Surkov’s assistants. The breach, if ultimately proven genuine, would appear to be the first major publicized hack of a Russian political figure. And in that instance, perhaps this could be a response to the hacking of US political figures attributed to Russia. Read 6 remaining paragraphs | Comments
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Some hacked e-mails, documents from Putin advisor confirmed as genuine
More than one million formerly broken links in the English Wikipedia have been updated to archived versions from the Wayback Machine, thanks to a partnership between the Internet Archive, and volunteers from the Wikipedia community, and the Wikimedia Foundation. From a blog post: The Internet Archive, the Wikimedia Foundation, and volunteers from the Wikipedia community have now fixed more than one million broken outbound web links on English Wikipedia. This has been done by the Internet Archive’s monitoring for all new, and edited, outbound links from English Wikipedia for three years and archiving them soon after changes are made to articles. This combined with the other web archiving projects, means that as pages on the Web become inaccessible, links to archived versions in the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine can take their place. This has now been done for the English Wikipedia and more than one million links are now pointing to preserved copies of missing web content. What do you do when good web links go bad? If you are a volunteer editor on Wikipedia, you start by writing software to examine every outbound link in English Wikipedia to make sure it is still available via the “live web.” If, for whatever reason, it is no longer good (e.g. if it returns a “404” error code or “Page Not Found”) you check to see if an archived copy of the page is available via the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine. If it is, you instruct your software to edit the Wikipedia page to point to the archived version, taking care to let users of the link know they will be visiting a version via the Wayback Machine. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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Wikipedia Community and Internet Archive Partner To Fix One Million Broken Links on Wikipedia