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Listen to the Lyre of Ur, a 4,500 year-old musical instrument

“You think you know what a Lyre looks like.” I love the fact that the website dedicated to the world’s oldest musical instrument is itself made of the world’s oldest HTML. [via Metafilter ] The instrument shown here is one of the three original lyres of Ur found in 1929, which are held today in the Museums of Pennsylvania, London and Baghdad as unplayable models. It is approximately 4,550 years old and is thought to predate the construction of the Great Pyramid, and even Stonehenge in England. They made a new one and a CD is now available . All I’m saying is, it sounds better than bagpipes. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LvgtAHV4mzw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TSWEeBGhz4M

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Listen to the Lyre of Ur, a 4,500 year-old musical instrument

Newly Found TrueCrypt Flaw Allows Full System Compromise

itwbennett writes: James Forshaw, a member of Google’s Project Zero team has found a pair of flaws in the discontinued encryption utility TrueCrypt that could allow attackers to obtain elevated privileges on a system if they have access to a limited user account. ‘It’s impossible to tell if the new flaws discovered by Forshaw were introduced intentionally or not, but they do show that despite professional code audits, serious bugs can remain undiscovered, ‘ writes Lucian Constantin. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Newly Found TrueCrypt Flaw Allows Full System Compromise

Raytheon signs $1 billion contract to protect government websites

Homeland Security has signed a five-year contract with Raytheon, which could be worth a whopping $1 billion. While the defense contractor is more known for weapons development, DHS hasn’t joined forces with it to create more missiles , lasers, warheads and UAVs . No, the agency has asked the company’s help to secure government websites. According to Raytheon’s announcement , it will aid the government in developing, deploying and supporting technologies that watch out for and mitigate cyberattacks. Reuters says the company will also help around 100 agencies manage their network security within the duration of the partnership as the prime contractor for DHS’ National Cybersecurity Protection System and Network Security Deployment divisions. After that massive Office of Personnel Management hack earlier this year (and the knowledge that other .gov websites are susceptible to attacks), it’s clear that the government believes it could use the cybersecurity upgrade Raytheon promises to bring to the table. And since the White House wants to start being more aggressive in securing its networks, this isn’t the government’s only anti-cyberattack project in the works. The Pentagon, for one, is building an automated system that can detect and prevent security breaches. [Image credit: Getty Images/Caiaimage] Via: Reuters Source: Raytheon

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Raytheon signs $1 billion contract to protect government websites

Tim Cook: Apple won’t merge iOS and OS X

Now that Apple is blurring the lines between its mobile tablets and PCs with the iPad Pro , it’s tempting to imagine iOS and OS X merging into a single operating system ( Windows 10-style ) that works on virtually every device the company makes. You’ll want to put any such ideas on hold, though. In a chat with Box’s Aaron Levie, Apple chief Tim Cook dismissed the prospects of unifying iOS and OS X. It “subtracts from both, ” he said, arguing that you “don’t get the best experience from either.” This isn’t a completely new idea from Apple (it once explained in detail why OS X doesn’t have touch), but it’s clear that Cook doesn’t feel any pressure to follow in Microsoft’s footsteps on this front. Not that Cook and crew are giving Microsoft and its ideas the cold shoulder — just the opposite, in fact. The exec said he doesn’t believe in “holding grudges” against Apple’s frequent rival, and that the two tech giants can “partner on more things” than they compete in. Witness the slew of iOS-friendly Office updates that were unveiled in tandem with the iPad Pro and iOS 9, for example. The enterprise crowd, Cook adds, would rather see Apple and Microsoft collaborating than fighting. On that note, the CEO contended that Apple isn’t nearly as work-phobic as it used to be. The company is big on enterprise deals (it made $25 billion in enterprise revenue in the space of a year), and that there’s no real distinction these days between personal and office-focused devices. You don’t buy enterprise smartphones any more than you buy enterprise cars, he said. We’re sure that BlackBerry won’t be happy with that last statement, but it’s hard to dispute — with occasional exceptions, software is the only thing distinguishing an off-the-shelf smartphone from a locked-down corporate handset. [Image credit: Michael Short/Bloomberg via Getty Images] Source: ZDNet , Recode

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Tim Cook: Apple won’t merge iOS and OS X

Sprint offers $2.1 billion to acquire the rest of Clearwire

As most observers expected , Sprint has finally made a formal offer to acquire the rest of Clearwire. On Thursday, Sprint said it would pay $2.1 billion for the remaining 49.7 percent of Clearwire that it does not currently control. As we reported yesterday , the move is widely seen as a play for Sprint to acquire Clearwire’s valuable 2.5 GHz spectrum, which it would use to offer LTE and strengthen its position against Verizon and AT&T. The bid works out to $2.90 per share—higher than the company’s closing price on Wednesday—but analysts say the offer may not be good enough. Read 2 remaining paragraphs | Comments

GCHQ Tried To Track Web Visits of "Every Visible User On Internet"

An anonymous reader writes with Ars Technica’s story on the relevations reported today by The Intercept that the UK’s GCHQ has been tracking World Wide Web users since 2007, with an operation called “Karma Police” — “a program that tracked Web browsing habits of people around the globe in what the agency itself billed as the ‘world’s biggest’ Internet data-mining operation, intended to eventually track ‘every visible user on the Internet.'” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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GCHQ Tried To Track Web Visits of "Every Visible User On Internet"

Building the ultimate X99 gaming and benchmarking PC

Armed with an Intel Haswell-E CPU, 32GB of DDR4 RAM, and an M.2 SSD, Ars UK puts together the ultimate gaming and benchmarking rig for the office. (video link) There are all sorts of reasons why you might want to get into PC gaming over, or in addition to a console: the huge library of comparatively cheap games on Steam, niche indie games that just wouldn’t find a home anywhere else, or maybe even the flexibility to run games on anything from lowly laptops all the way through to watercooled 4K behemoths. Then there are the other guys: the ones who obsess over clock speeds, how much wattage their power supply puts out, and if you really can cram an 8-core processor and a Titan X into a PC the size of shoebox . Consider me one of those people. For me, picking out the right components and building it all into a sleek, cable-managed rig is as much a part of PC gaming as it is actually playing games. Read 23 remaining paragraphs | Comments

Dr Who Detective Philip Morris Hints At More Rediscovered Episodes

BigBadBus writes: In late 2013, Philip Morris announced that he had found 9 missing episodes of 1960s Dr.Who, which completed the 1968 story “Enemy of the World” and most of “The Web of Fear.” He has now gone on record to talk about the only episode of these stories that he didn’t find — namely part 3 of “Web of Fear” and teases of more episode finds to come. Episodes keep trickling out of the past, it seems; we’ve mentioned a few small finds in 2004 and 2011, too. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Dr Who Detective Philip Morris Hints At More Rediscovered Episodes

Uber starts testing pre-paid service for events in NYC

Uber is launching yet another new product , but this one targets a specific group of people: event organizers, especially those tired of fielding calls from guests who can’t make it due to car troubles. The service called UberEvents allows organizers to buy and secure passes ahead of the occasion to send to guests, clients or whoever needs one to get to the location via email. Guests will only have to enter the code under the Promotions section of the Uber app to hail a ride. Now, nobody will be able to use car issues as an excuse anymore, and party planners won’t have to worry about how to send drunk guests home. Uber is initially making Events available to Business users and select people in New York City, though the service will be accessible by everyone in the metropolis within the coming weeks. Via: TechCrunch Source: Uber

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Uber starts testing pre-paid service for events in NYC

Light-Based Memory Chip Is First To Permanently Store Data

sciencehabit writes: Scientists have developed the first ever memory chip that’s entirely light-based and can store data permanently. Sciencemag reports: “Today’s electronic computer chips work at blazing speeds. But an alternate version that stores, manipulates, and moves data with photons of light instead of electrons would make today’s chips look like proverbial horses and buggies. Now, one team of researchers reports that it has created the first permanent optical memory on a chip, a critical step in that direction. If a more advanced photonic memory can be integrated with photonic logic and interconnections, the resulting chips have the potential to run at 50 to 100 times the speed of today’s computer processors.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Light-Based Memory Chip Is First To Permanently Store Data

Ken May

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