Flying from LA to San Francisco on business is a task normally fraught with stress and rage. But today, my journey begins from a better place. Instead of the gargantuan mess that is LAX, my Uber rolls up to a tiny airport three miles to the east. I start to realize just how different my work commute will be today. Read more…
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I Flew to Work in the Uber for the Skies
It’s no secret that everybody’s thinking about privacy and cyber security more since the world was pummeled with the unsettling, spy-novel truths of the Snowden revelations . Now, companies are starting to seize onto the zeitgeist by building more secure tools for the internet. And it sounds like Tor will be at the front of that line. Read more…
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Dreaming of a Tor Button for Firefox
First time accepted submitter chentiangemalc writes While Australia is on “high alert” for terror threats a man walked past a Sydney Airport security screening while engrossed in his iPad and delayed flights for an hour. From the article: “This event was captured on CCTV and unnerved officials so much that they evacuated passengers. As the Sydney Morning Herald reported, the man found himself (or, perhaps, didn’t) going into the terminal through an exit passage that clearly was convenient for him, but less convenient for the hordes of passengers who not only had to be removed from Terminal 3, but also re-screened. A spokeswoman for Qantas told the Morning Herald: ‘The man disembarked a flight and left. It appears he wasn’t paying attention, was looking at his iPad, forgot something and walked back past (the security area).'” Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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Man Walks Past Security Screening Staring At iPad Causing Airport Evacuation
iOS 8 development continues apace. Andrew Cunningham iOS 8 has been in the hands of the public for about a week and a half , and the OS has already received a pair of minor updates. One fixed a handful of small issues in the initial release; another fixed the major bugs introduced in the first update. But we’re already seeing evidence that Apple is working on some larger updates to the operating system, namely versions 8.1, 8.2, and 8.3. 9to5Mac first pointed out evidence of these new iOS versions this morning, found in its own analytics and data from some of its sources. So we quickly looked into our traffic data for September for similar data. We found requests listing iOS 8.1, 8.2, and 8.3 coming from Apple IP addresses—several thousand from 8.1 and just a few hundred from 8.2 and 8.3, which makes sense given that 8.1 is probably being worked on more aggressively at this point. The news here is not that Apple is continuing to develop new versions of iOS but that releasing an iOS 8.2 or 8.3 update would be a break from recent tradition. The last iOS version to progress beyond x.1 was iOS 4, which came during a much busier period for Apple in general and iOS specifically. Version 4.1 fixed many of the glaring bugs in version 4.0 and helped boost speed on the iPhone 3G, version 4.2 unified the iPhone and iPad versions of the OS and ushered in the first non-AT&T iPhones, and version 4.3 was introduced alongside the iPad 2. To some degree, software version numbers are arbitrary, but releasing three “major” updates for iOS 8 could indicate that iOS 8’s lifecycle will be similarly busy. Read 1 remaining paragraphs | Comments
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References to iOS 8.1, 8.2, and 8.3 showing up in site analytics
Contrary to earlier rumors, HP’s Chromebook-like Stream 14 turned out to be more expensive than people had hoped for when it was announced a few weeks ago. Having said that, today HP is finally introducing its $199 laptop with Windows, staying in line with what a company representative had told us before in regards to the Stream line expanding beyond the 14-inch machine. But there’s more, since HP’s new, budget-friendly , 11.6-inch laptop isn’t the only fresh announcement. There’s a 13.3-inch model as well, priced at $230, which, along with the $199 Stream, features an Intel Celeron processor and 32GB of flash storage. In addition to this pair of notebooks, HP is also introducing two Windows 8.1 tablets: the HP Stream 7 and HP Stream 8. If the moniker for each didn’t give it away, they are 7- and 8-inch slates, respectively, with the former costing a mere $99 and the latter going for $149. Unfortunately, HP isn’t sharing many more details (like other specs) at the moment. We do know, however, that the company hopes to lure in customers by including a bit of free mobile data every month and access to Microsoft’s Office 365 Personal productivity suite, which is definitely a nice bonus. All devices announced are expected to be available in the US by the beginning of November. In the meantime, stay tuned — we’ll be adding hands-on photos and additional info shortly. Filed under: Laptops , Tablets , HP Comments
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HP’s $199 Windows laptop arrives alongside a pair of tablets
An anonymous reader writes Parents in China’s Zhejiang province can give their own blood to earn some extra points on their child’s high school entrance exam. Four liters of donated blood will get your child one extra point; 6 liters adds two points; and 8 liters, three. From the article: “The policy burst into the national limelight this week, when a Weibo user posted a photo of a bandaged arm, saying, ‘For my future child, I say one thing: Relax when you take the high school entrance exam. Your dad’s already helped you gain points.’ The post was widely shared. Though the user declined to be interviewed by China Real Time, he also clarified his original post, saying that he had in fact been giving blood since age 18.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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Blood For Extra Credit Points Offer Raises Eyebrows In Test-Mad China
HughPickens.com writes Reuters reports that your medical information, including names, birth dates, policy numbers, diagnosis codes and billing information, is worth 10 times more than your credit card number on the black market. Fraudsters use this data to create fake IDs to buy medical equipment or drugs that can be resold, or they combine a patient number with a false provider number and file made-up claims with insurers, according to experts who have investigated cyber attacks on healthcare organizations. Medical identity theft is often not immediately identified by a patient or their provider, giving criminals years to milk such credentials. That makes medical data more valuable than credit cards, which tend to be quickly canceled by banks once fraud is detected. Stolen health credentials can go for $10 each, about 10 or 20 times the value of a U.S. credit card number, says Don Jackson, director of threat intelligence at PhishLabs, a cyber crime protection company. He obtained the data by monitoring underground exchanges where hackers sell the information. Plus “healthcare providers and hospitals are just some of the easiest networks to break into, ” says Jeff Horne. “When I’ve looked at hospitals, and when I’ve talked to other people inside of a breach, they are using very old legacy systems — Windows systems that are 10 plus years old that have not seen a patch.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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Medical Records Worth More To Hackers Than Credit Cards
colinneagle points out this article about how the Marines are using a Microsoft Kinect to build maps. A military contractor has come up with something that has the U.S. Marine Corps interested. The Augmented Reality Sand Table is currently being developed by the Army Research Laboratory and was on display at the Modern Day Marine Expo that recently took place on Marine Corps Base Quantico in Virginia. The set-up is simple: a table-sized sandbox is rigged with a Microsoft Kinect video game motion sensor and an off-the-shelf projector. Using existing software, the sensor detects features in the sand and projects a realistic topographical map that corresponds to the layout, which can change in real time as observers move the sand around in the box. The setup can also project maps from Google Earth or other mapping and GPS systems, enabling units to visualize the exact terrain they’ll be covering for exercises or operations. Eventually, they hope to add visual cues to help troops shape the sandbox to match the topography of a specified map. Eventually, the designers of the sandbox hope to involve remote bases or even international partners in conducting joint training and operations exercises. Future possibilities include large-scale models that could project over a gymnasium floor for a battalion briefing, and a smartphone version that could use a pocket-sized projector to turn any patch of dirt into an operational 3-D map. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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Marines Put Microsoft Kinect To Work For 3D Mapping
Protesters in Hong Kong have started communicating via FireChat, an app that lets people send messages without cell reception . Read more…
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Protesters Are Using FireChat’s Mesh Networks To Organize in Hong Kong
As it promised mere weeks ago, Jawbone has launched a new version of Up for iOS that syncs data from numerous health services and doesn’t require its own tracker. Confusingly, the Jawbone app which does require an Up or Up24 tracker is also called ‘Up’ and is still available . However, the new version is more of a fitness catchall app that works with Apple’s Health and over a hundred other apps (and their trackers), like RunKeeper and IFTTT. Interestingly, it even works with Nest’s thermostat to “create an ideal sleep environment.” In fact, the new Up wants to manage all aspects of your health by tracking your sleep, nutrition and workouts. Once it learns your habits, the “Insight Engine” will then give you personalized health tips and other info. There are also social functions, including team tracking and the ability to boast about fitness milestones. Apple had pulled HealthKit apps a few days ago due to bugs, but after some scrambling they’re now back — you can grab Jawbone’s UP for iOS here . Filed under: Wearables , Software Comments Via: MacRumors Source: Jawbone
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Jawbone’s trackerless Up app syncs with Apple Health, other fitness services