Home Depot Confirms Hack: As Many As 60 Million Cards Stolen

Home Depot confirmed today that the company was, indeed, the victim of a large credit card breach reported by many customers last week. An estimated 60 million card numbers were stolen, which would make it the biggest such hack in retail history. Read more…

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Home Depot Confirms Hack: As Many As 60 Million Cards Stolen

Intel Launches Xeon E5 V3 Series Server CPUs With Up To 18 Cores

MojoKid writes Intel took the wraps off its Xeon E5 v3 server line-up today and the chip, based on Intel’s Haswell-EP architecture, is looking impressive. Intel’s previous generation Xeon E5 V2 chips, which were based on Ivy Bridge, topped out at 12 cores per socket. The new Xeon E5 v3 processors, in contrast, are going to push as high as 18 cores per socket — a 50% improvement. The TDP range is pushing slightly outwards in both directions; the E5 V2 family ranged from 50W to 150W, whereas the E5 V3 family will span 55W — 160W in a single workstation configuration. The core technologies Intel is introducing to the E5 V3 family pull from the Haswell architecture, including increased cache bandwidth, improved overall IPC, and new features like AVX2, which offers a theoretical near-doubling of floating point performance over the original AVX instructions. Full support for DDR4 DRAM memory is now included as well. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Intel Launches Xeon E5 V3 Series Server CPUs With Up To 18 Cores

Archaeologists Just Discovered a 1,000-Year-Old Viking Fortress

It’s been 60 years since a viking settlement was discovered, leading historians to assume that we’d uncovered everything there is to uncover. But this weekend, Danish and English archaeologists announced they’ve unearthed evidence of a new fortress that’s been sought after for years. Read more…

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Archaeologists Just Discovered a 1,000-Year-Old Viking Fortress

Robocouch takes students to class without all of that exercise nonsense

There’s a different kind of two-seater roaming the sidewalks of the University of New South Wales (UNSW) in Australia: a motorized couch. Thanks to the efforts of a few engineering students, what started as a joke amongst friends is now a Xbox gamepad-controlled robotic sofa. Under the cushions, there’s an electric scooter motor and an armrest-mounted Raspberry Pi to wrangle the vehicle’s four independent wheels. All told, it took a group of nine students a year to get the kinks worked out of the mechanical, software and assembly systems. “We were thinking about making a fridge robotic, too, so you could call it over, ” said co-creator Will Andrew. One thing’s for sure: they’d certainly improve gameday lounging . Filed under: Misc , Transportation Comments Source: UNSW Australia

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Robocouch takes students to class without all of that exercise nonsense

Google’s latest object recognition tech can spot everything in your living room

Automatic object recognition in images is currently tricky. Even if a computer has the help of smart algorithms and human assistants , it may not catch everything in a given scene. Google might change that soon, though; it just detailed a new detection system that can easily spot lots of objects in a scene, even if they’re partly obscured. The key is a neural network that can rapidly refine the criteria it’s looking for without requiring a lot of extra computing power. The result is a far deeper scanning system that can both identify more objects and make better guesses — it can spot tons of items in a living room, including (according to Google’s odd example) a flying cat. The technology is still young, but the internet giant sees its recognition breakthrough helping everything from image searches through to self-driving cars . Don’t be surprised if it gets much easier to look for things online using only vaguest of terms. Filed under: Internet , Google Comments Via: GigaOM Source: Google Research Blog

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Google’s latest object recognition tech can spot everything in your living room

Denver Latest City Hit By Viral Respiratory Infection That Targets Kids

A respiratory illness that almost exclusively infects children and for which there is no vaccine has struck Denver, Colorado, the latest in a series of infection clusters in the Midwest; one Denver hospital alone has treated more than 900 children for the illness since August 18, though no deaths have been reported. Health officials believe that the sickness is related to a rare virus called human enterovirus 68 (HEV68), the [Denver] Post says. HEV68, first seen in California in 1962, and an unwelcome but highly infrequent visitor to communities worldwide since then, is a relative of the virus linked to the common cold (human rhinoviruses, or HRV), according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. … HEV68, which almost uniquely affects children, tends to first cause cold-like symptoms, including body aches, sneezing and coughing. These mild complaints then worsen into life-threatening breathing problems that are all the more dangerous to children with asthma. Since viruses do not respond to antibiotics, hospitals have treated the illness with asthma therapies. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Denver Latest City Hit By Viral Respiratory Infection That Targets Kids

TiVo proves that ‘size matters’ with absurd 26,000 hour DVR

TiVo has taken the TV-watching to a new, insane dimension with the Mega , a rack-mountable, 24TB DVR that will cost around $5, 000. That trumps its current flagship Roamio Pro ‘s 4TB storage by sixfold and makes it look quaint in comparison. Like that box, the Mega supports six channels of simultaneous recording, built-in transcoding, multi-room capability and live streaming to smartphones or tablets. In addition, it uses RAID 5 and hot-swappable drives, so that you won’t lose your Shark Week marathon in case of a hard disk failure. While the Mega seems like overkill in nearly every way, TiVo explained that “size matters — people hate being forced to delete cool stuff from their DVR.” That shouldn’t be a problem, since the new system brings 4, 000 hours of HD recording, or nearly 26, 000 hours at regular SD resolution. However, with the five grand price tag, you’ll need to both be rich and have a lot of time to watch TV, a market segment we doubt is all that large. However, with a full keyboard, ethernet and a recording scheduler, it could also appeal to video producers or broadcasters who need to track and store a lot of content. The Mega will arrive early next year along with final pricing, but if you’re interested, beware — it’s not likely to fit under your TV stand. Filed under: Home Entertainment , Storage Comments Via: The Verge Source: TiVo

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TiVo proves that ‘size matters’ with absurd 26,000 hour DVR

GM To Introduce Hands-Free Driving In Cadillac Model

cold fjord notes that drivers will be able to switch a new Cadillac model to partial auto-pilo. General Motors Co. (GM), the largest U.S. automaker, will introduce a Cadillac model in two years that can travel on the highway without the driver holding the steering wheel or putting a foot on a pedal. The 2017 Cadillac model will feature “Super Cruise” technology that takes control of steering, acceleration and braking at highway speeds of 70 miles per hour or in stop-and-go congested traffic, Chief Executive Officer Mary Barra said yesterday in a speech at the Intelligent Transport System World Congress in Detroit. GM declined to release the name of the model that will carry the feature. Barra also said GM in two years will become the first automaker to equip a model with so-called vehicle-to-vehicle technology that enables the car to communicate with other autos with similar abilities to warn of traffic hazards and improve road safety. GM will make the V2V feature standard on its 2017 Cadillac CTS sedan, debuting in the second half of 2016, she said. The Super Cruise feature will be on a different Cadillac model and goes beyond similar technology available on some Mercedes-Benz models that operates only at low speeds. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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GM To Introduce Hands-Free Driving In Cadillac Model

L.A. Times National Security Reporter Cleared Stories With CIA Before Publishing

New submitter Prune (557140) writes with a link to a story at The Intercept which might influence the way you look at media coverage of the kind of government activity that deserves rigorous press scrutiny. According to the story, “Email exchanges between CIA public affairs officers and Ken Dilanian, now an Associated Press intelligence reporter who previously covered the CIA for the Times, show that Dilanian enjoyed a closely collaborative relationship with the agency, explicitly promising positive news coverage and sometimes sending the press office entire story drafts for review prior to publication. In at least one instance, the CIA’s reaction appears to have led to significant changes in the story that was eventually published in the Times.” Another telling excerpt: On Friday April 27, 2012, he emailed the press office a draft story that he and a colleague, David Cloud, were preparing. The subject line was “this is where we are headed, ” and he asked if “you guys want to push back on any of this.” It appears the agency did push back. On May 2, 2012, he emailed the CIA a new opening to the story with a subject line that asked, “does this look better?” The piece ran on May 16, and while it bore similarities to the earlier versions, it had been significantly softened. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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L.A. Times National Security Reporter Cleared Stories With CIA Before Publishing

T-Mobile sues Huawei for stealing parts from its phone testing robots

Cellular providers and phone makers don’t always have the best relationships, but things are getting particularly sour between T-Mobile USA and Huawei. The UnCarrier is suing Huawei for trying not just to copy its phone testing robot technology, but to steal it. The phone maker’s staffers reportedly took illegal photos of the testing gear, and then swiped components; they even tried to break in when banned from the premises. T-Mobile insists that it spent “tens of millions” of dollars to switch to other phones as part of the breaches, and that Huawei may have earned “hundreds of millions” in ill-gotten profit. You would expect many companies to fight such allegations tooth and nail, but Huawei isn’t. It agrees that there’s at least some merit to claims that its workers were “acting inappropriately, ” and notes that the employees involved were fired. While it’s planning to protect itself in court, it “respects” T-Mobile’s right to sue over the thefts and plans to cooperate. Those kind words probably aren’t going to placate Magenta’s lawyers, but they suggest that the two telecom giants won’t be fighting to the bitter end. Filed under: Cellphones , Robots , Wireless , Mobile , T-Mobile Comments Via: TmoNews Source: Seattle Times

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T-Mobile sues Huawei for stealing parts from its phone testing robots