Category: reader

China Accidentally Built a Housing Complex in the Middle of a Highway

There’s no denying that China doesn’t have the best record when it comes to urban planning and development, particularly in regards to real estate —and their most recent blunder is a doozy. Thanks to some poor planning and (presumably poor) communication, China accidentally built a brand new set of modern apartments right in the middle of an eight-lane highway. Your very own permanent, honking sound soother. Read more…        

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China Accidentally Built a Housing Complex in the Middle of a Highway

Dangerous VBulletin Exploit In the Wild

An anonymous reader writes “vBulletin is a popular proprietary CMS that was recently reported to be vulnerable to an unspecified attack vector. Although vBulletin has not disclosed the root cause of the vulnerability or its impact, we determined the attacker’s methods. The identified vulnerability allows an attacker to abuse the vBulletin configuration mechanism in order to create a secondary administrative account. Once the attacker creates the account, they will have full control over the exploited vBulletin application, and subsequently the supported site.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Dangerous VBulletin Exploit In the Wild

How DirecTV Overhauled Its 800-Person IT Group With a Game

mattydread23 writes “Most gamification efforts fail. But when DirecTV wanted to encourage its IT staff to be more open about sharing failures, it created a massive internal game called F12. Less than a year later, it’s got 97% participation and nearly everybody in the IT group actually likes competing. So what did DirecTV do right? The most important thing was to devote a full-time staffer to the game, and to keep updating it constantly.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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How DirecTV Overhauled Its 800-Person IT Group With a Game

How The NSA Deploys Malware

We’ve long suspected that the NSA, the world’s premiere spy agency, was pretty good at breaking into computers. But now, thanks to an article by security expert Bruce Schneier—who is working with the Guardian to go through the Snowden documents—we have a much more detailed view of how the NSA uses exploits in order to infect the computers of targeted users. The template for attacking people with malware used by the NSA is in widespread use by criminals and fraudsters, as well as foreign intelligence agencies, so it’s important to understand and defend against this threat to avoid being a victim to the plethora of attackers out there. Read more…        

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How The NSA Deploys Malware

NC School District Recalls Its Amplify Tablets After 10% Break In Under a Month

Nate the greatest writes “Guilford County Schools’ headline grabbing tablet program is back in the news again. The program came to an abrupt end last Friday when the school district announced that they were recalling all of the Amplify tablets. GCS had leased over 15 thousand of the tablets (at a cost of $200 a year) for its middle school students, but decided to recall the tablets just one month into the school year after some 1500 students reported a broken screen. Around two thousand complained of improperly fitting cases, and there were also 175 reports of malfunctioning power supplies. There’s currently no explanation for the cases or power supplies, but GCS has stated that the tablets broke because they lacked a layer of Gorilla Glass. This was listed in the contract, but the school district did not confirm the condition of the tablets before accepting them. This program was the poster child for News Corp.’s entry into the educational market. It was the single largest program to use the Amplify tablet, and its failure represents a serious setback. The Amplify tablet now has a record for poor construction quality and a breakage rate that is 12 times higher than what Squaretrade reported in early 2012 for the iPad 2.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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NC School District Recalls Its Amplify Tablets After 10% Break In Under a Month

New High Tech $100 Bills Start To Circulate Today

Hugh Pickens DOT Com writes “New $100 bills made their debut today in the U.S. They include high tech features designed to make it easier for the public to authenticate but more difficult for counterfeiters to replicate. Those measures include a blue, 3-D security ribbon, as well as color-shifting ink that changes from copper to green when the note is tilted (PDF). That ink can be found on a large ‘100’ on the back of the bill, on one of the ‘100’s’ on the front, and on a new image of an ink well that’s also on the front. ‘The $100 is the highest value denomination that we issue, and it circulates broadly around the world, ‘ says Michael Lambert, assistant director for cash at the Federal Reserve Board. ‘Therefore, we took the necessary time to develop advanced security features that are easy for the public to use in everyday transactions, but difficult for counterfeiters to replicate.’ The bill was originally due to reach banks in 2011, but three years ago the Federal Reserve announced that a problem with the currency’s new security measures was causing the bills to crease during printing, which left blank spaces on the bills. This led the Feds to shred more than 30 million of the bills in 2012. The image of Benjamin Franklin will be the same as on the current bill, but like all the other newly designed currencies, it will no longer be surrounded by an dark oval. Except for the $1 and $2 bill, all U.S. paper currency has been redesigned in the last 10 years to combat counterfeiting.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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New High Tech $100 Bills Start To Circulate Today

Obamacare site hits reset button on passwords as contractors scramble

Getting to this page on the Healthcare.gov site is just the start of the battle for would-be insurance customers. Sean Gallagher Amid all the attention, bugs, and work happening at Healthcare.gov in light of the Affordable Care Act, potential registrants talking to phone support today have been told that all user passwords are being reset to help address the site’s login woes. And the tech supports behind Healthcare.gov will be asking more users to act in the name of fixing the site, too. According to registrants speaking with Ars, individuals whose logins never made it to the site’s database will have to re-register using a different username, as their previously chosen names are now stuck in authentication limbo. The website for the Affordable Care Act (aka “Obamacare”) launched just last week. With all the scrutiny and debate happening, if ever there was a website launch that was “too big to fail, ” this was it.  So, of course, it did—depending on how you define “failure.” The inability of Obamacare portals to keep up with the traffic demands initially put upon them has been seized by politicians and conservative pundits as evidence that Obamacare “is not ready for prime time” in the words of Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah). Now, a week later, the site appears to be stabilizing, with waiting times dropping dramatically for those who haven’t been able to register before. A test of the site this morning had me waiting four minutes to get to the signup page; others got on instantly. But problems persist beyond the front door. The contractors responsible for the exchange—CGI Federal for the website itself, Quality Software Systems Inc. (QSSI) for the information “hub” that determines eligibility for programs and provides the data on qualified insurance plans, and Booz Allen for enrollment and eligibility technical support—are scrambling to deploy more fixes. Technical support call center operators continue to handle an onslaught of calls from users who can’t get back into the system after registering. Read 13 remaining paragraphs | Comments        

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Obamacare site hits reset button on passwords as contractors scramble

Red Bull May Have Invented A Secret New Hybrid Technology

At the Singapore Grand Prix two weekends ago, Red Bull driver Sebastian Vettel won by an unbelievable 32 second margin over his closest rival. Seriously, it’s unbelievable. Now F1 experts believe that Red Bull Racing’s F1 engineers may have invented a new kind of traction control that links the car’s hybrid engine to its suspension — but no one knows for sure. The whole world is stumped. Read more…        

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Red Bull May Have Invented A Secret New Hybrid Technology

Microsoft to roll out Remote Desktop to iOS and Android later this month

Buried somewhere in a press release about enterprise cloud solutions, Microsoft let slip that with the launch of Windows Server 2012 R2, it will release its Remote Desktop app not just on Windows, Windows RT and OS X, but also iOS and Android later this month. This marks the first time the popular remote desktop software has made it to the rival mobile platforms, and could prove to be a shot across the bow to other apps in the same space. Michel Roth , one of Microsoft’s Most Valuable Professionals, adds that the OS X app has undergone a major overhaul, the iOS version will support iOS 6 and 7, while the Android variant should support everything from Gingerbread upward. We’re not sure yet on when Microsoft’s Remote Desktop will roll out to the respective app stores, but we do hope Redmond is at least giving some thought to making it available to Windows Phone 8 as well. Filed under: Software Comments Source: Microsoft

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Microsoft to roll out Remote Desktop to iOS and Android later this month

The downfall of Silk Road, and with it, the so-called Dark Net

From Adrian Chen’s Gawker long-read about that recent bust of the web’s biggest online illegal drug marketplace: The lesson of the Silk Road takedown isn’t that Ulbricht was sloppy about security.        

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The downfall of Silk Road, and with it, the so-called Dark Net