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60,000 Germans Evacuate While Officials Try To Defuse a WWII Bomb

More than 70 years ago the UK’s Royal Air Force dropped an 1, 100-pound bomb on Germany. They just found it. An anonymous reader quotes ABC: Residents in two German cities are evacuating their homes as authorities prepare to dispose of World War II-era bombs found during construction work this week. About 21, 000 people have been ordered to leave their homes and workplaces in the western city of Koblenz as a precaution before specialists attempt to defuse the 500-kilogram bomb on Saturday afternoon (local time). Among those moved to safety are prison inmates and hospital patients. Officials in the financial capital Frankfurt, meanwhile, are carrying out what is described as Germany’s biggest evacuation. Frankfurt city officials have said more than 60, 000 residents will have to leave their homes for at least 12 hours. Failure to defuse the bomb could cause a big enough explosion to flatten a city block, a fire department official said. “This bomb has more than 1.4 tonnes of explosives, ” Frankfurt fire chief Reinhard Ries said. “It’s not just fragments that are the problem, but also the pressure that it creates that would dismantle all the buildings in a 100-metre radius”… Police will ring every doorbell and use helicopters with heat-sensing cameras to make sure nobody is left behind before they start diffusing the bomb. Reuters notes that every year Germany discovers more than 2, 000 tons of live bombs and munitions, adding “In July, a kindergarten was evacuated after teachers discovered an unexploded World War Two bomb on a shelf among some toys.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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60,000 Germans Evacuate While Officials Try To Defuse a WWII Bomb

Data leak exposed millions of Time Warner Cable customers

Verizon isn’t the only big US telecom whose corporate ally left customer data out in the open . MacKeeper developer Kromtech has discovered that BroadSoft, a frequent partner to service providers, was storing over 4 million Time Warner Cable customer records on Amazon cloud servers without a password. The records, which stemmed from the MyTWC mobile app, date as far back as November 2010 — years before Charter bought TWC . The information included email addresses, user names, financial transactions (though there’s no indication of credit card data) and billing addresses. There was even closed-circuit camera footage from BroadSoft’s Indian offices, as if to rub salt in the wound. You might not need to panic. BroadSoft tells Gizmodo that it locked down its Amazon data (Charter says it was taken down) and hasn’t seen evidence that intruders accessed the information. Both BroadSoft and Charter say they’re investigating and will take extra steps to address the situation if necessary. To be on the safe side, though, Charter is recommending that MyTWC owners change their user names and passwords. The exposure didn’t include extremely sensitive info like credit card data or social security numbers, so the potential damage is relatively limited. However, it’s not so much the specific threat as that the data was left exposed in the first place. It shows that companies are still making rookie mistakes when handling data, and suggests that they need to implement more stringent (and importantly, continuous) oversight of their partners to keep your data secure. Via: Gizmodo Source: Kromtech

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Data leak exposed millions of Time Warner Cable customers

The Oldest Known Human Remains In the Americas Have Been Found In a Mexican Cave

schwit1 shares a report from Seeker: An ice-free corridor between the Americas and Asia opened up about 12, 500 years ago, allowing humans to cross over the Bering land bridge to settle what is now the United States and places beyond to the south. History books have conveyed that information for years to explain how the Americas were supposedly first settled by people, such as those from the Clovis culture. At least one part of the Americas was already occupied by humans before that time, however, says new research on the skeleton of a male youth found in Chan Hol cave near Tulum, Mexico. Dubbed the Young Man of Chan Hol, the remains date to 13, 000 years ago, according to a paper published in the journal PLOS ONE. How he arrived at the location remains a great mystery given the timing and the fact that Mexico is well over 4, 000 miles away from the Bering land crossing. For the new study, Gonzalez, Stinnesbeck, and their colleagues dated the Young Man of Chan Hol’s remains by analyzing the bones’ uranium, carbon, and oxygen isotopes, which were also found in stalagmite that had grown through the pelvic bone. The scientists believe that the resulting age of 13, 000 years could apply to at least two other skeletons found in caves around Tulum: a teenage female named Naia and a 25-30-year-old female named Eve of Naharon. Gonzalez said that the shape of the skulls suggests that Eve and the others “have more of an affinity with people from Southeast Asia.” He and his team further speculated that the individuals could have originated in Indonesia. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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The Oldest Known Human Remains In the Americas Have Been Found In a Mexican Cave

Linux Desktop Market Share Crosses 3%

Data for the month of August 2017 from reliable market analytics firm Net Applications is here, and it suggests that Linux has finally surpassed the three percent mark, quite possibly for the first time in recent years. According to Net Applications, the desktop market share of Linux jumped from 2.53 percent in July to 3.37 percent in August. There’s no explanation for what amounted for this growth. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Linux Desktop Market Share Crosses 3%

XYZPrinting announces a $3,000 full-color 3D printer

 Full-color 3D printing at home has long been a wild-eyed dream of consumers and hobbyists alike. Thus far it’s been fun to print out little trinkets in a single color, but to create something more akin to a painted action figure would be a game-changer. And, thanks to inkject technology, we just might have reached that milestone. XYZprinting, the maker of the popular Da Vinci line of… Read More

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XYZPrinting announces a $3,000 full-color 3D printer

A Canadian University Gave $11 Million To a Scammer

A Canadian university transferred more than $11 million CAD (around $9 million USD) to a scammer that university staff believed to be a vendor in a phishing attack, a university statement published on Thursday states. From a report: Staff at MacEwan University in Edmonton, Alberta became aware of the fraud on Wednesday, August 23, the statement says. According to the university, the attacker sent a series of emails that convinced staff to change payment details for a vendor, and that these changes resulted in the transfer of $11.8 million CAD into bank accounts that the school has traced to Canada and Hong Kong. The school is working with authorities in Edmonton, Montreal, London, and Hong Kong, the statement reads. According to the university, its IT systems were not compromised and no personal or financial information was stolen. A phishing scam is not technically a “hack, ” it should be noted, and only requires the attacker to convince the victim to send money. The school’s preliminary investigation found that “controls around the process of changing vendor banking information were inadequate, and that a number of opportunities to identify the fraud were missed.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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A Canadian University Gave $11 Million To a Scammer

Windows 10 Fall Creators Update lands October 17th, Microsoft confirms

Looks like that leak was right , after all. Microsoft announced today at IFA that the Windows 10 Fall Creators Update will officially launch on October 17th. It’s the fourth major addition to the OS, and it follows the Creators Update from earlier this year. The biggest change? It’ll give us our first taste of Windows Mixed Reality, the company’s VR platform that’s powered by inexpensive headsets from the likes of Dell, HP , Lenovo and ASUS . And if you don’t have a headset, you’ll also be able to check out some experiences in 2D with the Mixed Reality Viewer. According to executive vice president of Windows and devices Terry Myerson, the Fall Creators Update will also support eye-tracking, which makes it easier for those who can’t use their limbs to navigate the OS. This is particularly useful for those suffering from Lou Gehrig’s disease, Myerson said at an IFA keynote today. Unfortunately, the Timeline feature Microsoft showed off at Build won’t be ready in time for the Fall Creators Update . Similar to Apple’s Handoff, it lets you continue your work across a wide variety of devices. Notably, that doesn’t just mean Windows 10 computers — it’ll also bring over some of what you’re doing to iOS and Android, as well. The update will also mark the debut of the new Windows Fluent Design System, which aims to upgrade the look and feel of the OS and apps. It won’t be a huge visual change, but it should be the start of a slightly slicker-looking Windows. Follow all the latest news from IFA 2017 here! Cherlynn Low contributed reporting.

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Windows 10 Fall Creators Update lands October 17th, Microsoft confirms

FDA approves first gene therapy for certain leukemia patients

Enlarge / Scanning electron micrograph of a human T cell. (credit: NIAID/NIH ) For the first time, the Food and Drug Administration has approved a therapy that involves genetically engineering a patient’s own cells, the agency announced Wednesday . The therapy, called Kymriah (tisagenlecleucel) by Novartis, will be used to reprogram the immune cells of pediatric and young adult patients with a certain type of leukemia, called B-cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia. During a 22-day out-of-body retraining, patients’ immune cells—specifically T cells that patrol the body and destroy enemies—get a new gene that allows them to identify and attack the leukemia cells. Such therapies, called CAR-T therapies, have shown potential for effectively knocking back cancers in several trials, raising hopes of researchers and patients alike. But they come with severe safety concerns —plus potentially hefty price tags. Read 11 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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FDA approves first gene therapy for certain leukemia patients

China Plans 600 MPH Train To Rival Elon Musk’s Hyperloop

In addition to relaunching the world’s fastest bullet train, China is working on developing technology similar to Elon Musk’s Hyperloop, which will allow passengers to travel at speeds up to 4, 000 km/h (~2, 500 mph). The first stage of the company’s plan, however, will be to create a network of these “flying trains” operating at 1, 000 km/h (~600 mph). Shanghaiist reports: Earlier today, the China Aerospace Science and Industry Corporation (CASIC), one of the nation’s major space contractors, announced that it had begun research and development into a new, futuristic type of transport which would operate via supersonic “near ground flight.” The system would presumably be similar to that of the Hyperloop, proposed earlier this decade by Elon Musk, in which capsules would fly at ultrafast speeds down reduced-pressure tubes, dramatically reducing travel times. Of course, the CASIC isn’t looking to reach speeds of 4, 000 km/h right away. The first stage of the company’s plan will be to create an intercity network of these “flying trains” operating at 1, 000 km/h. In the second phase, this network would be extended and the max speed of the pods increased to 2, 000 km/h. Finally, in the third stage, the speed would be boosted all the way up to 4, 000 km/h — five times the speed of civil aviation aircraft today. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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China Plans 600 MPH Train To Rival Elon Musk’s Hyperloop

Cummins Unveils Electric Semi Truck Before Tesla

Cummins has beat Tesla to the punch by unveiling its own electric semi truck. According to Forbes, the fully electric, class 7 day-cab urban hauler, called Aeos, gets 100 miles of range from its 140-kWh battery pack and can haul a 22-ton trailer. While the company does offer the options of additional battery packs to triple the range or a range-extending engine generator, the Aeos is better suited for city use rather than long-haul trucking. Autoblog reports: While this electric truck is a concept, it’s a working demonstration of a product Cummins plans to start producing in 2019. At the unveiling in Columbus, Ind., Cummins also revealed its latest near-zero-emissions natural gas engines, as well as the X15 and lightweight X12 clean diesel engines. The company said it is embracing new technologies that allow its customers to contribute to a sustainable future. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Cummins Unveils Electric Semi Truck Before Tesla