ars – Page 21 – Tech Today w/ Ken May

AMD abandons the microserver market, takes $75 million hit

As part of its 1Q 2015 earnings release, AMD has announced that it is leaving the high density microserver market, effective immediately. AMD bought SeaMicro in 2012 for $334 million to get a foothold into the microserver business. At the time, SeaMicro built systems containing dozens of Intel Atom and Xeon processors connected to a shared storage and network fabric. Since the acquisition, AMD has only released a single new SeaMicro system, the SM15000. This could use either AMD Opteron systems (using the Piledriver core) or Intel Xeons (using the Ivy Bridge core). With today’s announcement, it’s clear that system will also be the last new SeaMicro system to be released. Read 3 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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AMD abandons the microserver market, takes $75 million hit

J.J. Abrams reveals new Force Awakens teaser, details

On Thursday, J.J. Abrams kicked off a weekend-long Star Wars convention by revealing the second teaser trailer for the upcoming Star Wars: The Force Awakens film, and it included the first reveal of Harrison Ford reprising his role as Han Solo. “Chewie, we’re home!” Ford says with Chewbacca standing behind him to close the teaser, which also included footage of a Millennium Falcon chase, a melted Darth Vader mask, a lightsaber hand-off, and Mark Hamill narrating a speech to an heir apparent (though unseen). Stormtroopers, X-Wings, TIE Fighters, new droids, and the sequel’s three new leads also feature prominently. As a lead-up to that teaser reveal, Entertainment Weekly columnist Anthony Breznican hosted a panel with Abrams and Lucasfilm president Kathleen Kennedy, where he asked questions about filming scenes in Abu Dhabi, designing new droids (including new droid “BB8,” whose impressive rolling ball design includes a head that swivels on its top), and casting the series’ three new lead actors. Read 8 remaining paragraphs | Comments

Los Angeles school district demands multi-million dollar refund from Apple

On Wednesday, the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) told Apple that it would not accept any further deliveries of Pearson curriculum, which Apple has been providing as part of a $1.6 billion plan to give every student in the nation’s second-largest school district an iPad. LAUSD also asked for a “multi-millon dollar refund” for software that had already been delivered, according to local public radio station KPCC . In 2013 the school district signed an initial $30 million deal with Apple in a program that was supposed to cost up to $1.3 billion. As part of the program, LAUSD said it would buy iPads from Apple at $768 each , and then Pearson, a subcontractor with Apple, would provide math and science curriculum for the tablets at an additional $200 per unit. Not a month after the pilot program launched, students were found disabling app and browser limitations on their tablets. A month after that, LAUSD reported that a third of the 2,100 iPads distributed during the pilot program had gone missing . A year later, media investigations revealed possible malfeasance in securing the contract with Apple and Pearson by LAUSD superintendent John Deasy. While Deasy has denied wrongdoing , he recently stepped down from his position and his successor, Ramon C. Cortines, has said he will scrap the program . Read 5 remaining paragraphs | Comments

Universal backdoor for e-commerce platform lets hackers shop for victims

As people become more aware of the threat of targeted “phishing” attacks via e-mail and social media, malware-armed attackers are turning to new ways to target specific victims where they least expect it—by exploiting the legitimate websites they frequent and assume to be secure. Last week, Swiss security firm Hi-Tech Bridge disclosed that the Web store of a corporate customer had been used to deliver a targeted attack against a specific site visitor. The attackers were also able to retrieve the store’s customer database, which they may have used to search for desirable targets. The attack exploited a current and patched version of osCommerce Online Merchant (version 2.3.4, released last June), a common Web store content management system used by a number of high-profile companies—including Canonical’s Ubuntu Shop . The attacker inserted malicious PHP script that provided a backdoor into the site and could be configured to check users’ IP addresses and login credentials as they visit the site for specific targets. Once a desired target is detected, the script attempts to download malware to the victim from another site. The attacker can then remotely delete the backdoor and altered PHP files and replace them with the original by connecting to the script with a “?del” parameter added to its URL. The backdoor script is labeled as “osCommerce 2.x.x universal pwner by Piht0z,” and it’s just that: a generic PHP-based backdoor for osCommerce sites. According to Ilia Kolochenko, High-Tech Bridge’s CEO, there have been similar cases of targeted attacks on users of e-commerce sites before, but “it’s the first time we see a universal backdoor for a large e-commerce platform,” he said in a blog post about the discovery. “This means that hackers started using this vector on a regular basis to achieve their goals.” Read on Ars Technica | Comments

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Universal backdoor for e-commerce platform lets hackers shop for victims

Sound waves separate rare cancer cells from blood

Circulating tumor cells (CTCs) are a rare type of cancer cell that are found in the blood stream of patients with localized tumors. Successful separation of CTCs from blood could serve as a liquid biopsy to help diagnose cancer and monitor treatment progress. A deeper understanding of CTCs could also lead to a better understanding of the most deadly cancer process: metastasis, where cancer cells leave established tumors and migrate to other locations in the body. Currently, CTC separation methods rely on features that distinguish CTCs from other cells—antibodies that stick to them, cell size, deformability, or even electrical properties. Scientists have also explored using sound waves to separate CTCs. Acoustic-based separation provides excellent biocompatibility and safety; it preserves the viability, function, phenotype, and genotype of cells. It also allow cells to be separated without modification. As a result, sound-based separation methods enable CTCs to be maintained in their native state throughout the separation process while avoiding invasive biopsies. Unfortunately, previous sound-based separations technologies haven’t managed to separate CTCs from clinical samples due to insufficient throughput and long-term operational instability. Recently, a team of scientists has developed an acoustic-based microfluidic device that separates CTCs from peripheral blood samples of cancer patients in a high-throughput manner. This method relies on something called tilted-angle standing surface sound waves. These standing waves contain points that “stand still,” called nodes, around which the wave oscillates. Read 7 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Sound waves separate rare cancer cells from blood

Hacked French network exposed its own passwords during TV interview

While French authorities continued investigating how the TV5Monde network had 11 of its stations’ signals interrupted the night before, one of its staffers proved just how likely a basic password theft might have led to the incident. In an interview with French news program 13 Heures , TV5Monde reporter David Delos unwittingly revealed at least one password for the station’s social media presence. That’s because he was filmed in front of a staffer’s desk—which was smothered in sticky notes and taped index cards that were covered in account usernames and passwords. Delos’s segment revealed the usernames and passwords for TV5Monde’s Twitter and Instagram accounts, but they were too difficult to read in an archived video of the broadcast . That wasn’t the case for the YouTube information, however; Twitter user pent0thal confirmed that account’s displayed password was “lemotdepassedeyoutube,” which translates in English to “the password of YouTube.” Read 2 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Hacked French network exposed its own passwords during TV interview

Descent Underground Kickstarter crosses $600,000 finish line

It’s no doubt been a long day for Eric “Wingman” Peterson and the other folks at Descendent Studios , but their crowdfunded reboot of the six-degrees-of-freedom shooter Descent is now over the $600,000 mark and will receive its funding, which will allow Peterson and team to buckle down and get to work on the title—once the post-Kickstarter partying is over, of course. Though the funding campaign got off to a good start, pledges slowed over the last week of the campaign. However, backers donated more than $200,000 of the $600,000 goal in the past four days, with $70,000 of donations coming in today, on the campaign’s final day. With about two hours left on the clock, the donation mark stands at just a bit over $602,000. Descent Underground engine demo running on an Oculus Rift DK2. Our stomachs lurch in anticipation! Peterson and his team (which includes several former members of the Austin branch of Cloud Imperium, which is currently focusing on building Star Citizen’s persistent universe) have set their sights on resurrecting the Decent series of games, which reached the height of their popularity in the late 1990s and cast players as the pilot of a fast, maneuverable spaceship blasting killer robots in underground mines. The game’s hook was that unlike other FPS titles, Descent allowed full movement along all axes—you could move up, down, left right, forward, backward, and rotate in any direction. Read 3 remaining paragraphs | Comments

Next Windows Server offer new even smaller “Nano Server” footprint

Microsoft is adding even more features to Windows Server to diversify and strengthen its support for virtualization and containerization on its platform. The next Windows Server will include an even more stripped down, lightweight install mode called Nano Server. Windows Server already has a shrunk install option, Server Core, that omits various features to reduce the memory and disk footprint, and to shrink its exposure to security flaws. Nano Server strips back the operating system further still, dropping things like the GUI stack, 32-bit Win32 support, local logins, and remote desktop support. Nano Server is designed for two kinds of workload; cloud apps built on runtimes such as .NET, Java, Node.js, or Python, and cloud infrastructure, such as hosting Hyper-V virtual machines. Compared to the full Server install, Microsoft claims that Nano Server shrinks the disk footprint by 93 percent, the number of critical security bulletins by 92 percent, and the number of reboots by 80 percent. Read 4 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Next Windows Server offer new even smaller “Nano Server” footprint

YouTube planning subscription service for ad-free videos

According to an e-mail sent to YouTube content creators, the video platform is looking to launch a subscription-based service that will permit viewers to bypass pre-roll ads on videos. It’s unclear how much the subscription will cost per month, but Bloomberg reports that revenue from the feature will be shared with content creators, as a supplement to advertising revenue from viewers who choose not to pay for the subscription service. An anonymous source told Bloomberg that the service could launch as early as this year. Venture Beat noted that an update to the terms of service for YouTube program partners said that the company would share 55 percent of its revenue with creators. What an individual creator gets back from that pool would be based on “a percentage of the monthly views or watchtime of all or a subset of participating content in the relevant subscription offering (as determined by YouTube).” Read 2 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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YouTube planning subscription service for ad-free videos

Dell support software gets flagged by antivirus program

Diagnostic software preinstalled on many Dell computers is now being flagged as a potentially unwanted program by antivirus program Malwarebytes following the discovery of a vulnerability that allows attackers to remotely execute malicious code on older versions. The application known as Dell System Detect failed to validate code before downloading and running it, according to a report published last month by researcher Tom Forbes. Because the program starts itself automatically, a malicious hacker could use it to infect vulnerable machines by luring users to a booby-trapped website. According to researchers with AV provider F-Secure , the malicious website need only have contained the string “dell” somewhere in its domain name to exploit the weakness. www.notreallydell.com was just one example of a site that would have worked. Dell released an update in response to Forbes’s report, but even then, users remained vulnerable. That’s because the updated program still accepted downloads from malicious sites that had a subdomain with “dell” in it, for instance, a.dell.fakesite.ownedbythebadguys.com. Read 2 remaining paragraphs | Comments