brides-cond – Page 4 – Tech Today w/ Ken May

Out-of-date apps put 3 million servers at risk of crypto ransomware infections

(credit: Dr F. Eugene Hester, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service) More than 3 million Internet-accessible servers are at risk of being infected with crypto ransomware because they’re running vulnerable software, including out-of-date versions of Red Hat’s JBoss enterprise application , researchers from Cisco Systems said Friday. About 2,100 of those servers have already been compromised by webshells that give attackers persistent control over the machines, making it possible for them to be infected at any time, the Cisco researchers reported in a blog post . The compromised servers are connected to about 1,600 different IP addresses belonging to schools, governments, aviation companies, and other types of organizations. Some of the compromised servers belonged to school districts that were running the Destiny management system that many school libraries use to keep track of books and other assets. Cisco representatives notified officials at Destiny developer Follett Learning of the compromise, and the Follett officials said they fixed a security vulnerability in the program. Follett also told Cisco the updated Destiny software also scans computers for signs of infection and removes any identified backdoors. Read 2 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Out-of-date apps put 3 million servers at risk of crypto ransomware infections

Ancient shopping lists point to widespread Bible-era literacy

The fortress in Arad. Around 2,600 years ago, in a military fortress in Southern Judah, a man called Eliashib sent and received messages written in ink on fragments of pottery. The contents were mundane, mainly concerning food supplies, but they provide evidence of literacy that could inform the debate about when major Biblical texts were written. Eliashib’s correspondence happened on the cusp of the fall of the Kingdom of Judah, which took place during 588-87 BCE. The date plays an important role in an ongoing debate among Biblical scholars: were the first Biblical texts produced before the fall of Jerusalem—as events were unfolding—or afterwards? One part of the debate hinges on the literacy levels at the time: if the pre-demolition population wasn’t generally literate, it wouldn’t have been likely that important historical texts were created in this era. But Eliashib and his colleagues in the Arad military fortress provide some evidence that literacy in this era may have been more widespread than previously thought. A multidisciplinary group of researchers from Tel Aviv University have combined their expertise in applied math, Jewish history, and archaeology to assess communications from the fortress, trying to establish how many people, and of what rank, were writing messages. Read 8 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Ancient shopping lists point to widespread Bible-era literacy

Homebrew patch makes many Oculus VR games perfectly playable on HTC Vive [Updated]

What’re those SteamVR “chaperone” grid lines doing in an Oculus-exclusive game? Find out yourself if you own an HTC Vive and use the new Revive patch on many “exclusive” Oculus games. (credit: Sam Machkovech) In the race to the top of virtual reality, Oculus and HTC have kicked off a hardware showdown the likes of which we haven’t seen since the “Nintendon’t” days. However, the war includes a curious compatibility issue: HTC’s current software hub, SteamVR, can be accessible by Oculus headset wearers, but Oculus Home doesn’t currently support the HTC Vive. Oculus founder Palmer Luckey has publicly stated that “we can only extend our SDK to work with other headsets if the manufacturer allows us to do so,” seemingly passing the buck to HTC and Valve in regard to why its Oculus Store games don’t natively support the other leading PC headset. Valve has denied this assertion . Either way, we no longer have to wait for the companies to settle their legal and licensing differences, thanks to the efforts of the LibreVR plugin, dubbed Revive . Short version: it works, as proven by the above screenshot we snapped of pack-in Oculus game Lucky’s Tale running within the SteamVR interface (complete with its “chaperone” boundary lines). The author’s test system, which includes a 4.2 GHz i7 processor and a GTX 980Ti, ran all test games without hitches in performance, while other users have reported similarly smooth performance on “VR-ready” Windows 10 PCs. Read 6 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Homebrew patch makes many Oculus VR games perfectly playable on HTC Vive [Updated]

Using synthetic nervous system, paralyzed man is first to move again

(credit: Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center/ Batelle ) With a paralyzing spinal cord injury, the biological wiring that hooks up our controlling brains to our useful limbs gets snipped, leading to permanent loss of sensation and control and usually a lifetime of extra health care. Researchers have spent years working to repair those lost connections, allowing paralyzed patients to sip coffee and enjoy a beer with robotic limbs controlled by just their minds. Now, researchers have gone a step further, allowing a paralyzed person to control his own hand with just his mind. In a study published Wednesday in Nature, researchers report using a “ neural bypass ” that reconnects a patient’s mental commands for movement to responsive muscles in his limbs, creating somewhat of a synthetic nervous system. The pioneering patient, Ian Burkhart, a 24-year-old man left with quadriplegia after a diving accident almost six years ago, can once again move his hand. In the pilot study he could control movement of individual fingers, grasp big and small objects, swipe a credit card, and play Guitar Hero . The advance may open the door to restorative treatments for paralyzed individuals, allowing them to have independent movement—and lives. Read 10 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Using synthetic nervous system, paralyzed man is first to move again

Windows 10 roadmap: Control everything remotely

As Microsoft continues to court businesses and encourage them to upgrade to Windows 10, the company has taken the novel step of publishing a roadmap of Windows 10 features . This roadmap describes business-oriented features that are coming to Windows 10. Some, such as biometric authentication in the Edge browser, have already been announced as part of the forthcoming Anniversary Update and are currently available in the Insider Preview . But others are not. While some are so vague as to tell us nothing—the Passport API used for biometric authentication is being “enhanced” to improve enterprise functionality—other features are rather more concrete. Microsoft plans to add device-based PC unlocking, wherein Windows and Android phones can be used to store authentication credentials, and the feature can be used to both unlock the PC and authenticate apps and services that use Windows Hello and the Passport API. The same is also being enabled for what Microsoft calls “Companion devices” that integrate with a new API called the “Companion Device Framework.” The Microsoft Band 2 fitness device will plug into this framework, and third-party devices will also be able to join in. Read 6 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Windows 10 roadmap: Control everything remotely

Amazon cloud has 1 million users and is near $10 billion in annual sales

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos. (credit: Dan Farber ) Amazon Web Services (AWS) will become a $10 billion business this year, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos said in a letter to shareholders this week. While Amazon as a whole “became the fastest company ever to reach $100 billion in annual sales” in 2015, Amazon Web Services will hit the $10 billion mark “at a pace even faster than Amazon achieved that milestone,” Bezos wrote. AWS is used by more than 1 million people from “organizations of every size across nearly every industry,” he wrote. AWS launched in March 2006 with the Simple Storage Service (S3). It expanded with the Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) a few months later, letting customers rent virtual machines over the Internet. The service allowed developers to obtain computing capacity on demand without having to operate their own servers, and over the years, many startups have built online businesses with Amazon’s data centers and services providing the back-end infrastructure. It’s not just small companies relying on Amazon, though, as big names like Adobe, Capital One, GE, MLB Advanced Media, Netflix , and Pinterest use the online platform. Read 6 remaining paragraphs | Comments

Frontier customers still have problems three days after Verizon changeover

Former Verizon customers who were switched over to Frontier Communications on Friday are still reporting outages and other problems today. Verizon sold its FiOS and DSL networks in California, Florida, and Texas to Frontier, but the transition has not been smooth. On Friday, Frontier acknowledged a “technical issue” involving the integration of systems, but the company said it had been fixed by 9:30am ET that morning. That assurance seems to have been premature, with customers still reporting problems on DownDetector and Twitter throughout the weekend and today. “Onto the 4th day without Internet or any working account…any timeframe guys? This is getting really crazy!” one California customer complained today. Read 5 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Frontier customers still have problems three days after Verizon changeover

Reddit removes “warrant canary” from its latest transparency report

(credit: Cyrus Farivar) Reddit has removed the warrant canary posted on its website, suggesting that the company may have been served with some sort of secret court order or document for user information. At the bottom of its 2014 transparency report , the company wrote: “As of January 29, 2015, reddit has never received a National Security Letter, an order under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or any other classified request for user information. If we ever receive such a request, we would seek to let the public know it existed.” That language was conspicuously missing from the 2015 transparency report that was published Thursday morning. Read 3 remaining paragraphs | Comments

Rare example of lost language found on stone hidden 2500 years ago

Mugello Valley Project The ancient Etruscan stele was recycled 2500 years ago for use inside the foundation of a temple, which suggests that it is quite old. The stone is about 4 feet tall, and would once have stood as part of a sacred display. 3 more images in gallery The ancient Etruscan civilization, whose great cities dotted the west coast of Italy between 2800 and 2400 years ago, was in many ways the model for ancient Greece and Rome. Etruscans lived in city states with sumptuous palaces, beautiful art, and a complicated social structure. But we know almost nothing about their daily lives, in part because most of their writing was recorded on perishable objects like cloth or wax tablets. For that reason, a new discovery made by the Mugello Valley Archaeological Project could be revolutionary. At a dig outside Florence, a group of researchers have unearthed a massive stone tablet, known as a stele, covered in Etruscan writing. The 500-pound stone is 4 feet high and was once part of a sacred temple display. But 2500 years ago it was torn down and used as a foundation stone in a much larger temple. Hidden away for thousands of years, the sandstone stab has been preserved remarkably well. Though it’s chipped, and possibly burned on one side, the stele contains 70 legible letters and punctuation marks. That makes it one of the longest examples of Etruscan writing known in the modern world. Scientists believe it will be full of words and concepts they’ve never encountered before. Almost all the writing we have from Etruscan civilization is from necropolises, massive tombs that the wealthy elites used to bury their dynastic families for generations. So a lot of the vocabulary we’ve gleaned comes from what are essentially gravestones, covered in rote phrases and praise for the dead. This new stele could reveal a lot about Etruscan religion, and possibly the names of the god or goddesses worshipped at the city. Read 6 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Rare example of lost language found on stone hidden 2500 years ago

AT&T boosts data caps for home Internet and steps up enforcement

AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson. (credit: AT&T) AT&T today announced that it will increase its data caps—and expand enforcement—on home Internet service. As a result, more customers will have to pay $10 overage charges for each 50GB they use beyond their monthly limit, similar to Comcast’s data cap system. AT&T will also let customers upgrade to unlimited data for an extra $30 a month. This is only necessary for Internet-only customers. People who purchase both AT&T Internet and TV in a bundle will get unlimited home Internet data at no extra charge. That applies to bundles with either DirecTV satellite or AT&T’s wireline U-verse TV system. Previously, AT&T enforced a 150GB monthly cap on its DSL network. On May 23, AT&T will expand enforcement of caps to U-verse Internet service, which brings fiber closer to the home to boost speeds, and to “Gigapower,” its all-fiber service. Read 9 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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AT&T boosts data caps for home Internet and steps up enforcement