Tag: computers

Uber’s Self-Driving Truck Went on a 120-Mile Beer Run To Make History

An anonymous reader writes: In the arms race to build self-driving vehicles, Uber-owned Otto just reached a landmark milestone by completing the first-ever commercial cargo run for a self-driving truck. On October 20, the self-driving truck left Fort Collins, Colorado at 1 a.m. and drove itself 120 miles on I-25 to Colorado Springs. The driver, who has to be there to help the truck get on and off the interstate exit ramps, moved to the backseat alongside a crowd of transportation officials to watch the historic ride. 2, 000 cases of Budweiser beer filled the trailer. “We’re just thrilled. We do think this is the future of transportation, ” James Sembrot, senior director of logistics strategy at Anheuser-Busch, told Business Insider. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Uber’s Self-Driving Truck Went on a 120-Mile Beer Run To Make History

American ‘Vigilante Hacker’ Defaces Russian Ministry’s Website

An anonymous Slashdot reader quotes CNN Money: An American vigilante hacker — who calls himself “The Jester” — has defaced the website of the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs in retaliation for attacks on American targets… “Comrades! We interrupt regular scheduled Russian Foreign Affairs Website programming to bring you the following important message, ” he wrote. “Knock it off. You may be able to push around nations around you, but this is America. Nobody is impressed.” In early 2015, CNN Money profiled The Jester as “the vigilante who hacks jihadists, ” noting he’s a former U.S. soldier who now “single-handedly taken down dozens of websites that, he deems, support jihadist propaganda and recruitment efforts. He stopped counting at 179.” That article argues that “the fact that he hasn’t yet been hunted down and arrested says a lot about federal prosecutors and the FBI. Several cybersecurity experts see it as tacit approval.” “In an exclusive interview with CNNMoney this weekend, Jester said he chose to attack Russia out of frustration for the massive DNS cyberattack that knocked out a portion of the internet in the United States on Friday… ‘I’m not gonna sit around watching these f—-rs laughing at us.'” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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American ‘Vigilante Hacker’ Defaces Russian Ministry’s Website

Report: Russian Hackers Phished The DNC And Clinton Campaign Using Fake Gmail Forms

Citing a report from SecureWorks, BuzzFeed is reporting that Russian hackers “used emails disguised to look as Gmail security updates to hack into the computers of the Democratic National Committee and members of Hillary Clinton’s top campaign staff”: The emails were sent to 108 members of Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton’s campaign and 20 people clicked on them, at least four people clicking more than once, Secureworks’ research found. The emails were sent to another 16 people from the DNC and four people clicked on them, the report said. Researchers found the emails by tracing the malicious URLs set up by [state-sponsored hacking group] Fancy Bear using Bitly, a link shortening service… “We were monitoring bit.ly and saw the accounts being created in real time, ” said Phil Burdette, a senior security researcher at SecureWorks, explaining how they stumbled upon the the URLs set up by Fancy Bear. The URL apparently resolved to accounts-google.com (rather than accounts.google.com), and Burdette says “They did a great job with capturing the look and feel of Google.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Report: Russian Hackers Phished The DNC And Clinton Campaign Using Fake Gmail Forms

Samsung’s 960 Pro and 960 Evo SSDs Marry Crazy-Fast Speeds With Roomy Capacity

An anonymous reader writes: Samsung is following up its NVMe successes from 2015 with some fresh blazing-fast M.2 SSDs for storage geeks. The company just announced the Samsung 960 Pro and 960 Evo during this year’s Samsung SSD Global Summit. As with 2015’s 950 Pro NVMe SSDs, the new 960 series marries stacked V-NAND density with the Non-Volatile Memory express (NVMe) specification. They also use a 4-lane PCIe 3.0 interface, just like the 950 Pro. The 960 Evo and Pro will roll out in October with prices starting at $130 and $330, respectively. The 960 Evo will be available in 250GB, 500GB, and 1TB capacities, while the Pro offers 512GB, 1TB, and 2TB versions. The Evo utilizes cheaper and more tightly packed TLC (triple-level cell) NAND, while the Pro sports speedier MLC (multi-level cell) NAND. That 2TB maximum is double the top capacity Samsung offered with the 950 Pro in 2015, and in another age would’ve earned the moniker “jaw dropping” for packing that much storage into an M.2 SSD. But this is the age of the 1TB SDXC card, so maybe sheer capacity increases aren’t as impressive as they used to be. Seagate also announced a 2TB M.2 storage option for enterprises in July.BetaNews has more details. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Samsung’s 960 Pro and 960 Evo SSDs Marry Crazy-Fast Speeds With Roomy Capacity

Apple iPhone 7 Plus Packs 3GB RAM, Early A10 Fusion Benchmarks Look Very Strong

MojoKid writes from a report via HotHardware: Apple’s A10 Fusion processor, paired with the iPhone 7, is already making its mark on benchmark circuit. Although you may or may not be impressed with Apple’s new handset, as usual, Cupertino’s latest smartphone is looking very strong performance-wise. According to Geekbench numbers, which showcase the iPhone 7 Plus running iOS 10.0.1 (Golden Master), the 5.5-inch smartphone has 3GB of RAM onboard (the iPhone 7 reportedly contains 2GB RAM). Compared to the previous generation iPhone 6s Plus, this is an increase of 1GB. Compared to Android flagships, which come with 4GB or even 6GB of RAM, 3GB might seem paltry. However, benchmarks show time and time again that Apple’s SoCs are among the fastest in the industry and simply do more with less resources. Apple says that the advances it has made with the A10 allow the processor to be twice as fast as the A8 in the iPhone 6 Plus and 40 percent faster than the A9 in the iPhone 6s Plus. The iPhone 7 Plus received a Geekbench single-core score of 3233, while its multi-core score comes in at 5363. For comparison, the beefy A9X processor in the iPad Pro — also paired with 3GB of RAM — puts up scores of 3009 and 4881 respectively. Likewise, these numbers far outpace those of the iPhone 6s Plus, which delivers 2407 and 4046 respectively. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Apple iPhone 7 Plus Packs 3GB RAM, Early A10 Fusion Benchmarks Look Very Strong

Netflix Finds x265 20% More Efficient Than VP9

Reader StreamingEagle writes (edited): Netflix conducted a large-scale study comparing x264, x265 and libvpx (Google-owned VP9), under real-world conditions, and found that x265 encodes used 35.4% to 53.3% fewer bits than x264, and between 21.8% fewer bits than libvpx, when measured with Netflix’s advanced VMAF assessment tool. This was the first large-scale study to use real-world encoder implementations, and a large sample size of high quality, professional content.A Netflix spokesperson explained why they did the test in the first place; “We wanted to understand the current state of the x265 and libvpx codec implementations when used to generate non-realtime encodes optimized for OTT use case. It was important to see how the codecs performed when testing on a diverse set of premium content from our catalog. This test can help us find areas of improvement for the different codecs.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Netflix Finds x265 20% More Efficient Than VP9

New Carbon Nanotube Chip Outperforms Silicon Semiconductors

“Researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison are the first to have fabricated carbon nanotube transistors (CNTs) that outperform the current-density of conventional semiconductors like silicon and gallium arsenide, ” reports NanotechWeb. Slashdot reader wasteoid shares the site’s interview with one of the researchers: “When the transistors are turned on to the conductive state (meaning that current is able to pass through the CNT channel) the amount of current traveling through each CNT in the array approaches the fundamental quantum limit, ” he tells nanotechweb.org. “Since the CNTs conduct in parallel, and the packing density and conductance per tube are very high, the overall current density is very high too — at nearly twice that of silicon’s. The result is that these CNT array FETs have a conductance that is seven times higher than any previous reported CNT array field-effect transistor.” The research was funded in part by the U.S. Army and Air Force, as well as the National Science Foundation. “The implication here is that by replacing silicon with a CNT channel, it should be possible for us to make either a higher performing device or one that works at lower power.” In other news, Fujitsu announced this week that it’s joining an effort to release a 256-megabyte 55-nanometer carbon nanotube-based NRAM by 2018. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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New Carbon Nanotube Chip Outperforms Silicon Semiconductors

Tesla Will Install More Energy Storage With SolarCity In 2016 Than The US Installed In 2015

An anonymous reader writes: Tesla is scheduled to install more energy storage capacity in 2016 with SolarCity alone than all of the US installed in 2015. It was revealed in a recent filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) that Tesla foresees an almost 10x increase in sales to SolarCity for behind the meter storage. [From the SEC filing: “We recognized approximately $4.9 million in revenue from SolarCity during fiscal year 2015 for sales of energy storage governed by this master supply agreement, and anticipate recognizing approximately $44.0 million in such revenues during fiscal year 2016.”] This revenue projection means Tesla expects to install approximately 116 MWh of behind the meter storage. The U.S. for example installed about 76 MWh of behind the meter storage. SolarCity and Tesla Energy doubled their battery installation volume last year. What’s particularly noteworthy is that the 116 MWh expectation does not include SolarCity’s biggest project — Kauai Island’s coming 52 MWh system. Hawaii is aiming for 100% renewable energy by 2045 and has contracted with SolarCity to balance the two 12MW Solar Power plants with the Kauai Island Utility Cooperative (KIUC). By 2020, there will be 70 GWh of Tesla battery storage on the road, and Straubel expects there to be 10 GWh of controllable load in those cars. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Tesla Will Install More Energy Storage With SolarCity In 2016 Than The US Installed In 2015

A Virus Has Forced an Entire Hospital Chain to Shut Down Its Computers

Hackers and hospital computers are a bad mix , as a string of attacks has been proving. The latest victim is MedStar Health, a company that operates a chain of hospitals around the Baltimore and Washington area. Read more…

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A Virus Has Forced an Entire Hospital Chain to Shut Down Its Computers