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Automatic Brakes Stopped Berlin Truck During Christmas Market Attack

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Deutsche Welle: The truck that plowed into a Berlin Christmas market, killing 12, came to a halt due an automatic braking system, according to German media reports on Wednesday. The automatic braking system potentially saved the lives of many more people in the recent terrorist attack. An investigation by newspaper “Suddeutsche Zeitung” and broadcasters “NDR” and “WDR” found the Scania R 450 semi-trailer stopped after between 70 and 80 meters (250 feet). The system was reportedly engaged after sensing a collision. Previous reports speculated that the truck had driven erratically and stopped due to the heroic actions of the truck’s Polish driver, who lay fatally wounded in the cabin. In 2012 the European Union adopted regulations requiring all new trucks exceeding 3, 500 kilograms be fitted with advanced emergency braking systems. The systems initially alert drivers and then take evasive action. The regulation was adopted to reduce the number of rear end collisions by trucks. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Automatic Brakes Stopped Berlin Truck During Christmas Market Attack

Scientists Develop a Breathalyzer That Detects 17 Diseases With One Breath From a Patient

randomErr quotes a report from Quartz: In the last 10 years, researchers have developed specific sniff tests for diagnosing tuberculosis, hypertension, cystic fibrosis, and even certain types of cancer. A group of global researchers led by Hossam Haick at the Israel Institute of Technology have taken the idea a step further. They’ve built a device — a kind of breathalyzer — that is compact and can diagnose up to 17 diseases from a single breath of a patient. The breathalyzer has an array of specially created gold nanoparticles, which are sized at billionths of a meter, and mixed with similar-sized tubes of carbon. These together create a network that is able to interact differently with each of the nearly 100 volatile compounds that each person breaths out (apart from gases like nitrogen, oxygen, and carbon dioxide). Haick’s team collected 2, 800 breaths from more than 1, 400 patients who were each suffering from at least one of 17 diseases (in three classes: cancer, inflammation, and neurological disorders). Each sample of the disease was then passed through the special breathalyzer, which then produced a dataset of the types of chemicals it could detect and in roughly what quantities. The team then applied artificial intelligence to the dataset to search for patterns in the types of compounds detected and the concentrations they were detected at. As they report in the journal ACS Nano, the data from the breathalyzer could be used to accurately detect that a person is suffering from a unique disease nearly nine out of ten times. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Scientists Develop a Breathalyzer That Detects 17 Diseases With One Breath From a Patient

Windows 10 Getting a Game Mode That Would Improve Game Performance – Report

Microsoft may have plans to improve gaming experience on Windows 10. The speculation comes after long time watcher @h0x0d found a new “gamemode.dll” in the latest Windows 10 developer build, reports GameSpot. The feature appears to allow Windows 10 to adjust CPU and GPU resources when running a game to allocate more power for the game that’s running instead of toward any background apps. From the article: The feature will reportedly launch as part of the Creators update and will be enabled for Windows Insider users soon. What’s unclear is exactly which games this is compatible with. It’s possible it could be limited to only to those downloaded from the Windows Store, or it might be much more far-reaching. We should know more once Windows Insiders testers get their hands on the feature. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Windows 10 Getting a Game Mode That Would Improve Game Performance – Report

Android Ransomware Infects LG Smart TV, Company ‘Refuses’ To Help

Security firms have been warning us for more than a year about the possibility of Android malware jumping from phones and tablets to other Android-powered devices, such smart TVs. The latest incident involving ransomware on a smart TV involves software engineer Darren Cauthon, who revealed that the LG smart TV of one of his family members was infected with ransomware right on Christmas day. What’s worse? He claims LG wouldn’t help him with perform factory reset of the device. From a report: Based on a screenshot Cauthon posted online, the smart TV appears to be infected with a version of the Cyber. Police ransomware, also known as FLocker, Frantic Locker, or Dogspectus. The infected TV is one of the last generations of LG smart TVs that ran Google TV, a smart TV platform developed by Google together with Intel, Sony, and Logitech. Google TV launched in 2010, but Google discontinued the project in June 2014. In the meantime, LG has moved on from Google TV, and the company’s TVs now run WebOS. Cauthon says he tried to reset the TV to factory settings, but the reset procedure available online didn’t work. When the software engineer contacted LG, the company told him to visit one of their service centers, where one of its employees could reset his TV. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Android Ransomware Infects LG Smart TV, Company ‘Refuses’ To Help

Millions of Websites Vulnerable Due To Security Bug In Popular PHP Script

An anonymous reader writes from a report via BleepingComputer: A security flaw discovered in a common PHP class allows knowledgeable attackers to execute code on a website that uses a vulnerable version of the script, which in turn can allow an attacker to take control over the underlying server. The vulnerable library is PHPMailer, a PHP script that allows developers to automate the task of sending emails using PHP code, also included with WordPress, Drupal, Joomla, and more. The vulnerability was fixed on Christmas with the release of PHPMailer version 5.2.18. Nevertheless, despite the presence of a patched version, it will take some time for the security update to propagate. Judging by past incidents, millions of sites will never be updated, leaving a large chunk of the Internet open to attacks. Even though the security researcher who discovered the flaw didn’t publish any in-depth details about his findings, someone reverse-engineered the PHPMailer patch and published their own exploit code online, allowing others to automate attacks using this flaw, which is largely still unpatched due to the holiday season. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Millions of Websites Vulnerable Due To Security Bug In Popular PHP Script

Uber Launches ‘Uber Freight’ Website To Prepare the World For Autonomous Delivery Trucks

Uber has launched a website for a service called Uber Freight. While there are little details about the company’s expansion from ride-hailing, Uber Freight is meant to prepare the world for autonomous delivery trucks, according to Inverse. From the report: Uber acquired a startup called Otto, which planned to bring the first self-driving trucks to market, in August. Since then the company has used its trucks to deliver 50, 000 cans of beer and hundreds of Christmas trees in San Francisco. This new service won’t use those trucks, at least not at the beginning. Instead it will function much like Uber’s existing platform: Some people will sign up to drive items across the country, and others will join so they can send packages without having to sign a contract with established shipping companies. The service will likely bring “surge pricing” to trucking, too. Uber Freight could also help Otto’s trucks by using data gathered from drivers on the platform. This would allow the self-driving vehicles to learn from experienced people while regulators figure out how to govern autonomous trucks and the technology catches up to all of the promises made by its creators. Uber Freight’s launch coincides with growing interest in trucking from many tech companies. Nikola Motor Company wants to use tech to make trucking more environmentally friendly and appealing to millennials; Tesla’s working on self-driving trucks; the list could go on. Uber told Inverse it’s going to wait until the new year to elaborate on how the system works. “We don’t have any new information to share at the moment, ” a spokesperson said, “but hope to in the new year so please do stay in touch.” It looks like the future of trucking — or at least one potential future — is going to take a little while longer to make its debut. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Uber Launches ‘Uber Freight’ Website To Prepare the World For Autonomous Delivery Trucks

Windows 10 For PCs Build 14997 Leaks Online

An anonymous reader writes: Microsoft had last week said that it wouldn’t be releasing a new Windows 10 build for insiders on Fast ring this year. But the supposed build has leaked online. The build 14997 contains a few new features, such as a refreshed Settings app, theme support from the Store (you might recall that with 14986, you could download them from the Store, but had to install them manually), a number of Edge improvements such as tab expansion, blue light reduction features, and more. Since it’s a leaked build, we would suggest treading carefully before downloading it. You might just want to avoid it until it’s available from the official channel. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Windows 10 For PCs Build 14997 Leaks Online

Build Your Own Fancy Glowing USB Volume Knob

We’ve seen little DIY volume knobs before , and they’re a handy way to add means to finely adjust the volume on your computer. Instructables user Trochilidesign’s made their own, and it’s pretty futuristic looking. Read more…

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Build Your Own Fancy Glowing USB Volume Knob

IBM On Track To Get More Than 7,000 US Patents In 2016

IBM wants to put the patent war in perspective. Big Blue said that it is poised to get the most U.S. patents of any tech company for the 24th year in a row. From a report on VentureBeat: In 2015, IBM received more than 7, 355 patents, down slightly from 7, 534 in 2014. A spokesperson for IBM said the company is on track to receive well over 7, 000 patents in 2016. In 2016, IBM is also hitting another interesting milestone, with more than 1, 000 patents for artificial intelligence and cognitive computing. IBM has been at it for more than a century, and it is seeking patents in key strategic areas — such as AI and cognitive computing. In fact, one-third of IBM’s researchers are dedicated to cognitive computing. IBM CEO Ginni Rometty said during the World of Watson conference in October that the company expects to reach more than 1 billion consumers via Watson by the end of 2017. (Watson is the supercomputer that beat the world’s best Jeopardy player in 2011.) Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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IBM On Track To Get More Than 7,000 US Patents In 2016

A Record High of 455 Scripted TV Shows Aired in 2016

In case you wanted to ground your abstract TV FOMO in hard numbers, FX has data on the fact that, yes, there really is too much TV. An anonymous reader shares a report: The network, whose CEO John Landgraf coined the idea of “peak TV, ” has released its unofficial tally of the number of shows on TV, finding that 455 different scripted television series from broadcast, cable, and streaming sources aired in the last year. That’s an 8 percent increase from last year, when 421 shows aired on TV; a 71 percent increase from 2011, when a mere 266 shows were on TV; and a 137 percent increase from 2006, when there were 192 shows on TV. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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A Record High of 455 Scripted TV Shows Aired in 2016