Tag: deals

Futures Trader Arrested For Causing 2010 ‘Flash Crash’

New submitter dfsmith writes: Apparently the “Flash Crash” of the stock market in May 2010 was perpetrated by a futures trader in the UK. The US Justice Department alleges that he used a “dynamic layering scheme” of large-volume sell orders to confuse other buyers, hence winning big in his futures trades. “By allegedly placing multiple, simultaneous, large-volume sell orders at different price points—a technique known as ‘layering’—Sarao created the appearance of substantial supply in the market. As part of the scheme, Sarao allegedly modified these orders frequently so that they remained close to the market price, and typically canceled the orders without executing them. When prices fell as a result of this activity, Sarao allegedly sold futures contracts only to buy them back at a lower price. Conversely, when the market moved back upward as the market activity ceased, Sarao allegedly bought contracts only to sell them at a higher price.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Futures Trader Arrested For Causing 2010 ‘Flash Crash’

New Dark Web Market Is Selling Zero-Day Exploits

Sparrowvsrevolution writes Over the last month, a marketplace calling itself TheRealDeal Market has emerged on the dark web, with a focus on sales of hackers’ zero-day attack methods. Like the Silk Road and its online black market successors like Agora and the recently defunct Evolution, TheRealDeal runs as a Tor hidden service and uses bitcoin to hide the identities of its buyers, sellers, and administrators. But while some other sites have sold only basic, low-level hacking tools and stolen financial details, TheRealDeal’s creators say they’re looking to broker premium hacker data like zero-days, source code, and hacking services, often offered on an exclusive, one-time sale basis. Currently an iCloud exploit is being offered for sale on the site with a price tag of $17, 000 in bitcoin, claiming to be a new method of hacking Apple iCloud accounts. “Any account can be accessed with a malicious request from a proxy account, ” reads the description. “Please arrange a demonstration using my service listing to hack an account of your choice.” Others include a technique to hack WordPress’ multisite configuration, an exploit against Android’s Webview stock browser, and an Internet Explorer attack that claims to work on Windows XP, Windows Vista and Windows 7, available for around $8, 000 in bitcoin. None of these zero days have yet been proven to be real, but an escrow system on the site using bitcoin’s multisignature transaction feature is designed to prevent scammers from selling fake exploits. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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New Dark Web Market Is Selling Zero-Day Exploits

Old Marconi Patent Inspires Tiny New Gigahertz Antenna

agent elevator writes Gehan Amaratunga and a group of engineers in England noted that the Guglielmo Marconi’s famous British patent application from 1900 had an interesting and little noticed detail. It depicted a transmitter linked to an antenna connected to a coil, which had one end dangling while the RF signal was fed to the middle of the coil. That detail inspired them to develop a way to reduce the size of a GHz antenna without significant transmission loss by using dielectrics as the radio wave emitting material instead of conductors. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Old Marconi Patent Inspires Tiny New Gigahertz Antenna

ISS Could Be Fitted With Lasers To Shoot Down Space Junk

An anonymous reader writes Japan’s Riken research institute has suggested a new idea for dealing with space junk. They say a fiber optic laser mounted onto the International Space Station could blast debris out of the sky. From the article: “To combat the increasingly dense layer of dead satellites and miscellaneous space debris that are enshrouding our planet, no idea — nets, lassos, even ballistic gas clouds — seems too far-fetched to avoid. Now, an international team of researchers led by Japan’s Riken research institute has put forward what may be the most ambitious plan to date. They propose blasting an estimated 3, 000 tons of space junk out of orbit with a fiber optic laser mounted on the International Space Station.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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ISS Could Be Fitted With Lasers To Shoot Down Space Junk

Facebook Working To Weed Out Fake Likes

jfruh writes In the early days of brands on Facebook, it was crucial for companies to garner as many “likes” as possible to boost their image, and that led to some unethical businesses selling likes that came from fake accounts. Now Facebook is informing brands that they’re working to root out fake likes, leaving like counts lower but realer. Now if only I could get my relatives to stop clicking on pictures that say they like puppies and are against cancer. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Facebook Working To Weed Out Fake Likes

Whoah, Small Spender! Steam Sets Limits For Users Who Spend Less Than $5

As GameSpot reports, Valve has implemented a policy that reduces the privileges of Steam users unless those users have spent $5 through the service. Along the same lines as suggestions to limit spam by imposing a small fee on emails, the move is intended to reduce resource abuse as a business model. From the article: “Malicious users often operate in the community on accounts which have not spent any money, reducing the individual risk of performing the actions they do, ” Valve said. “One of the best pieces of information we can compare between regular users and malicious users are their spending habits as typically the accounts being used have no investment in their longevity. Due to this being a common scenario we have decided to restrict certain community features until an account has met or exceeded $5.00 USD in Steam.” Restricted actions include sending invites, opening group chats, and taking part in the Steam marketplace. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Whoah, Small Spender! Steam Sets Limits For Users Who Spend Less Than $5

Star Wars Battlefront Game Trailer Is So Realistic It Looks Like Movie Footage

MojoKid writes It has been a tremendous week for Star Wars fans. First we got to see Han Solo and Chewbacca make an emotional reappearance in the newest Star Wars: The Force Awakens trailer (the second official trailer Disney has put out). Now, Electronic Arts is treating us to a visual smorgasbord of cinema-quality footage showing the forthcoming Star Wars Battlefront game. Battlefront will support to up 40 players divided between the Rebel Alliance and Galactic Empire, all shooting it out and playing with some of the coolest Star Wars vehicles and weapons around. We’re talking jetpacks, AT-AT war machines, AT-STs, TIE Fighters, X-wings, and more. Though the trailer allegedly shows actually “game engine footage, ” it’s questionable whether or not it’s actual gameplay or just pre-rendered cut scenes from the game engine. Either way, it’s still pretty impressive. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Star Wars Battlefront Game Trailer Is So Realistic It Looks Like Movie Footage

How Uber Surge Pricing Really Works

minstrelmike writes with this analysis from Nicholas Diakopoulos of the Washington Post: At the core of Uber’s wild success and market valuation of over $41 billion is its data and algorithmically fueled approach to matching supply and demand for cars. It’s classic economics, supposedly….but is Uber’s surge pricing algorithm really doing what they claim? Do surge prices really get more cars on the road? My analysis suggests that rather than motivating a fresh supply of drivers, surge pricing instead re-distributes drivers already on the road. Adds minstrelmike: The writer goes on to analyze 4 weeks of pricing info from 5 areas in D.C. and plotted prices versus wait times. “Price surging can work in any of three ways: by reducing demand for cars (less people want a car for a higher price), by creating new supply (providing an incentive for new drivers to hit the roads), or by shifting supply (drivers) to areas of higher demand.” It moves current drivers from one side of town to the other. It does not put new drivers on the road. It can’t because the prices change every 3-5 minutes.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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How Uber Surge Pricing Really Works

FBI Overstated Forensic Hair Matches In Nearly All Trials Before 2000

schwit1 writes The Justice Department and FBI have formally acknowledged that nearly every examiner in an elite FBI forensic unit gave flawed testimony in almost all trials in which they offered evidence against criminal defendants over more than a two-decade period before 2000. Of 28 examiners with the FBI Laboratory’s microscopic hair comparison unit, 26 overstated forensic matches in ways that favored prosecutors in more than 95 percent of the 268 trials reviewed so far, according to the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers (NACDL) and the Innocence Project, which are assisting the government with the country’s largest post-conviction review of questioned forensic evidence. The cases include those of 32 defendants sentenced to death. Of those, 14 have been executed or died in prison, the groups said under an agreement with the government to release results after the review of the first 200 convictions. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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FBI Overstated Forensic Hair Matches In Nearly All Trials Before 2000