digest-golf – Page 56

Why NSA spied on inexplicably unencrypted Windows crash reports

The National Security Agency’s X-KEYSCORE program gives the spy agency access to a wide range of Internet traffic. Any information that isn’t encrypted is, naturally, visible to passive Internet wiretaps of the kind the NSA and other intelligence agencies use. This in turn will typically expose such things as e-mails, online chats, and general browsing behavior. And, according to slides published this weekend by Der Spiegel , this information also includes crash reports from Microsoft’s Windows Error Reporting facility built in to Windows. These reports will tell eavesdroppers what versions of what software someone is running, what operating system they use, and whenever that software has crashed. Windows also sends messages in the clear whenever a USB or PCI device is plugged in as part of its hunt for suitable drivers. Read 3 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Why NSA spied on inexplicably unencrypted Windows crash reports

Apple’s incremental 2013—and what to expect in 2014

The trouble with the Apple beat is that everyone wants it to be as exciting and newsworthy as it was in 2007 when Apple announced the iPhone, or in 2010 when the original iPad dropped. Among both the tech press and enthusiasts, Apple is a victim of its own success—every year that the company doesn’t redefine a product category, the pundits get a bit more bored. In 2013, almost every one of Apple’s new hardware and software releases refined something that came before. While that might seem boring to early adopters, Apple continues to be a master of iteration, improving its products in noticeable and useful ways every single year. Here, we’ll look back at everything Apple has put out this year—and what we might expect in 2014. The iPhone Apple put a whole lot of marketing muscle behind the iPhone 5C, which is essentially a year-old phone. Andrew Cunningham In the strictest sense, Apple actually delivered two new iPhones this year: the iPhone 5S and the iPhone 5C . The 5S was the only truly new one, though—it delivered the expected improvements to the SoC and the camera while introducing a new hardware feature in the form of the TouchID fingerprint sensor. In contrast, the 5C is just an iPhone 5 with slightly upgraded cellular hardware and some colorful plastic. Read 21 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Apple’s incremental 2013—and what to expect in 2014

Game of Thrones illegal downloads exceed TV viewers for second year

The most-torrented shows of 2013, according to Torrent Freak. Torrent Freak Game of Thrones again turned out to be the most-pirated TV show of 2013, according to a report from Torrent Freak. The show was downloaded an estimated 5.9 million times, besting its proportion of conventional television viewers, which clocks in at 5.5 million. That is a 37 percent increase from 2012, when Torrent Freak estimated Game of Thrones was downloaded 4.28 million times. As the New York Times points out , illegal downloads grew about 10 percent in 2013, with 327 million unique users navigating 13.9 billion webpages that handle pirated movies and TV. The shows Breaking Bad, The Walking Dead, The Big Bang Theory , and Dexter contributed another 14.3 million downloads between them. 2013 also saw plenty of industry leaders endorsing illegal downloading in one way or another. Game of Thrones director David Petrarca said the show thrives on “cultural buzz” in part generated by pirates; Time Warner CEO Jeff Bewkes said that Game of Thrones ’ status as the most pirated show was “ better than an Emmy ;” Netflix stated that it uses piracy statistics to determine what types of shows to produce or license; Breaking Bad creator Vince Gilligan said piracy ” helped… in terms of brand awareness .” The Walking Dead executive producer Gale Ann Hurd disagreed , calling the idea that piracy does good for content a “mistaken belief” and saying the activity is not something “we should encourage.” Read 1 remaining paragraphs | Comments

US report predicts CO2 emissions have peaked, energy independence near

Well-sited wind power is cheaper than coal, but the good sites aren’t evenly distributed throughout the US. NREL/DOE Although there are some reasonable questions about the value of making long-term projections about energy use, doing so is one of the duties of the US’ Energy Information Agency. On Monday, the EIA released an overview of a report in which it attempts to track the trends in the energy economy of the US out to 2040. The report contains some eye-popping predictions, including a huge (but brief) boom in domestic oil production, a near balance between energy imports and exports, and a peak in carbon emissions that’s already in our past. Energy predictions are fraught with uncertainty, but this report contains more than most, since it’s predicated on having the entire period out to 2040 covered by legislation and rules that are already on the books. At the moment, that would include the expiration of a tax credit that promotes the installation of renewable power facilities, something that Congress has already renewed several times. Perhaps more significantly, the EPA’s rules governing greenhouse gas emissions from existing facilities are still being formulated but are likely to be in effect for most of the period under consideration. This probably explains why the EIA predicts that the slice of domestic energy production that comes from renewables only increases from 11 to 12 percent over the next 30 years. Read 8 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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US report predicts CO2 emissions have peaked, energy independence near

Report: Facebook set to finally launch auto-play video ads in news feeds

Caress this chipmunk’s cheeks with your pointer? Facebook wants to know about it. Facebook is due to announce the launch of video advertisements in users’ news feeds on Tuesday, according to The Wall Street Journal , citing anonymous sources. The newspaper added that the new program, which has been anticipated for some time now, is set to launch on Thursday on mobile applications as well as on the desktop browser. The ads apparently are designed to play automatically—a move that is surely bound to irritate many users of the social network. Ad Age reported in September 2013 that Facebook video ads had been originally slated for October 2013, but were then delayed. The Journal , which added that Facebook would charge $2 million per day to let advertisers reach its data-rich user based, noted that a teaser for the Lions Gate film “Divergent” is expected to be one of the first ads. Read 4 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Report: Facebook set to finally launch auto-play video ads in news feeds

North Korea attempts to purge online memory of executed leader

Kim Il Sung (left) is the founder of modern North Korea and the grandfather of current dictator Kim Jong Un. Tormod Sandtorv On Thursday, foreign policy watchers worldwide were stunned when North Korea announced the execution of Jang Song Taek , a top government official. Jang was the uncle of Kim Jong Un, North Korea’s young dictator, and also served as vice chairman of the National Defense Commission of North Korea . However, beyond the whims of North Korea’s leader, the Hermit Kingdom appears to have now also taken the unusual step of attempting to remove all references to Jang Song Taek from state-controlled Internet outlets, primarily the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA). The KCNA website , which is hosted in Japan, appears to have suffered an outage briefly on Friday , and subsequently, past articles appeared scrubbed of mentions of Jang. Read 3 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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North Korea attempts to purge online memory of executed leader

Sprint wants to buy T-Mobile and leave US with just three major carriers

Masayoshi Son (left), poses with a Storm Trooper at Sprint owner SoftBank’s launch of the iPhone 3GS in 2009. Danny Choo Sprint is “working toward a possible bid for rival T-Mobile” but is first examining regulatory concerns that could prevent such a merger, the Wall Street Journal reported today . A merger would leave the US cellular market with only three major carriers, although a combined Sprint/T-Mobile would perhaps be a more formidable opponent to market leaders AT&T and Verizon Wireless. AT&T attempted to buy T-Mobile, but it dropped those plans in December 2011 after opposition from the Justice Department and Federal Communications Commission (FCC). Sprint hasn’t made a final decision on a bid, but it could happen in the first half of 2014 and be worth more than $20 billion “depending on the size of any stake in T-Mobile that Sprint tries to buy,” the Journal reported. “But it would likely face tough opposition from antitrust authorities, who worry consumers could suffer without a fourth national competitor to keep a check on prices,” the report said. AT&T’s takeover bid for T-Mobile would have been $39 billion.The Journal ‘s sources indicate that Sprint is wary of wasting time on a deal that might not come to fruition, but the company’s owner is leading the charge. “Driving the current effort is SoftBank Chief Executive Masayoshi Son, an aggressive acquirer who bought control of Sprint earlier this year and has made no secret of his desire to grow in the US via further deals,” the Journal wrote. Read 7 remaining paragraphs | Comments

British Library sticks 1 million pics on Flickr, asks for help making them useful

In 2008, the British Library, in partnership with Microsoft, embarked on a project to digitize thousands of out-of-copyright books from the 17 th , 18 th , and 19 th centuries. Included within those books were maps, diagrams, illustrations, photographs, and more. The Library has uploaded more than a million of them onto Flickr and released them into the public domain. It’s now asking for help. Though the library knows which book each image is taken from, its knowledge largely ends there. While some images have useful titles, many do not, so the majority of the million picture collection is uncatalogued, its subject matter unknown. Next year, it plans to launch a crowdsourced application to fill the gap, to enable humans to describe the images. This information will then be used to train an automated classifier that will be run against the entire corpus. Read 1 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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British Library sticks 1 million pics on Flickr, asks for help making them useful

Everything you need to know to install SteamOS on your very own computer

SteamOS in all its blue glory. Lee Hutchinson True to its word, Valve has released a beta version of SteamOS, the Linux-based operating system that it will use to power its living room Steam Machine consoles. The release coincides with a lucky group of 300 public beta testers being selected to actually receive Steam Machines to test on—the rest of us can still use the OS, but we’ll have to bring our own hardware. Valve had previously recommended that users who aren’t “intrepid Linux hackers” should wait a few more months before trying out SteamOS, but that’s not going to stop Ars from barreling head first into the midst of things! We downloaded the OS as quickly as we could after it went live and spent some time getting it whipped into shape on fresh hardware. Contrary to Valve’s warning, the install wasn’t complex or scary at all—though if you’ve never installed Linux before, it might take you a bit out of your comfort zone. The hardware Specs at a glance:The Ars Technica Steam Machine CPU Intel Pentium G3220 (Haswell), dual-core, 3.0 GHz GPU Zotac Geforce GTX660 (2GB) RAM 8 GB DDR3-1600 Motherboard MSI H81I (mini-ITX) Storage Western Digital WD Blue 7200 rpm 500GB HD Sound Onboard Network Onboard (wired gigabit Ethernet) PSU Antec VP-450, 450W Case BitFenix Prodigy, arctic white We didn’t receive a Steam Machine to test, so we set out to build our own. Our goals were to stick to known-good SteamOS hardware, and to keep the price between $5-600. Andrew Cunningham, Kyle Orland, and I all stuck our heads together and came up with the configuration at right. All items were purchased from NewEgg, and the total prior to shipping was $562.93. Read 35 remaining paragraphs | Comments

Ukranian fraudster and CarderPlanet “Don” finally sentenced to 18 years

401(K) 2012 In 2001, a group of 150 Russian-speaking hackers gathered at a restaurant in Odessa to found CarderPlanet . It ultimately became one of the world’s most notorious fraudulent credit card data websites, and it was shut down in 2004 . On Thursday, one of the site’s founders, Roman Vega (aka “Boa”), was sentenced to 18 years in prison by a United States federal judge. Vega’s case has been going on for quite some time. The Ukrainian credit card fraudster was arrested, prosecuted, and convicted in Cyprus in 2003. Then, he was brought to the United States in 2004 to face federal charges in California, to which he pleaded guilty. By 2007, Vega faced fresh charges in New York. By early 2009, Vega pleaded guilty to those charges, but then he attempted to withdraw his plea in 2011. Various motions were filed, but by May 2012, the judge denied his request and his plea stood. Read 5 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Ukranian fraudster and CarderPlanet “Don” finally sentenced to 18 years

Ken May

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