God bless Elon Musk and his Twitter feed. While other companies rely on secretive press offices or employ PR giants to handle their communications, Musk happily uses the 140-character platform to break news about what’s going on at Tesla and SpaceX. Wednesday, we learned that the Model 3—Tesla’s next electric vehicle after the Model X SUV—will go into production in 2017, but only once the Gigafactory is up and running. Model 3, our smaller and lower cost sedan will start production in about 2 years. Fully operational Gigafactory needed. — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) September 2, 2015 The Gigafactory is a $5 billion plant that Tesla is building near Sparks, Nevada in partnership with Panasonic. The plan is to achieve significant economies of scale at the Gigafactory, which will make the Model 3’s $35,000 price tag possible—something Musk also told us via Twitter yesterday. @elonmusk $35k price, unveil in March, preorders start then. — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) September 2, 2015 When the Model 3 hits the streets in 2017 (assuming no Gigafactory-related delays) it won’t have as easy a time in the marketplace as the Model S, which even now still has no real competition. Chevrolet is launching the Bolt next year, a $30,000 EV which will match Tesla’s 200-mile (321km) range. However, Tesla has cleverly positioned itself as a premium brand with the Model S (and forthcoming Model X). Leveraging that cachet to move Model 3s seems like a no-brainer. Read on Ars Technica | Comments
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Sneaky adware caught accessing users’ Mac Keychain without permission
Last month, Ars chronicled a Mac app that brazenly exploited a then unpatched OS X vulnerability so the app could install itself without requiring people to enter system passwords. Now, researchers have found the same highly questionable installer is accessing people’s Mac keychain without permission. The adware taking these liberties is distributed by Israel-based Genieo Innovation, a company that’s long been known to push adware and other unwanted apps . According to researchers at Malwarebytes, the Genieo installer automatically accesses a list of Safari extensions that, for reasons that aren’t entirely clear, is stashed inside the Mac Keychain alongside passwords for iCloud, Gmail, and other important accounts. Genieo acquires this access by very briefly displaying a message asking for permission to open the Safari extensions and then automatically clicking the accompanying OK button before a user has time to respond or possibly even notice what’s taking place. With that, Genieo installs an extension known as Leperdvil. The following three-second video captures the entire thing: Read 5 remaining paragraphs | Comments
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Sneaky adware caught accessing users’ Mac Keychain without permission
Tesla strikes deal to buy lithium hydroxide mined in northern Mexico
On Friday, Tesla struck a deal with mining companies Bacanora Minerals Ltd and Rare Earth Minerals Plc. to purchase lithium compounds from a proposed mining site in northern Mexico. The mine is not functional yet—the deal requires the mining companies to raise funding to construct a mine as well as processing facilities over the next two years. But as the supply contract published by Bacanora (PDF) states, the companies project that once the mine is up and running, it will be able to supply 35,000 tons of lithium compounds (namely, lithium hydroxide and lithium carbonate) per year at first, eventually expanding to 50,000 tons per year. Tesla has agreed to purchase a minimum amount of lithium hydroxide from Bacanora Minerals and Rare Earth Minerals for five years after the mine becomes operational, with the potential to extend the agreement. In exchange, the mining companies will sell their mined materials to Tesla at below market rate, the Wall Street Journal reports . Read 2 remaining paragraphs | Comments
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Tesla strikes deal to buy lithium hydroxide mined in northern Mexico
City of Chicago sues red light camera maker Redflex for more than $300 million
Red light cameras in Arizona. Robert Couse-Baker The city of Chicago has joined a lawsuit against Redflex, an Australian company that sold the city red light cameras starting in 2003. Redflex announced the legal action in a statement to stockholders (PDF) today, sending the company’s already-suffering stock down to $0.17 per share. The suit alleges (PDF) that Redflex bribed a former Department of Transportation manager, John Bills, with $2 million in kickbacks to secure contracts with the city. The debacle has already resulted in corruption convictions, and the company’s CEO, Karen Finley, pleaded guilty to bribery earlier this year. Beyond these issues, Redflex cameras have been implicated in faulty ticketing accusations , with the company’s cameras allegedly issuing some 13,000 undeserved tickets to motorists in 2014. Redflex cameras have reportedly raised more than $500 million in traffic fines since 2003, according to the Chicago Tribune . Read 2 remaining paragraphs | Comments
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City of Chicago sues red light camera maker Redflex for more than $300 million
BitTorrent patched against flaw that allowed crippling DoS attacks
The maintainers of the open BitTorrent protocol for file sharing have fixed a vulnerability that allowed lone attackers with only modest resources to take down large sites using a new form of denial-of-service attack. The technique was disclosed two weeks ago in a research paper submitted to the 9th Usenix Workshop on Offensive Technologies. By sending vulnerable BitTorrent applications maliciously modified data, attackers could force them to flood a third-party target with data that was 50 to 120 times bigger than the original request. By replacing the attacker’s IP address in the malicious user datagram protocol request with the spoofed address of the target, the attacker could cause the data flood to hit the victim’s computer. In a blog post published Thursday , BitTorrent engineers said the vulnerability was the result of a flaw in a reference implementation called libuTP . To fix the weakness, the uTorrent, BitTorrent, and BitTorrent Sync apps will require acknowledgments from connection initiators before providing long responses. Read 3 remaining paragraphs | Comments
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BitTorrent patched against flaw that allowed crippling DoS attacks
Largest TV blackout in US history hits Dish because of money dispute [Updated]
Update 8pm ET: The blackout ended today following an emergency meeting. “On behalf of more than 5 million consumers nationwide, I am pleased DISH and Sinclair have agreed to end one of the largest blackouts in history and extend their negotiations,” FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler said in a statement. “The FCC will remain vigilant while the negotiations continue.” Original story: Read 10 remaining paragraphs | Comments
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Largest TV blackout in US history hits Dish because of money dispute [Updated]
Office 2016 for Windows coming on September 22
A leaked image from a Microsoft intranet site has disclosed that Office 2016 for Windows will be released on September 22. Office 2016 for Mac is already available to Office 365 subscribers . When that was launched in July, Microsoft said that regular retail copies would be released in September. While we’re not certain, it seems likely that September 22 will be the release date for that, too. Office 2016 is an incremental update . It makes styling between Windows, OS X, and the mobile apps a little more consistent—by default each app gets a boldly colored title bar that reflects the icon color, just like the mobile apps—and includes improved collaborative editing, rights management, and data analysis capabilities. Read 5 remaining paragraphs | Comments
Comcast planning gigabit cable for entire US territory in 2-3 years
While Comcast has started deploying 2Gbps fiber-to-the-home service to certain parts of its territory, much of its network is going to be stuck on cable for years to come. But customers outside the fiber footprint will still be able to buy gigabit Internet service after Comcast upgrades to DOCSIS 3.1, a faster version of the Data Over Cable Service Interface Specification. Comcast said in April that DOCSIS 3.1 will be available to some of its customers in early 2016 and eventually across its whole US footprint. Last week, Comcast said it wants to complete the whole upgrade within two years. “Our intent is to scale it through our footprint through 2016,” Comcast VP of network architecture Robert Howald said in an interview with FierceCable . “We want to get it across the footprint very quickly… We’re shooting for two years.” It could take up to three years, the story said. Read 4 remaining paragraphs | Comments
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Comcast planning gigabit cable for entire US territory in 2-3 years
Elon Musk’s hyperloop is actually getting kind of serious
The hyperloop sounds like science fiction, Elon Musk’s pipe dream: leapfrog high speed rail and go right to packing us into capsules that fling us across the country in hours using what are, essentially, pneumatic tubes. It sounds crazy, when you think about it. It’s starting to look a little less crazy. Hyperloop Transportation Technologies announced today that it has signed agreements to work with Oerlikon Leybold Vacuum and global engineering design firm Aecom. The two companies will lend their expertise in exchange for stock options in the company, joining the army of engineers from the likes of Boeing and SpaceX already lending their time to the effort. Read 13 remaining paragraphs | Comments
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Elon Musk’s hyperloop is actually getting kind of serious
New record temperature for a superconductor
Superconductivity was first seen in metals cooled down to close to absolute zero. But after exhausting every metal on the periodic table, the critical temperature at which the metal transitions to superconductivity never budged far from those extremely low temperatures. That changed dramatically with the development of cuprate superconductors, copper-containing ceramics that could superconduct in liquid nitrogen—still very cold (138K or −135°C), but relatively easy to achieve. But progress has stalled, in part because we don’t have a solid theory to explain superconductivity in these materials. Now, taking advantage of the fact that we do understand what’s going on in superconducting metals, a German research team has reached a new record critical temperature: 203K, or -70°C, a temperature that is sometimes seen in polar regions. The material they used, however, isn’t a metal that appears on the periodic table. In fact, they’re not even positive they know what the material is, just that it forms from hydrogen sulfide at extreme pressures. Read 8 remaining paragraphs | Comments
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New record temperature for a superconductor