An anonymous reader writes “Google today released Chrome version 35 for Windows, Mac, Linux, and Android. The new version is mainly for developers, especially those building Web content and apps for mobile devices – this release doesn’t appear to have any new features targeted at the end user. ” Read more of this story at Slashdot.
More:
Chrome 35 Launches With New APIs and JavaScript Features
MattSparkes (950531) writes “Law enforcement around the world has teamed-up to arrest 97 for buying/using Blackshades malware, which can remotely seize control of a victim’s computer, access documents, record keystrokes and even activate their webcam to take surreptitious pictures and video. It is also able to encrypt files in order to extract a ransom for their release. Blackshades RAT is a commercial product costing less than $200 which was marketed as a tool to test network security. However, it is widely used by hackers and was even said by the Electronic Frontier Foundation to have been used against Syrian activists by the government in 2012.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Read more here:
Almost 100 Arrested In Worldwide Swoop On Blackshades Malware
An anonymous reader writes “Online Trust Alliance (OTA) Executive Director and President Craig Spiezle testified before the U.S. Senate’s Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, outlining the risks of malicious advertising, and possible solutions to stem the rising tide. According to OTA research, malvertising increased by over 200% in 2013 to over 209, 000 incidents, generating over 12.4 billion malicious ad impressions. The threats are significant, warns the Seattle-based non-profit—with the majority of malicious ads infecting users’ computers via ‘drive by downloads, ‘ which occur when a user innocently visits a web site, with no interaction or clicking required.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Excerpt from:
Malvertising Up By Over 200%
sciencehabit writes: “If you’ve ever wiggled a balloon against your hair, you know that rubbing together two different materials can generate static electricity. But rubbing bits of the same material can create static, too. Now, researchers have shot down a decades-old idea of how that same-stuff static comes about (study). ‘[The researchers] mixed grains of insulating zirconium dioxide-silicate with diameters of 251 micrometers and 326 micrometers and dropped them through a horizontal electric field, which pushed positively charged particles one way and negatively charged particles the other. They tracked tens of thousands of particles—by dropping an $85, 000 high-speed camera alongside them. Sure enough, the smaller ones tended to be charged negatively and the larger ones positively, each accumulating 2 million charges on average. Then the researchers probed whether those charges could come from electrons already trapped on the grains’ surfaces. They gently heated fresh grains to liberate the trapped electrons and let them “relax” back into less energetic states. As an electron undergoes such a transition, it emits a photon. So by counting photons, the researchers could tally the trapped electrons. “It’s pretty amazing to me that they count every electron on a particle, ” Shinbrot says. The tally showed that the beads start out with far too few trapped electrons to explain the static buildup, Jaeger says.'” Read more of this story at Slashdot.
See more here:
Static Electricity Defies Simple Explanation
Hugh Pickens DOT Com (2995471) writes “Adrienne LaFrance reports at the Atlantic that f you’ve tried listening to any of the old CDs lately from your carefully assembled collection from the 1980’s or 1990’s you may have noticed that many of them won’t play won’t play. ‘While most of the studio-manufactured albums I bought still play, there’s really no telling how much longer they will. My once-treasured CD collection — so carefully assembled over the course of about a decade beginning in 1994 — isn’t just aging; it’s dying. And so is yours.’ Fenella France, chief of preservation research and testing at the Library of Congress is trying to figure out how CDs age so that we can better understand how to save them. But it’s a tricky business, in large part because manufacturers have changed their processes over the years and even CDs made by the same company in the same year and wrapped in identical packaging might have totally different lifespans. ‘We’re trying to predict, in terms of collections, which of the types of CDs are the discs most at risk, ‘ says France. ‘The problem is, different manufacturers have different formulations so it’s quite complex in trying to figure out what exactly is happening because they’ve changed the formulation along the way and it’s proprietary information.’ There are all kinds of forces that accelerate CD aging in real time. Eventually, many discs show signs of edge rot, which happens as oxygen seeps through a disc’s layers. Some CDs begin a deterioration process called bronzing, which is corrosion that worsens with exposure to various pollutants. The lasers in devices used to burn or even play a CD can also affect its longevity. ‘The ubiquity of a once dominant media is again receding. Like most of the technology we leave behind, CDs are are being forgotten slowly, ‘ concludes LaFrance. ‘We stop using old formats little by little. They stop working. We stop replacing them. And, before long, they’re gone.'” You can donate CDs to be tested for aging characteristics by emailing the Center for the Library’s Analytical Science Samples. I haven’t had much trouble ripping discs that were pressed in the 80s (and acquired from used CD stores with who knows how many previous owners), but I’m starting to get nervous about not having flac rips of most of my discs. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Read this article:
Your Old CD Collection Is Dying
Hugh Pickens DOT Com (2995471) writes “Jaikumar Vijayan reports at Computerworld that a physician at Columbia University Medical Center (CU) attempted to “deactivate” a personally owned computer from a hospital network segment that contained sensitive patient health information, creating an inadvertent data leak that is going to cost the hospital $4.8 million to settle with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). The error left patient status, vital signs, laboratory results, medication information, and other sensitive data on about 6, 800 individuals accessible to all via the Web. The breach was discovered after the hospital received a complaint from an individual who discovered personal health information about his deceased partner on the Web. An investigation by the HHS Office for Civil Rights (OCR) found that neither Columbia University nor New York Presbyterian Hospital, who operated the network jointly, had implemented adequate security protections, or undertook a risk analysis or audit to identify the location of sensitive patient health information on the joint network. “For more than three years, we have been cooperating with HHS by voluntarily providing information about the incident in question, ” say the hospitals. “We also have continually strengthened our safeguards to enhance our information systems and processes, and will continue to do so under the terms of the agreement with HHS.” HHS has also extracted settlements from several other healthcare entities over the past two years as it beefs up the effort to crack down on HIPAA violations. In April, it reached a $2 million settlement with with Concentra Health Services and QCA Health Plan. Both organizations reported losing laptops containing unencrypted patient data.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Link:
Physician Operates On Server, Costs His Hospital $4.8 Million
ananyo (2519492) writes “People are living longer, which is good. But old age often brings a decline in mental faculties and many researchers are looking for ways to slow or halt such decline. One group doing so is led by Dena Dubal of the University of California, San Francisco, and Lennart Mucke of the Gladstone Institutes, also in San Francisco. Dr Dubal and Dr Mucke have been studying the role in ageing of klotho, a protein encoded by a gene called KL. A particular version of this gene, KL-VS, promotes longevity. One way it does so is by reducing age-related heart disease. Dr Dubal and Dr Mucke wondered if it might have similar powers over age-related cognitive decline. What they found was startling. KL-VS did not curb decline, but it did boost cognitive faculties regardless of a person’s age by the equivalent of about six IQ points. If this result, just published in Cell Reports, is confirmed, KL-VS will be the most important genetic agent of non-pathological variation in intelligence yet discovered.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.
View article:
Single Gene Can Boost IQ By Six Points
An anonymous reader writes “Nielsen, the company that studies the viewing habits of television viewers, announced its findings in a blog post Tuesday. Since 2008, the number of cable TV channels offered as a bundle rose from 129 to 189 in 2013, but in that time-frame viewers have consistently only watched an average of 17 channels. The data seems to support the notion that consumers are better off subscribing to channels a la carte, but cable companies are of the opinion that ‘the price of cable TV wouldn’t change much if channels were served à la carte because content providers won’t sell the most popular programs to cable companies unless the provider’s other channels are also served up.’ Nielsen concluded in its post that ‘quality is imperative—for both content creators and advertisers’, signaling the possibility that more Americans will cut the cord after realizing that their cable bill has increased in the last few years but their consumption of content hasn’t.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Read More:
Average American Cable Subscriber Gets 189 Channels and Views 17
zarmanto writes: “The numbers have been telling us for a while now that (formerly expensive) feature phones have been slowly displaced by more feature-rich, high-end smartphones. Thus, it should come as no surprise that the other end of the market is also receiving active encroachment by low-end smartphones. Now, ARM is suggesting that it’s actually quite conceivable for OEMs to produce a ‘smartphone’ for as little as $20 — as long as you compromise a bit on those things which actually make it a smartphone in the first place. So, is this just more graying of the line between smartphones and feature phones? Or is this an indication that the feature phone (as we used to know it) is finally well-and-truly dead?” Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Read the article:
The Feature Phone Is Dead: Long Live the ‘Basic Smartphone’
Hugh Pickens DOT Com (2995471) writes “Walk into any university lecture hall and you’re likely to see row upon row of students sitting behind glowing laptop screens. Laptops in class have been controversial, due mostly to the many opportunities for distraction that they provide (online shopping, browsing Reddit, or playing solitaire, just to name a few). But few studies have examined how effective laptops are for the students who diligently take notes. Now Robinson Meyer writes at The Atlantic that a new study finds that people remember lectures better when they’ve taken handwritten notes, rather than typed ones. The research suggests that even when laptops are used solely to take notes, they may still be impairing learning because their use results in shallower processing. ‘Our new findings suggest that even when laptops are used as intended — and not for buying things on Amazon during class — they may still be harming academic performance, ‘ says psychological scientist Pam Mueller of Princeton University, lead author of the study. Laptop note takers’ tendency to transcribe lectures verbatim rather than processing information and reframing it in their own words is detrimental to learning. If you can type quickly enough, word-for-word transcription is possible, whereas writing by hand usually rules out capturing every word. ‘We don’t write longhand as fast as we type these days, but people who were typing just tended to transcribe large parts of lecture content verbatim, ‘ says Mueller. ‘The people who were taking notes on the laptops don’t have to be judicious in what they write down.'” Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Read the article:
Students Remember Lectures Better Taking Notes Longhand Than Using Laptops