events – Page 319 – Tech Today w/ Ken May

General Mills To Drop Artificial Ingredients In Cereal

schwit1 writes: General Mills announced Monday that it will be removing artificial colors and flavoring from its cereal products over the next two to three years. The company said that Trix and Reese’s Puffs will be some of the first cereals to undergo the changes adding that cereals like Lucky Charms that have marshmallows may take longer to reformulate. They say 90 percent of their cereals will have no artificial ingredients by the end of 2016. “We’ve continued to listen to consumers who want to see more recognizable and familiar ingredients on the labels and challenged ourselves to remove barriers that prevent adults and children from enjoying our cereals, ” said Jim Murphy, president of General Mills cereal division, in a statement. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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General Mills To Drop Artificial Ingredients In Cereal

Amazon Is Only Going To Pay Authors When Each Page Is Read

An anonymous reader writes: Amazon has a new plan to keep self-published authors honest: they’re only going to pay them when someone actually reads a page. Peter Wayner at the Atlantic explores how this is going to change the lives of the authors — and the readers. Fat, impressive coffee table books are out if no one reads them. Thin, concise authors will be bereft. Page turners are in. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Amazon Is Only Going To Pay Authors When Each Page Is Read

‘Brain-to-Text’ Interface Types Thoughts of Epileptic Patients

Jason Koebler writes with a link to Motherboard’s article about research from the Schalk Lab of Albany, New York, where researchers “have just demonstrated for the first time that it’s possible to turn a person’s thoughts into a legible phrase using what they’re calling a “brain-to-text” interface, ” writing “It’s still still the early days of this technology—electrodes had to be placed directly on the brain and the ‘dictionary’ of phrases was limited. Still, brainwaves of thought patterns were turned into text at a rate much better than chance.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

British Government Instituted 3-Month Deletion Policy, Apparently To Evade FOIA

An anonymous reader writes: In late 2004, weeks before Tony Blair’s Freedom of Information (FOI) act first came into force, Downing Street adopted a policy of automatically deleting emails more than three months old (paywalled). The IT decision has resulted in a “dysfunctional” system according to former cabinet officials, with Downing Street workers struggling to agree on the details of meetings in the absence of a correspondence chain. It is still possible to preserve an email by dragging it to local storage, but the relevance of mails may not be apparent at the time that the worker must make the decision to do so. Former special adviser to Nick Clegg Sean Kemp said: “Some people delete their emails on an almost daily basis, others just try to avoid putting anything potentially interesting in an email in the first place.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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British Government Instituted 3-Month Deletion Policy, Apparently To Evade FOIA

Apple De-Certifies Monster Cables After Lawsuit Against Beats

An anonymous reader writes: Since 2005, Monster cables have been licensed under Apple’s “Made For iDevice” program, which lets cable manufacturers put a logo on their product signifying they work with Apple products. Now, Apple has revoked that certification. In January of this year, Monster sued Beats, accusing its founders of fraud. Beats was acquired by Apple in 2014, and Monster is accusing Apple of bullying them by terminating the licensing deal. Monster’s general counsel said the move would “significantly disrupt Monster’s business and that the two companies had worked well for years, with Monster paying Apple more than $12 million in licensing fees since 2008.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Apple De-Certifies Monster Cables After Lawsuit Against Beats

Researchers Find Major Keychain Vulnerability in iOS and OS X

An anonymous reader notes a report from El Reg on a major cross-app resource vulnerability in iOS and Mac OS X. Researchers say it’s possible to break app sandboxes, bypass App Store security checks, and crack the Apple keychain. The researchers wrote, “specifically, we found that the inter-app interaction services, including the keychain and WebSocket on OS X and URL Scheme on OS X and iOS, can all be exploited by [malware] to steal such confidential information as the passwords for iCloud, email and bank, and the secret token of Evernote. Further, the design of the App sandbox on OS X was found to be vulnerable, exposing an app’s private directory to the sandboxed malware that hijacks its Apple Bundle ID. As a result, sensitive user data, like the notes and user contacts under Evernote and photos under WeChat, have all been disclosed. Fundamentally, these problems are caused by the lack of app-to-app and app-to-OS authentications.” Their full academic paper (PDF) is available online, as are a series of video demos. They withheld publication for six months at Apple’s request, but haven’t heard anything further about a fix. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Researchers Find Major Keychain Vulnerability in iOS and OS X

Malware Attacks Give Criminals 1,425% Return On Investment

An anonymous reader writes: Trustwave released a new report which reveals the top cybercrime, data breach and security threat trends. According to their findings, attackers receive an estimated 1, 425 percent return on investment for exploit kit and ransomware schemes ($84, 100 net revenue for each $5, 900 investment). Retail was the most compromised industry making up 43 percent of investigations followed by food and beverage (13 percent) and hospitality (12 percent). Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Malware Attacks Give Criminals 1,425% Return On Investment

Restaurateur Loses Copyright Suit To BMI

Frosty P writes: BMI claims Amici III in Linden, New York didn’t have a license when it played four tunes in its eatery one night last year, including the beloved “Bennie and the Jets” and “Brown Sugar, ” winning $24, 000 earlier this year, and over $8, 200 in attorney’s fees. Giovanni Lavorato, who has been in business for 25 years, says the disc DJ brought into the eatery paid a fee to play tunes. “It’s ridiculous for me to pay somebody also, ” he said. “This is not a nightclub. This is not a disco joint . . . How many times do they want to get paid for the stupid music?” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Restaurateur Loses Copyright Suit To BMI

‘Warm Neptune’ Exoplanets May Have Lots of Helium

An anonymous reader writes: Phil Plait reports on new research into exoplanets that came to an unexpected and non-obvious conclusion. Throughout the galaxy, astronomers have been finding exoplanets they call “warm Neptunes” — bodies about the size of Neptune, but which orbit their parent star more closely than Mercury orbits the Sun. When astronomers looked at spectra for these planets, they found something surprising: no methane signature (PDF). Methane is made of carbon and hydrogen, and it’s generally assumed that most large, gaseous planets will have a lot of hydrogen. But this class of exoplanet, being significantly smaller than, say, Jupiter, may not have the mass (and thus the gravity) to hold on to its hydrogen when it’s heated by the close proximity to the star. The result is that the atmosphere may be largely made up of helium instead. If so, the planet would look oddly colorless to our eyes, very unlike the planets in our solar system. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

210 Degree VR Headset With 5K Display Revealed By ‘Payday’ Developer Starbreeze

An anonymous reader writes: Starbreeze Studios has taken wraps off of StarVR, a new VR headset with dual displays comprising a 210 degree horizontal field of view with a total resolution of 5120×1440. The headset’s origins come from InfinitEye, a company working on a super-wide dual-display headset back in 2013 (http://bit.ly/1JNjqRy), which went into stealth mode for quite some time before being reborn as StarVR in partnership with Starbreeze Studios (http://bit.ly/1QwB0Nx). The studio is the developer behind the Payday franchise, Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons, and now ‘Overkill’s The Walking Dead’, which will have a VR component utilizing the new headset. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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210 Degree VR Headset With 5K Display Revealed By ‘Payday’ Developer Starbreeze