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Apple Says Sorry For iPhone Error 53 and Issues IOS 9.2.1 Update To Fix It

Mark Wilson writes: Apple has a lot of support at the moment for its stance on encryption and refusing the FBI access to an iPhone’s contents, but it’s only a couple of weeks since the company was seen in a less favorable light. There was quite a backlash when users found that installing an update to iOS resulted in Error 53 and a bricked iPhone. Apple initially said that Error 53 was caused ‘for security reasons’ following speculation that it was a bid to stop people from using third party repair shops. iFixit suggested that the problem was a result of a failure of parts to correctly sync, and Apple has been rounding criticized for failing to come up with a fix. Today the company has issued an apology, along with an update that ensures Error 53 won’t happen again. But there’s more good news … If you were talked into paying for an out of warranty replacement as a result of Error 53, you could be in line to get your money back. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Apple Says Sorry For iPhone Error 53 and Issues IOS 9.2.1 Update To Fix It

Stealing Keys From a Laptop In Another Room — and Offline

Motherboard carries a report that with equipment valued at about $3, 000, a group of Israeli researchers have been able to extract cryptographic keys from a laptop that is not only separated by a physical wall, but protected by an air gap. This, they say, “is the first time such an approach has been used specifically against elliptic curve cryptography running on a PC.” From the article: The method is a so-called side-channel attack: an attack that doesn’t tackle an encryption implementation head on, such as through brute force or by exploiting a weakness in the underlying algorithm, but through some other means. In this case, the attack relies on the electromagnetic outputs of the laptop that are emitted during the decryption process, which can then be used to work out the target’s key. Specifically, the researchers obtained the private key from a laptop running GnuPG, a popular implementation of OpenPGP. (The developers of GnuPG have since released countermeasures to the method. Tromer said that the changes make GnuPG âoemore resistant to side-channel attack since the sequence of high-level arithmetic operations does not depend on the secret key.â) Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Stealing Keys From a Laptop In Another Room — and Offline

Mattel Unveils $300 3D Printer

Lucas123 writes: Perhaps in an attempt to get out ahead of the consumer 3D printing market, which has allowed popular toys such as Legos to be replicated, Mattel today announced it would begin shipping its $300 fused filament fabricator machine in October. Mattel’s ThingMaker at-home toy-making device, reinvents the company’s iconic 1960s toy by the same name. The new ThingMaker allows users to upload design files via Mattel’s proprietary Design App, which works on Android or iOS devices. The 3D printer can then print single-part toys or print hundreds of different parts to be assembled into toys using ball-and-socket joints. Mattel’s ThingMaker Design App is based on Autodesk’s Spark, an open 3D printing platform that provides extensible APIs for each stage of the 3D printing workflow. Because it’s based on an open architecture, the ThingMaker Design App also works with other 3D printers; it is available now and free to download for iOS and Android devices. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Mattel Unveils $300 3D Printer

Pollen-Based Electrodes Could Boost Battery Storage

An anonymous reader writes: Bee pollen could hold the answer to next generation battery research, according to a new study led by scientists at Purdue University, Indiana. The team has been exploring how the unique microstructures found in allergen pollen grains could be used to provide a more energy efficient type of energy storage. The research explained that by turning pollen into a carbon anode with a more efficient microstructure than graphite, the team was able to create a battery which could store more energy than conventional graphite models. The scientists took the pollen from honeybees and common wetland plant cattails, and discovered that cattail pollen had more energy-storing capacity, compared to the bee pollen. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Pollen-Based Electrodes Could Boost Battery Storage

Iranian App Helps Users Avoid Morality Police

An anonymous reader writes: Young people in Iran are using a new app called Gershad (a contraction of ‘Gashte Ershad’, or ‘guidance patrol’), to avoid the ‘morality police’ by sharing the location of checkpoints with other users. At checkpoints strict Islamic dress and behavior codes are enforced, and their ad hoc nature can make them difficult to avoid. Hadi Ghaemi, the executive director of the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran, said of Gershad, “This is an innovative idea and I believe it will lead to many other creative apps which will address the gap between society and government in Iran.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Iranian App Helps Users Avoid Morality Police

Sci-Hub, a Site With Open and Pirated Scientific Papers

lpress writes: Sci-Hub is a Russian site that seeks to remove barriers to science by providing access to pirated copies of scientific papers. It was established in 2011 by Russian neuroscientist Alexandra Elbakyan, who could not afford papers she needed for her research and it now claims to have links to 48 million pirated and open papers. I tried it out and found some papers and not others, but it provides an alternative for researchers who cannot afford access to paid journals. After visiting this site, one cannot help thinking of the case of Aaron Swartz, who committed suicide as a result of prosecution for his attempt to free scientific literature. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Sci-Hub, a Site With Open and Pirated Scientific Papers

Hertz Is Pulling a Disney

New submitter wcrowe writes: Hertz is laying off over 200 IT employees, outsourcing the work to IBM India Private Limited, which has filed paperwork for H1-B visas to bring in replacements from overseas. This sounds pretty similar to what Disney did a year ago. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Hertz Is Pulling a Disney

OCZ Toshiba Breaks 30 Cents Per GB Barrier With New Trion 150 SSD

MojoKid writes: OCZ’s Trion 150 SSD is an update to the company’s Trion 100, which was the first drive from OCZ to feature TLC NAND and all in-house, Toshiba-built technology. As its branding suggests, the new Trion 150 kicks things up a notch over the Trion 100, thanks to some cutting-edge Toshiba 15nm NAND flash memory and a tweaked firmware, that combined, offer increased performance and lower cost over its predecessor. In testing, the Trion 150 hits peak reads and writes well north of 500MB/sec like most SATA-based SSDs but the kicker is, at its higher densities, the drive weighs in at about 28 cents per GiB. This equates to street prices of $70 for a 240GB drive, $140 for 480GB and $270 for a 960GB version. It’s good to see mainstream solid state storage costs continuing to come down. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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OCZ Toshiba Breaks 30 Cents Per GB Barrier With New Trion 150 SSD

AT&T gets ready to test 5G technologies this 2016

AT&T has been working on possible 5G technologies, such as millimeter waves, for years. Now that it’s time to get serious, it’s teaming up with Ericsson and Intel to ramp up its development in the lab in the second quarter of the year. After that, it’s moving its 5G endeavors out of the lab and into the field, starting with outdoor tests over the summer. The carrier says 60 percent of its mobile traffic in 2015 came from video. It’s moving forward with its 5G plans, because emerging technologies like virtual reality, 4K video, robots, Internet of Things and self-driving cars will be even more demanding. As AT&T’s Chief Strategy Officer John Donovan notes, those technologies “will be immersive, pervasive and responsive to customers. 5G will help make them a reality.” 5G internet could be anywhere from 10 to 100 times faster than LTE, with users observing downloads going gigabits (yes, giga bits) per second. Imagine being able to finish downloading a TV show for less than three seconds. That’s nowhere near enough time to get up and microwave some popcorn. AT&T believes its 5G network will even be able to start streaming videos much, much faster — just 1 to 5 milliseconds from the moment you press play — than an LTE connection. If everything goes well, some parts of Austin, Texas will be able to test out Ma Bell’s 5G tech by the end of this year. The company says it’s conducting tests in a way that enables it to deploy the network commercially as soon as 5G standards are set. You’d have to wait a while for that to happen, though. 3GPP, the international consortium in charge of hashing out network standards, is working on it right now. However, phase one (of two) won’t be completed until the first half of 2018. By the way, AT&T isn’t the only US carrier gearing up to test its next-gen mobile network: Verizon will soon begin its 5G wireless service trials, as well. [Image credit: Mike Mozart/Flickr ] Source: AT&T

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AT&T gets ready to test 5G technologies this 2016

Time Inc buys…MySpace?

MySpace still exists . Crazy, right? The once monolithic social network had faded into irrelevancy until it was relaunched with a little help from Justin Timberlake back in 2013. The fresh coat of paint wasn’t enough to reinvigorate the platform, however, and it’s now being sold as part of its parent company Viant to Time Inc. Yep, that’s the same Time Inc that publishes Time, Fortune , Entertainment Weekly and a whole bunch of other magazines. The company described the acquisition as “game changing, ” most likely in reference to Viant’s broader ad-tech business. MySpace does, supposedly, still have a part to play in that offering, but it’s notable the site was barely mentioned in the footnote of today’s press release . Source: Time Inc. (Press Release)

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Time Inc buys…MySpace?