Tag: facebook

Danish police charge 1,000 people following Facebook sex video

Facebook is no stranger to notifying police when there’s clear evidence of a crime, but its latest action has had consequences on a much larger scale than usual. Danish police have charged 1, 004 young people (some under 18) after Facebook notified authorities that Messenger users were sharing a video of two teens under 15 years old having sex, violating laws against the distribution of indecent images of children. Many of those who shared the video did so ‘just’ a few times, police said , but others shared it hundreds of times — they knew what they were doing, even if they didn’t realize it was illegal. Anyone found guilty would face no more than 20 days in prison, but they’d also be added to an offender registry for the next 10 years. The last messages were shared in the fall of 2017, but charges are only coming now because it’s a “very large and complex case, ” according to police. The investigation included four Danish police bureaus, and came after US authorities relayed Facebook’s warning to Europol. It can be tricky to catch ad hoc sharing of illegal videos on messaging services like this, both because of the private nature of the messages and because some users are bound to have end-to-end encryption turned on. Ultimately, it relies on someone in the sharing chain deciding to report the offending material — and in this case, it’s clear that it took a while before someone came forward. Privacy concerns are going to rule out active monitoring, but this does suggest that Facebook and others might want to do more to encourage voluntary reports. Via: BBC Source: The Local

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Danish police charge 1,000 people following Facebook sex video

AMD Is Releasing Spectre Firmware Updates To Fix CPU Vulnerabilities

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: AMD’s initial response to the Meltdown and Spectre CPU flaws made it clear “there is a near zero risk to AMD processors.” That zero risk doesn’t mean zero impact, as we’re starting to discover today. “We have defined additional steps through a combination of processor microcode updates and OS patches that we will make available to AMD customers and partners to further mitigate the threat, ” says Mark Papermaster, AMD’s chief technology officer. AMD is making firmware updates available for Ryzen and EPYC owners this week, and the company is planning to update older processors “over the coming weeks.” Like Intel, these firmware updates will be provided to PC makers, and it will be up to suppliers to ensure customers receive these. AMD isn’t saying whether there will be any performance impacts from applying these firmware updates, nor whether servers using EPYC processors will be greatly impacted or not. AMD is also revealing that its Radeon GPU architecture isn’t impacted by Meltdown or Spectre, simply because those GPUs “do not use speculative execution and thus are not susceptible to these threats.” AMD says it plans to issue further statements as it continues to develop security updates for its processors. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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AMD Is Releasing Spectre Firmware Updates To Fix CPU Vulnerabilities

Skype is adding an option for encrypted conversations

Soon, your chats on Skype can be just as secure as conversations on Signal, the service used by US Senators. Microsoft is integrating the open source Signal protocol, used by WhatsApp, Google, Facebook and Signal itself, into test versions of Skype as ‘ Private Conversations ‘ for end-to-end encrypted communications. There are a few restrictions: You can’t turn an existing chat into a Private Conversation, and must start each one by sending a request to one of your contacts. They don’t carry over between devices, so if you switch platforms, you’ll have to send a whole new request. And finally, Private Conversations are currently available in preview only for Skype Insiders, the service’s beta tester community. Via: Windows Central Source: Signal blog , Skype: Private Conversations

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Skype is adding an option for encrypted conversations

macOS High Sierra’s App Store System Preferences Can Be Unlocked With Any Password

A bug report submitted on Open Radar this week reveals a security vulnerability in the current version of macOS High Sierra that allows the App Store menu in System Preferences to be unlocked with any password. From a report: MacRumors is able to reproduce the issue on macOS High Sierra version 10.13.2, the latest public release of the operating system, on an administrator-level account by following these steps: 1. Click on System Preferences. 2. Click on App Store. 3. Click on the padlock icon to lock it if necessary. 4. Click on the padlock icon again. 5. Enter your username and any password. 6. Click Unlock. As mentioned in the radar, System Preferences does not accept an incorrect password with a non-administrator account. We also weren’t able to unlock any other System Preferences menus with an incorrect password. We’re unable to reproduce the issue on the third or fourth betas of macOS High Sierra 10.13.3, suggesting Apple has fixed the security vulnerability in the upcoming release. However, the update currently remains in testing. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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macOS High Sierra’s App Store System Preferences Can Be Unlocked With Any Password

Intel Launches 8th Gen Core Series CPUs With Integrated AMD Radeon Graphics

MojoKid writes: At CES 2018, Intel unveiled more details of its 8th generation Intel Core processors with integrated AMD Radeon RX Vega M graphics. Like cats and dogs living together, the mashup of an Intel processor with an AMD GPU is made possible by an Embedded Multi-Die Interconnect Bridge (EMIB), which provides a high-speed data interconnect between the processor, GPU and 4GB of second-generation High-Bandwidth Memory (HBM2). Intel is delivering 8th generation H-Series Core processors in 65W TDP (laptops) and 100W TDP (desktops) SKUs that will take up 50 percent less PCB real estate, versus traditional discrete configs. Both the mobile and desktop variants of the processors will be available in Core i5 or Core i7 configurations, with 4 cores and 8 threads, up to 8MB of cache and 4GB of HBM2. The 65W mobile processors can boost up to 4.1GHz, while the Radeon RX Vega M GL GPU has base/boost clocks of 931MHz and 1011MHz, respectively. The AMD GPU has 20 compute units and memory bandwidth checks in at 179GB/s. Desktop processors ratchet the maximum boost slightly to 4.2GHz, while the base/boost clocks of the Radeon RX Vega M GH GPU jump to 1063MHz and 1190MHz, respectively. Desktop GPUs are also upgraded with 24 CUs and 204GB/s of memory bandwidth. Intel says that its 8th generation Core i7 with Radeon RX Vega M GL graphics is up to 1.4x faster than a Core i7-8550U with an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1050 GPU in a notebook system. System announcements from Dell and HP are forthcoming, with availability in the first half of this year. Intel has also launched a new NUC small form factor gaming mini PC based on the technology as well. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Intel Launches 8th Gen Core Series CPUs With Integrated AMD Radeon Graphics

Linux Mint 19 Named ‘Tara’

BrianFagioli writes: Today, we get some information about the upcoming version 19 of Mint. The biggest news is that it will be called ‘Tara.’ If you aren’t aware, Mint’s distros are always named after a woman. Clement Lefebvre, Linux Mint leader, shares the following information: “The development cycle only just started so it’s a bit early to give details about Linux Mint 19, but here’s what we can say already: Linux Mint 19 is estimated to be released around May/June 2018. Linux Mint 19.x releases will be based on Ubuntu 18.04 LTS and supported until 2023. Linux Mint 19.x will use GTK 3.22. GTK 3.22 is a major stable release for GTK3. From there on, the theming engine and the APIs are stable. This is a great milestone for GTK3. It also means Linux Mint 19.x (which will become our main development platform) will use the same version of GTK as LMDE 3, and distributions which use components we develop, such as Fedora, Arch..etc. This should ease development and increase the quality of these components outside of Linux Mint.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Linux Mint 19 Named ‘Tara’

The World’s First 88-inch 8K OLED Display

From a report: Come CES, LG will be letting attendees get up close with its new 88-inch 8K OLED display, which is both the largest and the highest-resolution OLED panel to date. But as far as specs go, that’s all we have for now. Previously, the largest OLED screen size was 77 inches, and it “only” came in 4K. While this combination is currently offered to consumers by the likes of LG Electronics, Sony and Panasonic, they all source their large OLED panels from LG Display. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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The World’s First 88-inch 8K OLED Display

Movie Ticket Sales Hit A 22-Year Low in 2017

An anonymous reader quotes the Los Angeles Times: Hollywood is celebrating the end of 2017 with astronomical sales from “Star Wars: The Last Jedi, ” which is on track to soon exceed $1 billion in global ticket sales and eventually become the biggest movie of the year. But that won’t be enough to write a happy storyline for the industry. Although movie ticket sales in the U.S. and Canada are expected to dip just below last year’s record of $11.38 billion, the number of tickets sold is projected to drop 4% to 1.26 billion — the lowest level since 1995, according to preliminary estimates from studio executives. The falloff in ticket sales can mostly be explained by a handful of movies that flopped, especially during the dreary summer season that posted the worst results in more than two decades. Even such massive hits as “Wonder Woman, ” “Thor: Ragnarok” and “It” couldn’t make up for a lackluster summer lineup populated by rickety franchises (“Alien: Covenant”) and poorly reviewed retreads (“The Mummy”). However, the long-term decline in attendance reflects systemic challenges facing the industry. Audiences are spending less time going to the movies and are consuming more entertainment on small screens and through streaming services such as Netflix and Amazon that are spending billions on original video content. At the same time, while higher ticket prices have helped to offset attendance declines, they have made consumers pickier about what movies they’re willing to go see. And those increasingly discerning consumers turn to social media and Rotten Tomatoes to decide what’s worth their time and money. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Movie Ticket Sales Hit A 22-Year Low in 2017

Construction Workers Find 30 Perfectly Preserved Dinosaur Eggs

An anonymous reader quotes BGR: Chinese construction workers digging on Christmas day found a gift that was wrapped 130 million years ago in the form of 30 incredibly preserved dinosaur eggs. The discovery was made in the city of Ganzhou at the future site of a new middle school, but work on the new facility had to be put on hold after the ancient eggs were discovered. According to state media, the workers reported uncovering “oval-shaped stones” while clearing rock away using explosive blasts. The workers suspected they might be important so they alerted local law enforcement who took command of the site and contacted experts from a nearby museum who confirmed the “rocks” were actually fossilized dinosaur eggs. The eggs, which are thought to date from the Cretaceous period, are estimated to be as old as 130 million years. The location where they were discovered is believed to have once been an ancient lakeshore, which would have been a pleasant place for the dinosaurs to raise their brood. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Construction Workers Find 30 Perfectly Preserved Dinosaur Eggs

A Manager of the Exmo Bitcoin Exchange Has Been Kidnapped In Ukraine

CaptainDork shares a report from BBC: A manager of the Exmo Bitcoin exchange has been kidnapped in Ukraine. According to Russian and Ukrainian media reports Pavel Lerner, 40, was kidnapped while leaving his office in Kiev’s Obolon district on December 26th. The reports said he was dragged into a black Mercedes-Benz by men wearing balaclavas. Police in Kiev confirmed to the BBC that a man had been kidnapped on the day in question, but would not confirm his identity. A spokeswoman said that the matter was currently under investigation, and that more information would be made public later on. Mr Lerner is a prominent Russian blockchain expert and the news of his kidnapping has stunned many in the international cryptocurrency community. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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A Manager of the Exmo Bitcoin Exchange Has Been Kidnapped In Ukraine