Tag: funny

Police Body Cameras Come With Pre-Installed Malware

An anonymous reader writes: The old Conficker worm was found on new police body cameras that were taken out of the box by security researchers from iPower Technologies. The worm is detected by almost all security vendors, but it seems that it is still being used because modern day IoT devices can’t yet run security products. This allows the worm to spread, and propagate to computers when connected to an unprotected workstation. One police computer is enough to allow attackers to steal government data. The source of the infection is yet unknown. It is highly unlikely that the manufacturer would do this. Middleman involved in the shipping are probably the cause. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Police Body Cameras Come With Pre-Installed Malware

Windows 3.1 Glitch Causes Problems At French Airport — Wait, 3.1?

OakDragon writes: Microsoft has tamped down the earth on XP’s grave, steered Internet Explorer toward the nursing home, and is trying to convince everyone Windows 10 is a bright up-and-comer. But in the Paris airport of Orly, a system called DECOR — which helps air traffic controllers relay weather information to pilots — is running on Windows 3.1. That program suffered a glitch recently that grounded planes for some time. The airport actually runs on a variety of old systems, including Windows XP and UNIX. Maintenance is a problem. There are only three people in Paris that work on DECOR issues, and one of them is retiring soon. Hardware is also an issue. “Sometimes we have to go rummaging on eBay to replace certain parts, ” said Fiacre. “In any case, these machines were not designed to keep working for more than 20 years.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Windows 3.1 Glitch Causes Problems At French Airport — Wait, 3.1?

Quantum Dots Made From Fool’s Gold Boost Battery Performance

Science_afficionado writes: A lot of attempts have been made to use nanocrystals to improve battery performance, but the results have been disappointing. The problem is that when the size of the crystals drop below a certain size they begin to react chemically with the electrolytes which prevents them from recharging. Now, however, a team of engineers from Vanderbilt University report in an article published in the journal ACS Nano that they can overcome this problem by making the nanocrystals out of iron pyrite, commonly known as fool’s gold. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Quantum Dots Made From Fool’s Gold Boost Battery Performance

TV Networks Cutting Back On Commercials

An anonymous reader writes: Cable providers aren’t the only ones feeling pressure from cord cutters. The TV networks themselves are losing viewers the same way. A lot of those viewers are going to Netflix and other streaming services, which are often ad-free, or have ad-free options. Now, in an effort to win back that audience (and hang on to the ones who are still around), networks are beginning to cut back on commercial time during their shows. “Time Warner’s truTV will cut its ad load in half for prime-time original shows starting late next year, Chief Executive Officer Jeff Bewkes said last week on an earnings call. Viacom has recently slashed commercial minutes at its networks, which include Comedy Central and MTV. Earlier this month, Fox said it will offer viewers of its shows on Hulu the option to watch a 30-second interactive ad instead of a typical 2 1/2-minute commercial break. Fox says the shorter ads, which require viewers to engage with them online, are more effective because they guarantee the audience’s full attention.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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TV Networks Cutting Back On Commercials

NVIDIA Releases JTX1 ARM Board That Competes With Intel’s Skylake i7-6700K

An anonymous reader writes: NVIDIA has unveiled the Jetson TX1 development board powered by their Tegra X1 SoC. The Jetson TX1 has a Maxwell GPU capable of 1 TFLOP/s, four 64-bit ARM A57 processors, 4GB of RAM, and 16GB of onboard storage. NVIDIA isn’t yet allowing media to publish benchmarks, but the company’s reported figures show the graphics and deep learning performance to be comparable to an Intel Core i7-6700K while scoring multiple times better on performance-per-Watt. This development board costs $599 (or $299 for the educational version) and consumes less than 10 Watts. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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NVIDIA Releases JTX1 ARM Board That Competes With Intel’s Skylake i7-6700K

Fury and Fear In Ohio As IT Jobs Go To India

ErichTheRed writes: A company called Cengage Learning now joins the Toys ‘R Us, Disney and Southern California Edison IT offshoring club. Apparently, even IT workers in low-cost parts of the country are too expensive and their work is being sent to Cognizant, one of the largest H-1B visa users. As a final insult, the article describes a pretty humiliating termination process was used. Is it time to think about a professional organization before IT goes the way of manufacturing? Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Fury and Fear In Ohio As IT Jobs Go To India

WordPress Now Powers 25% of the Web

An anonymous reader writes: According to data from W3Techs one in four websites is now powered by WordPress. According to the report: “WordPress is used by 58.7% of all the websites whose content management system we know. This is 25.0% of all websites.” Venturebeat reports: “Today is a big day for the free and open-source content management system (CMS). To be perfectly clear, the milestone figure doesn’t represent a fraction of all websites that have a CMS: WordPress now powers 25 percent of the Web. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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WordPress Now Powers 25% of the Web

Electric-Car Startup Faraday Future Building a $1 Billion Factory In California

An anonymous reader writes: Faraday Future, an electric car startup based in California, wants to take on Tesla and is building a $1 billion factory in the California. Business Insider reports: “The startup of about 400 employees has poached executive talent from Tesla and also draws its name from a luminary scientist — Michael Faraday — who helped harness for humanity the forces of nature. Even Faraday’s public announcement that California, Georgia, Louisiana and Nevada are finalists for the factory mirrors the approach Tesla took to build a massive battery factory. Nevada won that bidding war among several states last year by offering up to $1.3 billion in tax breaks and other incentives. Faraday hopes to distinguish itself by branding the car less as transportation than a tool for the connected class.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Electric-Car Startup Faraday Future Building a $1 Billion Factory In California

Saying "Wasted" On Facebook Can Affect Your Credit Score

JustAnotherOldGuy writes: According to a recent report by the Financial Times (paywalled), some of the top credit rating companies are now using people’s social media accounts to assess their ability to repay debt. “If you look at how many times a person says ‘wasted’ in their profile, it has some value in predicting whether they’re going to repay their debt, ” Will Lansing, chief executive at credit rating company FICO, told the Financial Times. “It’s not much, but it’s more than zero.” According to the Financial Times, both FICO and TransUnion have had to find “alternative ways” to assess people who don’t have a traditional credit profile — including people who haven’t borrowed enough to give creditors an idea of what kind of risk they pose. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Saying "Wasted" On Facebook Can Affect Your Credit Score

NASA Eagleworks Has Tested an Upgraded EM Drive

An anonymous reader writes: A team of researchers at NASA’s Eagleworks Laboratories recently completed yet another round of testing on Engineer Roger Shawyer’s controversial EM Drive. While no peer reviewed paper has been published yet, engineer Paul March posted to the NASA Spaceflight forum to explain the group’s findings. From the article: “In essence, by utilizing an improved experimental procedure, the team managed to mitigate some of the errors from prior tests — yet still found signals of unexplained thrust.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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NASA Eagleworks Has Tested an Upgraded EM Drive