funny – Page 230 – Tech Today w/ Ken May

Linux 3.19 Kernel To Start 2015 With Many New Features

An anonymous reader writes Linux 3.18 was recently released, thus making Linux 3.19 the version under development as the year comes to a close. Linux 3.19 as the first big kernel update of 2015 is bringing in the new year with many new features: among them are AMDKFD HSA kernel driver, Intel “Skylake” graphics support, Radeon and NVIDIA driver improvements, RAID5/6 improvements for Btrfs, LZ4 compression for SquashFS, better multi-touch support, new input drivers, x86 laptop improvements, etc. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Linux 3.19 Kernel To Start 2015 With Many New Features

Russian Hackers Stole Millions From Banks, ATMs

An anonymous reader writes Tens of millions of dollars, credit cards and intellectual property stolen by a new group of cyber criminals. Group-IB and Fox-IT, in a joint research effort, released a report about the Anunak hackers group. This group has been involved in targeted attacks and espionage since 2013. Anunak targets banks and payments systems in Russia and CIS countries. In Europe, USA and Latin America criminals were mainly focusing on retail networks as well as mass media resources. Anunak is unique in the fact that it aims to target banks and e-payment systems. The goal is to get into bank networks and gain access to secured payment systems. As a result, the money is stolen not from the customers, but from the bank itself. If they manage to infect governmental networks, they use the infrastructure for espionage. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Russian Hackers Stole Millions From Banks, ATMs

TripAdvisor Fined In Italy For Fake Reviews

mpicpp writes with news that TripAdvisor, a travel website filled with user-generated reviews, has been hit with a €500, 000 ($611, 000) fine for “misleading customers” by failing to cull fake reviews from their list. “The regulator complained that people reading TripAdvisor Italy were unable to distinguish between genuine and fake reviews posted on the site. It said both were presented by TripAdvisor as ‘authentic and genuine in nature.’ Demanding payment of the fine within 30 days, the ICA also accused the travel company of failing to provide proper checks to weed out bogus postings.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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TripAdvisor Fined In Italy For Fake Reviews

Samsung Announces Production of 20nm Mobile LPDDR4, Faster Than Desktop DDR4

MojoKid writes Samsung announced today that it has begun volume production of its 8Gb LPDDR4 memory chips, with expected commercial shipments in 2015. The announcement is noteworthy for a number of reasons. First, one of the most important characteristics of a modern mobile device is its battery life, and moving to a new memory standard should significantly reduce the memory subsystem’s power consumption. Second, however, there’s the clock speed. Samsung is claiming that its LPDDR4 will hit 3.2GHz, and while bus widths on mobile parts are significantly smaller than the 64-bit channels that desktops use, the higher clock speed per chip will help close that gap. In fact, multiple vendors have predicted that LPDDR4 clock speeds will actually outpace standard DDR4, with a higher amount of total bandwidth potentially delivered to tablets and smartphones than conventional PCs will see. In addition, the power savings are expected to be substantial. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Samsung Announces Production of 20nm Mobile LPDDR4, Faster Than Desktop DDR4

Satellite Captures Glowing Plants From Space

sciencehabit writes About 1% of the light that strikes plants is re-emitted as a faint, fluorescent glow—a measure of photosynthetic activity. Today, scientists released a map of this glow as measured by the Orbiting Carbon Observatory-2, a NASA satellite launched in July with the goal of mapping the net amount of carbon in the atmosphere. The map reveals that tropical rainforests near the equator are actively sucking up carbon, while the Corn Belt in the eastern United States, near the end of its growing season, is also a sink. Higher resolution fluorescence mapping could one day be used to help assess crop yields and how they respond to drought and heat in a changing climate. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Satellite Captures Glowing Plants From Space

Manufacturer’s Backdoor Found On Popular Chinese Android Smartphone

Trailrunner7 writes that researchers at Palo Alto Networks have found a backdoor in Android devices sold by Coolpad. “A popular Android smartphone sold primarily in China and Taiwan but also available worldwide, contains a backdoor from the manufacturer that is being used to push pop-up advertisements and install apps without users’ consent. The Coolpad devices, however, are ripe for much more malicious abuse, researchers at Palo Alto Networks said today, especially after the discovery of a vulnerability in the backend management interface that exposed the backdoor’s control system. Ryan Olson, intelligence director at Palo Alto, said the CoolReaper backdoor not only connects to a number of command and control servers, but is also capable of downloading, installing and activating any Android application without the user’s permission. It also sends phony over-the-air updates to devices that instead install applications without notifying the user. The backdoor can also be used to dial phone numbers, send SMS and MMS messages, and upload device and usage information to Coolpad.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Manufacturer’s Backdoor Found On Popular Chinese Android Smartphone

Over 9,000 PCs In Australia Infected By TorrentLocker Ransomware

First time accepted submitter River Tam writes Cybercriminals behind the TorrenLocker malware may have earned as much as $585, 000 over several months from 39, 000 PC infections worldwide, of which over 9, 000 were from Australia. If you’re a Windows user in Australia who’s had their files encrypted by hackers after visiting a bogus Australia Post website, chances are you were infected by TorrentLocker and may have contributed to the tens of thousands of dollars likely to have come from Australia due to this digital shakedown racket. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A Domain Registrar Is Starting a Fiber ISP To Compete With Comcast

Jason Koebler writes: Tucows Inc., an internet company that’s been around since the early 90s — it’s generally known for being in the shareware business and for registering and selling premium domain names — announced that it’s becoming an internet service provider. Tucows will offer fiber internet to customers in Charlottesville, Virginia — which is served by Comcast and CenturyLink — in early 2015 and eventually wants to expand to other markets all over the country. “Everyone who has built a well-run gigabit network has had demand exceeding their expectations, ” Elliot Noss, Tucows’ CEO said. “We think there’s space in the market for businesses like us and smaller.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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A Domain Registrar Is Starting a Fiber ISP To Compete With Comcast

The Pirate Bay Responds To Raid

An anonymous reader writes The Pirate Bay’s crew have remained awfully quiet on the recent raid in public, but today Mr 10100100000 breaks the silence in order to get a message out to the world. In a nutshell, he says that they couldn’t care less, are going to remain on hiatus, and a comeback is possible. In recent days mirrors of The Pirate Bay appeared online and many of these have now started to add new content as well. According to TPB this is a positive development, but people should be wary of scams. Mr 10100100000 says that they would open source the engine of the site, if the code “wouldn’t be so s****y”. In any case, they recommend people keeping the Kopimi spirit alive, as TPB is much more than some hardware stored in a dusty datacenter. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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The Pirate Bay Responds To Raid

Waze Causing Anger Among LA Residents

KindMind writes According to AP, Waze has caused trouble for LA residents by redirecting traffic from Interstate 405 to neighborhood side streets paralleling the interstate. From the article: “When the people whose houses hug the narrow warren of streets paralleling the busiest urban freeway in America began to see bumper-to-bumper traffic crawling by their homes a year or so ago, they were baffled. When word spread that the explosively popular new smartphone app Waze was sending many of those cars through their neighborhood in a quest to shave five minutes off a daily rush-hour commute, they were angry and ready to fight back. They would outsmart the app, some said, by using it to report phony car crashes and traffic jams on their streets that would keep the shortcut-seekers away. Months later, the cars are still there, and the people are still mad.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.