Tag: funny

Blood Test of 4 Biomarkers Predicts Death Within 5 Years

retroworks writes “The NHS and the Daily Telegraph report on two studies (original and repeat duplicating results) in Estonia and Finland which predict whether an apparently healthy human will likely die within 5 years. The four biomarkers that appeared to determine risk of mortality in the next five years were: alpha-1-acid glycoprotein – a protein that is raised during infection and inflammation; albumin – a protein that carries vital nutrients, hormones and proteins in the bloodstream; very-low-density lipoprotein (VLDL) particle size – usually known for being ‘very bad’ cholesterol; and citrate – a compound that is an essential part of the body’s metabolism. Researchers found that people in the top 20% of the summary score range were 19 times more at risk of dying in the next five years than people in the lowest 20%.” The NHS’s summary of the news points out that “the implications of such a test are unclear. As this was an observational study, it can only show an association between the biomarkers and risk of death. It does not predict what the underlying cause of death would be for an individual and does not therefore provide an answer in terms of treatment.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Blood Test of 4 Biomarkers Predicts Death Within 5 Years

New Release of DICE, the CPU-Less Arcade Game Emulator, Adds Four Games

KingofGnG writes “DICE is a small emulator dedicated to recreating on a modern computer the arcade games based on discrete circuits: ancient and bizarre entertainment machines where the electronic components required for the game experience were soldered individually on the circuit board and where there was no trace of integrated circuit or CPU. It’s an obscure and fascinating kind of emulation, and the offering of emulated games grows richer with each release.” Released a few days ago, DICE 0.8 adds support for four new games: Atari’s Crossfire and Pin Pong, and Ramtek’s Clean Sweep and Wipe Out. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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New Release of DICE, the CPU-Less Arcade Game Emulator, Adds Four Games

FFmpeg’s VP9 Decoder Faster Than Google’s

An anonymous reader writes “A VP9 video decoder written for FFmpeg, FFvp9, now holds the title of being the world’s fastest VP9 video decoder. FFvp9 is faster than Google’s de facto VP9 decoder found in libvpx, but this doesn’t come as too much of a surprise given that FFmpeg also produced a faster VP8 video decoder than Google a few years back with both single and multi-threaded performance.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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FFmpeg’s VP9 Decoder Faster Than Google’s

Iran’s Hacking of US Navy ‘Extensive,’ Repairs Took $10M and 4 Months

cold fjord sends news that Iran’s breach of a computer network belonging to the U.S. Navy was more serious than originally thought. According to a Wall Street Journal report (paywalled, but summarized at The Verge), it took the Navy four months to secure its network after the breach, and the repair cost was approximately $10 million. From the article: “The hackers targeted the Navy Marine Corps Intranet, the unclassified network used by the Department of the Navy to host websites, store nonsensitive information and handle voice, video and data communications. The network has 800, 000 users at 2, 500 locations, according to the Navy. … The intrusion into the Navy’s system was the most recent in a series of Iranian cyberoffensives that have taken U.S. military and intelligence officials by surprise. In early 2012, top intelligence officials held the view that Iran wanted to execute a cyberattack but had little capability. Not long after, Iranian hackers began a series of major “denial-of-service” attacks on a growing number of U.S. bank websites, and they launched a virus on a Saudi oil company that immobilized 30, 000 computers. … Defense officials were surprised at the skills of the Iranian hackers. Previously, their tactics had been far cruder, usually involving so-called denial of service attacks that disrupt network operations but usually don’t involve a penetration of network security.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Iran’s Hacking of US Navy ‘Extensive,’ Repairs Took $10M and 4 Months

Whatever Happened To the IPv4 Address Crisis?

alphadogg writes “In February 2011, the global Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) allocated the last blocks of IPv4 address space to the five regional Internet registries. At the time, experts warned that within months all available IPv4 addresses in the world would be distributed to ISPs. Soon after that, unless everyone upgraded to IPv6, the world would be facing a crisis that would hamper Internet connectivity for everyone. That crisis would be exacerbated by the skyrocketing demand for IP addresses due to a variety of factors: the Internet of Things (refrigerators needing their own IP address); wearables (watches and glasses demanding connectivity); BYOD (the explosion of mobile devices allowed to connect to the corporate network); and the increase in smartphone use in developing countries. So, here we are three years later and the American Registry for Internet Numbers is still doling out IPv4 addresses in the United States and Canada. Whatever happened to the IPv4 address crisis?” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Whatever Happened To the IPv4 Address Crisis?

Kickstarter Security Breach Exposes Customer Data

New submitter jbov writes “Kickstarter members received an e-mail at about 16:40 EST notifying them of a security breach. According to the e-mail, information including user names, encrypted passwords, mailing addresses, and phone numbers may have been revealed. Kickstarter members were urged to change their passwords. ‘Older passwords were uniquely salted and digested with SHA-1 multiple times. More recent passwords are hashed with bcrypt.’ Kickstarter claims that credit card information was not accessed during the breach. According to Kickstarter, law enforcement officials contacted the company on Wednesday night and alerted them that ‘hackers had sought and gained unauthorized access to some of our customers’ data.’ Upon learning of the breach, Kickstarter closed the security breach and began strengthening security measures.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Kickstarter Security Breach Exposes Customer Data

Mac OS X Bitcoin Stealing Trojan Horse Called OSX/CoinThief Discovered

An anonymous reader writes “SecureMac.com has discovered a new trojan horse for Mac OS X called OSX/CoinThief.A, which spies on web traffic to steal Bitcoins. This malware has been found in the wild, along with numerous reports of stolen coins. The malware, which comes disguised as an app to send and receive payments on Bitcoin Stealth Addresses, instead covertly monitors all web traffic in order to steal login info for Bitcoin wallets.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Mac OS X Bitcoin Stealing Trojan Horse Called OSX/CoinThief Discovered

Windows Replacement? ReactOS 0.3.16 Gets Themes, CSRSS Rewrite, and More

jeditobe writes with this announcement from the ReactOS home page: “The ReactOS Project is pleased to announce the release of version 0.3.16. A little under a year has passed since the previous release and a significant amount of progress has been made. More than 400 bugs were eliminated. Some of the most significant include completion of the CSRSS rewrite and the first stages of a shell32 rewrite. 0.3.16 is in many ways a prelude to several new features that will provide a noticeable enhancement to user visible functionality. A preview can be seen in the form of theme support, which while disabled by default can be turned on to demonstrate the Lautus theme developed by community member Maciej Janiszewki. Another user visible change is a new network card driver for the RTL8139, allowing ReactOS to support newer versions of QEMU out of the box.” You can download release images here. Want to see how it handles Windows software? Here are demos of Office 2003, Photoshop CS2, and OpenMPT. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Windows Replacement? ReactOS 0.3.16 Gets Themes, CSRSS Rewrite, and More

Customer: Dell Denies Speaker Repair Under Warranty, Blames VLC

An anonymous reader writes “VLC is incapable of increasing the actual power past 100%, all that is being done is the waveform is being modified to be louder within the allowed constraints. But, that didn’t stop Dell from denying warranty service for speaker damage if the popular VLC Media Player is installed on a Dell laptop. Also we got a report that service was denied because KMPlayer was installed on a laptop. The warranty remains valid on the other parts of the laptop. VLC player developer [Jean-Baptiste Kempf] denied the issue with VLC and further claimed that the player cannot be used to damage speakers. How can I convince Dell to replace my laptop speaker which is still in warranty? Or class action is only my option?” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Customer: Dell Denies Speaker Repair Under Warranty, Blames VLC

Skinny Puppy Wants Compensation For Music Used in US Interrogations

First time accepted submitter time_lords_almanac writes “A Canadian band has sent an invoice to the U.S. Department of Defense after learning that its music was used without permission in ‘interrogations’ of detainees at Guantanamo Bay. The members of Skinny Puppy, who specialize in electronic music, were originally going to make the invoice the cover of their next album until they discovered they could bring legal action against the department. They were also none to happy to learn the purpose their music was being employed for, let alone illegally. The amount of compensation requested? $666, 000, of course.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Skinny Puppy Wants Compensation For Music Used in US Interrogations