Tag: jobs

Star Wars Pulls In $1 Billion At Record Speed

New submitter henrydan798 writes to note that Star Wars: The Force Awakens has set a new record for ticket sales, becoming the fastest movie ever to earn a billion dollars at the till. As the L.A. Times reports, The latest installment in the “Star Wars” franchise grossed an estimated $153.5 million in the U.S. and Canada in its second weekend, beating the lower end of analyst expectations of $140 million. This drives the J.J. Abrams-directed picture to a to-date domestic gross of $544.5 million. “The Force Awakens, ” which cost an estimated $200 million to produce, debuted last weekend to record domestic ticket sales of $248 million. It also grossed $281 million overseas for a global total of $529 million, topping the previous worldwide debut benchmark set in June by “Jurassic World” ($525 million). This week, with an international estimated gross of $546 million to date, the film became the fastest to surpass $1 billion globally. Were any of those dollars yours? If so, do you think they were well spent? Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Star Wars Pulls In $1 Billion At Record Speed

Giant Squid Filmed At Japanese Marina

overThruster writes: The Wall Street Journal reports: “The rare sight of a giant squid swimming inside a marina was captured on video on the coast of the Sea of Japan. According to a manager at the Mizuhashi Fisherina in Toyama prefecture, about 250 kilometers northwest of Tokyo, one fisherman found a 3.7-meter (12.1-foot) giant squid swimming beneath fishing boats docked at the marina on the morning of Dec. 24.” The extraordinary close up video taken by divers shows the giant squid’s natural coloration as well as the action of its siphon propelling it through the water. Additional footage here. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Giant Squid Filmed At Japanese Marina

North Korea’s Operating System Analyzed

Bruce66423 points out an analysis at The Guardian of North Korea’s Red Star Linux-based OS, based on a presentation Sunday to the Chaos Communication Congress in Berlin : The features of their Fedora based OS include a watermarking system to enable tracking of files — even if unopened. The operating system is not just the pale copy of western ones that many have assumed, said Florian Grunow and Niklaus Schiess of the German IT security company ERNW, who downloaded the software from a website outside North Korea and explored the code in detail. … This latest version, written around 2013, is based on a version of Linux called Fedora and has eschewed the previous version’s Windows XP feel for Apple’s OS X – perhaps a nod to the country’s leader Kim Jong-un who, like his father, has been photographed near Macs. The OS, unsurprisingly, allowed only tightly fettered access to web sites, using a whitelist approach that gives access to government-controlled or approved sites. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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North Korea’s Operating System Analyzed

APT Speed For Incremental Updates Gets a Massive Performance Boost

jones_supa writes: Developer Julian Andres Klode has this week made some improvements to significantly increase the speed of incremental updates with Debian GNU/Linux’s APT update system. His optimizations have yielded the apt-get program to suddenly yield 10x performance when compared to the old code. These improvements also make APT with PDiff now faster than the default, non-incremental behavior. Beyond the improvements that landed this week, Julian is still exploring other areas for improving APT update performance. More details via his blog post. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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APT Speed For Incremental Updates Gets a Massive Performance Boost

Pwnd Aethra Routers Used To Brute-Force WordPress Sites

An anonymous reader writes: Security researchers found around 8, 000 Aethra routers (with no admin passwords) as part of a botnet that attacked WordPress sites, trying to brute-force admin accounts. Most routers were deployed in enterprise networks in Italy. Each device could have be used to launch DDoS attacks with a capability between 1 to 10 Gbps for each device, based on the company’s bandwidth. Things could be worse, though: Additional investigation also revealed that some of the routers were also susceptible to various reflected XSS and CSRF attacks that would also allow attackers to take control of the device, even if using different login credentials. Using Shodan, a search engine for locating Internet-connected devices, researchers found over 12, 000 of Aethra routers around the world, 10, 866 in Italy alone, and over 8, 000 of these devices were of the model detected in the initial brute-force attack (Aethra Telecommunications PBX series). At that time, 70% of these Aethra routers were still using their default login credentials Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Pwnd Aethra Routers Used To Brute-Force WordPress Sites

Analyzing the US Air Force’s New "Portable Hobby Drone Disruptors" Solicitation

Lauren Weinstein writes: The U.S. Air Force has just issued a solicitation for a radio-based ‘Portable Anti Drone Defense’ system — essentially a remote drone disruption device that can be easily used by someone familiar with — well — shooting guns. The Air Force wants three units to start with. Delivery required 30 days after awarding of the contract. It does indeed make for interesting reading, and I thought it might be instructive to dig into the technical details a bit … Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Analyzing the US Air Force’s New "Portable Hobby Drone Disruptors" Solicitation

Facebook Replaces Flash With HTML5 For Videos

An anonymous reader writes: Facebook announced that it officially replaced Flash with HTML5 for its video player. They made the change because of security reasons, but developers also found it easier to work with — it led to quicker turnarounds for site-wide changes, and had better integration with code testing platforms. Facebook reports that user engagement has gone up since the switch was made. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Facebook Replaces Flash With HTML5 For Videos

Femto Fairy Lights – Touchable Holograms

mikejuk writes with this story about a Japanese team working on creating touchable holograms. I Programmer reports: “One method of creating a volumetric, i.e. true 3D, display, is to use a high power laser and focus it on a small spot in space. The air in that spot will be heated to the point where it ionizes and glows with a bright blue light. Scan the laser really fast and you can make a full 3D arrangement of glowing points of light — not exactly a hologram but as good as. Of course, the big problem is that you have a lot of energy being focused on small areas and human interaction could be a problem. You might well get burned by the laser if you attempted to touch or interact with the display. The solution is to use a really fast laser, a femtosecond laser, that heats a small spot to a high temperature but only for a very short time. This is much safer because the total energy involved is smaller. This is the reason you can touch sparks without getting burned.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Femto Fairy Lights – Touchable Holograms

Sony Creating Sulfur-Based Batteries With 40% More Capacity Than Li-Ion

MojoKid writes: Since the original iPhone was released in 2007, we have seen some incredible advances in smartphone processing power along with a wealth of feature improvements like faster Wi-Fi and cellular speeds and larger, higher resolution displays. However, battery technology, for the most part, hasn’t kept up. There are a few major battery suppliers but Sony is currently an underdog, commanding just 8 percent of the market for compact lithium-ion batteries. Its three largest competitors — Samsung (SDI), Panasonic and LG Chem — each command around 20 percent of the market. In an effort to change that, Sony is developing a new type of battery chemistry that can boost runtimes by 40 percent compared to lithium-ion batteries of the same volume. Sony’s batteries use a sulfur compound instead of lithium compounds for the positive electrodes, reportedly allowing for much great energy density. Sulfur batteries can also supposedly be made 30 percent smaller than traditional lithium-ion cells while maintaining the same run times. The company is now working to ensure that the new battery chemistry is safe enough for commercial use. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Sony Creating Sulfur-Based Batteries With 40% More Capacity Than Li-Ion

LifeLock Agrees To Pay $100 Million Fine In Settlement With FTC

New submitter dasgoober writes: Lifelock has agreed to pay $100 million to settle charges that it failed to properly protect user data, the F.T.C. announced on Thursday. This is the second settlement between the company and federal authorities. In 2010, the F.T.C. charged the company with failing to provide strong security measures for personal data. “This settlement demonstrates the Commission’s commitment to enforcing the orders it has in place against companies, including orders requiring reasonable security for consumer data, ” F.T.C .Chairwoman Edith Ramirez said in a statement. “The fact that consumers paid Lifelock for help in protecting their sensitive personal information makes the charges in this case particularly troubling.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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LifeLock Agrees To Pay $100 Million Fine In Settlement With FTC