You may not yet have stumbled across the Activity Log page in your wanderings around Facebook, but it’s worth exploring. It provides a blow-by-blow account of everything you do on the social network, and you can use it to take back likes or comments, find your favorite posts again, change your privacy settings and more. Read more…
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Fix All Your Facebook Mistakes With the Activity Log
An anonymous reader writes: Lightning struck a Google data center in Belgium four times in rapid succession last week, permanently erasing a small amount of users’ data from the cloud. The affected disks were part of Google Computer Engine (GCE), a utility that lets people run virtual computers in the cloud on Google’s servers. Despite the uncontrollable nature of the incident, Google has accepted full responsibility for the blackout and promises to upgrade its data center storage hardware, increasing its resilience against power outages. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
When Bruce Schneier says of a security problem “This is serious, ” it makes sense to pay attention to it. And that’s how he refers to a recently disclosed Cisco vulnerability alert about “an evolution in attacks against Cisco IOS Classic platforms. Cisco has observed a limited number of cases where attackers, after gaining administrative or physical access to a Cisco IOS device, replaced the Cisco IOS ROMMON (IOS bootstrap) with a malicious ROMMON image.” Schneier links to Ars Technica’s short description of the attack, whicih notes The significance of the advisory isn’t that the initial firmware can be replaced. As indicated, that’s a standard feature not only with Cisco gear but just about any computing device. What’s important is that attackers are somehow managing to obtain the administrative credentials required to make unauthorized changes that take control of the networking gear. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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Bruce Schneier On Cisco ROMMON Firmware Exploit: "This Is Serious"
minstrelmike writes: Over the weekend, hundreds of flights were delayed or canceled in the Washington, D.C. area after air traffic systems malfunctioned. Now, the FAA says the problem was related to a recent software upgrade at a local radar facility. The software had been upgraded to display customized windows of reference data that were supposed to disappear once deleted. Unfortunately, the systems ended up running out of memory. The FAA’s report is vague about whether it was operator error or software error: “… as controllers adjusted their unique settings, those changes remained in memory until the storage limit was filled.” Wonder what programming language they used? Read more of this story at Slashdot.
USB Type-C is shaping up to be the holy grail of ports . It can charge your laptop, deliver 4K video, and transfer loads of USB data all over a single cable—all at the same time. What could be better? You’re looking at the answer. Read more…
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Here’s The Box That Can Turn a Puny Laptop Into a Graphical Powerhouse
Vigile writes: The future of graphics APIs lies in DirectX 12 and Vulkan, both built to target GPU hardware at a lower level than previously available. The advantages are better performance, better efficiency on all hardware and more control for the developer that is willing to put in the time and effort to understand the hardware in question. Until today we have only heard or seen theoretical “peak” performance claims of DX12 compared to DX11. PC Perspective just posted an article that uses a pre-beta version of Ashes of the Singularity, an upcoming RTS utilizing the Oxide Games Nitrous engine, to evaluate and compare DX12’s performance claims and gains against DX11. In the story we find five different processor platforms tested with two different GPUs and two different resolutions. Results are interesting and show that DX12 levels the playing field for AMD, with its R9 390X gaining enough ground in DX12 to overcome a significant performance deficit that exists using DX11 to the GTX 980. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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DirectX 12 Performance Tested In Ashes of the Singularity
It’s the stuff of legends: the knight riding to the Crusades with the key to his lady’s chastity belt tucked under his armor. But it’s about as real as stories of Prester John or the Holy Grail . Read more…
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Chastity Belts Were Definitely Not A Medieval Thing
In the never ending parade of changes to cell phone carrier plans , Sprint has announced a new plan aimed at ensuring you always have the latest phone. Provided that phone is an iPhone, that is. Read more…
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Sprint Announces New "iPhone Forever" Plan to Always Keep You Up to Date
The capacity of our digital storage devices has skyrocketed in recent years. But there’s one storage medium that still kicks the crap out of our state-of-the-art solid state, and humans didn’t invent it. It’s called DNA. Read more…
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How DNA Could Replace Hard Drives
Yesterday, we learned that Disney is adding some absolutely massive Star Wars expansions to their Florida and California parks . Now here’s a video showing the highlights of Bob Iger’s keynote speech—along with more concept art that wasn’t officially released. Read more…
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"We’re Creating A Jaw-Dropping New World": More Details About Disney’s Star Wars Land