Tag: journal

Mac Users Reporting Widespread System Freezes With OS X El Capitan 10.11.4 Update

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Mac Rumors: A large number of MacBook Pro owners running OS X El Capitan are reporting widespread system freezes since installing the 10.11.4 update to Apple’s Mac OS. The problem appears to be concentrated on 13-inch Retina MacBook Pros (Early 2015) running 10.11.4. Users report that their system becomes totally unresponsive at seemingly random times, with no way to regain access to their Mac other than to force a hard reboot. The issue was initially reported by MacRumors forum member Antonnn on March 25, four days after Apple released what is the third update to the Mac OS. In Antonnn’s case, the freezes have been occurring “about once a week, ” first when browsing in Safari, but then also during the use of other Mac apps, including Adobe Photoshop and several third-party browsers. The freeze seems to affect not only the screen and mouse cursor but also the Mac’s Force Touch trackpad, which completely loses feedback. Apple Support is apparently aware of the issue but have so far offered no concrete solution. Meanwhile, some users have resorted to downgrading their system to 10.11.3 by restoring from a Time Machine backup or performing a clean install. Hundreds of others have posted to a dedicated thread discussing the issue. Bill Mattheis posted a video on YouTube of the freezing he has experienced on his MacBook Pro. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Mac Users Reporting Widespread System Freezes With OS X El Capitan 10.11.4 Update

Samsung Unveils 256GB MicroSD Card, Highest Capacity In Its Class

Samsung recently unveiled its EVO Plus 256GB microSD card, capable of storing more than 12 hours of 4K video footage, 33 hours of full HD recording, 55, 200 photos or 23, 500 MP3s. While you most likely do not need such a large microSD card in your life, you’ll probably want one. The card features Samsung’s newest V-NAND technology, with read/write speeds of 95MB/s and 90MB/s, respectively. It will be available in June to over 50 countries at a price of $250, which includes a 10 year warranty. Personally, I have no need for such a high-capacity card at this time, but I marvel how far technology has progressed in the last few years, let alone months. SanDisk, for example, revealed a 200GB microSD card back in March, 2015, which was the highest capacity microSD card up until now. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Samsung Unveils 256GB MicroSD Card, Highest Capacity In Its Class

Hyperloop One is testing its propulsion system in the Nevada desert today

Hyperloop One Here’s a look at the sled Hyperloop One is testing in North Las Vegas today. 4 more images in gallery In North Las Vegas today, a startup called Hyperloop One propelled a 10-foot-long sled down a track, accelerating it to 116 mph before it hit a patch of sand on the tracks. The test took about four seconds, USA Today reported . The test of Hyperloop One’s propulsion system is just one step of many on the path to achieve a dream put forth by Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, who first drew up a plan to transport people at 760mph in low-pressure tubes in 2013. Musk decided not to pursue this business venture, which he called Hyperloop, but his whitepaper spawned two rival Hyperloop companies and an international student engineer competition . Hyperloop One, formerly known Hyperloop Technologies, announced its name change on Tuesday, hoping to differentiate itself from Hyperloop Transportation Technologies (HTT), which has also made considerable headway in research and development of such a transportation system. HTT announced on Monday that it had exclusively licensed passive magnetic levitation technology that would serve to keep Hyperloop pods off the track, minimizing friction as they speed through a tube. Read 6 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Hyperloop One is testing its propulsion system in the Nevada desert today

Amazon Goes After YouTube With New Online Video Posting Service

Spencer Soper, writing for Bloomberg (edited and condensed): Amazon will let people post videos to its website and earn money from advertising, royalties and other sources, putting the company in more-direct competition with Google’s YouTube. Amazon already offers movies and television programs over the Internet — including its own original productions — to compete with Netflix. The new product dubbed Video Direct will let Amazon give consumers more options about what to watch without an upfront fee because many of those posting videos will be paid based on how their content performs. Competing streaming services have been driving up the cost of this material. Amazon used a similar strategy to boost its inventory of electronic books through Kindle Direct Publishing, which lets authors bypass traditional publishers and reach readers directly by posting and selling their own e-books online. The Seattle-based e-commerce giant said the service is designed for “professional video producers, ” but its only requirements are that the videos be high definition and have closed-captioning for the hearing impaired.The company is offering 15 cents for every hour of viewing a video creator’s content via Prime Video in the U.S, and six cents an hour for views outside of the U.S. Content creators can also allow Amazon to show their videos to any visitor for free. In such case, Amazon says it is offering 55 percent of all ad revenue their clips generate. Content creators can also sell their videos via its subscription service, or its rental its store — in which case, Amazon will offer 50 percent of the revenue. YouTube has been long criticized for paying less to YouTube creators, forcing many to leave the platform, or look for alternate revenue channels. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Amazon Goes After YouTube With New Online Video Posting Service

Kobo Customers Losing Books From Their Libraries After Software Upgrade

Reader Robotech_Master writes: After a recent Kobo software upgrade, a number of Kobo customers have reported losing e-books from their libraries — notably, e-books that had been transferred to Kobo from their Sony Reader libraries when Sony left the consumer e-book business. One customer reported missing 460 e-books, and the only way to get them back in her library would be to search and re-add them one at a time! Customers who downloaded their e-books and illegally broke the DRM don’t have this problem, of course.From the report: A Kobo representative actually chimed in on the thread, telling MobileRead users that they were following the thread and trying to fix the glitches that had been caused by the recent software changes and restore customers’ e-books. It’s good that they’re paying attention, and that’s definitely better than my first go-round with Barnes and Noble support over my own missing e-book. Hopefully they’ll get it sorted out soon. That being said, this drives home yet again the point that publisher-imposed DRM has made and is making continued maintenance of e-book libraries from commercial providers a big old mess. About the only way you can be sure you can retain the e-books you pay for is to outright break the law and crack the DRM in order to be able to back them up against your company going out of business and losing the purchases you paid for. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Kobo Customers Losing Books From Their Libraries After Software Upgrade

Tucows Bans Pop-Up Ads, Goes Ad-Free

HughPickens.com writes: Tucows began as a software downloads site nearly 25 years ago and has since evolved beyond that early core business and into domain names, mobile phone service and symmetrical gigabit fiber Internet in select towns and cities in the US. Now Tucows has announced that as a gesture of goodwill, Tucows has banned deceptive ads, hidden download buttons, pop-ups, flypaper, toolbars and other such Internet nastiness from the the nearly 40, 000 software titles it hosts for users on it’s download sites. “On the Tucows downloads site today, you’ll find no flashing ads. No toolbars. No pop-ups, ” says CEO Elliot Noss. “You might see a few plugs for other Tucows services, but nothing too egregious and certainly not anything that’s pretending to be a download button.” With Tucows’ success in domain names, mobile phone service (Ting) and fiber Internet (Ting Internet), Tucows’ revenue from downloads has become less relevant when looking at the balance sheet. “We don’t lightly walk away from opportunities or revenue, ” says Noss. “In the end, though, we’d rather have the Tucows name associated with good; with a belief in the power of the Internet to affect positive change. An ad-heavy site that packages browser toolbars along with every download isn’t something we want people to think of when they hear ‘Tucows, ‘.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Tucows Bans Pop-Up Ads, Goes Ad-Free

Hacker Guccifer Claims He Easily and Repeatedly Broke Into Hillary Clinton’s Email Server

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Fox News: The infamous Romanian hacker known as “Guccifer, ” speaking exclusively with Fox News, claimed he easily — and repeatedly — breached former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s personal email server in early 2013. In the process of mining data from the Blumenthal account, Lazar said he came across evidence that others were on the Clinton server. “As far as I remember, yes, there were up to 10, like, IPs from other parts of the world, ” he said. From the report: “‘For me, it was easy … easy for me, for everybody, ‘ Marcel Lehel Lazar, who goes by the moniker ‘Guccifer, ‘ told Fox News from a Virginia jail where he is being held. Fox News could not independently confirm Lazar’s claims. The 44-year-old Lazar said he first compromised Clinton confidant Sidney Blumenthal’s AOL account, in March 2013, and used that as a stepping stone to the Clinton server. He said he accessed Clintonâ(TM)s server ‘like twice, ‘ though he described the contents as ‘not interest[ing]’ to him at the time.” Guccifer was sent to prison last month, which is when his potential role in the Clinton email investigation became apparent. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Hacker Guccifer Claims He Easily and Repeatedly Broke Into Hillary Clinton’s Email Server

‘Largest Recall In American History’: Takata To Recall Nearly 70 Million Airbags

An anonymous reader writes: Federal regulators are ordering Japanese supplier Takata to recall as many as 40 million additional airbags linked to a defect already blamed for at least 11 deaths, bringing the total number of faulty airbags in the U.S. to 69 million. Previously, the recall involved about 24 million vehicles sold in the U.S. over roughly the last decade, with 14 manufacturers impacted. With the latest recall, almost every other major carmaker will now be pulled. “This is the largest recall in American history, ” National Highway Traffic Safety Administrator Mark Rosekind told reporters on Wednesday. Initial estimates said 35-40 million airbags were to be recalled. And because some vehicles use more than one Takata airbag, the total number of vehicles will likely be smaller. Now it’s considered highly likely that the total number of cars, trucks and crossovers will now top the 50 million mark, and as many as a quarter of all vehicles on U.S. roads could be covered. The NHTSA has reported that just over 8 million vehicles had been fixed as of April 22. The airbags have so far been tied to at least 10 U.S. deaths and more than 100 injuries — two more fatalities in Malaysia were confirmed Wednesday. “The exploding airbags can send shrapnel into the faces and necks of victims, leaving them looking as if they had been shot or stabbed, ” according to Fox 59. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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‘Largest Recall In American History’: Takata To Recall Nearly 70 Million Airbags

Cisco Finds Backdoor Installed On 12 Million PCs

Reader wiredmikey writes: Security researchers at Cisco have come across a piece of software that installed backdoors on 12 million computers around the world. Researchers determined that the application, installed with administrator rights, was capable not only of downloading and installing other tools, such as a known scareware called System Healer, but also of harvesting personal information. The software, which exhibits adware and spyware capabilities, was developed by a French online advertising company called Tuto4PC. The “features” have led Cisco Talos to classify the Tuto4PC software as a “full backdoor capable of a multitude of undesirable functions on the victim machine.” Tuto4PC said its network consisted of nearly 12 million PCs in 2014, which could explain why Cisco’s systems detected the backdoor on 12 million devices. An analysis of a sample set revealed infections in the United States, Australia, Japan, Spain, the UK, France and New Zealand.Tuto4PC has received flak from many over the years, including French regulators. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Cisco Finds Backdoor Installed On 12 Million PCs