linkedin – Page 260 – Tech Today w/ Ken May

HP Server Killer Firmware Update On the Loose

OffTheLip (636691) writes “According to a Customer Advisory released by HP and reported on by the Channel Register website , a recently released firmware update for the ubiquitous HP Proliant server line could disable the network capability of affected systems. Broadcom NICs in G2-G7 servers are identified as potentially vulnerable. The release date for the firmware was April 18 so expect the number of systems affected to go up. HP has not released the number of systems vulnerable to the update.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

AT&T Plans To Launch Internet Video Service

An anonymous reader writes “AT&T officially announced on Tuesday their intention to launch a Netflix-like service in collaboration with an investment group run by a former Fox president. AT&T is following in the footsteps of Verizon, which partnered with Redbox in 2012 to offer the same type of service, and like Verizon, is also still negotiating with Netflix on payments to not throttle Netflix traffic.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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AT&T Plans To Launch Internet Video Service

The Hackers Who Recovered NASA’s Lost Lunar Photos

An anonymous reader sends this story from Wired: “The Lunar Orbiter Image Recovery Project has since 2007 brought some 2, 000 pictures back from 1, 500 analog data tapes. They contain the first high-resolution photographs ever taken from behind the lunar horizon, including the first photo of an earthrise. Thanks to the technical savvy and DIY engineering of the team at LOIRP, it’s being seen at a higher resolution than was ever previously possible. … The photos were stored with remarkably high fidelity on the tapes, but at the time had to be copied from projection screens onto paper, sometimes at sizes so large that warehouses and even old churches were rented out to hang them up. The results were pretty grainy, but clear enough to identify landing sites and potential hazards. After the low-fi printing, the tapes were shoved into boxes and forgotten. … The drives had to be rebuilt and in some cases completely re-engineered using instruction manuals or the advice of people who used to service them. The data they recovered then had to be demodulated and digitized, which added more layers of technical difficulties.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

OpenSSL Cleanup: Hundreds of Commits In a Week

New submitter CrAlt (3208) writes with this news snipped from BSD news stalwart undeadly.org: “After the news of heartbleed broke early last week, the OpenBSD team dove in and started axing it up into shape. Leading this effort are Ted Unangst (tedu@) and Miod Vallat (miod@), who are head-to-head on a pure commit count basis with both having around 50 commits in this part of the tree in the week since Ted’s first commit in this area. They are followed closely by Joel Sing (jsing@) who is systematically going through every nook and cranny and applying some basic KNF. Next in line are Theo de Raadt (deraadt@) and Bob Beck (beck@) who’ve been both doing a lot of cleanup, ripping out weird layers of abstraction for standard system or library calls. … All combined, there’ve been over 250 commits cleaning up OpenSSL. In one week.'” You can check out the stats, in progress. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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OpenSSL Cleanup: Hundreds of Commits In a Week

Closing Surgical Incisions With a Paintbrush and Nanoparticles

New submitter BiancaM (3582365) writes “A group of chemists has shown the power of nanoparticles for closing and healing surgical wounds [abstract]. Using no more than a paintbrush they are able to close surgical openings as well as classical techniques such as sutures. However in fragile deep tissues such as liver even more remarkable results were found- normally fatal damage to internal organs is repaired in seconds using a nanoparticle glue. The results show that closing after surgery can be faster and simpler using nanomaterials to glue wounds shut.” For something between the above linked abstract and the research paper, there’s this write-up at PhysOrg, and a video of the technique in action. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Closing Surgical Incisions With a Paintbrush and Nanoparticles

DARPA Developing the Ultimate Auto-Pilot Software

coondoggie (973519) writes “Call it the ultimate auto-pilot — an automated system that can help take care of all phases of aircraft flight-even perhaps helping pilots overcome system failures in-flight. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) will in May detail a new program called Aircrew Labor In-Cockpit Automation System (ALIAS) that would build upon what the agency called the considerable advances that have been made in aircraft automation systems over the past 50 years, as well as the advances made in remotely piloted aircraft automation, to help reduce pilot workload, augment mission performance and improve aircraft safety.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Microsoft Plans $1 Billion Server Farm In Iowa

1sockchuck (826398) writes “Microsoft will invest $1.1 billion to build a massive new server farm in Iowa, not far from an existing data center in West Des Moines. The 1.2 million square foot campus will be one of the biggest in the history of the data center industry. It further enhances Iowa’s status as the data center capital of the Midwest, with Google and Facebook also operating huge server farms in the state.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Microsoft Plans $1 Billion Server Farm In Iowa

Investors Value Yahoo’s Core Business At Less Than $0

An anonymous reader writes “Yahoo is most known for its search, email, and news services. But its U.S. web presence is only part of its corporate portfolio. It also owns large stakes in Yahoo Japan and Alibaba (a web services company based in China). Yahoo Japan is publicly traded, and Alibaba is heading toward an IPO, so both have a pretty firm valuation. The thing is: when you account for Yahoo’s share of each and subtract them from Yahoo’s current market cap, you get a negative number. Investors actually value Yahoo’s core business at less than nothing. Bloomberg’s Matt Levine explains: ‘I guess this is fairly obvious, but it leads you to a general theory of the conglomerate discount, which is that a business can be worth less than zero (to shareholders), but a company can’t be (to shareholders). … A fun question is, as fiduciaries for shareholders, should Yahoo’s directors split into three separate companies to maximize value? If YJHI and YAHI are worth around $9 billion and $40 billion, and Core Yahoo Inc. is worth around, I don’t know, one penny, then just doing some corporate restructuring should create $13 billion in free shareholder value. Why not do that?'” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Investors Value Yahoo’s Core Business At Less Than $0

Ubuntu Linux 14.04 LTS Trusty Tahr Released

An anonymous reader writes with this announcement: “Ubuntu Linux version 14.04 LTS (code named “Trusty Tahr”) has been released and available for download. This updated version includes the Linux kernel v3.13.0-24.46, Python 3.4, Xen 4.4, Libreoffice 4.2.3, MySQL 5.6/MariaDB 5.5, Apache 2.4, PHP 5.5, improvements to AppArmor allow more fine-grained control over application, and more. The latest release of Ubuntu Server is heavily focused on supporting cloud and scale-out computing platforms such as OpenStack, Docker, and more. As part of the wider Ubuntu 14.04 release efforts the Ubuntu Touch team is proud to make the latest and greatest touch experience available to our enthusiast users and developers. You can install Ubuntu on Nexus 4 Phone (mako), Nexus 7 (2013) Tablet (flo), and Nexus 10 Tablet (manta) by following these instructions. On a hardware front, ARM multiplatform support has been added, enabling you to build a single ARM kernel image that can boot across multiple hardware platforms. Additionally, the ARM64 and Power architectures are now fully supported. See detailed release note for more information here and a quick upgrade to a newer version of Ubuntu is possible over the network.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Ubuntu Linux 14.04 LTS Trusty Tahr Released

Tactus Taps Wistron To Bring Its Magical Physical Touchscreen Buttons To The Masses

Tactus makes keyboards that appear out of seemingly flat glass touchscreen surfaces, thanks a fluid-based layer that reacts to electrical signals to create rises and bumps that serve as keys and buttons. It’s a magical technology, and one that you can see demoed on video in the clip below from CES this year. Soon, you’ll be able to get that tech on a range of devices thanks to a new… Read More

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Tactus Taps Wistron To Bring Its Magical Physical Touchscreen Buttons To The Masses