Tag: lucky-modern

Google to acquire Provo, Utah’s fiber, transform it into Google Fiber

Less than 10 days after announcing that Austin will be Google Fiber’s second city (Kansas City, KS and MO, and surrounding small towns  qualified as Google’s first), the company announced suddenly that Provo, Utah will become the “third Google Fiber City.” Interestingly, Google isn’t laying its own fiber this time, but rather purchasing an existing network. “In order to bring Fiber to Provo, we’ve signed an agreement to purchase iProvo, an existing fiber-optic network owned by the city,” the company wrote in a blog post . “As a part of the acquisition, we would commit to upgrade the network to gigabit technology and finish network construction so that every home along the existing iProvo network would have the opportunity to connect to Google Fiber. Our agreement with Provo isn’t approved yet—it’s pending a vote by the City Council scheduled for next Tuesday, April 23. We intend to begin the network upgrades as soon as the closing conditions are satisfied and the deal is closed.” Read 2 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Google to acquire Provo, Utah’s fiber, transform it into Google Fiber

Microsoft scores biggest patent licensee yet: Foxconn

Foxconn Zhengzhou facility, under construction in February 2012. Bert van Dijk / flickr One company—Taiwan’s Foxconn—makes a staggering 40 percent of the world’s consumer electronic devices. Starting now, Microsoft will be getting paid a toll on a large number of those devices. The company’s long patent-licensing campaign has landed its biggest client yet in licensing Foxconn, formally named Hon Hai Precision Industry Co. Foxconn has agreed to take a license for any product it produces that runs Google’s Android or Chrome operating systems. The Redmond software giant has insisted for years now that any company making Android phones needs to license its patents. That campaign has generally been successful; so successful , in fact, that by 2011 Microsoft was making more money from patent licensing than from its own mobile phone system. Read 9 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Microsoft scores biggest patent licensee yet: Foxconn

ColdFusion hack used to steal hosting provider’s customer data

A vulnerability in the ColdFusion Web server platform, reported by Adobe less than a week ago, has apparently been in the wild for almost a month and has allowed the hacking of at least one company website, exposing customer data. Yesterday, it was revealed that the virtual server hosting company Linode had been the victim of a multi-day breach that allowed hackers to gain access to customer records. The breach was made possible by a vulnerability in Adobe’s ColdFusion server platform that could, according to Adobe, “be exploited to impersonate an authenticated user.” A patch had been issued for the vulnerability on April 9  and was rated as priority “2” and “important.” Those ratings placed it at a step down from the most critical, indicating that there were no known exploits at the time the patch was issued but that data was at risk. Adobe credited “an anonymous security researcher,” with discovering the vulnerability. But according to IRC conversation  including one of the alleged hackers of the site, Linode’s site had been compromised for weeks before its discovery. That revelation leaves open the possibility that other ColdFusion sites have been compromised as hackers sought out targets to use the exploit on. Read 5 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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ColdFusion hack used to steal hosting provider’s customer data

Google Glass specs: 16GB SSD, “full-day” battery, and no 3rd-party ads

Google The Google Glass team yesterday released a list of tech specs for the upcoming augmented reality glasses. They will have Wi-Fi and Bluetooth connectivity; 16GB of flash memory, with 12GB usable (synced with Google cloud storage); a 5MP camera for photos and 720p for video; a battery providing a full day of typical usage; and an HD display that will be “the equivalent of a 25 inch high definition screen from eight feet away.” The optimal resolution for photos and video will be 640×360, according to a separate document prepared for developers. Developers using the Google Mirror API to create applications for Glass have also been told not to serve up any advertisements. “You may not serve or include any advertisements in your API Client,” the Mirror API terms of service state. “You may not use user data from your API Client for advertising purposes. You may not sell or transmit any user data received from your API Client(s) to a third-party ad network or service, data broker, or other advertising or marketing provider. For the avoidance of doubt, user data from the API Client(s) may not be used for Third-Party Ad Serving.” Read 5 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Google Glass specs: 16GB SSD, “full-day” battery, and no 3rd-party ads

New security protection, fixes for 39 exploitable bugs coming to Java

A dialog box presented by Java when it encounters an application that isn’t signed by a digital certificate. Java.com Oracle plans to release an update for the widely exploited Java browser plugin. The update fixes 39 critical vulnerabilities and introduces changes designed to make it harder to carry out drive-by attacks on end-user computers. The update scheduled for Tuesday comes as the security of Java is reaching near-crisis levels. Throughout the past year, a series of attacks hosted on popular websites has been used to surreptitiously install malware on unwitting users’ machines. The security flaws have been used to infect employees of Facebook and Apple in targeted attacks intended to penetrate those companies. The vulnerabilities have also been exploited to hijack computers of home and business users. More than once, attackers have exploited one previously undocumented bug within days or weeks of patching a previous “zero-day,” as such vulnerabilities are known, creating a string of attacks on the latest version of the widely used plugin. In all, Java 7 Update 21 will fix at least 42 security bugs, Oracle said in a pre-release announcement . The post went on to say that “39 of those vulnerabilities may be remotely exploitable without authentication, i.e., may be exploited over a network without the need for a username and password.” The advisory didn’t specify or describe the holes that will be patched. Security Exploration, a Poland-based security company that has discovered dozens of “security issues” in Java, has a running list of them here . Read 5 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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New security protection, fixes for 39 exploitable bugs coming to Java

New F-1B rocket engine upgrades Apollo-era design with 1.8M lbs of thrust

NASA has spent a lot of time and money resurrecting the F-1 rocket engine that powered the Saturn V back in the 1960s and 1970s, and Ars recently spent a week at the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, to get the inside scoop on how the effort came to be . But there’s a very practical reason why NASA is putting old rocket parts up on a test stand and firing them off: its latest launch vehicle might be powered by engines that look, sound, and work a whole lot like the legendary F-1. This new launch vehicle, known as the Space Launch System , or SLS, is currently taking shape on NASA drawing boards. However, as is its mandate, NASA won’t be building the rocket itself—it will allow private industry to bid for the rights to build various components. One potential design wrinkle in SLS is that instead of using Space Shuttle-style solid rocket boosters, SLS could instead use liquid-fueled rocket motors, which would make it the United States’ first human-rated rocket in more than 30 years not to use solid-fuel boosters. The contest to suss this out is the Advanced Booster Competition , and one of the companies that has been down-selected as a final competitor is Huntsville-based Dynetics . Dynetics has partnered with Pratt Whitney Rocketdyne (designers of the Saturn V’s F-1 engine, among others) to propose a liquid-fueled booster featuring an engine based heavily on the design of the famous F-1. The booster is tentatively named Pyrios , after one of the fiery horses that pulled the god Apollo’s chariot; the engine is being called the F-1B. Read 34 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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New F-1B rocket engine upgrades Apollo-era design with 1.8M lbs of thrust

Microsoft tells Windows 7 users to uninstall faulty security update (Updated)

Microsoft has pulled a Windows 7 security update released as part of this month’s Patch Tuesday after discovering it caused some machines to become unbootable. Update 2823324 , which was included in the MS13-036 bulletin , fixed a “moderate-level vulnerability” that requires an attacker to have physical computer access to be able to exploit a targeted computer, Dustin Childs, a group manager in the Microsoft Trustworthy Computing group, wrote in a blog post published Thursday evening. The company has now pulled it from the bulletin and is advising at least some Windows users who have installed it to uninstall the update following the guidance here . MS130-26 was one of nine bulletins released on Monday to fix 13 separate vulnerabilities. “We’ve determined that the update, when paired with certain third-party software, can cause system errors,” Childs wrote. “As a precaution, we stopped pushing 2823324 as an update when we began investigating the error reports, and have since removed it from the download center.” Read 3 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Microsoft tells Windows 7 users to uninstall faulty security update (Updated)

A beginner’s guide to building botnets—with little assembly required

Original photo by Michael Kappel / Remixed by Aurich Lawson Have a plan to steal millions from banks and their customers but can’t write a line of code? Want to get rich quick off advertising click fraud but “quick” doesn’t include time to learn how to do it? No problem. Everything you need to start a life of cybercrime is just a few clicks (and many more dollars) away. Building successful malware is an expensive business. It involves putting together teams of developers, coordinating an army of fraudsters to convert ill-gotten gains to hard currency without pointing a digital arrow right back to you. So the biggest names in financial botnets—Zeus, Carberp, Citadel, and SpyEye, to name a few—have all at one point or another decided to shift gears from fraud rings to crimeware vendors, selling their wares to whoever can afford them. In the process, these big botnet platforms have created a whole ecosystem of software and services in an underground market catering to criminals without the skills to build it themselves. As a result, the tools and techniques used by last years’ big professional bank fraud operations, such as the ” Operation High Roller ” botnet that netted over $70 million last summer, are available off-the-shelf on the Internet. They even come with full technical support to help you get up and running. Read 63 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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A beginner’s guide to building botnets—with little assembly required

OS X 10.8.4 beta suggests 802.11ac is coming soon to a Mac near you

Amid the sea of text, a revealing phrase: 802.11ac. 9to5Mac Before rolling them out to the public through Software Update, Apple regularly releases beta versions of its minor OS X updates to registered developers and other selected testers. These patches are normally routine—a security patch here, a new driver there—but they occasionally reveal tidbits about where Apple is taking OS X and, by extension, its Mac lineup. A new build of OS X 10.8.4 was released to beta testers today, and 9to5Mac cracked it open in short order. Hidden in the operating system’s “WiFi-frameworks” folder is a brand-new reference to 802.11ac Wi-Fi , a new standard that promises bandwidth of up to 1.3Gbps. The fastest Wi-Fi chips in today’s Macs support 802.11n at speeds of either 450Mbps (for devices with three antennae like the iMac or MacBook Pro) or 270Mbps (for devices like the MacBook Air with only two antennae), making the new standard quite the potential upgrade. As with previous Wi-Fi upgrades, the new 802.11ac adapters and routers will also be backward-compatible with 802.11n, g, b, and a-based devices. Routers and adapters that support 802.11ac first began to appear on the market last year, and have slowly proliferated as the months have gone on. We saw quite a few 802.11ac routers at this year’s CES , and 802.11ac chips from the likes of Broadcom should begin to show up in many consumer devices this year. Even some smartphones (the HTC One in particular) are beginning to ship with the new standard, so it wouldn’t be a surprise if Apple made the jump in this year’s Macs. Read 1 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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OS X 10.8.4 beta suggests 802.11ac is coming soon to a Mac near you

Solid electrolyte may end the catastrophic failures of lithium batteries

Batteries like this one with liquid electrolytes may eventually get a run for their money. pinkyracer Lithium batteries have become a very popular technology, powering everything from cell phones to cars. But that doesn’t mean the technology is without its problems; lithium batteries have been implicated in some critical technological snafus, from exploding laptops to grounded airplanes . Most of these problems can be traced back to the electrolyte, a liquid that helps ions carry charges within the battery. Liquid electrolytes can leak, burn, and distort the internal structure of the battery, swelling it in ways that can lead to a catastrophic failure. The solution, of course, would be to get rid of the liquids. But ions don’t tend to move as easily through solids, which creates another set of problems. Now, researchers have formulated a solid in which lithium ions can move about five times faster than any previously described substance. Better yet, the solid—a close chemical relative of styrofoam—helps provide structural stability to the battery. Don’t expect to see a styrofoam battery in your next cellphone though, as the material needs to be heated to 60°C in order to work. The problem with liquid electrolytes has to do with the fact that, during recharging, lithium ions end up forming deposits of metal inside the battery. These create risks of short circuits (the problem that grounded Boeing’s Dreamliner 787) and can damage the battery’s structure, causing leaks and a fire risk. Solid electrodes get around this because the lithium ions will only come out of the electrolyte at specific locations within the solid, and can’t form the large metal deposits that cause all of the problems. Read 6 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Solid electrolyte may end the catastrophic failures of lithium batteries