management – Page 16 – Tech Today w/ Ken May

FreeBSD-Current Random Number Generator Broken

First time accepted submitter bobo the hobo writesThe FreeBSD random number has been discovered to be generating possibly predictable SSH keys and SSL certificates for months. Time to regenerate your keys and certs if using FreeBSD-Current. A message to the freebsd-current mailing list reads in part: “If you are running a current kernel r273872 or later, please upgrade your kernel to r278907 or later immediately and regenerate keys. I discovered an issue where the new framework code was not calling randomdev_init_reader, which means that read_random(9) was not returning good random data. read_random(9) is used by arc4random(9) which is the primary method that arc4random(3) is seeded from.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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FreeBSD-Current Random Number Generator Broken

Storing Data In Synthetic Fossils

Bismillah tips news of research from ETH Zurich which brings the possibility of extremely long-term data storage. The scientists encoded data in DNA, a young but established technique that has a major problem: accuracy. “[E]ven a short period of time presents a problem in terms of the margin of error, as mistakes occur in the writing and reading of the DNA. Over the longer term, DNA can change significantly as it reacts chemically with the environment, thus presenting an obstacle to long-term storage.” To get around this issue, they encapsulated the DNA within tiny silica spheres, a process roughly comparable to the fossilization of bones (abstract). The researchers say data can be preserved this way for over a million years. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Breakthrough In Face Recognition Software

An anonymous reader writes: Face recognition software underwent a revolution in 2001 with the creation of the Viola-Jones algorithm. Now, the field looks set to dramatically improve once again: computer scientists from Stanford and Yahoo Labs have published a new, simple approach that can find faces turned at an angle and those that are partially blocked by something else. The researchers “capitalize on the advances made in recent years on a type of machine learning known as a deep convolutional neural network. The idea is to train a many-layered neural network using a vast database of annotated examples, in this case pictures of faces from many angles. To that end, Farfade and co created a database of 200, 000 images that included faces at various angles and orientations and a further 20 million images without faces. They then trained their neural net in batches of 128 images over 50, 000 iterations. … What’s more, their algorithm is significantly better at spotting faces when upside down, something other approaches haven’t perfected.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Breakthrough In Face Recognition Software

Nanotech Makes Steel 10x Stronger

An anonymous reader writes: A new metal-making process currently in testing at oil fields uses nano-scale plating to make metals like steel as much as ten times stronger than they would be without it. “[The process] uses an advanced form of electroplating, a process already used to make the chrome plating you might see on the engine and exhaust pipes of a motorcycle. Electroplating involves immersing a metal part in a chemical bath containing various metal ions, and then applying an electrical current to cause those ions to form a metal coating. The company uses a bath that contains more than one kind of metal ion and controls how ions are deposited by varying the electrical current. By changing the current at precise moments, it can create a layered structure, with each layer being several nanometers thick and of different composition. The final coating can be up to a centimeter thick and can greatly change the properties of the original material.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Nanotech Makes Steel 10x Stronger

Federal Study: Marijuana Use Doesn’t Increase Auto Crash Rates

An anonymous reader writes: After the legalization of marijuana in multiple states around the U.S., many are worried about a corresponding uptick in car crashes as people drive while under the influence of pot. But according to a new federal study (PDF) commissioned by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, those fears seem unfounded. They report that after adjusting for other factors (people who tend to drive after using marijuana also tend to be more crash-prone in general), there was no statistically significant increase in crash rates by drivers who tested positive for the drug. It’s still a bad idea to drive high, but driving drunk is far, far worse: “One substance was shown to have a major influence on crashes: alcohol. The study confirmed the enormous danger of drinking and driving, even after age and sex adjustment: drivers with a 0.05% blood-alcohol level were found to be twice as likely to be in a crash. For a person weighing 180 to 190 pounds, that could be a single can of beer, glass of wine, or shot of liquor. At 0.08% (two drinks), the likelihood is quadrupled, and at .20% (four drinks or more), the risk is higher by 23 times.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Federal Study: Marijuana Use Doesn’t Increase Auto Crash Rates

Canada’s Next-Generation Military Smart Gun Unveiled

Zothecula writes Looking every bit like a weapon from a science fiction movie, the latest integrated assault rifle prototype being developed for the Canadian Armed Forces (CAF) is packed with some very smart weapons technology. Along with the ability to fire new lightweight telescoped ammunition, and a secondary effects module that adds either a three-round 40 mm grenade launcher or a 12-gauge shotgun, there is also a NATO-standard power and data bus to allow the attachment of smart accessories, such as electro-optical sights and position sensors that connect to command and control networks. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Researcher Developing Tattoo Removal Cream

BarbaraHudson writes During tattooing, ink is injected into the skin, initiating an immune response, and cells called “macrophages” move into the area and “eat up” the ink. The macrophages carry some of the ink to the body’s lymph nodes, but some that are filled with ink stay put, embedded in the skin. That’s what makes the tattoo visible under the skin. Dalhousie Uiversity’s Alec Falkenham is developing a topical cream that works by targeting the macrophages that have remained at the site of the tattoo. New macrophages move in to consume the previously pigment-filled macrophages and then migrate to the lymph nodes, eventually taking all the dye with them. “When comparing it to laser-based tattoo removal, in which you see the burns, the scarring, the blisters, in this case, we’ve designed a drug that doesn’t really have much off-target effect, ” he said. “We’re not targeting any of the normal skin cells, so you won’t see a lot of inflammation. In fact, based on the process that we’re actually using, we don’t think there will be any inflammation at all and it would actually be anti-inflammatory.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Oldest Twin Remains Found In Siberia

astroengine writes A team of Canadian and Russian researchers investigating an early Neolithic cemetery in Siberia have identified the world’s oldest set of human twins, buried with their young mother. The skeleton of the woman was exhumed in 1997 from a hunter-gatherer cemetery in south-eastern Siberia. Found with 15 marmot teeth — decorative accessories which were probably attached to clothing — the remains were photographed and labelled, but were not investigated by anthropologists. Now Angela Lieverse, a bioarchaeologist at the University of Saskatchewan, Canada, and colleagues Andrzej Weber from the University of Alberta, Canada, and Vladimir Bazaliiskii from Irkutsk University, Russia, have examined the skeleton and found remains of twin fetuses nestled between the pelvis and upper legs. The twins, about 36 to 40 weeks old, probably suffocated during their mother’s troubled labor nearly 8, 000 years ago. “This is not only one of the oldest archaeologically documented cases of death during childbirth, but also the earliest confirmed set of human twins in the world, ” Lieverse said. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Oldest Twin Remains Found In Siberia

VESA Embedded DisplayPort 1.4a Paves Way For 8K Displays, Longer Battery Life

MojoKid writes: The VESA standards organization has published the eDP v1.4a specification (Embedded DisplayPort) that has some important new features for device manufacturers as they bump up mobile device displays into the 4K category and start looking towards even higher resolutions. eDP v1.4a will be able to support 8K displays, thanks to a segmented panel architecture known as Multi-SST Operation (MSO). A display with this architecture is broken into two or four segments, each of which supports HBR3 link rates of 8.1 Gbps. The updated eDP spec also includes VESA’s Display Stream Compression (DSC) standard v1.1, which can improve battery life in mobile devices. In another effort to conserve battery power, VESA has tweaked its Panel Self Refresh (PSR) feature, which saves power by letting GPUs update portions of a display instead of the entire screen. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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VESA Embedded DisplayPort 1.4a Paves Way For 8K Displays, Longer Battery Life

US Gas Pump Hacked With ‘Anonymous’ Tagline

An anonymous reader writes Researchers at Trend Micro have uncovered a gas pump in the United States whose ID has been changed from ‘DIESEL’ to ‘WE_ARE_LEGION’ — the call-sign of the Anonymous hacking group. Following up recent revelations regarding the vulnerability of gas pump systems to online attackers, the researchers found 1, 515 completely unprotected gas pump monitoring devices via the Shodan device-based search engine. The report notes that the exposed devices are capable of being protected via six-digit pins, but this security measure is not being used. The report concludes: “Our investigation shows that the tampering of an Internet-facing device resulted in a name change. But sooner or later, real world implications will occur, causing possible outages or even worse.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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US Gas Pump Hacked With ‘Anonymous’ Tagline