polls – Page 11 – Tech Today w/ Ken May

Fake Call Centers in India Scam Americans Of Millions

An anonymous reader writes:Indian police have arrested 70 people and are questioning hundreds more after uncovering a massive scam to cheat thousands of Americans out of millions of dollars by posing as U.S. tax authorities and demanding unpaid taxes, a police officer said Thursday. According to police in Mumbai, the yearlong scam involved running fake call centers which sent voice mail messages telling U.S. nationals to call back because they owed back taxes. Those who called back and believed the threats would fork out thousands of dollars to “settle” their case, Mumbai police officer Parag Marere said Thursday. The scam brought in more than $150, 000 a day, Marere said without giving a total sum. If the scam netted that amount daily, it would have made almost $55 million in one year. Some victims were also told to buy gift vouchers from various companies, and hand over the voucher ID numbers which the impostors then used to make purchases, Marere said. Police said they are likely to file charges against many of the 600 or more people still being questioned on suspicion of running the fake call centers, housed on several stories of a Mumbai office building. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Fake Call Centers in India Scam Americans Of Millions

Revolutionary Ion Thruster To Be Tested On International Space Station

Three Australian researchers have developed “an ion thruster that could replace the current chemical-based rocket propulsion technology, which requires huge volumes of fuel to be loaded onto a spacecraft.” Slashdot reader theweatherelectric shares this article from the ABC News: An Australian-designed rocket propulsion system is heading to the International Space Station for a year-long experiment that ultimately could revolutionize space travel. The technology could be used to power a return trip to Mars without refuelling, and use recycled space junk for the fuel… It will be placed in a module outside the ISS, powered, as Dr Neumann describes, by an extension cord from the station. “What we’ll be doing with our system is running it for as long as we can, hopefully for the entire year on the space station to measure how much force it’s producing for how long.” In the early 2000s “it was basically a machine the size of a fist that spat ions from a very hot plasma ball through a magnetic nozzle at a very high velocity, ” and the researchers are now hoping to achieve the same effect by recycling the magnesium in space junk. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Multiple Linux Distributions Affected By Crippling Bug In Systemd

An anonymous reader writes: System administrator Andrew Ayer has discovered a potentially critical bug in systemd which can bring a vulnerable Linux server to its knees with one command. “After running this command, PID 1 is hung in the pause system call. You can no longer start and stop daemons. inetd-style services no longer accept connections. You cannot cleanly reboot the system.” According to the bug report, Debian, Ubuntu, and CentOS are among the distros susceptible to various levels of resource exhaustion. The bug, which has existed for more than two years, does not require root access to exploit. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Multiple Linux Distributions Affected By Crippling Bug In Systemd

New California Law Allows Test of Autonomous Shuttle With No Driver

If you live in California, you may soon start to see self-driving cars on the road with no operators to be seen. California Governor Jerry Brown signed into law on Thursday a bill that allows a self-driving vehicle with no operator inside to test on a public road. Currently, companies are legally able to test self-driving cars in California as long as the operators are located inside the vehicles when they are being tested. Fortune reports: The bill introduced by Democratic Assemblywoman Susan Bonilla allows testing in Contra Costa County northeast of San Francisco of the first full-autonomous vehicle without a steering wheel, brakes, accelerator or operator. New legislation was necessary because although driverless vehicles can be tested on private land like the office park, the shuttle will cross a public road on its loop through the campus. The new law means that two cube-like Easymile shuttles that travel no faster than 25 mph (40 kph) will be tested for a period of up to six months before being deployed and used by people. In an interview with Reuters in March, Bonilla said the “natural tension” between regulators concerned about safety and lawmakers trying to encourage innovation in their state necessitated a new bill. “They’re risk averse and we’re saying we need to open the door here and take steps (to innovate), ” Bonilla said, calling the driverless shuttle project “a very wise first out-of-the-gate opportunity” to show how the technology could work safely. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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New California Law Allows Test of Autonomous Shuttle With No Driver

Google Rebrands ‘Apps for Work’ To ‘G Suite,’ Adds New Features

Google has renamed “Apps for Work” to “G Suite” to “help people everywhere work and innovate together, so businesses can move faster and go bigger.” They have also added a bunch of new features, such as a “Quick Access” section for Google Drive for Android that uses machine learning to predict what files you’re going to need when you open up the app, based off your previous behavior. Calendar will automatically pick times to set up meetings through the use of machine intelligence. Sheets is also using AI “to turn your layman English requests into formulas through its ‘Explore’ feature, ” reports The Next Web. “In Slides, Explore uses machine learning to dynamically suggest and apply design ideas, while in Docs, it will suggest backup research and images you can use in your musings, as well as help you insert files from your Drive account. Throughout Docs, Sheets, and Slides, you can now recover deleted files on Android from a new ‘Trash’ option in the side/hamburger menu.” Google’s cloud services will now fall under a new “Google Cloud” brand, which includes G Suite, Google Cloud Platform, new machine learning tools and APIs, and Google’s various devices that access the cloud. Slashdot reader wjcofkc adds: I just received the following email from Google. When I saw the title, my first thought was that there was malware lying at the end — further inspection proved it to be real. Is this the dumbest name change in the history of name changes? Google of all companies does not have to try so hard. “Hello Google Apps Customer, We created Google Apps to help people everywhere work and innovate together, so that your organization can move faster and achieve more. Today, we’re introducing a new name that better reflects this mission: G Suite. Over the coming weeks, you’ll see our new name and logo appear in familiar places, including the Admin console, Help Center, and on your invoice. G Suite is still the same all-in-one solution that you use every day, with the same powerful tools — Gmail, Docs, Drive, and Calendar. Thanks for being part of the journey that led us to G Suite. We’re always improving our technology so it learns and grows with your team. Visit our official blog post to learn more.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Google Rebrands ‘Apps for Work’ To ‘G Suite,’ Adds New Features

Elon Musk Proposes Spaceship That Can Send 100 People To Mars In 80 Days

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: Today, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk unveiled the Mars vehicle — the spaceship his company plans to build to transport the first colonists to Mars. It will have a diameter of 17 meters. The plan is to send about 100 people per trip, though Musk wants to ultimately take 200 or more per flight to make the cost cheaper per person. The trip can take as little as 80 days or as many as 150 depending on the year. The hope is that the transport time will be only 30 days “in the more distant future.” The rocket booster will have a diameter of 12 meters and the stack height will be 122 meters. The spaceship should hold a cargo of up to 450 tons depending on how many refills can be done with the tanker. As rumored, the Mars vehicle will be reusable and the spaceship will refuel in orbit. The trip will work like this: First, the spaceship will launch out of Pad 39A, which is under development right now at the Kennedy Space Center at Cape Canaveral, Florida. At liftoff, the booster will have 127, 800 kilonewtons of thrust, or 28, 730, 000 pounds of thrust. Then, the spaceship and booster separate. The spaceship heads to orbit, while the booster heads back to Earth, coming back within about 20 minutes. Back on Earth, the booster lands on a launch mount and a propellant tanker is loaded onto the booster. The entire unit — now filled with fuel — lifts off again. It joins with the spaceship, which is then refueled in orbit. The propellant tankers will go up anywhere from three to five times to fill the tanks of the spaceship. The spaceship finally departs for Mars. To make the trip more attractive for its crew members, Musk promises that it’ll be “really fun” with zero-G games, movies, cabins, games, a restaurant. Once it reaches Mars, the vehicle will land on the surface, using its rocket engines to lower itself gently down to the ground. The spaceship’s passengers will use the vehicle, as well as cargo and hardware that’s already been shipped over to Mars, to set up a long-term colony. At the rate of 20 to 50 total Mars trips, it will take anywhere from 40 to 100 years to achieve a fully self-sustaining civilization with one million people on Mars, says Musk. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Elon Musk Proposes Spaceship That Can Send 100 People To Mars In 80 Days

California Launches Mandatory Data Collection For Police Use-of-Force

An anonymous Slashdot reader quotes the AP: All 800 police departments in California must begin using a new online tool launched Thursday to report and help track every time officers use force that causes serious injuries… The tool, named URSUS for the bear on California’s flag, includes fields for the race of those injured and the officers involved, how their interaction began and why force was deemed necessary. “It’s sort of like TurboTax for use-of-force incidents, ” said Justin Erlich, a special assistant attorney general overseeing the data collection and analysis. Departments must report the data under a new state law passed last November. Though some departments already tracked such data on their own, many did not… “As a country, we must engage in an honest, transparent, and data-driven conversation about police use of force, ” California Attorney General Kamala Harris said in a news release. It’s an open source tool developed by Bayes Impact, and California plans to share the code with other interested law enforcement agencies across the country. Only three other states currently require their police departments to track data about use-of-force incidents, “but their systems aren’t digital, and in Colorado’s case, only capture shootings.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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California Launches Mandatory Data Collection For Police Use-of-Force

Spam Hits Its Highest Level Since 2010

Long-time Slashdot reader coondoggie quotes Network World: Spam is back in a big way — levels that have not been seen since 2010 in fact. That’s according to a blog post from Cisco Talos that stated the main culprit of the increase is largely the handiwork of the Necurs botnet… “Many of the host IPs sending Necurs’ spam have been infected for more than two years. “To help keep the full scope of the botnet hidden, Necurs will only send spam from a subset of its minions… This greatly complicates the job of security personnel who respond to spam attacks, because while they may believe the offending host was subsequently found and cleaned up, the reality is that the miscreants behind Necurs are just biding their time, and suddenly the spam starts all over again.” Before this year, the SpamCop Block List was under 200, 000 IP addresses, but surged to over 450, 000 addresses by the end of August. Interestingly, Proofpoint reported that between June and July, Donald Trump’s name appeared in 169 times more spam emails than Hillary Clinton’s. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

People Are Drilling Holes Into Their iPhone 7 To ‘Make a Headphone Jack’

TechRax — a popular YouTuber who destroys technology for fame and riches — has uploaded a video where he drills a hole into an iPhone 7, claiming it to be a “secret hack” to reinstall a headphone jack in the device. The only problem is that he didn’t tell people it was a joke, and of course, some people fell for it. Crave Online reports: The YouTube video has amassed over 7.5 million views since being posted online last week, with it attracting 81, 000 dislikes in the process. The comments section is currently torn between people who are in on the joke, people who criticize TechRax for damaging his iPhone 7, and most unfortunately, people who have tried the “hack” out for themselves. Although this is YouTube so you can never be quite sure of whether or not these folks are trolling, parsing the comments section reveals some pretty convincing complaints lobbed in TechRax’s direction. It’s also firmly believable that there are people dumb enough to attempt drilling a hole into their iPhone 7, which is unfortunate but that’s the way the world is in 2016. You can read the comments under the YouTube video for more “convincing complaints.” But as if the report didn’t make it clear enough already, the video is a joke. Apple removed the headphone jack and there’s no way to get it back, unless you use an adapter. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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People Are Drilling Holes Into Their iPhone 7 To ‘Make a Headphone Jack’

Samsung’s 960 Pro and 960 Evo SSDs Marry Crazy-Fast Speeds With Roomy Capacity

An anonymous reader writes: Samsung is following up its NVMe successes from 2015 with some fresh blazing-fast M.2 SSDs for storage geeks. The company just announced the Samsung 960 Pro and 960 Evo during this year’s Samsung SSD Global Summit. As with 2015’s 950 Pro NVMe SSDs, the new 960 series marries stacked V-NAND density with the Non-Volatile Memory express (NVMe) specification. They also use a 4-lane PCIe 3.0 interface, just like the 950 Pro. The 960 Evo and Pro will roll out in October with prices starting at $130 and $330, respectively. The 960 Evo will be available in 250GB, 500GB, and 1TB capacities, while the Pro offers 512GB, 1TB, and 2TB versions. The Evo utilizes cheaper and more tightly packed TLC (triple-level cell) NAND, while the Pro sports speedier MLC (multi-level cell) NAND. That 2TB maximum is double the top capacity Samsung offered with the 950 Pro in 2015, and in another age would’ve earned the moniker “jaw dropping” for packing that much storage into an M.2 SSD. But this is the age of the 1TB SDXC card, so maybe sheer capacity increases aren’t as impressive as they used to be. Seagate also announced a 2TB M.2 storage option for enterprises in July.BetaNews has more details. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Samsung’s 960 Pro and 960 Evo SSDs Marry Crazy-Fast Speeds With Roomy Capacity