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The US Army Is Rolling Out Superhuman Hearing to Soldiers

An anonymous reader writes: The U.S. Army has developed an all-in-one hearing system that not only boosts the hearing of troops in the field, it also acts to cut down the noise of battle. The system, known as Tactical Communication and Protective System (TCAPS), is currently rolling out to units in the field. TCAPS is $2, 000 pair of earbuds designed to limit battlefield noise exposure, cutting off noise that reaches a set decibel threshold. The wearer can still hear gunshots and estimate their direction, but the noise is dampened to a non-damaging level thanks to microphones that detect the noise, and internals that use sound canceling technology to modify it for a wearer’s ears. At the same time, the decibel cap allows TCAPS-equipped soldiers to hear the voices of others around him, including through radios and other communications equipment. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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The US Army Is Rolling Out Superhuman Hearing to Soldiers

Scientists Announce Plans For Synthetic Human Genomes

An anonymous reader writes: After it was reported three weeks ago that scientists have held a secret meeting to consider creating a synthetic human genome, the participants of that meeting have officially published their plans. They announced a plan to launch a project that would radically reduce the cost of synthesizing human genomes — a revolutionary development in biotechnology that could enable technicians to grow human organs for transplantation. The Washington Post reports: “The announcement, published Thursday in the journal Science, is the latest sign that biotechnology is going through a rapidly advancing but ethically fraught period. The promoters of synthetic genomes envision a project that would eventually be on the same scale as the Human Genome Project of the 1990s, which led to the sequencing of the first human genomes. The difference this time would be that, instead of ‘reading’ genetic codes, which is what sequencing does, the scientists would be ‘writing’ them. They have dubbed this the ‘Genome Project-write.'” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Scientists Announce Plans For Synthetic Human Genomes

TeamViewer Servers Go Down, Users Believe They Are Hacked

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Softpedia: Something is happening with TeamViewers servers at the moment, and all clues point to a massive breach that has led to many users going on Reddit and complaining about having their computers hacked. Some users have reported finding new transactions in their PayPal and bank accounts, while others discovered someone had been poking around their email account. Other lucky users said they barely avoided getting hacked at the last minute, noticing their mouse starting to move across the screen, and hurrying to disconnect their Internet connection. On Twitter, the TeamViewer team wrote that they’re only experiencing issues in some parts of their network, but they denied any security breach, at least on their side. In the past months, we’ve seen malware use TeamViewer many times to infect computers, but most of those cases were because of users who used weak passwords, which is certainly not TeamViewer’s fault. It is strange that this time around, just when TeamViewer servers go down, multiple users also flock to social media to complain about getting hacked. This is either one huge strange cosmic coincidence or TeamViewer is really at fault and won’t be able to pin the blame on its users. On a semi-related note, PayPal will be suspending their business operations in Turkey after failing to obtain a new license for its service in the country. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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TeamViewer Servers Go Down, Users Believe They Are Hacked

Panasonic To Stop Making LCD Panels For TVs

AmiMoJo quotes a report from NHK WORLD: Japanese electronics maker Panasonic says it will stop making LCD panels for televisions, giving way to fierce price competition. The pullout from TV LCD manufacturing follows the company’s withdrawal from plasma TV production 3 years ago. They say they will continue to manufacture LCD panels at the plant for products other than televisions, such as medical equipment and cars. They say the company will keep making Panasonic-brand televisions, using panels supplied by other manufacturers. After Panasonic pulls out, Sharp and its Taiwanese parent firm Hon Hai will be the only producer in Japan. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Panasonic To Stop Making LCD Panels For TVs

Samsung Starts Mass Producing New 512GB NVMe SSD That’s Smaller Than a Stamp

An anonymous reader writes from a report via PCWorld: Samsung announced late Monday night that it has begun mass producing a new SSD that is tinier than a postage stamp. PCWorld reports: “The PM971-NVMe fits up to 512GB of NAND flash, a controller, and RAM into a single BGA chip measuring 20mm x 16mm x 1.5mm and weighing just one gram, the company said. Samsung says the PM971-NVMe will hit 1.5GBps read speeds and 800MBps write speeds. The PM971-NVMe is built using 20nm NAND chips and includes 4GB of LPDDR4 RAM as a cache. The NAND is triple-level cell but uses a portion as a write butter. The drive will come in 512GB, 256GB and 128GB capacities.” While on the topic of hardware, Intel unveiled its Broadwell-E family, which consists of an “Extreme Edition” Core i7 chipset that has 10 cores and 20 threads. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Samsung Starts Mass Producing New 512GB NVMe SSD That’s Smaller Than a Stamp

Fiverr Suffers Six-Hour DDoS Attack After Removing DDoS-For-Hire Listings

Two days after Fiverr, a marketplace for digital services, removed user listings from its website that advertised DDoS-for-hire services, the company’s website suffered a six-hour long DDOS attack. Softpedia reports: The incident took place on the morning of May 27 (European timezones), and the service admitted its problems on its Twitter account. At the time of writing, Fiverr has been back up and functioning normally for more than two hours. Fiverr’s problems stem from an Incapsula probe that found DDoS-for-hire ads on its marketplace, available for $5. Incapsula reported the suspicious listings to Fiverr, who investigated the issue and removed the ads. Fiverr first removed all listings advertising blatantly illegal DDoS services, but later also removed the ads offering to “test” a website for DDoS “protection” measures. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Fiverr Suffers Six-Hour DDoS Attack After Removing DDoS-For-Hire Listings

Hackers Claim to Have 427 Million Myspace Passwords

Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai, reporting for Motherboard: There’s an oft-repeated adage in the world of cybersecurity: There are two types of companies, those that have been hacked, and those that don’t yet know they have been hacked. MySpace, the social media behemoth that was, is apparently in the second category. The same hacker who was selling the data of more than 164 million LinkedIn users last week now claims to have 360 million emails and passwords of MySpace users, which would be one of the largest leaks of passwords ever. And it looks like the data is being circulated in the underground by other hackers as well. It’s unclear when the data was stolen from MySpace, but both the hacker, who’s known as Peace, and one of the operators of LeakedSource, a paid hacked data search engine that also claims to have the credentials, said it’s from a past, unreported, breach. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Hackers Claim to Have 427 Million Myspace Passwords

FCC Formalizes Massive Fines For Selling, Using Cell-Phone Jammers

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Network World: Two years ago the FCC announced its intention to fine a Chinese electronics maker $34.9 million and a Florida man $48, 000 for respectively selling and using illegal cell-phone jammers. Today the agency has issued press releases telling us that those fines have finally been made official, without either of the offending parties having bothered to mount a formal defense of their actions. From the press release announcing the fine against CTS. Technology: ” The company’s website falsely claimed that some jammers had been approved by the FCC, and advertised that the company could ship signal jammers to consumers in the United States.” The company did not respond to the FCC’s allegations, although the agency does report that changes were made to its website that appear to be aimed at complying with U.S. law. Next up is Florida man, Jason R. Humphreys, who is alleged to have used a jammer on his commute: “Mr. Humphreys’ illegal operation of the jammer continued for up to two years, caused interference to cellular service along Interstate 4, and disrupted police communications.” Last Fall, a Chicagoan was arrested for using a cell-phone jammer to make his subway commute more tolerable. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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FCC Formalizes Massive Fines For Selling, Using Cell-Phone Jammers

Google Now Handles At Least 2 Trillion Searches Per Year

Danny Sullivan, reporting for Search Engine Land: How many searches per year happen on Google? After nearly four years, the company has finally released an updated figure today of “trillions” per year. How many trillions, exactly, Google wouldn’t say. Consider two trillion the starting point. Google did confirm to Search Engine Land that because it said it handles “trillions” of searches per year worldwide, the figure could be safely assumed to be two trillion or above. Is it more than two trillion? Google could be doing five trillion searches per year. Or 10 trillion. Or 100 trillion. Or presumably up to 999 trillion, because if it were 1, 000 trillion, you’d expect Google would announce that it does a quadrillion searches per year. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Google Now Handles At Least 2 Trillion Searches Per Year

How Militarized Cops Are Zapping Rights With Stingray

“Police nationwide are secretly exploiting intrusive technologies with the feds’ complicity, ” argues a new article on Alternet — calling out Stingray, which mimics a cellphone tower to identify every cellphone nearby. “It gathers information not only about a specific suspect, but any bystanders in the area as well… Some Stingrays are capable of collecting not only cell phone ID numbers but also numbers those phones have dialed and even phone conversations.” The ACLU says requests for more information have been meeting heavy resistance from police departments since 2011, with many departments citing nondisclosure agreements with Stingray’s manufacturer and with the FBI, and “often, the police get a judge’s sign-off for surveillance without even bothering to mention that they will be using a Stingray…claiming that they simply can’t violate those FBI nondisclosure agreements. “More often than not, police use Stingrays without bothering to get a warrant, instead seeking a court order on a more permissive legal standard. This is part of the charm of a new technology for the authorities: nothing is settled on how to use it.” Stingray is more than a 1960s TV series with puppets. Several state judges estimate there have been hundreds of instances where police have used the Stingray tool without a warrant or telling a judge. Slashdot reader Presto Vivace writes: This is why it matters who wins the mayor and city council races. Localities do not have to accept this technology. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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How Militarized Cops Are Zapping Rights With Stingray