An anonymous reader writes “Do you think an airgap can protect your computer? Maybe not. According to this story at Ars Technica, security consultant Dragos Ruiu is battling malware that communicates with infected computers using computer microphones and speakers.” That sounds nuts, but it is a time-tested method of data transfer, after all. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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Ars: Cross-Platform Malware Communicates With Sound
An anonymous reader writes “Email service FastMail.fm has an blog post about an interesting bug they’re dealing with related to the new Mail.app in Mac OS 10.9 Mavericks. After finding a user who had 71 messages in his Junk Mail folder that were somehow responsible for over a million entries in the index file, they decided to investigate. ‘This morning I checked again, there were nearly a million messages again, so I enabled telemetry on the account … [Mail.app] copying all the email from the Junk Folder back into the Junk Folder again!. This is legal IMAP, so our server proceeds to create a new copy of each message in the folder. It then expunges the old copies of the messages, but it’s happening so often that the current UID on that folder is up to over 3 million. It was just over 2 million a few days ago when I first emailed the user to alert them to the situation, so it’s grown by another million since. The only way I can think this escaped QA was that they used a server which (like gmail) automatically suppresses duplicates for all their testing, because this is a massively bad problem.’ The actual emails added up to about 2MB of actual disk usage, but the bug generated an additional 2GB of data on top of that.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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Mac OS 10.9’s Mail App — Infinity Times Your Spam
JoshMST writes “Why are we in the middle of GPU-renaming hell? AMD may be releasing a new 28-nm Hawaii chip in the next few days, but it is still based on the same 28-nm process that the original HD 7970 debuted on nearly two years ago. Quick and easy (relative terms) process node transitions are probably a thing of the past. 20-nm lines applicable to large ASICs are not being opened until mid-2014. ‘AMD and NVIDIA will have to do a lot of work to implement next generation features without breaking transistor budgets. They will have to do more with less, essentially. Either that or we will just have to deal with a much slower introduction of next generation parts.’ It’s amazing how far the graphics industry has come in the past 18 years, but the challenges ahead are greater than ever.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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Next-Gen GPU Progress Slowing As It Aims for 20 nm and Beyond
Rumor has it that Netflix will begin testing enhanced content and extra features, first for its original shows such as House of Cards , then DVD extra-style content from partner providers if it goes well. Read more…
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Rumor has it that Netflix will begin testing enhanced content and extra features, first for its orig
When it comes to prolonging the life of your laptop, there’s no easier upgrade than adding an ultra-compact USB flash drive to expand its storage capacity—particularly if it’s got a small SSD on board. And a company called PKparis is now laying claim to the title of ‘world’s smallest USB 3.0 flash drive’ with its new K’1 that more than looks the part. Read more…
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You’ll Barely Notice the World’s Smallest USB 3.0 Flash Drive
Microsoft set Windows 8.1 upon the world today, and with it a host of improvements large and small. You check out our full review here , but in the meantime, here’s a look at our favorite new features. Read more…
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The Five Best New Features in Windows 8.1
Those long dark stretches of highway out in the middle of nowhere without any streetlights might soon be a thing of the past thanks to the engineers and designers at the Netherlands-based Kaal Masten . They’ve created the Spirit, a standalone solar-powered streetlight that gets all the energy it needs from the sun, so it can be installed and provide lighting anywhere—even remote locations without access to power grids. Read more…
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Self-Contained Solar-Powered Streetlights Stay Completely Off the Grid
alphadogg writes “As it embarks on what’s likely to be a long journey to its next big increase in speed, Ethernet is in some ways a victim of its own success. Years ago, birthing a new generation of Ethernet was relatively straightforward: Enterprises wanted faster LANs, vendors figured out ways to achieve that throughput and hashed out a standard, and IT shops bought the speed boost with their next computers and switches. Now it’s more complicated, with carriers, Web 2.0 giants, cloud providers, and enterprises all looking for different speeds and interfaces, some more urgently than others. … That’s what the IEEE 802.3 400Gbps Study Group faces as it tries to write the next chapter in Ethernet’s history. … ‘You have a lot of different people coming in to the study group, ‘ said John D’Ambrosia, the group’s chair, in an interview at the Ethernet Alliance’s Technology Exploration Forum in Santa Clara, California, on Tuesday. That can make it harder to reach consensus, with 75 percent approval required to ratify a standard, he said.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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Ethernet’s 400-Gigabit Challenge Is a Good Problem To Have
Starting October 31st, T-Mobile users will be gain unlimited texts and data in over 100 countries, at no additional cost. That’s right—if you’re on a supported Simple Choice plan, you no longer have to worry about exorbitant roaming charges when you travel. Read more…
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T-Mobile Announces Free, Unlimited Roaming in 100 Countries
Nate the greatest writes “Guilford County Schools’ headline grabbing tablet program is back in the news again. The program came to an abrupt end last Friday when the school district announced that they were recalling all of the Amplify tablets. GCS had leased over 15 thousand of the tablets (at a cost of $200 a year) for its middle school students, but decided to recall the tablets just one month into the school year after some 1500 students reported a broken screen. Around two thousand complained of improperly fitting cases, and there were also 175 reports of malfunctioning power supplies. There’s currently no explanation for the cases or power supplies, but GCS has stated that the tablets broke because they lacked a layer of Gorilla Glass. This was listed in the contract, but the school district did not confirm the condition of the tablets before accepting them. This program was the poster child for News Corp.’s entry into the educational market. It was the single largest program to use the Amplify tablet, and its failure represents a serious setback. The Amplify tablet now has a record for poor construction quality and a breakage rate that is 12 times higher than what Squaretrade reported in early 2012 for the iPad 2.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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NC School District Recalls Its Amplify Tablets After 10% Break In Under a Month