privacy-rights – Page 36 – Tech Today w/ Ken May

Chinese military “hacked” Israel’s Iron Dome

Iron Dome The technology behind Iron Dome, the missile defense system Israel has been using since 2011, was allegedly stolen by Chinese military hackers. That claim was made by Cyber Engineering Services to Brian Krebs of security news site Krebs On Security , and it identifies Elisra Group, Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI), and Rafael Advanced Defense Systems as the three defense companies that were compromised during the cyber assault. The perpetrators, Cyber Engineering Services says, are the same ones behind a spate of attacks that have come to light in the past few years, all attributed to Unit 61398, a Shanghai-based arm of the Chinese army. The five Chinese military officers indicted by the US earlier this year for allegedly hacking energy firms in the country also belong to the same unit. The hacks took place from October 2011, some six months after Iron Dome became operational, and continued up until August 2012. Israel Defense Forces (IDF) has said that many hundreds of rockets fired from Gaza, particularly during the current military operation and a series of clashes in 2012, have been scuppered by the system, which is thought to be one of the most effective missile-defense technologies in the world. Read 7 remaining paragraphs | Comments

It’s not just Verizon: All major US carriers throttle “unlimited” data

Verizon Wireless One of the most common reactions to Verizon’s announcement that it will throttle the heaviest users of its “unlimited” 4G plans went something like this: “That’s the last straw, I’m switching to T-Mobile!” Unfortunately, switching to T-Mobile, AT&T, or Sprint won’t protect you from getting throttled, even if the carrier is claiming to sell you “unlimited” data. Let’s take a look at the relevant passages in each carrier’s terms and conditions. We’ll start with the Verizon Wireless announcement last week: Read 15 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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It’s not just Verizon: All major US carriers throttle “unlimited” data

Bose accuses Beats of using patented noise-cancelling tech

Bose Corp. filed a lawsuit on Friday that accuses popular headphone maker Beats Electronics of infringing upon several of its patents. The suit claims that Bose lost sales because Beats—which Apple announced it would acquire for $3 billion in May—used patented noise-cancelling technology in its Studio and Studio Wireless headphone lines. Beats’ products that allegedly use the technology “can also be used for noise cancellation when no music is played, a feature that Beats also advertises,” the suit states. “Thus, Beats specifically encourages users to use the infringing functionality. Beats advertises no method to turn off features that cause end users to directly infringe.” Read 5 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Bose accuses Beats of using patented noise-cancelling tech

DOE, commercial partners start world’s largest carbon capture project

Earlier this week, the US Department of Energy announced that work has started on what when finished will be the world’s largest carbon capture facility. Located in Thompsons, Texas, the project will capture a portion of the emissions from the coal-fired W.A. Parish Generating Station. The CO 2 will then be compressed and piped to the West Ranch oil field, where it will be injected under ground. This will help liberate oil that’s otherwise difficult to extract, but has the added benefit that the carbon dioxide typically stays underground, sequestered. The project was originally planned as a small pilot that would only extract CO 2 from the equivalent of 60 megawatts of the plant’s 3,500MW of generating capacity. When it was realized that the amount of CO 2 from 60MW of would be too little CO 2 to supply the oil field’s needs, the project scope was expanded to 240MW. At that scale, the facility would become the largest of its type in the world. The exhaust gas will have its sulfates removed before being bubbled through a solution of amines, which will bind the CO 2 . Once separated from the rest of the gasses, the carbon dioxide will be released by heating the amine solution, which can be recycled. The CO 2 is then sent under pressure via a pipeline. Read 1 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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DOE, commercial partners start world’s largest carbon capture project

Ars editor learns feds have his old IP addresses, full credit card numbers

Jonathan Ryan In May 2014, I reported on my efforts to learn what the feds know about me whenever I enter and exit the country. In particular, I wanted my Passenger Name Records (PNR), data created by airlines, hotels, and cruise ships whenever travel is booked. But instead of providing what I had requested, the United States Customs and Border Protection (CBP) turned over only basic information about my travel going back to 1994. So I appealed—and without explanation , the government recently turned over the actual PNRs I had requested the first time. The 76 new pages of data, covering 2005 through 2013, show that CBP retains massive amounts of data on us when we travel internationally. My own PNRs include not just every mailing address, e-mail, and phone number I’ve ever used; some of them also contain: Read 24 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Ars editor learns feds have his old IP addresses, full credit card numbers

Quasiparticles carry entanglement to near infinite speeds

crocus08 In a recent experiment, scientists were able to observe quasiparticles propagating across a string of ions, creating waves of quantum entanglement in their wake. Experiments like this one, which study systems with multiple quantum bodies, are crucial to learning about the behavior of quasiparticles and their interactions with more traditional particles. It’s tempting to think that quasiparticles are not particles at all. Quasiparticles are “objects” that emerge within a complex system, such as a solid object. The collective behavior of the particles in the solid can create the impression of a new particle. The impression—or quasiparticle—moves through the solid as if it were a real particle moving through empty space, and it behaves according to the same rules. Nevertheless, within their system, quasiparticles can have real effects on their environment. Most recently, scientists were able to track the propagation of quasiparticles called magnons through a collection of atoms. Now, scientists have been able to watch as that propagation changed the behavior of these atoms. And in the process, the quasiparticles reached speeds where a conventional model, which we use to understand time, breaks down. Read 13 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Quasiparticles carry entanglement to near infinite speeds

Why Google took years to address a battery-draining “bug” in Chrome

Aurich Lawson A recent Forbes report says that Chrome on Windows uses up more battery than competing browsers, thanks to a high system timer setting. Unlike Linux or Mac OS X, Windows uses a timer to schedule tasks. At idle, the timer on Windows is set to about 15 ms, so if it has no work to do, it will go to sleep and only wake up every 15 ms to check if it needs to do something. Applications can change this timer, and other browsers like Firefox and Internet Explorer don’t mess with it until they need to do something processor intensive, like playing a video. After the video is done, the timer is set to return to 15 ms so that the computer can idle again. Chrome, though, boosts the timer to 1 ms and keeps it there forever. The difference means that on Firefox at idle, the CPU only wakes 64 times a second. On Chrome, it wakes up 1,000 times a second. In its Windows documentation, Microsoft notes that setting the system timer to a high value can increase power consumption by “as much as 25 percent.” This means that on a laptop, you’ll get a shorter runtime with Chrome than you will on a competing browser. And the issue has been around for a long time. Forbes links to a bug report documenting the problem that was first filed in 2010. Read 7 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Why Google took years to address a battery-draining “bug” in Chrome

Id shows off double-jumping, skull-crushing new Doom at QuakeCon

If you weren’t at QuakeCon, this content-free teaser is all you get to see of the new Doom for the time being. The bad news is that only people who were actually at Dallas’ QuakeCon last night were able to see the world-premiere gameplay footage from the next Doom game, which somehow hasn’t been leaked online yet. The good news is that plenty of people that were there are reporting on the unveiling, which seemed to include a number of extremely un- Doom -like additions. One of the bigger changes brought by the new Doom (which is notably not being called Doom 4 anymore ) is a jet-pack powered double-jump, à la Crysis 3 , Titanfall , Destiny and, now, presumably, every first-person shooter to come out in the next year or two. Players can also climb up the sides of “large crates and gaps” according to PC Gamer’s report , adding even more ability to go vertical. But it’s the Mortal Kombat -style melee finishing moves that seem to have gotten the crowd the most riled up. PC Gamer describes how, once an enemy is low on health, the player can get close and activate moves that see “lower jaws pulled off, skulls stomped on, and hearts torn out with the level of detail usually reserved for those slow-mo bullet cams in the Sniper Elite series.” Rock Paper Shotgun noted that “enemies break apart like moldy bread… literally tearing them in half sometimes.” The outlet also reported scenes with “crushing heads, chunks flying everywhere.” Read 3 remaining paragraphs | Comments

GHCQ’s “Chinese menu” of tools spreads disinformation across Internet

Just a few of the “weaponized” capabilities from GCHQ’s catalog of information warfare tools. What appears to be an internal Wiki page detailing the cyber-weaponry used by the British spy agency GCHQ was published today by Glenn Greenwald of The Intercept . The page, taken from the documents obtained by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden, lists dozens of tools used by GCHQ to target individuals and their computing devices, spread disinformation posing as others, and “shape” opinion and information available online. The page had been maintained by GCHQ’s Joint Threat Research Intelligence Group (JTRIG) Covert Internet Technical Development team, but it fell out of use by the time Snowden copied it. Greenwald and NBC previously reported on JTRIG’s “dirty tricks” tactics for psychological operations and information warfare, and the new documents provide a hint at how those tactics were executed. GCHQ’s capabilities included tools for manipulating social media, spoofing communications from individuals and groups, and warping the perception of content online through manipulation of polls and web pages’ traffic and search rankings. Originally intended to inform other organizations within GCHQ (and possibly NSA) of new capabilities being developed by the group, the JTRIG CITD team noted on the page, “We don’t update this page anymore, it became somewhat of a Chinese menu for effects operations.” The page lists 33 “effects capability” tools, as well as a host of other capabilities for collecting information, tracking individuals, attacking computers, and extracting information from seized devices. Read 8 remaining paragraphs | Comments

Human memory-saving devices get $37.5m research boost from DARPA

Flickr user: Dierk Schaefer Two teams creating devices that stimulate the brain to restore memory function have been granted $37.5 million by DARPA to develop the technology. Both will initially work with people with epilepsy who have been given implants to locate where their seizures originate. The researchers will reuse the data gathered during this process to monitor other brain activity, such as the patterns that occur when the brain stores and retrieves memories. One team will then attempt to map these patterns by recording the brain activity of epilepsy sufferers with mild memory problems while they play a computer game about remembering things. The pattern differences between the best and worst scores among these patents will be used to develop an algorithm for a personalized stimulation pattern to keep the brain performing at an optimal level. Read 6 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Human memory-saving devices get $37.5m research boost from DARPA