production – Page 24

Water droplets bounce off these new self-cleaning surfaces

Every day, we interact with a myriad of surfaces ranging from soft fabrics to hard metals. Inevitably, this means we have to spend our time cleaning them. A class of self-cleaning materials would certainly make our lives easier. Previous attempts to create these materials have focused on developing surfaces that are rough and waxy; these cause water droplets to roll along the surface, picking up dirt and dust due as it goes. These materials have been relatively successful, but they have many limitations. For example, they’re easily worn away and easily contaminated by oils like those found on our skin. Luckily, scientists have now developed a waterproof, self cleaning coating that can be applied to materials that are as soft as cotton and as hard as glass. This coating is composed of titanium dioxide (TiO2) nanoparticles with two size distributions, delivered as a suspension in ethanol containing the chemical perfluorooctyltriethoxysilane. After application, the ethanol is allowed to evaporate for 180 seconds before the coating is ready for use. This coating can be sprayed, dipped, or painted onto a surface, and it maintains its performance after several types of damage. Read 6 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Water droplets bounce off these new self-cleaning surfaces

Tech support scammer threatened to kill man when scam call backfired

Tech support scammers should probably just hang up the phone when a scam call goes wrong. But one scammer took things to a new level by threatening to kill a man who pointed out that the scammer was trying to steal money. As we’ve reported numerous times , scammers pretending to work for Microsoft tech support call potential victims, tell them their computers are infected, convince them to provide remote access, and then charge them hundreds of dollars to fix imaginary problems. Read 6 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Tech support scammer threatened to kill man when scam call backfired

Now you can easily send (free!) encrypted messages between Android, iOS

On Monday, Open Whisper Systems announced the release of Signal 2.0 , the second version of its app for iOS. What makes this latest release special is that it allows users to send end-to-end encrypted messages, for free, to users of Redphone and TextSecure, Android apps supported by Open Whisper Systems that encrypt calling and text messages, respectively. Previously, this kind of cross-platform secure messaging cost money in the form of a monthly subscription fee that both the sender and the receiver of the message had to pay. (Or, encrypting messages cost considerable time and effort to implement without a dedicated app.) Signal and its Android counterpart TextSecure are unique in that they use forward encryption, which generates temporary keys for each message, but still allow asynchronous messaging through the use of push notifications and “prekeys.” Ars reported on the implementation details in 2013 . Open Whisper Systems has pulled ahead of other privacy apps by making its interface easy for a person who doesn’t know too much about encryption to use. It’s also open source, so it can be vetted by experts, and its open encryption protocol can be adopted by other messaging apps. In fact, last November, messaging platform Whatsapp deployed Open Whisper Systems’ protocol for its 500 million Android users . Still, until now communicating with iOS users from an Android phone has been much more challenging. Read 4 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Now you can easily send (free!) encrypted messages between Android, iOS

In major goof, Uber stored sensitive database key on public GitHub page

Uber is trying to force GitHub to disclose the IP address of every person that accessed a webpage connected to a database intrusion that exposed sensitive personal data for 50,000 drivers. The court action revealed that a security key unlocking the database was stored on a publicly accessible place, the online equivalent of stashing a house key under a doormat. Uber officials have yet to say precisely what information was contained in the two now-unavailable GitHub gists . But in a lawsuit filed Friday against the unknown John Doe intruders, Uber lawyers said the URLs contained a security key that allowed unauthorized access to the names and driver’s license numbers of about 50,000 Uber drivers . The ride-sharing service disclosed the breach on Friday, more than two months after it was discovered. “The contents of these internal database files are closely guarded by Uber,” the complaint stated. “Accessing them from Uber’s protected computers requires a unique security key that is not intended to be available to anyone other than certain Uber employees, and no one outside of Uber is authorized to access the files. On or around May 12, 2014, from an IP address not associated with an Uber employee and otherwise unknown to Uber, John Doe I used the unique security key to download Uber database files containing confidential and proprietary information from Uber’s protected computers.” Read 3 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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In major goof, Uber stored sensitive database key on public GitHub page

Verizon issues furious response to FCC, in Morse code, dated 1934

Verizon is just so mad at the Federal Communications Commission today that a normal press release wouldn’t do. After all, Verizon issues so many press releases denouncing the FCC for trying to regulate telecommunications that today’s vote on net neutrality required a special one to make sure it would be remembered. So Verizon wrote it in Morse code and set the date as “1934” to make the point that the FCC is taking us backward in time. Verizon sent out the press release in this e-mail: Read 6 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Verizon issues furious response to FCC, in Morse code, dated 1934

Remote valet mode and revolutionized parking: Ford’s Smart Mobility

Ford has a plan to help cut car emissions, and this time it doesn’t have anything to do with batteries, hybrid powertrains, or clever engine technology. Instead, the company is focusing on improving the parking experience, and its answer involves a crowdsourced real-time database of occupied and empty parking spots across the country, and remote control vehicles enabled by off-the-shelf commercial 4G LTE. At first glance that might not sound like it has much to do with reducing vehicle CO 2 emissions, but according to Ford, their data shows that hunting for parking spaces in urban environments can account for between 20 and 30 percent of a vehicle’s emissions. To find out more about what Ford has been working on, we spoke with Mike Tinskey, director of vehicle electrification and infrastructure at Ford. He told Ars about a pair of research projects that the car maker has been working on as part of a larger program called Smart Mobility. Smart Mobility involves 25 different experiments and pilot studies around the world, but these two have both been developed in conjunction with a team at Georgia Tech here in the US; Ford has had a long-running relationship with the group, which Tinskey describes as being analogous to the company’s research and advanced modeling arm for sustainability. According to Tinskey, Smart Mobility exists at the intersection of mobility and sustainability, with the overall goal of finding novel ways to reduce CO 2 . “When you look for places to do that, you start looking at antiquated things like parking, where people waste a lot of time, and a lot of CO 2 ,” he said. Read 10 remaining paragraphs | Comments

Intel forges ahead to 10nm, will move away from silicon at 7nm

This week at the 2015 International Solid-State Circuits Conference (ISSCC), Intel will provide an update on its new 10nm manufacturing process and new research on how it’s maintaining the march of Moore’s law to 7nm and beyond. The first chips based on Intel’s new 10nm process are expected in late 2016/early 2017, and the company says it’s hoping to avoid the delays that haunted the belabored release of 14nm Broadwell. To hit 7nm, Intel says new materials will be required—as in, it looks like 10nm will finally be the end of the road for silicon. The most likely replacement for silicon is a III-V semiconductor such as indium gallium arsenide (InGaAs), though Intel hasn’t provided any specific details yet. ISSCC 2015, being held in San Francisco this week, is where all the big players in silicon (Intel, Samsung, TSMC, IBM, etc.) meet to talk about their latest manufacturing processes and how they might go about overcoming the current barriers to smaller, faster, and denser computer chips. It’s not unusual for Intel to have one of the largest presences at the conference, and this year is no different: it will be presenting three papers on its 14nm technology, hosting sessions on a variety of topics, and Mark Bohr—one of Intel’s most esteemed researchers—will be sitting on a panel that discusses Moore’s law beyond 10nm. The steady march of new CMOS processes driving ever smaller transistors. Intel Read 4 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Intel forges ahead to 10nm, will move away from silicon at 7nm

If you skipped Windows 8, here’s some new stuff you get with Windows 10

It’s a shame that Windows 8’s interface was so divisive. The UI dominated the conversation around the OS to the extent that its other, subtler changes got buried. People who stuck with Windows 7 never saw these updates at all. Windows 10, as we’ve covered, is Microsoft’s effort to repackage Windows 8’s improvements in a way that will be more appealing to Windows 7 loyalists. As if to drive that point home, Microsoft is giving current Windows 7 users a whole year after launch to hop on the Windows 10 train at no charge . Microsoft has made a bunch of changes to Windows in the last two years that have nothing to do with the new user interface. This list doesn’t have anything new on it, but if you’re still running Windows 7 and you decide to upgrade to Windows 10, it’ll be new to you, and you’ll get to use it all without having to figure out how to live life without a Start menu. (If you’re interested in seeing some of the UI stuff that you’ll be sidestepping, ZDNet’s Ed Bott recently published this piece about Windows 8 features that got cut from Windows 10). Read 27 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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If you skipped Windows 8, here’s some new stuff you get with Windows 10

Windows Defender now removes Superfish malware… if you’re lucky

First the good news. Microsoft today released a signature update for Windows Defender, the anti-malware software that’s built in to Windows, to enable it to both detect and remove the Superfish malware that Lenovo installed on some systems . Defender’s removal process seems to be quite robust, both uninstalling the software and removing the dangerous certificate that Superfish installs. However, it doesn’t appear to clean any contaminated installs of Firefox or Thunderbird; for that, you’ll want to check out our manual removal instructions . Uh oh… 2 more images in gallery Now the bad news. While Windows Defender is supplied as part of Windows and works well enough, Microsoft gave it some rather strange behavior as a concession to third-party anti-malware vendors . If a third-party anti-malware product is installed, Windows Defender will automatically disable itself. Many Lenovo systems include trial versions of anti-malware software; during the duration of these trials, Windows Defender will be inactive. Read 2 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Windows Defender now removes Superfish malware… if you’re lucky

Password cracking experts decipher elusive Equation Group crypto hash

Unraveling a mystery that eluded the researchers analyzing the highly advanced Equation Group the world learned about Monday, password crackers have deciphered a cryptographic hash buried in one of the hacking crew’s exploits. It’s Arabic for “unregistered.” Researchers for Moscow-based Kaspersky Lab spent more than two weeks trying to crack the MD5 hash using a computer that tried more than 300 billion plaintext guesses every second. After coming up empty-handed, they enlisted the help of password-cracking experts, both privately and on Twitter , in hopes they would do better. Password crackers Jens Steube and Philipp Schmidt spent only a few hours before figuring out the plaintext behind the hash e6d290a03b70cfa5d4451da444bdea39 was غير مسجل, which is Arabic for “unregistered”. The hex-encoded string for the same Arabic word is dbedd120e3d3cce1. “That was a shock when it popped up and said ‘cracked,'” Steube told Ars Monday evening. He is the developer behind the free Hashcat password-cracking programs and an expert in password cracking. Read 6 remaining paragraphs | Comments

Ken May

Tag: production