Tag: reprints

DirecTV will broadcast live 4K content by “early next year”

(credit: Adam Melancon ) Even if 4K TVs were popular Black Friday and Cyber Monday steals, there continues to be a lack of 4K content to watch on them. DirecTV wants to provide a solution: the company’s SVP of Video and Space Communications Phil Goswitz confirmed at New York’s TranSPORT conference that DirecTV will launch a live 4K broadcasting service sometime in “early 2016.” At the conference, Goswitz explained that the company currently has the ability to transmit up to 50 new UHD channels, and live sports transmissions are already being tested as part of next year’s rollout. DirecTV already has the hardware in place, and according to Goswitz, the company wants to get ahead of cable companies and provide viewers with 4K content they can’t get from their cable companies. “I think the belief that there are technology challenges is a bit of a misinformed myth,” he said. “I think technology throughout the entire ecosystem is ready. But I think content is king; the plane is ready to take off and there is no king on board.” Goswitz went on to say that DirecTV is “moving into working with partners” to create more 4K content. Currently Netflix and YouTube have some 4K video ready to stream, but most companies continue to focus on hardware. Roku and TiVo recently came out with updated set-top boxes ready for 4K streaming, but they still have to work with the finite amount of 4K content available. Read 1 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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DirecTV will broadcast live 4K content by “early next year”

The National Security Letter spy tool has been uncloaked, and it’s bad

It took 11 years to finally unveil what the FBI demands in a National Security Letter. How it evolved over the years is shown above. (credit: ACLU ) The National Security Letter (NSL) is a potent surveillance tool that allows the government to acquire a wide swath of private information—all without a warrant. Federal investigators issue tens of thousands of them each year to banks, ISPs, car dealers, insurance companies, doctors, and you name it. The letters don’t need a judge’s signature and come with a gag to the recipient, forbidding the disclosure of the NSL to the public or the target. Nicholas Merrill (credit: Wikipedia ) For the first time, as part of a First Amendment lawsuit, a federal judge ordered the release of what the FBI was seeking from a small ISP as part of an NSL. Among other things, the FBI was demanding a target’s complete Web browsing history, IP addresses of everyone a person has corresponded with, and records of all online purchases, according to a court document unveiled Monday. All that’s required is an agent’s signature denoting that the information is relevant to an investigation. “The FBI has interpreted its NSL authority to encompass the websites we read, the Web searches we conduct, the people we contact, and the places we go. This kind of data reveals the most intimate details of our lives, including our political activities, religious affiliations, private relationships, and even our private thoughts and beliefs,” said Nicholas Merrill, who was president of Calyx Internet Access in New York when he received the NSL targeting one of his customers in 2004. Read 6 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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The National Security Letter spy tool has been uncloaked, and it’s bad

Hey Reader’s Digest: Your site has been attacking visitors for days

Enlarge (credit: Malwarebytes ) An active hacking campaign is forcing Reader’s Digest and many other websites to host malicious code that can surreptitiously infect visitors with malware and linger for days or weeks before being cleaned up. Reader’s Digest has been infected since last week with code originating with Angler, an off-the-shelf hack-by-numbers exploit kit that saves professional criminals the hassle of developing their own attack scripts, researchers from antivirus provider Malwarebytes told Ars. People who visit the site with outdated versions of Adobe Flash, Internet Explorer, and other browsing software are silently infected with malware that gains control over their computers. Malwarebytes researchers said they sent Reader’s Digest operators e-mails and social media alerts last week warning the site was infected but never got a response. The researchers estimate that thousands of other sites have been similarly attacked in recent weeks and that the number continues to grow. “This campaign is still ongoing and we see dozens of new websites every day being leveraged to distribute malware via the Angler exploit kit,” Malwarebytes Senior Security Researcher Jérôme Segura wrote in an e-mail. “This attack may have been going on for some time but we noticed a dramatic increase in infections via WordPress sites in the past couple of weeks.” Read 3 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Hey Reader’s Digest: Your site has been attacking visitors for days

Managing a 100-percent renewable grid, without batteries

(credit: US DOE ) Stanford researcher Mark Jacobson likes to take current thinking about renewable energy and supersize it. Rather than aiming for 50 percent renewables, like California is , he has analyzed what it would take for each of the 50 states to go fully renewable . It would apparently involve so many offshore wind turbines that hurricanes headed toward the States would be suppressed. Now, he and a few collaborators are back with a more detailed look at how to manage the grid stability issues that come with large amounts of intermittent generators, like photovoltaic panes and wind turbines. Normally, issues of intermittency are expected to be handled by fossil fuel power and batteries. But the new analysis suggests we don’t need any of that—and we don’t need biofuels or nuclear, either. Instead, it suggests we could manage a 100-percent renewable grid through a combination of hydrogen production and heat storage. None of this is entirely new. People have been talking about generating hydrogen from renewable energy for years—with a fuel cell, it can be used to power cars or generate electricity as needed. And the paper cites an existing community that’s already using solar energy to generate heat that’s stored under ground. But, as with Jacobson’s past analyses, they are taken to new scales here. Read 11 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Managing a 100-percent renewable grid, without batteries

Iranian military spear-phish of State Department employees detected first by Facebook

The Facebook and email accounts of US State Department officials focused on Iran were hacked, and possibly used to gather data about US-Iranian dual citizens in Iran. More details have emerged about the hacking the computers of US State Department and other government employees, first revealed earlier this month in a Wall Street Journal report . The intrusions by hackers purported to be associated with the Iranian Revolutionary Guard may be tied to the arrest of an Iranian-American businessman in Tehran in October and other arrests of dual citizens in Iran. The attackers used compromised social media accounts of junior State Department staff as part of a “phishing” operation that compromised the computers of employees working in the State Department’s Office of Iranian Affairs and Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs and computers of some journalists. The first warning of the attacks came from Facebook, which alerted some of the affected users that their accounts had been compromised by a state-sponsored attack, the New York Times reports . The Iranian Revolutionary Guard hackers used the access to identify the victims’ contacts and build “spear-phishing” attacks that gave them access to targeted individuals’ e-mail accounts. The attack “was very carefully designed and showed the degree to which they understood which of our staff was working on Iran issues now that the nuclear deal is done,” an unnamed senior US official told the Times . This most recent attack, which came after a brief period of little or no Iranian activity against US targets over the summer according to data from Check Point and iSight Partners, was a change from tactics previously associated with Iranian hackers. Earlier attacks attributed to Iran were focused on taking financial services companies’ websites offline  and destroying data—such as in the attack attack on casino company Las Vegas Sands Corp. last year after its majority owner called for a nuclear attack on Iran. These attacks may not have been carried out by the Iranian government but by Iranian or pro-Iranian “hacktivists.” The State Department attack, however, was more subtle and aimed at cyber-espionage rather than simple vengeance—bearing hallmarks of tactics attributed to Chinese state-sponsored hackers. Read 1 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Iranian military spear-phish of State Department employees detected first by Facebook

Tesla Model X production starts in earnest, pricing revealed

(credit: Tesla) Several months ago we found out pricing for the fully loaded “Signature” edition Tesla Model X electric SUV. Now, we’ve got a better idea of what the cheapest Model X will set you back: $80,000 before any options and tax rebates or incentives. That’s for the 70D, which has all-wheel drive (a motor for each axle) and a 70kWh battery (pricing for the 90D and P90D haven’t been announced). That’s $5000 more than the equivalent Model S sedan , which hits 60mph a little quicker and has a slightly longer range than the SUV but not the same funky rear doors. The distinctive Falcon wing doors are Tesla’s approach to making an SUV with all the utility of a minivan; that was how Elon Musk described the design brief back in September. By opening up and out, they’re supposed to give better access to the rear seats while taking up less space than a traditional door. There are three different interior layouts. The base 70D is a five seater, but there’s also a six seat version (three rows of two) for an extra $3000 and seven seats are yours for $4500. Tesla released the pricing information for the 70D Model X at the same time it told customers with preorders that they can begin configuring their vehicles. Screenshots of the online configurator provided by Tesla to Ars state that Model X deliveries will begin in early 2016, starting with range-topping P90D orders. “Lesser” 90D Model Xs follow by mid-year, with 70D deliveries before 2017. Read 1 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Tesla Model X production starts in earnest, pricing revealed

FDA approves first GM food animal—Atlantic salmon

(credit: Artizone/Flickr ) After two decades of deliberation, the Food and Drug Administration has approved the first ever genetically engineered food animal, a fast-growing Atlantic Salmon called AquAdvantage salmon. According the agency, which announced the approval Thursday , the modified salmon are safe to eat, equally nutritious as other salmon, and should pose no threat to the environment. First created in 1989 and submitted to the agency for approval in 1995, the Atlantic salmon are modified to carry a growth hormone gene from Chinook salmon. That gene is further engineered to be under the control of a tiny bit of DNA, called a promoter, from the eel-like ocean pout fish. In general, DNA promoters are non-coding sequences that help control the expression level of a gene—how much protein product is synthesized from the gene. With the engineered promoter boosting hormone production, the modified salmon grow to market-size in about half the time of conventional Atlantic salmon. Read 4 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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FDA approves first GM food animal—Atlantic salmon

Android adware can install itself even when users explicitly reject it

(credit: Lookout) Two weeks ago, Ars reported on newly discovered Android adware that is virtually impossible to uninstall . Now, researchers have uncovered malicious apps that can get installed even when a user has expressly tapped a button rejecting the app. The hijacking happens after a user has installed a trojanized app that masquerades as an official app available in Google Play and then is made available in third-party markets. During the installation, apps from an adware family known as Shedun try to trick people into granting the app control over the Android Accessibility Service , which is designed to provide vision-impaired users alternative ways to interact with their mobile devices. Ironically enough, Shedun apps try to gain such control by displaying dialogs such as this one, which promises to help weed out intrusive advertisements. From that point on, the app has the ability to display popup ads that install highly intrusive adware. Even in cases where a user rejects the invitation to install the adware or takes no action at all, the Shedun-spawned app uses its control over the accessibility service to install the adware anyway. Read 4 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Android adware can install itself even when users explicitly reject it

Visual Studio now supports debugging Linux apps; Code editor now open source

The Visual Studio Code editor, now open source, editing TypeScript on OS X. (credit: Microsoft) NEW YORK—Developers can now debug apps running on Linux servers or IoT devices from the comfort of Visual Studio. Microsoft today released a preview of a Visual Studio extension that adds remote debugging using GDB of Linux software. This was one of many announcements made at Microsoft’s Connect developer event today as the company aims to give its developer platform the broadest reach it’s ever had, able to handle Android, iOS, and Linux development, alongside the more expected Azure, Office, and Windows. Visual Studio 2015 already made big strides in this direction, and Microsoft is pushing ahead to try to make Visual Studio the best development environment around. The free and cross-platform Chromium-based code editor Visual Studio Code is being open sourced today. A new build has also been published, adding an extension mechanism to the editor. There are already some 60 extensions available, including new language support (such as Go language), richer debugging, code linters, and more. Read 10 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Visual Studio now supports debugging Linux apps; Code editor now open source

Feds bugged steps of Silicon Valley courthouse

(credit: James Vaughan ) Defense attorneys have asked a federal judge to throw out more than 200 hours of conversations FBI agents recorded using hidden microphones planted on the steps of a California county courthouse. The lawyers are representing defendants accused of engaging in an illicit real estate bid-rigging and fraud conspiracy. The steps to the San Mateo County courthouse are frequently the scene of public auctions for foreclosed homes. Federal prosecutors have admitted that on at least 31 occasions in 2009 and 2010, FBI agents used concealed microphones to record auction participants as they spoke, often in hushed voices with partners, attorneys, and others. Because the federal agents didn’t obtain a court order, the defense attorneys argue the bugging violated Constitutional protections against unreasonable searches and seizures. In a court brief filed Friday in the case, attorneys wrote: Read 4 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Feds bugged steps of Silicon Valley courthouse