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New Ransomware Poses As A Windows Update

Slashdot reader MojoKid quotes an article from Hot Hardware: A security researcher for AVG has discovered a new piece of ransomware called Fantom that masquerades as a critical Windows update. Victims who fall for the ruse will see a Windows screen acting like it’s installing the update, but what’s really happening is that the user’s documents and files are being encrypted in the background… The scam starts with a pop-up labeled as a critical update from Microsoft. Once a user decides to apply the fake update, it extracts files and executes an embedded program called WindowsUpdate.exe… As with other EDA2 ransomware, Fantom generates a random AES-128 key, encrypts it using RSA, and then uploads it to the culprit. From there, Fantom targets specific file extensions and encrypts those files using AES-128 encryption… Users affected by this are instructed to email the culprit for payment instructions. While the ransomware is busy encrypting your files, it displays Microsoft’s standard warning about not turning off the computer while the “update” is in progress. Pressing Ctrl+F4 closes that window, according to the article, “but that doesn’t stop the ransomware from encrypting files in the background.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Dyson Will Spend $1.4 Billion, Enlist 3,000 Engineers To Build a Better Battery

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Digital Trends: Among the 100 new products the company founder James Dyson wants to invent by 2020, the greatest investment in people and money is to improve rechargeable lithium-ion batteries, as reported by Forbes (Warning: paywalled). And Dyson is not planning incremental improvements. His opinion is that current Li-ion batteries don’t last long enough and aren’t safe enough — the latter as evidenced by their propensity to spontaneously catch on fire, which is rare but does happen. Dyson believes the answer lies in using ceramics to create solid-state lithium-ion batteries. Dyson says he intended to spend $1.4 billion in research and development and in building a battery factory over the next five years. Last year Dyson bought Ann Arbor, Michigan-based Sakti3, which focuses on creating advanced solid-state batteries, for $90 million. The global lithium-ion battery market accounts for $40 billion in annual sales, according to research firm Lux as cited by Forbes. Dyson’s company (which is an accurate description since he has 100-percent ownership) currently employs 3, 000 engineers worldwide. He intends to hire another 3, 000 by 2020. Their average age is 26. Dyson values young engineers, saying, “The enthusiasm and lack of fear is important. Not taking notice of experts and plowing on because you believe in something is important. It’s much easier to do when you’re young.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Dyson Will Spend $1.4 Billion, Enlist 3,000 Engineers To Build a Better Battery

Four Code Bootcamps Are Now Eligible For Government Financial Aid

Long-time Slashdot reader theodp notes a pilot program for improving computer science education which includes financial aid for students at four code bootcamps: In this week’s Hack Education Weekly News, Audrey Watters writes, “The US Department of Education has selected eight higher ed institutions and eight ‘non-traditional providers’ that will work as partners to pilot the DoE’s new EQUIP experiment, meaning that students will be able to receive federal financial aid for coding bootcamps, MOOCs, and the like… “Good thing there haven’t been any problems with for-profit higher ed and exploitation of financial aid, otherwise this would all seem like a terrible idea.” The original submission has more details on the participants (including the four code bootcamps). Ultimately the program involves pairing “non-traditional” providers with higher education institutions — and then monitoring their results with a third-party “quality assurance entity” — to improve the ways we measure a school’s performance, but also testing new ways to fund training for computer careers. (I’m curious how Slashdot’s readers feel about government loans for attendees at code bootcamps…) Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Cable Expands Broadband Domination as AT&T and Verizon Lose Customers

The cable industry’s grip on the U.S. broadband space increased last quarter, with Comcast and Charter gaining nearly 500, 000 subscribers, combined. Phone companies AT&T, Verizon, CenturyLink, and Frontier, however, all lost Internet customers. ArsTechnica reports:The 14 largest ISPs, accounting for 95 percent of the US market, gained 192, 510 Internet customers in Q2 2016, bringing the total to 91.9 million, Leichtman Research Group reported today. Cable companies accounted for all of the gains, adding 553, 293 subscribers for a new total of 57 million. The phone companies lost 360, 783 subscribers, bringing them down to 34.9 million. Phone companies’ losses more than doubled since Q2 2015, when they lost about 150, 000 subscribers. Comcast and Charter, the two biggest ISPs, led the way in subscriber gains. Comcast added 220, 000 broadband subscribers to boost its total to 24 million, while Charter (the new owner of Time Warner Cable) added 277, 000 subscribers for a new total of 21.8 million. AT&T lost 123, 000 subscribers, lowering its total to 15.6 million. Verizon lost 83, 000, leaving it with 7 million Internet customers. CenturyLink and Frontier lost 66, 000 and 77, 000, respectively. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Cable Expands Broadband Domination as AT&T and Verizon Lose Customers

Tesla Preps Bigger 100 KWh Battery For Model S and Model X

An anonymous reader writes: Tesla will soon offer a 100 kWh battery for the Model S and Model X that will allow for increased range — perhaps as much as 380 miles for the Model S. Currently, the 90 kWh batteries are the company’s largest capacity. Kenteken.TV is reporting that the Dutch regulator that certifies Tesla’s vehicles for use in the European Union, RDW, has recently published a number of new Tesla variants. RDW’s public database now includes entries for a Tesla “100D” and “100X, ” which are titles that follow Tesla’s current naming system based on battery capacity. The listing for the 100D claims the vehicle has a range of 381 miles or 613 kilometers. The motor output is reported as 90 kilowatts (121 horsepower), which is the maximum output the Tesla motors can sustain without overheating. Autoblog notes that EU range estimates tend to be more optimistic than those issued by the U.S. EPA. A more realistic range might be 310 to 320 miles. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Tesla Preps Bigger 100 KWh Battery For Model S and Model X

Venus May Have Been Habitable, Says NASA

EzInKy writes: Science Daily has an article speculating that Venus may have been habitable which is suggested by NASA climate modeling, which proposes that Venus may have had a shallow liquid-water ocean and habitable surface temperatures for up to two billion years of its early history. Talk about global climate change run amok. Venus may represent a near Earth example of what is in store for the future of our world if we don’t make it a number one priority to address. Science Daily reports: “Venus today is a hellish world. It has a crushing carbon dioxide atmosphere 90 times as thick as Earth’s. There is almost no water vapor. Temperatures reach 864 degrees Fahrenheit (462 degrees Celsius) at its surface. Scientists have long theorized that Venus formed out of ingredients similar to Earth’s, but followed a different evolutionary path. Measurements by NASA’s Pioneer mission to Venus in the 1980s first suggested Venus originally may have had an ocean. However, Venus is closer to the sun than Earth and receives far more sunlight. As a result, the planet’s early ocean evaporated, water-vapor molecules were broken apart by ultraviolet radiation, and hydrogen escaped to space. With no water left on the surface, carbon dioxide built up in the atmosphere, leading to a so-called runaway greenhouse effect that created present conditions.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Venus May Have Been Habitable, Says NASA

Next Generation of Wireless — 5G — Is All Hype

Many people have promised us that 5G will be here very soon. And it will be the best thing ever. To quote Lowell McAdam, the CEO of Verizon, 5G is “wireless fiber, ” and to quote SK Telecom, thanks to 5G we will soon be able to “transfer holograms” because the upcoming standard is “100 times faster” than our current communications system 4G LTE. But if we were to quote Science, the distant future isn’t nearly as lofty as the one promised by executives. Backchannel explains: “5G” is a marketing term. There is no 5G standard — yet. The International Telecommunications Union plans to have standards ready by 2020. So for the moment “5G” refers to a handful of different kinds of technologies that are predicted, but not guaranteed, to emerge at some point in the next 3 to 7 years. (3GPP, a carrier consortium that will be contributing to the ITU process, said last year that until an actual standard exists, ‘”5G’ will remain a marketing & industry term that companies will use as they see fit.” At least they’re candid.) At the moment, advertising something as “5G” carries no greater significance than saying it’s “blazing fast” or “next generation” — nut because “5G” sounds technical, it’s good for sales. We are a long way away from actual deployment. Second, this “wireless fiber” will never happen unless we have… more fiber. Real fiber, in the form of fiber optic cables reaching businesses and homes. (This is the “last mile” problem; fiber already runs between cities.) It’s just plain physics. In order to work, 99% of any “5G” wireless deployment will have to be fiber running very close to every home and business. The high-frequency spectrum the carriers are planning to use wobbles billions of times a second but travels incredibly short distances and gets interfered with easily. So it’s great at carrying loads of information — every wobble can be imprinted with data — but can’t go very far at all. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Next Generation of Wireless — 5G — Is All Hype

Linux Kernel 4.8 Adds Microsoft Surface 3 Support

Brian Fagioli, writing for BetaNews:If you are a Windows user, and want a really great computer, you should consider Microsoft’s Surface line. Not only do they serve as wonderful tablets, but with the keyboard attachment, they can be solid laptops too. While many Linux users dislike Microsoft, some of them undoubtedly envy Windows hardware. While it is possible to run Linux distros on some Surface tablets, not everything will work flawlessly. Today, release candidate 1 of Linux Kernel 4.8 is announced, and it seems a particularly interesting driver has been added — the Surface 3 touchscreen controller. “This seems to be building up to be one of the bigger releases lately, but let’s see how it all ends up. The merge window has been fairly normal, although the patch itself looks somewhat unusual: over 20 percent of the patch is documentation updates, due to conversion of the drm and media documentation from docbook to the Sphinx doc format. There are other doc updates, but that’s the big bulk of it, ” says Linus Torvalds, Linux creator. Will Microsoft’s lower-priced (starting at $499) hybrid computer become the ultimate mobile Linux machine? Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Linux Kernel 4.8 Adds Microsoft Surface 3 Support

Fortune 500 Company Hires Ransomware Gang To Hack the Competition

It’s no secret that ransomware hackers are in the business to make money. But a new business arrangement hitting the news today may surprise many. Vice’s Motherboard, citing research and investigation (PDF) from security firm F-Secure, is reporting that a Fortune 500 company, the name of which hasn’t been unveiled, hired a ransomware gang to hack its competitors. From the article: In an exchange with a security researcher pretending to be a victim, one ransomware agent claimed they were working for a Fortune 500 company. “We are hired by [a] corporation to cyber disrupt day-to-day business of their competition, ” the customer support agent of a ransomware known as Jigsaw said, according to a new report by security firm F-Secure. “The purpose was just to lock files to delay a corporation’s production time to allow our clients to introduce a similar product into the market first.”In a statement to Motherboard, Mikko Hypponen said, “If this indeed was a case where ransomware was used on purpose to disrupt a competitor’s operation, it’s the only case we know of.” F-Secure adds that the consumer representative noted that “politicians, governments, husbands, wives — people from all walks of life contract [them] to hack computers, cell phones.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Fortune 500 Company Hires Ransomware Gang To Hack the Competition

US Navy Faces $600M Lawsuit For Allegedly Pirating 3D VR Software

An anonymous reader quotes a report from HotHardware: The U.S. Navy has been accused of pirating 3D software after first testing a software package offered by Germany company Bitmanagement Software GmbH. The company is suing the United States of America for nearly $600 million. HotHardware reports: “According to the court filing, Bitmanagement licensed its BS Contact Geo software for use on 38 Navy computers from 2011 to 2012. This limited rollout was ‘for the purposes of testing, trial runs, and integration into Navy systems.’ While this test period was underway, the Navy reportedly began negotiating to license the software for use on thousands of additional computers. However, even as the negotiations were ongoing, the Navy decided to go ahead and initiate its full-scale rollout without actually paying for the software. In total, the initial 38 computers allegedly swelled to 104, 922 computers by October 2013. As of today, BS Contact GEO is claimed to be installed on 558, 466 Navy computers, although ‘likely this unauthorized copying has taken place on an even larger scale’ according to the filing. As if the unauthorized installation of software onto hundreds of thousands of computers wasn’t enough, Bitmanagement is alleging that the Navy during 2014 began disabling the Flexwrap software that is tasked with tracking the use of BS Contact Geo and helping to prevent it from being duplicated. When this software piracy was taking place, the retail price of a single BS Contact Geo license was $1067.76. With nearly 600, 000 computers now in play, Bitmanagement is seeking a whopping $596, 308, 103 in damages. The lawsuit, which alleges willful copyright infringement was filed on July 15th.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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US Navy Faces $600M Lawsuit For Allegedly Pirating 3D VR Software

Ken May

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