technology – Page 191

5-Year-Old Critical Linux Vulnerability Patched

msm1267 quotes Kaspersky Lab’s ThreatPost: A critical, local code-execution vulnerability in the Linux kernel was patched more than a week ago, continuing a run of serious security issues in the operating system, most of which have been hiding in the code for years. Details on the vulnerability were published Tuesday by researcher Philip Pettersson, who said the vulnerable code was introd in August 2011. A patch was pushed to the mainline Linux kernel December 2, four days after it was privately disclosed. Pettersson has developed a proof-of-concept exploit specifically for Ubuntu distributions, but told Threatpost his attack could be ported to other distros with some changes. The vulnerability is a race condition that was discovered in the af_packet implementation in the Linux kernel, and Pettersson said that a local attacker could exploit the bug to gain kernel code execution from unprivileged processes. He said the bug cannot be exploited remotely. “Basically it’s a bait-and-switch, ” the researcher told Threatpost. “The bug allows you to trick the kernel into thinking it is working with one kind of object, while you actually switched it to another kind of object before it could react.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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5-Year-Old Critical Linux Vulnerability Patched

‘Star In a Jar’ Fusion Reactor Works, Promises Infinite Energy

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Space.com: For several decades now, scientists from around the world have been pursuing a ridiculously ambitious goal: They hope to develop a nuclear fusion reactor that would generate energy in the same manner as the sun and other stars, but down here on Earth. Incorporated into terrestrial power plants, this “star in a jar” technology would essentially provide Earth with limitless clean energy, forever. And according to new reports out of Europe this week, we just took another big step toward making it happen. In a study published in the latest edition of the journal Nature Communications, researchers confirmed that Germany’s Wendelstein 7-X (W7-X) fusion energy device is on track and working as planned. The space-age system, known as a stellerator, generated its first batch of hydrogen plasma when it was first fired up earlier this year. The new tests basically give scientists the green light to proceed to the next stage of the process. It works like this: Unlike a traditional fission reactor, which splits atoms of heavy elements to generate energy, a fusion reactor works by fusing the nuclei of lighter atoms into heavier atoms. The process releases massive amounts of energy and produces no radioactive waste. The “fuel” used in a fusion reactor is simple hydrogen, which can be extracted from water. The W7-X device confines the plasma within magnetic fields generated by superconducting coils cooled down to near absolute zero. The plasma — at temperatures upwards of 80 million degrees Celsius — never comes into contact with the walls of the containment chamber. Neat trick, that. David Gates, principal research physicist for the advanced projects division of PPPL, leads the agency’s collaborative efforts in regard to the W7-X project. In an email exchange from his offices at Princeton, Gates said the latest tests verify that the W7-X magnetic “cage” is working as planned. “This lays the groundwork for the exciting high-performance plasma operations expected in the near future, ” Gates said. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Researchers Point Out ‘Theoretical’ Security Flaws In AMD’s Upcoming Zen CPU

An anonymous reader writes from a report via BleepingComputer: The security protocol that governs how virtual machines share data on a host system powered by AMD Zen processors has been found to be insecure, at least in theory, according to two German researchers. The technology, called Secure Encrypted Virtualization (SEV), is designed to encrypt parts of the memory shared by different virtual machines on cloud servers. AMD, who plans to ship SEV with its upcoming line of Zen processors, has published the technical documentation for the SEV technology this past April. The German researchers have analyzed the design of SEV, using this public documentation, and said they managed to identify three attack channels, which work, at least in theory. [In a technical paper released over the past weekend, the researchers described their attacks:] “We show how a malicious hypervisor can force the guest to perform arbitrary read and write operations on protected memory. We describe how to completely disable any SEV memory protection configured by the tenant. We implement a replay attack that uses captured login data to gain access to the target system by solely exploiting resource management features of a hypervisor.” AMD is scheduled to ship SEV with the Zen processor line in the first quarter of 2017. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

First Dinosaur Tail Found Preserved in Amber

The tail of a beautiful, feathered dinosaur has been found perfectly preserved in amber from Myanmar. It is a huge breakthrough that could help open a new window on the biology of a group that dominated Earth for more than 160 million years. From a report on the National Geographic: The semitranslucent mid-Cretaceous amber sample, roughly the size and shape of a dried apricot, captures one of the earliest moments of differentiation between the feathers of birds of flight and the feathers of dinosaurs. Inside the lump of resin is a 1.4-inch appendage covered in delicate feathers, described as chestnut brown with a pale or white underside. CT scans and microscopic analysis of the sample revealed eight vertebrae from the middle or end of a long, thin tail that may have been originally made up of more than 25 vertebrae. NPR has a story on how this amber was found. An excerpt from it reads: In 2015, Lida Xing was visiting a market in northern Myanmar when a salesman brought out a piece of amber about the size of a pink rubber eraser. Inside, he could see a couple of ancient ants and a fuzzy brown tuft that the salesman said was a plant. As soon as Xing saw it, he knew it wasn’t a plant. It was the delicate, feathered tail of a tiny dinosaur. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Paris Makes All Public Transportation Free In Battle Against ‘Worst Air Pollution For 10 Years’

Paris has barred some cars from its streets and has made public transportation free as it suffers from the worst and most prolonged winter pollution for at least 10 years, the Airparif agency said on Wednesday. The Independent reports: Authorities have said only drivers with odd-numbered registration plates can drive in the capital region on Wednesday. Drivers of even-numbered cars were given the same opportunity on Tuesday, but could now be fined up to 35 EUR if they are caught behind the wheel. More than 1, 700 motorists were fined for violations on Tuesday. Paris mayor Anne Hidalgo said images of smog blanketing the capital were proof of the need to reduce vehicle use in the city center. The air pollution peak is due to the combination of emissions from vehicles and from domestic wood fires as well as near windless conditions which means pollutants have not been dispersed, the Airparif agency said. “This is a record period (of pollution) for the last 10 years, ” Karine Leger of AirParif told AFP by telephone. For more than a week, Airparif has published readings of PM10 at more than 80 micrograms per cubic meter of air particles, triggering the pollution alert. Along with odd-numbered cars, hybrid or electric vehicles as well as those carrying three or more people will be allowed to roam the roads. Foreign and emergency vehicles will be unaffected. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Paris Makes All Public Transportation Free In Battle Against ‘Worst Air Pollution For 10 Years’

Cesarean Births Could Be Affecting Human Evolution, Study Says

CanadianRealist writes: Larger babies delivered by cesarean section may be affecting human evolution. Researchers estimate cases where the baby cannot fit down the birth canal have increased from 30 in 1, 000 in the 1960s to 36 in 1, 000 births today, [according to estimates from researchers at the University of Vienna in Austria.] Science Alert reports: “In the past, larger babies and mothers with narrow pelvis sizes might both have died in labour. Thanks to C-sections, that’s now a lot less likely, but it also means that those ‘at risk’ genes from mothers with narrow pelvises are being carried into future generations. More detailed studies would be required to actually confirm the link between C-sections and evolution, as all we have now is a hypothesis based on the birth data.” Agreed, more studies required part. Cesareans may simply be becoming more common with “too large” defined as cesarean seems like a better idea. It’s reasonable to pose the question based simply on an understanding of evolution. Like it’s reasonable to conjecture that length of human pregnancy is a compromise between further development in utero, and chance of mother and baby surviving the delivery. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Cesarean Births Could Be Affecting Human Evolution, Study Says

Qualcomm Debuts 10nm Server Chip To Attack Intel Server Stronghold

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Tom’s Hardware: Qualcomm and its Qualcomm Datacenter Technologies subsidiary announced today that the company has already begun sampling its first 10nm server processor. The Centriq 2400 is the second generation of Qualcomm server SOCs, but it is the first in its new family of 10nm FinFET processors. The Centriq 2400 features up to 48 custom Qualcomm ARMv8-compliant Falkor cores and comes a little over a year after Qualcomm began developing its first-generation Centriq processors. Qualcomm’s introduction of a 10nm server chip while Intel is still refining its 14nm process appears to be a clear shot across Intel’s bow–due not only to the smaller process, but also its sudden lead in core count. Intel’s latest 14nm E7 Broadwell processors top out at 24 cores. Qualcomm isn’t releasing more information, such as clock speeds or performance specifications, which would help to quantify the benefit of its increased core count. The server market commands the highest margins, which is certainly attractive for the mobile-centric Qualcomm, which found its success in the relatively low-margin smartphone segment. However, Intel has a commanding lead in the data center with more than a 99% share of the world’s server sockets, and penetrating the segment requires considerable time, investment, and ecosystem development. Qualcomm unveiled at least a small portion of its development efforts by demonstrating Apache Spark and Hadoop on Linux and Java running on the Centriq 2400 processor. The company also notes that Falkor is SBSA compliant, which means that it is compatible with any software that runs on an ARMv8-compliant server platform. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

This ‘artificial iris’ is like a pair of programmable shades in contact lens form

Smart contact lenses have been the stuff of science fiction for a long time, but as with jetpacks and faster-than-light travel, we’re still waiting on them. Research is ongoing, though, and a project at the University of Ghent shows promise not just in advancing the technology but providing some therapeutic value as well. Read More

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This ‘artificial iris’ is like a pair of programmable shades in contact lens form

Google Says It Is About To Reach 100 Percent Renewable Energy

Google said today it will power 100 percent of its sprawling data centers and offices with renewable energy starting next year. The company said today it has bought enough wind and solar power to account for all the electricity it uses globally each year. In comparison, 44 percent of Google’s power supplies came from renewables last year. From a blogpost: To reach this goal we’ll be directly buying enough wind and solar electricity annually to account for every unit of electricity our operations consume, globally. And we’re focusing on creating new energy from renewable sources, so we only buy from projects that are funded by our purchases. Over the last six years, the cost of wind and solar came down 60 percent and 80 percent, respectively, proving that renewables are increasingly becoming the lowest cost option. Electricity costs are one of the largest components of our operating expenses at our data centers, and having a long-term stable cost of renewable power provides protection against price swings in energy. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Netflix Keeping Bandwidth Usage Low By Encoding Its Video With VP9 and H.264/AVC Codecs

Netflix announced last week that it is getting offline video downloads support. The company has since shared that it is using VP9 video compression codec to ensure that the file sizes don’t weigh a lot. An anonymous reader shares an article on Slashgear (edited): For streaming content, Netflix largely relies on H.264/AVC to reduce the bandwidth, but for downloading content, it uses VP9 encoding. VP9 can allow better quality videos for the same amount of data needed to download. The challenge is that VP9 isn’t supported by all streaming providers — it is supported on Android devices and via the Chrome browser. So to get around that lack of support on iOS, Netflix is offering downloads in H.264/AVC High whereas streams are encoded in H.264/AVC Main on such devices. Netflix chooses the optimal encoding format for each title on its service after finding, for instance, that animated films are easier to encode than live-action. Netflix says that H.264 High encoding saves 19% bandwidth compared to other encoding standards while VP9 saves 36%. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Netflix Keeping Bandwidth Usage Low By Encoding Its Video With VP9 and H.264/AVC Codecs

Ken May

Tag: technology