Tag: technology

Intel Broadwell-E, Apollo Lake, and Kaby Lake Details Emerge In Leaked Roadmap

bigwophh writes: In Q4 2016, Intel will release a follow up to its Skylake processors named Kaby Lake, which will mark yet another 14nm release that’s a bit odd, for a couple of reasons. The big one is the fact that this chip mayn not have appeared had Intel’s schedule kept on track. Originally, Cannonlake was set to succeed Skylake, but Cannonlake will instead launch in 2017. That makes Kaby Lake neither a tick nor tock in Intel’s release cadence. When released, Kaby Lake will add native USB 3.1 and HDCP 2.2 support. It’s uncertain whether these chips will fit into current Z170-based motherboards, but considering the fact that there’s also a brand-new chipset on the way, we’re not too confident of it. However, the so-called Intel 200 series chipsets will be backwards-compatible with Skylake. It also appears that Intel will be releasing Apollo Lake as early as the late spring, which will replace Braswell, the lowest-powered chips Intel’s lineup destined for smartphones. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Intel Broadwell-E, Apollo Lake, and Kaby Lake Details Emerge In Leaked Roadmap

Sued Freelancer Allegedly Turns Over Contractee Source Code In Settlement

FriendlySolipsist writes: Blizzard Entertainment has been fighting World of Warcraft bots for years. TorrentFreak reports that Bossland, a German company that operates “buddy” bots, alleges Blizzard sued one of its freelancers and forced a settlement. As part of that settlement, the freelancer allegedly turned over Bossland’s source code to Blizzard. In Bossland’s view, their code was “stolen” by Blizzard because it was not the freelancer’s to disclose. This is a dangerous precedent for freelance developers in the face of legal threats: damned if you do, damned if you don’t. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Sued Freelancer Allegedly Turns Over Contractee Source Code In Settlement

600,000 Arris Cable Modems Have ‘Backdoors In Backdoors,’ Researcher Claims

An anonymous reader writes: A security researcher using Shodan to probe Arris cable modems for vulnerabilities has found that 600, 000 of the company’s modems not only have a backdoor, but that the backdoor itself has an extra backdoor. Brazilian vulnerability tester Bernardo Rodrigues posted that he found undocumented libraries in three models, initially leading to a backdoor that uses an admin password disclosed back in 2009. Brazilian researcher Bernardo Rodrigues notes that the secondary backdoor has a password derived in part from the final five digits from the modem’s serial number. However, the default ‘root’ password for the affected models remains ‘arris.’ Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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600,000 Arris Cable Modems Have ‘Backdoors In Backdoors,’ Researcher Claims

TrueCrypt Safer Than Previously Thought

An anonymous reader writes: Back in September, members of Google’s Project Zero team found a pair of flaws in the TrueCrypt disk encryption software that could lead to a system compromise. Their discovery raised concerns that TrueCrypt was unsuitable for use in securing sensitive data. However, the Fraunhofer Institute went ahead with a full audit of TrueCrypt’s code, and they found it to be more secure than most people think. They correctly point out that for an attacker to exploit the earlier vulnerabilities (and a couple more vulnerabilities they found themselves), the attacker would already need to have “far-reaching access to the system, ” with which they could do far worse things than exploit an obscure vulnerability. The auditors say, “It does not seem apparent to many people that TrueCrypt is inherently not suitable to protect encrypted data against attackers who can repeatedly access the running system. This is because when a TrueCrypt volume is mounted its data is generally accessible through the file system, and with repeated access one can install key loggers etc. to get hold of the key material in many situations. Only when unmounted, and no key is kept in memory, can a TrueCrypt volume really be secure.” For other uses, the software “does what it’s designed for, ” despite its code flaws. Their detailed, 77-page report (PDF) goes into further detail. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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TrueCrypt Safer Than Previously Thought

Researchers Create Plant-Circuit Hybrid

sciencehabit writes: Researchers have crafted flexible electronic circuits inside a rose. Eventually such circuitry may help farmers eavesdrop on their crops and even control when they ripen. The advance may even allow people to harness energy from trees and shrubs not by cutting them down and using them for fuel, but by plugging directly into their photosynthesis machinery. The researchers used “an organic electronic building block called PEDOT-S:H. Each of these building blocks consists of a short, repeating chain of a conductive organic molecule with short arms coming off each link of the chain. Each of the arms sports a sulfur-containing group linked to a hydrogen atom. Berggren’s group found that when they placed them in the water, the rose stems readily pulled the short polymer chains up the xylem channels (abstract). … The upshot was that the myriad short polymer chains quickly linked themselves together into continuous strings as long as 10 centimeters. The researchers then added electronic probes to opposite ends of these strings, and found that they were, in fact, wires, conducting electricity all down the line.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Researchers Create Plant-Circuit Hybrid

First Images Ever Taken of a Planet Being Formed, 450 Light-Years From Earth

Zothecula writes: Of the many new exoplanets discovered over the past two decades, all have been identified as established, older planets – none have been acknowledged as newly-forming protoplanets. Now scientists working at the Keck observatory have spied just such a planet in the constellation of Taurus, some 450 light-years from Earth (abstract), that is only just beginning its life, collecting matter and spinning into a brand new world. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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First Images Ever Taken of a Planet Being Formed, 450 Light-Years From Earth

Sony Quietly Adds PS2 Emulation To the PS4

An anonymous reader writes: The Digital Foundry blog reports that Sony has added functionality to the PlayStation 4 that allows it to act as an emulator for some PlayStation 2 games. Surprisingly, the company did not mention that this functionality is live; a new Star Wars game bundle just happened to include three titles that were released on the PS2. From the article: “How can we tell? First of all, a system prompt appears telling you that select and start buttons are mapped to the left and right sides of the Dual Shock 4’s trackpad. Third party game developers cannot access the system OS in this manner. Secondly, just like the PS2 emulator on PlayStation 3, there’s an emulation system in place for handling PS2 memory cards. Thirdly, the classic PlayStation 2 logo appears in all of its poorly upscaled glory when you boot each title.” Sony has confirmed the games are being emulated, but declined to provide any further details. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Sony Quietly Adds PS2 Emulation To the PS4

Plasma-Cutting Steel Underwater Is a Wondrous Phase of Shipbuilding

Thanks to this explanatory video full of really cool time lapse footages, we can take a look inside BAE Systems’ shipbuilding halls in Scotland, where the new offshore patrol vessels for the Royal Navy are being built as part of a £348 million contract, or about $530 million. Read more…

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Plasma-Cutting Steel Underwater Is a Wondrous Phase of Shipbuilding

Seiko Is Re-issuing the Futuristic Watch Ripley Wore In Aliens

Sometimes a unique design isn’t enough to make a product a hit, but then it makes an appearance in a major motion picture and suddenly everyone wants one. Let’s call it the DeLorean BTTF effect, and that’s exactly what happened with the Seiko Giugiaro 7A28-7000 once Ripley wore it in Aliens . Read more…

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Seiko Is Re-issuing the Futuristic Watch Ripley Wore In Aliens

US Navy Is Planning To Launch a Squadron of Underwater Drones By 2020

Hallie Siegel writes: According to the non-profit Autonomous Undersea Vehicle Applications Center, there are over 250 different configurations of unmanned undersea vehicles (UUVs) in service today. That number is likely to grow in the coming years as the technology improves — note that the US Navy has made UUVs a priority and is planning to launch a whole squadron of them by 2020. Dan Gettinger from the Center for the Study of the Drone at Bard College gives an overview of this technology. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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US Navy Is Planning To Launch a Squadron of Underwater Drones By 2020