united-states – Page 2 – Tech Today w/ Ken May

Cummins Unveils Electric Semi Truck Before Tesla

Cummins has beat Tesla to the punch by unveiling its own electric semi truck. According to Forbes, the fully electric, class 7 day-cab urban hauler, called Aeos, gets 100 miles of range from its 140-kWh battery pack and can haul a 22-ton trailer. While the company does offer the options of additional battery packs to triple the range or a range-extending engine generator, the Aeos is better suited for city use rather than long-haul trucking. Autoblog reports: While this electric truck is a concept, it’s a working demonstration of a product Cummins plans to start producing in 2019. At the unveiling in Columbus, Ind., Cummins also revealed its latest near-zero-emissions natural gas engines, as well as the X15 and lightweight X12 clean diesel engines. The company said it is embracing new technologies that allow its customers to contribute to a sustainable future. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Cummins Unveils Electric Semi Truck Before Tesla

Higher Minimum Wages Bring Automation and Job Losses, Study Suggests

An anonymous reader shares a report via email: As of the start of the year, 19 U.S. states had raised minimum wages, dramatizing a long simmering debate: Do minimum wages kill jobs, and make the working class worse off in the end? Or do they simply make them a little richer, with little or no loss to overall employment? In a new paper, economists Grace Lordan of the London School of Economics and David Neumark of UC Irvine parse 35 years of census data and come down on the worse-off side: For lower-skill jobs like bookkeepers and assembly-line workers, they say, higher minimum wages encourage employers to automate — according to their calculations, a $1 increase can cost tens of thousands of jobs nationally. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

US authorities have seized the dark web marketplace AlphaBay

Last week, we reported that an international law enforcement operation had shut down AlphaBay , the dark web’s go-to marketplace after the fall of Silk Road. Today, the U.S. Justice Department announced that it has seized AlphaBay and has brought civil charges against operator Alexandre Cazes (who is now deceased) and his wife, with the intention of taking their assets as well. Cazes, a Canadian citizen, was arrested in Thailand on July 5, but he committed suicide while in custody a week later. While the United States is working with international authorities to freeze the assets of AlphaBay, the Justice Department is also specifically interested in Cazes’ and his wife’s personal assets amassed through illegal AlphaBay activities. These including luxury cars, homes and a Thai hotel. Authorities have already seized Cazes’ vast stores of cryptocurrency. AlphaBay earned millions of dollars per week selling drugs, weapons, tools to help commit internet fraud and more. According to the Justice Department’s press release , Silk Road (which was shut down in 2013) had around 14, 000 goods and services listed when it was seized. Comparatively, AlphaBay had “over 250, 000 listings for illegal drugs and toxic chemicals on AlphaBay, and over 100, 000 listings for stolen and fraudulent identification documents and access devices, counterfeit goods, malware and other computer hacking tools, firearms and fraudulent services.” Source: U.S. Department of Justice

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US authorities have seized the dark web marketplace AlphaBay

Hacker Behind Massive Ransomware Outbreak Can’t Get Emails From Victims Who Paid

Joseph Cox, reporting for Motherboard: On Tuesday, a new, worldwide ransomware outbreak took off, infecting targets in Ukraine, France, Spain, and elsewhere. The hackers hit everything from international law firms to media companies. The ransom note demands victims send bitcoin to a predefined address and contact the hacker via email to allegedly have their files decrypted. But the email company the hacker happened to use, Posteo, says it has decided to block the attacker’s account, leaving victims with no obvious way to unlock their files. The hacker tells victims to send $300 worth of bitcoin. But to determine who exactly has paid, the hacker also instructs people to email their bitcoin wallet ID, and their “personal installation key.” This is a 60 character code made up of letters and digits generated by the malware, which is presumably unique to each infection of the ransomware. That process is not possible now, though. “Midway through today (CEST) we became aware that ransomware blackmailers are currently using a Posteo address as a means of contact, ” Posteo, the German email provider the hacker had an account with, wrote in a blog post. “Our anti-abuse team checked this immediately — and blocked the account straight away. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Hacker Behind Massive Ransomware Outbreak Can’t Get Emails From Victims Who Paid

Obama reportedly ordered implants to be deployed in key Russian networks

Enlarge (credit: Wikimedia Commons/Maria Joner) In his final days as the 44th president of the United States, Barack Obama authorized a covert hacking operation to implant attack code in sensitive Russian networks. The revelation came in an 8,000-word article The Washington Post published Friday that recounted a secret struggle to punish the Kremlin for tampering with the 2016 election. According to Friday’s article, the move came some four months after a top-secret Central Intelligence Agency report detailed Russian President Vladimir Putin’s direct involvement in a hacking campaign aimed at disrupting or discrediting the presidential race. Friday’s report also said that intelligence captured Putin’s specific objective that the operation defeat or at least damage Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton and help her Republican rival Donald Trump. The Washington Post said its reports were based on accounts provided by more than three dozen current and former US officials in senior positions in government, most of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity. In the months that followed the August CIA report, 17 intelligence agencies confirmed with high confidence the Russian interference. After months of discussions with various advisors, Obama enacted a series of responses, including shutting down two Russian compounds, sanctioning nine Russian entities and individuals, and expelling 35 Russian diplomats from the US. All of those measures have been known for months. The Post , citing unnamed US officials, said Obama also authorized a covert hacking program that involved the National Security Agency, the CIA, and the US Cyber Command. According to Friday’s report: Read 1 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Obama reportedly ordered implants to be deployed in key Russian networks

YouTube Claims 1.5 Billion Monthly Users

An anonymous reader shares a report: Google’s YouTube unit says it now reaches 1.5 billion viewers every month — and its users watch more than an hour of mobile videos per day — as it expands its video programming to sell more digital ads. YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki also wrote that YouTube Red, the company’s foray into original videos, has launched 37 series that have generated “nearly a quarter billion views.” YouTube Red has 12 new projects in the works, she said. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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YouTube Claims 1.5 Billion Monthly Users

Sci-Hub Ordered To Pay $15 Million In Piracy Damages

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TorrentFreak: Two years ago, academic publisher Elsevier filed a complaint (PDF) against Sci-Hub and several related “pirate” sites. It accused the websites of making academic papers widely available to the public, without permission. While Sci-Hub is nothing like the average pirate site, it is just as illegal according to Elsevier’s legal team, who obtained a preliminary injunction from a New York District Court last fall. The injunction ordered Sci-Hub’s founder Alexandra Elbakyan to quit offering access to any Elsevier content. However, this didn’t happen. Instead of taking Sci-Hub down, the lawsuit achieved the opposite. Sci-Hub grew bigger and bigger up to a point where its users were downloading hundreds of thousands of papers per day. Although Elbakyan sent a letter to the court earlier, she opted not engage in the U.S. lawsuit any further. The same is true for her fellow defendants, associated with Libgen. As a result, Elsevier asked the court for a default judgment and a permanent injunction which were issued this week. Following a hearing on Wednesday, the Court awarded Elsevier $15, 000, 000 in damages, the maximum statutory amount for the 100 copyrighted works that were listed in the complaint. In addition, the injunction, through which Sci-Hub and LibGen lost several domain names, was made permanent. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Sci-Hub Ordered To Pay $15 Million In Piracy Damages

At $75,560, Housing a Prisoner in California Now Costs More Than a Year at Harvard

The cost of imprisoning each of California’s 130, 000 inmates is expected to reach a record $75, 560 in the next year, the AP reported. From the article: That’s enough to cover the annual cost of attending Harvard University and still have plenty left over for pizza and beer Gov. Jerry Brown’s spending plan for the fiscal year that starts July 1 includes a record $11.4 billion for the corrections department while also predicting that there will be 11, 500 fewer inmates in four years (alternative source) because voters in November approved earlier releases for many inmates. The price for each inmate has doubled since 2005, even as court orders related to overcrowding have reduced the population by about one-quarter. Salaries and benefits for prison guards and medical providers drove much of the increase. The result is a per-inmate cost that is the nation’s highest — and $2, 000 above tuition, fees, room and board, and other expenses to attend Harvard. Since 2015, California’s per-inmate costs have surged nearly $10, 000, or about 13%. New York is a distant second in overall costs at about $69, 000. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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At $75,560, Housing a Prisoner in California Now Costs More Than a Year at Harvard

Chipotle finds malware exposed credit card info across the US

Hackers stole credit card information from customers at Chipotle restaurants across the United States between March 24th and April 18th, the company announced today. Chipotle revealed in April that it had been the victim of an attack, and today it shared details about the type of information stolen from customers, which covered “cardholder name in addition to card number, expiration date, and internal verification code.” No other information was compromised, Chipotle said. The attack pulled data off the magnetic strips of credit cards used in physical Chipotle locations around the US. The company has not said how many customers were affected, though it offered a searchable list of locations that were actually hit in the attack, including the dates each restaurant was vulnerable. Some were compromised for about a week, and others for the full four weeks. If you swiped a credit card at a Chipotle in March or April, check out the list of affected restaurants right here . “Because of the nature of the incident and the type of data involved, we do not know how many unique payment cards may have been involved, ” Chipotle spokesperson Chris Arnold told Engadget. As Reuters notes, Chipotle is not offering credit monitoring services to compromised customers. The company said monitoring services don’t alert customers when a fraudulent charge is made in their name. “Chipotle takes this kind of issue very seriously, and we regret any inconvenience or concern it may have caused, ” Arnold told Engadget. “To help prevent a similar incident from recurring, we have resolved the issue and continue to work with cyber security firms to evaluate ways to enhance our security measures.” Source: Chipotle

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Chipotle finds malware exposed credit card info across the US

US Senate approves encrypted chat app Signal for staff use

The United States Senate has been taking cybersecurity more seriously than ever before, thanks to the DNC leaks and various government cyberattacks. Senate Sergeant at Arms Frank J. Larkin and his team have recently finished encrypting all Senators’ websites, and it turns out he has also approved Signal for official use by Senate staff members. Sen. Ron Wyden, a privacy and encryption advocate, has revealed that Larkin’s office has given one of the most secure messaging apps out there its seal of approval in a letter thanking the Sergeant at Arms for his efforts. While the letter was sent on May 9th, ZDNet says staff members were first allowed to use the app for official business back in March. That the current administration would approve Signal for official use came as somewhat of a surprise. Back in February, House Republicans Darin LaHood and Lamar Smith demanded an investigation into the EPA’s use of secure messaging apps to secretly express their dissatisfaction with President Trump’s policies. They said encrypted conversations can “run afoul” of the government’s record-keeping rules. Nevertheless, Signal’s approval isn’t really groundbreaking. The National Archives and Records Administration told ZDNet that Senate staff members are exempt from those rules, so long as they don’t use encrypted apps for anything considered “historically valuable.” Via: ZDNet Source: Senator Ron Wyden

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US Senate approves encrypted chat app Signal for staff use