Tag: united-states

Toyota’s Killer Firmware

New submitter Smerta writes “On Thursday, a jury verdict found Toyota’s ECU firmware defective, holding it responsible for a crash in which a passenger was killed and the driver injured. What’s significant about this is that it’s the first time a jury heard about software defects uncovered by a plaintiff’s expert witnesses. A summary of the defects discussed at trial is interesting reading, as well the transcript of court testimony. ‘Although Toyota had performed a stack analysis, Barr concluded the automaker had completely botched it. Toyota missed some of the calls made via pointer, missed stack usage by library and assembly functions (about 350 in total), and missed RTOS use during task switching. They also failed to perform run-time stack monitoring.’ Anyone wonder what the impact will be on self-driving cars?” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Toyota’s Killer Firmware

Jeffrey Zients Appointed To Fix Healthcare.gov

An anonymous reader writes with news that the Obama administration has appointed Jeffrey Zients to lead the effort to revamp Healthcare.gov after its trouble rollout earlier this month. Zients said, “By the end of November, healthcare.gov will work smoothly for the vast majority of users.” Obama created a position for Zients within the government in 2009, when he was made the OMB’s Chief Performance Officer. The purpose of his position was to analyze and streamline the government’s budget concerns. “Healthcare.gov covers people in the 36 states that declined to run their own health-insurance exchanges. About 700, 000 applications have been begun nationwide, and half of them have come in through the website. The White House aims to have 7M uninsured Americans covered by the scheme by the end of March.” Zients’s appointment came after a contentious House Committee hearing about the healthcare website, in which many were blamed and few took responsibility. The government also said that contractor Quality Software Services Inc., a subsidiary of UnitedHealth group, would “oversee the entire operation” of Healthcare.gov. QSSI has already done work on the website, building the pipeline that transfers data between the insurance exchanges and the federal agencies. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Jeffrey Zients Appointed To Fix Healthcare.gov

Exoplanet Count Peaks 1,000

astroengine writes “The first 1, 000 exoplanets to be confirmed have been added to the Europe-based Extrasolar Planets Encyclopaedia. For the last few weeks, astronomers (and the science media) have been waiting with bated breath as the confirmed exoplanet count tallied closer and closer to the 1, 000 mark. Then, with the help of the Super Wide Angle Search for Planets (SuperWASP) collaboration, the number jumped from 999 to 1, 010 overnight. All of the 11 worlds are classified as ‘hot-Jupiters’ with orbital periods between 1 day and 9 days.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Exoplanet Count Peaks 1,000

A Look Inside the 8K Theater Technology At the Newly Renovated Fiske Planetarium

An anonymous reader writes “Sky gazers at CU-Boulder’s Fiske Planetarium are getting better, clearer and deeper views. And not just of astronomy anymore. The planetarium has been upgraded, transforming it into a digital IMAX-like theater that’s open to the public every Saturday and Sunday with a variety of programs including shows for children. ‘Fiske’s refurbished video system projects ultra high-definition pictures at 8, 000 by 8, 000 pixels in size, giving audience members a crystal-clear 360-degree view on the dome’s 65-foot screen. “The size and quality is the equivalent of 40 Blu-ray players projecting 40 sections of one video image at once, ” said [Doug Duncan, director of Fiske]. This gallery of images shows a behind-the-scenes look at the Planetarium’s brand new 8k Fulldome projection system. ‘ In addition to space odysseys and laser shows — longtime favorites of audiences — movies are now part of the Fiske lineup. ‘Just like at an IMAX theater, we can take you near a black hole, through the Grand Canyon, under the ocean, or up to a super volcano, ‘ said Duncan. “The sky is no longer the limit.'” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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A Look Inside the 8K Theater Technology At the Newly Renovated Fiske Planetarium

It’s Better That You Don’t Remember Coby Because It Just Went Under

You know those gadgets that you can buy at drugstores? Back in the early 2000s it was all portable CD players and PC speakers. Now it’s MP3 players with 2GB of storage and wimpy tablets. And if you’ve ever done last minute Christmas shopping at a Walgreens you know that the brands start to become recognizable for their no-name-ness. Coby was a staple in that lineup until recently. Now a titan of cheap, sometimes questionable electronics has fallen . Read more…        

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It’s Better That You Don’t Remember Coby Because It Just Went Under

British NHS May Soon No Longer Offer Free Care

An anonymous reader writes “Coinciding with challenges in the rollout of the U.S. Affordable Care Act are challenges for NHS. The Independent reports, ‘A National Health Service free at the point of use will soon be “unsustainable, ” if the political parties do not come forward with radical plans for change before the 2015 election, top health officials have warned. Stagnant health spending combined with ever rising costs and demand mean the NHS is facing “the most challenging period in its 65-year existence, ” the NHS Confederation said … In a frank assessment of the dangers faced by the health service, senior officials at the confederation say that the two years following the next general election will be pivotal in deciding whether the NHS can continue to provide free health care for all patients. “Treasury funding for the service will be at best level in real terms, ” they write. “Given that demand continues to rise, drugs cost more, and NHS inflation is higher than general inflation, the NHS is facing a funding gap estimated at up to £30bn by 2020.”‘ From The Guardian: ‘Our rose-tinted view of the NHS has to change.’ More at the Independent, Mirror, and Telegraph.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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British NHS May Soon No Longer Offer Free Care

New High Tech $100 Bills Start To Circulate Today

Hugh Pickens DOT Com writes “New $100 bills made their debut today in the U.S. They include high tech features designed to make it easier for the public to authenticate but more difficult for counterfeiters to replicate. Those measures include a blue, 3-D security ribbon, as well as color-shifting ink that changes from copper to green when the note is tilted (PDF). That ink can be found on a large ‘100’ on the back of the bill, on one of the ‘100’s’ on the front, and on a new image of an ink well that’s also on the front. ‘The $100 is the highest value denomination that we issue, and it circulates broadly around the world, ‘ says Michael Lambert, assistant director for cash at the Federal Reserve Board. ‘Therefore, we took the necessary time to develop advanced security features that are easy for the public to use in everyday transactions, but difficult for counterfeiters to replicate.’ The bill was originally due to reach banks in 2011, but three years ago the Federal Reserve announced that a problem with the currency’s new security measures was causing the bills to crease during printing, which left blank spaces on the bills. This led the Feds to shred more than 30 million of the bills in 2012. The image of Benjamin Franklin will be the same as on the current bill, but like all the other newly designed currencies, it will no longer be surrounded by an dark oval. Except for the $1 and $2 bill, all U.S. paper currency has been redesigned in the last 10 years to combat counterfeiting.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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New High Tech $100 Bills Start To Circulate Today

The Price of 500MB of Mobile Data Across the World

Today, nearly half of the world’s total population has potential access to some kind of 3G or 4G network, which is five times the level of mobile coverage we were at just five years ago. Unfortunately, not all mobile broadband is created equal—especially where price is concerned. Read more…        

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The Price of 500MB of Mobile Data Across the World

The First Man To Walk In Space Almost Got Stuck Out There

Today I found out that the first man to walk in space almost got stuck out there. That lucky individual was Alexei Leonov, who was born in the Soviet Union on May 30, 1934. He was one of the twenty Soviet Air Force Pilots to be chosen for the first cosmonaut group. Read more…        

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The First Man To Walk In Space Almost Got Stuck Out There

FBI Admits It Controlled Tor Servers Behind Mass Malware Attack

MikeatWired writes “It wasn’t ever seriously in doubt, but the FBI yesterday acknowledged that it secretly took control of Freedom Hosting last July, days before the servers of the largest provider of ultra-anonymous hosting were found to be serving custom malware designed to identify visitors. Freedom Hosting’s operator, Eric Eoin Marques, had rented the servers from an unnamed commercial hosting provider in France, and paid for them from a bank account in Las Vegas. It’s not clear how the FBI took over the servers in late July, but the bureau was temporarily thwarted when Marques somehow regained access and changed the passwords, briefly locking out the FBI until it gained back control. The new details emerged in local press reports from a Thursday bail hearing in Dublin, Ireland, where Marques, 28, is fighting extradition to America on charges that Freedom Hosting facilitated child pornography on a massive scale. He was denied bail today for the second time since his arrest in July. On August 4, all the sites hosted by Freedom Hosting — some with no connection to child porn — began serving an error message with hidden code embedded in the page. Security researchers dissected the code and found it exploited a security hole in Firefox to identify users of the Tor Browser Bundle, reporting back to a mysterious server in Northern Virginia. The FBI was the obvious suspect, but declined to comment on the incident. The FBI also didn’t respond to inquiries from WIRED today. But FBI Supervisory Special Agent Brooke Donahue was more forthcoming when he appeared in the Irish court yesterday to bolster the case for keeping Marque behind bars.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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FBI Admits It Controlled Tor Servers Behind Mass Malware Attack