Remember when Microsoft said no known ransomware could run on Windows 10 S? ZDNet decided to put their claim to the test by hiring a security researcher to hack it, and he actually succeeded in doing so in a little more than three hours using Word as the attack vector. While the hack is not guaranteed, it does show that W10 S is not bulletproof.
Bottom line: If it’s not in the app store, it won’t run. Cracking Windows 10 S was a tougher task than we expected. But one common attack point exists. Hickey was able to exploit how Microsoft Word, available to download from the Windows app store, handles and processes macros. These typically small, script-based programs are designed to automate tasks, but they’re also commonly used by malware writers.
Discussion
Source: [H]ardOCP – Word Macro Used to Break into the “More Secure” Windows 10 S
Monthly Archives: June 2017
'Rocket League' will die without cross-console multiplayer
All online games eventually die. But the difference between the original version of World of Warcraft and, say, Call of Duty: Ghosts is that WoW was more of a service on an open system (PC). Players were able to gradually migrate to its annual expans…
Source: Engadget – ‘Rocket League’ will die without cross-console multiplayer
Wonder Woman Actor Says Chief Is Actually a Demi-God
Wonder Woman isn’t the only deity anymore. Eugene Brave Rock, who plays Chief in DC’s blockbuster film Wonder Woman, looks to have confirmed one of the movie’s big secrets: Chief is a demi-god.
Source: Gizmodo – Wonder Woman Actor Says Chief Is Actually a Demi-God
Phoronix Announces '2017 Linux Laptop Survey'
Phoronix is hosting a 2017 Linux Laptop Survey. From their site:
While Linux laptop compatibility is much better than where it was years ago, it’s still not too uncommon to run into display/hybrid issues, shorter battery life under Linux than Windows or macOS, touchpad problems, and other occasional compatibility/performance shortcomings. So we’ve established this Linux Laptop Survey in conjunction with Linux stakeholders to hopefully gather more feedback that will be useful to many different parties…
The survey will be online until July 6th, after which the results will be publicly available, and will determine the most popular brands, distros, screen sizes, and GPUs, as well as common pain points and popular price points. And one particularly interestng question asks respondents what they’d like to see in a “dream Linux laptop.”
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot – Phoronix Announces ‘2017 Linux Laptop Survey’
Saturday's Best Deals: Roomba, Fitbit, Simplehuman, and More
The entry level Roomba 650, vacuum-insulated water bottles, and the best price ever on the Fitbit Alta lead off Saturday’s best deals from around the web.
Source: LifeHacker – Saturday’s Best Deals: Roomba, Fitbit, Simplehuman, and More
AMDGPU VRAM Improvements Could Help DiRT Rally, Dying Light
A patch series posted on Friday could help games suffering from visible video memory pressure when using the AMDGPU DRM driver…
Source: Phoronix – AMDGPU VRAM Improvements Could Help DiRT Rally, Dying Light
GTA V Mod OpenIV Returns after Rockstar Softens Stance
OpenIV and other single-player mods are back in business: Rockstar Games held discussions with Take-Two and managed to convince the publisher to leave modders alone. Apparently, their animosity toward mods stemmed from how they could affect multiplayer. OpenIV, however, never touched GTA Online.
Following a strong backlash from the community, developer Rockstar has stepped in to get Take-Two to soften their harsh stance against mods. Take-Two’s main issue against OpenIV and other tools was the threat they posed against the GTA Online mode, and their potential for cheating and harassment. Their letter to the mod’s developers threatened legal action if the tool wasn’t taken offline, which the team did comply with, leaving a significant number of players unable to use their customizations. However, OpenIV was only used to modify GTA 5’s single-player game, and never touched GTA Online.
Discussion
Source: [H]ardOCP – GTA V Mod OpenIV Returns after Rockstar Softens Stance
Roundup: The best “escape room” games for a breakout party
Enlarge / Some typical escape room components—plus a “Chrono Decoder”—from Escape Room: The Game. (credit: Spinmaster)
Welcome to Ars Cardboard, our weekend look at tabletop games! Check out our complete board gaming coverage at cardboard.arstechnica.com—and let us know what you think.
I don’t know CPR. I can’t tie a tourniquet. But I can work my way out of a locked, puzzle-stuffed room in 60 minutes or less.
I’ve been honing this vital skill over the last year as the current mania for physical “escape rooms” has made its way to the tabletop. In an escape room, a team of players works together to solve codes and puzzles that will eventually provide a means of escape. Usually this requires organizing a group, traveling to a physical location, and paying a significant per-person fee.
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Source: Ars Technica – Roundup: The best “escape room” games for a breakout party
Persona 3’s ending made me appreciate all of life’s little endings
Enlarge / It’s hard to tell from this promo image, but this game is a poignant meditation on friendship and death.
It was easier for me to walk away from Persona 3 than I expected. The game about nine friends and a dog—which celebrates its tenth anniversary in the States this year—follows a similar arc to most role-playing games. That means the gang of plucky young people ultimately saves the world. Yet its 21st century characters and setting made Persona 3 far more relatable and endearing to me than the high-flying heroes of Final Fantasy or Chrono Trigger. It helps, too, that this was the series’ first game to sport a now-signature blend of dating sim and turn-based dungeon crawling.
Playing Persona 3, I felt I was experiencing the first game designed to let me take my time. Whether that meant meeting up with a friend for kendo practice or hanging out with a couple of elderly used booksellers, there was nearly always something more digestible, recognizable, and less world-shatteringly urgent to do than fighting gods and monsters. It’s the kind of stuff that let me inhabit a game’s world for a bit rather than simply tour through it. Tearing up specters and saving the Earth from supernatural threats is fun, but it’s a bit harder to relate to in a way that feels like my real life.
By the end of the game, I was nearly as attached to the city of Iwatodai and its inhabitants as I’ve ever been to a real place. The downside is that this made it that much harder to eventually say goodbye to those virtual sights I saw and friends I made along the way. What made that goodbye easier was a special, quiet message before the closing credits—one that reminds me how to accept the end of comfort and friendship even today.
Read 17 remaining paragraphs | Comments
Source: Ars Technica – Persona 3’s ending made me appreciate all of life’s little endings
Memblaze Launches PBlaze5 SSDs: Enterprise 3D TLC, Up to 6 GB/s, 1M IOPS, 11 TB
Memblaze has introduced its new generation of server-class NVMe SSDs for mixed and mission critical workloads. The PBlaze5 SSDs are based around Micron’s 3D eTLC memory and paired with a Microsemi Flashtec controller. The SSDs come in PCIe 3.0 x8 AIC or 2.5” U.2 form-factors, carry up to 11 TB of 3D TLC NAND, and feature sequential read performance of up to 6 GB/s as well as random read performance of up to 1M IOPS.
The Memblaze PBlaze5 700 and 900-series SSDs are based on Microsemi’s Flashtec PM8607 NVMe2016 controller that features 16 compute cores, 32 NAND flash channels, and supports everything one might expect from a contemporary SoC for server SSDs (LDPC 550 bit/4KB ECC with a 1×10-17 bit error rate, NVMe 1.2a, AES-256 PCIe 3.0 x8/PCIe 3.0 x4 dual-port, etc.) along with a host of enterprise-grade features. Memblaze further outfits the card with their own MemSpeed 3.0 as well as MemSolid 3.0 firmware-based technologies. The MemSpeed 3.0 feature better ensures consistent performance and QoS, and comes with further priority que management optimizations over the previous version. As for the MemSolid 3.0, it is a stack of reliability and security features of the PBlaze5 900-series drives, which we are going to touch upon later.
Both the 700 and 900 series drives use the same kind of memory — Micron’s 32-layer 3D eTLC NAND flash (384 Gb). Memblaze tells us that the 3D eTLC memory offers higher endurance and reliability, but it does not go beyond that.
Gallery: Memblaze PBlaze5 700
Given the same controller and the same kind of memory, performance and power consumption numbers for the PBlaze5 700 and 900-series SSDs are close (the 900-series offers 50% higher random write performance). The 2.5″ drive form-factor PBlaze5 D700/D900 feature sequential read speeds of up to 3.2 GB/s, sequential write speeds of up to 2.4 GB/s, as well as up to 760K random read IOPS. The PCIe card-based PBlaze5 C700/C900 offer considerably higher performance numbers due to two times wider interface (PCIe 3.0 x8): sequential reads up to 6 GB/s, sequential writes up to 2.4 GB/s, and 1.042M read IOPS, respectively. As for power consumption, all the drives use from 7 to 25 W of power, depending on the configuration, workload and settings. However, the similarities between the PBlaze5 700 and 900-series SSDs end here.
Gallery: Memblaze PBlaze5 900
The PBlaze5 700 drives are designed for datacenters that require maximum performance, high density and capacity at low power and moderate costs. That said, the PBlaze 700-series are rated for 1 DPWD for five years and come with reliability features that are consistent with other SSDs for hyperscale datacenters.
By contrast, the PBlaze5 900-series drives are aimed at mission critical environments (databases, financial transactions, analytics, etc.) that need enhanced reliability. In addition to extended error correction code (with a 1×10-17 bit error rate), the PBlaze 900-series also supports T10 Data Integrity Field (DIF)-compliant end-to-end data path protection, which results in a Silent Bit Error Rate (SBER) lower than 10-23. In addition, the 900-series takes full advantage of all MemSolid 3.0 enhancements offering features like crypto erase, background scan protection, firmware encryption (one of the first SSDs to support this feature), whole disk encryption, metadata protection, read disturb protection, dual-port capability (U.2 drives only), and so on. For those who need to precisely manage the power consumption of their SSDs, the MemSolid 3.0-based drives offer distinct 15, 20 and 25 W modes. As for endurance, Memblaze guarantees 3 DPWD over five years for its PBlaze5 900-series SSDs.
| Memblaze PBlaze5 Series Specifications | |||||
| PBlaze5 D700 | PBlaze5 C700 | PBlaze5 D900 | PBlaze5 C900 | ||
| Form Factors | 2.5″ U.2 Drive | HHHL AIC | 2.5″ U.2 Drive | HHHL AIC | |
| Interface | PCIe 3.0 x4 | PCIe 3.0 x8 | PCIe 3.0 x4 | PCIe 3.0 x8 | |
| Capacities | 2 TB 3.6 TB 4 TB 8 TB 11 TB |
2 TB 3.2 TB 4 TB 8 TB |
|||
| Controller | Microsemi Flashtec PM8607 NVMe2016 | ||||
| Protocol | NVMe 1.2a | ||||
| NAND | 3D Enterprise TLC NAND memory | ||||
| Sequential Read | 3.2 GB/s | 6 GB/s | 3.2 GB/s | 6 GB/s | |
| Sequential Write | 2.4 GB/s | 2.4 GB/s | 2.4 GB/s | 2.4 GB/s | |
| Random Read (4 KB) IOPS | 760,000 | 1,042,000 | 760,000 | 1,042,000 | |
| Random Write (4 KB) IOPS | 210,000 | 304,000 | |||
| Latency Read | 90 µs | ||||
| Latency Write | 15 µs | ||||
| Power | Idle | 7 W | |||
| Operating | 23 W | ||||
| ECC | LDPC 550 bit/4 KB | ||||
| Endurance | 1 DWPD | 3 DWPD | |||
| Dual-Port Support | – | + | – | ||
| Uncorrectable Bit Error Rate | <1 bit per 10-17 bits read | ||||
| Silent Bit Error | – | <1 bit per 10-23 bits read | |||
| End-to-End Data Protection | – | T10 DIF/DIX | |||
| Crypto Erase | – | + | |||
| Firmware Signature | – | + | |||
| PCIe ECRC | – | + | |||
| Encryption | AES-256 | ||||
| Power Loss Protection | Yes | ||||
| Proprietary Technologies | MemSpeed 3.0 | MemSpeed 3.0 MemSolid 3.0 |
|||
| MTBF | 2.1 million hours | ||||
| Warranty | Five years | ||||
| Additional Information | Link | Link | |||
Traditionally, Memblaze does not publicly list the pricing of their enterprise SSDs, as pricing is dependent in part on the number ordered and just how the customer wants the drives configured. The company is currently working with its partners on deploying the PBlaze5 drives, and actual volume shipments will begin after their clients validate the SSDs with their respective applications.
Related Reading:
- Intel Announces SSD DC P4501 Low-Power NVMe SSD With 3D NAND
- Western Digital Launches HGST Ultrastar SS300 SSDs: 3D NAND for Data Centers
- Intel Announces New DC P4500 And P4600 Datacenter SSDs
- The Intel Optane SSD DC P4800X (375GB) Review: Testing 3D XPoint Performance
- Samsung Shows Off A Z-SSD: With New Z-NAND
- NGD Launches Catalina: a 24 TB PCIe 3.0 x4 SSD with 3D TLC NAN
Source: AnandTech – Memblaze Launches PBlaze5 SSDs: Enterprise 3D TLC, Up to 6 GB/s, 1M IOPS, 11 TB
Facebook Refines Mission Statement To Bring People In The World Together, ‘A Responsibility To Do More’
For the first time ever, Facebook has just overhauled its mission statement, reflecting the social network’s major focus on community. Originally, the mission was “to give people the power to share and make the world more open and connected”, whereas now, it’s “to give people the power to build community and bring the world closer together”.
The
Source: Hot Hardware – Facebook Refines Mission Statement To Bring People In The World Together, ‘A Responsibility To Do More’
Sony is losing its grip on the indie market
Here we go again.
In 2011, Microsoft was the indie king. The industry was just blossoming thanks to services like Steam and Xbox Live Arcade, which introduced independent games to huge, hungry audiences. Indie Game: The Movie was about to debut, giv…
Source: Engadget – Sony is losing its grip on the indie market
Use IFTTT To Stay Informed on Government News
In today’s political climate, there’s a good chance you’re looking for less government-themed news, not more. However, if you’re looking for information straight from the source IFTTT (If this, then that) has made it super easy to stay up to date with its new Data Access Project.
Source: LifeHacker – Use IFTTT To Stay Informed on Government News
The People GoFundMe Leaves Behind
citadrianne shares a report from The Outline: President Donald Trump’s proposed budget seeks to slash $54 billion from social services including programs like Medicaid and Meals on Wheels. As these resources dry up, crowdfunding websites will further entrench themselves as extra-governmental welfare providers in order to fill the gap. For a lucky few, these sites are a lifeline. For most people, they are worthless. Crowdfunding’s fatal flaw is that not every campaign ends up getting the money it needs. A recent study published in the journal Social Science & Medicine found that more than 90 percent of GoFundMe campaigns never meet their goal. For every crowdfunding success story, there are hundreds of failures. “As many happy stories as there are in charitable crowdfunding, there are a lot of really worthy causes when you browse these platforms that nobody has given a cent to,” Rob Gleasure, professor at the business school of the National University of Ireland, Cork told The Outline. “People haven’t come across them.”
Feller and Gleasure’s report highlighted how fickle crowdfunding can be. Of all the Razoo campaigns started in 2013, they found, more than a third didn’t receive any funding at all. According to their report, donors are more likely to give to campaigns that feature lots of pictures and accompanying text.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot – The People GoFundMe Leaves Behind
ADATA SU800 128GB SSD On Linux
Needing to replace a failed hard drive in one of our server room benchmark systems, I decided to try out the ADATA SU800 as something new. It’s an affordable SATA 3.0 SSD and in not trying out an ADATA SSD in a while, I decided to purchase this one and run some benchmarks on it prior to commissioning it to its new home.
Source: Phoronix – ADATA SU800 128GB SSD On Linux
FCC Grants Approval To OneWeb To Launch Over 700 Internet Beaming Satellites
Space is about to get a lot more crowded. The FCC recently granted approval to OneWeb to launch over 720 Internet-beaming satellites. OneWeb is “the first satellite constellation of its kind to receive approval from the full commission.” The low-Earth orbit satellites will employ on-geostationary satellite orbit (NGSO) technology.
Image
Source: Hot Hardware – FCC Grants Approval To OneWeb To Launch Over 700 Internet Beaming Satellites
Much Respect: Rockstar Games Asks Take-Two To Step Off GTA V PC Modders And OpenIV
It is better to have some mods instead of none, right? Rockstar Games and Grand Theft Auto publisher Take-Two Interactive have agreed to not take legal action against single-player mods.
Rockstar released a statement noting, “Take-Two has agreed that it generally will not take legal action against third-party projects involving Rockstar’s
Source: Hot Hardware – Much Respect: Rockstar Games Asks Take-Two To Step Off GTA V PC Modders And OpenIV
Keep Your Favorite Drink Hot or Cold All Day Long With Amazon's Alpha Armur Gold Box
Once you start carrying your beverages in vacuum-insulated stainless steel, you’ll never want to go back. Today only on Amazon, you can save big on Alpha Armur double-walled steel bottles in a variety of sizes and colors, all of which will keep drinks hot or cold all day long.
Source: LifeHacker – Keep Your Favorite Drink Hot or Cold All Day Long With Amazon’s Alpha Armur Gold Box
Purism Librem 13 / 15 Laptops Hit GA Status
Purism has announced their privacy-minded Coreboot-friendly Librem laptops have reached a general availability state…
Source: Phoronix – Purism Librem 13 / 15 Laptops Hit GA Status
Ubuntu 17.10 Video Acceleration Progress, New Unity-Session Package
We recently reported on Ubuntu planning to finally ship video acceleration by default, at least for Intel hardware, and they have made progress in this area…
Source: Phoronix – Ubuntu 17.10 Video Acceleration Progress, New Unity-Session Package