Source: Engadget – SEC is reportedly investigating how Facebook disclosed data scandal
Monthly Archives: July 2018
Trump administration appeals court loss in AT&T/Time Warner case
Enlarge (credit: Aurich Lawson)
The US Department of Justice will appeal the court ruling that allowed AT&T to purchase Time Warner Inc.
AT&T completed the merger after getting a favorable ruling from a judge at the US District Court for the District of Columbia last month. The Trump administration’s Justice Department did not seek a stay of the ruling, so AT&T was able to take ownership of Time Warner. But the DOJ is appealing the judge’s ruling to the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, the DOJ said in a court filing today.
A court could theoretically force AT&T and Time Warner to reverse the merger. AT&T agreed to maintain some separation between and its old and new business units as part of a post-verdict agreement that let AT&T close the acquisition without facing a DOJ petition for a stay. That separation might make undoing the merger logistically easier if the DOJ wins its appeal.
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Source: Ars Technica – Trump administration appeals court loss in AT&T/Time Warner case
The 10 Best Deals of July 12, 2018
We see a lot of deals around the web over on Kinja Deals, but these were our ten favorites today.
Source: LifeHacker – The 10 Best Deals of July 12, 2018
School District to Arm Students With Giant Pepper Spray Canisters to Deter Shooters
An Ohio school district is gearing up for a surprising security upgrade for the new year: smart pepper spray. Beginning in the fall, schools in the Columbiana Exempted Village School District in Ohio will begin using devices called ‘Threat Extinguishers.’ Modeled after fire extinguishers, these are pepper spray…
Source: Gizmodo – School District to Arm Students With Giant Pepper Spray Canisters to Deter Shooters
Yummy wooden waffles installed at Canada's National Arts Centre
Diamond Schmitt Architects warms up the joint
Source: TreeHugger – Yummy wooden waffles installed at Canada’s National Arts Centre
US DOJ Appeals AT&T's Time Warner Acquisition
The Department of Justice thinks that AT&T acquiring Time Warner will put many Americans in a situation that will harm consumers and has not exercised its right to appeal the previous court decision that paved the way to let the combining of the two companies to move forward.
Judge Richard Leon of U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia ruled that the tie-up between AT&T’s wireless and satellite businesses with Time Warner’s movies and television shows was legal under antitrust law. The Justice Department had argued the deal would harm consumers.
Discussion
Source: [H]ardOCP – US DOJ Appeals AT&T’s Time Warner Acquisition
Mitigating Spectre with Site Isolation in Chrome
The Google Security Blog has showcased a newly enabled Chrome feature that helps to protect against speculative execution side-channel attacks like Spectre. Site Isolation limits each renderer process to documents from a single site. To put this in context, previously Chrome allowed cross-site popups and iframes to access and stay in the same process as the page that created them. The cost of this enhanced security is 10% to 13% more memory usage.
It is good to see enhanced security features being enabled in Chrome, but I’ve been fighting the extra memory usage while doing the news. I’m glad to see that the Google Chrome development team is optimizing this new feature and porting it to Android.
In January, Google Project Zero disclosed a set of speculative execution side-channel attacks that became publicly known as Spectre and Meltdown. An additional variant of Spectre was disclosed in May. These attacks use the speculative execution features of most CPUs to access parts of memory that should be off-limits to a piece of code, and then use timing attacks to discover the values stored in that memory. Effectively, this means that untrustworthy code may be able to read any memory in its process’s address space.
Discussion
Source: [H]ardOCP – Mitigating Spectre with Site Isolation in Chrome
Razer Bringing Massive Discounts On Razer Gaming Phone, Keyboards, Mice, Headsets For Prime Day
Amazon Prime Day kicks off on Monday, July 16th and will last through July 17th. With many people eagerly awaiting what deals will be available, some manufacturers are cluing us in early on how far they will be discounting products to make the occasion. The latest is Razer, which is promising up to a 40 percent savings on its gaming devices
Source: Hot Hardware – Razer Bringing Massive Discounts On Razer Gaming Phone, Keyboards, Mice, Headsets For Prime Day
GCC 8 Hasn't Been Performing As Fast As It Should For Skylake With "-march=native"
It turns out that when using GCC 8 since April (or GCC 9 development code) if running on Intel Skylake (or newer architectures like the yet-to-be-out Cannonlake or Icelake) and compile your code with the “-march=native” flag for what should tune for your CPU microarchitecture’s full capabilities, that hasn’t entirely been the case. A fix is en route that can correct the performance by as much as 60%…
Source: Phoronix – GCC 8 Hasn’t Been Performing As Fast As It Should For Skylake With “-march=native”
The Wirecutter's best deals: A 500GB Samsung SSD, and more
This post was done in partnership with Wirecutter. When readers choose to buy Wirecutter’s independently chosen editorial picks, it may earn affiliate commissions that support its work. Read their continuously updated list of deals here.
Source: Engadget – The Wirecutter’s best deals: A 500GB Samsung SSD, and more
To Get Your Kid Moving, Walk Out the Door
There’s an episode of Everybody Loves Raymond where Ray remembers an effective parenting method he learned from his dad: AIS. Ass In Seat. He’d say, “We’re leaving. 9 o’clock, AIS!” and whoever’s ass was not in their seat at the designated time would be left behind. The kicker? Ray tries it on Debra, his wife. Moral:…
Source: LifeHacker – To Get Your Kid Moving, Walk Out the Door
Justice Department appeals approval of Time Warner-AT&T merger
Source: Engadget – Justice Department appeals approval of Time Warner-AT&T merger
Justice Department Appeals Time Warner-AT&T Merger Approval
The Justice Department will appeal the AT&T-Time Warner merger approval, according to a court document filed Thursday. In one of the largest U.S. antitrust cases in decades, U.S. District Judge Richard Leon ruled last month that the merger could go on despite the government’s resistance. The feds did not seek a stay that would have prevented the merger from taking place, and AT&T and Time Warner closed the deal directly after Leon’s ruling.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot – Justice Department Appeals Time Warner-AT&T Merger Approval
Marketers collected personal info from closed Facebook groups
Source: Engadget – Marketers collected personal info from closed Facebook groups
'DNA Repairing' Sunscreens Might Actually Work
The sun’s ultraviolet radiation is dangerous to our skin cells because it damages our DNA. That’s why sun exposure can cause cancer, and why sunscreen is so important (even apart from its power to prevent sunburns). There are sunscreens that claim they can help your skin repair that damage—and, it turns out, they…
Source: LifeHacker – ‘DNA Repairing’ Sunscreens Might Actually Work
The World of Blade Runner Is Coming to Comics
Blade Runner 2049 may not have lit the box office on fire nearly as much as it should have, but its dystopian world is living on in the world of comic books.
Source: Gizmodo – The World of Blade Runner Is Coming to Comics
Chrome enables site isolation to blunt the threat of Spectre attacks
(credit: Google)
Google’s Chrome browser is undergoing a major architectural change to enable a protection designed to blunt the threat of attacks related to the Spectre vulnerability in computer processors. If left unchecked by browsers or operating systems, such attacks may allow hackers to pluck passwords or other sensitive data out of computer memory when targets visit malicious sites.
Site isolation, as the mitigation is known, segregates code and data from each Internet domain into their own “renderer processes,” which are individual browser tasks that aren’t allowed to interact with each other. As a result, a page located at arstechnica.com that embeds ads from doubleclick.net will load content into two separate renderer processes, one for each domain. The protection, however, comes at a cost. It consumes an additional 10 to 13 percent of total memory. Some of the performance hit can be offset by smaller and shorter-lived renderer processes. Site isolation will also allow Chrome to re-enable more precise timers, which Google and most other browser makers disabled earlier this year to decrease chances of successful attacks.
Site isolation has been available in Chrome as an optional mitigation since early this year, but starting with version 67, it’s being enabled by default for 99 percent of users. Google is leaving it off for the other 1 percent so engineers can monitor and improve performance. The protection is also being enabled in the Chrome desktop. For performance reasons, it isn’t available in Chrome for Android for the time being.
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Source: Ars Technica – Chrome enables site isolation to blunt the threat of Spectre attacks
Waymo's first Jaguar I-Pace EVs hit Bay Area roads
At an event before the New York Auto Show back in March, Waymo unveiled the first luxury vehicle it’s adding to its nascent self-driving service’s fleet: The new I-Pace, Jaguar Land Rover’s answer to Tesla’s Model X. The Alphabet company finally got…
Source: Engadget – Waymo’s first Jaguar I-Pace EVs hit Bay Area roads
What's Causing the Mysterious Hums Heard Around the World?
People in cities around the world—from Taos, New Mexico, to Windsor, Ontario, to Blackburn, England, to Auckland, New Zealand—have reported hearing strange humming noises that have no obvious source. The hums are often compared to the sound of idling trucks, and for the people who can hear them, they can be maddening,…
Source: Gizmodo – What’s Causing the Mysterious Hums Heard Around the World?
New Nintendo Switch Patched Against Hack
Switch hackers have reported on Twitter that the Fusee Gelee exploit on the Nintendo Switch has been closed. However this is something that has to be done at the factory, and it is believed that Nintendo will never be able to close the specific exploit on Switch devices already sold. That said, you probably don’t want to update anyway.
Discussion
Source: [H]ardOCP – New Nintendo Switch Patched Against Hack