In a truly troubling sign of poor judgment, Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh says he racked up huge sums of credit card debt purchasing season tickets to watch the chronically disappointing Washington Nationals play baseball in their charmless stadium year after year:
Source: Gizmodo – Report: Trump’s Supreme Court Nominee Blames Massive Credit Card Debt On Nationals Season Tickets
Another routine Mesa 18.1. point release is being prepared while waiting for the August debut of the Mesa 18.2 feature update…
Source: Phoronix – Mesa 18.1.4 Being Prepared With Intel Fixes & A Couple For Radeon
Still reeling (at least in reputation, but certainly not in financial success) from the 2016 US presidential election, Facebook is launching its own slate of news shows produced and funded by the social network in partnership with “trustworthy” news organizations. The lineup, which launches next week, features a whole…
Source: Gizmodo – Check Out the Fox News-Filled Schedule for Facebook’s ‘Trustworthy’ News Shows
Retail colossus Walmart just patented a new technology meant to monitor employee productivity via audio surveillance of checkout counters. The technology, which Walmart calls “listening to the frontend,” aims to increase employee efficiency by using sensors to monitor sounds that can indicate how long lines are, how…
Source: Gizmodo – Walmart Patents Audio Surveillance Tool to Monitor Employee Conversations
It’s one of the greatest showdowns in recent movie history, and now it’s a “Great Showdowns” print by artist Scott Campbell.
Source: Gizmodo – The Gang’s All Here in This Epic Avengers: Infinity War Art
Plans to launch the first NASA astronauts since 2011 to the International Space Station from the United States look set to be delayed due to incomplete safety measures and accountability holes in the agency’s commercial crew program, Reuters reported Wednesday, citing a federal report released on Wednesday. From the report: SpaceX and Boeing Co are the two main contractors selected under the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s commercial crew program to send U.S. astronauts to space as soon as 2019, using their Dragon and Starliner spacecraft respectively. But the report from the Government Accountability Office said the issues could cause delays in the launch of the first crewed mission from U.S. soil by a private company and could result in a nine-month gap in which no U.S. astronauts inhabit the ISS.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot – NASA Commercial Crew Program for Space Station Faces Delays, Report Says
Epic’s Fortnite eSports initiatives are continuing beyond the recent Pro-Am charity tournament. The studio has unveiled a Summer Skirmish series that will hand out $8 million in prizes across eight weeks’ worth of competitions, starting with a $250,…
Source: Engadget – The next big ‘Fortnite’ eSports event is an million, 8-week tourney
Google has quietly enabled a security feature called Site Isolation for 99% of its desktop users on Windows, Mac, Linux, and Chrome OS. This happened in Chrome 67, released at the end of May. From a report: Site Isolation isn’t a new feature per-se, being first added in Chrome 63, in December 2017. Back then, it was only available if users changed a Chrome flag and manually enabled it in each of their browsers. The feature is an architectural shift in Chrome’s modus operandi because when Site Isolation is enabled, Chrome runs a different browser process for each Internet domain. Initially, Google described Site Isolation as an “additional security boundary between websites,” and as a way to prevent malicious sites from messing with the code of legitimate sites.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot – Google Quietly Enables ‘Site Isolation’ Feature for 99% of Chrome Desktop Users
Four years ago, the Flint water crisis began when officials switched its source from Lake Huron to the Flint River. Its more corrosive water caused dangerous levels of lead from old pipes to leach into the city’s drinking water, poisoning residents….
Source: Engadget – Elon Musk said he will pay for home water filters in Flint
Night after night, a father has terrible dreams. Dreams of death. Invasion. Destruction. Then, those dreams start to become reality and he’ll stop at nothing to save his family. That’s the plot of Extinction, a new Netflix sci-fi film that just got its first trailer.
Source: Gizmodo – Ant-Man’s Michael Peña Saves the World in Netflix’s First Extinction Trailer
Broadcom on Wednesday announced plans to buy IT management software company CA for $18.9 billion in cash, just months after U.S. regulators blocked Broadcom’s deal to buy fellow chip-maker Qualcomm.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot – Broadcom Buying CA For billion
Israeli based Bancor exchange was the site of a breach in which $23.5 million was initially stolen from its customer’s cryptocurrency wallets. $12.5 million in Ethereum, $1 million in Pundi, and another $10 million in Bancor tokens was stolen when a wallet used to upgrade smart contracts was compromised. Bancor was immediately able to stop the transfer of Bancor tokens so that saved them $10 million in potential losses. They hope to work with other exchanges to stop the trading of the remaining $13.5 million in cryptocurrency. I wonder how affected customer view those smart contracts now?
“With Bancor exchange, every transaction is executed directly against a smart contract. This means that converting a cryptocurrency does not require matching two parties in real-time with opposite wants; rather, it can be completed by a single party directly through the token’s smart contract.” reads the company.
“It is not possible to freeze the ETH and any other stolen tokens,” reads the statement published by Bancor. “However, we are working together with dozens of cryptocurrency exchanges to trace the stolen funds and make it more difficult for their thief to liquidate them.”
Discussion
Source: [H]ardOCP – Hackers Steal .5 Million in Cryptocurrency From Israeli Based Bancor Exchange
Here’s a surprising fact: It costs money to watch video online, even on free sites like YouTube. That’s because about 4 in 5 videos on the web today rely on a patented technology called the H.264 video codec. From a report: It took years for companies to put this complex, global set of legal and business agreements in place, so H.264 web video works everywhere. Now, as the industry shifts to using more efficient video codecs, those businesses are picking and choosing which next-generation technologies they will support. The fragmentation in the market is raising concerns about whether our favorite web past-time, watching videos, will continue to be accessible and affordable to all. Over the last decade, several companies started building viable alternatives to patented video codecs. Mozilla worked on the Daala Project, Google released VP9, and Cisco created Thor for low-complexity videoconferencing. All these efforts had the same goal: to create a next-generation video compression technology that would make sharing high-quality video over the internet faster, more reliable, and less expensive. In 2015, Mozilla, Google, Cisco, and others joined with Amazon and Netflix and hardware vendors AMD, ARM, Intel, and NVIDIA to form AOMedia. As AOMedia grew, efforts to create an open video format coalesced around a new codec: AV1. AV1 is based largely on Google’s VP9 code and incorporates tools and technologies from Daala, Thor, and VP10. Mozilla loves AV1 for two reasons: AV1 is royalty-free, so anyone can use it free of charge. Software companies can use it to build video streaming into their applications. Web developers can build their own video players for their sites. The second reason we love AV1 is that it delivers better compression technology than even high-efficiency codecs — about 30% better, according to a Moscow State University study.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot – AV1 is Well On Its Way To Becoming a Viable Alternative To Patented Video Codecs, Mozilla Says
Uber is scaling back its self-driving team in the wake of the fatal Arizona crash and the subsequent shutdown of its autonomous operations. The ridesharing company has confirmed to Pittsburgh’s Action 4 News that it laid off about 100 employees in i…
Source: Engadget – Uber lays off roughly 100 workers in its self-driving team
Change is coming to Riverdale! Today’s release of Archie #32 by Mark Waid, Ian Flynn, and Audrey Mok brought an end to Waid’s tenure on the revitalized series since he first started alongside Fiona Staples in 2015. The new team of Nick Spencer and Marguerite Sauvage are set to begin later this year—and we spoke…
Source: Gizmodo – Marguerite Sauvage on Designing the Next Era of Archie
Facebook is apologizing after its algorithms tagged 65,000 Russian users as “interested in treason.” Facebook algorithmically tags users based on their behavior, making it easier for advertisers to target people interested in specific topics. In this case, however, the tag “treason” may have put users under the threat…
Source: Gizmodo – Facebook’s Ad Tools Labeled Thousands of Users as ‘Interested’ in Treason
This is a short security cam video of two crooks installing a card skimmer on a convenience store’s point-of-sale machine after distracting the clerk. It takes like one second. Granted the skimmer had to be made to fit that exact model of point of sale machine, but still. This might explain all the charges on my credit card bill that I don’t recognize. They’re like, all boner pills and video sex websites. “You sure that wasn’t you, GW?” Can I get in trouble if I tell the credit card company they weren’t?
Keep going for the video while I call my doctor and ask him if it’s normal to feel like my heart is in my penis.
Source: Geekologie – Video of Crooks Installing A Card Skimmer On Convenience Store’s Point-Of-Sale Machine
Elon Musk has been taking a good bit of criticism lately, much of it deserved. After enduring quite a bit of roasting over his ineffective efforts to help kids trapped in a cave in Thailand, he’s now pledged to help every single person in Flint, Michigan, who is still affected by the water crisis.
Source: Gizmodo – Elon Musk Vows to Take on Flint Water Crisis
FCC boss Ajit Pai says the agency will finally take steps to shore up the security of the FCC’s public comment system after being widely criticized for turning a blind eye to routine fraud and abuse. From a report: If you’ll recall, more than 22 million Americans voiced their thoughts on the Trump FCC’s attack on net neutrality last fall via the agency’s website. The vast majority of comments opposed the move, closely reflecting surveys that show widespread, bipartisan support for the rules. […] Not a single one of your comments was cited in the FCC’s 218 page justification for its decision. […] Back in May, Senators Senators Jeff Merkley (D-OR) and Pat Toomey (R-PA) fired off a letter to Pai demanding he actually do something about the abuse of FCC systems. […] In a response letter this week provided to the Wall Street Journal, Pai says the agency is finally taking steps to address the problem, while acknowledging his own identity was hijacked during the comment process. “It is troubling that some bad actors submitted comments using false names,” Mr. Pai said. “Indeed, like you, comments were submitted in my name and my wife’s name that reflect viewpoints we do not hold.” Pai’s letter, which wasn’t publicly shared, states that the FCC hopes to eventually “rebuild and re-engineer” the commission’s electronic comment system “to institute appropriate safeguards against abusive conduct.” It also states that Pai will approach Congress for funding for the overhaul, something Pai likely knows may not actually happen.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot – FCC Promises to Fix Comment System Hijacked During Net Neutrality Repeal
Enlarge / A US Air Force MQ-9 Reaper awaits maintenance December 8, 2016, at Creech Air Force Base, Nevada. Training materials for the Reaper Aircraft Maintenance Unit were stolen by a hacker exploiting a Netgear router. (credit: U.S. Air Force photo by Senior Airman Christian Clausen)
In May, a hacker perusing vulnerable systems with the Shodan search engine found a Netgear router with a known vulnerability—and came away with the contents of a US Air Force captain’s computer. The purloined files from the captain—the officer in charge (OIC) of the 432d Aircraft Maintenance Squadron’s MQ-9 Reaper Aircraft Maintenance Unit (AMU)at Creech Air Force Base, Nevada—included export-controlled information regarding Reaper drone maintenance.
The hacker took the documents to a Dark Web marketplace, where he planned on selling them for a few hundred dollars. And it’s there that analysts from Recorded Future, an information security threat intelligence company, discovered them.
US Air Force/Recorded Future
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Source: Ars Technica – Year-old router bug exploited to steal sensitive DOD drone, tank documents
