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Submission + - Latest Windows 10 Preview Build Brings Unexpectedly Large Number of Enhancements

Submitted by Deathspawner
Deathspawner writes: Following its huge Windows 10 event last Wednesday, Microsoft released a brand-new preview build to the public, versioned 9926. We were told that it'd give us Cortana, Microsoft's AI assistant, as well as a revamped Start menu and updated notifications pane. But as it turns out, that's not even close to summing up all that's new with this build. In fact, 9926 is easily the most substantial update rolled out so far in the beta program, with some UI elements and integral Windows features seeing their first overhaul in multiple generations.

Submission + - Tesla P85D g-forces hold iPhone against seat and elicit surprising reactions (dragtimes.com)

Submitted by FikseGTS
FikseGTS writes: DragTimes puts a few unsuspecting riders in the seat of a 691HP Tesla P85D while using the Tesla's "Insane" mode launch. An iPhone goes flying out of a kids hand and sticks to the rear seat from the g-forces and others have some interesting choice of words from the experience. Clean and Explicit versions of the video are availalbe.

Submission + - Vivaldi - New Web Browser Looks a Lot Like Opera. (winsupersite.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: With Microsoft touting its upcoming new browser for Windows 10, codenamed Spartan, it's interesting to see that yet another web browser entering the already crowded market. For most, there's only three browsers: Chrome, Firefox, and Internet Explorer. Vivaldi, as the proposed new browser is called, has a very Opera-like feel to it. And, there's good reason for that, considering that former CEO and co-founder of Opera, Jon von Tetzchner, is the creator of the new project.
United States

White House Drone Incident Exposes Key Security Gap 236

Posted by timothy from the if-you-can-breathe-there's-a-security-gap dept.
HughPickens.com writes The Washington Post reports that the intrusion by a recreational drone onto the White House lawn has exposed a security gap at the compound that the Secret Service has spent years studying but has so far been unable to fix. Commercial technology is available that can use a combination of sensitive radar and acoustic trackers to detect small drones, though coming up with an effective way to stop them has been more elusive. "To do something about the problem, you have to find it, you have to track it, you have to identify it and you have to decide what to do with it," says Frederick F. Roggero. "But especially in an urban environment, it would be tough to detect and tough to defeat kinetically without shooting it down and causing collateral damage." Most recreational drones, like the one that crashed Monday, weigh only a few pounds and lack the power to do much harm. Larger models that can carry payloads of up to 30 pounds are available on the market and are expected to become more common. The FAA imposes strict safety regulations on drones flown by government agencies or anyone who operates them for commercial purposes. In contrast, hardly any rules apply to people who fly drones as a hobby, other than FAA guidelines that advise them to keep the aircraft below 400 feet and five miles from an airport. "With the discovery of an unauthorized drone on the White House lawn, the eagle has crash-landed in Washington," says Senator Charles Schumer. "There is no stronger sign that clear FAA guidelines for drones are needed."

Submission + - Vivaldi: the geeks' new browser of choice? (expertreviews.co.uk)

Submitted by cdysthe
cdysthe writes: The former CEO of Opera has launched a new web browser, Vivaldi, that rebuffs the modern trend for minimalism. Whilst Google Chrome and Internet Explorer have shifted towards stripped-down browsers that do little more than display web pages, Vivaldi is something of a throwback, stuffing features into the browser.

Submission + - The "mammoth snow storm" falls flat (ap.org)

Submitted by mi
mi writes: You heard the scare-mongering, you heard the governors and mayors closing public transit and declaring driving on public road a crime . But it turned out to have been a mistake. Boston may have been hit somewhat, but further South — NYC and Philadelphia — the snowfall was rather underwhelming. Promised "2-3 feet" snow, NYC got only a few inches.

Is this an example of "better safe than sorry", or is government's overreach justified by questionable weather models exceeding the threshold of honest mistake?

Submission + - Valve's Economist Yanis Varoufakis Appointed Greece's Finance Minister (ibtimes.co.in)

Submitted by eldavojohn
eldavojohn writes: A turnover in the Greek government resulted from recent snap elections placing SYRIZA (Coalition of the Radical Left) in power — just shy of an outright majority by two seats. Atheist and youngest Prime Minister in Greek history since 1865 Alexis Tsipras has been appointed the new prime minister and begun taking immediate drastic steps against the recent austerity laws put in place by prior administrations. One such step has been to appoint Valve's economist Yanis Varoufakis to position of Finance Minister of Greece. For the past three years Varoufakis has been working at Steam to analyze and improve the Steam Market but now has the opportunity to improve one of the most troubled economies in the world.
NASA

Proposed Space Telescope Uses Huge Opaque Disk To Surpass Hubble 126

Posted by timothy from the world-of-unlimited-resources dept.
Required Snark writes NASA has funded a study of a geo-sychrounous orbit telescope that uses a half-mile diameter opaque disk to provide images with 1000 times the resolution of the Hubble. It uses diffraction at the edge of the disk to focus light, resulting in a very high quality image. It's named the Aragoscope, after the scientist Francois Arago, who first noticed how a disk affects light waves. "When deployed the Aragoscope will consist of an opaque disk a half mile in diameter parked in geostationary orbit behind which is an orbiting telescope keeping station some tens to hundreds of miles behind that collects the light at the focal point and rectifies it into a high-resolution image. 'The opaque disk of the Aragoscope works in a similar way to a basic lens,' says CU-Boulder doctoral student and team member Anthony Harness. 'The light diffracted around the edge of the circular disk travels the same path length to the center and comes into focus as an image.' He added that, since image resolution increases with telescope diameter, being able to launch such a large, yet lightweight disk would allow astronomers to achieve higher-resolution images than with smaller, traditional space telescopes."

Submission + - Finding your longitude on Earth with Jupiter's moons 1

Submitted by StartsWithABang
StartsWithABang writes: If you want to know where you are on Earth, you typically use a GPS or, barring that, other terrestrial landmarks to help determine your location. If you didn't have access to that sort of technology or knowledge, you could still use some well-known objects in the sky to determine your latitude. Longitude, however, is trickier, since it's arbitrarily defined. Perhaps surprisingly, for centuries, the best way to determine it was by using the moons of Jupiter, and watching when they enter/exit the shadow of the giant planet.
Transportation

Uber Capping Prices During Snowmageddon 2015 154

Posted by timothy from the not-content-with-market-clearing-prices dept.
An anonymous reader writes that yesterday Uber announced a cap on surge pricing during the mammoth snow storm hitting the northeast this week; there will still be surge pricing, but it will be capped at 2.8 times the usual fares. The cap comes after an agreement struck between Uber and the New York City Attorney General’s office in January 2014 that required Uber to limit prices during “abnormal disruptions of the market”, including emergencies and natural disasters. Uber also announced a national policy for its price limits during those emergencies. ... While Uber plans to limit dynamic pricing during this storm, the company has had a bad history with emergency situations and surge pricing. In late 2012, Uber received criticism for raising fares during Hurricane Sandy. (The agreement with the NY AG came in part as a result of Hurricane Sandy backlash.)
United States

Researchers Tie Regin Malware To NSA, Five Eyes Intel Agencies 95

Posted by timothy from the which-wolves-and-which-sheep dept.
Trailrunner7 writes Researchers at Kaspersky Lab have discovered shared code and functionality between the Regin malware platform and a similar platform described in a newly disclosed set of Edward Snowden documents 10 days ago by Germany's Der Spiegel. The link, found in a keylogger called QWERTY allegedly used by the so-called Five Eyes, leads them to conclude that the developers of each platform are either the same, or work closely together. "Considering the extreme complexity of the Regin platform and little chance that it can be duplicated by somebody without having access to its source codes, we conclude the QWERTY malware developers and the Regin developers are the same or working together," wrote Kaspersky Lab researchers Costin Raiu and Igor Soumenkov today in a published report. (Here is the Spiegel article.)

Submission + - Opera founder unveils feature-rich Vivaldi power browser. (gigaom.com)

Submitted by cdysthe
cdysthe writes: Almost two years ago, the Norwegian browser firm Opera ripped out the guts of its product and adopted the more standard WebKit and Chromium technologies, essentially making it more like rivals Chrome and Safari. But it wasn’t just Opera’s innards that changed; the browser also became more streamlined and perhaps less geeky.

Many Opera fans were deeply displeased at the loss of what they saw as key differentiating functionality. So now Jon von Tetzchner, the man who founded Opera and who would probably never have allowed those drastic feature changes, is back to serve this hard core with a new browser called Vivaldi.

Submission + - Researchers Tie Regin Malware to NSA, Five Eyes Intel Agencies

Submitted by Trailrunner7
Trailrunner7 writes: Researchers at Kaspersky Lab have discovered shared code and functionality between the Regin malware platform and a similar platform described in a newly disclosed set of Edward Snowden documents 10 days ago by Germany’s Der Spiegel.

The link, found in a keylogger called QWERTY allegedly used by the so-called Five Eyes, leads them to conclude that the developers of each platform are either the same, or work closely together.

“Considering the extreme complexity of the Regin platform and little chance that it can be duplicated by somebody without having access to its source codes, we conclude the QWERTY malware developers and the Regin developers are the same or working together,” wrote Kaspersky Lab researchers Costin Raiu and Igor Soumenkov today in a published report.

Submission + - Why Screen Lockers On X11 Cannot Be Secure (martin-graesslin.com)

Submitted by jones_supa
jones_supa writes: One thing we all remember from Windows NT, is the security feature requiring the user to press CTRL-ALT-DEL to unlock the workstation (this can still be enabled with a policy setting). The motivation was to make it impossible for other programs to mimic a lock screen, as they couldn't react to the special key combination. Martin Gräßlin from KDE team takes a look at the lock screen security on X11. On a protocol level, X11 doesn't know anything of screen lockers. Also the X server doesn't know that the screen is locked as it doesn't understand the concept. This means the screen locker can only use the core functionality available to emulate screen locking. That in turn also means that any other client can do the same and prevent the screen locker from working (for example opening a context menu on any window prevents the screen locker from activating). That's quite a bummer: any process connected to the X server can block the screen locker, and even more it could fake your screen locker.

Submission + - Proposed Space Telescope Uses Huge Opaque Disk to Surpass Hubble (gizmag.com)

Submitted by Required Snark
Required Snark writes: NASA has funded a study of a geo-sychrounous orbit telescope that uses a half mile diameter opaque disk to provide images with 1000 times the resolution of the Hubble. It uses diffraction at the edge of the disk to focus light, resulting in a very high quality image. It's named the Aragoscope, after the scientist Francois Arago, who first noticed how a disk effects light waves.

When deployed the Aragoscope will consist of an opaque disk a half mile in diameter parked in geostationary orbit behind which is an orbiting telescope keeping station some tens to hundreds of miles behind that collects the light at the focal point and rectifies it into a high-resolution image.

"The opaque disk of the Aragoscope works in a similar way to a basic lens," says CU-Boulder doctoral student and team member Anthony Harness. "The light diffracted around the edge of the circular disk travels the same path length to the center and comes into focus as an image." He added that, since image resolution increases with telescope diameter, being able to launch such a large, yet lightweight disk would allow astronomers to achieve higher-resolution images than with smaller, traditional space telescopes.

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