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Swallowing Your Password 118

Posted by samzenpus from the eat-and-login dept.
HughPickens.com writes: Amir Mizroch reports at the WSJ that a PayPal executive who works with engineers and developers to find and test new technologies, says that embeddable, injectable, and ingestible devices are the next wave in identification for mobile payments and other sensitive online interactions. Jonathon Leblanc says that identification of people will shift from "antiquated" external body methods like fingerprints, toward internal body functions like heartbeat and vein recognition, where embedded and ingestible devices will allow "natural body identification." Ingestible devices could be powered by stomach acid, which will run their batteries and could detect glucose levels and other unique internal features can use a person's body as a way to identify them and beam that data out. Leblanc made his remarks during a presentation called Kill all Passwords that he's recently started giving at various tech conferences in the U.S. and Europe, arguing that technology has taken a huge leap forward to "true integration with the human body." But the idea has its skeptics. What could possibly go wrong with a little implanted device that reads your vein patterns or your heart's unique activity or blood glucose levels writes AJ Vicens? "Wouldn't an insurance company love to use that information to decide that you had one too many donuts—so it won't be covering that bypass surgery after all?"

Comment "forced" (Score 4, Insightful) 616

by roc97007 (#49531917) Attached to: Bill To Require Vaccination of Children Advances In California

> Last Wednesday, the legislation stalled in the Senate Education Committee as lawmakers said they were concerned that too many students would be forced into home schooling.

Or even worse, that they found that they liked it. The problem with making something a condition of participating in a government institution is the risk that significant numbers will discover they do fine without it.
Government

Bill To Require Vaccination of Children Advances In California 616

Posted by samzenpus from the won't-somebody-please-think-of-the-children? dept.
mpicpp sends the latest news on California legislation that would eliminate exemptions for vaccinating school children. A bill that would require nearly all children in California to be vaccinated by eliminating "personal belief" exemptions advanced through the State Legislature on Wednesday, though it still has several hurdles to clear. If approved, California would become one of only three states that require all parents to vaccinate their children as a condition of going to school, unless there is a medical reason not to do so. Under the bill, introduced after a measles outbreak that began at Disneyland, parents who refuse vaccines for philosophical or religious reasons would have to educate their children at home. The legislation prompted a roiling debate in Sacramento, and last week hundreds of people protested at the Capitol, arguing that it infringed on their rights and that it would unfairly shut their children out of schools. Last Wednesday, the legislation stalled in the Senate Education Committee as lawmakers said they were concerned that too many students would be forced into home schooling. This Wednesday, however, the bill passed that committee after its authors tweaked it, adding amendments that would expand the definition of home schooling to allow multiple families to join together to teach their children or participate in independent study programs run by public school systems.
Yahoo!

Yahoo Called Its Layoffs a "Remix." Don't Do That. 194

Posted by samzenpus from the what-to-do-and-what-not-to-do dept.
Nerval's Lobster writes: Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer, in a conference call with reporters and analysts, referred to the net layoffs of 1,100 employees in the first quarter of 2015 as part of a 'remixing' of the company. A 'remix' is a term most often applied to songs, although it's also appropriate to use in the context of photographs, films, and artwork. CEOs rarely use it to describe something as momentous as a major enterprise's transition, especially if said transition involves layoffs of longtime employees, because it could potentially appear flippant to observers. If you run your own shop (no matter how large), it always pays to choose words as carefully as possible when referring to anything that affects your employees' lives and careers. Despite a renewed focus on mobile and an influx of skilled developers and engineers, Yahoo still struggles to define its place on the modern tech scene; that struggle is no more evident than in the company's most recent quarterly results, which included rising costs, reduced net income, and layoffs.
Security

New Javascript Attack Lets Websites Spy On the CPU's Cache 134

Posted by samzenpus from the protect-ya-neck dept.
An anonymous reader writes: Bruce Upbin at Forbes reports on a new and insidious way for a malicious website to spy on a computer. Any computer running a late-model Intel microprocessor and a Web browser using HTML5 (i.e., 80% of all PCs in the world) is vulnerable to this attack. The exploit, which the researchers are calling "the spy in the sandbox," is a form of side-channel attack. Side channel attacks were previously used to break into cars, steal encryption keys and ride the subway for free, but this is the first time they're targeted at innocent web users. The attack requires little in the way of cost or time on the part of the attacker; there's nothing to install and no need to break into hardened systems. All a hacker has to do is lure a victim to an untrusted web page with content controlled by the attacker.
Google

Google Launches Project Fi Mobile Phone Service 112

Posted by samzenpus from the new-carrier-in-town dept.
An anonymous reader writes: Google unveiled today a new cell phone service called Project Fi. It offers the same basic functionality as traditional wireless carriers, such as voice, text and Internet access, but at a lower price than most common plans. From the article: "Google hopes to stand out by changing the way it charges customers. Typically, smartphone owners pay wireless carriers like AT&T and Verizon a bulk rate for a certain amount of data. Google says it will let customers pay for only what data they use on their phones, from doing things like making calls, listening to music and using apps, potentially saving them significant amounts of money. For now, the program is invite-only and will only be available on Google's Nexus 6 smartphone."

Submission + - Google launches Project Fi mobile phone network

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Google unveiled today a new cell phone service called Project Fi. It offers the same basic functionality as traditional wireless carriers, such as voice, text and Internet access, but at a lower price than most common plans. From the article: "Google hopes to stand out by changing the way it charges customers. Typically, smartphone owners pay wireless carriers like AT&T and Verizon a bulk rate for a certain amount of data. Google says it will let customers pay for only what data they use on their phones, from doing things like making calls, listening to music and using apps, potentially saving them significant amounts of money. For now, the program is invite-only and will only be available on Google's Nexus 6 smartphone."
United States

McConnell Introduces Bill To Extend NSA Surveillance 209

Posted by samzenpus from the lets-see-what-you're-doing dept.
jriding sends word that the majority leader of the U.S. Senate has introduced a bill that would extend the surveillance provisions of the Patriot Act until 2020: Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell introduced a bill Tuesday night to extend through 2020 a controversial surveillance authority under the Patriot Act. The move comes as a bipartisan group of lawmakers in both chambers is preparing legislation to scale back the government's spying powers under Section 215 of the Patriot Act. It puts McConnell (R-Ky.) and Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Richard Burr (R-N.C.), the bill’s co-sponsor, squarely on the side of advocates of the National Security Agency’s continued ability to collect millions of Americans’ phone records each day in the hunt for clues of terrorist activity.

Comment Re:Specced too low, weird form factor (Score 1) 174

by m.dillon (#49529981) Attached to: Intel 'Compute Stick' PC-Over-HDMI Dongle Launched, Tested

This is the *mobile* i5, not the full blown desktop i5. It's basically the Broadwell successor to the Haswell 29xx series. 15W TDP or less. The BRIX runs 8W idle (not sleeping) and 20W at 100% cpu (all 4 threads full out). Intel is playing fast and loose with their naming schema for Broadwell.

-Matt

Comment Re:Specced too low, weird form factor (Score 1) 174

by m.dillon (#49529845) Attached to: Intel 'Compute Stick' PC-Over-HDMI Dongle Launched, Tested

All the older haswell-based boxes have dropped in price significantly. They make decent boxes too as long as you are not compute-heavy. E.G. the 2957U is 2-core, no hypthreading, 1.4 GHz, no-turbo, and no AESNI (so https and other crypto is slow). Whereas even the Broadwell i3-5200U is 2-core/4-thread, 2.2 GHz with Turbo to 2.7 GHz, and has AESNI.

I have an Acer C720P chromebook running DragonFly (BSD) with the 2955U in it, which is very close to the 2957U. I would call it decent for its purpose and it can certainly drive the chromebook's display fairly well. Firefox is not as snappy as I would like, though.

On the i5-5200U even unaccelerated video decoding can run full frame at full speed on my 1920x1050 monitor and firefox is quite snappy.

If I had to make a cost-concious decision on using the older Haswell based cpu and giving up some cpu power I would say that it would still be a reasonable choice *BUT* I would compensate at least a little by throwing in more ram (at least 4GB).

-Matt
Education

Virtual Reality Games Can Improve Memory Retention of Safety Instructions 36

Posted by samzenpus from the don't-forget dept.
vrml writes: Using a virtual reality (VR) headset to experience risky situations as immersive 3D games improves memory retention of passenger safety instructions, according to research published in the IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics, and illustrated by a YouTube video. Researchers recruited occasional flyers: half of them played a VR gaming experience of an airliner water landing and evacuation, while the other half studied a real airline safety card. After one week, passengers who had studied the safety card suffered a significant loss of knowledge, while passengers who had played the VR game fully retained the safety knowledge gained. The research group has now made available its emergency water landing experience also for the Oculus Rift.

Comment Specced too low, weird form factor (Score 2) 174

by m.dillon (#49529549) Attached to: Intel 'Compute Stick' PC-Over-HDMI Dongle Launched, Tested

It's specced way too low to really be useful as a general computing device, and the form factor is 'weird' to say the least. It's too big to really be called a stick, and too small to be able to pack a decent cpu. There's plenty of space behind the monitor for a somewhat larger device in a better form factor. The stick is a play toy that you will become disappointed with very quickly (think the old 'netbook' concept Intel tried to push a few years ago... that's what the stick feels like).

Honestly, the 'compute stick' makes zero sense for a TV-mounted device. It is far better to just go with a chrome cast stick or an AppleTV for airplay and using a pad or cell in your hand to control it if you want to throw a display up on the TV. Otherwise you will be fumbling around with a horrible remote or you have to throw together a bluetooth keyboard (etc...) and it just won't be a fun or convenient experience.

My recommendation... don't bother with this gadget. Instead, spend a bit more money and get an Intel NUC or Gigabyte BRIX (both based on Broadwell). And get at least the i5 version, the lack of turbo in the i3 version is telling. e.g. i5-5200 based box or better. It will cost significantly more than the stick, but it packs a decent cpu, can take up to 16GB of ram (2x204pin SO-DIMM DDR3), and depending on the model might even have room for a 2.5" SSD or HDD in it. The broadwell i5-5200U makes for quite a reasonable compact workstation and boxes based on it will be almost universally dual-headed. Of course, whatever floats your boat but I would definitely say that the lowest-priced Intel NUC or Gigabyte BRIX that is haswell-based or broadwell-based is still going to be an order of magnitude better than the compute stick.

I have one of the Gigabyte GB-BXi5H-5200's myself ('H' version fits a normal 2.5" SSD or HDD) and packed 16GB of ram into it. It is dual-headed so I can drive two displays with it and the box is small enough to mount on the back of a monitor if you so desire (it even includes a mounting plate and most monitors, such as LG monitors, are ready to take it). And if mounting it on the back of a TV doesn't make sense, mount it on the back of a monitor instead or just let it float behind the monitor. It's a small box, after all, it won't get in the way of anything. 4-thread (2-core), 2.2 GHz turbo to 2.7 GHz. Dual-head. Decent.

-Matt

Comment Re:Headline doesn't really match study conclusion (Score 1) 341

by dgatwood (#49525127) Attached to: Study Confirms No Link Between MMR Vaccine and Autism

The more accurate headline on Slashdot and the UT San Diego website would be, "Study finds immunized siblings of autistic children not at higher risk of developing autism than immunized siblings of unaffected children."

No, the correct headline is "Study finds immunized siblings of autistic children not at higher risk of developing autism than non-immunized siblings of autistic children."

Additionally, this study says the precise opposite of what you said the headline should read, finding that siblings of autistic children were almost 8x as likely to develop autism as children who did not have an autistic sibling, regardless of whether those children were vaccinated or not.
Wireless Networking

Wi-Fi Attack Breaks iPhones By Locking Them Into an Endless Loop 1

Posted by samzenpus from the going-around-and-around-again dept.
An anonymous reader writes: Researchers from Skycure demonstrated a novel attack at the RSA 2015 conference that affects iPhones and other iOS devices. The attack, which takes advantage of new and previously announced vulnerabilities, locks iPhones into a never-ending reboot cycle effectively rendering them useless. Skycure CEO Adi Sharabani explained that this attack began when Skycure researchers bought a new router and were messing around with its network settings. In doing so, they discovered a particular configuration that caused apps in iPhones connected to that router to crash whenever they launched.

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