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Submission + - Researcher Discloses Methods For Bypassing All OS X Security Protections

Submitted by Trailrunner7
Trailrunner7 writes: For years, Apple has enjoyed a pretty good reputation among users for the security of its products. That halo has been enhanced by the addition of new security features such as Gatekeeper and XProtect to OS X recently, but one researcher said that all of those protections are simple to bypass and gaining persistence on a Mac as an attacker isn’t much of a challenge at all.

Gatekeeper is one of the key technologies that Apple uses to prevent malware from running on OS X machines. It gives users the ability to restrict which applications can run on their machines by choosiing to only allow apps from the Mac App Store. With that setting in play, only signed, legitimate apps should be able to run on the machine. But Patrick Wardle, director of research at Synack, said that getting around that restriction is trivial.

“Gatekeeper doesn’t verify an extra content in the apps. So if I can find an Apple-approved app and get it to load external content, when the user runs it, it will bypass Gatekeeper,” Wardle said in a talk at the RSA Conference here Thursday. “It only verifies the app bundle.”

“If Macs were totally secure, I wouldn’t be here talking,” Wardle said. “It’s trivial for any attacker to bypass the security tools on Macs.”

Submission + - Modern Supercomputers Have Just Hit the End of Another Architectural Era (theplatform.net)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: There has been a steady climb toward accelerators for top-ranked machines, but with the self-hosted model of the upcoming Knights Landing architecture, this offload model and the bottleneck of data movement between the GPU and other elements, will likely go away. The OpenPower efforts of IBM and Nvidia to use NVlink to speed that communication will be put to the test with the Power9 based systems coming to other centers in the next couple of years, including the future 150-petaflop “Sierra” machine coming to Lawrence Livermore Laboratory, but Gara says that these are still using what amounts to an offload model in that data has to be pushed between multiple components.

It is not clear how the Top 500 folks will choose to classify systems that have a GPU that is part of the compute since the accelerators classification generally just refers to a coprocessor that sits across a bus. The main question, however, is how long it will take for this classification to disappear entirely. As it stands, the new top-tier systems that will start to come online, possibly for the November rankings, will sport Knights Landing, wherein the accelerator is not a discrete unit. Gara says the shift away from the offload model is already starting to happen, and will continue with the introduction of Knights Landing into the full HPC market (right now just the national labs—at least as far we know) are part of the early access program for these chips.

Submission + - Comcast & Time Warner merger died

Submitted by andyring
andyring writes: According to Bloomberg News, the Time Warner/Comcast merger of raw evil is dead. Comcast plans as early as tomorrow to withdraw the merger proposal, "after regulators decided that the deal wouldn’t help consumers, making approval unlikely" according to the story.

Feed Google News Sci Tech: Xiaomi's new phone is great – you still can't have it - SlashGear (google.com)

From feed by feedfeeder

SlashGear
Xiaomi's new phone is great – you still can't have it
SlashGear
Just like every other Xiaomi product released thus far, the Mi 4i will not be coming to the United States. Instead, this device has been revealed in India, and will bring the same "sell high quality smart devices cheap" tactic Xiaomi is employing in China. They'll...
Xiaomi Mi 4i combines impressive specs with a $200 price tagComputerworld
Xiaomi Smartphones Move Beyond China With Mi 4i India LaunchPC Magazine
Xiaomi unveils Mi 4i at Rs 12999; Mi Band finally arrives at Rs 999The Indian Express
Business Today-Livemint-Financial Express
all 261 news articles

Submission + - We'll be the last PC company standing, Acer CEO says (digitaltrends.com)

Submitted by Velcroman1
Velcroman1 writes: At a sky-high press conference atop the new World Trade Center in lower Manhattan, Acer unveiled a sky-high lineup of goods – and placed a flag in the sand for the sagging PC industry. “There are only four or five players in the PC industry, and all of us are survivors,” Jason Chen, CEO of Acer Corp, told an international group of reporters. “We will be the last man standing for the PC industry.” To that end, the company showed off a slew of new laptops and 2-in-1s, the new Liquid X2 smartphone, and introduces a new line of gaming PCs, called Predator.

Submission + - NVIDIA Quadro M6000 12GB Maxwell Workstation Graphics Tested Showing Solid Gains (hothardware.com)

Submitted by MojoKid
MojoKid writes: NVIDIA's Maxwell GPU architecture has has been well-received in the gaming world, thanks to cards like the GeForce GTX Titan X and the GeForce GTX 980. NVIDIA recently took time to bring that same Maxwell goodness over the workstation market as well and the result is the new Quadro M6000, NVIDIA's new highest-end workstation platform. Like the Titan X, the M6000 is based on the full-fat version of the Maxwell GPU, the G200. Also, like the GeForce GTX Titan X, the Quadro M6000 has 12GB of GDDR5, 3072 GPU cores, 192 texture units (TMUs), and 96 render outputs (ROPs). NVIDIA has said that the M6000 will beat out their previous gen Quadro K6000 in a significant way in pro workstation applications as well as GPGPU or rendering and encoding applications that can be GPU-accelerated. One thing that's changed with the launch of the M6000 is that AMD no longer trades shots with NVIDIA for the top pro graphics performance spot. Last time around, there were some benchmarks that still favored team red. Now, the NVIDIA Quadro M6000 puts up pretty much a clean sweep.

Feed Google News Sci Tech: Scientists find missing link in Yellowstone plumbing: This giant volcano is very (google.com)

From feed by feedfeeder

Washington Post
Scientists find missing link in Yellowstone plumbing: This giant volcano is very ...
Washington Post
Yellowstone National Park is the home of one of the world's largest volcanoes, one that is quiescent for the moment but is capable of erupting with catastrophic violence at a scale never before witnessed by human beings. In a big eruption, Yellowstone would...
Peering Inside Yellowstone's SupervolcanoDiscovery News
U. researchers: Yellowstone 'supervolcano' has another, bigger magma reservoirSalt Lake Tribune
Giant Magma Reservoir Found Beneath Yellowstone SupervolcanoVoice of America (blog)
Daily Mail-Smithsonian
all 12 news articles

Submission + - Two huge magma chambers spied beneath Yellowstone National Park (sciencemag.org)

Submitted by sciencehabit
sciencehabit writes: Underneath the bubbling geysers and hot springs of Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming sits a volcanic hot spot that has driven some of the largest eruptions on Earth. Geoscientists have now completely imaged the subterranean plumbing system and have found not just one, but two magma chambers underneath the giant volcano.

Submission + - Virtual Telescope Readies to Image Black Hole's 'Ring of Fire' (discovery.com)

Submitted by astroengine
astroengine writes: With the addition of a telescope at the southern-most point of Earth, the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) now spans the diameter of our planet and, when the vast project goes online, astronomers will get their first glimpse of the bright ring surrounding a supermassive black hole. Using a method known as Very Long Baseline Interferometry, or VLBI, astronomers can combine the observing power of many telescopes situated at distant locations around the planet. The distance between those observatories, known as the “baseline,” then mimics a virtual telescope of that diameter. Now, in an attempt to make direct observations of the supermassive black hole in the center of our galaxy, located at a powerful radio emission source called Sagittarius A*, the South Pole Telescope (SPT) at the National Science Foundation’s Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station has been linked to the EHT and the stage is set for a historic new era of exploring the most extreme objects in the known universe. “Now that we’ve done VLBI with the SPT, the Event Horizon Telescope really does span the whole Earth, from the Submillimeter Telescope on Mount Graham in Arizona, to California, Hawaii, Chile, Mexico, Spain and the South Pole,” said Dan Marrone of the University of Arizona. “The baselines to SPT give us two to three times more resolution than our past arrays, which is absolutely crucial to the goals of the EHT. To verify the existence of an event horizon, the ‘edge’ of a black hole, and more generally to test Einstein’s theory of general relativity, we need a very detailed picture of a black hole. With the full EHT, we should be able to do this.”

Submission + - CINELERRA - Updated --- 4/04/2015 (cinelerra.org)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The Heroine Virtual 4.6 release with real-time color correction, floating point, and many more cinema production features are by far the most advanced and technically modern advances available in the free media software real-time production technologies field. The most recent modifications include new features designed to enable live video capture from signal, greater control over recording, new icons, and additional features for the user. Adherence to the releases from HV will keep you current with the most capable cinema and media live production technologies.

Submission + - iOS WiFi Bug Allows Remote Reboot Of All Devices In Area 2

Submitted by BronsCon
BronsCon writes: A recently disclosed flaw in iOS 8 dubbed "No iOS Zone" allows an attacker to create a WiFi hot spot that will cause iOS devices to become unstable, crash, and reboot, even when in offline mode. Adi Sharabani and Yair Amit of Skycure are working with Apple for a fix; but, for now, the only workaround is to simply not be in range of such a malicious network.

Submission + - This app turns your phone into a cosmic ray detector. No joke. (crayfis.io)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: A few months ago physicists put out a paper showing that you can make a world-class cosmic ray detector by running an app on 1 million phones! They already have more than 50k users signed up and are doing private beta testing. The project launches this summer. This is such a cool citizen science project.

Submission + - Drone Killed Hostages From U.S. and Italy 1

Submitted by HughPickens.com
HughPickens.com writes: The NYT reports that President Obama has offered an emotional apology for the accidental killing of two hostages held by Al Qaeda, one of them American, in a United States government counterterrorism operation in January, saying he takes “full responsibility” for their deaths. “As president and as commander in chief, I take full responsibility for all our counterterrorism operations,” including the one that inadvertently took the lives of the two captives, a grim-faced Obama said in a statement to reporters in the White House briefing room. The White House earlier released an extraordinary statement revealing that intelligence officials had confirmed that Warren Weinstein, an American held by Al Qaeda since 2011, and Giovanni Lo Porto, an Italian held since 2012, died during the operation. Gunmen abducted Warren Weinstein in 2011 from his home in Lahore, Pakistan. They posed as neighbors, offered food and then pistol-whipped the American aid worker and tied up his guards, according to his daughter Alisa Weinstein.

The White House did not explain why it has taken three months to disclose the episode. Obama said that the operation was conducted after hundreds of hours of surveillance had convinced American officials that they were targeting an Al Qaeda compound where no civilians were present, and that “capturing these terrorists was not possible.” The White House said the operation that killed the two hostages “was lawful and conducted consistent with our counterterrorism policies” but nonetheless the government is conducting a “thorough independent review” to determine what happened and how such casualties could be avoided in the future.

Submission + - Africa E-Waste Dump Continues Hyperbole War (blogspot.ca)

Submitted by retroworks
retroworks writes: Two stories appear today which feature close up photos of young African men surrounded by scrap metal in the city of Accra. The headlines state that this is where our computers go to die (Wired). The Daily Mail puts it in even starker terms, alleging "millions of tons" are dumped in Agbogbloshie.

The stories appear the same day as a press release by investigators who returned this week from 3 weeks at the site. The release claims that Agbogbloshie's depiction as the worlds "largest ewaste dump site" to be a hoax. It is a scrap automobile yard which accounts for nothing more than local scrap from Accra. Three Dagbani language speaking electronics technicians, three reporters, Ghana customs officials and yours truly visited the site, interviewed workers about the origins of the material, and assessed volumes. About 27 young men burn wire, mostly from automobile scrap harnesses. The electronics — 20 to 50 items per day — are collected from Accra businesses and households. The majority of Accra (population 5M) have had televisions since the 1990s, according to World Bank metadata (over 80% by 2003).

The investigation did confirm that most of the scrap was originally imported used, and that work conditions were poor. However, the equipment being recycled had been repaired and maintained, typically for a decade (longer than the original OECD owner). It is a fact that used goods will, one day, eventually become e-waste. Does that support a ban on the trade in used goods to Africa? Or, as the World Bank reports, is the affordable used product essential to establish a critical mass of users so that investment in highways, phone towers, and internet cable can find necessary consumers?

Submission + - Jony Ive is the new Steve Jobs (bgr.com) 1

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Steve Jobs was well-known for instilling his own design tastes into Apple’s products. From the skeuomorphic aesthetic that used to define iOS to the company’s general aversion to superfluous buttons, Jobs was much more involved in product design than your average CEO. By all accounts, Jobs was Apple’s supreme taste maker.

Now, three years after Jobs’ passing, it’s apparent that Apple designer Jony Ive is Apple’s new tastemaker. The Apple Watch, seemingly Ive's pet project, is a reflection of the tremendous influence Ive wields within the company.

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