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Submission + - Google's Project Loon Could Interfere With Mobile Operations (thestack.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Google’s Project Loon, which aims to deliver internet connectivity to far-flung locations using balloons, will damage cellular communications provided by Indian mobile operators, the country’s government claimed today. Telecom Minister Shankar Prasad had argued in a written reply to the Rajya Sabha (RS), the Indian Council of States, that the frequency band proposed for the Loon project is already in use for cellular operations in India. He explained that this clash would lead to interference with mobile transmissions. The response was given in reply to the RS’ query whether technical difficulties would arise from approving the operation of Project Loon in India.

Submission + - Revisiting how much RAM is enough today for desktop computing (techspot.com)

Submitted by jjslash
jjslash writes: A hotly debated subject year in and year out, TechSpot is testing how much RAM you need for regular desktop computing and how it affects performance in apps and games, and as it turns out, there's not much benefit going beyond 8 GB for regular programs, and surprisingly, 4GB seems to be enough for gaming in most cases.

Although RAM is cheap these days, and they had to go to absurdly unrealistic settings to simulate high demand for memory outside of virtualization, it's a good read to confirm our judgment calls on what is enough for most in 2015.

Submission + - Multiple Vulnerabilities in Pocket

Submitted by vivaoporto
vivaoporto writes: Clint Ruoho reports on gnu.gl blog the process of discovery, exploitation and reporting of multiple vulnerabilities in Pocket, the third party web-based service chosen by Mozilla (with some backslash) as the default way to save articles for future reading in Firefox.

The vulnerabilities, exploitable by an attacker with only a browser, the Pocket mobile app and access to a server in Amazon EC2 costing 2 cents an hour, would give an attacker unrestricted root access to the server hosting the application.

The entry point was exploiting the service's main functionality itself — adding a server internal address in the "read it later" user list — to retrieve sensitive server information like the /etc/passwd file, its internal IP and the ssh private key needed to connect to it without a password. With this information it would be possible to SSH into the machine from another instance purchased in the same cloud service giving the security researcher unrestricted access.

All the vulnerabilities were reported by the researcher to Pocket, and the disclosure was voluntarily delayed for 21 days from the initial report to allow Pocket time to remediate the issues identified. Pocket does not provide monetary compensation for any identified or possible vulnerability.

Submission + - AMD Continues Giving A Black Eye To Linux Gaming (phoronix.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: AMD's Linux gaming performance has been embarrassingly bad but it doesn't look like there's any quick remedy. Virtual Programming just released Dirt: Showdown for Linux and it's the latest example of AMD's Linux driver issues: AMD's GPUs results are cringe worthy with even the Radeon R9 Fury running slower than NVIDIA's aging GTX 680 and GTX 760. If a racing game doesn't interest you, next week Feral Interactive confirmed they are releasing Company of Heroes 2 for Linux but only NVIDIA and Intel graphics are supported.

Submission + - IRS computer hack bigger than previously thought

Submitted by schwit1
schwit1 writes: A hack of IRS taxpayer information was significantly bigger than previously estimated, the IRS revealed today.

An additional 220,000 potential victims had information stolen from an IRS website as part of a sophisticated scheme to use stolen identities to claim fraudulent tax refunds, the IRS said Monday. The revelation more than doubles the total number of potential victims, to 334,000.

Well, no matter, this hack is mere chicken feed compared to the 21 million records stolen from the federal Office of Personal Management. And it hardly compares with the recent Pentagon breach, where the Chinese got almost all federal records. No, the IRS is doing a much better job then those other agencies, only being slightly incompetent and screwing up only a little.

Submission + - Breathing Beijing's Air is The Equivalent of Smoking Almost 40 Cigarettes a Day (economist.com)

Submitted by iONiUM
iONiUM writes: From the economist: "Pollution is sky-high everywhere in China. Some 83% of Chinese are exposed to air that, in America, would be deemed by the Environmental Protection Agency either to be unhealthy or unhealthy for sensitive groups. Almost half the population of China experiences levels of PM2.5 that are above America’s highest threshold. That is even worse than the satellite data had suggested."

They go on to say "Berkeley Earth’s scientific director, Richard Muller, says breathing Beijing’s air is the equivalent of smoking almost 40 cigarettes a day and calculates that air pollution causes 1.6m deaths a year in China, or 17% of the total. A previous estimate, based on a study of pollution in the Huai river basin (which lies between the Yellow and Yangzi rivers), put the toll at 1.2m deaths a year—still high."

Submission + - How to shoot down a drone (popularmechanics.com)

Submitted by gurps_npc
gurps_npc writes: Popular Mechanics has a nice article about how to shoot down a non-military drone. Interestingly enough, a Super Soaker will do the job while a standard paint gun does nothing. It doesn't take much energy as long as it is concentrated. A BB gun can do it as well — if you can hit the the target.

Submission + - Dual GPU battle: GTX 980 Ti SLI and Radeon R9 Fury X Crossfire (techspot.com)

Submitted by jjslash
jjslash writes: Nvidia and AMD's high-end GPU parts are plenty fast and while both cards can provide playable performance at 4K, many games dip down to and below 30fps, so folks looking to achieve smooth 4K gameplay will undoubtedly be eyeing dual GTX 980 Ti or Fury X cards to realize their PC gaming machine's full potential. TechSpot puts both cards to the test in SLI and Crossfire modes, at stock and overclocked speeds in over 10 games to see who gets the bragging rights.

Submission + - Def Con: Hacker Shows How to "Kill" Anyone (securityweek.com) 1

Submitted by wiredmikey
wiredmikey writes: Hackers the Def Con gathering in Las Vegas on Friday got schooled in how to be online killers. A rush to go digital with the process of registering deaths has made it simple for maliciously minded folks to have someone who is alive declared dead by the authorities.

"This is a global problem," Australian computer security specialist Chris Rock said as he launched a presentation titled "I Will Kill You."

Submission + - You can't audit voting machines in Kansas

Submitted by Geoffrey.landis
Geoffrey.landis writes: A statistician discovered evidence of suspicious counting on voting machines in Kansas. The voting machines keep a paper trail for verification... but her request to examine the record of votes is being blocked with the explanation that no one, not even the election officials, is allowed to see it.

According to the Washington Post "The voting machines that Sedgwick County uses have a paper record of the votes, known as Real Time Voting Machine Paper Tapes... . Since the software is proprietary, even elections officials can’t examine it and postelection audits can’t be done, according to Pamela Smith, president of Verified Voting Foundation".

Even the Kansas papers editorialize that this is going too far. More evidence that the software used in voting machines should never be proprietary.

Submission + - IBM Drops $1 Billion For Medical Images For Watson (nytimes.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: IBM is purchasing a company called Merge Healthcare for $1 billion. The company specializes in medical imaging software, and it will be a key new resource for IBM's Watson AI. Big blue's researchers estimate that 90% of all medical is contained within images. Having a trove of them and the software to mine that data should help Watson learn how to make more accurate diagnoses. IBM thinks it'll also provide better context for run of the mill medical imaging. "[A] radiologist might examine thousands of patient images a day, but only looking for abnormalities on the images themselves rather than also taking into account a person’s medical history, treatments and drug regimens." They can program Watson to do both. The AI is already landing contracts to assist with medical issues: "Last week, IBM announced a partnership with CVS Health, the large pharmacy chain, to develop data-driven services to help people with chronic ailments like diabetes and heart disease better manage their health."

Submission + - 10 years of Intel processors compared (techspot.com)

Submitted by jjslash
jjslash writes: An interesting look back at the evolution of Intel CPUs since the original Core 2 Duo E6600 and Core 2 Quad processors were introduced. The test pits the eight year old CPUs to their successors in the Nehalem, Sandy Bridge and Haswell families, including today's Celeron and Pentium parts which fare comparably well. A great reference just days before Intel's new Skylake processor debuts.

Submission + - AMD challenges Nvidia with high-end R9 290X GPU

Submitted by jjslash
jjslash writes: Nvidia knew they had a winner in their hands when they launched the mindblowingly fast GeForce GTX Titan last year. The only catch was the not so attainable $1,000 asking price and yet it still sold like hot cakes. AMD is now finally ready to counter with a brand new GPU architecture that stuffs nearly 2000 million more transistors than its predecessor. In a sense, the Radeon R9 290X could be considered AMD's Titan, as it's the most complex GPU AMD has created and also one of the most expensive, but surprisingly that's just $550, a fraction of the competition's asking price.

Submission + - If Wikipedia says so... 1

Submitted by Colin Lewis
Colin Lewis writes: Australian Federal Environment Minister Greg Hunt has hosed down suggestions of a link between climate change and increased bushfire intensity, saying he had ''looked up what Wikipedia'' said and it was clear that bushfires in Australia were frequent events that had occurred during hotter months since before European settlement.

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/greg-hunt-uses-wikipedia-research-to-dismiss-links-between-climate-change-and-bushfires-20131023-2w1w5.html#ixzz2ib6ZUe00

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