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Submission + - Intel Responds To Alleged Chip Flaw (hothardware.com)

An anonymous reader writes: The tech blogosphere lit up yesterday afternoon after reports of a critical bug in modern Intel processors has the potential to seriously impact systems running Windows, Linux and macOS. The alleged bug is so severe that it cannot be corrected with a microcode update, and instead, OS manufacturers are being forced to address the issue with software updates, which in some instances requires a redesign of the kernel software. Some early performance benchmarks have even suggested that patches to fix the bug could result in a performance hit of as much as 30 percent. Since reports on the issues of exploded over the past 24 hours, Intel is looking to cut through the noise and tell its side of the story. The details of the exploit and software/firmware updates to address the matter at hand were scheduled to go live next week. However, Intel says that it is speaking out early to combat "inaccurate media reports."

Intel acknowledges that the exploit has "the potential to improperly gather sensitive data from computing devices that are operating as designed." The company further goes on state that “these exploits do not have the potential to corrupt, modify or delete data." The company goes on to state that the "average computer user" will be negligibly affected by any software fixes, and that any negative performance outcomes "will be mitigated over time." In a classic case of trying to point fingers at everyone else, Intel says that "many different vendors' processors" are vulnerable to these exploits.

Submission + - SPAM: More Bad News Expected for Tesla 1

schwit1 writes:

In October, Tesla reported that it produced 220 Model 3 vehicles in the third quarter. CEO Elon Musk had previously said the company would produce more than 1,600 Model 3s by September.

Munster isn't the only analyst to doubt Tesla's fourth-quarter Model 3 production. KeyBanc analyst Brad Erickson reduced his fourth-quarter Model 3 production target by two-thirds, cutting it from 15,000 to only 5,000.

According to Munster, Tesla investors may need to wait several more quarters for the Model 3 story to play out. "We predict a breakout year for the Model 3 in 2019 which means, until then, other elements like solid Model S and X production numbers, increasing energy deployments like the South Australia installation, and future vehicles (Roadster, Semi, Model Y, and pickup truck) will stoke investor optimism," he says.

Elon Musk promised Tesla would produce 500,000 Model 3 sedans in 2018 and has accepted refundable $1,000 deposits on nearly that many. At current production rates, it will be years before pre-orders are filled.

The Model 3's good will and good reviews won't matter much if Tesla can't ramp up production, which even bulls like Munster believes is running at least a year late.

Link to Original Source

Submission + - 2 Years Later, Security Holes Linger in GPS Services Used by Millions of Devices (securityledger.com)

chicksdaddy writes: Security researchers say that serious security vulnerabilities linger in a GPS software by the China-based firm ThinkRace more than two years after the hole was discovered and reported to the firm, The Security Ledger reports. (https://securityledger.com/2018/01/two-years-later-dangerous-vulnerability-lays-bare-gps-data/)

Data including a GPS enabled device’s location, serial number, assigned phone number and model and type of device can be accessed by any user with access to the GPS service. In some cases, other information is available including the device’s location history going back 1 week. In some cases, malicious actors could also send commands to the device via SMS including those used to activate or deactivate GEO fencing alarms features, such as those used on child-tracking devices.

The vulnerabilities affect hundreds of thousands of connected devices that use the GPS services, from smart watches, to vehicle GPS trackers, fitness trackers, pet trackers and more. At issue are security holes in back-end GPS tracking services that go by names like amber360.com, kiddo-track.com, carzongps.com and tourrun.net, according to Michael Gruhn, an independent security researcher who noted the insecure behavior in a location tracker he acquired and has helped raise awareness of the widespread flaws. (https://0x0.li/trackmageddon/#advisories)

Working with researcher Vangelis Stykas, Gruhn discovered scores of seemingly identical GPS services (https://0x0.li/trackmageddon/0x0-20171222-gpsui.net.html), many of which have little security, allowing low-skill hackers to directly access data on GPS tracking devices.

Alas, news about the security holes is not new. In fact, the security holes in ThinkRace’s GPS services are identical to those discovered by New Zealand researcher Lachlan Temple in 2015 and publicly disclosed at the time (https://www.zxsecurity.co.nz/presentations/201607_Unrestcon-ZXSecurity_Vechile-Tracking.pdf). Temple’s research focused on one type of device: a portable GPS tracker that plugged into a vehicle’s On Board Diagnostic (or OBD) port. However, Stykas and Gruhn say that they have discovered the same holes spread across a much wider range of APIs (application program interfaces) and services linked to ThinkRace.

Comment So sick of Bitcoin (Score 2) 57

When will this worthless shit crash already? It's a complete failure as a currency. All it's accomplished for the world is to facilitate trafficking in drugs, weapons, and humans, and to reward people who waste electricity. Yes, everyone accepts it as payment. Because it's undergoing a bubble. But no one wants to pay for stuff with it. Because it's undergoing a bubble.

For a currency to be usable, it needs to maintain a stable value. Bitcoin fails miserably at it. Nerds seem to get intrigued by its algorithm and lose sight of human nature- people won't trust it once they get burned by the crash that's being dismissed as an inevitable "short-term correction". (And that's more acceptable than a long-term correction... why?) Sure, you'll forget you were a "billionaire" when you went to bed last night and you'll buy pizza with your Bitcoins for lunch- except no pizzeria will accept them after that. But rest assured, there is a distributed blockchain uncontrolled by any central authority that establishes beyond all doubt that you are the proud owner of a worthless currency.

Bitcoin has made one thing perfectly clear- so-called "fiat money" is the worst kind of currency except for all the others.

Comment The Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act (Score 1) 275

What most people don't know is, Sonny Bono actually had some sort of music career before he became a corrupt politician. Did you know that? I knew that. Most people don't know that. Because everyone just knows him as the guy who came up with the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act. But he was actually a singer. He died skiing when he hit a tree; once the tree has seventy more rings I'll check out his albums.

Comment Re:Good. (Score 0, Troll) 141

This was always a huge problem waiting to happen. The barrier to entry for idiot UAV operators is WAY too small. In my opinion they should all have pilots' licenses to fly beyond 50 feet from the operator.

OK, let me get this straight. You live in a country where 30000 people are shot each year, and what you're upset about about are drones that can fly 50 feet from the operator?

Guess what else flies 50 feet from the operator? You people need to get your priorities in order.

Comment Re: It's a male, take him down! (Score 5, Insightful) 681

Something is wrong with the way Americans train police. I don't think they know this, but American police are the butt of jokes around the world. They're not real cops.

Most of them are former security guards and prison guards who think their guns are toys, like this acquitted Philip Mitchell Brailsford piece of shit who forced a guy begging for his life to play "Simon Says", pumped five rounds into him, and then typically claimed self defense like an American policeman will always do.

Cops with prior military training don't act like this at all. Maybe you would be better served by unloading your current "police force" and starting anew with recruits who have been trained to respect weapons and understand that they serve the public, not the other way around.

Comment Re:News flash, that's how it works (Score 5, Insightful) 121

This behavior is required by law. A long time ago the Supreme Court altered corporate behavior forever with a ruling that corporations have a duty to their stockholders only, and aside from taxes, absolutely no responsibility to the community at large. They also recently decided that politicians have a duty to represent their supporters, not their constituents. Then they established that a corporate person has a Constitutional right to free speech, with a decision that redefined political bribery out of existence- at this point corruption can't be prosecuted unless someone can find a legal document where both parties agree to a quid pro quo.

This is what happens when you use a few narrow issues like abortion and guns as litmus tests for judgeships. Since judges have lifetime appointments, Trump has wisely chosen to nominate Hitler Youth who apparently haven't even seen a single episode of Law and Order, and he is rapidly filling all the seats that Congress left empty during the Obama administration.

Comment Re:No, it is not a shift in trust (Score 1) 365

It will turn out to be a Ponzi scheme, even though it didn't start out as one. Unlike traditional securities trading, with cybercurrency there is a complete lack of regulation that might prevent market manipulation by a small number of holders. And 40% of the market is controlled by a handful of shady characters. This won't end pretty.

Comment Tulips and Ponzi schemes (Score 1) 233

John McAfee's Twitter account has some funny stuff in it about tulips: He explains why the Dutch tulip mania happened:

Tulips are perishable and must be repurchased, over and over, to maintain a presence. Obviously, inflated prices cannot be sustained. Bitcoin is not perishable, and needs to purchased only once. There can be no comparison.

In other words, if only the tulips were made of plastic, this never would have happened.

He also has negative things to say about gold:

Gold is laughable compared to cryptocurrencies. How do you rationalize gold? How do you ship it? It's physical so how do you safely store it. It was good for people 3,000 years ago. Today it is inherently worthless. Soon it will drop in value as crypto currencies climb.

"Gold? Bah, I have something more valuable, bwahaha!" I have to wonder at this point whether he's managed to talk his wife into a stainless steel wedding ring. He's talking about the relative price of gold vs. Bitcoin as if the gold is going to be responsible for the fluctuation, and not the Bitcoin with its crazy, unstable valuation relative to the rest of the economy. But of course it can't be a bubble:

Bitcoin now at $16,600.00. Those of you in the old school who believe this is a bubble simply have not understood the new mathematics of the Blockchain, or you did not cared enough to try. Bubbles are mathematically impossible in this new paradigm.

Keep in mind, he is sitting on a lot of them:

I like stuff. Most of the stuff I REALLY like I can only buy with Bitcoins. I prefer stuff over money. I can't eat, smoke, wear or fuck a Bitcoin. I got 'em, but I spend 'em.

I don't blame him. If I had his Bitcoin portfolio I'd be filling my cart at overstock.com right now and tweeting crap like this.

There are a number of indications that Bitcoin has organically evolved into a Ponzi scheme, even if it wasn't engineered to be one.

  • No intrinsic value: An ounce of gold is a viable commodity, and there is significant demand for it just for industrial applications, despite what McAfee says. In fact the financial industry's fondness for gold presents a hindrance to the technology industry. With Bitcoin, what is the fundamental value? "Here is a large integer and someone had to burn X kilowatt-hours to find it. And it is a member of a set of numbers that have carefully engineered scarcity." Not exactly something that makes you instinctively reach for your wallet full of fiat money.
  • Fragile perceived value: No matter how sound the mathematics behind cryptocurrencies are, they are not well understood by investors- and even an understanding the math of the "new paradigm" doesn't necessarily translate into appreciation of the currency's value within the "old paradigm" in which all the rest of the economy still operates. It has the same flaw as fiat money- its paradigm is irrelevant unless everyone agrees to accede to it. Furthermore, everyone knows that everyone else understands what "LEGAL TENDER" means. The math behind cryptocurrency is somewhat too esoteric for people. Most of us will not behave like rational actors who were taught number theory and blockchain algorithms in grade school. Everyone knows they don't understand the esoteric math, that most other holders don't either, and that everyone else is thinking: "This stuff might just be Monopoly money after all." When the price drops, market participants will not employ any significant algorithmic complexity in their decision making. They're going to panic. Blockchain mathematics will have a showdown with human psychology and will lose.
  • It's useless as a currency. It quadrupled in value over three months. Then just during the past week it plunged 25% then shot back up. For something that is passed off as "money", the price fluctuates so violently that it can't be used as a form of cash- it's only suitable for investment. The whole purpose of a currency is to maintain a stable valuation for economic transactions. Everything that makes something a great investment makes it suck as a currency, and vice versa. Traditional "fiat money" often has problems with inflation and deflation, but considered as a currency, Bitcoin is experiencing serious hyperdeflation; any economy truly based on it would be in a tailspin right now. It's only useful as cash in transactions where there is no alternative- usually involving ransomware, drugs, weaponry, or human trafficking. While it's true that a lot of sellers are accepting Bitcoin, that's because of the same deflationary pressure which is averse to buyers. (Or anyone not sitting on a mountain of this stuff, needing to quietly unload it- like guess who above.) Once people realize this stuff does not perform its nominal function as a currency, and it becomes widely seen as an investment vehicle undergoing a rapid bubble, the dynamics of traditional bubble will take effect.
  • Concentrated ownership:1000 people own 40% of the Bitcoin market. These are the earliest investors who are profiting from the scheme. These days, we're seeing a wave of more naive investors stampeding in like new Amway recruits and driving the price up. Any time a single early investor makes even a modest transaction, the entire market wobbles like a slowing bicycle just from people speculating on his motives. Collusion among even a small group of these guys will trigger a market panic that prompts the rest of them to also dump their holdings. This will happen extremely quickly (i.e. within minutes) since the law has not caught up with cryptocurrencies- there are no regulations in place to prevent market manipulation like there are with ordinary securities trading. Anyone with a long position and a brain has set a trigger in case Armageddon happens while they're asleep or driving, and these things will undergo a chain reaction like a room full of mousetraps. The Bitcoin market will literally collapse faster than a neutron star during a supernova.
  • People are beginning to call it a Ponzi scheme. Historically this has been a reliable indicator that something is in fact a Ponzi scheme, and furthermore, it's also nearing collapse.

Comment Fuck- my parents were in cahoots with the Russians (Score 1) 128

I typed in my last name and found that both my parents submitted the exact same text:

Before leaving office, the Obama Administration rammed through a massive scheme that gave the federal government broad regulatory control over the internet. That misguided policy decision is threatening innovation and hurting broadband investment in one of the largest and most important sectors of the U.S. economy. I support the Federal Communications Commission's decision to roll back Title II and allow for free market principles to guide our digital economy.

This is highly suspicious because these two don't agree on ANYTHING.

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