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Submission + - Class-action reveals Ford engineers thought infotainment system was unsaleable (computerworld.com)

Submitted by Lucas123
Lucas123 writes: A class-action lawsuit against Ford and its MyFord Touch in-vehicle infotainment system — originally based on a Microsoft platform — has brought to light corporate documents that show engineers at the Dearborn carmaker referred to the problematic technology as a "polished turd" that they feared would be "unsaleable." The documents even reveal Henry Ford's great grandson experienced significant problems with MyFord Touch. In one incident, Edsel Ford was forced to wait on a roadside for the system to reset and could not continue to drive because he was unable to use the IVI's navigation system. The lawsuit describes an IVI screen that would freeze or go blank; generate error messages that wouldn't go away; voice recognition and navigation systems that failed to work, problems wirelessly pairing with smartphones, and a generally slow system. Ford's CEO Mark Fields even described his own travails with the SYNC IVI, referring to it as having crashed on several occasions, and that he was so frustrated with the system he may have damaged his car's screen out of aggravation. The civil suit is expected to go to trial in 2017.

Submission + - The Technical Difficulty In Porting a PS3 Game to the PS4 (edge-online.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The Last of Us was one of the last major projects for the PlayStation 3. The code optimization done by development studio Naughty Dog was a real technical achievement — making graphics look modern and impressive on a 7-year-old piece of hardware. Now, they're in the process of porting it to the much more capable PS4, which will end up being a technical accomplishment in its own right. Creative director Neil Druckmann said, 'Just getting an image onscreen, even an inferior one with the shadows broken, lighting broken and with it crashing every 30 seconds that took a long time. These engineers are some of the best in the industry and they optimised the game so much for the PS3’s SPUs specifically. It was optimised on a binary level, but after shifting those things over [to PS4] you have to go back to the high level, make sure the [game] systems are intact, and optimise it again. I can't describe how difficult a task that is. And once it’s running well, you’re running the [versions] side by side to make sure you didn't screw something up in the process, like physics being slightly off, which throws the game off, or lighting being shifted and all of a sudden it’s a drastically different look. That’s not ‘improved’ any more; that’s different. We want to stay faithful while being better.'

Submission + - Discrete Logarithm problem solved : Time to drop some crypto methods ? 2

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: From the article :

Researchers at the Laboratoire Lorrain de Recherches en Informatique et ses Applications (CNRS/Université de Lorraine/Inria) and the Laboratoire d'Informatique de Paris 6 (CNRS/UPMC) have solved one aspect of the discrete logarithm problem. This is considered to be one of the 'holy grails' of algorithmic number theory, on which the security of many cryptographic systems used today is based. They have devised a new algorithm that calls into question the security of one variant of this problem, which has been closely studied since 1976.

Submission + - Legal backlash against KlearGear.com bad review "fine"

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: An update on a Slashdot story about KlearGear.com "fining" a couple for a bad review 4 years earlier on RipoffReport: Not only did KlearGear report this as a bad debt to credit reporting agencies, but KlearGear is hiding behind a DomainsByProxy domain name to making finding their real identities harder. Now Public Citizen is representing the couple and is going after KlearGear for $75,000. The TV station that broke this story, KUTV, now reports: It looks like RipoffReport will be on the couple's side also, the BBB and TRUSTe say their logos were used by KlearGear.com without permission, and credit reporting agency Experian is also investigating. (Submitting anonymously for obvious reasons.)

Submission + - U. S. Military Settles for Software Piracy (bbc.co.uk)

Submitted by Rambo Tribble
Rambo Tribble writes: The BBC reports that the U. S. government has agreed to pay software maker Apptricity $50 million to settle claims that the U. S. Army pirated thousands of copies of the firm's provisioning software. The report indicates 500 licensed copies were sold, but it came to light an army official had mentioned that "thousands" of devices were running the software.

Submission + - Whistle blowing in action (nature.com)

Submitted by bmahersciwriter
bmahersciwriter writes: Helene Hill thought she was close to retirement when, on a whim one day, she decided to check on a junior colleague's cell cultures. They were empty, she says, yet he produced data from them soon after. Blowing the whistle on what she thinks was research misconduct cost her 14 years and $200,000. See how she and other whistleblowers fared in this story from Nature.

Submission + - Top Black Thursday/Friday Tech Picks?

Submitted by theodp
theodp writes: Take a gander at the 2013 Black Friday ads, and your head will be spinning with deals that seem too good to be true. And while the WSJ will try to slap you back to reality with a story on The Dirty Secret of Black Friday 'Discounts', it's still hard not to get jazzed over the prospect of picking up an iPad Mini w/$100 gift card for $299 (Walmart), a 16GB Nexus 7 for $199 (Staples), or a 32GB Microsoft Surface for $199.99 (Best Buy). So, if you're playing the game this year — either online or in-person (hey, what could go wrong?), — what are your top tech picks for Black Friday? Any strategy for improving your odds of getting them?

Submission + - Hackers Break Currency Validator to Pass Any Paper as Valid Euro

Submitted by Trailrunner7
Trailrunner7 writes: If espionage is the world’s second-oldest profession, counterfeiting may be in the running to be third on that list. People have been trying to forge currency for just about as long as currency has been circulating, and anti-counterfeiting methods have tried to keep pace with the state of the art. The anti-counterfeiting technology in use today of course relies on computers and software, and like all software, it has bugs, as researchers at IOActive discovered when they reverse-engineered the firmware in a popular Euro currency verifier and found that they could insert their own firmware and force the machine to verify any piece of paper as a valid Euro note.

“The impact is obvious. An attacker with temporary physical access to the device could install customized firmware and cause the device to accept counterfeit money. Taking into account the types of places where these devices are usually deployed (shops, mall, offices, etc.) this scenario is more than feasible.”

Submission + - Toyota's Killer Firmware (edn.com) 1

Submitted by Smerta
Smerta writes: On Thursday, a jury verdict found Toyota's ECU firmware defective, holding it responsible for a crash in which a passenger was killed and the driver injured. What's significant about this is that this is the first time a jury heard about software defects uncovered by plaintiff's expert witnesses. An interesting summary of the defects discussed at trial is interesting reading, as well the transcript of court testimony. Wonder what the impact will be on self-driving cars?

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