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Submission + - AMD Ryzen 5000 Series Processors Set A New Performance Bar Over Intel (hothardware.com)

Submitted by MojoKid
MojoKid writes: AMD made bold claims when the company unveiled its new Zen 3-based Ryzen 5000 series processors early last month. Statements like "historic IPC uplift" and "fastest for gamers" were waved about like flags of victory. However, as with most things in the computing world, independent testing is always the best way to validate claims. Today AMD lifted the embargo on 3rd party reviews and, in testing, AMD's new Ryzen 5000 series CPUs set a new performance bar virtually across the board, and one that Intel currently can't touch. There are four processors in the initial Ryzen 5000 series lineup, though it's a safe bet more will be coming later. The current entry point is the Ryzen 5 5600X 6-core / 8-thread processor, followed by the 8-core / 16-thread Ryzen 7 5800X, 12-core / 24 thread Ryzen 9 5900X, and the flagship 16-core / 32-thread Ryzen 9 5950X. All of these new CPUs are backwards compatible with AMD socket AM4 motherboards. In comparison to Zen 2, Zen 3 has a larger L1 branch target buffer and improved bandwidth through multiple parts of its pipeline with additional load/store flexibility. Where Zen 2 could handle 2 load and 1 store per cycle, Zen 3 can handle 3 load and 2 stores. All told, AMD is claiming an average 19% increase in IPC with Zen 3, which is a huge uplift gen-over-gen. Couple that IPC uplift with stronger multi-core scaling and a new unified L3 cache configuration, and Zen 3's performance looks great across a wide variety of workloads for both content creation and gaming especially. AMD's Ryzen 9 5950X, Ryzen 9 5900X, Ryzen 7 5800X and Ryzen 5 5600X will be priced at $799, $549, $449 and $299, respectively and should be on retail and etail shelves starting today.

Submission + - Apple search bot leaked internal IPs via proxy configuration (bleepingcomputer.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: A security researcher discovered that Apple's search bots that had been crawling his podcast series had been leaking internal IPs, due to a misconfigured proxy server.

And, it took Apple just a little over 9 months to fix this leak, for no obvious reason.

Submission + - Chrome 76 Arrives With Flash Blocked By Default

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Google today launched Chrome 76 for Windows, Mac, Linux, Android, and iOS. The release includes Adobe Flash blocked by default, Incognito mode detection disabled, multiple PWA improvements, and more developer features. You can update to the latest version now using Chrome’s built-in updater or download it directly from google.com/chrome. oogle has been taking baby steps to kill off Flash for years. In 2015, Chrome started automatically pausing less important Flash content. In 2016, Chrome blocking "behind the scenes" Flash content and using HTML5 by default. In July 2017, however, Adobe said it would kill Flash by 2020. With Chrome 76, Flash is now blocked by default. Users can still turn it on in settings, but next year, Flash will be removed from Chrome entirely.

Submission + - It's 2019, and one third of businesses still have Windows XP deployments (techrepublic.com) 3

Submitted by intensivevocoder
intensivevocoder writes: There is a relatively old—though still fundamentally true—adage about Windows: Microsoft's biggest competition is Microsoft, as a specific subset of users (and businesses) only upgrade to the latest version of Windows kicking and screaming. According to SpiceWorks' Future of Network and Endpoint Security report, published Tuesday, 32% of organizations still have at least one Windows XP device connected to their network, despite extended support for XP ending in 2014. (Notably, the last variant of XP, Windows POSReady 2009, reached end of life in April 2019.)

With the looming end of free support for Windows 7, this reticence of users and enterprises to upgrade to newer versions of Windows is likely to create significant security issues. Presently, 79% of organizations still have at least one Windows 7 system on their network, according to SpiceWorks, which also found that two thirds of businesses plan to migrate all of their machines off Windows 7 prior to the end of support on January 14, 2020, while a quarter will only migrate after that deadline.

Submission + - U.S. proposes barring big tech companies from offering financial services (reuters.com)

Submitted by PolygamousRanchKid
PolygamousRanchKid writes: A proposal to prevent big technology companies from functioning as financial institutions or issuing digital currencies has been circulated for discussion by the Democratic majority that leads the House Financial Services Committee, according to a copy of the draft legislation seen by Reuters. In a sign of widening scrutiny after Facebook Inc’s (FB.O) proposed Libra digital coin aroused widespread objection, the bill proposes a fine of $1 million per day for violation of such rules.

Last week, U.S. President Donald Trump criticized Libra and other cryptocurrencies and demanded that companies seek a banking charter and make themselves subject to U.S. and global regulations if they wanted to “become a bank.” His comments came after Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell told lawmakers that Facebook’s plan to build a digital currency called Libra could not move forward unless it addressed concerns over privacy, money laundering, consumer protection and financial stability.

Submission + - Galileo satellite positioning service outage

Submitted by hyperfine transition
hyperfine transition writes: The Galileo satellite positioning service is currently unavailable, with all satellites marked as in outage . Galileo is the European-built and operated alternative to GPS. The outage is being attributed to problems at the Precise Timing Facility in Italy. The availability of multiple Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS) and the relative newness of Galileo (the system is still under construction and only the newest GNSS receivers will track it) means that it is likely that few users will see an impact but the problem highlights our potential vulnerability to the loss of positioning and timing services available through GNSS.

Submission + - Raspberry Pi Admits To Faulty USB-C Design On the Pi 4 (arstechnica.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The Raspberry Pi 4 was announced two weeks ago as a major new upgrade to the line of cheap single-board hobbyist computers. The Pi 4 featured a faster CPU, options for up to 4GB of RAM, and a new, modern USB-C port for power delivery. The Pi 4 was the Raspberry Pi Foundation's first ever USB-C device, and, well, they screwed it up. As detailed by Tyler Ward, the Raspberry Pi 4 has a non-compliant USB-C charging port and doesn't work with as many chargers as it should. Thanks to the open nature of Raspberry Pi (even the schematics are online!), Ward was able to discover that Raspberry Pi just didn't design its USB-C port correctly. Two "CC" pins on a USB-C port are supposed to each get their own 5.1K ohms resistor, but Raspberry Pi came up with its own circuit design that allows them to share a single resistor. This is not a compliant design and breaks compatibility with some of the more powerful USB-C chargers out there.

Whether your USB-C charger works with the Pi 4 has to do with whether it uses an "e-marked" cable. E-marked cables are fully featured USB-C cables with chips inside that negotiate power management, accessory modes, data rates, and other communication specs. Since the Pi 4 USB-C port is wired incorrectly, these smart cables will detect the Pi 4 as an "Audio Adaptor Accessory" and refuse to charge them. Usually, e-marked cables are more expensive and come with larger, higher-powered items, like a USB-C laptop. After reports started popping up on the Internet, Raspberry Pi cofounder Eben Upton admitted to TechRepublic that "A smart charger with an e-marked cable will incorrectly identify the Raspberry Pi 4 as an audio adapter accessory and refuse to provide power." Upton went on to say, "I expect this will be fixed in a future board revision, but for now users will need to apply one of the suggested workarounds. It's surprising this didn't show up in our (quite extensive) field testing program."

Submission + - The Lost History of Sodium Wiring

Submitted by Rei
Rei writes: On the face of it, sodium seems like about the worst thing you could make a wire out of — it oxidizes rapidly in air, releases hot hydrogen gas in water, melts at 97,8C, and has virtually no tensile strength. Yet, in the late 1960s and early 1970s, the Nacon Corporation did just that — producing thousands of kilometers of high-gauge sodium wiring for electrical utilities — and it worked surprisingly well.

While sodium has three times the (volumetric) resistivity of copper and nearly double that of alumium, its incredibly low density gives it a gravimetric resistivity less than a third of copper and half of alumium. Priced similar to alumium per unit resistivity (and much cheaper than copper), limitless, and with almost no environmental impact apart from its production energy consumption, sodium wiring proved to be much more flexible without the fatigue or installation damage risks of alumium. The polyethylene insulation proved to offer sufficient tensile strength on its own to safely pull the wire through conduits, while matching its thermal expansion coefficient. The wiring proved to have tamer responses to both over-current (no insulation burnoff) and over-voltage (high corona inception voltage) scenarios than alumium as well. Meanwhile, "accidental cutting" tests, such as with a backhoe, showed that such events posed no greater danger than cutting copper or alumium cabling. Reliability results in operation were mixed — while few reliability problems were reported with the cables themselves, the low-voltage variety of Nacon cables appeared to have unreliable end connectors, causing some of the cabling to need to be repaired during 13 years of utility-scale testing.

Ultimately, it was economics, not technical factors, that doomed sodium wiring. Lifecycle costs, at 1970s pricing, showed that using sodium wiring was similar to or slightly more expensive for utilities than using alumium. Without an unambiguous and significant economic case to justify taking on the risks of going larger scale, there was a lack of utility interest, and Nacon ceased production.

Submission + - Heavily Processed Food Like Ready Meals and Ice Cream Linked To Early Death (theguardian.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: People who eat large amounts of heavily processed foods, from breakfast cereals and ready meals to muffins and ice-cream, have a greater risk of heart attack, stroke and early death, according to two major studies. In the French NutriSanté study, researchers at the University of Paris gathered details on the diets and health of more than 105,000 people. Over five years of follow-up, those who consumed the most “ultra-processed” food were most at risk of stroke, heart attack and other cardiovascular problems. When the amount of ultra-processed food in the diet rose 10 percentage points, for example from 10% to 20%, the risk of the diseases rose 12%.

The study, published in the British Medical Journal, does not prove that ultra-processed foods cause disease. Nor does the effect appear particularly large, even in the most enthusiastic junk food consumers. The results suggest that 277 cases of cardiovascular disease would arise each year in 100,000 heavy consumers of ultra-processed foods, versus 242 cases in the same number of low consumers. For the second study, also in the BMJ, a team at the University of Navarra in Pamplona monitored the eating habits and health of nearly 20,000 Spanish graduates from 1999 to 2014. Over the course of the study, 335 participants died. Once factors such as age, sex, body mass index and whether or not people smoked were taken into account, the trend was clear. The top quarter consumers of ultra-processed foods — who had more than four servings a day — were 62% more likely to have died than those in the bottom quarter, who ate less than two portions a day. For each additional serving, the risk of death rose 18%.

Submission + - Grindr Let Chinese Engineers See Americans' Data (reuters.com)

Submitted by JustAnotherOldGuy
JustAnotherOldGuy writes: The Chinese company that bought Grindr wasn't supposed to let Chinese engineers access Americans' data — but it did anyway. In January 2018, Beijing Kunlun Tech Co Ltd — already an $93 million investor in Grindr — bought out the company for a further $152m. Despite assurances to the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States that the company would not access Americans' sensitive data via its offices in China, the acquisition led to a rapid drawdown of its US engineering staff through attrition and layoffs, and an increased emphasis on development and data-processing in Kunlun's Beijing office.
Eight former Grindr employees have come forward to say that this led to some of its Beijing-based engineers having access to Americans' data, including private messages and HIV status in early 2019. Now, CFIUS has asked Kunlun to sell the company and divest itself of its interest in it. Kunlun shut down its Beijing office in February, citing "policy reasons and concerns about data privacy."

Submission + - The Humble Space Telescope can no longer be powered up

Submitted by frank249
frank249 writes: Diana Dragomir (@cabridelle) tweeted that the @MOST_Telescope can no longer be powered up. It's had a long life, overshooting its planned 1-year lifespan by a factor of 15! Thank you to @WarmNeptune, the MOST science team, @csa_asc and @MSCI_in_space for keeping the mission going for as long as it would go.

The MOST Space Telescope (which stands for Microvariability and Oscillation of Stars) was launched into space in 2003. It was the first Canadian scientific satellite in orbit in 33 years, and it is the first space telescope to be entirely designed and built in Canada. About the size and shape of a large suitcase, the satellite weighs only 54 kilograms and is equipped with an ultra high precision telescope that measures only 15 centimetres in diameter (thus the nickname "humble space telescope"). Despite its diminutive size, it is ten times more sensitive than the Hubble Space Telescope in detecting the minuscule variations in a star’s luminosity caused by vibrations that shake its surface.

Submission + - Software Defined Satellite Soon To Be Launched (bbc.com)

Submitted by kbahey
kbahey writes: Traditionally, large satellites are configured on the ground for specific tasks that cannot be changed after launch, even if market demands evolve.

A new satellite scheduled to be launched soon, will change all that: its coverage, bandwidth, power and frequency can all be altered in orbit.

The 3.5 tonne spacecraft will be operated by Paris-based telecom operator Eutelsat, in a R&D partnership with the European Space Agency (ESA), with manufacturer Airbus acting as the prime contractor.

A company official stated that the satellite "will bring unprecedented flexibility to our customers, allowing for in-orbit payload re-configuration and taking customisation to a new level, while also opening the way to a paradigm shift in the manufacture of telecommunications satellites".

Submission + - So You Automated Your Coworkers Out of a Job (gizmodo.com)

Submitted by merbs
merbs writes: Automation is too often presented as a faceless, monolithic phenomenon—but it’s a human finger that ultimately pulls the trigger. Someone has to initiate the process that automates a task or mechanizes a production line. To write or procure the program that makes a department or a job redundant. And that’s not always an executive, or upper-, or even middle management—in fact, it’s very often not. Sometimes it’s a junior employee, or a developer, even an intern.

In a series of interviews with coders, technicians, and engineers who’ve automated their colleagues out of work—or, in one case, been put in a position where they’d have to do so and decided to quit instead—I’ve attempted to produce a snapshot of life on the messy front lines of modern automation. (Some names have been changed to protect the identities of the automators.) We’ve heard plenty of forecasting about the many jobs slated to be erased, and we’ve seen the impacts on the communities that have lost livelihoods at the hands of automation, but we haven’t had many close up looks at how all this unfolds in the office or the factory floor.

Submission + - Banks attacked through backdoors directly connected to local networks

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Karspesky security researcher Sergey Golovanov writes about recent cybertheft incidents involving hardware backdoors planted by criminals. Each attack had a common springboard: an unknown device directly connected to the company’s local network. In some cases, it was the central office, in others a regional office, sometimes located in another country. At least eight banks in Eastern Europe were the targets of the attacks. Hardware backdoors are cheap and inmune to antivirus a firmware modified openwrt based router can provide covert remote access, painless packet captures, and secure VPN connections with the flip of a switch. Will a flashlight and a ladder be common tools of a computer security someday?

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