grendel_x86 - Slashdot User

Submission + - Microsoft Issues Windows Out-of-Band Update That Disables Spectre Mitigations (bleepingcomputer.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 28, 2018 @04:24PM

An anonymous reader writes: Microsoft has issued on Saturday an emergency out-of-band Windows update that disables patches for the Spectre Variant 2 bug (CVE-2017-5715). The update —KB4078130— targets Windows 7 (SP1), Windows 8.1, all versions of Windows 10, and all supported Windows Server distributions. Microsoft shipped mitigations for the Meltdown and Spectre bugs on January 3. The company said it decided to disable mitigations for the Spectre Variant 2 bug after Intel publicly admitted that the microcode updates it developed for this bug caused "higher than expected reboots and other unpredictable system behavior" that led to "data loss or corruption."

HP, Dell, and Red Hat took previous steps during the past week.

Submission + - Flawed Malwarebytes updates causes network connectivity problems (malwarebytes.com)

Submitted by marquis111 on Sunday January 28, 2018 @03:27PM

marquis111 writes: Malwarebytes pushed out a database update yesterday that caused its web link blocking engine to randomly flag all traffic as malicious, thus causing the computers running it to lose connection to the network, which also precludes those affected computers from receiving an updated database file that fixes the issue.

Submission + - SPAM: Amateur discovers long-dead NASA satellite has come back to life

Submitted by schwit1 on Friday January 26, 2018 @09:07PM

schwit1 writes: In his hunt to locate Zuma an amateur astronomer has discovered that a long-dead NASA satellite, designed to study the magnetosphere, has come back to life.

IMAGE went dead in 2005, and though NASA thought it might come back to life after experiencing a total eclipse in 2007 that would force a reboot, no evidence of life was seen then. It now appears that the satellite came to life sometime between then and 2018, and was chattering away at Earth waiting for a response. NASA is now looking at what it must do to take control of the spacecraft and resume science operations.
Link to Original Source

Google Shows Off Ad-Supported Cell Phone 290

Posted by Zonk on Thursday August 02, 2007 @05:52PM from the gotta-love-freebies dept.

taoman1 writes "Today Google showed off a ad-supported cellphone that the company plans to offer for free to interested parties. The product could reach the marketplace within a year, and will offer Google search, email, and a web browser. 'The move would echo another recent product launched by a phone industry outsider, Apple Inc.'s iPhone. But Google's product would draw its revenue from a sharply different source, relying on commercial advertising dollars instead of the sticker price of at least US$499 for an iPhone and $60 per month for the AT&T Inc. service plan. Negotiating the fairest way to split those advertising revenues with service providers could be a big hurdle for Google, one analyst said. Another problem is the potential that consumers could be scared off by the prospect of listening to advertisements before being able to make phone calls, said Jeff Kagan, a wireless and telecommunications industry analyst in Atlanta.'"

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