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Comment Wrong assumption in the article (Score 5, Interesting) 83

by SteveWoz (#65962954) Attached to: When 20-Year-Old Bill Gates Fought the World's First Software Pirates

I, Steve Wozniak, did not participate in the theft of the BASIC. It was funny to me to see others enjoying doing this. I had never used BASIC myself, at that time, only the more-scientific languages like Fortran, Algol, and PL-1, and several assembly languages. I sniffed the air and sensed that you needed BASIC to sell computers into homes, because of the book 101 Games in BASIC. I loved games and saw games as the key. It was the [MS] BASIC that inspired me to write a BASIC interpreter for my 6502 processor, in order to have a more useful computer.
Science

Scientists Found a Way To Cool Quantum Computers Using Noise (sciencedaily.com) 7

Posted by EditorDavid from the cool-technology dept.
Slashdot reader alternative_right writes: Quantum computers need extreme cold to work, but the very systems that keep them cold also create noise that can destroy fragile quantum information. Scientists in Sweden have now flipped that problem on its head by building a tiny quantum refrigerator that actually uses noise to drive cooling instead of fighting it. By carefully steering heat at unimaginably small scales, the device can act as a refrigerator, heat engine, or energy amplifier inside quantum circuits.

Comment Chargers too (Score 1) 148

by cerberusss (#65908717) Attached to: Power Bank Feature Creep is Out of Control
It's not just powerbanks that have unnecessary features. Chargers are affected too: the new Anker Nano 45W (A121D) doesn't support AVS, and PPS is limited up to 16V (not 20, what most laptops want). But it has a smart interactive display... you could argue that the old version is better.

Comment Re:Crap (Score 1) 289

by cerberusss (#65818655) Attached to: 'AI Can't Think'
Okay, but you have to admit it's useful to distinguish between the intelligence that AI seems to display, and that humans seem to display.
Privacy

Manufacturer Remotely Bricks Smart Vacuum After Its Owner Blocked It From Collecting Data (tomshardware.com) 123

Posted by EditorDavid from the sucking-dirt-and-data dept.
"An engineer got curious about how his iLife A11 smart vacuum worked and monitored the network traffic coming from the device," writes Tom's Hardware.

"That's when he noticed it was constantly sending logs and telemetry data to the manufacturer — something he hadn't consented to." The user, Harishankar, decided to block the telemetry servers' IP addresses on his network, while keeping the firmware and OTA servers open. While his smart gadget worked for a while, it just refused to turn on soon after... He sent it to the service center multiple times, wherein the technicians would turn it on and see nothing wrong with the vacuum. When they returned it to him, it would work for a few days and then fail to boot again... [H]e decided to disassemble the thing to determine what killed it and to see if he could get it working again...

[He discovered] a GD32F103 microcontroller to manage its plethora of sensors, including Lidar, gyroscopes, and encoders. He created PCB connectors and wrote Python scripts to control them with a computer, presumably to test each piece individually and identify what went wrong. From there, he built a Raspberry Pi joystick to manually drive the vacuum, proving that there was nothing wrong with the hardware. From this, he looked at its software and operating system, and that's where he discovered the dark truth: his smart vacuum was a security nightmare and a black hole for his personal data.

First of all, it's Android Debug Bridge, which gives him full root access to the vacuum, wasn't protected by any kind of password or encryption. The manufacturer added a makeshift security protocol by omitting a crucial file, which caused it to disconnect soon after booting, but Harishankar easily bypassed it. He then discovered that it used Google Cartographer to build a live 3D map of his home. This isn't unusual, by far. After all, it's a smart vacuum, and it needs that data to navigate around his home. However, the concerning thing is that it was sending off all this data to the manufacturer's server. It makes sense for the device to send this data to the manufacturer, as its onboard SoC is nowhere near powerful enough to process all that data. However, it seems that iLife did not clear this with its customers.

Furthermore, the engineer made one disturbing discovery — deep in the logs of his non-functioning smart vacuum, he found a command with a timestamp that matched exactly the time the gadget stopped working. This was clearly a kill command, and after he reversed it and rebooted the appliance, it roared back to life.
Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader registrations_suck for sharing the article.

Submission + - Why Cambridge University Library is safeguarding floppy disk knowledge (itbrew.com)

Submitted by Nerval's Lobster
Nerval's Lobster writes: Not all heroes wear capes. Some, like Leontien Talboom, rock bangs and suspenders while playing a real-life game of Operation on old floppy disks to preserve their content. When Talboom was a kid, she used floppy disks to save her fictional stories about Furbys, the popular robotic toy of the 90s, which she would write on her father’s old work laptop.

Today, Talboom, who is now a Cambridge University Library technical analyst, spends her time preserving knowledge about floppies while rescuing content from them as part of the library’s Future Nostalgia project. Why is Future Nostalgia’s work so important? There is limited time to image floppy disks (i.e., duplicate the data on them) because their material can degrade and oxidize over time.

“A lot of the ones that we have in our collection are dating from the ’70s, ’80s, ’90s,” Talboom said. “So, we’re talking at least 30 years by, even getting very close to 50 years for some of them.”

Submission + - It takes less than $1k to access unencrypted satellite data: study (itbrew.com)

Submitted by Nerval's Lobster
Nerval's Lobster writes: Have you ever been tempted to spend less than $1,000 on satellite equipment—just so you can show how much sensitive data can be easily accessed?

Computer scientists from the University of California, San Diego, and the University of Maryland answered “yes” to that question. In a research paper published Oct. 13, they wrote that they can use satellites to access large amounts of sensitive and unencrypted traffic from a variety of sectors, including the telecommunication, retail, and even the military.

The setup. The researchers focused their study on geostationary (GEO) satellites, which orbit the Earth’s equator, receiving and amplifying signals from the ground. Hardware used to conduct the study included a Ku-Band satellite dish, a low-noise block downconverter to amplify weak signals, and a dish motor to enable automated movement for tracking purposes, among other materials. In total, the equipment ran the researchers just under $700, or roughly what you’d pay to rent a one-bedroom apartment in Wichita, Kansas.
EU

New Large Coral Reef Discovered Off Naples Containing Rare Ancient Corals (independent.co.uk) 13

Posted by EditorDavid from the reefer-gladness dept.
Off the southwest cost of Italy, a remotely operated submarine made "a significant and rare discovery," reports the Independent — a vast white coral reef that was 80 metres tall (262 feet) and 2 metres wide (6.56 feet) "containing important species and fossil traces." Often dubbed the "rainforests of the sea", coral reefs are of immense scientific interest due to their status as some of the planet's richest marine ecosystems, harbouring millions of species. They play a crucial role in sustaining marine life but are currently under considerable threat...

hese impressive formations are composed of deep-water hard corals, commonly referred to as "white corals" because of their lack of colour, specifically identified as Lophelia pertusa and Madrepora oculata species. The reef also contains black corals, solitary corals, sponges, and other ecologically important species, as well as fossil traces of oysters and ancient corals, the Italian Research Council said. It called them "true geological testimonies of a distant past."

Mission leader Giorgio Castellan said the finding was "exceptional for Italian seas: bioconstructions of this kind, and of such magnitude, had never been observed in the Dohrn Canyon, and are rarely seen elsewhere in our Mediterranean". The discovery will help scientists understand the ecological role of deep coral habitats and their distribution, especially in the context of conservation and restoration efforts, he added.
The undersea research was funded by the EU.

Thanks to davidone (Slashdot reader #12,252) for sharing the article.

Submission + - How the hacks in 'Hackers' hold up (itbrew.com)

Submitted by Nerval's Lobster
Nerval's Lobster writes: Hackers rollerbladed into theaters almost exactly 30 years ago. The 1995 movie features young, fashionable, rebellious techies (Jonny Lee Miller, Angelina Jolie, Matthew Lillard, and others) as they go up against a corrupt security officer (Fisher Stevens) framing them for an oil-tanker cyberattack.

Nathan Hunstable remembers watching Hackers shortly after its release, when he was a young teenager who had “zero interest in computers.” Now CISO at CEC Entertainment, owner of Chuck E. Cheese, Hunstable’s interest in computers has upped a bit.

We asked the CISO (who began his IT career as a movie-theater network admin) a simple question with a complex answer: How does Hackers—and its many hacks—hold up? Get your popcorn ready. Some security threats—like social engineering—never die.

Submission + - How USB-C Ended the Great Connector Wars (itbrew.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: It's easy to forget the dark ages of peripheral connectivity. A twisted nest of proprietary connectors was the norm. Then, in 2014, a hero emerged: USB-C. It promised a reversible connector, high-speed data transfer, and enough power to charge a laptop. It was a revolution. This article from IT Brew breaks down the three waves of USB-C adoption, from its humble beginnings in the PC industry to its EU-mandated takeover of the mobile world. It's how a single connector brought order to the chaos and became the undisputed king of the hardware industry.

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