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On December 17, the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission issued a recall on the HP Chromebook 11 power supply/charger due to concerns with the unit overheating and possibly even melting while in use. The CPSC report states that, "Google has received nine reports of chargers overheating and melting during use. There is one report of a small burn to a consumer and one report of minor property damage to a pillow from an overheating charger."
It used to be a fantasy from Hollywood blockbusters: robots that can walk around like humans and mimic soldiers. We are getting closer and closer to making that a reality thanks to companies like Boston Dynamics, who has built the quadruped BigDog, and biped Petman, along with several other models of robots, some of which are funded by DARPA.
Google's Robotic Past
Google, which started off as an internet related services company, seems to be on a shopping spree of sorts. Boston Dynamics is its eighth robotics purchase. The acquisitions appear to point to the internet giant's determination in pioneering a future with robots. Google has previously developed the self-driving car, prompting discussion about the road legal status of a car that can drive itself, and Nevada to issue the first license allowing the operation of autonomous vehicles on its roads. Other robotics companies Google has recently purchased are Schaft, Industrial Perception, Inc, Redwood Robotics, Meka Robotics, Autofuss and Holomni, and Bot & Dolly.
Boston Dynamics Pioneering Spirit
from MIT; Marc Raibert and his colleagues founded the company in the early 1990's. Some of the current projects Boston Dynamics continues developing include BigDog, a four legged robot that can walk and climb through rough terrain, carry up to 340 pounds, and is the size of a large dog. Also in the quadruped category are Little Dog, which is small enough to fit on a hand, the LS3 which was funded by DARPA to assist soldiers walking on foot with carrying a load, and the Cheetah, a record breaking robot that can run at 29 mph.
Boston Dynamics also has created some bipedal robots, such as Petman which is used for testing protective clothing and Atlas, which is being developed to "negotiate outdoor, rough terrain."
Google Remains Quiet On Future Plans, For Now
Google has stayed fairly quiet about what its future plans are going to be, however it currently spends about $7 billion dollars per year in research and development.
Peter Diamandis posted on Google+ : "This internal robotics revolution is being led by +Andy Rubin, the Google executive who developed and ran Android, the world's most widely used smartphone software. This is being done with Larry Page's enthusiastic support, as he and his team continue to display their impressive "moonshot thinking" by investing heavily in the future."
Peter continued, " I think it will be the transformation of our society -- how we work, how we learn, take care of our sick, conduct our commerce, explore, handle disasters, fight wars... everything."
Microsoft has announced that, as of the end of October, it has ended distribution of all retail copies of Windows 7. In addition, sales of PCs with Windows 7 on them will end on an undetermined date. Mainstream support, or updates, fixes, and technical assistance, to the original version of Windows 7, is expected to end on January 13, 2015 and extended support (for the latest service pack release of Win7) will end on January 14, 2020.
A Microsoft spokesperson told TheNextWeb.com, “We have yet to determine the end of sales date for PCs with Windows 7 preinstalled.”
Microsoft, recoiling from recent revelations about government tracking of user data, made an announcement on Wednesday of its plans to more closely guard its users from snooping eyes.
“Like many others, we are especially alarmed by recent allegations in the press of a broader and concerted effort by some governments to circumvent online security measures – and in our view, legal processes and protections – in order to surreptitiously collect private customer data,” posted Brad Smith, who is General Counsel and Executive Vice President, Legal & Corporate Affairs for Microsoft.
He went on to add that the confidence of users’ private information and communications has been undermined to such a degree that Microsoft felt it must act to restore that confidence. The user data referred to here is personal information about the user and their activities, including address books, emails, video chats and more.
Encryption, Transparency, and the Law
Most of the action to be taken can be implemented immediately. In the post, Smith elaborates that Microsoft plans to expand encryption, reinforce legal protections of customer data, and enhance the transparency of the software code.
Microsoft already encrypts much of the information that passes through services such as Outlook.com, Office 365, Windows Azure, and SkyDrive. However, there will be an effort to strengthen the existing encryption across all of the services. With regard to reinforcing legal protection, Microsoft plans to notify a user if a legal order related to their data is received, and if a gag order is in place, to challenge it legally. For increased transparency, the plan is to take "additional steps to increase transparency by building on our long-standing program that provides government customers with an appropriate ability to review our source code, reassure themselves of its integrity, and confirm there are no back doors."
Smith concluded, “We all want to live in a world that is safe and secure, but we also want to live in a country that is protected by the Constitution. We want to ensure that important questions about government access are decided by courts rather than dictated by technological might. And we’re focused on applying new safeguards worldwide, recognizing the global nature of these issues and challenges. We believe these new steps strike the right balance, advancing for all of us both the security we need and the privacy we deserve.”
There’s a newly discovered Linux worm out, according to a new blog post published by Symantec. Right now, the worm appears to be affecting only x86 computers running Linux and PHP, however it can possibly attack smaller devices such as set top boxes, home routers, and security cameras. Also potentially affected are Apache web servers and PHP servers. In addition to this threat, the attacker hosts variants for other architectures including PPC, MIPSEL, MIPS and ARM.
Because many embedded devices are rarely updated due to outdated technology or some other issue, the concern remains that some devices (such as routers) may be left open to infection. The worm, which is called Linux Darlloz, utilizes an old vulnerability that had been patched back in May 2012.
In their blog post, Symantec researchers wrote, “Upon execution, the worm generates IP addresses randomly, accesses a specific path on the machine with well-known ID and passwords, and sends HTTP POST requests, which exploit the vulnerability. If the target is unpatched, it downloads the worm from a malicious server and starts searching for its next target. Currently, the worm seems to infect only Intel x86 systems, because the downloaded URL in the exploit code is hard-coded to the ELF binary for Intel architectures.”
Steps To Protect Your Devices
In the post, Symantec recommends taking the following steps:
Learning By Reading And Viewing
There’s a system named NELL at Carnegie Mellon University that is attempting to learn in the way that we do when we are young: by looking at things. Since 2010, NELL, short for Never Ending Language Learning, “has been running continuously, attempting to perform two tasks each day,” according to the CMU web site. The first task is to do what many of us do every day, but on a much larger (and faster) scale: go online and read what’s on the web, by visiting millions of web pages. The second task is to improve its competency level, thus becoming a better reader, and hopefully learner, the next day.
VoIP, also known as Voice over Internet Protocol, has become more prominent as it continues to gain popularity amongst an entire spectrum of uses and users, from business to residential. To the uninitiated, VoIP might conjure images of Vonage commercials, but with the availability of services that are customizable to a client’s specific needs, and advent of V.VoIP (Video Voice over Internet Protocol), its uses far exceed being able to call your relatives in India or Germany.
Snowden, the NSA, eavesdropping, data collection, hacking, government spying: all common keywords used daily in today’s media. If this doesn’t sound familiar to you, perhaps you’ve been spending time on a remote desert island. For the rest of us, we can’t turn the TV on or flip to a news site without hearing about government leaks, congressional hearings, or talk of the NSA or some other official agency possibly spying on the public. For that reason, and perhaps now more than ever, companies are professing their intent to protect the privacy of those whose data they are charged with protecting. Microsoft is no different.
The iPod, the iPhone, the iPad; all were innovative products that changed lifestyles. It seems that Apple is once again planning new ways of doing things. Rumors are circulating that Apple is planning to launch devices with 3D cameras as early as 2014.
AllThingsD reported on Sunday that an offer has been made by Apple to purchase PrimeSense, with an expected closing by the end of the week.
“I can say we are deeply involved with a couple of projects, and, yes, I think you will see 3D capabilities in a phone or tablet in 2014,” Tal Dagan, V.P. of PrimeSense told Forbes.
At AmiWest, the annual Amiga convention in October, keynote speaker Trevor Dickinson, who is a founding shareholder of A-EON Technology, presented a new line of Amiga motherboards. The Cyrus Plus motherboard, a successor to the AmigaONE X1000, will be built around the dual core QorIQ processors, and will range from 32 bit .5 GHz to 64 bit 2.4 GHz. Those will be the P3 and P5, respectively; the naming left up to a straw poll of enthusiasts on naming options for the new machines. In addition, through a partnership with Ultra Electronics Varisys, Amiga is planning to invest $1.2 million (USD) in Amiga hardware in a plan to develop future computers for the company.
Last week, Microsoft announced a new vulnerability that could affect TIFF images viewed in certain MS products. The flaw (CVE-2013-3906) is currently being exploited as the company works toward a patch.
According to Microsoft, "An attacker could exploit this vulnerability by convincing a user to preview or open a specially crafted email message, open a specially crafted file, or browse specially crafted web content." A successful attack would allow the attacker to gain the same administrative permissions as the current user of the system. What this means is that a user who is signed in to their computer as an administrator could be more negatively affected than a user who has limited user rights on the system.
For web sites that contain infected TIFF images, an attacker might host a web site designed to infect a user's computer. The link to the web site might come in the form of an email or instant message, which convinces a user to click on the link or image and bring the user to the web site; it might also be included in the email as an attachment. From there the user would be faced with the infected content.
Compromised Software
The following software and operating systems are vulnerable to the TIFF bug:
Microsoft has stated that, "The attacks observed are very limited and carefully carried out against selected computers, largely in the Middle East and South Asia."
Keep Computers Infection Free
Though Microsoft is still working on a permanent solution, many antivirus and security software providers have already provided updates to detect malicious software. Make sure that your antivirus is up to date. Always exercise caution when opening email attachments that have not been requested. An organization can also install Microsoft's free Enhanced Mitigation Experience Toolkit or EMET, which will apply an anti-exploit application to any vulnerable processes or applications.
In its announcement, Microsoft added that a patch would not be ready by this week's Tuesday patch release, but that it will be released with the monthly update or through an out-of-cycle security update. The original announcement from Microsoft can be found here:Security Advisory 2896666.
For those making some of the greatest sacrifices since 9/11, many are experiencing a new challenge: unemployment. Over two and a half million Americans have served in the Middle East conflicts, and now that they are home, about 9.7 percent of them are jobless, with thirty percent of vets under the age of 25 currently unemployed. Another million are expected to have transitioned out of the military by 2016.
Katherine Webster, a tech expert from the Bay Area, founded Vets in Tech just for these individuals. Formed in July of 2012, the group already has the backing of individuals well known within the tech industry such as Craigslist ‘s Craig Newmark and companies like HP, Facebook, Intuit and Cisco. Vets in Tech was designed to help veterans get their feet in the door in places such as Silicon Valley.
On Tuesday, Apple filed its first transparency report, signaling a desire to alleviate customer concerns and growing attention to privacy with regard to personal devices and services provided by the company. The data contained in the report addresses the nature of requests Apple received from law enforcement agencies via court order. According to the report, some law enforcement requests are simply meant to help a person locate a lost or stolen iPhone or when stolen phones have been discovered.
Though a gag order limits what companies can disclose regarding the details of requests for information, general information was released on data requested from January 1 to June 30, 2013. The report states, “We have reported all the information we are legally allowed to share, and Apple will continue to advocate for greater transparency about the requests we receive.” The report detailed the kind of data requests received for devices, as well as services such as iCloud and iTunes.
