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16 Jan 04:00
Apple, Amazon, Microsoft & More Settle Lawsuits With Boston University
by samzenpus
curtwoodward writes "Boston University hadn't been very aggressive with intellectual property lawsuits in the past. But that changed in 2012, when the school began suing the biggest names in consumer tech, alleging infringement of a patent on blue LEDs — a patent that, no coincidence, is set to expire at the end of 2014. As of today, about 25 big tech names have now settled the lawsuits, using 'defensive' patent firm RPX. A dozen or so more defendants are probably headed that way. And BU is no longer a quiet patent holder."
Luciano and -1 others like this
16 Jan 03:59
Things We Saw Today: Random Oscar Winner Generator
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16 Jan 02:49
Kristen Stewart joins a "romantic" remake of 1984 because life is pain
by Rob Bricken
Oh my god. OH MY GOD. Okay. Deep breath. For the full effect of this news, I'm going to have to let US Magazine explain it, because I think it most effectively sells the horror of what's happening here.
    
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16 Jan 02:10
Scene Report: Metal
by gguillotte
Once the capital of cardigans and the bastion of birth-control glasses, Portland is now a metal mecca. Last year was the biggest yet for loud and heavy local exports: Gateway metal band Red Fang had its latest album, Whales and Leeches, debut at No. 66 on the Billboard charts. To put that in perspective, Black ’N Blue’s debut peaked at No. 129 in 1984.
16 Jan 02:09
Point-of-sale malware infecting Target found hiding in plain sight
by Dan Goodin
firehose' this malware has been used in previous intrusions dating back to at least June 2013; in the screen shot below left, we can see a notation added to that virustotal submission, “30503 POS malware from FBI."
The source close to the Target investigation said that at the time this POS malware was installed in Target's environment (sometime prior to Nov. 27, 2013), none of the 40-plus commercial antivirus tools used to scan malware at virustotal.com flagged the POS malware (or any related hacking tools that were used in the intrusion) as malicious. “They were customized to avoid detection and for use in specific environments,” the source said.
That source and one other involved in the investigation who also asked not to be named said the POS malware appears to be nearly identical to a piece of code sold on cybercrime forums called BlackPOS, a relatively crude but effective crimeware product. BlackPOS is a specialized piece of malware designed to be installed on POS devices and record all data from credit and debit cards swiped through the infected system.
According the author of BlackPOS—an individual who uses a variety of nicknames, including “Antikiller”—the POS malware is roughly 207 kilobytes in size and is designed to bypass firewall software. The barebones “budget version” of the crimeware costs $1,800, while a more feature-rich “full version”—including options for encrypting stolen data, for example—runs $2,300.
Krebs went on to report that sources told him the attackers broke into Target after hacking a company Web server. From there, the attackers somehow managed to upload the POS malware to the checkout machines located at various stores. The sources said the attackers appeared to then establish a control server inside Target's internal network that "served as a central repository for data hoovered by all of the infected point-of-sale devices." The attackers appear to have had persistent access to the internal server, an ability that allowed them to periodically log in and collect the pilfered data.
The details haven't been independently verified by Ars. That said, Wednesday's report is consistent with what's already known about the compromise.'
Independent security journalist Brian Krebs has uncovered important new details about the hack that compromised as many as 110 million Target customers, including the malware that appears to have infected point-of-sale systems and the way attackers first broke in.
According to a post published Wednesday to KrebsOnSecurity, point-of-sale (POS) malware was uploaded to Symantec-owned ThreatExpert.com on December 18, the same day that Krebs broke the news of the massive Target breach. An unidentified source told Krebs that the Windows share point name "ttcopscli3acs" matches the sample analyzed by the malware scanning website. The thieves used the user name "Best1_user" to log in and download stolen card data. Their password was "BackupU$r".
The class of malware identified by Krebs is often referred to as a memory scraper, because it monitors the computer memory of POS terminals used by retailers. The malware searches for credit card data before it has been encrypted and sent to remote payment processors. The malware then "scrapes" the plain-text entries and dumps them into a database. Krebs continued:
Read 2 remaining paragraphs | Comments
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16 Jan 02:07
Chandler Parsons tries to dunk on Jason Smith, is denied
by Conrad Kaczmarek
firehosesomething something New Orleans and Houston etc.
Chandler Parsons did not complete his dunk in this particular case.
Chandler Parsons is extremely handsome, but his good looks do nothing to Jason Smith. Jason Smith had very little interest in getting dunked on. Weird, right?
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16 Jan 01:24
From the article, Olympic Construction Sins: The Leaning Houses...
From the article, Olympic Construction Sins: The Leaning Houses of Sochi by Benjamin Bidder.
Photo credit: Spiegel Online
Caption: Skiba has stuck boards beneath his refrigerator in order to ensure that it stands upright. Excavators dug out a huge pit behind his house to store debris from Olympic construction sites. It appears that the digging altered the flow of groundwater on the hill and is causing the homes of Skiba and others to slowly slide down the hill.
16 Jan 01:24
Shoots & Leaves
Shoots & Leaves:
Take a picture with Shoots & Leaves, and it gets uploaded to a hosting service. The app gets a link to the uploaded photo and does something with it. You decide what that something is. For example, you can:
- Create a reminder
- Send a text message
- Send an email
- Copy to the clipboard
- Open it in Safari
Shoots & Leaves also supports sending to third-party apps, including Omnifocus and Drafts.
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16 Jan 01:24
Steam Dev Days Is Off To A Great Start
firehose'Valve reportedly has been showing off their own VR solution that is even superior to Oculus Rift
Valve is working on a vendor-independent OpenGL debugger'
Kicked off this morning in Seattle was Valve's first Steam Dev Days conference where they were pushing their Steam Machines and Linux-based SteamOS agenda, OpenGL/Linux gaming, VR, and other hot topics...
16 Jan 01:22
Bus crash results in muppet row
by Rob Beschizza
firehosevia multitasksuicide
After a passenger bus crashed into a footbridge in Lancaster, England, a man attempted to pose a Kermit the Frog puppet alongside the wreckage for a photo opportunity. Police ordered him to leave—but not before he was captured on film.
"He was frogmarched from the scene", reports The Visitor, which added that the bus lost its roof when it hit the low bridge at about 11:40 a.m. on Tuesday. [via Arbroath]
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16 Jan 00:58
3 months behind the counter at Voodoo Doughnut
firehoseWWeek: 'there’s pressure on the crew working the register to take in $5,000 in an eight-hour shift selling a product that costs an average of $2, much of it purchased by confused tourists who just survived a gauntlet of aggressive panhandlers. That girl with the septum piercing may look like she’s too cool to care while working the register. But if she doesn’t take in $1,000 during the first four hours of her Friday-afternoon shift, there’s a decent chance she won’t be here Saturday.
To folks on the other side of the register, Voodoo Doughnut looks like bedlam. The music is loud, the employees are terminally hip, and the lobby is decorated with satanic bric-a-brac and stained-glass portraits of owners Tres Shannon and Kenneth “Cat Daddy” Pogson.
But everything at Voodoo is deliberate, right down to the strategies for getting customers out the door fast, the secret ways cashiers push certain doughnuts on the unsuspecting, and that counting room in the back with piles of cash.
Voodoo already has two busy locations in Portland and another in Eugene. This week, Voodoo hosts a grand-opening party for its first out-of-state store, in Denver. Austin, Texas, is rumored to be next. Pogson told the Portland Business Journal last June that Voodoo plans to expand into 10 to 20 stores across the country.
Don’t be distracted by the crushed-velvet portrait of rapper Rick Ross or the ear-splitting death metal—Voodoo is perhaps the most ruthlessly efficient business in Portland. Somewhere, there’s probably a pink spreadsheet showing a 10-percent increase in productivity as “Maneater” plays in the kitchen.'
BONUS: Danzig photo
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submitted by Neechevo [link] [39 comments] |
16 Jan 00:56
Wargames Illustrated is looking to add a new Sub-Editor to their team. Are you the perfect fit for them? Source From the announcement: Wargames Illustrated is a part of the Battlefront family of companies and the world’s premier tabletop gaming magazine. Its continued expansion and future aspirations have provided us with the opportunity to offer [...]
Wargames Illustrator hiring Sub-Editor
by Polar_Bear
firehoseyay
"at our studio in Nottingham, England."
boo
Wargames Illustrated is looking to add a new Sub-Editor to their team. Are you the perfect fit for them? Source From the announcement: Wargames Illustrated is a part of the Battlefront family of companies and the world’s premier tabletop gaming magazine. Its continued expansion and future aspirations have provided us with the opportunity to offer [...]
16 Jan 00:55
Adrian Carton de Wiart - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
by gguillotte
Sir Adrian Paul Ghislain Carton de Wiart[1] VC, KBE, CB, CMG, DSO (5 May 1880 – 5 June 1963) was a British Army officer of Belgian and Irish descent. He served in the Boer War, First World War, and Second World War; was shot in the face, head, stomach, ankle, leg, hip, and ear; survived two plane crashes; tunnelled out of a POW camp; and bit off his own fingers when a doctor refused to amputate them. Describing his experiences in World War I, he wrote, "Frankly I had enjoyed the war."[2]
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16 Jan 00:55
A Busy Doctor’s Right Hand, Ever Ready to Type - NYTimes.com
by gguillotte
Without much fanfare or planning, scribes have entered the scene in hundreds of clinics and emergency rooms. Physicians who use them say they feel liberated from the constant note-taking that modern electronic health records systems demand. Indeed, many of those doctors say that scribes have helped restore joy in the practice of medicine, which has been transformed — for good and for bad — by digital record-keeping.
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16 Jan 00:55
Brony Live Wallpaper (Apache2 license)
by gguillotte
firehosethe miracle of open source
Featuring characters from MLP:FIM (trademarked to Hasbro Inc.).
GIFs are from the Desktop Ponies project and licensed as CCBYSANC.
16 Jan 00:53
Vladimir Putin is struggling to put on a hockey helmet
by Rodger Sherman
firehose'Russian agents have since been charged with putting small amounts of radioactive materials in the helmet's food. We are also scared because we just made a joke about Vladimir Putin and do not want to die.'
More like Vladimir can't-Put-on-a-hockey-helmet
Here at SB Nation, we are big fans of Vladimir Putin sports. Like the time he stole Robert Kraft's Super Bowl ring and said he could kill somebody with it, or any of the many videos of him killing people while doing judo. (Not actually killing them. Just judo-killing them.)
That's why we were very glad to find this video of him playing hockey in advance of the Sochi Olympics. Last week, he was joined by Belarus president Alexander Lukashenko and hockey legend Pavel Bure.
It's a slow-paced game and he doesn't seem to be testing the goalie much, but perhaps a younger, spryer Putin was someone not to be messed with on the ice. He is 61, after all, and this is much, much, much, much better than we will be at any sport when we are 61. And his hockey fist-bumps are on point!
However, now Reddit uncovered Putin struggling to put on a helmet:
His first attempt, as you can see, is backwards. Russian agents have since been charged with putting small amounts of radioactive materials in the helmet's food. We are also scared because we just made a joke about Vladimir Putin and do not want to die.
firehose likes this
16 Jan 00:50
Newswire: John Hodgman will play a radio rival to Dan Castellaneta on Parks And Recreation
firehoseas rival public radio hosts
16 Jan 00:48
The Fart Party Really Stinks, Julia Wertz
The Fart Party Really Stinks, Julia Wertz
The Fart Party Really Stinks, Julia Wertz
The Fart Party Really Stinks, Julia Wertz
The Fart Party Really Stinks, Julia Wertz
The Fart Party Really Stinks, Julia Wertz
firehose likes this
16 Jan 00:46
Microsoft Extends Updates For Windows XP Security Products Until July 2015
by samzenpus
An anonymous reader writes "Microsoft today announced it will continue to provide updates to its security products for Windows XP users through July 14, 2015. Previously, the company said it would halt all updates on the end of support date for Windows XP: April 8, 2014. For consumers, this means Microsoft Security Essentials will continue to get updates after support ends for Windows XP. For enterprise customers, the same goes for System Center Endpoint Protection, Forefront Client Security, Forefront Endpoint Protection, and Windows Intune running on Windows XP." 
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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16 Jan 00:46
theatlantic: The Dark Side of the Truffle Trade Nighttime...
The Dark Side of the Truffle Trade
Nighttime heists, Chinese knockoffs, and poisoned meatball-sabotage: the high-stakes pursuit of the world’s most-prized fungus,Read more. [Image: Reuters/Stefano Rellandini]
16 Jan 00:46
Verizon leads top wireless carriers in bill size, at $148 a month
by Jon Brodkin
Verizon Wireless has the largest average bill size among the four major mobile carriers in the US, while T-Mobile has the lowest, according to a survey released yesterday by research firm Cowen and Company.
The survey of 1,876 US-based mobile customers in Q4 2013 pegged the average monthly Verizon bill at $148, higher than Sprint ($144), AT&T ($141), and T-Mobile ($120):
Cowen and Company
The numbers reflect postpaid subscribers and include all taxes and fees. They include both single users and family plan customers. Across the industry, 68.5 percent of postpaid respondents were paying for family plans, with 26.1 percent on individual plans and 5.4 percent on corporate plans. Verizon had the most family and corporate plans, with 72.3 percent of respondents paying for family plans and 7.0 percent on corporate plans. The report did not break out the average individual bill size by carrier.
Read 9 remaining paragraphs | Comments
16 Jan 00:45
The '60s Batman TV show is finally coming to DVD (thanks to Conan?)
by Rob Bricken
You have possibly waited decades for a hiome video release of the campy, ridiculous wonderful 1960s Batman TV series starring Adam West, and now your wait is over, because Warner Bros. is finally releasing the show in a box set... as first reported by Conan O'Brien on Twitter. Wait, what?
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16 Jan 00:42
Your Automobile is Very Likely Spying on You
by Kevin Murray
firehosevia Albener Pessoa
everything is always watching beat
...but Republicans and Democrats in the U.S. Senate are uniting to put a stop to unfettered snooping via the "black boxes," or "event data recorders," placed in your car by automakers.
Is your car spying on you? If the vehicle is a fairly new model it probably is, thanks to a "black box" that collects data about what’s going on in your car. And there’s no off switch or way to opt out. By September all new cars sold in the United States will be required to have black boxes, or as they’re more formally called, "event data recorders."
"The amount of data that they record is vast. And it's not capped," said Nate Cardozo, a staff attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF).
That’s just one way new technology installed in automobiles is invading our privacy. At the 2014 Consumer Electronics Show (CES) last week, Google and a handful of automobile manufacturers, including Audi, GM, Honda and Hyundai, announced a partnership designed to bring the Android mobile platform to vehicles. Those devices are capable of broadcasting your location, Web pages you may have looked at, stores you shopped in and much much more. Chevrolet, for example, showed off a camera mounted on the windshield that records the driver’s point of view and a microphone in the cabin records any noises made in the car.
...Consider what Ford’s top sales guy James Farley said at a CES event: "We know everyone who breaks the law. We know when you’re doing it. We have GPS in your car, so we know what you’re doing." Farley quickly retracted his impolitic remarks, but they give you insight into how seriously some automakers take your privacy. (more)
Is your car bugged?
See if you are on the list.
If so, read this.
~Kevin
"The amount of data that they record is vast. And it's not capped," said Nate Cardozo, a staff attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF).
That’s just one way new technology installed in automobiles is invading our privacy. At the 2014 Consumer Electronics Show (CES) last week, Google and a handful of automobile manufacturers, including Audi, GM, Honda and Hyundai, announced a partnership designed to bring the Android mobile platform to vehicles. Those devices are capable of broadcasting your location, Web pages you may have looked at, stores you shopped in and much much more. Chevrolet, for example, showed off a camera mounted on the windshield that records the driver’s point of view and a microphone in the cabin records any noises made in the car.
...Consider what Ford’s top sales guy James Farley said at a CES event: "We know everyone who breaks the law. We know when you’re doing it. We have GPS in your car, so we know what you’re doing." Farley quickly retracted his impolitic remarks, but they give you insight into how seriously some automakers take your privacy. (more)
Is your car bugged?
See if you are on the list.
If so, read this.
~Kevin
16 Jan 00:40
Google pagando jumbocat para funcionários
by Carlos Cardoso
firehoseshared for the banner
No final do Século Passado surgiu uma empresa que tentou quebrar o monopólio das barcas e aerobarcos na travessia Rio-Niterói. Usavam duas embarcações de classe catamarã, com o inacreditavelmente ingênuo nome de… Jumbo Cat. Com medo da concorrência a Barcas S/A entrou na Justiça, tanto fez que a Transtur acabou falindo, para desespero de quem queria uma travessia rápida sem pagar a fortuna dos aerobarcos ou sofrer a muvuca das barcas. Agora os Jumbocats voltam a ser polêmica, graças ao Google.
A empresa contratou o serviço de um catamarã para transportar seus funcionários através da Baía de São Francisco, e as autoridades não estou gostando, pois o serviço é computado como transporte privado e isso rende só US$ 50,00 por atracagem. Estranhou? Eu explico.
Mountain View, onde fica a sede do Google é subúrbio, fica a 64 km de São Francisco, e a galera jovem e descolada não quer morar no fim do mundo, mesmo que topem trabalhar lá. Querem morar em São Francisco, Oakland, em Alameda, onde estão os nuclear weassels. Quem não gosta disso é a população local, que viu suas cidades invadidas por um bando de geeks endinheirados, o preço dos imóveis foi pras alturas, a infraestrutura local fica sobrecarregada e a entrada tributária gerada por esses novos moradores simplesmente não compensa. O resultado? Manifestações de amor assim:
Isso foi em Oakland. Com direito a pedra quebrando janela do busão do Google e tudo. A coisa chegou a um ponto onde as prefeituras estão pensando em cobrar para que as empresas usem os pontos de ônibus municipais. Isso se traduz, no caso do Google, em US$ 100 mil por ano. Por ônibus. Daí a alternativa do Jumbocat.
O que fica evidente é que administração municipal é bem mais complicado do que em SimCity. E que, em países de verdade, mesmo empresas bilionárias não conseguem sempre tudo que querem.
The post Google pagando jumbocat para funcionários appeared first on Meio Bit.
16 Jan 00:40
OPM considering transgender care in future employee health plans
by Andy Medici
firehosevia multitasksuicide
Federal employees may be one step closer to being able to access transgender care through their federal health insurance coverage. The Office of Personnel Management is currently evaluating the exclusion of transgender care in the federal employee health benefit program, according to the agency. But the agency said that no decision has been made yet […]
16 Jan 00:19
Senator Feinstein: 'It should be a crime for a private individual to arm a drone'
by Russell Brandom
firehoseright to bear drones
In today's Senate drone hearing, Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) got personal, describing a rally held outside her home earlier this year. "I went to the window to peek out, and there was a drone right there looking in. Obviously the drone's pilot was surprised, because the drone wheeled around and crashed," she told the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation. "What kind of camera was on the drone? What kind of microphone? Could an enterprising person have attached a firearm to it?"
The hearing mostly concerned with the FAA's roadmap for regulating civilian drone use, spurred on by Amazon's recent announcement of a drone delivery program. But Senator Feinstein used her time to specifically speak out specifically against the prospect of private citizens equipping drones with deadly force, potentially opening the door for a new legislative avenue regulating the unmanned crafts. "We should not allow armed drones in the United States, period," the Senator told the committee. "It should be a crime for a private individual to arm a drone."
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