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Submission + - Intel Offers More Insight on its 3D Memory (itworld.com)

Submitted by itwbennett
itwbennett writes: When Intel and Micron Technology first announced the 3D XPoint memory in July, they promised about 1,000 times the performance of NAND flash, 1,000 times the endurance of NAND flash, and about 10 times the density of DRAM. At OpenWorld last week, Intel CEO Brian Krzanich disclosed a little more information on the new memory, which Intel will sell under the Optane brand, and did a demo on a pair of matching servers running two Oracle benchmarks. One server had Intel's P3700 NAND PCI Express SSD, which is no slouch of a drive. It can perform up to 250,000 IOPS per second. The other was a prototype Optane SSD. The Optane SSD outperformed the P3700 by 4.4 times in IOPS with 6.4 times less latency.

Submission + - Google Threatens Action Against Symantec After Botched Investigation

Submitted by itwbennett
itwbennett writes: Through its acquisition of Verisign's authentication business unit in 2010, Symantec became one of the largest certificate authorities (CAs) in the world. In September of this year, Google discovered that Symantec had issued a pre-certificate for google.com without its knowledge. Symantec's initial investigation of the incident determined that 23 test certificates had been issued for domain names belonging to Google, Opera and three other unnamed organizations. But Google quickly found additional unauthorized certificates that Symantec missed. Now, Google wants Symantec to disclose all certificates issued by its SSL business going forward.

Submission + - Australia Working On High-Tech Shark-Detection Systems (itworld.com)

Submitted by jfruh
jfruh writes: Even if you're a frequent ocean swimmer, you're much more likely to die in a car accident than from a shark attack — and yet sharks strike fear into people's hearts in ways that directly affect the economies of surf paradises like Australia. That's why the Australian government is working on a host of techologies to detect shark incursions on popular beaches, including drones and smart buoys that can identify potential predators.

Submission + - Microsoft to Pay up to $15K for Bugs in Two Visual Studio Tools (itworld.com) 1

Submitted by itwbennett
itwbennett writes: Yesterday, Microsoft started a three-month bug bounty program for two open source tools that are part of Visual Studio 2015. The program applies to the beta versions of Core CLR, which is the execution engine for .NET Core, and ASP.NET, Microsoft's framework for building websites and web applications. Bounties range from $500 to $15,000, although Microsoft will reward more 'depending on the entry quality and complexity.' The highest reward will go to researchers who've found a remote code execution bug with a functioning exploit and an accompanying, high-quality white paper. On the low end, cross-site scripting or cross-site request forgery bugs with a low-quality report will get $500.

Submission + - Oracle Fixes Java Vulnerability Used By Russian Cyberspies (itworld.com)

Submitted by itwbennett
itwbennett writes: Oracle said Tuesday that it has fixed Oracle fixed 154 security flaws in Java and a wide range of its other products, including one that Russian cyberespionage group Pawn Storm used to launch stealthy attacks earlier this year. The vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2015-4902, was being used by the Pawn Storm attackers to enable the execution of a malicious Java application without user interaction.

Submission + - In Battle With Ad Blockers, Ad Industry Fesses Up To Alienating Users (itworld.com)

Submitted by itwbennett
itwbennett writes: In a post on the IAB (Internet Advertising Bureau) website Thursday, Scott Cunningham, senior vice president of technology of IAB and general manager of its Tech Lab, issued what amounts to an apology for '[losing] track of the user experience' and called on advertisers 'to do better.' But it may be a case of too little, too late as 'a report released in August forecasted that U.S. websites will lose US$21.8 billion in ad revenue this year due to ad blockers,' writes Jeremy Kirk.

Submission + - House of Representatives Proposal Aims To Regulate Car Privacy (itworld.com)

Submitted by itwbennett
itwbennett writes: Even though, as reported today on Slashdot, 'experts from government, industry, and academia say they have no confidence they'll develop a secure system that can protect users from tracking and privacy breaches,' a subcommittee of the U.S. House of Representatives have 'proposed that the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration set up an Automotive Cybersecurity Advisory Council to develop cybersecurity best-practice.' The draft proposal would require vehicle manufacturers to 'develop and implement' a privacy policy outlining their information-gathering practices, and would make vehicle data hacking illegal and subject to a $100,000 penalty for each violation.

Submission + - Beware of Oracle's Licensing 'Traps,' Law Firm Warns (itworld.com)

Submitted by itwbennett
itwbennett writes: Slashdot readers are no strangers to Oracle's aggressive licensing practices, practices that have earned the notoriety over the years. This week, Texas law firm Scott & Scott wrote a blog post warning enterprises about the 'traps' in Oracle software licensing. One of the biggest problems with Oracle software is how difficult it is for companies to track internally what they're using and how they're using it, said Julie Machal-Fulks, a partner with Scott & Scott, in an interview with Katherine Noyes. 'They may use just one Oracle product and think they're using it correctly, but then Oracle comes along and says, 'no, you're using it wrong — you owe us a million bucks.'

Submission + - Barnes & Noble Has Been Quietly Refreshing Its Nook Hardware (itworld.com)

Submitted by itwbennett
itwbennett writes: Peter Smith writes that he 'had more or less written off the Nook when Barnes & Noble farmed hardware duties out to Samsung.' But now that Amazon is aiming for the low end with its downgraded Fire tablet line, Barnes & Noble has an opportunity to 'carve out a niche on the higher end of things,' says Smith. And so it has been quietly moving in that direction. Yesterday, Venture Beat wrote about the newly (and stealthily) launched $250 Samsung Galaxy Tab E Nook. As Smith notes, 'the specs for this new tablet aren't anything special,' which might explain the stealthy launch, except that another, pricier Nook tablet apparently came out a month ago (again, according to VentureBeat), the Samsung Galaxy Tab S2 Nook.

Submission + - Did You Get the Best Chip In Your iPhone 6S? (itworld.com)

Submitted by itwbennett
itwbennett writes: Apple is splitting the manufacture of the A9 processor for its iPhone 6S between TSMC (~60%) and rival Samsung (~40%) — 'and they are not created equal', writes Andy Patrizio. For starters, Chipworks noted that Samsung uses 14nm while TSMC uses 16nm. And a Reddit user posted tests of a pair of 6S Plus phones and found the TSMC chip had eight hours of battery life vs. six hours for the Samsung. Meanwhile, benchmark tests from the folks at MyDriver (if Mr. Patrizio's efforts with Google Translate got it right) also found that the Samsung chip is a bigger drain on the phone's battery, while the TSMC chip is slightly faster and runs a bit cooler. So how do you know which chip you got? There's an app for that.

Submission + - Dell, EMC Said To Be In Merger Talks

Submitted by itwbennett
itwbennett writes: According to a Wall Street Journal report, Dell might buy some or all of storage giant EMC (the grain of salt here is that the Journal's report cited unnamed sources, and cautioned that the the companies might not finalize any agreement.) If the report has it right, though, 'a total merger would be one of the biggest deals ever in the technology industry,' writes Stephen Lawson for the IDG News Service, 'with EMC holding a market value of about US$50 billion. It would also bring together two of the most important vendors to enterprise IT departments.'

Submission + - Why Is RAM Suddenly So Cheap? (itworld.com)

Submitted by jfruh
jfruh writes: The average price of a 4GB DDR3 memory DIMM at the moment $18.50 — a price that silicon tech blogger Andy Patrizio calls "just crazy." Why is it so cheap? The memory business tends to go in boom and bust cycles, but the free availability of Windows 10 means that fewer people are upgrading their PCs, reducing RAM demand — and prices might stay low for another two years.

Submission + - Nissan Creates The Ultimate Distracted Driving Machine (itworld.com)

Submitted by jfruh
jfruh writes: More and more research is suggesting that it isn't safe to text or even talk on our phones hands-free while driving, but one brave car company is pushing full-speed in the other direction. Nissan has created a concept car in which every surface, including the entire dashboard and even the seats, is a display device. The car is the result of "extensive" surveys with the younger generation that came to the conclusion that, according to Nissan, young people "feel that time spent in a car should be time for connecting and sharing experiences with friends."

Submission + - 30 years a sysadmin (itworld.com)

Submitted by itwbennett
itwbennett writes: Sandra Henry-Stocker’s love affair with Unix started in the early 1980s when she 'was quickly enamored of the command line and how much [she] could get done using pipes and commands like grep.’ Back then, she was working on a Zilog minicomputer, a system, she recalls, that was 'about this size of a dorm refrigerator’. Over the intervening years, a lot has changed, not just about the technology, but about the job itself. 'We might be ‘just' doing systems administration, but that role has moved heavily into managing security, controlling access to a wide range of resources, analyzing network traffic, scrutinizing log files, and fixing the chinks on our cyber armor,’ writes Henry-Stocker. What hasn’t changed? Systems administration remains a largely thankless role with little room for career advancement, albeit one that she is quick to note is ‘seldom boring’ and ‘reasonably' well-paid.

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