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Angry iPhone fans will have to wait until March to fix their handsets, despite promises from Apple to replace ageing batteries. The tech company previously admitted deliberately reducing the performance of older smartphones to extend their battery life. It offered to replace the power packs in the iPhone 6 or later even if the devices passed Apple's Genius Bar diagnostic test according to an internal memo. Customers have taken to social media to express their outrage at being told the firm has run out of stock and won't be getting more batteries in for at least two months. News of...

I bought an external backup disk and it will not install/PC will not recognize it. I am running Win 7 on a Dell PC. External drive is an ACOMDATA. Plugged it in the USB 2.0 port and no matter what I do the PC cannot find it except as "2.0 HDD Device." Cannot open it, cannot copy anything to it and it does not appear when I select Computer Devices. Cannot see it in "install a device." Suggestions? Thanks.

AMD have updated their web page and clarified a bit more on speculative_execution vulnerabilities with some additional details on current state of affairs and AMD actions.

A collaboration led by scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Brookhaven National Laboratory has observed an unexpected phenomenon in lithium-ion batteries—the most common type of battery used to power cell phones and electric cars. As a model battery generated electric current, the scientists witnessed the concentration of lithium inside individual nanoparticles reverse at a certain point, instead of constantly increasing. This discovery, which was published on January 12 in the journal Science Advances, is a major step toward improving the battery life of consumer electronics. "If you have a cell phone, you likely need to charge its battery...

F-Secure has reported another serious flaw in Intel hardware, which could enable hackers to access corporate laptops. Standard password of Intels Management Engine BIOS Extension are rarely changed and can invoke business laptops vulnerable to unauthorized remote access, claims F-Secure. Intels Management Engine BIOS Extension, or MEBx, contains the standard log-in combination 'admin', 'admin' and because many users simply do not change it, according to F-Secure this opens the door to an easy to set-up attack. Attackers can open the BIOS Extension during startup with Ctrl + P, even if the user has set a bios password. Then they can manage settings of the Management Engine, reports dw.com."The issue...

China experts and former intelligence officials are raising concerns about user data privacy following the acquisition of Grindr, the world’s largest gay dating application, by a Chinese technology firm. The Chinese government, they say, could be in a position to demand sensitive and embarrassing details on the lives of millions of non-Chinese citizens. This week, the Kunlun Group completed a full buyout of Grindr, a gay, bi, trans, and queer dating app that claims 3.3 million daily users. The Chinese firm bought 60 percent of the company in Jan. 2016 for $93 million and has now acquired the remaining stake...

Microsoft has given the world new versions of PowerShell that bring the popular automation and scripting tool to MacOS and Linux.PowerShell Core 6.0’s both an upgrade and a replacement for its predecessors.It’s a replacement because Microsoft is no longer actively developing its predecessor, “Windows PowerShell”. That tool will be kept secure in future updates to Windows Server and Windows.Those of you looking for future fun, by way of enhancements, need to adopt PowerShell Core. That moniker reflects the fact it runs with the .Net Core, rather than the Windows-only .NET framework.The change has been made because Microsoft wants sysadmins to...

Facebook is tweaking what people see to make their time on it more “meaningful” in a move that could hurt publishers and news organizations that rely on it to spread their content. Facebook has said before that it will emphasize personal connections over business pages and celebrities that people follow. But the latest move represents a major shift, one intended to highlight the posts users are most likely to engage with rather than passively consume.The company says people will likely spend less time on Facebook as a result. The changes come as the company faces criticism that social media can...

Facebook is about to jump into the consumer hardware business in a big way with a video chat device named "Portal," which will put it in direct competition with Amazon’s hugely popular line of Echo voice-controlled devices, Cheddar has learned. The device is designed to work in the home and represents Facebook’s first serious foray into selling consumer hardware, people familiar with the matter said. Rather than position the device as a smart assistant akin to Amazon’s Echo speakers, Facebook intends to pitch Portal as a way for families and friends to stay connected through video chatting and other social...

Earlier this year Forbes reported on an especially creepy strain of malware known as FruitFly targeting Apple Macs. At the time, it was unclear just what the spy tool was for, though it appeared to be used for surveilling people's personal Macs, in particular peeping at them through their webcam. Now the U.S. Department of Justice has unveiled an indictment against 28-year-old North Royalton, Ohio, resident Phillip Durachinsky, who is not only accused of spying on Apple Mac owners via Fruitfly but also of producing child pornography. Prosecutors alleged Durachinsky had been installing spyware on people's PCs for more than...

The Director of IBM Research wanted a very quick video for a keynote speech he was giving, so I stayed up all night making this for him. This was so big and new that we put it out with bugs in the video that was running on the computer screen. The music is by David Jameson, a computer scientist friend who had a song in the top 10 in Ireland. Made about 1990 - 27 years ago!

https://www.projectveritas.com/2018/01/09/undercover-video-sr-network-security-engineer-reveals-twitter-ready-to-give-trumps-private-dms-to-doj/

Interesting video.

Yesterday , my wife shut down our HP before I could stop Windows Updates for the time being until MS gets the patch issue resolved . Athlon 2 prosessor / Windows 7 / 64 bit . After rebooting a few times yesterday we got the computer to work again and I left it on all night so I could use this morning . Seemed to be working OK but after I went into Windows Update to check download history - where I discovered the newest patch had been installed " successfully " - and then closed that window and again...

Apple just released iOS 11.2.2 with some Safari and WebKit improvements to mitigate the Spectre vulnerability. macOS is also receiving an update. It’s a supplemental update to macOS High Sierra 10.13.2 and it includes the same fix.As always, you should update your devices with the latest security patches. In this case, Meltdown and Spectre are serious vulnerabilities. With Meltdown, a malicious application running on an unpatched device can read the unencrypted kernel memory. You don’t want anyone to grab your password and private encryption keys.Meltdown was already addressed in previous updates. iOS 11.2, macOS 10.13.2 and tvOS 11.2 already...

Jeff Bezos, the newly minted richest man in the world, is now the wealthiest person of all-time after his fortune soared to new heights. Shares in Amazon hit an all-time high on Monday, which lifted Bezos’ net worth to a record $105.1billion, according to Bloomberg. That figure eclipses the $100billion worth that Microsoft boss Bill Gates amassed back in April 1999. In the last 12 months, Amazon’s stock has climbed by nearly 57 per cent. So far in 2018, the e-commerce giant’s shares have jumped 6.6 per cent. Amazon continued its dominance over the recent holiday period, grabbing 89 per...

A series of flaws have been discovered in Intel, AMD, and ARM chipsets that allow speculative references to be probed for privileged data. "Meltdown" is a flaw currently believed to affect only Intel processors and "melts security boundaries which are normally enforced by the hardware". "Spectre" is a flaw that affects Intel, AMD, and ARM processors due to the way "speculative execution" is handled. Both could theoretically be used to read information from a computer's memory, including private information like passwords, photos, messages, and more. Apple has apparently already started patching Meltdown in macOS. Here's what you need to know....

What happens when you pay two monkeys unequally? Watch what happens. An excerpt from the TED Talk: "Frans de Waal: Moral behavior in animals."

British T.V. personalities, Eric Robinson and David Nixon, introduce us to an electro-mechanical, polyphonic tape replay keyboard otherwise known as the 'Mellotron.'

Hundreds of robot realtors are helping Bay Area renters find new homes Mark Austin — Posted on January 6, 2018 Some potential renters in California meet an unusual assistant when they show up for a tour of their new dream home — a robot realtor named “Zenny” that gives a tour of the house, wirelessly connected to high-tech property management startup Zenplace. The Mercury News recently followed one prospective buyer as he checked out a place in Santa Clara. “I wasn’t expecting a robot,” chuckled Gilbert Serrano as he arrived at the two-bedroom rental house. The three-foot-tall robot had an...