"Gauss," as Kaspersky Lab researchers have dubbed the malware, was devised by the same "factory" or "factories" responsible for the Stuxnet worm used to disrupt Iran's nuclear program, as well as the Flame and Duqu Trojans.
With the ability to monitor and steal data from several banks, the suggestion is that this malware monitors financial transactions related to terrorism. In addition to doing who knows what with a chunk of the payload that will likely never be decrypted, it installs a random custom font.
I think we've basically outlawed everything having to do with the world of stuff, and the only thing you're allowed to do is in the world of bits. And that's why we've had a lot of progress in computers and finance. Those were the two areas where there was enormous innovation in the last 40 years. It looks like finance is in the process of getting outlawed. So, the only thing left at this point will be computers and if you're a computer that's good.
— Peter Thiel, Fortune Brainstorm Tech
Thiel makes a lot of interesting points about how technological progress seems to be diminishing and how existing tech giants stockpiling cash is likely a sign that they see no major shifts coming in which to invest at a better return. Also interesting is that Amazon is called out as one of the few companies that breaks this stereotype as they invest in more automation, faster delivery, and move into integrated content and devices.
We propose an automatic technique for repairing program defects. Our approach does not require difficult formal specifications, program annotations or special coding practices. Instead, it works on off-the-shelf legacy applications and readily-available testcases. We use genetic programming to evolve program variants until one is found that both retains required functionality and also avoids the defect in question. Our technique takes as input a program, a set of successful positive testcases that encode required program behavior, and a failing negative testcase that demonstrates a defect.
A best paper award winner at ICSE in 2009, this is a very interesting read on the possibility that test suites can sufficiently declare the specification of the program, and defects discovered can be removed automatically.
Testing with a production Surface tablet right now. I really like my job's perks.
As part of its Olympic sponsorship, AT&T is bringing some innovation into its advertising with a campaign that integrates the record-breaking and award-winning performances of Team USA athletes into a series of spots created by BBDO New York that are scheduled to air the day after the events. In the spots, aspiring athletes are shown watching an Olympic performance (the real footage from the day before) on their phones and then making a note of the winning time or score as motivation.
This was definitely a really cool idea and had caught my attention before I read this.
A stock-trading algorithm gone awry appears to have thrown American stock markets into chaos on Wednesday, following a surge of volatile trading after the opening bell. Financial news sites have pinpointed the problem to Knight Capital Group. The brokerage firm's algorithm appears to have triggered purchases and sales of millions of shares for 30-45 minutes.
This cost them approximately $10 million per minute for a total loss of approximately $440 million dollars. In other related news the company's stock closed with a single day loss of over 60 percent.
By plugging an Arduino microcontroller into the [lock], Brocious found that he could simply read this 32-bit key out of the lock's memory. No authentication is required — and the key is stored in the same memory location on every Onity lock.
If that wasn't bad enough, the lock unlocks when you play the key back to it. I feel safe.
An analysis of the survival rate shows that, in contrast to the Titanic, the crew generally does the best, and children the worst. Women started out doing pretty poorly, but their survival have been going up as the years have passed. But before we conclude that chivalry was dead and seeing a revival, we'll caution you that it may be just that more women now learn how to swim.
Seems like there's not a lot of chivalry on sinking ships, regardless of whether or not the captain yells 'women and children first'.
Real Actors Performing Yelp Reviews #1
Sweden's ambassador to Belarus was expelled and the Stockholm government retaliated by ousting two Belorussian diplomats in a spat that began with reports of a mass drop of teddy bears over the eastern European nation.
That's a pretty great lede.