Month: April 2016

Neil Jacobs, chief atmospheric scientist with Panasonic Weather Solutions, talks about his global weather model (credit: Panasonic Weather Solutions)

For a long time, weather forecasting was largely the domain of governments, with the National Weather Service leading the way in the United States. During the last two decades, however, the private weather forecasting industry—which includes well-known companies such as AccuWeather and many hundreds of smaller businesses—has grown up and is now estimated to be worth as much as $6 billion.

Even so, these companies largely just repackage model forecasts and incorporate data from government weather agencies. The heavy lifting, in the form of sophisticated computer modeling and the processing power to run them, is still done by the large ECMWF center in Europe, NOAA's National Centers for Environmental Prediction in the United States, and similar forecasting services in Canada, Japan, and elsewhere.

All of these government agencies, with staffs generally in the hundreds of scientists, forecasters, and coders, collect weather data from a variety of sources, including shared satellite data along with in-situ observations from aircraft, balloon soundings, surface observations, and other sources. Then, using their own software, they "assimilate" these observations into physics-based forecast models that simulate weather conditions around the globe, at various levels of the atmosphere, over a 10- to 16-day period. The results from these global models are then used to predict things like the high temperature on Wednesday and whether it is likely to rain on Saturday afternoon for little Joey's birthday party.

Enlarge / An e-mail targeting a retail company to deliver point-of-sale malware. (credit: Proofpoint)

For the past decade, spear phishing—the dark art of sending personalized e-mails designed to trick a specific person into divulging login credentials or clicking on malicious links—has largely been limited to espionage campaigns carried out by state-sponsored groups. That made sense. The resources it takes to research the names, addresses, and industries of large numbers of individuals was worth it when targeting a given organization that had blueprints or some other specific piece of data prized by the attacker. But why go through the trouble to spread crypto ransomware or banking trojans to the masses when a single scam e-mail could do the trick?

Since the beginning of the year, that truism has begun to unravel. According to researchers at security firm Proofpoint, a single threat actor, dubbed TA530, has been targeting executives and other high-level employees in an attempt to trick them into installing an assortment of malware—including the CryptoWall ransomware program that encrypts valuable data and demands a hefty fee to undo the damage. Other malware spread in the campaign includes the Ursnif ISFB banking trojan and the Ursnif/RecoLoad point of sale reconnaissance trojan targeting businesses in the retail and hospitality industries. Targeted executives typically have titles of chief financial officer, head of finance, senior vice president, and director.

According to a blog post published Tuesday:

Enlarge

Following on the from the success of last year's P8—not to mention Mate S and Nexus 6P smartphones—Huawei has unveiled the P9 and P9 Plus, a pair of sharp all-metal smartphones. The P9 sports a relatively pocketable 5.2-inch 1080p edge-to-edge display, while the P9 Plus has a 5.5-inch 1080p display. Both smartphones have not one but two cameras co-engineered with iconic camera company Leica.

Sat above Huawei's now-standard fingerprint sensor on the rear of the phone are a pair of 12-megapixel Sony 12MP IMX286 sensors, which are mated to a pair of Leica Summarit H 1:2.2/27 lenses (f/2.2 aperture, 27mm focal length). One sensor records in full RGB, while the other is monochrome. While both sensors have the same 1.25µm pixels, Huawei says the monochrome sensor lets in 300 percent more light, making for far better low light photography, faster focusing, and a much wider colour gamut. The company even claims the P9's twin cameras gather 270 percent more light than iPhone 6S—although it's not clear how it got to this figure.

Like other phones that have been armed with dual camera sensors in the past—the HTC One M8 being a prime example—the P9 allows users to adjust the focal point after they've taken a photo, as well as producing what Huawei claims is "Leica-quality" bokeh (the out-of-focus blurry bits). Helping things along is a new camera UI designed by Leica that has both simple and fully manual modes. There's also a hybrid autofocus system that uses a laser for short range shooting up to 1.2 metres, the two sensors and a dedicated depth ISP for long range depth focusing focusing, and contrast focusing. For the full Leica experience, Huawei's even added the Leica shutter sound (yes, really).

(credit: Jeremy Buckingham)

Southern California Gas recently told California’s air regulator that it wants to fix the damage done by one of its leaking natural gas storage wells, which ultimately released tens of thousands of tons of methane into the atmosphere. That is, as long as making things right doesn’t cost too much.

In a proposal sent to SoCal Gas earlier this month (PDF), the California Air Resources Board (CARB) outlined sustainability projects that the utility could undertake to compensate for the pollution caused by the massive leak. Some of the projects that CARB suggested included reducing methane emissions from agriculture facilities like dairies and waste treatment plants, which are notorious for how much methane they belch; promoting sustainable energy initiatives by replacing old water heaters or subsidizing zero-emissions vehicles; and addressing “orphan” environmental issues that no company bears a responsibility for, like cleaning up abandoned oil wells.

Two weeks later, the gas company responded (PDF), saying that it would prefer to count its methane emissions using a more relaxed standard than the one CARB used in its proposal.