Decrypted: Westworld goes full blackhat

In the new episode of Ars TV podcast Decrypted, we talk to an expert in combat technology about the park’s robots.

Enlarge / "You can have one and I can have one!" Logan says enthusiastically to William about their robots. "I won't have sex with mine either!" (credit: HBO)

William wears a white hat, but his creepy future brother-in-law Logan keeps begging him to go blackhat. Now Logan may get his way. One of the biggest questions in Westworld is why this place brings out the worst in people. Is it because we use robots to kill each other in the real world? Is it because we're fundamentally evil? Or are we all being manipulated by a storyline that some godlike figure implanted in our memories?

On this week's Decrypted podcast, I'm joined by combat technology expert Peter W. Singer to talk about war in episode 4 of Westworld, "Dissonance Theory."

Singer is the author of Wired for War and strategist at the New America Foundation. His latest book, Ghost Fleet, mashes up science fiction and nonfiction to explore the future of military engagement and combat.

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How The Jester fooled Russians—and Fox News—with one simple trick.

A Tweet with cross-site scripting link convinced some he’d hacked Russian Foreign Ministry.

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In case you were busy this weekend and missed it, there was a bit of craziness involving the Russian Foreign Ministry's website, Twitter, various news outlets, and the "patriotic hacker" known as The Jester. Nothing was harmed except the credibility of several news organizations, some eardrums, and the tender feelings of some Russian officials.

If you are at all familiar with The Jester, you will know that this isn't the first time he's used Internet sleight-of-hand for propaganda and other purposes. In the past, he used web address shortener services and cross-site scripting to create the illusion that he had altered articles on the websites of the Malta Independent Online and the Tripoli Post. He's also used various other tricks to mess with the minds of would-be Anonymous members. And yes, he's launched distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks against jihadist sites and the Westboro Baptist Church.

Last week, in the wake of the mega-DDoS attack on Dyn, after indicating he believed Russia was somehow behind the attacks, The Jester posted this message on Twitter:

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Renewable capacity passes coal, additions outpacing demand in US, Europe

153 GigaWatts of renewables make up over half the new capacity added globally.

Enlarge (credit: Steve Braund)

According to the International Energy Agency, 2015 was a banner year for renewable power, marking the first time that total installed renewable capacity passed coal. The agency just released its analysis of the medium-term prospects for renewables, which includes a look at the state of the global market in 2015. The report predicts that 2015 is only the beginning; by 2021, renewables will generae enough electricity to handle all of the demand in the US and Europe.

As of 2015, hydropower remained the largest global source of renewable electricity, accounting for just over 70 percent of it. But wind power is now 15 percent, and solar has grown from negligible to four percent. The new additions of capacity, however, indicate that these two power sources are just getting started.

Last year saw 153 GigaWatts of renewable capacity added globally, an increase of 15 percent from the year 2014. This was enough to push renewables past coal, becoming the largest source of new capacity. Wind accounted for 66 GW of these additions, with photovoltaics at 49 GW. Combined, that means that 75 percent of the new renewables were solar or wind (the remainder were primarily hydro and biomass). To provide a sense of scale, the IEA notes that this means half a million solar panels were installed every day. Two wind turbines were installed every hour—in China alone.

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Apple is 19 percent less profitable in Q4 of 2016 than in Q4 of 2015

iPhone, iPad, Mac, and “other products” are all down this quarter.

Enlarge / The iPhone 7 and 7 Plus. (credit: Andrew Cunningham)

Apple has just released its earnings report for the fourth quarter of fiscal 2016, which runs from the beginning of July to the end of September. As has been the case for the last two quarters, iPhone sales were down year-over-year, and that decline combined with sliding sales for Macs, iPads, and "other products" has driven the company's revenue and profit down even as its Services division continues to climb at a steady clip.

Apple made $9 billion in profit and $46.9 billion in revenue, compared to $11.1 billion in profit and $51.5 billion in revenue in Q4 of 2015. Its gross margin was 39.4 percent. These results beat Apple's guidance for the quarter, which predicted revenue between $45.5 billion and $45.7 billion and a profit margin between 37.5 and 38 percent.

The company predicts that it will make between $76 and $78 billion in the first quarter of fiscal 2017, with profit margins between 38 and 38.5 percent. The company made $74.6 billion in revenue in Q1 of 2016, so this would be a return to growth after three quarters of year-over-year decline.

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AT&T defends Time Warner merger, announces $35 DirecTV streaming

CEO says merger won’t raise prices, puts forth $35 DirecTV offer as proof.

Enlarge / AT&T will own a bunch of new media properties if it is allowed to buy Time Warner. (credit: Aurich Lawson)

AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson today defended his company's proposed acquisition of Time Warner, saying that critics who claim the merger will raise prices are "uninformed." As proof, he said the AT&T-owned DirecTV will soon launch a $35-per-month streaming service called DirecTV Now.

"I'm not surprised [by the criticism]. They're uninformed comments," Stephenson said in response to a question from Wall Street Journal editor Rebecca Blumenstein at the newspaper's WSJDLive Conference. "Anybody who characterizes this as a means to raise prices is ignoring the basic premise of what we're trying to do here, again a $35 product we bring into the market."

Blumenstein had asked specifically about merger criticism from Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump and Democratic vice presidential nominee Tim Kaine, noting that the Department of Justice and Federal Communications Commission have raised concerns about previous "megadeals" and antitrust issues. Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.) and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) have also claimed the merger will lead to higher prices for US consumers.

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Quartalszahlen: Apples Gewinn und Umsatz fällt zum dritten Mal in Folge

Apple meldet erneut weniger Gewinn, ist aber das profitabelste US-Unternehmen. Die Konzernführung redet alle Probleme weiter schön, und keiner nimmt das mehr ernst. (Apple, iPhone)

Apple meldet erneut weniger Gewinn, ist aber das profitabelste US-Unternehmen. Die Konzernführung redet alle Probleme weiter schön, und keiner nimmt das mehr ernst. (Apple, iPhone)

How one rent-a-botnet army of cameras, DVRs caused Internet chaos

Attacks that took down Dyn appear to have been “rented” from multiple botnets.

Enlarge / We're also mad you're connected to the Internet, toaster et al. (credit: Disney)

Welcome to the Internet of Evil Things. The attack that disrupted much of the Internet on October 21 is still being teased apart by investigators, but evidence thus far points to multiple "botnets" of Internet-connected gadgets being responsible for blocking access to the Domain Name Service (DNS) infrastructure at DNS provider Dyn. Most of these botnets—coordinated armies of compromised devices that sent malicious network traffic to their targets—were controlled by Mirai, a self-spreading malware for Internet of Things (IoT) devices.

But other systems not matching the signature of Mirai were also involved in the coordinated attack on Dyn. "We believe that there might be one or more additional botnets involved in these attacks," Dale Drew, CSO of Level 3 Communications, told Ars. "This could mean that they are 'renting' several different botnets to launch an attack against a specific victim, in which multiple other sites have been impacted."

The motive may have been blackmail, since the attacker sought a payout by Dyn to stop. But Drew warned that the huge disruption caused by the attack "could result in large copycat attacks, and [a] higher [number of] victim payouts [so] as to not be impacted in the same way. It could also be a signal that the bad guy is using multiple botnets in order to better avoid detection since they are not orchestrating the attack from a single botnet source."

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Aussie KickassTorrents Blocking Battle Continues, Despite Takedown

Despite KickassTorrents being taken offline during the summer, the battle to have clones and copies blocked by ISPs continued this week in the Australian Federal Court. Music industry groups and service providers argued over the implementation of blockades, with an old classic raising its head once again. Who will pay to protect the labels’ copyrights?

Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and ANONYMOUS VPN services.

Back in April, members of the Australian Recording Industry Association (ARIA) and Australasian collecting society APRA AMCOS teamed up to file the music industry’s first ‘pirate’ site blocking application Down Under.

Filed at the Federal Court under section 115A of the Copyright Act 1968, member labels Universal Music, Warner Music, Sony Music and J Albert & Son demanded that then leading torrent site KickassTorrents (KAT) should be blocked by the country’s ISPs.

Arguing that KickassTorrents showed a “complete disrespect for music creators and the value of music”, the industry groups asked leading ISPs Telstra, Optus, TPG, and Foxtel to stop their subscribers from accessing the site. However, during the summer that job was effectively carried out for them by the US Department of Justice, which shut down KickassTorrents and had its owner arrested.

But despite the disappearance of the site, the Aussie case has continued. The music industry is now focusing on the many clones, copies, and wannabees that are using the KickassTorrents name to get traffic, despite having nothing to do with the original site.

This week the parties were back in the Federal Court. The ISPs aren’t fighting the blocking demand per se, but as usual there’s a dispute over who will foot the bill for legal proceedings and will shoulder costs of implementing the blockades.

None of the ISPs are objecting to paying for the blocking systems to be put in place. However, they want rightsholders to pay for the initial implementation and ongoing maintenance of a block, which according to ComputerWorld will be put in place for three years.

ISP Optus estimated a cost of AUS$12,500 (US$9,533) to put blocks in place. TPG informed the court that following initial setup, each domain name would cost $50 to block.

Simplifying the rolling injunctions demands made by the movie and TV industry in the blocking case against The Pirate Bay and others, the music industry is seeking straight-forward DNS-based blocking backed up by a system which would block subsequently appearing clones, mirrors, and proxy sites.

The record labels and their allies foresee an application to the court containing details of any site they wish the ISPs to block, with the ISPs given 10 days to object to the blocking demand. The court would then decide whether the parties would need to appear before another hearing in advance of the domain being added to the blocklist.

Of course, KickassTorrents no longer exists so the continuing of a case to have it blocked is somewhat unusual, to say the least.

Illustrating just how far removed the case has shifted from its original aims is an image posted by CNET, which shows the original domains the industry wanted blocked, and how that has completely changed following the demise of KAT.

kat-block

– Kat.al is an incomplete snapshot of KAT before it went offline.
– Kattor.zyx has nothing to do with KAT, redirects to another site.
– Kickass.cd is a clone of The Pirate Bay.
– Kickasstorrents.immunicity.date is another ‘snapshot’ site.
– Kickass.pe is completely inactive
– Kickass.Ukbypass.download (see Kickass.cd)
– Kickass.Unblocked.tv (see Kickass.cd)

The case (which now has only tenuous links to KickassTorrents) continues alongside the movie industry’s blocking case against The Pirate Bay. That too is experiencing argument over who will pay for what and has also been affected by takedowns.

The Pirate Bay, isoHunt, Torrentz, TorrentHound and Solarmovie are featured in that action, but only the first two domains are intact after last three permanently closed (1,2) in recent months.

Only time will tell whether the expense and inevitable game of whac-a-mole will be worth it, but all the signs point to this being a complex battle with no definite end.

Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and ANONYMOUS VPN services.

Next-gen MacBook Pro leaked, features OLED toolbar above the keyboard

Next-gen MacBook Pro leaked, features OLED toolbar above the keyboard

Apple’s holding an event later this week, where the company is expected to introduce a new MacBook pro laptop, among other things. And rumors have been making the rounds for months that one new feature for that laptop would be a touchscreen OLED toolbar above the keyboard, allowing you to interact with software-defined “keys” that could change depending on what you’re doing with the laptop.

Now it looks like those rumors were true.

Continue reading Next-gen MacBook Pro leaked, features OLED toolbar above the keyboard at Liliputing.

Next-gen MacBook Pro leaked, features OLED toolbar above the keyboard

Apple’s holding an event later this week, where the company is expected to introduce a new MacBook pro laptop, among other things. And rumors have been making the rounds for months that one new feature for that laptop would be a touchscreen OLED toolbar above the keyboard, allowing you to interact with software-defined “keys” that could change depending on what you’re doing with the laptop.

Now it looks like those rumors were true.

Continue reading Next-gen MacBook Pro leaked, features OLED toolbar above the keyboard at Liliputing.

macOS 10.12.1 spills the beans on the new MacBook Pro

Oops: TouchID, the “magic toolbar,” and thinner footprint all clearly visible.

Apple

Who needs rumor sites and analyst reports when Apple leaks its own hardware ahead of time in its own software? An eagle-eyed MacRumors reader went digging into the macOS 10.12.1 update that was released yesterday and found an official Apple Pay-related image that outs the new MacBook Pro and a whole bunch of its banner features.

The image, seen above, appears to show off the 13-inch MacBook Pro that Apple is expected to reveal at its hardware event on Thursday. The screen bezel is noticeably thinner than in the current design, and there's less metal surrounding the keyboard, which is in keeping with reports that the hardware would have a smaller, slimmer profile than the current model. The row of function keys (including the Escape key and the power button) has also been replaced with a long narrow black strip, which rumors have said is an OLED display panel that can display different information depending on the app you're using. The right-most section of the strip includes an embedded Touch ID fingerprint sensor, which can be used for Apple Pay and presumably to unlock your Mac.

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