Month: October 2016

If you want hardcore gaming performance, but need it in a system that's portable, if not completely lightweight, then Razer's new Blade Pro could be just the ticket. Razer is calling it the "desktop in your laptop," and they the company has a point.

On the inside, the system packs a quad core Skylake processor, an 8GB Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080 GPU, 32GB RAM, up to 2TB of NVMe SSD storage in RAID 0, Thunderbolt 3, and a 4K G-Sync capable screen. That's a machine that isn't giving much up in performance to most desktop PCs, so already justifies Razer's strapline... but it's the next thing they did that really makes this a laptop desktop.

(credit: Razer)

The Blade Pro doesn't have the usual membrane keys found in laptops. It has a full mechanical keyboard, with switches—not rubber domes—beneath each key. OK, it's still a laptop, so it's a low profile mechanical keyboard with reduced key travel and chiclet style buttons. But it's a mechanical keyboard nonetheless (Razer also has a similar mechanical mechanism for its iPad Pro keyboard). And of course, being a Razer laptop, it's not just a mechanical keyboard. It's a mechanical keyboard that can be lit up with any color of the rainbow. Alongside it sits a giant touchpad.

Microsoft posted revenue of $20.5 billion in the first quarter of its 2017 financial year, a negligible rise on the same quarter last year. Operating income was $5.2 billion, down 8 percent year on year, net income was $4.7 billion, down 4 percent, and earnings per share were $0.60, down 2 percent.

As ever, Microsoft also offered alternative figures that book Windows 10 revenue up front instead of amortized over several years. Using that regime for both this year and last, revenue was up 3 percent at $22.3 billion, operating income was flat at $7.1 billion, net income up was up 6 percent at $6.0 billion, end earnings per share were up 9 percent at $0.76.

The company continued to cite negative impact on foreign earnings due to the strength of the US dollar; at constant exchange rates everything looks rosier.

Google had a self-driving car sitting at the show, but it wasn't driving itself anywhere.

On Wednesday, California’s Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) held a meeting to discuss a set of proposed rules (PDF) that would govern how state regulator would deal with autonomous vehicles in the near future.

The California DMV’s rules lifted from guidelines that the National Highway Transportation Safety Authority (NHTSA) published last month then made voluntary. That troubled automakers and autonomous software engineers from Google, Ford, Volkswagen, and Honda, all of which currently have licenses to test autonomous vehicles on California’s roads as long as those cars have a qualified driver.

Eighteen companies working on self-driving vehicles have licenses to test autonomous vehicles in the state. California’s strong technology industry made it a hotbed for autonomous driving research, and the state’s large population often means that companies will adapt their product to meet California’s regulatory demands if they’re more stringent than rules governing other states in the nation.

The spear-phishing e-mail received by Clinton campaign staffer William Rinehart matches messages received by both former Secretary of State Colin Powell and Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta. (credit: The Smoking Gun)

The breach of personal e-mail accounts for Clinton presidential campaign chairman John Podesta and former Secretary of State Colin Powell have now been tied more closely to other breaches involving e-mail accounts for Democratic party political organizations. Podesta and Powell were both the victims of the same form of spear-phishing attack that affected individuals whose data was shared through the “hacktivist” sites of Guccifer 2.0 and DCLeaks.

As Ars reported in July, the spear-phishing attack used custom-coded Bit.ly shortened URLs containing the e-mail addresses of their victims. The URLs appeared in e-mails disguised to look like warnings from Google about the victims’ accounts. These spear-phishing attacks were tracked by the security firm SecureWorks as part of the firm’s tracking of the “Fancy Bear” threat group (also known as APT28), a hacking operation previously tied to a phishing campaign against military and diplomatic targets known as Operation Pawn Storm.

As The Smoking Gun reported in August, one of these e-mails was sent to William Rinehart, a staffer with the Clinton presidential campaign. Rinehart’s e-mails were leaked on the DCLeaks site. DCLeaks also carried the e-mails of Sarah Hamilton, an employee of a public relations firm that has done work for the Clinton campaign and for the DNC. Hamilton's e-mails were offered to The Smoking Gun by someone claiming to be Guccifer 2.0 via a password-protected link on the DC Leaks site.

Enlarge (credit: George Hodan)

Since June, some entity has been releasing e-mails and electronic documents obtained via network intrusions and credential thefts of politicians and political party employees. Some of the releases have appeared on sites believed to be associated with Russian intelligence operations; others have appeared on Wikileaks. On occasion, the leaker has also engaged journalists directly, trying to have them publish information drawn from these documents—sometimes successfully, other times not.

The US government has pinned at least some of the blame for these leaks on Russia. This has led some observers to argue that WikiLeaks and Russian intelligence agencies are "weaponizing" the media. This is what national security circles refer to as an "influence operation," using reporters as tools to give credibility and cover to a narrative driven by another nation-state. The argument is that by willingly accepting leaked data, journalists have (wittingly or not) aided the leaker's cause. As such, they have become an "agent of influence."

The Grugq, a veteran information security researcher who has specialized in counterintelligence research and a former employee of the computer security consulting company @stake, penned an article about the topic yesterday. "The primary role for an agent of influence," he wrote, "is to add credibility to the narrative/data that the agency is attempting to get out and help influence the public." Such agents might friendly with or controlled by the agency trying to spread the information, but they can also be unwitting accomplices "sometimes called a 'useful idiot,' unaware of their role as conduits of data for an agency."

Enlarge (credit: Getty | Media for Medical)

The National Center for Homeopathy is slamming the Food and Drug Administration’s recent warnings and investigation regarding homeopathic teething gels and tablets, calling the agency’s moves “arbitrary and capricious.” In a statement on its website, the NCH went on to blame the media’s “exaggerated fear mongering” and “dramatic headlines” for getting homeopathic teething treatments largely pulled from the market.

The NHC issued a call to action among homeopaths to “correct misconceptions” and spread the information that homeopathy has been proven safe and effective.

“Despite these facts, groups interested in seeing homeopathy destroyed continue to hammer away at the system - making exaggerated claims that create misunderstandings about and limit consumer access,” the NCH said (emphasis theirs).

Abigail Bassett

AUSTIN, Texas—It’s a rare thing for a modern-day car to excite me. Don’t get me wrong, most of the cars now on the market are fantastic machines—they do exactly what they aim to do, and they do it well. It’s just rare to find an everyday car that inspires any kind of excitement. The 2016 Volkswagen Golf R, however, is a whole different animal.

I spent a week behind the wheel of the third-generation Golf R here in Austin and couldn’t wipe the smile from my face. Fast, responsive, enjoyable to drive in traffic or on the highway, and even more fun to toss around in the Hill Country, the hot hatch gets VW’s turbocharged, 2.0L, inline four-cylinder engine and puts out 292hp (217kW) at 5,000rpm and 280lb-ft (380Nm) of torque from 1,800 to 5,000 rpm. There's a choice of transmissions with a six-speed dual-clutch DSG available, but our test Golf R got the new-for-2016 six-speed manual. The EPA rates the manual at 22mpg city and 31mpg highway, but don't expect to see those numbers if you rag it.