Month: February 2018

Enlarge / Babcock Ranch doesn't want to be any other developer-driven southwest Florida today. (credit: Dyllan Furness)

BABCOCK RANCH, Florida—About a decade ago, NFL lineman-turned-real estate developer Syd Kitson began to have a vision. Fiber-optic Internet fed into every home. Self-driving cars ferried kids back-and-forth from school. A great blue sea of solar panels stretched to a horizon line of pines, soaked up rays in the Sunshine State.

Kitson wanted to turn the abandoned land he saw around him in Southwest Florida into a sort of future town, a place running entirely on the latest and greatest in energy-efficient technology. So in 2006, Kitson purchased 91,000 acres of mostly undeveloped agricultural land just 15 miles northeast of Fort Myers. He named the development Babcock Ranch, honoring the family who sold it to him.

There’s never been a shortage of real estate developers wanting to capitalize on Florida, of course. Yet Kitson promised his town would be different, better because it would be as sustainable as possible. When media outlets (ABC, CBS) eventually saw it, they dubbed Babcock Ranch America's "first solar-powered town."

(credit: Jeremy Brooks)

An Arkansas man has been sentenced to serve almost three years in federal prison for developing advanced malware that he knew would be used to steal passwords, surreptitiously turn on webcams, and conduct other unlawful actions on infected computers.

Taylor Huddleston, 27, of Hot Springs, Arkansas, admitted in July that he was the developer of NanoCore, a remote-access trojan that he sold online, documents filed in federal court in Virginia show. In a statement of facts signed by Huddleston, the defendant confirmed that from 2012 to 2016 he marketed the malware on Hack Forums, a site that offers discussions on a wide range of topics including hacking. Huddleston also agreed with prosecutors that NanoCore and available plugins offered a full set of features including:

• a keylogger that allowed customers to record all keystrokes typed
• a password stealer that extracted passwords saved and sent them over the Internet to the customer
• the ability for customers to remotely turn on webcams and spy
• the ability to view, delete, and download files
• the ability to lock infected computers until users paid customers a ransom
• a "booter" or "stresser" that allowed infected computers to participate in distributed denial-of-service attacks

The statement of facts, signed on July 25, said:

Enlarge (credit: Valentina Palladino)

Mixed reviews and price outrage met the Matebook X, Huawei's first true ultrabook, when it debuted last year. But the Chinese company isn't giving up on PCs: it debuted the Matebook X Pro at this year's Mobile World Congress. The new laptop is slightly larger than its predecessor, and Huawei attempted to right some of the Matebook X's wrongs with a wider array of spec options, discrete graphics, and a tiny hidden webcam.

Let's talk about that webcam. Upon opening the Matebook X Pro, you're met with a 14-inch, 3,000 x 2,000 touchscreen with nearly nonexistent bezels on all four sides. According to Huawei, the Matebook X Pro has a 91-percent screen-to-body ratio. That's much higher than other ultrabooks considering most fit a webcam somewhere near the display panel, typically embedded on the top or bottom bezel.

To glean the most immersive screen experience possible, Huawei got creative with the webcam placement. A recessed camera lies under a camera button on the top-most row in the middle of the keyboard—give that button a press and a tiny camera pops up from the chassis.