Month: February 2018

Enlarge (credit: Scott Olson | Getty Images)

Add Tesla to the legion of organizations that have been infected by cryptocurrency-mining malware.

In a report published Tuesday, researchers at security firm RedLock said hackers accessed one of Tesla's Amazon cloud accounts and used it to run currency-mining software. The researchers said the breach in many ways resembled compromises suffered by Gemalto, the world's biggest SIM card maker, and multinational insurance company Aviva. In October, RedLock said Amazon and Microsoft cloud accounts for both companies were breached to run currency-mining malware after hackers found access credentials that weren't properly secured.

The initial point of entry for the Tesla cloud breach, Tuesday's report said, was an unsecured administrative console for Kubernetes, an open source package used by companies to deploy and manage large numbers of cloud-based applications and resources.

Enlarge (credit: Swype)

Swype, the influential smartphone keyboard, is dead. XDA Developers is reporting that Swype's owner, Nuance Communications, is discontinuing development of the popular keyboard app. While it might still exist in the iOS and Android app stores for now, it will be left to rot.

In a statement on its website, Nuance said it was leaving the "direct-to-consumer keyboard business" to "concentrate on developing our AI solutions for sale directly to businesses." Nuance—which bought Swype in 2011 for $102 million—has long been a force in voice recognition and text-to-speech software, and it helps companies build consumer products (like this BMW 7 Series) with its voice technology. Lately the company has also set its sights on the healthcare market.

Swype is noteworthy as the third-party smartphone keyboard that originated gesture typing. Rather than holding a phone in both hands and tapping on each letter, Swype let you hold the phone in one hand, hold a finger down on the screen, swing it around the keyboard from letter to letter, and lift off to spell a word. Swyping, as it was called, wasn't as exact of an input as tapping on each key, but it was close enough that the software could usually figure out your intent. Most of all, it was fast, especially considering that it only took one hand to type.

Enlarge / The 30TB Samsung PM1643 SSD. (credit: Samsung)

If you need to pack more storage into your enterprise systems, then boy has Samsung got the SSD for you. The new PM1643 boasts a capacity of 30.72TB in a standard 2.5-inch drive.

On the inside, the drive has nine flash controllers driving 32 1TB packages of NAND flash, with each package containing 16 layers of 512Gb 3-bit-per-cell V-NAND. There's also 40GB of DDR4 RAM. The RAM is unusual, too; the 8Gb chips are built using Through Silicon Vias (TSVs), enabling them to be stacked vertically. They're assembled into 10 packages each of 4GB.

The drive uses a 12Gb/s Serial Attached SCSI interface. Samsung claims it can reach 400,000 read and 50,000 write random IOPS, with sequential read and write speeds of 2,100MB/s and 1,700MB/s, respectively.

Enlarge / The proposed route between Mumbai and Pune. (credit: Virgin Hyperloop One)

Virgin Hyperloop One signed an agreement with the Indian state of Maharashtra to conduct a feasibility study and build a demonstration track that could lead to the construction of a hyperloop system between two of the state's major city centers: Mumbai and Pune.

Ryan Kelly, director of marketing for the startup formerly known simply as Hyperloop One, said that the pact between Virgin Hyperloop One and Maharashtra represents "the strongest language we’ve seen from a government to date." The company, which recently received a sizable investment from the Virgin Group and counts billionaire founder Richard Branson among its board members, intends to complete a feasibility study within the next six months and complete a demonstration track in two to three years.

Kelly told Ars in an email that "the plan is that this track will go from use as a demonstration to part of the live track." He added that the track from Mumbai to Pune could be completed in three to five years.

Enlarge / Choose wisely. (credit: Getty | Mario Tama)

There are more than 90,000 vitamin and dietary supplement products sold in the US. They come in pills, powders, drinks, and bars. And they all anticipate some better versions of ourselves—selves with sturdier bones, slimmer waist lines, heftier muscles, happier intestines, better sex lives, and more potent noggins. They foretell of diseases dodged and aging outrun.

On the whole, we believe them. Supplements are a $30 billion industry in the US. Recent surveys suggest that 52 percent of Americans take at least one supplement—and 10 percent take four or more. But should we? Are we healthier, smarter, stronger, or in any way better off because of these daily doses?

The answer is likely no. Most supplements have little to no data to suggest that they’re effective, let alone safe. They’re often backed by tenuous studies in rodents and petri dishes or tiny batches of people. And the industry is rife with hype and wishful thinking—even the evidence for multivitamins isn’t solid. There are also outright deadly scams. What’s more, the industry operates with virtually no oversight.