Flash Player Security Flaws Patched
Adobe has today issued an emergency update to patch two security holes in its Adobe Flash Player software. Links to sites hosting the malicious code are embedded in phishing e-mails aimed at the aerospace and manufacturing industry, and also against Mac OS X users.
The malware infects computers with a trojan virus in a number of executable files and a number of DDLs that allows virus distributors to remotely access the computer. Flash versions affected include Adobe Flash Player 11.5 on Windows and Mac OS X, and 11.2 on Linux. The security flaw also affects certain preinstalled platforms such as Flash in IE10 and Chrome, as well as Flash Player 11.1 on Android, although these will be automatically updated in routine software updates.
Source: threatpost.com
Read More ...
Only Apple Left in eBook Price Fixing Scheme as Macmillan Settles with DOJ Last October, Amazon Kindle owners received some good news in that some companies would be issuing refunds for price-adjusted eBooks. Several publishers and Apple were involved in an alleged price fixing scheme to try and combat Amazon's dominance, but last October three publishers settled. Penguin Books settled in December, which left just Macmillan and Apple as the final two. Now, however, it's just Apple as Macmillan has reached a settlement agreement with the DOJ. As part of the agreement, Macmillan is prohibited from entering into any new discounting agreements on eBooks, and report to the DOJ on any eBook opportunities and communcation with its rivals. The DOJ expects many Macmillan titles to drop in price, though no word was made on whether it or Penguin would issue refunds like HarperCollins, Simon & Schuster, and Hachette. Macmillan's CEO, John Sargent, is not too happy about the settlement, as he believes it's harmful to the entire industry and his company will have a "pricing disadvantage for two years." He also states his company did nothing wrong with the pricing, even if the DOJ and others disagree. As for Apple, well, there's a court date coming up this June to try and settle with the last holdout. Source: Ars Technica Read More ...
Earth-Like Planet May Be Nearer Than Thought If you go far enough into the past you will find that people believed Earth was the only planet capable of supporting life. Now that assumption is in doubt as we know there are likely billions of planets orbiting millions of stars, and there is a chance some of them orbit in the habitable zone and look like Earth. Now researchers at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics have determined that such a planet may be as near as 13 light years away. The researchers arrived at this figure after reexamining data from the Kepler Space Telescope, which hunts for planets. Their analysis determined that approximately 60% of red dwarf stars should have a planet smaller than Neptune orbiting them. Most of these planets are likely too large and too far from the star to support life, but some 6% should be approximately the size of Earth and in the star's habitable zone. Red dwarfs are the most common kind of star and roughly 75% of the stars near us are red dwarfs, so even at just 6%, there is a good chance the nearest Earth-like planet is just 13 light years away. Of course this planet would be very different from our own as it will be orbiting the smaller and cooler star much more closely, which means they have a very short year. The researchers did identify three red-dwarf systems that are likely to have a planet in the habitable zone, and the longest year amongst them was just 56 days. Source: Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics Read More ...
New Call of Duty Game to Release this Year In a move that comes as no surprise, Activision has confirmed that a new Call of Duty game will be released in the fourth quarter of this year, just in time for the holiday shopping season. Activision didn't confirm what the title of the game will be, but it is expected to be Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4. Actor Bill Murray, who did voice work for Modern Warfare 3, was reported to have said, "I'm doing work on a sequel to Modern Warfare 3, it carries straight on and I only ever appear in the Modern Warfare games," which further points to the new game being Modern Warfare 4. Source: Trusted Reviews Read More ...
Thermaltake Announces Chaser A31 Case The Chaser A31 case is the newest mid tower offering from Thermaltake. The case is available in colors of black, white, and blue and features a windowed side panel. Up to five 120mm case fans can be installed and there is room for CPU coolers up to 160mm in height and GPUs up to 410mm in length. A removable hard drive cage allows for up to six 3.5" or 2.5" drives and the case also has three 5.25" bays. The front panel features two USB 3.0 and audio connectors, and a bottom mounted PSU rounds out this case. Read More ...
Nanoscale Capsule to Help Kill Cancer Cancer, in all its forms, can be a very difficult disease to treat as it is our bodies' own cells that have mutated to form the tumors and are in close proximity to healthy cells. This can make surgery impossible but chemotherapy will kill more than just the cancer cells, which is why researchers are working to find means to selectively target cancer cells and preserve their healthy neighbors. Now researchers at the University of California, Los Angeles have developed a means to deliver a protein to kill cancer cells, without hurting healthy cells. The researchers have created shells roughly 100 nm wide out of a water-soluble polymer that are able to enter a cell carrying the protein apoptin. Once within the cell, the polymer degrades and releases the protein which triggers the cancer cell to self-destruct. Healthy cells however are not affected by apoptin, so if the polymer shell were absorbed by the wrong cell, no harm would come to it. An important characteristic of the polymer shell is that it can be produced under mild conditions, so as not to damage the protein it contains. The researchers have tested this delivery method on human breast cancer cells within lab mice, and resulted in a significant reduction of tumor growth. The researchers are still working on this design though, trying to make it better at targeting cancer cells and survive long in the blood stream. Source: University of California, Los Angeles Read More ...
Understanding Wear at the Atomic Level Among the reasons solid state drives are replacing hard disk drives is the lack of moving components, which means there are no components to mechanically wear out. Of course, SSDs suffer a different kind of wear, as do many other technologies such as the nanotechnology of the future. Unlike some forms of wear HDDs and SSDs undergo, the wear nanotechnology suffers is not well understood, but researchers at the University of Pennsylvania have recently uncovered some of its secrets. At the macroscale there are two main processes that dominate mechanical wear; plastic deformation and fracture deformation. Plastic deformation involves a material changing shape without breaking, and if the material breaks, that is a fracture deformation. At the nanoscale, where atoms press and rub against each other, researchers had theorized a different kind of deformation takes place, and now the University of Pennsylvania has caught it in action. By running a silicon-tipped atomic force microscope over a piece of diamond within an electron microscope, it has been confirmed that atoms will actually transfer from one material to another. This process of atomic attrition is actually related to well-established science, which is useful for discovering the mathematics that governs the wearing process. Understanding the process better should enable more resilient nano-devices to be built in the future, which will increase both functionality and decrease cost. Source: University of Pennsylvania Read More ...
Grabbing Light to Reflect Color Within arm's length of me are multiple examples of reflective displays that conserve power by operating without a backlight. One of the displays is actually a writing tablet that utilizes liquid crystals while the others are eink readers that move small particles to create images. While largely the technologies are different, both technologies monochromatic, but researchers at the University of Michigan are looking to change that. Iridescence is a phenomenon that is not uncommon in Nature, as it is what gives peacock feathers' their color, amongst other materials. The various colors of a peacock feather are created by special grooves that only reflect certain colors of light, but the angle you view the grooves at affects the color you see. The researchers have successfully replicated the iridescent effect without that angle dependency by etching nanoscale cavities into a surface. When light falls on these cavities, a specific frequency is trapped, so it is missing from what is reflected back to your eyes. (The etching holds the negative of the image you see.) So far the researchers have only produced static images this way, but they hope to create moving images this way soon. When that is achieved, it will be interesting to see what uses the technology will have, as displays and counterfeit-protection already come to mind. Source: University of Michigan Read More ...
Available Tags:Security , Apple , Thermaltake ,
No comments:
Post a Comment