Month: September 2017

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Equifax CIO, CSO “retire” in wake of huge security breach

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A monitor displays Equifax Inc. signage on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) in New York, US, on Friday, Sept. 15, 2017.

Michael Nagle/Bloomberg via Getty Images


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On Friday, Equifax announced that two top executives would be retiring in the aftermath of the company’s massive security breach that affected 143 million Americans.

According to a press release, the company said that its Chief Information Officer, David Webb, and Chief Security Officer, Susan Mauldin, would be leaving the company immediately and were being replaced by internal staff. Mark Rohrwasser, who has lead Equifax’s international IT operations, is the company’s new interim CIO. Russ Ayres, who had been a vice president for IT at Equifax, has been named as the company’s new interim CSO.

The notorious breach was accomplished by exploiting a Web application vulnerability that had been patched in early March 2017.

However, the company’s Friday statement also noted for the first time that Equifax did not actually apply the patch to address the Apache Struts vulnerability (CVE-2017-5638) until after the breach was discovered on July 29, 2017.

As Ars reported earlier in the week, Apache Struts is a framework for developing Java-based apps that run both front-end and back-end Web servers. It is relied on heavily by banks, government agencies, large Internet companies, and Fortune 500 companies. Experian, one of the three big credit reporting services, and annualcreditreport.com, which provides free credit reports, both reportedly rely on Apache Struts as well.

“While Equifax fully understands the intense focus on patching efforts, the company’s review of the facts is still ongoing,” the press release continued. “The company will release additional information when available.”

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Grilled Cheese Cooked On Shutters? After Irma, Floridians Got Creative With Food

Greg Gatscher, left, and his son, Evan, prepare the house for Hurricane Irma. Little did they know these metal shutters would later become a cooktop.

Tara Gatscher


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Tara Gatscher

Greg Gatscher, left, and his son, Evan, prepare the house for Hurricane Irma. Little did they know these metal shutters would later become a cooktop.

Tara Gatscher

The power outages that followed hurricanes Harvey and Irma are unfortunately a common reality with powerful storms, just as is the fact that the affected people need to eat.

Hurricane diets can consist of a lot of processed, prepackaged food, but with a bit of imagination or preparation, hot meals are possible.

After Hurricane Irma hit Florida, Tara Gatscher and her family returned to their house in Tampa Bay to find that while the house didn’t have any terrible damage, they didn’t have power.

During their hurricane preparations they had put up metal shutters around the house, but without any power they needed some light, so they removed a few and laid them on the patio. It was around this time that Gatscher says her 14-year-old son, Evan, started getting hungry.

“My husband is going to work and trying to deal with their power issues [and] my son is like, ‘Man, I’m hungry. I don’t like cold food. I’m starving, I need something warm,’ ” she says.

They had one propane tank, but hadn’t set up the grill yet and were unsure how much longer the food in the fridge would stay good.

Jokingly, Evan told his mom that he could probably cook some food using the metal shutters that had heated up from the sun.

“So he took some bread and some cheese before it got bad, he wrapped it in foil and he stuck it on the metal shutter that was laying on the ground and waited like five minutes and he had himself a grilled cheese sandwich,” Gatscher says.

She says she was surprised, but that the sandwich turned out well and was a large improvement from what the options the family had during the storm.

“I mean we were hungry, we were living off cereal in like an office room. We were living off crap … from the vending machines for a few days,” Gatscher says. “He just had to find something to eat that was real food.”

Evan even offered to make grilled-cheese sandwiches for the whole family if the propane tank didn’t work. The propane tank ended up working and Gatscher says the family had some stuff on the grill later.

And grilling food is a popular cooking method after storms like this, but some people do it better than others.

In Gulfport, Fla., Veronica Champion is in charge of The Historical Peninsula Inn. As Irma approached, the entire area was evacuated and Champion went to stay with some neighbors. Unlike, the Gatschers though, Champion wasn’t eating junk food.

She calls her neighbor a “grill master extraordinaire,” and for good reason. She says that while a lot of what her friends ate was basic fare that included eggs and sausage, there were some specialties, including a grilled cherry pie.

“A real cherry pie, it was perfect. It was the best cherry pie I’ve ever had,” Champion says. “We had no power, the cherry pie was frozen and he cooked it for an hour and a half on the grill. It has the flakiest crust, it was perfect. I don’t know how he did it, but it was amazing.”

Champion says this particular neighbor had quite a bit of experience with hurricanes and did prepare some items — like hushpuppies — ahead of the storm so they could be heated up and prepared later.

In between the bites of cherry pie, Champion also had to think about her business. Upon her return, she says the inn was without power, but did get it back in time before the food they had went bad. Some of the other restaurants nearby didn’t get power back as quickly, though. Champion says once the fridges at the inn were functional, they started to store food from other restaurants there, too.

That sense of community is something that Ramon Hernandez, owner of the Cuban restaurant, Pipo’s emphasized as well. In St. Petersburg, Hernandez said neither of his two locations lost power, but as they were getting up and running again, and in between the larger than usual crowds, the restaurant made sure to give back.

They worked with others in the community and provided at least 200 meals to those who still didn’t have power. Many families had gone without much to eat for two days.

“There are a lot of people less fortunate than us and I just feel blessed that we survived the storm and that we’re able to provide some relief,” Hernandez says. “It’s a time when everyone should come together and help out in rebuilding.”

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Lyft’s redesigned street concept could fix L.A. traffic

Want your city to fix its traffic issues? It should start by narrowing streets and planting trees where cars currently drive.

A new partnership with Lyft and transportation experts highlights the overlooked secrets of good urban design — and the answers may sound counterintiutive. For example, building more lanes to transport more cars isn’t a way to cut down on congestion.

With the help of architecture firm Perkins+Will and transportation consultants Nelson/Nygaard, the ride-sharing company has reimagined a street for the future. The teams reenvisioned a concept for Wilshire Boulevard in Los Angeles, a notoriously car-centric city. The average L.A. driver wastes over 100 hours a year sitting in traffic.

Wilshire Boulevard’s design is typical of the city boulevards — there are currently 10 vehicle lanes, including two lanes that buses share with vehicles.

But Lyft’s design includes trees, protected bike lanes, a loading zone for ridesharing vehicles, three narrowed lanes for vehicles and lanes for autonomous buses. The concept also rewards buses with exclusive travel lanes.

The design also features a widened sidewalk, landscaping and benches for people to sit on. It creates more welcoming spaces, so people are comfortable walking to and using public transportation.

Related: Lyft changes gears to build its own self-driving tech

The firms believe the changes would bring remarkable results: twice as many road users, such as motorists and cyclists, could use the redesigned street and vehicle lanes could transport four times as many people as before. This would be also attributed to a shift toward shared autonomous vehicles.

In Los Angeles today, 68% of people drive alone. It also takes 10 times as much road space to move someone in a car as any other mode of transportation, according to Jeff Tumlin, director of strategy at Nelson/Nygaard.

lyft la street 6 This illustrates how many people can currently use Wilshire Boulevard in Los Angeles.

Tumlin believes if people see public transportation or biking as a good alternative to driving, they’re less likely to rely on their car.

“The best way to make driving possible is to make it easy for drivers to do something other than driving,” Tumlin told CNN.

Lyft is also partnering with the Southern California Association of Governments on its 100 Hours Campaign, an effort to reduce congestion, to make this vision of smarter streets a reality.

lyft la street 5

The company, not surprisingly, believes it should largely start with carpooling. It’s offering 20% off Lyft carpooling rides in the next month in the Los Angeles area.

Los Angeles is already working to fix its traffic issues. By 2035, the city’s mobility plan — released in August 2015 — calls for half of trips to be made on public transit, biking and walking.

lyft la street 4

“If cities go this route, the result will be stronger, greener, and healthier communities,” Lyft senior director of transportation policy Emily Castor Warren told CNN. “It will also mean a healthier, more secure future, for our families and our planet alike.”

Although there are many advantages to ride-sharing, the results aren’t all rosy: A recent study found that New York traffic has worsened due to the trend. Ridesharing added 600 million miles to the city’s roads in the last three years. In much of Manhattan, average vehicle speeds have fallen 13% since 2010.

Related: How free self-driving car rides could change everything

“The current trajectory we’re on is a more congested, less walkable, less equitable city. That needs to change,” Tumlin said.

Lyft is open to congestion pricing in the U.S. European cities such as London and Stockholm are charging motorists for driving into the city center to cut down on congestion. Lyft’s rival Uber has also endorsed congestion pricing in cities, but no U.S. city has taken embraced the model yet.

“It’s worked in Europe,” Hasan Ikhrata, executive director of the Southern California Association of Governments told CNN. “It could work in Los Angeles.”

CNNMoney (Washington) First published September 18, 2017: 8:37 AM ET

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Tesla seeks patent for mobile EV battery-swapping machines

Tesla has filed a patent application for a machine that will enable technicians to swap EV battery packs in as little as 15 minutes. The EV-maker initially toyed with the idea of building rigs that can quickly replace its cars’ battery packs back in 2013 — it even demoed the system at an event. That didn’t quite pan out, but it clearly hasn’t given up on its plans of providing customers a quick way to get their packs swapped out. As Electrek notes, the new design is more compact than the one it showed off a few years ago and could even be mobile, probably so it could easily be placed in strategic locations where Superchargers aren’t available.

As you can see in the image above, the rig has the power to lift vehicles, allowing technicians easy access to the whole car as they help the machine change batteries. It won’t enable 90-second swaps like what Tesla originally promised, but waiting for 15 minutes isn’t bad at all if you find yourself low on power while driving between cities or states and there’s no Supercharger nearby. The rig in the patent was designed to service the Model S and X, but it’s not hard to imagine Tesla making one that its electric trucks can use.

USPTO

Written by Mariella Moon for Engadget.

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Board Games, Ranked 

Now that summer is fading into fall and there’s less time to be outside in the sunshine enjoying the best type of games, lawn games, people are starting to think about hunkering down for the long, cold, worst months ahead, pondering alternative, indoor diversions like board games. Here is a ranking of the best ones:

Read more…

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Boeing Tests a Lidar Laser System for Turbulence Detection

Early next year, a Boeing 777 will take off from the company’s airfield near Seattle with a laser shooting out of its nose. It may sound like a novel (and grisly) way to avoid bird strikes, but this isn’t that kind of laser. Rather, it’s part of a new system that Boeing hopes could spot brutal turbulence that can damage aircraft and toss passengers around the cabin—and give crews enough time to hunker down before the going gets tough.

While modern passenger aircraft can withstand even the bumpiest rides, turbulence remains dangerous for the people inside those planes. According to the FAA, 44 people were severely injured by turbulence in 2016, and that doesn’t count the less severe rocking and spilled drinks passengers endure on flights on a daily basis.

Boeing thinks a long-range lidar could be the answer. “We expect to be able to spot clear-air turbulence more than 60 seconds ahead of the aircraft, or about 17.5 kilometers [10.9 miles], giving the crew enough time to secure the cabin and minimize the risk of injuries,” says Stefan Bieniawski, the Boeing program’s lead investigator. (Clear-air turbulence is the sort that strikes without any visual warnings, like moving clouds.)

The lidar is the centerpiece of a new system developed by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, which has been collaborating with Boeing since 2010 to configure it for use on commercial aircraft. It projects a laser in a steady line ahead of the aircraft, while an optical sensor tracks the bits of light reflected back by dust particles along the path of the beam.

Software analyzes the aircraft’s velocity relative to the movement and velocities of particles at different distances. Significant changes in the velocity differentials—like pockets of air moving faster than the stuff around it—are signs of turbulence ahead. When the system detects those deltas, it will alert the flight crews through audible and visual cues integrated into the instrument panel. (The specifics of how to deliver those alerts are still in development.)

Even if it doesn’t give pilots enough time to steer around the threat, a 60-second warning could be a major improvement over conventional methods of turbulence detection, which rely on reports from aircraft flying the same routes and general precautions around active weather systems. At best, those systems can help pilots avoid turbulent areas but not predict when the air gets choppy from one instant to the next. Systems that use radars to bounce radio waves off water droplets don’t work for spotting clear-air turbulence. With a minute’s warning, passengers could buckle up. Flight attendants could stow their coffee pots and take their own seats.

Similar ground-based systems can detect turbulence and wind-shear around airports, but they’re the size of trucks. Now that the engineers have downsized their system so it can fit into a commercial jet without adding too much weight (about 185 pounds) or consuming too much power (3.3 watts), they can test it through Boeing’s ecoDemonstrator program. Every 18 months or so, the company selects a bunch of nascent technologies and installs them on an aircraft, which it flies twice daily for six weeks. The 2018 program will have some 30 systems on the 777, a new cargo aircraft FedEx is leasing back to Boeing.

“This is all about accelerating technologies,” said Doug Christensen, a manager in the ecoDemonstrator program. “We want to see if they work and how they integrate into the airplanes.” This year’s tech roster includes a lightweight and compact thrust reverser for the newest generation of massive jet engines, 3-D printed components, cockpit noise reduction systems, and a new biofuel.

If the lidar system proves successful, it could start spotting turbulence for commercial airlines within a few years, Boeing says. Until then, make sure to buckle up—and maybe keep a hand on that cup of joe.

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A Carbon-Fiber Cage Could Crash-Proof Drone Delivery

IBM Has Used Its Quantum Computer to Simulate a Molecule—Here’s Why That’s Big News

We just got a little closer to building a computer that can disrupt a large chunk of the chemistry world, and many other fields besides. A team of researchers at IBM have successfully used their quantum computer, IBM Q, to precisely simulate the molecular… Read more

We just got a little closer to building a computer that can disrupt a large chunk of the chemistry world, and many other fields besides. A team of researchers at IBM have successfully used their quantum computer, IBM Q, to precisely simulate the molecular structure of beryllium hydride (BeH2). It’s the most complex molecule ever given the full quantum simulation treatment.

Molecular simulation is all about finding a compound’s ground state—its most stable configuration. Sounds easy enough, especially for a little-old three-atom molecule like BeH2. But in order to really know a molecule’s ground state, you have to simulate how each electron in each atom will interact with all of the other atoms’ nuclei, including the strange quantum effects that occur on such small scales. This is a problem that becomes exponentially harder as the size of the molecule increases.

While today’s supercomputers can simulate BeH2 and other simple molecules, they quickly become overwhelmed and chemical modellers—who attempt to come up with new compounds for things like better batteries and live-saving drugs—are forced to approximate how an unknown molecule might behave, then test it in the real world to see if it works as expected.

The promise of quantum computing is to vastly simplify that process by exactly predicting the structure of a new molecule, and how it will interact with other compounds. In work published today in Nature (paywall)—and also available on the Arxiv (PDF)—the IBM team have shown that they can use a new algorithm to calculate the ground state of BeH2 on their seven-qubit chip.

In some ways, it’s a small advance. But it’s an important step on the path of ever-greater complexity in molecular simulation using quantum computers that will ultimately lead to commercially important breakthroughs.

 Even now, as the research team notes in their blog post on the work, IBM offers access to a 16-qubit quantum computer as a free cloud service. The more qubits a chip has—that is, quantum bits that can be used to encode data in multiple states at once—the greater the complexity of calculations it should be able to handle. At least in theory. As we pointed out when we made practical quantum computers one of our Breakthrough Technologies of 2017, one of the big challenges in designing quantum computers is making sure qubits remain in their delicate quantum state long enough to perform calculations. The more qubits a chip has, though, the harder that has been for researchers to do. 

Still, the day when quantum computers surpass classical machines—an inflection point known as quantum supremacy—is rapidly approaching. Some observers think a chip with 50 qubits would be enough to get there. And while the chemistry world stands to benefit immensely from such advances, it isn’t the only field. Quantum computers are expected to be superstars at any kind of optimization problem, which should help propel big advances in everything from artificial intelligence to how companies deliver packages to customers.

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