US President-elect Donald Trump answers questions from the media December 28 at Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Florida.
President-elect Donald Trump made nice with the intelligence community in a statement after he received a briefing from officials Friday. But despite his toned-down rhetoric, he didn’t concede that Russia was responsible for political hacks during the 2016 US election.
Instead, he cast further doubt on the idea that the hacks had any effect on the election whatsoever.
Trump’s statement marks a shift in tone toward intelligence officials without giving any ground on how he views the hacks. Trump has criticized the intelligence community for weeks , dismissing their assessment that Russia was responsible for hacks against the Democratic National Committee and other political organizations in the lead up to the election. «These are the same people that said Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction,» his transition team said in a statement in December.
On Friday, Trump first praised US intelligence workers, saying in his statement, «I have tremendous respect for the work and service done by the men and women of this community to our great nation. »
He went on to name a laundry list of parties, including Russia, that «are consistently trying to break through the cyber infrastructure of our governmental institutions, businesses and organizations including the Democrat National Committee. »
Also on that list: «China, other countries, outside groups and people. »
Despite these efforts, «there was absolutely no effect on the outcome of the election including the fact that there was no tampering whatsoever with voting machines,» Trump said.

© Source: https://www.cnet.com/news/trump-denies-hacking-affected-election-outcome-intelligence-briefing/
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Bose demonstrated the newest version of its active seat suspension in a commuter van.
Bose made its name in audio, and currently designs sound systems for automakers such as Nissan and Cadillac , but the company showed off another side of its business at CES 2017, active seat suspension. Already selling its unique seat suspension technology for commercial trucks, Bose is developing the technology for cars.
At CES, I rode in a van equipped with prototype versions of the seating technology, geared toward showing how riders can be more productive when their seats keep them steady.
Given an iPad and assigned writing and drawing tasks, I sat in a well-padded seat with a footrest while the van drove over obstacles representing potholes, speed bumps and an angled driveway approach. With the Bose system turned off, the van jounced me around with strong vertical and lateral motion, making it difficult and uncomfortable to use a stylus on the iPad.
Bose will need to make its seat suspension technology smaller for use in passenger cars.
With the system activated, my seat moved independently from the vehicle, absorbing much of the external motion. I still felt some of the harsher movements, but I could more easily work on the iPad. Bose’s technology became particularly noticeable when the van passed over uneven bumps. I could see the top and sides of the van moving around me while I remained upright and centered.
Bose thinks the technology could play a big part in autonomous cars, where riders will spend more time working or using tablets.
The production seats for trucks, called Bose Ride, use an electromagnetic motor to control vertical motion, which keeps the rider’s thorax insulated from hard shocks. A sensor detects the beginning of a shock moment, and the seat’s motor responds. The prototype I experienced added lateral control, a cradle in the seat that compensated for side-to-side motion.
Built for commercial vehicles, the Bose Ride seats look too large to fit in a typical passenger vehicle. But Bose showed its work towards making the technology smaller, so that one day it could be more widely used. Imagine a sports car with its suspension designed for perfect handling, while the seat’s suspension serves up a completely comfortable ride.

© Source: https://www.cnet.com/roadshow/news/bose-suspends-the-seat-not-the-car-for-a-smooth-ride-ces-2017/
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Groups of attackers have adopted a new tactic that involves deleting publicly exposed MongoDB databases and asking for money to restore them. In a matter of days, the number of affected databases has risen from hundreds to more than 10,000.
The issue of misconfigured MongoDB installations, allowing anyone on the internet to access sensitive data, is not new. Researchers have been finding such open databases for years, and the latest estimate puts their number at more than 99,000.
On Monday, security researcher Victor Gevers from the GDI Foundation reported that he found almost 200 instances of publicly exposed MongoDB databases that had been wiped and held to ransom by an attacker or a group of attackers named Harak1r1.
The attackers left a message behind for the database administrators asking for 0.2 bitcoins (around $180) to return the data.
A day later, the number of databases wiped by Harak1r1 had reached 2,500 and by Friday, more than 8,600 had been affected and contained the ransom message.
In addition, other attackers have joined the scheme, researchers counting at least five groups with different ransom messages so far. Together, the groups deleted 10,500 databases, and in some cases, they’ve replaced each other’s ransom messages.
The bad news is that most of them don’t even bother copying the data before deleting it, so even if the victims decide to pay, there’s a high chance they won’t get their information back.
Gevers said he has helped some victims and there was no evidence in the logs that the data had been exfiltrated. He advises affected database owners not to pay and to get help from security professionals.
MongoDB administrators are advised to follow the steps on the security checklist from the MongoDB documentation in order to lock down their deployments and prevent unauthorized access.

© Source: http://www.infoworld.com/article/3155201/security/more-than-10000-exposed-mongodb-databases-deleted-by-ransomware-groups.html
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Panasonic has developed a flexible lithium ion battery for use in wearable devices that maintains its electrical characteristics even after repeated bending.
The battery means more freedom for designers of wearable devices, who are constrained by the need for inflexible areas to hold the battery and some electronics.
Three prototypes of the battery were on display at this week’s CES electronics show in Las Vegas. The largest is 40mm by 65mm, the medium size is 35mm by 55mm, and the smallest is 28.5mm by 39mm.
All three are just 0.45mm thick, considerably thinner than a credit card, which is 0.76mm thick. They can be bent up to a radius of 25mm or twisted to an angle of 25 degrees.
A prototype flexible lithium ion battery developed by Panasonic on show at CES in Las Vegas on Jan. 6, 2017.
The batteries weigh just a gram or two and output 3.8 volts.
The batteries are small enough to be embedded inside credit cards or similar sized card systems. Batteries currently used in such cards degrade faster than normal because of the flexing and twisting they experience from being in a wallet.
The new batteries, which are still under development, don’t suffer from the same problems. Flexing up to the 25mm limit results in a loss of just 1 percent of capacity.
Panasonic is one of the world’s largest lithium ion battery makers. It produces cells for numerous applications, from consumer AA cells to the batteries used in electric cars. The company is in a high-profile partnership with Tesla to supply batteries for its cars from the custom built Gigafactory in Nevada.

© Source: http://www.computerworld.com/article/3154740/wearables/panasonic-offers-a-flexible-battery-for-wearables.html
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Intel continues to refine and update its Next Unit of Computing (NUC) mini-PCs , which take much of the hardware from its Ultrabook line and package it into a tiny square chassis. The major updates for this year’s NUCs include the latest seventh-generation Intel Core processors and support for Optane memory.
Intel’s Optane memory , co-developed with Micron, is a non-volatile memory technology that’s faster than flash but denser than DRAM. It doesn’t replace standard RAM in these NUCs, which have two familiar SO-DIMM sockets for up to 32GB of DDR4 at 2133 MT/s. Instead, Optane is meant to offer speedy storage, possibly in an M.2 format , to provide fast boot times and application launching.
This year’s NUC models offer a number of processor and storage options. The top of the line NUC7i7BNH is powered by a Core i7-7567U , a dual-core processor with a max turbo clock of 4.0GHz and a 28W TDP. Intel’s Iris Plus Graphics 650 IGP runs the display. For storage, there’s an M.2 slot and room for a 2.5″ HDD or SSD up to 9.5mm tall. All this hardware fits into a chassis that’s only 4.5″ x 4.4″ x 2″ (or 11.5 cm x 11. cm x 5.1 cm).
The NUC models with Core i5 or Core i3 CPUs are available in two configurations: one with a slot for a 9.5-mm-tall drive, and a low-profile model that only has room for an M.2 unit. The low-profile variants (whose names end in K rather than H) have similar dimensions, but are only 1.4″ (3.5 cm) tall.
The kits labeled NUC7i5BNH and NUC7i5BNK are powered by Intel’s Core i5-7260U , a dual core processor with a max turbo clock of 3.4GHz and a 15W TDP. This processor integrates Intel’s Iris Plus Graphics 640 unit. The Core i3 variants of this year’s NUCs, the NUC7i3BNH and NUC7i3BNK , have Intel’s Core i3-7100U processor inside. This dual-core CPU has a base frequency of 2.4GHz, a 15W TDP, and offer up an Intel HD Graphics 620 IGP.
The rest of the feature set in these NUCs remains quite solid. They have dual-array front microphones for taking advantage of Cortana, an HDMI 2.0 port, and Intel’s 802.11ac dual-band wireless connectivity. There’s also a Thunderbolt 3 port on tap that can offer USB 3.1 and DisplayPort connectivity. A Micro SDXC slot with UHS-I support and Bluetooth 4.2 support round out the list of features.

© Source: http://techreport.com/news/31250/intel-latest-nucs-get-a-boost-from-kaby-lake
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