Congress tucked CISA inside last night's budget bill Last night's budget bill wasn't all about avoiding a government shutdown. Packed inside the 2,000-page bill announced by Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI) is the full text of the controversial Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act (CISA) of 2015. If you'll recall, the measure passed the Senate back in October, leaving it up to the House to approve the bill that encourages businesses to share details of security breaches and cyber attacks. Engadget
Amazon building its own overnight airfreight operation, sources say Amazon.com Inc. is creating a logistics operation that will include overnight air operations in the US domestic market, potentially including the acquisition of at least 20 freighter aircraft, Cargo Facts has learned. Currently, Amazon ships most of its parcels through United Parcel Service, FedEx, and the United States Postal Service. The change to an inhouse logistics venture would seismically change the airfreight industry... Cargo Facts
The end of Internet advertising as we've known it My sister, a retired U.S. Navy commander, has a perfect military expression for what she does with her Sunday newspaper when it arrives: she "field-strips" it. Out go advertising inserts and other unwanted sections, sometimes before the paper even gets inside her house. Same goes for junk mail. The wheat gets in the door; the chaff goes in the bin. Online, we have ad blockers to field-strip websites automatically. MIT
Price check: DDR4 memory down nearly 40% in 6 months, expected to continue Just a year ago DDR4 dynamic random access memory (DRAM) was rather expensive and was sold at a noticeable premium compared to DDR3. Today, DDR4 memory modules cost less than DDR3 modules cost a year ago and continue to get more affordable. Next year prices of DDR4 are expected to decline further as manufacturers of DRAM are gradually increasing production of memory in general and DDR4 in particular. AnandTech
AI predicts if face photo looks intelligent, trustworthy, attractive, emotional, happy A team of graduate students at Radboud University, the Netherlands, has constructed a neural-network-based AI system that works with photographs of human faces. The machine predicts what a human thinks of the person in the photo -- does the person in the photo look intelligent, attractive, memorable, trustworthy and so on. Note that the system predicts what some will think about the person in the photo... Wikitract
The Potential Applications for HoloLens Microsoft's upcoming product, the HoloLens, is thought by many to be the true future of personal computing. Not only does it augment reality (a feat formerly reserved for the likes of hallucinogens and sweat lodges), but it supports voice commands and gesture recognition as well. This combination of features will make any developer weak in the knees, and early previews from the Holographic Academy Microsoft hosted in April were overwhelmingly positive. Maximum PC
How Tor works: Part one Tor is an anonymity tool used by those who want to stay private and uncensored when browsing the Internet. Over time, it’s grown to be pretty darn good at this. This makes the security, stability, and speed of the underlying network critical to those depending on it. But how does Tor work under the hood? In this series of posts, we’ll take a deep dive into the structure and protocols used by the Tor network in order to see first-hand how Tor operates. Jordan Wright
The console wars revisited: Two years of Xbox One vs. PS4 Back in late 2013 when both the Xbox One and PlayStation 4 were brand new to the gaming scene, we recommendedtaking a wait-and-see attitude before diving into the new generation of console hardware. Even a year ago, we still said both consoles felt a little too expensive and a little too lacking in must-play exclusives. There was no need to run out and buy immediately. Ars Technica
Terrafugia just got FAA approval to test their flying cars Why drive a car, autonomous or otherwise, when you can fly one? That seems to be the question of the day at the Federal Aviation Administration, where test flights in U.S. airspace have just been approved. Sadly, you won’t be able to jump in and take one of these cars to the skies anytime soon — the prototypes that have been cleared for flight are just mini versions... DigitalTrends
Hideo Kojima's mission unlocked It has been a difficult year for Hideo Kojima. Although Metal Gear Solid V, the project that the video-game director worked on for more than five years, launched in September to enviable sales and widespread acclaim, its creation was not without complications. In mid-March, the game’s Japanese publisher, Konami, removed Kojima’s name and that of his studio, Kojima Productions, from its Web site and the game's box. The New Yorker
A secret catalogue of government gear for spying on your cellphone The intercept has obtained a secret, internal U.S. government catalogue of dozens of cellphone surveillance devices used by the military and by intelligence agencies. The document, thick with previously undisclosed information, also offers rare insight into the spying capabilities of federal law enforcement and local police inside the United States. The Intercept
Instagram's million dollar bug In 2012, Bloomberg published a somewhat famous (at least to bug bounty participants) article on Facebook's "Whitehat" bug bounty program. In this article, Facebook is quoted as saying: "If there's a million-dollar bug, we will pay it out". My apologies in advance if that makes for too much of a click-bait title, but it's important background for this write-up. Exfiltrated
Real-time tracking shows how batteries degrade How disposable Lithium batteries degrade during normal use has been tracked in real-time by a UCL-led team using sophisticated 3D imaging, giving a new way to non-invasively monitor performance loss and guide the development of more effective commercial battery designs. UCL
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