A Big Ol’ Friday News Dump, Courtesy of Hillary Clinton’s Email Server

A Big Ol’ Friday News Dump, Courtesy of Hillary Clinton’s Email Server

Remember how Hillary Clinton used a private homebrew email server to conduct official State Department business? Today—only hours before the agency is expected to release the next batch of Clinton’s emails, and just days before the Iowa caucuses—the sitting administration disclosed that 22 of those emails are now considered top secret, and thus exempt from release:

The Obama administration confirmed for the first time Friday that Hillary Clinton’s unsecured home server contained closely guarded government secrets, censoring 22 emails with material requiring one of the highest levels of classification.

As the Associated Press notes, this could very well contradict the argument (floated by Clinton and her surrogates) that the former Secretary of State “never sent or received information on her personal email account that was classified at the time.” Given the nature of the classification, the Obama administration is not required to explain what exactly the top secret emails were about.

The candidate, for her part, appears to be protesting the classification, which allows the government to withhold the entirety of the emails (as opposed to simply redacting certain portions of them). A spokesperson for Clinton’s campaign told NBC News that “we firmly oppose the complete blocking of the release of these emails. Since first providing her emails to the State Department more than one year ago, Hillary Clinton has urged that they be made available to the public. We feel no differently today.”

Email the author: trotter@gawker.com · PGP key + fingerprint · Photo credit: Getty Images

via Gizmodo
A Big Ol’ Friday News Dump, Courtesy of Hillary Clinton’s Email Server

Apple Has Been Directing People Searching For Abortion Clinics To Adoption Centers Since 2011

apple-maps Apple is working on changing an algorithm in Siri and Apple Maps that has been directing people to adoption centers when they asked for an abortion clinic.
Though the company knew this was a problem since at least 2011, it said at the time that this was a “glitch” and promised Siri would get better.
But not much changed in five years.
UCSF researcher Alexis Hoffman tested search… Read More


via TechCrunch
Apple Has Been Directing People Searching For Abortion Clinics To Adoption Centers Since 2011

Google’s VirusTotal can tell if your firmware is infected

BIOS firmware is the root of your electronic devices, dictating communication between a computer’s hardware and operating system from the boot-up process. It’s an insulated layer in most devices, and organizations including the National Security Agency have focused on infecting firmware because it’s not covered in standard virus-detection scans. Google’s latest VirusTotal tool changes that — in a blog post, VirusTotal security engineer Francisco Santos outlines the dangers of firmware malware and how the company can now pinpoint that bad code.

"Since the BIOS boots a computer and helps load the operating system, by infecting it attackers can deploy malware that survives reboots, system wiping and reinstallations, and since antiviruses are not scanning this layer, the compromise can fly under the radar," Santos writes. "As of today VirusTotal is characterizing in detail firmware images, legit or malicious."

Researchers can upload malware to VirusTotal to see which antivirus products detect malicious code. On top of labeling firmware images, the new tool can extract certificates from the firmware and its executable files, and it can extract portable executables inside the image. PEs are a high-profile source of malicious software, Santos says.

"What’s probably most interesting is the extraction of the UEFI Portable Executables that make up the image, since it is precisely executable code that could potentially be a source of badness," Santos writes. "These executables are extracted and submitted individually to VirusTotal, such that the user can eventually see a report for each one of them and perhaps get a notion of whether there is something fishy in their BIOS image."

The "next interesting step" for VirusTotal’s firmware tool is the ability to dump your own BIOS firmware into its scanning service, Santos says.

Via: PC World

Source: VirusTotal

via Engadget
Google’s VirusTotal can tell if your firmware is infected

How Drinking Too Much Soda Can Affect Your Body

You probably know that soda isn’t the best thing for your body, but have you ever wondered what would happen if you didn’t drink anything else? These are the health hazards you might run into if you down too many cans of cola.

Having a can of your favorite soda every day isn’t going to kill you if that’s how you like to treat yourself. But if you replace drinking water with soda, you’re certainly not doing your body any favors. This video from the AsapScience YouTube channel shows exactly how soda negatively affects your body, and how drinking too much will lead to numerous health problems. Soda eats away the enamel on your teeth, adds extra calories to your diet that are easy to forget about, can age you at the same rate as a typical smoker (if you drink 600 ml of soda a day), and the high-fructose corn syrup used in most soft drinks isn’t easily metabolized by your body. Artificial sweeteners have their own set of problems as well, so swapping in diet sodas won’t help very much. You don’t have to give up soda entirely, but it’s not a bad idea to look into healthier alternatives so it’s not all you drink. And remember, if you’re thirsty, a glass of water is always your best bet.

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What If You Only Drank Soda? | YouTube


via Lifehacker
How Drinking Too Much Soda Can Affect Your Body

Adobe Lightroom CC 2015.4, Lightroom 6.4 and ACR 9.4 now available for download

Adobe has made updates available to its subscription and standalone Lightroom applications as well as Camera Raw. The updates bring with it a feature called ‘Boundary Warp,’ a tool that helps to straighten the curved edges of stitched panoramas so that the image is rectangular. Lightroom CC 2015.4, Lightroom 6.4 and ACR 9.4 bring support for Fujifilm’s newly announced X-system cameras, including the Fujifilm X-Pro2 and X70, as well as bug fixes – see the details below.


New Camera Support in Lightroom CC 2015.4 / 6.4

  • Fujifilm X70
  • Fujifilm X-E2S
  • Fujifilm X-Pro2
  • Leica M (Typ 262)
  • Leica X-U (Typ 113)
  • Panasonic DMC-ZS60 (DMC-TZ80, DMC-TZ81, DMC-TZ85)
  • Phase One IQ150
  • Sony ILCA-68 (A68)

Additional Updates in Lightroom CC 2015.4 / 6.4

  • Nikon 1 J4 Camera Matching Profile added
  • The panorama merging process should complete roughly twice as fast as Lightroom 6.3
  • Improved quality when applying Auto Straighten and Upright “Level” mode
  • A preference was added to the Mac to prevent accidental “speed swiping”
  • Metadata is added to merged panoramas to support Photoshop’s Adaptive Wide Angle filter
  • Customers can now set the location of where photos are stored when downloaded from Lightroom mobile or Lightroom web in the preference panel or contextually in the folder panel
  • Thumbnails update much quicker when copying and pasting settings in the grid view
  • Images load faster in the Library module when you are zoomed in and navigating images
  • Tethered support added for the Nikon D5500 and Nikon D7200

Fixed Bugs

  • Auto Sync of some settings failed when using smart previews
  • Lightroom would ignore model-specific custom default settings for some cameras, including some Leica and Sony models.
  • Crop resets to image bounds when adjusting rotation via slider
  • In Lights Out mode, an image would “disappear” if a customer uses the Undo functionality
  • SIGMA 50mm f1.4 ART lens was incorrectly identified as Zeiss Milvus 50mm f1.4
  • Soft Proofing RGB readout values differed for same file between 5.7.1 and 6.x
  • Import from iPhoto would result in all photos receiving a “pick” flag
  • Comments from Lightroom web come in to Lightroom on the desktop as already “read.”
  • Lightroom would not display the correct EXIF metadata for some video files generated by Canon, Fuji and Panasonic cameras
  • Vertical panoramas created using Merge could appear with the wrong orientation
  • The video cache did not respect the maximum size specified in the preferences
  • Customers experienced issues importing video files in some scenarios
  • Tethering Nikon cameras on Mac OS X 10.11 (El Capitan) did not work properly
  • Installation Instructions

New Camera Support in Camera Raw 9.4

  • Fujifilm X70
  • Fujifilm X-E2S
  • Fujifilm X-Pro2
  • Leica M (Typ 262)
  • Leica X-U (Typ 113)
  • Panasonic DMC-ZS60 (DMC-TZ80, DMC-TZ81, DMC-TZ85)
  • Phase One IQ150
  • Sony ILCA-68 (A68)

Additional Updates in Camera Raw 9.4

  • Nikon 1 J4 Camera matching profile support added
  • The panorama merging process should complete roughly twice as fast as ACR 6.3
  • Improved quality when applying Auto Straighten and Upright “Level” mode.
  • Metadata is added to merged panoramas to support Photoshop’s Adaptive Wide Angle filter
  • DNG Converter 9.4 now supports HiDPI displays on Mac

Fixed Bugs and Other Changes:

  • Fixed issue where vertical panoramas created using Merge could appear with the wrong orientation.
  • Addressed a bug that would ignore model-specific custom default settings for some cameras, including some Leica and Sony models.
  • Corrected occasional crash using Crop tool after a Merge operation completed.
  • Fixed an issue where state of HSL controls would be rendered incorrectly in GPU mode when applying Contrast or Saturation local control adjustments.
  • Addressed the issue of the SIGMA 50mm f1.4 ART lens incorrectly identified as Zeiss Milvus 50mm f1.4.

via Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)
Adobe Lightroom CC 2015.4, Lightroom 6.4 and ACR 9.4 now available for download

New US single family home sales hit 10-month high

New US single-family home sales hit a 10 month high in December, another indication that the housing sector remains strong despite a slow down in the overall global economy. The Commerce Department said on Wednesday sales rose 10.8% to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 544,000 units. Sales last month were likely helped along by unseasonably mild weather […]

The post New US single family home sales hit 10-month high appeared first on Business Pundit.

via Business Pundit
New US single family home sales hit 10-month high

New stem cell treatment could ‘cure’ type 1 diabetes

Researchers at MIT and Harvard figured out how to produce pancreatic beta cells — the ones that produce insulin — in large quantities back in 2014. The same intercollegiate team announced in the journal Nature on Monday that they’ve now managed to implant those cells into mice that have been genetically designed to suffer from Type 1 diabetes — without the cells being rejected. Even more impressive, the diabetic mice produced their own insulin during the 174-day study period, eliminating the need for daily injections. Instead, patients would simply need "booster" injections of beta cells once every few years.

This method "has the potential to provide diabetics with a new pancreas that is protected from the immune system," study co-author Daniel Anderson said in a statement, "which would allow them to control their blood sugar without taking drugs." Human trials are expected to begin within the next few years.

[Image Credit: Getty]

Via: Gizmodo

Source: Nature

via Engadget
New stem cell treatment could ‘cure’ type 1 diabetes