What seemed like an inevitability may soon be a reality. Ride-sharing company Lyft is now testing a subscription plan that will allow regular users to pay a flat monthly rate in exchange for a flat number of monthly rides. The plan may prove popular with customers who choose to regularly commute using ride-sharing cars rather than their own vehicle or … Continue reading
Jimmy Kimmel has found a U.S. Customs law that Donald Trump’s sons may have violated, which could lead to massive fines.
Confirming Gina Haspel would prove that the rehabilitation of torturers has a bipartisan consensus.
Several disability rights advocates called it ableist.
Zinke made the dumb comment in response to a plea that we not forget a dark moment in our country’s history.
Rescue teams are currently responding to the scene, the military said in a statement.
When the Spectre and Meltdown bugs hit, it became clear that they wouldn’t be fixed with a few quick patches — the problem runs deeper than that. Fortunately, Intel has had plenty of time to work on it, and new chips coming out later this year will include improvements at the hardware/architecture level that protect against the flaws. Well, two out of three, anyway.
CEO Brian Krzanich announced the news in a company blog post. After thanking a few partners, he notes that all affected products from the last 5 years have received software updates to protect them from the bugs. Of course, the efficacy of those updates is debatable, as well as their performance hits — and that’s if your hardware vendor even gets a patch out. But at any rate, the fixes are available.
There are actually three semi-related bugs here: Spectre is variants 1 and 2; then there’s variant 3, which researchers dubbed Meltdown. Variant 1 is arguably the most difficult of them all to fix, and as such Intel doesn’t have a hardware solution for it yet — but variants 2 and 3 it has in the bag.
“We have redesigned parts of the processor to introduce new levels of protection through partitioning that will protect against both Variants 2 and 3,” Krzanich writes. Cascade Lake Xeon and 8th-gen Core processors should include these changes when they ship in the second half of 2018. Although that’s a bit vague, we can be certain that Intel will prominently advertise what new chips include the mitigations as we get closer to release.
Lastly, even older hardware will be getting the microcode updates — back to the 1st-gen Core processors. Remember Nehalem and Penryn? Those will be patched in time, as well. Anyone surprised that a Nehalem system is still in use anywhere probably hasn’t worked in IT at a big company or government agency. I bet there are 98SE systems running on Pentiums somewhere in the Department of Energy.
This announcement doesn’t require anything from users, but keep your computer up to date if you know how, and ask customer service for your device provider if you’re not sure.
Intel promised hardware protection in its chips in the aftermath of the Spectre and Meltdown discovery, and now it’s detailing just what it has planned for its new CPUs. The chipmaker found its processors under the spotlight back in January, when Google Project Zero and others discovered low-level vulnerabilities in several generations of Intel chips that could potentially allow hackers … Continue reading
Google has updated Google Maps to include wheelchair accessible routes in transit, helping individuals with mobility problems get around. The routes are available for certain big cities and they’re based around public transit, which is typically easier to use for individuals with wheelchairs and other mobility devices. These routes are available for cities around the world. Google points out that … Continue reading
This is site is run by Sascha Endlicher, M.A., during ungodly late night hours. Wanna know more about him? Connect via Social Media by jumping to about.me/sascha.endlicher.
