Surface Go 2 review: small improvements over original with larger screen and faster CPU, but $400 entry model is lacking in power and upgrades are expensive — Judging the Surface Go 2 really comes down to your expectations. Can you live with slow performance to get a well-designed $400 tablet PC (not including a keyboard)?
A data breach at the U.S. Marshals Service exposed the personal information of current and former prisoners, TechCrunch has learned.
A letter sent to those affected, and obtained by TechCrunch, said the Justice Department notified the U.S. Marshals on December 30, 2019 of a data breach affecting a public-facing server storing personal information on current and former prisoners in its custody. The letter said the breach may have included their address, date of birth and Social Security number, which can be used for identity fraud.
But the notice didn’t say how many current and former prisoners are affected by the breach.
As the law enforcement arm of the federal courts, U.S. Marshals are tasked with capturing fugitives and serving federal arrest warrants. Last year, U.S. Marshals arrested more than 90,000 fugitives and served over 105,000 warrants.
A spokesperson for the Justice Department did not respond to a request for comment by email or phone.
It’s the latest federal government security lapse in recent weeks.
The Defense Information Systems Agency, a Dept. of Defense division charged with providing technology and communications support to the U.S. government — including the president and other senior officials — said a data breach between May and July 2019 resulted in the theft of employees’ personal information.
Last month, the Small Business Administration admitted that 8,000 applicants, who applied for an emergency loan after facing financial difficulties because of the coronavirus pandemic, had their data exposed.
Enlarge / Rick Bright, head of the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority, listens during a House Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee hearing on Thursday, March 8, 2018. In the background is Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. (credit: Getty Images | Bloomberg)
The Trump administration is facing pressure from a federal watchdog agency to reinstate the whistleblower who President Trump claimed is "a disgruntled employee who's trying to help the Democrats win an election."
Rick Bright, an immunology expert who led the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA) until he says he was forced out of his position, reportedly got good news from the US Office of Special Counsel, which is investigating his whistleblower complaint.
"A federal investigative office has found 'reasonable grounds to believe' that the Trump administration was retaliating against a whistleblower, Dr. Rick Bright, when he was ousted from a government research agency combating the coronavirus—and said he should be reinstated for 45 days while it investigates, his lawyers said Friday," The New York Times wrote.
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IDC: India's smartphone market grew 1.5% YoY in Q1 while China and US declined dramatically; Apple still dominates $500+ segment, Xiaomi maintains overall lead — - Avg selling price of smartphone in March quarter was $171, with the sub-$200 segment accounting for 76.2% of shipments
Both Defcon and Black Hat, originally scheduled for August, have cancelled in-person events, instead opting to host conferences online — For real this time. Its sister conference, Black Hat, has also been called off. — For years, a simple and elegant inside joke has permeated Defcon, the influential hacking conference.
After suspending them at the end of March because of the COVID-19 pandemic, Waymo has announced it will resume driving operations on May 11 in Arizona.
Waymo will start its driving operations in the Phoenix area again, a decision the company says it made after discussions with “our teams, partners and local and state authorities,” before restoring them in other cities, including San Francisco, Detroit and Los Angeles.
Arizona’s stay at home order expires on May 15, but academic experts have expressed concern that Arizona hasn’t reached the peak of its COVID-19 outbreak yet and some who worked with the state government recently told the Washington Post that they were asked to “pause” work on projections and modeling.
The company’s announcement says this is the first step in a “tiered approach to safely resume our operations,” starting with its test fleet and then eventually offering Waymo One, its self-driving ride hailing service, again.
Waymo said it is following safety guidance from local and state governments, as well as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Safety measures Waymo has implemented include requiring personnel to wear face masks in its facilities or vehicles, unless someone is driving alone in a vehicle and a partnership with AutoNation to clean cars several times a day.
The company says it has also limited maximum capacity and put in social distancing guidelines for its work areas, created health and safety training for its team and will work with occupational healthcare providers to screen people before they enter facilities.
Private equity firm Vista Equity Partners says it will invest $1.5B in Reliance Jio Platforms, which would give it a 2.32% stake, valuing the telco firm at $65B — Private equity firm Vista Equity Partners said on Friday it will invest $1.5 billion in Reliance Jio Platforms …
Form Energy, which is developing what it calls ultra-low-cost, long-duration energy storage for the grid, has signed a contract with the Minnesota-based Great River Energy to develop a 1 megawatt, 150 megawatt hour pilot project.
The second-largest electric utility in the U.S., Great River Energy’s installation in Cambridge, Minn. will be the first commercial deployment of the venture-backed battery technology developer’s long-duration energy storage technology.
From Energy’s battery system is significant for its ability to deliver 1 megawatt of power for 150 hours — a huge leap over the lithium ion batteries currently in use for most grid-scale storage projects. Those battery systems can last for two- to four-hours.
The step change in the duration of energy delivery should allow energy storage projects to replace the peaking power plants that rely on coal and natural gas to smooth demand on the grid.
“Long duration energy storage solutions will play an entirely different role in a clean electricity system than the conventional battery storage systems being deployed at scale today,” said Jesse Jenkins, an assistant professor at Princeton University who studies low-carbon energy systems engineering, in a statement. “Lithium-ion batteries are well suited to fast bursts of energy production, but they run out of energy after just a few hours. A true low-cost, long-duration energy storage solution that can sustain output for days, would fill gaps in wind and solar energy production that would otherwise require firing up a fossil-fueled power plant. A technology like that could make a reliable, affordable 100% renewable electricity system a real possibility,”
Backed with over $49 million in venture financing from investors including MIT’s The Engine investment vehicle; Eni Next, the corporate venture capital arm of the Italian energy firm Eni Spa, and the Bill Gates-backed sustainability focused investment firm, Breakthrough Energy Ventures, Form Energy has developed a new storage technology called an “aqueous air” battery system.
“Our vision at Form Energy is to unlock the power of renewable energy to transform the grid with our proprietary long-duration storage. This project represents a bold step toward proving that vision of an affordable, renewable future is possible without sacrificing reliability,” said Mateo Jaramillo, the chief executive of Form Energy, in a statement.
Form’s pitch to utilities relies on more than just a groundbreaking energy storage technology, and includes an assessment of how best utilities can optimize their energy portfolios using a proprietary software analytics system. That software, was built to model high penetration renewables at a system level to figure out how storage can be combined with renewable energy to create a low-cost energy source that can deliver better returns to energy providers.
“Great River Energy is excited to partner with Form Energy on this important project. The electrical grid is increasingly supplied by renewable sources of energy. Commercially viable long-duration storage could increase reliability by ensuring that the power generated by renewable energy is available at all hours to serve our membership. Such storage could be particularly important during extreme weather conditions that last several days. Long-duration storage also provides an excellent hedge against volatile energy prices,” said Great River Energy Vice President and Chief Power Supply Officer Jon Brekke, in a statement.
Ultimately, this deployment is intended to be the first of many installations of Form Energy’s battery systems, according to the statement from both companies.
“Long duration energy storage solutions will play an entirely different role in a clean electricity system than the conventional battery storage systems being deployed at scale today,” said Jesse Jenkins, an assistant professor at Princeton University who studies low-carbon energy systems engineering, in a statement. “Lithium-ion batteries are well suited to fast bursts of energy production, but they run out of energy after just a few hours. A true low-cost, long-duration energy storage solution that can sustain output for days, would fill gaps in wind and solar energy production that would otherwise require firing up a fossil-fueled power plant. A technology like that could make a reliable, affordable 100% renewable electricity system a real possibility,”
A researcher found NSO Group's contact tracing system, codenamed “Fleming”, unprotected on the Internet, NSO says system was a demo, hence not a security lapse — As countries work to reopen after weeks of lockdown, contact-tracing apps help to understand the spread of the deadly coronavirus strain, COVID-19.
Reuters : SpaceX's S-1 excerpts list “manufacturing our own GPUs” among the “substantial capital expenditures” it is undertaking, wit...
