grid

Power utilities claim 'daily' and 'constant' cyberattacks, says report

Power utilities in the U.S. are under daily cyberattacks, according to report released Tuesday by members of Congress.

Of about 160 utilities surveyed in the 35-page report (PDF), more than a dozen reported "daily," "constant," or "frequent" attempted cyberattacks on their computer systems.

"Grid operations and control systems are increasingly automated, incorporate two-way communications, and are connected to the Internet or other computer networks," the report said. "While these improvements have allowed for critical modernization of the grid, this increased interconnectivity has made the grid more vulnerable to remote cyber … Read more

Dongle jokes and a tweet lead to firings, threats, DDoS attacks

What started as a handful of off-color jokes by two men at a developer conference has led to cyberattacks, death threats, and the firing of two people, including the woman who originally reported the incident.

It all started Sunday at the PyCon event in Santa Clara, Calif., when Adria Richards, a developer evangelist for e-mail vendor SendGrid, overheard some jokes being told by two men seated immediately behind her at the conference, which is for people working on the Python programming language. The two allegedly made jokes about "forking" in a sexual manner and "big dongles." … Read more

Top 3 photo collage apps for Android

Sometimes it takes more than a single photo to capture a moment. Collage apps on Android have become increasingly popular, because they give users much more freedom to express their photography and enables them to create unique galleries. And with the ongoing trend of increasing screen sizes, check out these apps to Insta-photobomb your friends on that big and shiny phablet display of yours.

KD Collage

KD Collage includes templates for just about as many photos as you'd like, whether it's the standard two-to-four photos, five to nine or even 20 at a time. One unique advantage in … Read more

Tegra 4, gaming dominate Nvidia's 2013 plans

LAS VEGAS--Nvidia has never been a timid company, and at CES 2013, the chipmaker stepped on the gas.

Nvidia's aggressive plans for cloud gaming, its Tegra 4 quad core processor, and Nvidia Shield, its first Nvidia-branded gaming device, set a course for placing the company in the limelight this coming year.

Project Shield: Portable gaming companion The Android-based Project Shield is Nvidia's first attempt at selling a device bearing the Nvidia name. It strongly resembles a console controller, complete with joysticks and buttons. It can play Android, Tegra, and PC games, as well as play games streamed from … Read more

Nvidia Grid pushes gaming to the cloud

LAS VEGAS--Nvidia took the wraps off Nvidia Grid, the company's first fully integrated system to enable customers to access their games via the cloud.

Launched tonight at CES, Nvidia Grid pushes the limits of cloud gaming in a server stack that's designed to optimize computer graphics. In the works for five years, the stacks, which are packed full of GPUs, or graphics processing units, enable 3D gaming that can render graphics directly to the cloud.

The upshot is that you'll be able to start playing a game on one device, like a tablet, and pick it up … Read more

The lights over your head are about to get smart

Take a walk through the labs of Bridgelux (PDF) in Livermore, Calif., and you see a lot of LED lighting modules being made on a more affordable platform: disused factories that used to make silicon chips. But while you'll see lots of lights, you'll hear mostly about connectivity. Bridgelux CEO Bill Watkins envisions a new array of smart, connected sensors, cameras, and other devices integrated with LED lighting over our heads.

The challenge is formidable: Most lighting consumers, large and small, think of lighting as a cost to be contained, not an opportunity to be maximized. So job … Read more

Maker of smart-grid software discloses hack

Telvent Canada says someone sneaked past its internal firewall, installing malicious software and stealing files related to control software it makes that's used to manage the electric grid in various countries.

The company warned customers last week that it learned of a breach of its network on September 10, according to the KrebsOnSecurity blog. Project files associated with the firm's OASyS SCADA (supervisory control and data acquisition) software were stolen, the post says.

"Although we do not have any reason to believe that the intruder(s) acquired any information that would enable them to gain access to … Read more

The 404 1,116: Where we keep up the good work (podcast)

Leaked from today's 404 episode:

- Microsoft squares off with new logo.

- Scientists discover that music memories are stored in a different part of the brain than the rest.

- Buzzfeed interviews a Google employee whose job required vetting thousands of terrible images a day.

Bathroom break video: Ghostbusters theme on eight floppy drives.

Video voice mail: Matt from Colorado Springs deserves a trucker hat.

Episode 1,116 Subscribe in iTunes (audio) | Subscribe in iTunes (video) | Subscribe in RSS Audio | Subscribe in RSS Video

RIM CEO: Health care, smart-grid markets interested in BB10

If you take CEO Thorsten Heins' word for it, the next Research in Motion operating system -- BlackBerry 10 -- isn't intended just for mobile devices, and is already drawing interest from other industries.

In an interview with CNET, Heins said businesses in the health care and smart-grid fields have already expressed interest in using the operating system. The company likes to tout that QNX, the software BlackBerry 10 is based on, powers a number of different systems, including cars.

Eventually, BlackBerry 10 will power devices and equipment in multiple industries, Heins said. For instance, he said, the auto … Read more

Smart home of the future faces hurdles

You know the home: smart appliances, robotic maids, jet packs. Well, maybe not jet packs; that might get awkward indoors. But the sentiment remains: where are our smart homes?

The question was posed to 1,021 Internet experts, researchers, observers, and critics by Elon University's Imagining the Internet Center and the Pew Research Center's Internet & American Life Project. Specifically, respondents were asked with which of the following two (intentionally opposite) statements they agreed with:

By 2020, the connected household has become a model of efficiency, as people are able to manage consumption of resources (electricity, water, food, … Read more