Community Health Systems says personal data stolen in cyber attack

Community Health Systems says personal data stolen in cyber attack

 Reuters

U.S. hospital operator Community Health Systems Inc said on Monday personal data, including patient names and addresses, of about 4.5 million people were stolen by hackers from its computer network, likely in April and June.
The company said the data, considered protected under the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, included patient names, addresses, birth dates, telephone numbers and Social Security numbers. It did not include patient credit card or medical information, Community Health Systems said in a regulatory filing.
It said the security breach had affected about 4.5 million people who were referred for or received services from doctors affiliated with the hospital group in the last five years.

The FBI warned healthcare providers in April that their cybersecurity systems were lax compared to other sectors, making them vulnerable to hackers looking for details that could be used to access bank accounts or obtain prescriptions, Reuters previously reported.

The company said it and its security contractor, FireEye Inc unit Mandiant, believed the attackers originated from China. They did not provide further information about why they believed this was the case. They said they used malware and other technology to copy and transfer this data and information from its system.
Community Health, which is one of the largest hospital operators in the country with 206 hospitals in 29 states, said it was working with federal law enforcement authorities in connection with their investigation into the attack. It said federal authorities said these attacks are typically aimed at gathering intellectual property, such as medical device and equipment development data.

It said that prior to filing the regulatory document, it had eradicated the malware from its systems and finalized the implementation of remediation efforts. It is notifying patients and regulatory agencies as required by law, it said.

It also said it is insured against such losses and does not at this time expect a material adverse effect on financial results.

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Spacewalking astronauts release baby satellite

Spacewalking astronauts release baby satellite

MARCIA DUNN AP Aerospace Writer

Associated Press

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — Spacewalking astronauts launched a tiny Peruvian research satellite Monday, setting it loose on a mission to observe Earth.
Russian Oleg Artemiev cast the 4-inch box off with his gloved right hand as the International Space Station sailed 260 miles above the cloud-flecked planet. The nanosatellite gently tumbled as it cleared the vicinity of the orbiting complex, precisely as planned.
"One, two, three," someone called out in Russian as Artemiev let go of the satellite.
Cameras watched as the nanosatellite — named Chasqui after the Inca messengers who were fleet of foot — increased its distance and grew smaller. Artemiev's Russian spacewalking partner, Alexander Skvortsov, tried to keep his helmet camera aimed at the satellite as it floated away.
The satellite — barely 2 pounds — holds and instruments to measure temperature and pressure and cameras that will photograph Earth. It's a technological learning experience for the National University of Engineering in Lima. A Russian cargo ship delivered the device earlier this year.
Less than a half-hour into the spacewalk, the satellite was on its way, flying freely.
With that completed, Artemiev and Skvortsov set about installing fresh science experiments outside the Russian portion of the space station and retrieving old ones. "Be careful," Russian Mission Control outside Moscow warned as the astronauts made their way to their next work site.
The two conducted a spacewalk in June, a few months after moving into the space station. Four other men live there: another Russian, two Americans and one German.
U.S. spacewalks, meanwhile, remain on hold.
NASA hoped to resume spacewalks this month after a yearlong investigation but delayed the activity until fall to get fresh spacesuit batteries on board. The SpaceX company will deliver the batteries on a Dragon supply ship next month. Engineers are concerned about the fuses of the on-board batteries.
Before the battery issue, NASA was stymied by a spacesuit problem that nearly cost an Italian astronaut his life last summer. Luca Parmitano's helmet flooded with water from the suit's cooling system, and he barely made it back inside. The investigation into that incident is now complete, with safety improvements made to the U.S. spacesuits.

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Microsoft cloud service Azure restored after partial outage

Microsoft cloud service Azure restored after partial outage

Reuters 

Microsoft said it resolved an outage on its Azure cloud computing service, which occurred across multiple regions.
Partial disruptions began as of 1.40 p.m. ET on Aug. 18, the company said on the Azure website. (http://bit.ly/VAqCJV)
Microsoft Azure is a cloud-based platform for creating, deploying and maintaining online applications and services such as websites and web-hosted applications. The service, which is used by governments and corporations around the world, supports various programming languages, tools and frameworks.
The company said Azure services such as virtual machines, cloud services, mobile services, service bus, site recovery, HDInsight, websites and Storsimple were down due to interruptions in multiple centers.
The core platform components were working properly throughout and only a small subset of customers were affected by the outage, Microsoft said. 

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Facebook Doesn't Want You To See Everything Your Friends Post

Facebook Doesn't Want You To See Everything Your Friends Post

Maya Kosoff

Business Insider 

On July 17, Tim Herrera spent six hours scrolling through his Facebook News Feed.
What may sound like procrastination or killing time was actually Herrera's own experiment to understand Facebook's News Feed algorithm.
Herrera, a digital audience producer for the Washington Post, moved to Washington, D.C. this spring after living in New York for more than six years.
Curious to see how that affected his News Feed, he embarked on an experiment: first, he cataloged every news item on his News Feed until they started to repeat—he found 1,417 unique posts. No event RSVP or like went unnoticed.
"I think most people generally know that Facebook shows only a sliver of what goes on in their networks, so I wanted to see precisely how small that sliver really is," Herrera told Business Insider.
Then, Herrera went through and noted all of the July 17 status updates and posts made by his 403 Facebook friends and the 157 Pages he likes. After crunching the numbers, Herrera realized he'd only seen 738 of the 2,593 new updates created by his connections that day—roughly 29% of the day's activity.
"Considering the average U.S. user spends around 40 minutes on Facebook per day – or about one-tenth of the time I spent in my News Feed – it’s easy to imagine that percentage dipping far, far below my 29%," he said in his analysis of the News Feed experiment.
The further down the News Feed rabbit hole Herrera went, the stranger the posts he was shown became. Herrera saw almost no news from Denver, despite growing up there, liking several Denver-based news Pages, and being connected to friends who live here. And blogs he doesn't read that often—like Jezebel and The Cut—made up a significant number of the posts he was shown, while websites he likes almost weren't shown at all.
But toward the end of his experiment, Herrera started seeing stuff his high school friends posted, only because he had checked out their status updates earlier. "That's a miscue," he said, in regard to the News Feed algorithm. "And just because I don't click Like on something from a friend doesn't mean I don't want to see their posts in my News Feed."
Not much is known about how News Feed's algorithm works. Other journalists have tried gleaning information about how different Facebook features operate.
WIRED's Mat Honan liked every single thing he saw on Facebook for two days, liking thousands of posts and Pages in the process and unintentionally spamming his friends' feeds. The Atlantic's Caleb Garling set out to trick Facebook's algorithm, crafting a carefully worded status to garner as many likes as possible.
But the outcomes of these experiments don't tell us much about what makes News Feed elevate certain posts and hide others, or why Tim Herrera is always shown updates from someone he worked with at Pizza Hut when he was 16.
"There's a long way to go before Facebook learns us well enough that it can predict what we truly want, versus guessing what we want based on past activity and all the other signals it uses," Herrera told Business Insider. "But over the years we've ceded more and more control of News Feed to Facebook's machines, so eventually it's possible that it really will know us better than we know ourselves." 

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DARPA wants future tanks to use technology in place of armor

DARPA wants future tanks to use technology in place of armor

Mariella Moon

Engadget

Tanks and other land-based fighting vehicles are typically fitted with layers upon layers of armor for protection, but they move real slow as a result.
Since more advanced weapons are being developed to punch holes through thick plating anyway, DARPA wants to find a way to develop faster, more agile fighting vehicles that don't depend on armor for safety.
To accomplish that, the agency has launched the Ground X-Vehicle Technology (GXV-T) program, which aims to conjure up technologies that'll lead to slimmer tanks that can avoid getting shot at. The program wants to cut vehicles' weight and the number of operators needed to operate them in half, as well as to make them twice as fast so they can dodge incoming threats. It also plans to give these new breed of vehicles the power to drive through rough terrain and to evade enemy detection.
DARPA's slated to work on GXV-T technologies for the next 24 months before it awards any contract, so it might take a while before we see a finished product.

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Apple gives beta users a peek at OS X Yosemite

Apple gives beta users a peek at OS X Yosemite

By Julia Love

San Jose Mercury News 

Aug. 18- CUPERTINO, Calif. — Apple is no longer afraid of the word "beta."
Breaking with its notorious code of secrecy, Apple is letting users test-drive its new operating system for the Mac before it is officially launched later this fall. For the first time, the Cupertino, Calif.-based company unveiled a free beta version of its upcoming OS X Yosemite software to the general public late last month along with a parallel version for developers that was updated Monday, setting the Apple blogosphere afire.
Users often get to test new services from Google before they are finalized, but it's a rare perk from Apple, which typically limits its beta releases to registered developers. By giving the public an early look at Yosemite, Apple is showing a greater appreciation for beta testing, said Carolina Milanesi, chief of research and head of U.S. business at Kantar Worldpanel ComTech, a consumer research firm.
"It may be a bit of a different Apple," she said, adding that the company now seems to understand that releasing a beta version "doesn't say that their attention to detail has changed. ... It's just that they are seeking feedback."
With beta testing, companies can deploy users to spot kinks in software before it debuts. After the troubled 2012 launch of Apple Maps, which set off a deluge of user complaints and forced an apology from CEO Tim Cook, Apple may be trying to avoid another "gotcha" moment, said analyst Van Baker with Gartner Research.
"This is sort of taking advantage of, in essence, the crowdsourcing approach to understand, 'Is there anything we missed?'" he said.
Apple last released a beta version of its software to the public in 2000, and users had to pay for it. The Yosemite beta program is open to the first million people who sign up, though users must consent to a nondisclosure agreement.
Apple released a beta version of its upcoming iOS 8 software for iPhones and iPads to developers after the Worldwide Developers Conference in June, but the company has not opened up the software to the public.
The public beta program will also provide valuable feedback to the developer community, which Apple needs to keep happy as Google's Android operating system gains ground, said Milanesi.
"From a developer perspective, there's an opportunity to deliver better products," she said.
Among other new features, the OS X Yosemite for Macs will allow users to begin a task on one Apple device and finish it on another, Apple has said. The iOS 8 system for iPhones and iPads will give developers new tools to create health and fitness apps.

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You Won't Believe Who Is Convinced One Direction Will Break Up

One Direction frequently squashes the rumors that they're breaking up, but this time one of their earliest fans — the guy who put them together in the first place — has proclaimed that the band will split! Their X Factor mentor Simon Cowell told the Daily Star that he doesn't expect 1D to stay together forever, like the boys have recently promised.

"Bands don't stay together forever," he said. "I think they will make at least two more albums together and they are in the middle of one right now."

When asked about the possibility of Harry Styles going solo, Simon said that he doesn't see it happening "for a while," but he thinks that the boys will "eventually" all have solo careers.

Fans have been tweeting their reactions to this news with the hashtag#HalfAHeartWithoutOneDirection, showing how heartbroken they would be if One Direction actually split up.

Simon later gushed about One Direction's upcoming album, which he has already listened to . And it sounds like all the more reason for fans to be heartbroken at the idea of a world without 1D.

For the time being, though, it looks like One Direction has no plans to break up or have any of its members go solo. The boys have repeatedly denied the rumors, so Simon's prediction could be totally wrong!

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Microsoft Announces Windows Phone Hackathon on ITCN 2014

Microsoft Announces Windows Phone Hackathon on ITCN 2014

Microsoft Pakistan has announced a three day Windows Phone Hackathon on the occasion of ITCN Asia – country’s largest IT Expo – starting August 26th, 2014.

Microsoft said that all sorts of startups, students and professional developers are invited to participate in the Hackathon and win amazing Windows Phone devices.

As mentioned above, almost anyone can participate. Each team can have a maximum of two members, while single member teams are also allowed.

Microsoft said that it will give away as many as 20 high-end Windows Phone devices as prizes for various categories.

Contestants will be asked to develop Windows Phone apps in following categories:

• Build for Better Pakistan
• Games
• Kids & Education
• Lifestyle & Food
• News & Weather

Prizes will be given to Winning & Runner Up teams in each category. Mobile phone devices will be given relative to team size. If a team consist of an individual, one Windows Phone device will be given. If it consists of two members, both members will be given category relative Windows Phone device.

Along with, during three days of the Hackathon, Microsoft will be organizing following sessions as well:

• Technical training sessions from Microsoft staff for the attendees (anyone can join)
• Apps showcasing
• Meet the experts to learn more about the global market place
• Quizzes and Sessions to allow people to win exciting giveaways

If you are interested, head to this link here to get further details about the event and to get yourself registered.

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Samsung Unveils Galaxy Alpha with New Metal Design

Samsung Unveils Galaxy Alpha with New Metal Design

Samsung is afraid, that’s a fact. This last quarter, it recorded its worst performance in two years, mostly due to the faltering sales of its S5 flagship. It’s been just about time that people realize that gimmicks don’t really matter rather than showing off (or for point scoring).

But the worst is the design. Samsung’s phones are just about as exciting design-wise as BlackBerry’s are in terms of apps. It’s about time that it has to change its usual years-old design.

Turns out, Samsung finally has.

After months of speculation, Samsung finally uncovered the Galaxy Alpha, its first metal high-end in ages. No need to smash the hell out of your phones (or post an awkward selfie, I’m just saying!) just yet because there’s more.

The screen of Galaxy Alpha is 4.7″ with 720p HD resolution. That’s not exactly the flagship-standard for 2014 but offers a respectable pixel density of 320ppi. Apart from there, almost nothing is subpar in Galaxy Alpha.

The internals are Samsung’s home-baked. The Exynos 5 Octa octa-core processor comes with four Cortex-A15 cores clocked at 1.8Ghz and four Cortex-A7 at 1.3Ghz. There’s also Mali-T628 MP6 GPU. Accompanying such power lies 2 GB worth RAM and 32 GB storage, which is non-expandable.

At the back of Galaxy Alpha is a 12 megapixel camera capable of shooting 4K video at 30fps. There’s also a 2.1 megapixel lens at the front for all your selfies.

In typical Samsung fashion, no shortage of gimmicks either. With Galaxy Alpha you get a fingerprint-reader as well as a heart-rate scanner. The OS running is Android 4.4.4 KitKat, customized by Samsung further. Samsung’s S Health, Ultra Power saving mode and the wide-array of usual apps will come along too.

Galaxy Alpha will come with a rather small 1,860 mAh battery. It will be offered in four colours: Black, White, Gold, Silver and Blue. It is remarkably thin too, at just 6.7mm thin.

It’s not a complete redesign though, but a rather “evolution of the Galaxy design” as Samsung calls it. It isn’t all metal; the back-cover is still dimpled and removable, not unlike the Galaxy S5 while the phone itself now looks like an iPhone. Should turn more heads now but isn’t water-proof.

Galaxy Alpha will hit worldwide this September for an unspecified price-tag.

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Gunmen attack Saudi prince's motorcade in Paris, rob 250,000 euros

Gunmen attack Saudi prince's motorcade in Paris, rob 250,000 euros

AFP

Kalashnikov-wielding robbers have attacked the motorcade of a Saudi prince in Paris, making off with 250,000 euros ($335,000) in cash and reportedly stealing "sensitive" documents, French police said Monday.
The theft took place in northern Paris as the motorcade was making its way from the Saudi embassy to an airport in Le Bourget, said police, who confirmed there were no injuries.
The attack took place late on Sunday around Porte de la Chapelle, a police source said.
The car attacked was a supply vehicle that was stolen and later found burned, the source added.
No suspects have yet been apprehended.
According to the local daily Le Parisien, the men also stole documents said to be "sensitive".
"It's quite an unusual attack. They were obviously well-informed. It's true that it's quite a rare way of operating," the police source told AFP.

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Samsung Submits Plan to Invest in Indonesian Factory

Reuters

South Korea's Samsung Electronics Co Ltd said on Monday it plans to set up a factory to produce mobile phones mainly forIndonesia, one of the world's fastest growing markets for the devices.

The company, which already has factories in China and Vietnam, declined to disclose the potential size of its investment. Earlier this year, Taiwan's Foxconn Technology Group, a major supplier to Apple Inc, said it was considering setting up a $1 billion manufacturing facility in Indonesia.

"We have been discussing with the Indonesian government of our plan to produce mobile phones for the domestic market, so that we can meet local consumers' need more effectively," Samsung said in an emailed statement.

Samsung plans to gradually build up the production capacity at the factory in West Java to 900,000 units per month, Budi Darmadi, director general of high-tech industry at Indonesia's industry ministry, told Reuters.

The South Korean company is expected to start with a monthly capacity of 100,000 units this year, Darmadi added.

It is unclear if Samsung is going to produce cellular phones or smartphones, or both, at the factory.

A youthful population, low smartphone penetration rates and higher disposable incomes make Indonesia an attractive market for smartphone manufacturers like Samsung, which has seen sales growth of its flagship Galaxy models weaken in more established markets.

People aged under-30 make up over half of Indonesia's 240 million population and just 20 percent use smartphones. Estimates put smartphone usage at 50 percent before the end of the decade.

Samsung's investment comes a few months after Indonesians elected former Jakarta governor Joko Widodo, who is seen by the markets as business-friendly, as president of Southeast Asia's largest economy. Widodo's administration is due to take office in October.

Foxconn, listed as Hon Hai Precision Industry Co Ltd in Taiwan, had said it was waiting for the new government to take office before deciding whether it would go ahead with its manufacturing plant.

The Indonesian government is considering a 20 percent tax for smartphones retailing at 5 million rupiah ($428.38 dollar) and above in an effort to dampen the influx of imported products.

© Thomson Reuters 2014

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The Big 5.5-Inch iPhone Might Be Called The 'iPhone 6L' (AAPL)

The Big 5.5-Inch iPhone Might Be Called The 'iPhone 6L' (AAPL)

Jay Yarow

Business Insider 

Apple is expected to break from tradition and release two new phones with two different screen sizes this year.

Multiple reports say Apple will release a 4.7-inch model as well as a 5.5-inch model. The current iPhone is 4-inches, which is relatively small compared to Android phones.
When this happens, Apple will face a naming dilemma. Since the first iPhone rolled out, it's been pretty simple to name the iPhone. Here's how it's gone: iPhone, iPhone 3G, iPhone 3GS, iPhone 4, iPhone 4S, iPhone 5, iPhone 5S, and the iPhone 5C.
But, with the iPhone 6 coming in two sizes, but supposedly otherwise similar specs, Apple has to come up with a way to differentiate.

With the iPad, Apple has the iPad Air for the 9.7-inch model, and the iPad Mini for the 7.9-inch model. But the iPad Air name doesn't really sound right. And the iPhone Air sounds kind of goofy for a 5.5-inch iPhone.
So, what could Apple do? Well, there's a rumor from a Chinese site that Apple might call the 5.5-inch iPhone the iPhone 6L, with the L presumably standing for "Large". The 4.7-inch iPhone would just be the iPhone 6 in this scenario.

It's also a little goofy, but it's better than iPhone Air, which doesn't make any sense. The "Air" name comes from the MacBook Air, which is a super light laptop. The iPhone is already plenty light, and odds are that the bigger iPhone won't be the lighter of the two, so it doesn't make any sense.
The iPhone 6L name comes from 9to5Mac, which spotted it at Asian site Apple Daily. Apple Daily won't load on our computer, but 9to5Mac's report doesn't seem to have an information on how Apple Daily came up with 6L. So, this is a thin rumor, treat it skeptically. But, of all the naming conventions possible, the 6L makes the most sense

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