Slashdot Mirror

An anonymous reader quotes a report from ZDNet: For the first time, EU authorities have announced plans to recall a product from the European market because of a data privacy issue. The product is Safe-KID-One, a children's smartwatch produced by German electronics vendor ENOX. According to the company's website, the watch comes with a trove of features, such as a built-in GPS tracker, built-in microphone and speaker, a calling and SMS text function, and a companion Android mobile app that parents can use to keep track and contact their children. The product is what most parents regularly look in a modern smartwatch but in a RAPEX (Rapid Alert System for Non-Food Products) alert published last week and spotted by Dutch news site Tweakers, European authorities ordered a mass recall of all smartwatches from end users citing severe privacy lapses. "The mobile application accompanying the watch has unencrypted communications with its backend server and the server enables unauthenticated access to data," said authorities in the RAPEX alert. "As a consequence, the data such as location history, phone numbers, serial number can easily be retrieved and changed." On top of this, authorities also said that "a malicious user can send commands to any watch making it call another number of his choosing, can communicate with the child wearing the device or locate the child through GPS."

New submitter bartvbl writes: As part of the GPL license, D-Link makes its firmware source code available for many of its devices. When looking through the files I accidentally stumbled upon 4 different private keys used for code signing. Only one — the one belonging to D-Link itself — was still valid at the time. I have successfully used this key to sign an executable as D-Link. A Dutch news site published the full story (translated to english with Google Translate).

First time accepted submitter TBerben (1061176) writes "The European Parliament has voted to accept the telecommunications reform bill. This bill simultaneously forbids mobile providers from charging roaming costs as of December 15, 2015 and guarantees net neutrality. Previous versions of the bill contained a much weaker definition of net neutrality, offering exemptions for 'specialized services,' but this was superseded in an amendment (original link, in Dutch) submitted by Dutch MEP Marietje Schaake (liberal fraction). Note that the legislation is not yet definitive: the Council of Ministers still has the deciding vote, but they are expected to follow the EP's vote."

First time accepted submitter Barryke writes "Today LEGO announces the new mohawk (NASA's turf) sporting MINDSTORMS EV3 platform (press release). And with details on its features and innards (in Dutch) which in short comes down to: 'Its intelligent brick sports an ARM9-soc running Linux on 64MB RAM and 16MB storage memory, and supports SD cards. There are also four ports, which allow four other 'Bricks' can be connected. The intelligent brick can be reached by WiFi, USB and Bluetooth, and supports control via Android and iOS devices. It comes with 3 servo's, two touch sensors and an IR sensor to track other robots at upto six meters. It also includes 17 build plans, shown in 3D using Adobe Inventor Publisher.'"

Godefricus writes "Outrage ensued among Dutch techie and media websites, after a government report advised that the dwindling print media industry should be financially supported by the online industry (Google translation; Dutch original here). The idea is to help the old media fund 'innovative initiatives.' The suggested implementation of the plan is by taxing a percentage of each ISP subscription, and give the money to the papers. The report, which was solicited by the Dutch parliament and written by a committee of its members, specifically states that 'news and the gathering of news stories is not free, and the public must be made aware of that.' The report is not conclusive, but from here it's just one step toward a legislative proposal. Both industries are largely privately owned in The Netherlands, and the current government is center-left wing. Who needs an RIAA if you can build one into your government? And hey, why invest in the future if you can invest in the past?"

Roboticles writes "Tweakers.net paid a visit to Intel's laboratories in the California town of Folsom, the birthplace of the 45nm CPU. We spoke to lead architect Stephen Fisher about the development of the Penryn chip and the day the first A0 version arrived. We were shown the machinery used to test and patch the 45nm processor, which is currently being manufactured in Arizona for release next month."

Roboticles writes "Tweakers.net paid a visit to Intel's laboratories in the California town of Folsom, the birthplace of the 45nm CPU. We spoke to lead architect Stephen Fisher about the development of the Penryn chip and the day the first A0 version arrived. We were shown the machinery used to test and patch the 45nm processor, which is currently being manufactured in Arizona for release next month."

Martin_Sturm writes "A $175 1GB USB stick designed to protect your data turns out to be a very insecure. According to the distributer of the Secustick, the safety of the data is ensured: 'Due to its unique technology it has the ability to destroy itself once an incorrect password is entered.' The Secustick is used by various European governments and organizations to secure data on USB sticks. Tweakers.net shows how easy it is to break the protection of the stick. Quoting: 'It should be clear that the stick's security is quite useless: a simple program can be used to fool the Secustick into sending its unlock command without knowing the password. Besides, the password.exe application can be adapted so that it accepts arbitrary passwords.' The manufacturer got the message and took the Secustick website offline. The site give a message (translated from Dutch): 'Dear visitor, this site is currently unavailable due to security issues of the Secustick. We are currently working on an improved version of the Secustick.'"

Robbedoeske writes "The first Optimums Mini Three keyboards have been shipped to Holland and Tweakers.net managed to lay hands on one of them to review this precious gem." Apparently the drivers crash a lot, consume way to much CPU, the device is capable of only 3 frames per second, and the packaging makes the images look far more crisp than the actual device. And with a price tag of over $100, I'm scared to imagine what the price of a full keyboard will actually be should it ever actually ship. But it still would be neat.

Robbedoeske writes "The first Optimums Mini Three keyboards have been shipped to Holland and Tweakers.net managed to lay hands on one of them to review this precious gem." Apparently the drivers crash a lot, consume way to much CPU, the device is capable of only 3 frames per second, and the packaging makes the images look far more crisp than the actual device. And with a price tag of over $100, I'm scared to imagine what the price of a full keyboard will actually be should it ever actually ship. But it still would be neat.

Robbedoeske writes "Dutch language site Tweakers.net has the first pictures of AMD's Socket F, aka Socket 1207. This socket introduces support for DDR 2 memory and some say it will offer the ability for a integrated PCI Express controller on the cpu. Socket F is meant to be used in systems with more than one Opteron cpu."

Robbedoeske writes "Dutch language site Tweakers.net has the first pictures of AMD's Socket F, aka Socket 1207. This socket introduces support for DDR 2 memory and some say it will offer the ability for a integrated PCI Express controller on the cpu. Socket F is meant to be used in systems with more than one Opteron cpu."

Robbedoeske writes "Tweakers.net has put online a comparison of nine Serial ATA RAID 5 adapters. Can the establishment counter the attack of the newcomers? Which of the contestants delivers the best performance, offers the best value for money and has the best featureset?"

Robbedoeske writes "Tweakers.net has put online a comparison of nine Serial ATA RAID 5 adapters. Can the establishment counter the attack of the newcomers? Which of the contestants delivers the best performance, offers the best value for money and has the best featureset?"

Yoeri Lauwers writes "Tweakers.net investigates matters a bit more clearly and decides that AnandTech and Storagereview should think twice before they shout that "RAID 0 is useless on the desktop". Tweakers.net's tests illustrate the contrary"

Yoeri Lauwers writes "Tweakers.net investigates matters a bit more clearly and decides that AnandTech and Storagereview should think twice before they shout that "RAID 0 is useless on the desktop". Tweakers.net's tests illustrate the contrary"

Martin_Sturm writes "The IEEE consortium announces in a recent press release that it granted permission to the Linux Man Page Project to incorporate material from the official documentation on the POSIX standard. Obviously this is very good news for the Man Page project which now has access to a huge amount of good documentation. Until recently the project could not use this documentation due to copyright restricions."

Megamuch writes: "The tweakers.net guys got to take a tour inside the Dane-Elec memory factory in Ireland and have posted a pictorial tour of their trip. " They give a nice tour with lots of decent photos of the process that the comany goes through to package up chips. Fascinating stuff.

Beanie writes: "Today Intel announced their 1.7GHz Pentium 4. It's crazy to think about the fact that just one year ago we were breaking the 1GHz barrier and now we're almost up to 2GHz. AnandTech has a review of the Pentium 4 1.7GHz and they compare it to the recently released AMD Athlon 1.33GHz." And Otis_INF writes "Tweakers.net had the oppertunity to run some benchmarks on a system with an Intel Foster CPU on board, placed on an early i860 based board. The complete sneak preview (in english) is here. It smokes the P4 in some benchmarks."

XBL writes: "Tweakers.net has posted a preview of the Itanium that includes benchmarks of the x86 emulator. Looks pretty dismal here, as it struggles to keep up with even a Pentium I in many areas! Let's just hope that 64-bit apps will make this thing not look so bad. That $4k pricetag hurts though, no matter how fast it will be."

XBL writes: "Tweakers.net has posted a preview of the Itanium that includes benchmarks of the x86 emulator. Looks pretty dismal here, as it struggles to keep up with even a Pentium I in many areas! Let's just hope that 64-bit apps will make this thing not look so bad. That $4k pricetag hurts though, no matter how fast it will be."