hackerbra.launchpadisrael.com21 Sep 2017 News | Hackerbrain

hacker news with inline top comments .. more .. 21 Sep 2017 News home ask best 29789h 38m ago archive news 4 years ago news 4 years ago news 4 years ago news 4 years ago news 4 years ago news 4 years ago news 4 years ago news 4 years ago news 4 years ago news 4 years ago news 4 years ago news 4 years ago news 4 years ago news 4 years ago news 5 years ago news 5 years ago news 5 years ago news 5 years ago news 6 years ago news 7 years ago news 8 years ago news 9 years ago news 10 years ago news 11 years ago ask 4 years ago ask 4 years ago ask 4 years ago ask 4 years ago ask 4 years ago ask 4 years ago ask 4 years ago ask 4 years ago ask 4 years ago ask 4 years ago ask 4 years ago ask 4 years ago ask 4 years ago ask 4 years ago ask 5 years ago ask 5 years ago ask 5 years ago ask 5 years ago ask 6 years ago ask 7 years ago ask 8 years ago ask 9 years ago ask 10 years ago ask 11 years ago best 4 years ago best 4 years ago best 4 years ago best 4 years ago best 4 years ago best 4 years ago best 4 years ago best 4 years ago best 4 years ago best 4 years ago best 4 years ago best 4 years ago best 4 years ago best 4 years ago best 5 years ago best 5 years ago best 5 years ago best 5 years ago best 5 years ago best 6 years ago best 7 years ago best 8 years ago best 9 years ago best 10 years ago best 11 years ago 1 Google signs agreement with HTC blog.google 239 points by maguay 4 hours ago 88 comments top 19 1 bcatanzaro 3 hours ago 9 replies "Its still early days for Googles hardware business." Why no mention of Motorola in 2011? Google bought it for $12.5B, and sold it 2014 for $3B. I think it would have made the blog post better to give some explanation for why Things Are Different This Time. 2 EddieRingle 4 hours ago 2 replies Important bit: > Thats why weve signed an agreement with HTC, a leader in consumer electronics, that will fuel even more product innovation in the years ahead. With this agreement, a team of HTC talent will join Google as part of the hardware organization. These future fellow Googlers are amazing folks weve already been working with closely on the Pixel smartphone line, and we're excited to see what we can do together as one team. The deal also includes a non-exclusive license for HTC intellectual property. 3 maguay 4 hours ago 3 replies Random things that strike me about this deal: - HTC's stock price has been going down for the past 5 years, and EPS was down sharply recently. Does this make HTC more or less viable on its own going forward? - Apple finally made a VR push with the upcoming macOS High Sierra and iMac Proalong with the HTC Vive. Google didn't fully acquire HTC here, and HTC's trajectory was already tied to Android, but still seems an interesting wrinkle there. - Samsung continues to hedge their bets, most recently with Bixby. Really wonder if Google's continued hardware investment will make them seek more of their own path. - Why would Google acquire just a team from HTC? Seems like the oddest of acquihires yet. 4 tanilama 4 hours ago 0 replies TL;DR, Google doesn't acquire HTC, they bought a team. 5 spacehunt 3 hours ago 1 reply HTC's press release raises even more questions -- they claim they will continue to develop the next flagship phone? > HTC will continue to have best-in-class engineering talent, which is currently working on the next flagship phone, following the successful launch of the HTC U11 earlier this year. HTC will also continue to build the virtual reality ecosystem to grow its VIVE business, while investing in other next-generation technologies, including the Internet of Things, augmented reality and artificial intelligence. http://www.htc.com/us/about/newsroom/2017/2017-09-21-htc-goo... 6 atomicnumber1 2 hours ago 5 replies So, a billion dollars for about a 100 engineers. 7 SeoxyS 2 hours ago 0 replies Didn't quite work out for them last time why will this be any different than Motorola? 8 patryn20 2 hours ago 0 replies When any company gets large enough they become a repository of technical failures and an acquirer of the same. Unfortunately that ultimately matters little to stock value and market share. 9 maruhan2 4 hours ago 2 replies So confused. So in essence, Google bought a team from HTC? 10 xbmcuser 2 hours ago 1 reply I was really hoping they would at least take the HTC distribution and servicing channels to sell pixel phones more widely instead of just a few countries like currently. 11 CrunchGo 2 hours ago 0 replies I'm very excited about google's future plans. Anyone else feel like this is their path towards competing with apple and samsung in the long run? 12 0xbear 1 hour ago 0 replies Guaranteed in the top 10 on Google's internal Memegen: "WTF are you doing cat" gif. 13 maxpert 1 hour ago 0 replies Is it me or do you also see another Motorola in making? 14 sidcool 4 hours ago 2 replies So is this an acquisition or a recruitment drive? 15 AbeEstrada 4 hours ago 2 replies I think Google wants the VR (HTV Vive) team. 16 Abishek_Muthian 3 hours ago 0 replies Good win-win. 17 jimjimjim 3 hours ago 0 replies more acquisitions another nexus 7 god, i hope so. 18 thrillgore 4 hours ago 1 reply I did a literal spit take when I saw this. Are they doing this for phone production or for the Vive/VR? 19 jaypaulynice 2 hours ago 1 reply Google bought Motorola for $12.5 billion and sold it at a discount...Google just doesn't get user experience. Google bought so many user experience startups and yet they have nothing to show after so many years... 2 How to hack a turned-off computer, or running unsigned code in Intel ME blackhat.com 483 points by edejong 8 hours ago 126 comments top 27 1 sounds 8 hours ago 4 replies In case you haven't already used the following, please note that the NSA had an undocumented "backdoor" included which "disables" the ME. (Man, oh man, I wish I was making this stuff up.) http://blog.ptsecurity.com/2017/08/disabling-intel-me.html I put quotes around "disables" because the ME is not fully disabled. The blog's analysis does show how it is in a "safe" state, i.e. forced to ignore the outside world very early in its code path. Also, not likely to brick your computer, assuming unscrewing your case and using a SPI flash programmer hasn't already bricked your computer. Edit: "backdoor" in quotes too. 2 m1el 8 hours ago 4 replies I would be glad if this made Intel reconsider their stance on enforcing untrustable CPU features onto users. CPUs aren't cheap! Just give your customers full control over the product! 3 Keyframe 5 hours ago 2 replies I hate to be a Debbie Downer / conspiracy borderline, but nothing will change if all of this is true. Some apologies, "it's an oversight, we'll do better", "we take security seriously"... and nada. Maybe some provisional solutions which seem good, but in the back - things will remain status quo. 4 bluesroo 8 hours ago 1 reply Wow this sounds huge. I remember people speculating about this since it came to light... But people always talked about it like it was a vague hypothetical that only scary 3-letter agencies would figure out. I'm curious to see what kind of access they need in order to actually make use of this. If they somehow don't need physical access this is going to be nuts. 5 breatheoften 7 hours ago 5 replies This is the kind of thing that will cause Apple to switch to internally designed arm chips for their Mac line with great alacrity. One could argue that its surprising they havent already. 6 CookieMon 4 hours ago 2 replies Joke's on them, my computer's never turned-off. But seriously, I take it we won't know the attack vector until December, however if remotely exploitable they would surely have used the word "remote"? Is any mundane malware with admin rights able to update Intel ME? 7 ysleepy 7 hours ago 0 replies "Wouldn't it be kind of great if millions of people were secretly running minix, it would finally go mainstream!" The engineers probably thought something like this when deciding to use minix. Now it might ...