PlayStation VR is going to launch with a game that allows players to sexually assault a woman who is actively asking them to stop. Yes, that’s exactly as gross as it sounds and yes, of course the game is Dead or Alive Xtreme 3. The game’s virtual rea…
Source: Engadget – ‘Dead or Alive’ VR is basically sexual assault, the game
Monthly Archives: August 2016
AMD vs. Intel-Assessing Their New Strategies: A Study In Contrasts
Over the next few years we are going to see something we don’t see that often. Two companies in the same market on two very different paths. AMD will be focused like a laser on traditional PC and Server markets but adapting to the new loads and tasks that both are being tossed in. Intel, in contrast, will be expanding massively to drones, IoT, and Automotive each of which has massive, but as yet, unrealized potential for firms in their class. Now typically when AMD and Intel run at each other AMD is massively disadvantaged but with Intel’s shift in focus they won’t be chasing Intel but a…
Source: TG Daily – AMD vs. Intel-Assessing Their New Strategies: A Study In Contrasts
Zinnia, I Choose You!: Flower That Looks Like A Pokeball
This is a photo captured by Redditor space_wyrm in their garden of a zinnia that looks like a pokeball (previously: pokeball flowers made out of duct tape). The zinnia is displaying codominance, or the visibility of both alleles of a specific gene (in this case pink or white coloration) in a single phenotype. It got the pollen color totally wrong though, that should all be black. You had one job, Mother Nature. “I have a thousand-million jobs!” Yeah well my wiener could use a growth spurt.
Thanks to carey, who agrees you have to be careful about catching ’em all and not having adequate facilities or you could face pocket monster hoarding charges.
Source: Geekologie – Zinnia, I Choose You!: Flower That Looks Like A Pokeball
World Of Warcraft: Legion Launches Tonight, And Azeroth Is Screwed
With the European launch of World of Warcraft’s sixth expansion a little over an hour away and North America following six hours later, Azeroth is not in great shape. Heroes are dead, leadership is faltering, and our only hope for salvation lies in a set of artifacts no one’s seen for thousands of years. This is fine.
Source: Kotaku – World Of Warcraft: Legion Launches Tonight, And Azeroth Is Screwed
Verizon Switches On LTE Advanced In 461 Cities — Is Your Phone Compatible?
An anonymous reader writes: Today, the carrier announces that its LTE is getting much faster. In 461 cities across the USA, it switches on the speedier ‘LTE Advanced’ (LTE-A). Best of all, many existing devices are compatible. The company said in a blog post:”Verizon LTE Advanced uses software that combines multiple channels to speed mobile data over the network more quickly than ever before. The result is 50 percent faster peak speeds in cities nationwide for Verizon customers using one of the 39 LTE Advanced-capable phones and tablets already on Verizon’s network — including top-selling Samsung Galaxy S6 and S7 smartphones, Moto Droids and Apple iPhones. As new devices from Apple, Samsung, LG and other manufacturers are introduced, they will be LTE Advanced-capable right out of the box.”
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot – Verizon Switches On LTE Advanced In 461 Cities — Is Your Phone Compatible?
Know How Much Watermelon You Need for a Gathering With This Rule of Thumb
Watermelons come in all shapes and sizes, so knowing how much you need for a barbecue or picnic can be tricky. This simple rule of thumb will make sure you get enough for everyone.
Source: LifeHacker – Know How Much Watermelon You Need for a Gathering With This Rule of Thumb
Can your couch give you cancer?
Drenching our furniture in chemicals to make it safer probably wasn’t the best idea.
Source: TreeHugger – Can your couch give you cancer?
Visit Elk Grove With This Sneak Peek at Ash vs Evil Dead Season Two
We’re just over a month away from Ash vs Evil Dead’s October 2 return to the airwaves. “I guess it’s safe to say the truce is over,” Ash announces in this behind-the-scenes peek, which contains (awesomely gory) footage from the first episode as “Ashy Slashy” heads back to his Michigan hometown of Elk Grove.
Source: io9 – Visit Elk Grove With This Sneak Peek at Ash vs Evil Dead Season Two
Kim Dotcom hopes to livestream his extradition appeal
Source: Engadget – Kim Dotcom hopes to livestream his extradition appeal
T-Mobile is Making Its 'Unlimited' Data Plan Even More Confusing
When T-Mobile announced “One” plan, little did the company know that people wouldn’t like seeing their “unlimited” data plan offer video streaming max out at 480p resolution. The company is making some tweaks to that plan, only to make things more confusing to people. It will now begin selling “HD day passes” for $3 per day, allowing customers to stream in 1080p for 24 hours. The Verge reports: That’s simple enough, but here’s where it gets really weird: T-Mobile is also offering a plan called T-Mobile One Plus, which, among other benefits, offers unlimited HD day passes. So by subscribing to the plan, you can stream 1080p video all you want every single day — but only if you go and activate the HD day pass again every single day. Presumably, T-Mobile is hoping you’ll forget to activate those passes, or else it would have just lifted the 480p quality limit without this bizarre constraint. Making this even more confusing, T-Mobile originally announced plans to offer an “HD add-on” for the One plan that offered unlimited HD streaming without constraints. That’s no longer going to be an option, however, so if you want HD video streaming, you’re stuck re-enabling it every day. A T-Mobile rep framed the change as “giving customers more” for the same price, which is true (both cost $25 extra per month), but the new plan also involves the strange new reactivation hurdle.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot – T-Mobile is Making Its ‘Unlimited’ Data Plan Even More Confusing
I Got Scammed By A Silicon Valley Startup
While this is a very interesting story, you can’t help but count every single time this person should have know she was getting screwed over. Also, there are a dozen listed “red flags” in the article. Would it take twelve red flags for you to walk away from a scam job? Especially after THIS one:
Around this time, Bruce and I were sharing personal concerns and he confided in me that he had let Michael borrow $50,000 from his personal savings. Did you read that? A startup employee gave his life savings to our CEO. He wasn’t the only one. Another biz dev team bro who was crashing on the CEO’s couch, Bobby, apparently lent Michael five figures too. In disbelief, I asked why he needed money when he has $2M already committed in the company. Bruce said that Michael had his offshore money tied up with the IRS because of unpaid taxes and essentially his assets were frozen until he went to court.
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Source: [H]ardOCP – I Got Scammed By A Silicon Valley Startup
Build a One-Click Morning Routine Starter with an Amazon Dash Button
We all have a morning routine, and depending on exactly how yours works, it might be possible to automate certain parts of it. Case in point, DIYer Tom Harrigan shows off his method of automating his morning routine to make his mornings a little easier.
Source: LifeHacker – Build a One-Click Morning Routine Starter with an Amazon Dash Button
Blu's Pure XR brings 3D Touch to Android for $299
Right on schedule, Blu has followed up last year’s Pure XL with its latest affordable, feature-heavy (and unlocked) Android phone: the $299 4G LTE Pure XR. On its face, the XR version sports a curved, 5.5-inch 1080p SuperAMOLED screen with a (possibl…
Source: Engadget – Blu’s Pure XR brings 3D Touch to Android for 9
Mark Zuckerberg's Wife Can't Control His New Home Assistant
Mark Zuckerberg continues to making news on his Italy trip, the latest being an update on the AI he’s building to help around the house. The Facebook founder revealed he’ll be ready to demo the assistant he’s been working on throughout 2016 next month. He also revealed that, “much to [her] chagrin,” his wife Priscilla cannot use the technology quite yet.
Source: Gizmodo – Mark Zuckerberg’s Wife Can’t Control His New Home Assistant
No, Steam Isn't Offering 'Special Exemptions' For No Man's Sky Refunds
No Man’s Sky is not the game a lot of people wanted it to be
. Over the weekend, people sought refunds en masse, and many reported that retailers like Amazon, Steam, and PSN offered unconditional or nearly unconditional refunds. That’s not entirely true.
Source: Kotaku – No, Steam Isn’t Offering ‘Special Exemptions’ For No Man’s Sky Refunds
Now Arriving On the New York Subway: Free E-Books, Timed For Your Commute
Brian Fagioli, writing for BetaNews:Andrew M. Cuomo, Governor of New York has announced a new promotion called “Subway Reads,” which leverages the free Wi-Fi connectivity provided at the NYC subway. This initiative will help straphangers get some relief from the other nonsense by enabling them to bury themselves in a free Penguin Random House e-book short or excerpt. “As part of ‘Subway Reads’, Penguin Random House created a special platform to offer subway customers free access to five full-length e-shorts, including High Heat, a Jack Reacher novella by Lee Child; F. Scott Fitzgerald’s classic short story, The Diamond As Big As The Ritz; 3 Truths and A Lie, a short story by Lisa Gardner; The Murders in the Rue Morgue by Edgar Allan Poe; and At the Reunion Buffet by Alexander McCall Smith,” says the New York State Government.Sounds like a good thing. What’s your thought?
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot – Now Arriving On the New York Subway: Free E-Books, Timed For Your Commute
Oh Wow: Watching A Hammer Smash Through A Mirror At 120,000 Frames Per Second
This is a video from the Slow-Mo Guys (I still suggest rebranding yourselves as the Slow-Mo Bros) of a hammer smashing through a mirror filmed at 120,000 frames per second. For reference, that’s like a frame every 120,000th of a second. What can I say, I’m a numbers guy. Just kidding, I’m all about colors. The most interesting thing about the video besides the fact there was a real-life car crash outside my building while I was watching it is that the impact of the hammer actually produces a shockwave through the mirror before it shatters. Still, no word how many decades of bad luck these guys have accumulated or if Bloody Mary showed them her tits.
Hit the jump for the video, then let’s let’s go break shit in the parking lot after work and film it with my phone.
Source: Geekologie – Oh Wow: Watching A Hammer Smash Through A Mirror At 120,000 Frames Per Second
Legendary Actor Gene Wilder Dies at 83
Gene Wilder, the legendary comedic actor who starred in Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, Young Frankenstein and so many others, has passed away at the age of 83.
Source: Gizmodo – Legendary Actor Gene Wilder Dies at 83
The bottom line: Our quick verdict on the Samsung Galaxy Note 7
Samsung’s enormous, pen-toting Galaxy Note was something of a curiosity when the original came out five years ago — unwieldy and built for a niche audience. Since then, big phones have become the norm, and the Note line in particular has become ever…
Source: Engadget – The bottom line: Our quick verdict on the Samsung Galaxy Note 7
Meet USBee, the malware that uses USB drives to covertly jump airgaps
Enlarge / Illustration of USBee, in which an ordinary, unmodified USB drive (A) transmits information to a nearby receiver (B) through electromagnetic waves emitted from the drive data bus. (credit: Guri et al.)
In 2013, a document leaked by former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden illustrated how a specially modified USB device allowed spies to surreptitiously siphon data out of targeted computers, even when they were physically severed from the Internet or other networks. Now, researchers have developed software that goes a step further by turning unmodified USB devices into covert transmitters that can funnel large amounts of information out of similarly “air-gapped” PCs.
The USBee—so named because it behaves like a bee that flies through the air taking bits from one place to another—is in many respects a significant improvement over the NSA-developed USB exfiltrator known as CottonMouth. That tool had to be outfitted with a hardware implant in advance and then required someone to smuggle it into the facility housing the locked-down computer being targeted. USBee, by contrast, turns USB devices already inside the targeted facility into a transmitter with no hardware modification required at all.
“We introduce a software-only method for short-range data exfiltration using electromagnetic emissions from a USB dongle,” researchers from Israel’s Ben-Gurion University wrote in a research paper published Monday. “Unlike other methods, our method doesn’t require any [radio frequency] transmitting hardware since it uses the USB’s internal data bus.”
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Source: Ars Technica – Meet USBee, the malware that uses USB drives to covertly jump airgaps