Shaky-cam is already hard enough to watch. Is it a terrible idea to put it in 3D? Yep, it is.
Source: io9 – Jason Bourne 3D is Making People Sick
Monthly Archives: August 2016
Cybercriminals Select Insiders To Attack Telecom Providers
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Help Net Security:
Cybercriminals are using insiders to gain access to telecommunications networks and subscriber data, according to Kaspersky Lab. In addition, these criminals are also recruiting disillusioned employees through underground channels and blackmailing staff using compromising information gathered from open sources…
According to Kaspersky Lab researchers, if an attack on a cellular service provider is planned, criminals will seek out employees who can provide fast track access to subscriber and company data or SIM card duplication/illegal reissuing. If the target is an Internet service provider, the attackers will try to identify the employees who can enable network mapping and man-in-the-middle attacks.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot – Cybercriminals Select Insiders To Attack Telecom Providers
Recommended Reading: The political media machine on Facebook
Inside Facebook’s (Totally
Insane, Unintentionally
Gigantic, Hyperpartisan)
Political-Media Machine
John Herrman,
The New York Times Magazine
A barrage of political links, ads and other content has filled up your News Feed over the last few months…
Source: Engadget – Recommended Reading: The political media machine on Facebook
Apollo Lake Laptops May Ditch Replaceable RAM
Is not being able to replace a laptop’s memory a deal breaker for you? You’ll probably be avoiding the majority of Apollo Lake portables, then, as it is being reported that manufacturers are opting for onboard soldered designs.
…replacing the memory sticks with higher-capacity models wasn’t an impossible feat for consumers using a screwdriver and the wondrous unlimited power of Google. However, if the memory is now on-board, the chips are soldered into place on the motherboard itself and cannot be replaced. As a result, notebook motherboards supporting Apollo Lake won’t have any memory bank slots whatsoever, reducing the overall amount of hardware packed into the super-thin form factor. This slightly reduces manufacturing costs for the OEM, as well.
Comments
Source: [H]ardOCP – Apollo Lake Laptops May Ditch Replaceable RAM
Hacker who stole 2.9 million credit card numbers is Russian lawmaker’s son
(credit: Wikipedia)
On Thursday, a federal jury in Seattle found Roman Seleznev guilty of stealing millions of credit card numbers and selling them online to other fraudsters. Seleznev, 32, is the son of Russian Parliament member Valery Seleznev.
Seleznev, who occasionally went by the moniker “Track2” online (a reference to one of the information strips on the back of a magnetic stripe card”), had been hacking into restaurant and retail Point of Sale (PoS) systems since at least October 2009 and continued until October 2013.
According to a 2014 indictment (PDF) from the Department of Justice, Seleznev and potentially others who are unknown to the investigators “developed and used automated techniques, such as port scanning, to identify computers and computer systems that were connected to the Internet [and] were dedicated to or involved with credit processing by retail businesses.”
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Source: Ars Technica – Hacker who stole 2.9 million credit card numbers is Russian lawmaker’s son
What Breakfast Has to Say About Free Will
You forgot to buy milk. Naturally, it’s all the big bang’s fault.
Source: Gizmodo – What Breakfast Has to Say About Free Will
Lenovo's Thinkpad X1 Yoga will make you want OLED everywhere
The dream of large OLED screens has, for the past few years, seemed perpetually on the horizon. LG has had OLED TVs on the market for a while, but they’re still far more expensive than comparable LCDs. If you’ve wanted to get your OLED fix recently,…
Source: Engadget – Lenovo’s Thinkpad X1 Yoga will make you want OLED everywhere
GTA V's Missions Are The Ultimate Thrill Ride
The Grand Theft Auto series is the modern epic, encompassing American culture in all its decadence and corrupted glory. The humor is crass, the violence is shocking, and the game’s allure keeps us going mission after a mission as we follow a cast of conflicted criminals.
Source: Kotaku – GTA V’s Missions Are The Ultimate Thrill Ride
Top 10 Clever Ways to Repurpose Your Kitchen Scraps
Vegetable peels, coffee grounds, corn cobs, dryer lint—they’re all waste for sure, but there’s treasure in that trash. You could compost them, that’s obvious, but let’s talk about some more clever ways to reuse those kitchen scraps before they make it to the bin.
Source: LifeHacker – Top 10 Clever Ways to Repurpose Your Kitchen Scraps
Someone Made a Miniature of the Original Iron Throne and Ouch My Butt
The Iron Throne is one of the most iconic images in Game of Thrones, and yet it’s always been a bit, well, lackluster. Now, someone’s taken it upon themselves to make a throne worthy of the Ruler of Westeros—or, at least, their LEGOs.
Source: io9 – Someone Made a Miniature of the Original Iron Throne and Ouch My Butt
HAARP Holds Open House To Dispel Rumors Of Mind Control
An anonymous Slashdot reader writes:
HAARP — the former Air Force/Navy/DARPA research program in Alaska — will host an open house Saturday where “We hope to show people that it is not capable of mind control and not capable of weather control and all the other things it’s been accused of…” said Sue Mitchell, spokesperson for the geophysical institute at the University of Alaska. “We hope that people will be able to see the actual science of it.” HAARP, which was turned over to The University of Alaska last August, has been blamed for poor crop yields in Russia, with conspiracy theorists also warning of “a super weapon capable of mind control or weather control, with enough juice to trigger hurricanes, tornadoes and earthquakes.”
The facility’s 180 high-frequency antennas — spread across 33 acres — will be made available for public tours, and there will also be interactive displays and an unmanned aircraft ‘petting zoo’. The Alaska Dispatch News describes it as “one of the world’s few centers for high-power and high-frequency study of the ionosphere… important because radio waves used for communication and navigation reflect back to Earth, allowing long-distance, short-wave broadcasting.”
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot – HAARP Holds Open House To Dispel Rumors Of Mind Control
LLVM Clang vs. GCC Compiler Benchmarks On FreeBSD 11.0
For those interested in C/C++ compiler performance, for some fun numbers to dive into this weekend are LLVM Clang vs. GCC benchmarks atop FreeBSD 11.0 RC1 AMD64 on an Intel Xeon Haswell system.
Source: Phoronix – LLVM Clang vs. GCC Compiler Benchmarks On FreeBSD 11.0
MIT Develops Groundbreaking Wi-Fi That's Three Times Faster
MIT scientists claim to have created a new wireless technology that can triple Wi-Fi data speeds while also doubling the range of the signal. The technology basically combines multiple transmitters and receivers that work simultaneously, which allows for the sending and receiving of more than one data signal at the same time.
MIT claimed that during tests, MegaMIMO 2.0 was able to increase data transfer speed of four laptops connected to the same Wi-Fi network by 330 percent. Paper co-author Rahul said the technology could also be applied to mobile phone networks to solve similar congestion issues. The system is similar in size to a standard Wi-Fi router and could prove particularly useful at high-capacity events where large numbers of people are fighting for bandwidth space, such as concerts and football matches.
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Source: [H]ardOCP – MIT Develops Groundbreaking Wi-Fi That’s Three Times Faster
Augmenting the FPS: How well does Tobii track your gaze in a video game?
Ars Technica tests the Tobii EyeX while playing Deus Ex. Video edited by Jennifer Hahn. (video link)
During Ars’ review playthrough of the latest adventure in the Deus Ex series, I spied a curious option tucked into its Windows menus: “Tobii eye-tracking.” None of Square Enix’s press materials mentioned such a thing, which seemed strange for a series that revolves around human augmentation and sci-fi upgrades. Eye-tracking in an FPS? Sounds like some futuristic stealth-spy stuff!
The word “Tobii” perked up my coworkers’ ears, as they’d tested simple prototypes of the eye-tracking doodad at various Consumer Electronics Shows. Deus Ex presented a great opportunity to test the add-on’s full potential, and Tobii was kind enough to send loaner hardware. We wanted to find out: Just what does an eye-tracking sensor do for computer users—how does it translate the gaze of your eyes to real-world computer use—and does it work well enough to earn a $140 price tag?
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Source: Ars Technica – Augmenting the FPS: How well does Tobii track your gaze in a video game?
Chrono Cross Was A Bad Sequel, But A Brilliant Game.
In many ways, the reason Chrono Cross is one of the most underrated JRPGs in gaming is because of the comparisons to its predecessor, Chrono Trigger.
Source: Kotaku – Chrono Cross Was A Bad Sequel, But A Brilliant Game.
Six innovative rooftop solar technologies
By Cat DiStasio
It’s never been easier to give your house a solar roof. Falling manufacturing costs and increasing demand have led to a number of fascinating new solar products in recent years, including roof shingles with integrated solar cells, mo…
Source: Engadget – Six innovative rooftop solar technologies
Dell Launches S2417DG 24-inch 165Hz G-SYNC Gaming Monitor
If refresh rate matters a lot to you in gaming, then you might want to pay attention to the brand-new S2417DG from Dell: a monitor spec’d at 165Hz. Well, as long as you’re willing to cough up for a graphics card that can reliably deliver 165 FPS in your games!
As its model name suggests, the S2417DG is a 24-inch monitor, so for many, that
Source: Hot Hardware – Dell Launches S2417DG 24-inch 165Hz G-SYNC Gaming Monitor
JRPGs, Grand Theft Nightmares, And Retro Horror
Hail Kotaku Readers! My name is Peter Tieryas and I’ll be your guest editor today. That means lots of retrogames, existential musings, and a list of the strangest football games I could find.
Source: Kotaku – JRPGs, Grand Theft Nightmares, And Retro Horror
Eavesdropping On Tinder: Researcher Demonstrates Man-in-the-Middle Attacks
An anonymous Slashdot reader writes:
Security expert Anthony Zboralski posted on HERT a social engineering attack for Tinder that lets you perform a man-in-the-middle attack against unsuspecting users. Zboralski says, “Not only we can eavesdrop on the conversation of two strangers, we can also change their reality.” The attack can easily be extended to SMS, Whatsapp, iMessage and voice.
“At some point people exchange phone numbers and the Tinder convo stops. That’s not a problem…” Zboralski explains, suggesting more ways to continue the man-in-the-middle exploits..
His article drew a response from Tinder, arguing they “employ several manual and automated mechanisms” to deter fake and duplicate profiles. But while they’re looking for ways to improve, “ultimately, it is unrealistic for any company to positively validate the real-world identity of millions of users while maintaining the commonly expected level of usability.”
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot – Eavesdropping On Tinder: Researcher Demonstrates Man-in-the-Middle Attacks
Simone Giertz's New Robot Is Her Shittiest Yet
The queen of shitty robots
is back, apparently, with a hankering for a peanut butter sandwich.
Source: Gizmodo – Simone Giertz’s New Robot Is Her Shittiest Yet