To find suspect, city cops ran stingray for hours, then called in FBI

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OAKLAND, Calif.—According to new government affidavits filed earlier this week, the Oakland Police Department (OPD) used its stingray without a warrant in 2013 for several hours overnight as a way to locate a man accused of being involved in shooting a local police officer. When that effort was unsuccessful, the OPD called in the FBI, which was somehow able to locate the suspect in under an hour, and he surrendered to OPD officers.

That suspect, Purvis Ellis, is the lead defendant in the case of United States v. Ellis et al. The case involves four men who are charged with the January 21, 2013 attempted murder of local police officer Eric Karsseboom in the parking area in front of a Seminary Avenue apartment complex in East Oakland. The men are also charged with running an alleged local gang, centered around Seminary Avenue (known as “SemCity”).

While these new filings fill out the timeline a bit more, they also raise new questions in Ellis, which has provided a rare insight into how this surveillance device, also known as a cell-site simulator, is used in practice to find suspects, and the seeming lengths the government is willing to go to keep it quiet. The tool has come under increasing scrutiny by lawmakers and activists in recent years. Since this case began, the Department of Justice, which oversees the FBI, and the State of California now require a warrant when a stingray is used in most circumstances.

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Source: Ars Technica – To find suspect, city cops ran stingray for hours, then called in FBI

Final Fantasy XV’s first half is open world, but it’s second half is linear.

Final Fantasy XV’s first half is open world, but it’s second half is linear. That’s what game director Hajime Tabata recently told Famitsu (via Siliconera). In the latter half, the story tightens up like in a traditional FF game, which probably explains why Square Enix went with a more linear experience.

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Source: Kotaku – Final Fantasy XV’s first half is open world, but it’s second half is linear.

Apple Patent Reveals Future iPhones Could Nab Fingerprints And Photos Of Suspected Thieves

Apple Patent Reveals Future iPhones Could Nab Fingerprints And Photos Of Suspected Thieves
Apple has filed a patent application with the United States Patent & Trademark Office (USPTO) that could flip the script on iPhone and iPad thieves looking for a fast payday. What they’ll get instead is a visit from local law enforcement—the patent involves taking a snapshot and capturing the fingerprint of the thief without the sticky fingered

Source: Hot Hardware – Apple Patent Reveals Future iPhones Could Nab Fingerprints And Photos Of Suspected Thieves

Intel Launches Flurry of 3D NAND-Based SSDs For Consumer and Enterprise Markets

MojoKid writes: Intel launched a handful of new SSD products today that cover a broad spectrum of applications and employ 3D NAND technology. The SSD 600p Series is offered in four capacities ranging from 128GB, to 256GB, 512GB and 1TB. The drivers are targeted at consumer desktops and notebooks and are available in the M.2 form-factor. The entry-level 128GB model offers sequential reads and writes of up to 770 MB/sec and 450 MB/sec respectively. At higher densities, the multi-channel 1TB model offers sequential reads and writes that jump to 1,800 MB/sec and 560 MB/sec respectively. The 128GB SSD 600p weighs in at $69, while the 1TB model is priced at $359, or about .36 cents per GiB. For the data center, Intel has also introduced the DC P3520 and DC S3520 Series SSDs in 2.5-inch and PCIe half-height card form-factors. Available in 450GB to 2TB capacities, the range-topping 2TB model offers random reads/writes of 1,700 MB/sec and 1,350 MB/sec respectively. Finally, Intel launched the SSD E 6000p (PCIe M.2) and SSD E 5420s Series (SATA). The former supports Core vPro processors and is targeted at point-of-sale systems and digital signage. The latter is aimed at helping customers ease the transition from HDDs to SSDs in IoT applications.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.



Source: Slashdot – Intel Launches Flurry of 3D NAND-Based SSDs For Consumer and Enterprise Markets

Princeton University Researchers Unveil 25-Core Open Source Piton Processor At Hot Chips

Princeton University Researchers Unveil 25-Core Open Source Piton Processor At Hot Chips
Researchers at Princeton University recently showed off a 25-core processor they designed specifically for data centers. It’s called “Piton,” named after the metal spikes rock climbers hammer into cracks or seams of mountainsides to anchor their position, and it’s built after a scalable architecture that could boost processing speed while

Source: Hot Hardware – Princeton University Researchers Unveil 25-Core Open Source Piton Processor At Hot Chips

Google Fiber Hits Trouble Waters As Alphabet Tightens Purse Strings, Halves Staff

Google Fiber Hits Trouble Waters As Alphabet Tightens Purse Strings, Halves Staff
When Google Fiber first launched in Kansas City back in 2012, it was hailed as a revolution in high-speed internet connectivity for consumers and businesses. Offering gigabit internet speeds for $70 per month was unheard of at the time, and Google promised to quickly spread the service across the United States.

Four years later, Google

Source: Hot Hardware – Google Fiber Hits Trouble Waters As Alphabet Tightens Purse Strings, Halves Staff

Windows 10 Anniversary Update Coughs Up Blue Screen Of Death When Amazon Kindles Are Connected

Windows 10 Anniversary Update Coughs Up Blue Screen Of Death When Amazon Kindles Are Connected
Late last week, we reported that the Anniversary Update was causing problems for certain webcams that were otherwise working fine in Windows 10. Today, we’re learning of yet another hardware incompatibility with Windows 10, and the inconvenience to users is far greater this time around.

Customers are reporting that something as simple as

Source: Hot Hardware – Windows 10 Anniversary Update Coughs Up Blue Screen Of Death When Amazon Kindles Are Connected

AMD & NVIDIA GPU VR Performance: Project Cars

If you like racing games then it is likely that you are familiar with Project Cars. This racing game can push a system to its limits when you turn up the visuals, and that is just what we are doing today while using our HTC Vive VR headset. And this is certainly a game we will add to the VR Leaderboard.

Source: [H]ardOCP – AMD & NVIDIA GPU VR Performance: Project Cars

NASA's Voyager 2 Flew By Saturn 35 Years Ago Today

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Space.com: Thirty-five years ago today, a NASA spacecraft got an up-close look at beautiful, enigmatic Saturn. On Aug. 25, 1981, the Voyager 2 probe zoomed within 26,000 miles (41,000 kilometers) of the ringed planet’s cloud tops. The discoveries made by Voyager 2 — and by its twin, Voyager 1, which had flown past Saturn nine months earlier — reshaped scientists’ understanding of the Saturn system and planted the seed for NASA’s Cassini mission, which began orbiting the ringed planet in 2004, NASA officials said. Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 launched a few weeks apart in 1977, tasked with performing a “grand tour” of the solar system’s big planets — Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune. The two spacecraft accomplished that goal, eyeing all four gaseous worlds up close, and also studying 48 of their moons. (Voyager 1 flew past Jupiter and Saturn, while Voyager 2 had close encounters with all four planets.) The Voyagers weren’t the first spacecraft to fly by Saturn; that distinction belongs to NASA’s Pioneer 11 probe, which did so in 1979. But the Voyagers broke a lot of new ground; they discovered four new Saturn moons, for example, and revealed an incredible diversity of landscapes on satellites such as Dione, Tethys and Iapetus, NASA officials said. August 25th appears to be a good day for nerds. You can view some out-of-this-world photos from NASA’s Voyager 1 and 2 probes here.

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Source: Slashdot – NASA’s Voyager 2 Flew By Saturn 35 Years Ago Today