In the recent hit game Inside, you play a child on the run through a mysterious and horrifying surveillance state straight out of 1984. Oxenfree stars a group of teenagers with a complicated history arriving at a spooky island for an ill-advised camp…
Source: Engadget – Why young-adult video games are thriving
Monthly Archives: August 2016
Clever Baby Seal Escapes Death by Killer Whales
This clever little seal narrowly escaped death by jumping into a Canadian couple’s boat—and it was all captured on video.
Source: Gizmodo – Clever Baby Seal Escapes Death by Killer Whales
MIT Channels MacGyver: Boils Water Using a Sponge, Bubble Wrap, and Sunlight
Boiling water is one of the easiest and most reliable ways to get rid of dangerous parasites and bacteria, and thanks to MIT, the next time you go camping you might be able to leave the stove and matches at home. All you’ll need is a sponge, some unpopped bubble wrap, and some sunlight.
Source: Gizmodo – MIT Channels MacGyver: Boils Water Using a Sponge, Bubble Wrap, and Sunlight
New attack can pluck secrets from 1% of HTTPS traffic, affects top sites
Enlarge / From an upcoming paper laying out a new attack against 64-bit block ciphers used by HTTPS and OpenVPN. (credit: Karthikeyan Bhargavan and Gaëtan Leurent)
Researchers have devised a new attack that can decrypt secret session cookies from about 1 percent of the Internet’s HTTPS traffic and could affect about 600 of the Internet’s most visited sites, including nasdaq.com, walmart.com, match.com, and ebay.in.
The attack isn’t particularly easy to carry out, because it requires an attacker to have the ability to monitor traffic passing between the end user and one of the vulnerable websites and to also control JavaScript on a Web page loaded by the user’s browser. The latter must be done either by actively manipulating an HTTP response on the wire or by hosting a malicious website that the user is tricked into visiting. The JavaScript then spends the next 38 hours collecting about 785GB worth of data to decrypt the cookie, which allows the attacker to log into the visitor’s account from another browser. A related attack against OpenVPN requires 18 hours and 705GB of data to recover a 16-byte authentication token.
Impractical no more
Despite the difficulty in carrying out the attack, the researchers said it works in their laboratory and should be taken seriously. They are calling on developers to stop using legacy 64-bit block-ciphers. For transport layer security, the protocol websites use to create encrypted HTTPS connections, that means disabling the Triple DES symmetric key cipher, while for OpenVPN it requires retiring a symmetric key cipher known as Blowfish. Ciphers with larger block sizes, such as AES, are immune to the attack.
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Source: Ars Technica – New attack can pluck secrets from 1% of HTTPS traffic, affects top sites
Google Daydream VR Platform Launches On Android 7.0 Nougat In A Few Short Weeks
We reported earlier this year on Daydream, a new Google solution for virtual reality. It’s in effect set to become Google Cardboard’s replacement, and requires Android 7.0 ‘Nougat’ to use. If all of the required specs are met, then Google will denote compatible phones as ‘Daydream Ready’.
If Google has its way, Daydream is going to be huge,
Source: Hot Hardware – Google Daydream VR Platform Launches On Android 7.0 Nougat In A Few Short Weeks
Dyson's latest smart fan heats, cools and purifies the air
Dyson has expanded its lineup with The Pure Hot+Cool Link, a very expensive WiFi enabled fan that combines all the features of the Dyson Pure Hot+ Cool fan and Pure Cool Link. It can thermostatically cool, heat and purify the air, and connect with yo…
Source: Engadget – Dyson’s latest smart fan heats, cools and purifies the air
Game Changers: The Zip N Store Fridge Bag Storage Solution
This is the Zip N Store, a sort of sliding drawer for Ziploc and shredded cheese bags you can install in your refrigerator. Or a pantry shelf! But not your anus. Alternatively, continue storing all your bags of cheese in a giant pile in the crisper like a normal person. Sometimes the pile grows so big I forget what kind of cheese I’ve got in there. “Sick, this cheese is so old it’s green!” Give me that! *snatches bag* It’s not green because it’s OLD, it’s green because it’s MOON CHEESE you uncultured space-peasant. Oh God just kidding this is two-year old provolone please toss it before I get sick.
Keep going for a couple more shots and a 4.5-minute informercial in case you’re the kind of person who can watch 4.5-minute infomercials void of any hunks and babes using new exercise equipment.
Source: Geekologie – Game Changers: The Zip N Store Fridge Bag Storage Solution
Batman's Ears: Long or Short?
Sometimes I like it when artists draw Batman’s ears long. But, then, other times, I like it when the Dark Knight’s cowl is rendered with shorter ears. What about you guys?
Source: io9 – Batman’s Ears: Long or Short?
Deadly Earthquakes Turned Central Italy Into a Terrifying Pile of Rubble
A magnitude 6.2 earthquake hit Norcia in central Italy early this morning, followed by some 40 more aftershocks over the course of three hours. The quakes affected towns throughout the Umbria, Lazio, and Marche regions. Italian wire service ANSA is currently reporting 73 dead.
Source: Gizmodo – Deadly Earthquakes Turned Central Italy Into a Terrifying Pile of Rubble
Moto Z's Hasselblad camera add-on surfaces in fresh photos
When Motorola and Lenovo unveiled the Moto Z, they unveiled a host of MotoMods… except for one. Where was that camera add-on we’d seen in leaks? Apparently, it’s still coming — and it might be more than you were expecting. Moto G3 has come across…
Source: Engadget – Moto Z’s Hasselblad camera add-on surfaces in fresh photos
Military submarine maker springs leak after “hack”—India, Oz hit dive alarm
Enlarge (credit: The Last Ship, Warner Bros Television)
A massive leak of documents on India’s new military submarines from French shipbuilder DCNS is the result of a hack, the country’s defence minister said on Wednesday.
Manohar Parrikar claimed, according to local reports, that the entire designs of its Scorpene submarines hadn’t been disclosed. “First step is to identify if its related to us, and anyway its not all 100 percent leak,” he was quoted as saying.
The documents were made public by The Australian on Tuesday, which described the breach as an “Edward Snowden-sized leak.”
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Source: Ars Technica – Military submarine maker springs leak after “hack”—India, Oz hit dive alarm
Singapore To Cut Off Public Servants From the Internet
Singapore is planning to cut off web access for public servants as a defence against potential cyber attack, Reuters reports. The local government’s move has already been criticized by many, who say that it marks a retreat for a technologically advanced city-state that has trademarked the term “smart nation”. From an article on The Guardian: Some security experts say the policy, due to be in place by May, risks damaging productivity among civil servants and those working at more than four dozen statutory boards, and cutting them off from the people they serve. It may only raise slightly the defensive walls against cyber attack, they say. Ben Desjardins, director of security solutions at network security firm Radware, called it “one of the more extreme measures I can recall by a large public organisation to combat cyber security risks.” Stephen Dane, a Hong Kong-based managing director at networking company Cisco Systems, said it was “a most unusual situation” and Ramki Thurimella, chair of the computer science department at the University of Denver, called it both “unprecedented” and “a little excessive”.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot – Singapore To Cut Off Public Servants From the Internet
Windows 10 Tip: Shut down OneDrive Completely
For all you Windows 10 users that aren’t interested in using Microsoft’s OneDrive, you can actually shut the service off altogether to prevent it from running at start up. You can find the complete rundown here.
In Windows 10 Pro or Enterprise, you can use Group Policy to make this change. Open Local Group Policy Editor (Gpedit.msc) and go to Computer Configuration > Administrative Templates > Windows Components > OneDrive. Double-click the policy Prevent The Usage Of OneDrive For File Storage and set it to Enabled. After you restart your PC, you’ll find that the OneDrive icon is no longer in the navigation pane and the sync client no longer runs.
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Source: [H]ardOCP – Windows 10 Tip: Shut down OneDrive Completely
Here Are Some Words That Seem Like They Should Be Related But Actually Aren't at All
Did you know the words “male” and “female” aren’t actually related to each other? As in, there’s no “male” in “female.” The word male is derived from the Latin word masculus, while the word female comes from the French word femelle. It sounded close enough so we just made them both pronounced like male. Damn, patriarchy.
Source: Gizmodo – Here Are Some Words That Seem Like They Should Be Related But Actually Aren’t at All
Kitchen Tool School: The Humble Y-Shaped Vegetable Peeler
I don’t know that there’s a kitchen task less glamorous than peeling potatoes. Peeling potatoes is dull, monotonous work, and the humble y-peeler (as opposed to a fancier swivel peeler) may seem like dull tool by association. Nothing could be further from the truth, however, as this so-simple vegetable peeler can do so much more than peel potatoes.
Source: LifeHacker – Kitchen Tool School: The Humble Y-Shaped Vegetable Peeler
The bottom line: Our quick verdict on the BlackBerry DTEK50
With a review headline that reads “cheap, secure and better than expected,” you might expect the device in question to have earned a high score. As it turns out, this is a BlackBerry we’re talking about, which is to say, “better than expected” doesn’…
Source: Engadget – The bottom line: Our quick verdict on the BlackBerry DTEK50
Star Wars vs Prog Rock
Mack Sztaba is a concept artist and illustrator who has worked for companies like Firaxis, Gearbox, Microsoft and Wizards of the Coast.
Source: Kotaku – Star Wars vs Prog Rock
For a safer, happier city: Just add a little empathy
Inconsiderate jerk cyclists make it hard for everyone, including other cyclists.
Source: TreeHugger – For a safer, happier city: Just add a little empathy
Save $10 On a Fire TV Stick Voice Remote Bundle With This Amazon Refurb Sale
You won’t unlock the full potential
of Amazon’s Fire TV Stick without the useful voice remote, and Amazon just released a batch of refurbished voice remote bundles for $40, or $10 less than buying it new. To put it another way, that’s like getting the voice remote for free in exchange for buying a slightly used dongle that you’ll literally never see once it’s plugged in.
Source: Kotaku – Save On a Fire TV Stick Voice Remote Bundle With This Amazon Refurb Sale
A Design Defect Is Plaguing Many iPhone 6 and 6 Plus Units
Evan Selleck, writing for iPhoneHacks (edited and condensed): For many iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus owners out there in the wild, a design defect is apparently causing some huge issues. Gadget repair firm iFixit has reported about a flaw dubbed “Touch Disease”, which it claims is cropping up. With it, owners of the phones are experiencing, to start, a gray bar that appears at the very top of their display. And, for many others, the display itself becomes unresponsive to touch, or less responsive overall. In the blog post, iFixit says the problem stems from issues with the touchscreen controller chip, which is soldered onto the logic board. Interestingly enough, iFixit posits that the same internal design decisions that led to “Endgate” might be causing the issue leading to Touch Disease, too: “In both the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus, the Touch IC chips connect to the logic board via an array of itty-bitty solder balls — “like a plate resting on marbles,” Jessa explains. Over time, as the phone flexes or twists slightly during normal use, those solder balls crack and start to lose contact with the board. “At first, there may be no defect at all. Later you might notice that the screen is sometimes unresponsive, but it is quick to come back with a hard reset,” Jessa explains. “As the crack deepens into a full separation of the chip-board bond, the periods of no touch function become more frequent.”
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot – A Design Defect Is Plaguing Many iPhone 6 and 6 Plus Units