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Phoenix666 writes:

VoCore2 is an open source Linux computer and a fully-functional wireless router that is smaller than a coin. It can also act as a VPN gateway for a network, an AirPlay station to play lossless music, a private cloud to store your photos, video, and code, and much more.

The Lite version of the VoCore2 features a 580MHz MT7688AN MediaTek system on chip (SoC), 64MB of DDR2 RAM, 8MB of NOR storage, and a single antenna slot for Wi-Fi that supports 150Mbps.

All this for $4.

Spend $12 and go for the full VoCore2 option and you get the same SoC, but you get 128MB of DDR2 RAM, 16MB of NOR storage, two antenna slots supporting 300Mbps, an on-board antenna, and PCIe 1.1 support.

The story goes on to cover 11 more relatively inexpensive computers (depending on your idea of inexpensive). Read on for the complete list and links to each one.

[Continues...]

Fauxlosopher writes:

News from the USA's State of Washington via komonews.com!

The friendly government folks in King County, Washington, have been caught buying data on local shoppers and mining it to find the home addresses of freeloading scallywags who are likely to own a pet without also having purchased a matching permission slip.

This is one small example of how the big nose of government can end up in unpleasant, uncomfortable places when it is let off its leash. It is also an illustration of how any entity can target and locate people of specific demographics via purchase and exploitation of "private" bulk data derived from common customers' commerce.

I have a strong preference to use only cash for in-person transactions and refuse the use of so-called loyalty or discount cards, which should make such data mining much more difficult, particularly as the numbers of like-minded folks increase.

Original Submission

Phoenix666 writes:

The Chinese are coming and they're hungry for games companies.

They need new content to feed their 560 million avid gamers, who contribute to the biggest gaming market in the world - worth an estimated $24.4bn (£19.8bn) in 2016, according to Newzoo.

And this market is growing at around 15% a year.

Chinese firms have already spent more than $111bn on foreign acquisitions this year, according to Dealogic, with some of the biggest deals involving gaming companies.

Internet giant Tencent - which owns the WeChat and QQ Games platforms - bought Finnish Clash of Clans mobile games maker Supercell for $8.6bn earlier this year.

Should games firms welcome or fear Chinese conquest?

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Celestial writes:

Windows 10 is now serving Edge advertisements to anyone that does not have it as the default browser.

These ads appear over the Edge icon in the Windows 10 taskbar, even when Edge is not open. They do appear only when Edge is not the default system browser but that covers the majority of Windows 10 systems.

Since it advertises Microsoft Edge and Microsoft Rewards, it is possible that the campaign is reserved to the United States. The reason for this is simple: Microsoft Rewards are only available in the US right now.

This is not the only ad that promotes Microsoft Edge that users may see however. Microsoft is pushing ads in the Action Center as well stating that Chrome is draining battery fast and that switching to Edge would better the situation.

Both ads have some use for users and try to promote a feature of Microsoft Edge or Microsoft that may be beneficial to users.

One could argue that this is a good thing, and it probably would not get such a bad reception if Microsoft would provide clear and concise options to turn of[f] these after they appear once.

The main issue that many Windows 10 users may have with these ads is however that is seems impossible to get rid of those advertisements once and for all.

Microsoft really wants Windows 10 users to use Cortana and Edge.

Original Submission

bradley13 writes:

[Ed note: According to Wikipedia, Ethereum "... is a public blockchain-based distributed computing platform, featuring smart contract functionality. It provides a decentralized virtual machine, the Ethereum Virtual Machine, that can execute peer-to-peer contracts using a cryptocurrency called ether."]

I've been experimenting with digital currencies over the past few months. As of today, I give up on Ethereum. After the DAO mess, and the hard-fork, the block chain has become huge. I tried a fresh resync today, and gave up after it reached more than 70GB; restarted with --fast (which uses an abbreviated format), and it has been running for hours. Ethereum has apparently become unusable unless you trust an online service, which kind of defeats the point.

On a related note: It is now possible to get a refund from The DAO [The Decentralized Autonomous Organization -Ed.] I received an informative email from the BTC/ETH broker I use, explaining how to do this. In a nutshell:

1. Visit https://www.myetherwallet.com/#the-dao. This will take you to a page called "Withdraw DAO"
2. Locate your wallet - you will have to give the service access (if you don't trust them, create a new wallet). Mist users: Your wallet is a "keystore file", you can locate it under Accounts:Backup:Accounts.
3. You will then have to provide your password, to unlock your wallet.
4. Select Withdraw DAO for ETH

If you bought The DAO near the end, when you were paying a premium, you can repeat the process in the tab "Withdraw extraBalance" to reclaim the premium that you paid. You can also repeat the process, to withdraw into the ETC hard-fork. I went through all of this today, and it was a surprisingly easy process.

Then - since synchronization appears to be impossible - you can use that same online service to get rid of your ETH:

1. Go to your broker, and tell them you want to buy BTC with ETH.
2. Go to MyEtherWallet, select "Send Ether and Tokens", and complete the payment in ETH.
3. Note: You may want to leave 0.05 ETH or so in your wallet, if you think you might want to try ETH again someday. This would pay for "gas" for some future transaction.

Meanwhile, I've not only done all of that, but also submitted this story, and the ETH "fast" synchronization still isn't finished. Bye bye Ethereum...

P.S. I have no connection to bity.com except as a happy customer.

Original Submission

Phoenix666 writes:

In the cybersecurity world, the law doesn't always treat the good guys like good guys.

As Harley Geiger put it in a talk titled, "Fighting for Legal Protection for Security Researchers" at UNITED2016, the Rapid7 Security Summit, the vast majority of independent research into the security of consumer and commercial products, "doesn't seek to undermine IP (intellectual property) or safety of products. It helps us keep ahead of those who do seek to do harm."

Yet laws at both the federal and state level, "tend to undermine that," he said.

Geiger, director of public policy at Rapid7, cited laws like the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) and Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA), which he said in crucial areas fail to allow for a distinction between researchers, who are simply trying to improve cybersecurity, and criminal hackers.

The story goes on to reference how the Librarian of Congress has allowed a temporary reprieve (as we covered in It's Finally Legal to Hack Your Own Devices (Even Your Car).) But, as much as that may improve things for the time being, it falls short of what is really needed for security professionals to examine and test systems.

So, how can a white hat work in a responsible way that is distinguishable from a black hat who, when caught, only claims he is a white hat?

Original Submission

An Anonymous Coward writes with news from https://www.therealreporter.com/briefs/mits_real_disruption_series_talks_block_chain_for_real_estate:

The MIT Center for Real Estate resumed its cutting-edge "Real Disruption" series last week with an examination of blockchain technology and its applications to the real estate industry, specifically the impact it will have on the current title recording system. ...

"I don't know if society is ready, but it's coming. We are still at the forefront of all this," said panelist Christian Saucier, chief technology officer for Ubitquity, a startup developing a SaaS (Software-as-a-Service) blockchain platform for securely recording,tracking and transferring deeds. "These technologies have not yet made an impact on the real estate space – but they're about to."

I get nervous when I hear phrases like "unlocking liquidity" and "securitized" — these two paragraphs appear near the end of the article:

Although panelists agreed that despite its inherent flaws, the current titling system works reasonably well (especially in the U.S.), Doney named five "friction points" that blockchain could improve and "utterly transform the way that it's been done over the next 20 to 30 years,' citing the aforementioned changes in titling; the use of smart contracts (computer protocols that facilitate, verify, or enforce the performance of a contract,); unlocking liquidity in real estate assets (including leases); more effective crowdsourcing, and innovative "user ship" models that will allow for a freer exchange of value.

Doney's firm, Securrency, is a FinTech platform that monetizes excess capacity in assets such as commercial real estate leases. "What we have in commercial real estate right now is very illiquid major deals, where you can't break apart, for example, the individual income streams associated with commercial leases and monetize those income streams," he states. But through the use of smart contracts, leases can be risk-scored, securitized, and then sold into liquid markets – something that his firm is pioneering.

Last decade it was luring suckers into mortgages and investing in worthless derivatives. Will next decade see the suckers buying into mutual funds composed of fractional ownership of real estate... with values hyped into the next bubble? This way you aren't limited to buying and flipping houses (leaving the last owner in the lurch when the music stops) — now modest investors can play in Trump's league?

Original Submission

Phoenix666 writes:

Dystopian corporate surveillance threats today come at us from all directions. Companies offer "always-on" devices that listen for our voice commands, and marketers follow us around the web to create personalized user profiles so they can (maybe) show us ads we'll actually click. Now marketers have been experimenting with combining those web-based and audio approaches to track consumers in another disturbingly science fictional way: with audio signals your phone can hear, but you can't. And though you probably have no idea that dog whistle marketing is going on, researchers are already offering ways to protect yourself.

The technology, called ultrasonic cross-device tracking, embeds high-frequency tones that are inaudible to humans in advertisements, web pages, and even physical locations like retail stores. These ultrasound "beacons" emit their audio sequences with speakers, and almost any device microphone—like those accessed by an app on a smartphone or tablet—can detect the signal and start to put together a picture of what ads you've seen, what sites you've perused, and even where you've been. Now that you're sufficiently concerned, the good news is that at the Black Hat Europe security conference on Thursday, a group based at University of California, Santa Barbara will present an Android patch and a Chrome extension that give consumers more control over the transmission and receipt of ultrasonic pitches on their devices.

In Saks, no one can hear you(r phone) scream.

Original Submission

Phoenix666 writes:

As mindfulness meditation and yoga have become mainstream and more extensively studied, growing evidence suggests multiple psychological and physical benefits of these mindfulness exercises, as well as for similar practices like tai chi and qi gong.

Systematic reviews and meta-analyses analyzing hundreds of research studies suggest that mindfulness-based interventions help decrease anxiety, depression, stress, and pain, and help improve general health, mental health, and quality of life. These practices also appear to reduce inflammation and increase immune response.

Trade in your luggage for yoga pants.

Original Submission

Phoenix666 writes:

The United States government has made good on its policy of requiring agencies to release 20 per cent of their bespoke code as open source by making code.gov live, complete with lots of code.

Code.gov is a rather bare bones affair, with a listing of available projects its richest page as it offers code from 13 agencies. Among the projects on offer are a NASA Trick simulation environment and the analytics code powering analytics.usa.gov that The Register finds useful when assessing desktop OS market share.

There's also a GitHub repository to consider.

United States CIO Tony Scott said he hopes the launch gives developers within and without government some useful code. The Office of Personnel Management's Google-analytics-data-cruncher certainly looks to have wide applicability, as does The White House's petition-organising repo.

Original Submission

Phoenix666 writes:

The TurkeyBlocks monitoring network has detected restrictions on access to multiple social media services Facebook, Twitter and YouTube throughout Turkey beginning Friday Nov 04 2016 1:20AM local time, ongoing as of Friday noon.

Restrictions on messaging services WhatsApp, Skype and Instagram have also now been detected, validating widespread user complaints about WhatsApp service failure in Turkey – the first time nationwide restrictions have been detected on the popular messaging apps in recent years.

The incident is believed to be related to the detention of multiple leaders of opposition political party HDP, accompanied by raids of the HDP headquarters in Ankara.

Such a sad turn of events for such a wonderful country.

Original Submission

Phoenix666 writes:

Whether it's an IUD, a shot, an implant, or a daily pill, birth control is a regular part of many adult women's lives. It has left a lot of women asking: Why not men?

For years, people have tried to create birth control for men. The World Health Organization commissioned what sounded like a promising trial, a two-hormone injection designed to lower sperm count. Initial results looked like it would be 96 percent effective in preventing pregnancy in the participants' partners. But the Stage II trial was stopped after an independent review panel found that the drug had too many side effects. The results were published last week in The Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism.

All Things Considered's Audie Cornish sat down with NPR science correspondent Rob Stein to discuss the trial and the reason it was canceled. Here are excerpts of their conversation, edited for length and clarity.

...

they realized that a lot of guys were dropping out because they were experiencing side effects. The most common side effect was acne, and sometimes that acne was pretty severe. Some men also developed mood swings and in some cases those mood swings got pretty bad. One man developed severe depression, and another tried to commit suicide. Because of that, they cut the study short.

Original Submission

Phoenix666 writes:

The speed at which the first Aboriginal settlers spread across Australia has been underlined by the discovery of an ancient rock shelter north of Adelaide.

The rock fissure in the Flinders Ranges contains tools and other artefacts that date back to around 49,000 years ago.

That means Aboriginal people must have colonised large parts of the continent within a few millennia of their arrival.

Details of the Warratyi shelter are reported in the journal Nature.

"It is the southernmost oldest site in the continent (there is another site in southwestern Australia called Devil's Lair, which is quite old), but in terms of inland occupation, it's significant geographically because it shows people are moving very quickly around the continent and into the interior part of the continent," lead scientist Giles Hamm told BBC News.

Colonizing large parts of Australia "within a few millennia of their arrival," in roughly the same time span as the entire history of Western Civilization, is "speedy?"

Original Submission

mendax writes:

Wired recently published a story that says something about the state of stealthy cell phone snooping:

Julian Oliver has for years harbored a strange obsession with spotting poorly disguised cellphone towers, those massive roadside antennae draped in fake palm fronds to impersonate a tree, or even hidden as spoofed lamp posts and flag poles. The incognito base stations gave him another, more mischievous idea. What about a far better-disguised cell tower that could sit anonymously in office, invisibly hijacking cellphone conversations and texts?

Earlier this week, the Berlin-based hacker-artist unveiled the result: An entirely boring-looking Hewlett Packard printer that also secretly functions as a rogue GSM cell base station, tricking your phone into connecting to it rather than your phone carrier's tower, effectively intercepting your calls and text messages. [...]

Oliver's fake printer, which he calls the Stealth Cell Tower, could potentially eavesdrop on the voice calls and SMS messages of any phone that's fooled into automatically connecting to it. Since it sits indoors near its victims, Oliver says it can easily overpower the signal of real, outdoor cell towers. But instead of spying, the printer merely starts a text message conversation with the phone, pretending to be an unidentified contact with a generic message like "Come over when you're ready," or the more playful "I'm printing the details for you now." If the confused victim writes back, the printer spits out their response on paper as a creepy proof of concept. It's also programmed to make calls to connected phones and, if the owner answers, to play an mp3 of the Stevie Wonder song "I Just Called to Say I Love You." After five minutes, the printer drops its connection with the phone and allows it to reconnect to a real cell tower.

While Oliver's device is fairly benign, what's frightening about this is the ease Oliver was able to hide the snooping hardware. The article contains a picture showing the snooper's circuit board mounted in the printer, showing just how small the board is and demonstrating just how easy it would be to hide one of these potentially evil gadgets.

Original Submission

Phoenix666 writes:

In January, the British firm Automated Ships and its Norwegian partners Kongsberg Maritime will begin work on the first offshore vessel that can be run with no captain, crew, or engineers.

The ship, named the Hrönn, is being designed as an offshore support vessel capable of delivering cargo to remote locations, launching and retrieving unmanned submersible craft, and acting as a resupply vessel for North Sea oil rigs. It will be launched next year and, pending successful sea trials, will be certified for offshore use the following year.

"The advantages of unmanned ships are manifold, but primarily center on the safe-guarding of life and reduction in the cost of production and operations; removing people from the hazardous environment of at-sea operations and re-employing them on-shore to monitor and operate robotic vessels remotely; along with the significantly decreased cost in constructing ships, will revolutionize the marine industry," said Automated Ships MD Brett Phaneuf.

The shipping industry is keener than its automotive cousins to get robot ships running commercially. The industry has been revolutionized by containers, which slashed the cost of shipping goods, and is now hoping for similar savings by taking humans out of the equation, or helping to augment them.

Sigh. There goes your bright future at sea.

Original Submission