Remember your last flight when you told yourself that at least flying couldn’t get any worse? Well, it’s about to get worse. United Airlines will soon start charging some customers for the privilege to use the overhead bins . Read more…
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United Airlines Will Start Charging for Use of Overhead Bins
Rejoice, you can download Netflix movies and TV shows to watch offline. Unfortunately, it only downloads to your built-in storage by default, which can lead to some slow, cluttered phones. If you’d rather use the extra space on your SD card for all those Stranger Things episodes, here’s how. Read more…
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How to Download Netflix Movies to Your SD Card and Save Space on Your Phone
Bluetooth is about to become a lot less hassle-prone. The wireless standard’s Special Interest Group has officially adopted the Bluetooth 5 spec, clearing the way for device makers to use the much-improved technology in everything from phones to wearables to smart home equipment. This doesn’t mean that you’ll see it right away, of course. The group expects Bluetooth 5-equipped products to hit the market in the next 2 to 6 months, or right around when the next wave of smartphones is likely to arrive. Again, the new spec is all about raw performance. You can expect up to four times the range, twice the speed and eight times the amount of data in broadcast messages. Those will be particularly helpful for smart appliances and the Internet of Things , where the existing Bluetooth 4.2 standard might not be powerful enough to connect an entire home. However, it should also make a difference anywhere that you notice Bluetooth’s existing limitations. Smartwatches could see a serious upgrade, for example — one of the biggest bottlenecks on wristwear is the slow connection to your phone. And regardless of the device you use, there are techniques to reduce interference with other wireless devices. Just don’t expect much of a boost to audio quality. While Bluetooth 5 could help with range, you won’t see improvements to audio compression, latency and power use until 2018. The newly adopted format is primarily about dragging Bluetooth’s range and speed into the modern era, and future efforts will build on top of that groundwork. Source: Bluetooth SIG
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Bluetooth 5’s faster, longer-ranged wireless is here
If there wasn’t already a reason to develop a solution to drug-resistant “superbugs, ” there is now. Scientists have found bacteria on an American pig farm that resists carbapenems, a variety of antibiotics used only against germs that resist normal antibiotics. There was a similar incident with cattle earlier in 2016, but that bacteria couldn’t transmit its resistance to anything but its offspring — this strain could jump between bacteria without much trouble. Thankfully, the scientists didn’t find evidence of the bacteria reaching the pigs or their food supply. And while the bacteria would pose a threat to people who are already sick, it’s not normally dangerous to humans. That’s not exactly reassuring in the long term, though, and the team tells Popular Science that it wants to find methods of preventing this sort of contamination in the future. The group is also worried about the resistant bacteria’s origins. It’s unlikely that the resistance developed at the farm given the lack of antibiotics, so there’s a good chance that it came from something outside. Plenty of research is underway to develop both more sophisticated antibiotics and treatments that avoid antibiotics altogether. However, this discovery reinforces the need for short-term steps to prevent particularly stubborn bacteria from spreading, such as better procedures and preventative technology . Ideally, the medical community would buy enough time to have a true answer to superbugs before the best available options prove ineffective. Via: Popular Science Source: American Society for Microbiology
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Scientists find bacteria resistant to last-ditch drug treatments
If you ask Josiah Zayner, the genetic engineering revolution will not come in the form of designer babies or mutant super crops , but in the form of a bottle of glowing beer. Read more…
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This Biohacker Wants to Spur a Genetic Engineering Revolution With Glowing Beer
Following years of pining after GameCube games on the Virtual Console, it looks like Nintendo fans will soon be getting their wish. According to a recent report by Eurogamer , the Nintendo Switch is rumored to be the first Nintendo console to offer GameCube games on its Virtual Console. Citing several sources within the company, the article states that Nintendo already has classic titles like Super Mario Sunshine, Luigi’s Mansion and Super Smash Bros. Melee running on the Switch. The article goes on to suggest that Nintendo is also prepping popular GameCube lifestyle sim Animal Crossing for the Virtual Console. It seems as though the company is also looking into making the console compatible with the Wii U’s GameCube controller adapter. Given Super Smash Bros Melee ‘s evergreen popularity at fighting game tournaments and the Switch reveal trailers focus on eSports, its inclusion is an easy win for Nintendo. The GameCube emulator is rumored to be developed by Nintendo’s European Research Department – the people responsible for this year’s Christmas sell-out, the NES Mini. While the NES Mini has a few issues , its game emulation runs flawlessly, meaning that if true, GameCube emulation on the Switch looks rather promising indeed. Frustratingly, it looks like old Virtual Console purchases won’t transfer over to the Switch, requiring users to pay a small ‘upgrade’ fee to unlock the rom on Switch. In an age where account purchases on mobile transfer seamlessly to your next handset, if true, it’s hard not to see this as a cheap cash grab. While none of this has been officially confirmed, Eurogamer’ s previous rumors about the system proved to be true. With Nintendo holding a press event revealing more about the Switch next month, we won’t have long to discover how much truth is in this reports. Source: Eurogamer
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Report: Nintendo Switch will play Gamecube games
An anonymous reader quotes a report from BleepingComputer: For the past two months, a new exploit kit has been serving malicious code hidden in the pixels of banner ads via a malvertising campaign that has been active on several high profile websites. Discovered by security researchers from ESET, this new exploit kit is named Stegano, from the word steganography, which is a technique of hiding content inside other files. In this particular scenario, malvertising campaign operators hid malicious code inside PNG images used for banner ads. The crooks took a PNG image and altered the transparency value of several pixels. They then packed the modified image as an ad, for which they bought ad displays on several high-profile websites. Since a large number of advertising networks allow advertisers to deliver JavaScript code with their ads, the crooks also included JS code that would parse the image, extract the pixel transparency values, and using a mathematical formula, convert those values into a character. Since images have millions of pixels, crooks had all the space they needed to pack malicious code inside a PNG photo. When extracted, this malicious code would redirect the user to an intermediary ULR, called gate, where the host server would filter users. This server would only accept connections from Internet Explorer users. The reason is that the gate would exploit the CVE-2016-0162 vulnerability that allowed the crooks to determine if the connection came from a real user or a reverse analysis system employed by security researchers. Additionally, this IE exploit also allowed the gate server to detect the presence of antivirus software. In this case, the server would drop the connection just to avoid exposing its infrastructure and trigger a warning that would alert both the user and the security firm. If the gate server deemed the target valuable, then it would redirect the user to the final stage, which was the exploit kit itself, hosted on another URL. The Stegano exploit kit would use three Adobe Flash vulnerabilities (CVE-2015-8651, CVE-2016-1019 or CVE-2016-4117) to attack the user’s PC, and forcibly download and launch into execution various strains of malware. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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New Stegano Exploit Kit Hides Malvertising Code In Banner Pixels