We’ve known that Disney is doing a brand new DuckTales for a while, but now we’re starting to get some solid details about who’ll be providing the voices of our feathered friends… and it turns out a former Time Lord and Marvel villain is lending his brogue to Scrooge McDuck himself. Read more…
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David Tennant Is Your New Scrooge McDuck In DuckTales
Scientists already knew via remote observations that Ceres, the dwarf planet (or humongous asteroid if you prefer), has plenty of water in it. The Dawn probe has now revealed that the asteroid is composed of as much as 30 percent water at the poles, explaining its ice volcano and weird bright spots . “It’s just oozing, ” Planetary Science Institute’s Thomas Prettyman told Nature , adding that you’d “just swipe and find the ice table” at Ceres’ northern pole. After entering an orbit around 240 miles above Ceres, Dawn pointed its Gamma Ray and Neutrino Detector (GRaND) instrument at the surface. It was able to glean the water mass by measuring the decay of gamma-rays and neutrons within a few dozen yards of its surface. That gave the team the amount of hydrogen near the surface, from which they deduced the amount of water, present either as ice or locked inside surface minerals. Overall, Ceres could be 17 to 30 percent water by weight, which is a lot, as the quasi-planet weighs around 1 quintillion (a million trillion, or 1 x 10^18) tons. That makes around 0.2-0.3 quintillion tons of water at the high end of the scale, which is not a lot less than the Earth, relatively speaking. Our planet has about 15 quintillion tons of ocean water, but is over 10 times larger in diameter than Ceres. Scientists have theorized that liquid water once flowed inside Ceres during the early years of our solar system. Once it got colder, surface ice sublimated (passed straight from a solid to a gas) at the equators of Ceres, either dissipating into space or forming a very thin atmosphere. However, in the colder, high-latitude areas, “water can survive within a meter of the surface over Ceres’ 4.5 billion year lifetime, ” according to the paper. As we’ve seen with ice volcanoes, it’s still playing havoc beneath its surface. Source: Nature
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Dwarf planet Ceres is ‘oozing’ with water
Ghost sharks, aka chimaeras, are elusive relatives of sharks and rays that live in the black depths of the ocean, as far down as 2,600 meters. The Ghost Shark was captured on video by a remotely operated vehicle deployed on a geology expedition by the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute in waters off Hawaii and California. The scientists who analyzed the video think that it’s a pointy-nosed blue chimaera (Hydrolagus trolli) that usually calls the waters off Australia and New Zealand home. This is the first time researchers have known this species to swim in the Northern Hemisphere. From National Geographic : Unlike those more well-known sharks, chimaeras don’t have rows of ragged teeth, but instead munch up their prey—mollusks, worms, and other bottom-dwellers—with mineralized tooth plates. A pattern of open channels on their heads and faces, called lateral line canals, contain sensory cells that sense movement in the water and help the ghost sharks locate lunch. And perhaps most fascinating, male chimaeras sport retractable sex organs on their foreheads.
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First ever video of Ghost Shark, with sex organ on its head, alive in the ocean
An anonymous reader writes: Swedish hardware hacker Ulf Frisk has created a device that can extract Mac FileVault2 (Apple’s disk encryption utility) passwords from a device’s memory before macOS boots and anti-DMA protections kick in. The extracted passwords are in cleartext, and they also double as the macOS logon passwords. The attack requires physical access, but it takes less than 30 seconds to carry out. A special device is needed, which runs custom software (available on GitHub), and uses hardware parts that cost around $300. Apple fixed the attack in macOS 10.12.2. The device is similar to what Samy Kamker created with Poison Tap. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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A $300 Device Can Steal Mac FileVault2 Passwords
It’s been 36 years since Atari released Battlezone and effectively created the first-person shooter in the process. The game’s immersive periscope viewer and vector graphics influenced decades of game design and provided arcade goers with an early glimpse of what a virtual reality world could look like. While we’ve argued here that Battlezone ‘s PSVR reboot is the ultimate fan service and a great first leap into VR gaming, it was still missing one key thing: the old-school, glowing green cathode-ray tube vibe of the original. That’ll change next week, when Rebellion Studios adds a free Classic Mode update as their “faithful homage” to the title that arguably started it all. According to Rebellion Studios lead programmer Richard May, making something new feel retro is more complicated than it sounds and “recreating the glowing green lines using our modern in-house engine required some workarounds.” The controls, on the other hand, were a little simpler to rebuild since the team had already built out the two-track control system of the original arcade cabinets. And one more thing that’s not changing: you still can’t get any closer to that danged volcano in the distance. In addition to Classic Mode, the free Battlezone update also adds new missions, levels and a game codex. The whole thing rolls out on December 20th . Source: PlayStation Blog
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‘Battlezone’ Classic Mode fulfills the promise of ’80s VR
Enlarge (credit: Alan Levine/Flickr ) There’s a new Wi-Fi standard in town, and it takes speed to another level. 802.11ad Wi-Fi is rated for data throughput up to 4,600Mbps, or four times faster than the current speed champ 802.11ac. That’s much faster than standard gigabit Ethernet and most home broadband speeds, although—as any Wi-Fi user knows—there’s a big difference between theoretical speed and what’s possible in practice. Still, want to stream high-bitrate 4K, HDR films over Wi-Fi? That won’t be a problem with 802.11ad. Even the best triple-layer UHD Blu-rays top out at 128Mbps bitrates. There’s even a chance it could make high-end wireless virtual reality headsets more practical. 802.11ad will at first be available via a new wave of home routers, a couple of which have already hit the shelves: the Netgear Nighthawk X10 and the TP-Link Talon AD7200 . As ever with brand-new tech, the routers demand a hefty premium, with the AD7200 costing an eye-watering £350/$360—that’s as much as even sophisticated mesh-based systems like the Ubiquiti Amplifi . Is 802.11ad Wi-Fi worth the cost? Is there anything you can even reasonably use it for right now? Or should you hold out for the inevitable price drops? Let’s find out. How does 802.11ad Wi-Fi work? Like previous versions of Wi-Fi, 802.11ad is an official standard ratified by the Wi-Fi Alliance. Unlike previous versions, however, the tech behind it didn’t come from the IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers). Instead, it’s based on tech created by the WiGig (Wireless Gigabit) Alliance, which was officially announced back in 2009, entered draft stage with the IEEE in 2011, and finally emerged as the standard it is today when the WiGig Alliance merged with Wi-Fi Alliance in 2013. Read 38 remaining paragraphs | Comments
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4.6Gbps Wi-Fi: How 60GHz wireless works—and should you use it?
Finally, there’s a Mario game on smartphones. As promised , Nintendo has released Super Mario Run today, giving iPhone and iPad users a new way to run, leap and spin through the Mushroom Kingdom. It’s an auto-runner, meaning the portly plumber will jog, hop and vault over obstacles automatically. You tap the screen to jump, leaping across gaps and goombas to collect colorful coins. It sounds simple, but there’s a surprising amount of complexity to the platforming. Like Rayman Jungle Run , timing is essential to unlock contextual moves, such as rolls and wall jumps. The game has a one-time fee of $9.99. Nintendo is keen to avoid the free-to-play mechanics that plague so many smartphone games, focusing instead on quality and traditional replayability. The levels are challenging enough, tasking players to collect coins of increasing difficulty. With plenty of stages and worlds to explore, they should keep you preoccupied for hours. There’s also Kingdom Builder, a basic village design mini-game, and Toad Rally, an aysnchronous multiplayer mode that emphasises style over brute-force level completion. The three modes feed into one another too, unlocking one-time “rally tickets, ” enemy score multipliers and more. It’s not all rosy, however. Nintendo has been criticised for demanding an always active internet connection . (The company says it’s to stop piracy.) If you’re the type of person that likes to game on their morning commute, or has to ration a modest data cap each month, this could be a deal-breaker. Regardless, it’s a landmark moment for the company and it’s beloved mustachioed mascot. Miitomo was an interesting experiment, sure, but it pales in comparison to the potential of Super Mario Run . This is a true platformer, albeit one with limited controls, that could make a ton of money and improve Nintendo’s standing in the public conscience. Source: Super Mario Run (iOS)
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‘Super Mario Run’ is now available
New submitter mirandakatz writes: Since India’s prime minister banned 86 percent of the rupee notes in circulation last month, citizens have been waiting in hours-long lines for ATMs. But these circumstances have also created an unexpected progression: a burgeoning cashless economy. At Backchannel, Lauren Razavi explores how India is now beating many Western countries in adopting mobile payments, and how demonetization has triggered a radical shift toward reimagining India’s enormous informal economy as a data-driven digital marketplace. From the report: “Before last month, Paytm, a mobile app that allows users to pay for everything from pizza to utility bills, saw steady business — it was processing between 2.5 and 3 million transactions a day. Now, usage of the app has close to doubled. 6 million transactions a day is common; 5 million is considered a bad day. Rather than being forced to idle away time in excruciatingly long lines, ‘people are proactively exploring other ways to settle payments besides cash, ‘ says Deepak Abbot, senior vice president at Paytm. ‘Now people are realizing they don’t need to really line up, because merchants are starting to accept other forms of payment.’ All of this has created a newfound system that practically incentives mobile payment. With so many people queuing up at banks every day — and a lot of Indian bureaucracy to wade through in order to open a traditional bank account or line of credit — the appeal of more convenient digital alternatives is easy to understand. According to a report in the Hindu Business Line, as many as 233 million unbanked people in India are skipping plastic and moving straight to digital transactions. ‘Cash has lost its credibility and payments are no longer perceived in the same way, ‘ says Upasana Taku, the cofounder of Indian mobile wallet company MobiKwik, which reported a 40 percent increase in downloads and a 7, 000 percent increase in bank transfers since demonetization. ‘There’s chaos at the moment but also relief that India will now be an improved economy, ‘ she says.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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India Just Flew Past Us In the Race To E-Cash
Yahoo just revealed that in August 2013, someone stole data linked to more than one billion accounts. Back in September, the company announced a 2014 security breach affecting some 500 million users, however, it believes these two incidents are “likely distinct.” Additionally, the company says that it believes the same hackers from the 2014 breach dug into its code and figured out how to forge cookies to target specific accounts. It has invalidated the forged cookies and notified holders of the accounts they were used to access in 2015 or 2016. Need a spreadsheet or a chart to keep track of all the ways your Yahoo account info is probably floating around right now? There is an FAQ to try and help users figure out what has been stolen, when and how they might be affected. Still, the massive size of this breach means that for Yahoo users information including “names, email addresses, telephone numbers, dates of birth, hashed passwords (using MD5) and, in some cases, encrypted or unencrypted security questions and answers” is potentially out there. The company is reaching out to potentially affected users, so there should be a message coming your way soon, while the security questions and answers have been invalidated. Of course, if you’ve used the same information for a security answer somewhere else, then whoever has it could use those answers against you — change them. Yahoo’s ongoing security investigation and users left scrambling to reset passwords and security questions (again) is just one part of the puzzle. It’s unclear how these new revelations affect its $4.83 billion acquisition by (Engadget and AOL parent company) Verizon . Previous reports indicated the carrier could be looking for a discount or way out of the deal altogether , and this bad news probably won’t help. Source: Yahoo , FAQ
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Yahoo confirms new security breach affecting over one billion accounts
Did you see that story about a 5-year-old boy and his dying wish to see Santa Claus? Of course you did. The heartbreaking tale has been seen and heard by millions of people around the world . It went viral earlier this week when it was retold by virtually every major news outlet. The only problem? It’s almost certainly fake. Read more…
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That Story About a Boy Dying In Santa’s Arms Is Totally Fake