I’ve had these beautiful antique glasses for well over a decade. Retrospecs & Co. , the folks who sold them to me, have also taken fantastic care of getting me lenses, and an upgrade, over the many years. (more…)
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Authentic early American eyewear
Enlarge (credit: Faraday Future) Faraday Future, set to reveal its first production model at CES in just under a month, has left little doubt as to its ambition with its latest teaser video. The company no doubt hopes to avoid a repeat of last year’s underwhelming visit to Las Vegas, when hordes of tech journalists expecting a Tesla rival found a concept car instead. Leading up to this year’s event, the company has been setting expectations with a series of short teasers of a camouflaged prototype car in testing. The most recent shows us that Faraday is aiming high, with the new EV benchmarked against Bentley, Ferrari, and Tesla. That means we can probably forget the idea of Faraday Future exploiting some new niche in the EV marketplace. No, we think the new electric SUV is gunning straight for the Tesla Model X, a vehicle that’s both bonkers-fast and also rather practical . And we think the inclusion of Bentley’s Bentayga as another rival means a more upmarket interior than the rather barebones Tesla. However, we still don’t even know the name of the production car, nor an expected price, how long it will take to charge, or pretty much anything concrete. And although we asked for a sneak-peek before CES, it seems like everyone else we shall have to wait until January 3rd to find out the answers to those questions. Read on Ars Technica | Comments
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Faraday Future targets Ferrari, Tesla and Bentley with a new teaser
Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks are on the rise, affecting individuals , private businesses and government-funded institutions alike. As part of a large warning to cybercriminals, the UK’s National Crime Agency (NCA) has arrested 12 individuals for using a DDoS-for-hire service called Netspoof. “Operation Vulcanialia” targeted 60 citizens in total, and led to 30 cease and desist notices, and the seizure of equipment from 11 suspects. The NCA says it had two focuses: arresting repeat offenders and educating first-time users about the consequences of cybercrime. The work formed part of Operation Tarpit , a larger effort co-ordinated by Europol. Law enforcement agencies from Australia, Belgium, France, Hungary, Lithuania, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, the UK and the US targeted users of DDoS tools together, resulting in 34 arrests and 101 suspects being interviewed and cautioned. The UK’s contribution was spearheaded by intelligence gathered by the West Midlands Regional Cyber Crime Unit, and executed by Regional Organised Crime Units under the watchful eye of the NCA. Some of the arrests were detailed in a press release — all but one was under the age of 30. Netspoof allowed anyone to initiate potentially devastating DDoS attacks from as little as £4. Packages soared to as much as £380, however, depending on the user’s requirements. It meant almost anyone, regardless of their technical background, could take down sites and services by flooding them with huge amounts of data. The trend is representative of the increase in cybercrime and how easy it is for people to wield such powers. DDoS attacks aren’t comparable to hacking, but they’re still a worrisome tactic for businesses. Knocking a service offline can affect a company’s finances and reputation, angering customers in the process. Twelve arrests is by no means insignificant, but it almost certainly represents a small number of DDoS users. Still, it’s a warning shot from the NCA — it’s aware of the problem, and officers are putting more resources into tracking those who both use and facilitate such attacks on the internet. Via: Ars Technica Source: Europol , NCA
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UK police crack down on people paying for DDoS attacks
The Hollywood Reporter is reporting that Warner Bros, Disney and Fox have won an injunction against “family values” streaming service VidAngel. In the aftermath, VidAngel has announced that it will “cease streaming all works for which it has not obtained licensing.” The company has also pledged to appeal, taking the fight all the way to the Supreme Court if necessary. VidAngel’s pitch is twofold: you can stream new movies for a dollar , with the added bonus of very specific censorship options. In its commercial, it suggests that you can watch The Wolf of Wall Street without the language or Game of Thrones without the nudity or violence. Which will save you a bucketload of time, since a sanitized version of each would last about four minutes. In order to make that happen, however, VidAngel purchased movies on DVD, uploaded them to its server and then “sold” a copy to its customers for $20. When the film had been seen, the company would then “buy back” the copy for $19, making the price for each rental a tidy buck. It sounds dodgy, but VidAngel felt that it was protected by the Family Movie Act (2005), which relaxed provisions of the DMCA for this sort of “family-friendly filtering.” The studios felt differently, and called VidAngel an unlicensed VOD streaming service that violated windowing regulations. For instance, you could watch an edited version of Star Wars: The Force Awakens days after it was available on DVD, even though it wasn’t yet due to appear on streaming services. Judge Andre Birotte Jr. sided with the studios, saying that the protections afforded by the Family Movie Act didn’t apply. Mostly because you need to work with an “authorized” copy of a studio movie, not just a DVD you picked up at the store. As a consequence, VidAngel has stopped offering its current catalog to users, but has pledged to keep fighting. It’s not shutting down in the interim, however, and will stream its first fully-licensed movie to customers at some point this week. Although there’s no guarantee that it won’t be something starring Kirk Cameron. Via: THR Source: Judgment (Documentcloud)
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Hollywood forces VidAngel to stop streaming its movies
Image: Gizmodo Who doesn’t hate carrying around their laptop? Even the lightest ones weigh a couple of pounds and can be a huge burden to lug around the city. That’s where portable apps, ones stored on a USB drive, come in. Read more…
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How to Turn a USB Stick into an Ultra Portable PC
The British Museum To flesh out the features on the so-called Jericho Skull, archaeologists at the British Museum have worked for more than two years to reconstruct the face of a man whose skull had been reshaped by ritual throughout his long life. While he was an infant, his head had been bound tightly with cloth to change its shape. After he died at a ripe old age, his skull was then plastered, decorated, and put on display. This Jericho Skull gives us a glimpse of life in the Levant long before the rise of religions that describe a great battle at the city’s walls. Jericho, located today in Palestine, dates back more than 11,000 years and is one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities on Earth. It’s very likely that this man lived behind the earliest versions of Jericho’s infamous walls, built more than 9,000 years ago, but that doesn’t mean he lived a hardscrabble existence threatened by war. Recent archaeological investigation of Jericho’s Neolithic walls shows that they were not used for defense. Based on layers of silt that collected around them, researchers surmise that Jericho’s first walls were built to prevent the city from being flooded during the rainy season. Read 6 remaining paragraphs | Comments
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This man’s skull was ritualistically transformed 9,000 years ago in Jericho
Apple is making good on its promise of giving you a unified video streaming experience . The company has released iOS 10.2 and tvOS 10.1, both of which include the company’s centerpiece TV app. So long as a given service supports the feature, you no longer have to jump into and out of apps to catch up on your viewing — you can resume your favorite show or check out recommendations from a single place. Netflix isn’t included in TV at the moment, alas, but this and the recently launched single sign-on should save you a lot of hassle. The iOS update isn’t just a one-trick pony, of course. It includes a slew of new emoji , including a face palm, a gorilla (read: Harambe) and female equivalents for most job emoji. And of course, there are numerous subtler tweaks. You’ll see improved music controls with quicker access to your queue and shuffling, better stabilization and improved frame rates for Live Photos, a dedicated News app section for saved articles and notifications for smart home devices like smoke detectors and door sensors. Combine these with general fixes (there’s a significant upgrade to Bluetooth performance, for example) and you’ll definitely want to upgrade — if just to see Apple fulfill one of its big end-of-year promises . Source: MacRumors
CRISPR is already effective enough to be used in experimental therapies for leukemia, cystic fibrosis, sickle cell disease and other conditions. But a team of scientists from Western University have created an even more effective version of CRISPR by adding an engineered enzyme called TevCas9. The current version of CRISPR uses an enzyme known as Cas9 to cut DNA segments, such as the specific parts that cause genetic disorders. Western’s scientists created TevCas9 by combining Cas9 with another enzyme called I-Tevl. According to the team, the next-gen CRISPR is more precise and more efficient. Plus, it has the potential to prevent genes from repairing themselves. Lead scientist David Edgell explains: “The problem with CRISPR is that it will cut DNA, but then DNA-repair will take that cut and stick it back together. That means it is regenerating the site that the CRISPR is trying to target, creating a futile cycle. The novelty of our addition, is that it stops that regeneration from happening.” See, the upgraded CRISPR cuts genes in two places instead of just one to make it tougher for self-repair to kick in. The team still has to confirm that through further testing, but as the team says, that “is the hope and the expectation.” If you want to read the study’s technical details, check out the team’s paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences . Source: PNAS , Western University
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Scientists design the next-gen CRISPR for gene editing
Akira , still one of the most definitive manga and anime ever made , never really got a game to do the source material justice. While that’s probably not going to change, Patrick Scott Patterso n, retro game hunter-gatherer, managed to pick up four slightly different copies of the mid-development Akira title on the Game Boy. They are all experiment builds, so all that mid-test gaming nougat is housed in open-air cartridges — which makes me nervous. The title is primarily broken into two (pretty broken) parts: Bike-based levels where you dodge static obstacles and an awkward-looking platform section where you punch and kick enemies that are, for some reason, much shorter than you. There’s also a bunch of jumping which will be familiar to anyone that played handheld games that were Hollywood movie tie-ins back in the 90s. You do, however, get to run around as protagonists Kaneda or Tetsuo — which is cool. There’s even a brief hovercraft shooter level and mutant bosses that Patterson was able to try through debug level options. The ideas are all very Akira , but the game is severely unfinished. There’s a single cloying soundtrack and only a few sound effects repeated constantly. Level design is all delightfully broken up too, but what are you expecting from a collection of decades-old mid-development cartridges? Patterson plans to pull together the workable parts of each cartridge, pulling them into something vaguely playable for fans that probably don’t even care how the game plays. Via: Kotaku
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Unreleased ‘Akira’ title for Game Boy resurfaces
MalwareHunterTeam has discovered “Popcorn Time, ” a new in-development ransomware with a twist. Gumbercules!! writes: “With Popcorn Time, not only can a victim pay a ransom to get their files back, but they can also try to infect two other people and have them pay the ransom in order to get a free key, ” writes Bleeping Computer. Infected victims are given a “referral code” and, if two people are infected by that code and pay up — the original victim is given their decryption key (potentially). While encrypting your files, Popcorn Time displays a fake system screen that says “Downloading and installing. Please wait” — followed by a seven-day countdown clock for the amount of time left to pay its ransom of one bitcoin. That screen claims that the perpetrators are “a group of computer science students from Syria, ” and that “all the money that we get goes to food, medicine, shelter to our people. We are extremely sorry that we are forcing you to pay but that’s the only way that we can keep living.” So what would you do if this ransomware infected your files? Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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New Ransomware Offers The Decryption Keys If You Infect Your Friends