Author: kenmay

Lyft Is Willing to Pay $27 Million to Keep Its California Drivers as Contractors

Lyft has offered to settle a case against its California drivers with a sum of $27 million . The cash would allow the company to keep its drivers as contractors, rather than making them employees. Read more…

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Lyft Is Willing to Pay $27 Million to Keep Its California Drivers as Contractors

Samsung Unveils 256GB MicroSD Card, Highest Capacity In Its Class

Samsung recently unveiled its EVO Plus 256GB microSD card, capable of storing more than 12 hours of 4K video footage, 33 hours of full HD recording, 55, 200 photos or 23, 500 MP3s. While you most likely do not need such a large microSD card in your life, you’ll probably want one. The card features Samsung’s newest V-NAND technology, with read/write speeds of 95MB/s and 90MB/s, respectively. It will be available in June to over 50 countries at a price of $250, which includes a 10 year warranty. Personally, I have no need for such a high-capacity card at this time, but I marvel how far technology has progressed in the last few years, let alone months. SanDisk, for example, revealed a 200GB microSD card back in March, 2015, which was the highest capacity microSD card up until now. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Samsung Unveils 256GB MicroSD Card, Highest Capacity In Its Class

Researchers are using silk cocoons to store blood samples

When doctors draw blood for analysis, it’s vital that the sample either be immediately examined or refrigerated. That’s because the proteins which indicate various diseases will either be destroyed by enzymes in the blood or deformed by ambient heat. Either way, the sample quickly becomes useless if you leave it sitting out. However a team of researchers from Tufts University have developed a new way to store samples without having to put them on ice by using silkworm cocoons . The system works in a manner similar to conventional dried blood spot collection — wherein a drop of blood is deposited onto a piece of cardboard and allowed to dry. The Tufts method, however, relies on powdered silk and a separate silk-based solution. Mixing these two items with a sample of blood and allowing the result to dry preserved more viable blood proteins than both the normal drying or refrigeration methods. The team published its findings in the journal, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences on Monday. The technology itself is still very much in its preliminary development stages and won’t be showing up in your doctor’s office in the foreseeable future. Source: STAT News

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Researchers are using silk cocoons to store blood samples

Windows 10’s Wi-Fi credential sharing is going away in the Anniversary Update

Last night, a new Windows 10 Insider Preview unexpectedly made its way onto the Internet after Microsoft accidentally started releasing it to end users while sending it to Windows Update. The new build, 14342, takes some big steps forward in Edge’s extension support. Previously,  extensions in the Edge browser had to be manually downloaded and installed. Now they are installed and updated in the same way as Universal Windows Apps. The number of extensions available for Edge has also grown, with a couple of ad blockers now joining the fray. With this build, Microsoft is starting to bring back some of the more tablet-oriented features that were in Windows 8 but removed from Windows 10. Swipe navigation in the browser is now back, allowing you to navigate back and forward just by swiping the page left and right. The next Mobile build will also include this capability. Read 4 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Windows 10’s Wi-Fi credential sharing is going away in the Anniversary Update

Hyperloop One is testing its propulsion system in the Nevada desert today

Hyperloop One Here’s a look at the sled Hyperloop One is testing in North Las Vegas today. 4 more images in gallery In North Las Vegas today, a startup called Hyperloop One propelled a 10-foot-long sled down a track, accelerating it to 116 mph before it hit a patch of sand on the tracks. The test took about four seconds, USA Today reported . The test of Hyperloop One’s propulsion system is just one step of many on the path to achieve a dream put forth by Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, who first drew up a plan to transport people at 760mph in low-pressure tubes in 2013. Musk decided not to pursue this business venture, which he called Hyperloop, but his whitepaper spawned two rival Hyperloop companies and an international student engineer competition . Hyperloop One, formerly known Hyperloop Technologies, announced its name change on Tuesday, hoping to differentiate itself from Hyperloop Transportation Technologies (HTT), which has also made considerable headway in research and development of such a transportation system. HTT announced on Monday that it had exclusively licensed passive magnetic levitation technology that would serve to keep Hyperloop pods off the track, minimizing friction as they speed through a tube. Read 6 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Hyperloop One is testing its propulsion system in the Nevada desert today

No more get-out-of-jail-free card for CryptXXX ransomware victims

(credit: Aurich Lawson) For the past month, people infected with the CryptXXX ransomware had a way to recover their files without paying the hefty $500 fee to obtain the decryption key. On Tuesday, that reprieve came to an end. Researchers from security firm Proofpoint said in a blog post that version 2.006 has found a way to bypass a decryption tool that has been freely available for weeks. The tool was provided by Kaspersky Lab and was the result of flaws in the way CryptXXX worked. The crypto ransomware update effectively renders the Kaspersky tool useless, Proofpoint said. It did this with the use of zlib , a software library used for data compression. The new version also makes it harder to use the Kaspersky tool by locking the screen of an infected computer and making it unusable until the ransom is paid. Read 2 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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No more get-out-of-jail-free card for CryptXXX ransomware victims