Hackers use Amazon cloud to scrape mass number of LinkedIn member profiles

Image courtesy of TheTruthAbout. Image courtesy TheTruthAbout LinkedIn is suing a gang of hackers who used Amazon’s cloud computing service to circumvent security measures and copy data from hundreds of thousands of member profiles each day. “Since May 2013, unknown persons and/or entities employing various automated software programs (often referred to as ‘bots’) have registered thousands of fake LinkedIn member accounts and have extracted and copied data from many member profile pages,” company attorneys alleged in a complaint filed this week in US District Court in Northern California. “This practice, known as ‘scraping,’ is explicitly barred by LinkedIn’s User Agreement, which prohibits access to LinkedIn ‘through scraping, spidering, crawling, or other technology or software used to access data without the express written consent of LinkedIn or its Members.'” With more than 259 million members—many who are highly paid professionals in technology, finance, and medical industries—LinkedIn holds a wealth of personal data that can prove highly valuable to people conducting phishing attacks, identity theft, and similar scams. The allegations in the lawsuit highlight the unending tug-of-war between hackers who work to obtain that data and the defenders who use technical measures to prevent the data from falling into the wrong hands. Read 7 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Hackers use Amazon cloud to scrape mass number of LinkedIn member profiles

These Are the Brains of the Next Bitcoin Mining Monster

In just a few short years, bitcoin mining has come a long way , from CPUs, to GPUs, to specialized, single purpose, system-on-a-chip beasts. There’s still progress to be made, though, more efficient mining marvels to build. This is that progress. Meet the (prototype) brains of an insane digital drill. Read more…        

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These Are the Brains of the Next Bitcoin Mining Monster

Powerful new planet finder snaps a direct image of an exoplanet

After 10 years of painstaking development, the Gemini Planet Imager has returned its first image of a distant exoplanet. Behold Beta Pictoris b, a massive planet several times larger than Jupiter — and over 63 light-years from Earth. Read more…        

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Powerful new planet finder snaps a direct image of an exoplanet

Sony’s Life Space UX demo envisions projectors, screens everywhere

Among the announcements Sony dropped during Kaz Hirai’s CES keynote , the Life Space UX project seemed to be most outrageous, pushing an entirely new vision for projectors. We checked out the company’s CES demo booth and found out it actually goes even further than that. The prototype 4K Ultra Short Throw Projector shown on stage and in the demo is expected to cost between $30, 000 – $40, 000 when it launches later this year. Similar to the pricey Cinema Beam projector released by LG last year , it can sit very close to a wall even in high-brightness settings and beam a large, clearly visible image. The combination of zoom lenses, 3 separate SXRD microdisplays and a laser diode light source make it powerful and sharp enough to put out a 147-inch 4K image that’s visible even with the lights on. Its low sleek design and modular setup (it splits apart to reveal speakers and cabinet space within) is made for flexibility and to be “harmonic” with the room when it’s off. Other prototypes included in the demo (check out the gallery for a better look) put a projector in the lamp over a regular kitchen table for Surface-style interaction, a mirror that turned into a high-res, touchable display and ceiling projectors that shot upwards. Filed under: Displays , Home Entertainment , HD Comments

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Sony’s Life Space UX demo envisions projectors, screens everywhere

The eyes of the starfish

Starfish have eyes — not just light-sensitive “eye spots”, but real, honest-to-Poseidon eyes, one at the end of each of their arms. They probably see the world differently than we do (for instance, they’re likely colorblind and can’t see at near the level of detail), but they can see. And they know about that time you poked them with a stick.        

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The eyes of the starfish

Gigabyte’s Squeezed Amazing Gaming Guts Into a 0.9-Inch Thick Laptop

This laptop might not have the sleek looks of a shiny ultrabook, but what does that matter when Gigabyte has managed to cram some crazy powerful gaming guts into its 0.9-inch frame ? Read more…        

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Gigabyte’s Squeezed Amazing Gaming Guts Into a 0.9-Inch Thick Laptop

Robins Can Actually See Magnetic Fields (But Only in One Eye)

Despite its unassuming looks and gentle temperament, the humble red breasted robin ( Erithacus rubecula ) boasts a superhero-like ability. They can see magnetic fields, giving them an almost perfect sense of direction. Read more…        

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Robins Can Actually See Magnetic Fields (But Only in One Eye)

Neptune’s Pine isn’t a smartwatch, it’s a smartphone that sits on your wrist

When designing a smartwatch, the general trend is to start with a basic timepiece and add features until physics or budgets get in the way. That’s not the approach taken by 19-year-old Canadian Simon Tian when he developed the Pine by Neptune. Instead, he took to Kickstarter with the idea of just shrinking a last-generation smartphone down to watch-size proportions. The result isn’t really a watch in any sense of the word, but considering that the Pine raised eight times its goal on Kickstarter, there’s clearly a desire for this sort of hardware. We got to spend some time with it at CES and want to share some impressions with you. Even with the pictures, it’s hard to get a sense of the scale of this thing. Imagine something the size of a deck of cards that’s strapped along your wrist and you’re almost there. The three Android navigation buttons run down the right side of the 2.4-inch, 320 x 240 TFT screen. Powering this thing is a 1.2GHz Snapdragon S4 paired with 512MB RAM and when using it, it’s certainly swift enough to play Angry Birds without any stutter or lag. Considering that it is a smartphone that’s been shrunk in the wash, you’ll also find a microSIM card slot, speakerphone and forward and rear-facing cameras. The VGA forward-facer is fine for video calls, but to use the primary lens, you’ll actually have to unclip the device from the wrist clip to use it. Because of the size of the display, it’s entirely possible to use a full size software keyboard, meaning that it’s feasible, if not comfortable, to use this for email and texting. In fact, the phrase “feasible, if not comfortable” probably sums this device up in its entirety. While we’re sure there are plenty of people who will overlook its size in favor of having full smartphone functionality attached to their wrist, we can’t imagine this selling beyond its niche. Still, if you remain determined to snaffle one, the 16GB edition will cost $335 and the 32GB edition will set you back $395 when they launch in March. Filed under: Cellphones , Wearables , Mobile Comments Source: Neptune Pine

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Neptune’s Pine isn’t a smartwatch, it’s a smartphone that sits on your wrist

End of Moore’s Law Forcing Radical Innovation

dcblogs writes “The technology industry has been coasting along on steady, predictable performance gains, as laid out by Moore’s law. But stability and predictability are also the ingredients of complacency and inertia. At this stage, Moore’s Law may be more analogous to golden handcuffs than to innovation. With its end in sight, systems makers and governments are being challenged to come up with new materials and architectures. The European Commission has written of a need for ‘radical innovation in many computing technologies.’ The U.S. National Science Foundation, in a recent budget request, said technologies such as carbon nanotube digital circuits will likely be needed, or perhaps molecular-based approaches, including biologically inspired systems. The slowdown in Moore’s Law has already hit high-performance computing. Marc Snir, director of the Mathematics and Computer Science Division at the Argonne National Laboratory, outlined in a series of slides the problem of going below 7nm on chips, and the lack of alternative technologies.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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End of Moore’s Law Forcing Radical Innovation