Author: kenmay

Sony: PS4’s main selling point will be ‘new playing options, not improved hardware specs’

As Sony Computer Entertainment warms up its blue lighting and double-checks its playlist for February 20th , one unnamed SCE official says that the PlayStation 4 will act as more of a home entertainment hub than what we’ve seen in the past. They added, according to the Nikkei , that the main selling point won’t be the rumored eight-core AMD64 CPU or other hardware specs, but how it opens up new styles of play — something Nintendo is also focusing on . Sony is going to push the new console as a home entertainment “nerve center,” with a focus on the hardware’s ability to connect and share to mobile devices — the rival that’s pulling gamers away from traditional consoles. Edge had previously mentioned the possibility of a dedicated share button on the next-gen controller, though that remains a product of the rumor mill at the moment. No discussion on any Gaikai-powered cloud gaming just yet, but following its unveiling later this month, the report states that the new PlayStation should launch before the end of the year. A bit of a shame, then, that it’s still only February. Filed under: Gaming , Sony Comments Source: Nikkei (requires subscription) , Edge-online

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Sony: PS4’s main selling point will be ‘new playing options, not improved hardware specs’

Ants Use Sound To Communicate

sciencehabit writes “A new study shows that ant pupae—a stage between larvae and adult—can communicate via sound, and that this communication can be crucial to their survival. The young insects have a specialized spike along their abdomen that they stroke with one of their hind legs, similar to dragging the teeth of a comb along the edge of a table. This noise serves primarily as an emergency beacon, allowing the ants to shout for help when being threatened by a predator.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Ants Use Sound To Communicate

And Now, a Tiny Japanese Roomba… for Your iDevice Screen

Although it seems that we’ve been soliciting your opinions with a simple “Yea or Nay” quite a bit lately—regarding this and this , for starters—we just as often herald instances of “hell in a handbasket” to connote examples of design or specific products that confound us. And while I’d surmise that a new product called the Automee S is an example of chindōgu , the fact that it will reportedly available for 1575 Yen (about $17) next month seems to be at odds with the spirit of ‘unuseless design.’ Unfortunately, the product page is in Japanese, so we’re relying on New Launches’ translation regarding details and specs. They write that “the little one has three tires for maneuvering and two made of paper which do the cleaning. The onboard sensors prevent the Automee S from falling off the edges and also lets it clean the entire surface evenly.” New Launches also notes that it takes four minutes to clean a phone and eight to clean a tablet, which makes it good for 45 and 22 complete cleans on a single AA battery. (more…)

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And Now, a Tiny Japanese Roomba… for Your iDevice Screen

A Facebook Bug Pretty Much Took Down the Entire Internet

If you thought the Internet freaked out for a little bit and every site you went to was down, you’re not alone. Major websites were down: CNN, Huffington Post, ESPN, Gawker, The Washington Post, BuzzFeed, etc. were all broken. Why? Because of a glitch with Facebook. More »

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A Facebook Bug Pretty Much Took Down the Entire Internet

Adobe issues emergency Flash update for attacks on Windows, Mac users

Adobe Systems has released a patch for two Flash player vulnerabilities that are being actively exploited online to surreptitiously install malware, one in attacks that target users of Apple’s Macintosh platform. While Flash versions for OS X and Windows are the only ones reported to be under attack, Thursday’s unscheduled release is available for Linux and Android devices as well. Users of all affected operating systems should install the update as soon as possible. The Mac exploits target users of the Safari browser included in Apple’s OS X, as well as those using Mozilla’s Firefox. That vulnerability, cataloged as CVE-2013-0634, is also being used in exploits that trick Windows users into opening booby-trapped Microsoft Word documents that contain malicious Flash content, Adobe said in an advisory . Adobe credited members of the Shadowserver Foundation , Lockheed Martin’s Computer Incident Response Team, and MITRE with discovery of the critical bug. Read 4 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Adobe issues emergency Flash update for attacks on Windows, Mac users

Which One Has More Usable Space: the 128GB Surface Pro or the 128GB MacBook Air?

Everyone’s been making fun of the Surface Pro for being so stingy on hard drive space. The 128GB version of the Surface Pro only has 90GB of free space ( originally reported to be 83GB but since boosted). Where the hell did the other 38 gigs go? Well, you could ask the same question to the 128GB version of the MacBook Air. The MBA only has 92GB of free space. What! More »

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Which One Has More Usable Space: the 128GB Surface Pro or the 128GB MacBook Air?

Parcel Sensor Knows When Your Delivery Has Been Dropped

First time accepted submitter Hamsterdan writes “If you’re tired of finding that your stuff has been smashed during shipping after opening your package, this device is for you. ‘Called DropTag, the gadget combines a battery, a low-energy Bluetooth transmitter, an accelerometer and a memory chip. Stuck on a parcel as it leaves an e-commerce warehouse, it logs any g-forces above a set risky shock level that it experiences. The idea is that when the courier puts it in your hands, you turn on Bluetooth on a smartphone running a DropTag app and scan it before you sign for it.'” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Parcel Sensor Knows When Your Delivery Has Been Dropped

Data siphoned in Fed reserve hack a “bonanza” for spear phishers

Sensitive details on thousands of banking executives lifted from a hacking involving the Federal Reserve represent a potential “bonanza” for spear phishers looking to snare high-value targets in personalized scam e-mails, a security researcher said. The list is no longer readily available online, but according to Chris Wysopal, CTO of security firm Veracode, it contained details from a Federal Reserve-related database that Anonymous-affiliated hackers claimed to breach on Sunday. It included 31 fields, including home addresses, e-mail addresses, login IDs, and cryptographically hashed passwords. “As you can see, this is a spearphishing bonanza and even a password reuse bonanza for whoever can crack the password hashes,” he wrote in a blog post published on Wednesday. “It doesn’t look like any of these are internal Federal Reserve System accounts as those would have FRS AD UIDs associated with each account. Still, this is about the most valuable account dump by quality I have seen in a while.” Read 2 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Data siphoned in Fed reserve hack a “bonanza” for spear phishers