Category: reader

Malvertising Campaign Infected Thousands of Users Per Day For More Than a Year

An anonymous reader writes from a report via Softpedia: Since the summer of 2015, users that surfed 113 major, legitimate websites were subjected to one of the most advanced malvertising campaigns ever discovered, with signs that this might have actually been happening since 2013. Infecting a whopping 22 advertising platforms, the criminal gang behind this campaign used complicated traffic filtering systems to select users ripe for infection, usually with banking trojans. The campaign constantly pulled between 1 and 5 million users per day, infecting thousands, and netting the crooks millions each month. The malicious ads, according to this list, were shown on sites like The New York Times, Le Figaro, The Verge, PCMag, IBTimes, Ars Technica, Daily Mail, Telegraaf, La Gazetta dello Sport, CBS Sports, Top Gear, Urban Dictionary, Playboy, Answers.com, Sky.com, and more. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Malvertising Campaign Infected Thousands of Users Per Day For More Than a Year

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos Becomes World’s Third Richest Person

An anonymous reader quotes a report from BBC: Strong earnings from Amazon and a boost to the company’s stock have made its founder, Jeff Bezos, the world’s third richest person, according to Forbes. Mr Bezos owns 18% of Amazon’s shares, which rose 2% in trading on Thursday. Forbes estimated his fortune to be $65.3 billion (49.5 billion British Pound). Amazon’s revenue beat analysts’ expectations, climbing 31% from last year to $30.4 billion in the second quarter. Profit for the e-commerce giant was $857 million, compared with $92 million in 2015. According to Forbes estimates, Mr Bezos’s fortune is only surpassed by Microsoft founder Bill Gates, worth $78 billion (59 billion British Pound), and the $73.1 billion (55 billion British Pound) fortune of Zara founder Amancio Ortega. Amazon had developed a reputation for announcing little or no profit each quarter, but appeared to hit a turning point last year and has seen improving earnings since. Amazon shares have spiked 50% since February. BBC’s report includes some bullet points about Bezos. He was born in Albuquerque, New Mexico, in 1964. He studied at Princeton University and worked on Wall Street. In 1994, he launched Amazon as an online book retailer. A lifelong Star Trek fan, Bezos launched Blue Origin spaceflight and aerospace firm in 2000, and more than a decade later, he purchased The Washington Post newspaper in 2013. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos Becomes World’s Third Richest Person

Guy Builds a Crazy Bellows Using Only Primitive Technology

The story of mankind is one of doing as little work as possible. And that plays out most excellently as Christian Bale lookalike Primitive Technology seeks to build the most efficient “forge blower” he can with the bounty of the forest. Read more…

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Guy Builds a Crazy Bellows Using Only Primitive Technology

Australia Has Moved 1.5 Metres, So It’s Updating Its Location For Self-Driving Cars

An anonymous reader shares a CNET report: Australia is changing from “down under” to “down under and across a bit”. The country is shifting its longitude and latitude to fix a discrepancy with global satellite navigation systems. Government body Geoscience Australia is updating the Geocentric Datum of Australia, the country’s national coordinate system, to bring it in line with international data. The reason Australia is slightly out of whack with global systems is that the country moves about 7 centimetres (2.75 inches) per year due to the shifting of tectonic plates. Since 1994, when the data was last recorded, that’s added up to a misalignment of about a metre and a half. While that might not seem like much, various new technology requires location data to be pinpoint accurate. Self-driving cars, for example, must have infinitesimally precise location data to avoid accidents. Drones used for package delivery and driverless farming vehicles also require spot-on information.ABC has more details. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Australia Has Moved 1.5 Metres, So It’s Updating Its Location For Self-Driving Cars

Use a Raspberry Pi to Power a Fancy Clock and Display Panel

Considering the Raspberry Pi’s a mini computer, it should come as no surprise one of the more common projects is a dashboard-style display . Over on GitHub, DIYer n0bel has a guide to turning the Pi into a smart clock. Read more…

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Use a Raspberry Pi to Power a Fancy Clock and Display Panel

Official ‘Dungeons and Dragons’ content now available on Roll20

Roll20’s online tabletop gaming system has been a haven for veterans of pen-and-paper RPGs for awhile now, but for fans of the original role-playing adventure game, it just got a lot better. Wizards of the Coast is now selling officially licensed Dungeons and Dragons modules on Roll20 — starting with the fifth edition starter set adventure , ‘ The Lost Mine of Phandelver ‘. Technically, players could already use Roll20 to play Dungeons and Dragons content, just not officially. The online gaming system is designed to work with any tabletop-style RPG game — giving players digital dice, VOIP and webcam chat systems and the ability to draw maps on a shared playspace. You can play anything on it — but that usually comes with the extra hurdle of distributing materials via email and having players open them outside of the platform. Native content purchased on the Roll20 marketplace , like the new D&D module, is just a lot easier to work with. All of the character sheets, manuals, documents and high resolution maps are right there, in the ROll20 interface. The first D&D Roll20 module comes with five pre-generated characters, digital game tokens, maps and all the necessary documentation to take 4-6 players through the Lost Mine of Phandelver . At $20, it costs the same as the 5th edition Dungeons and Dragons starter pack. Additional modules will follow soon after, though they cost a little more: Storm King’s Thunder , the next officially licensed D&D Roll20 module, rings in at $50. Source: Polygon , Twitter

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Official ‘Dungeons and Dragons’ content now available on Roll20

Apollo astronauts dying of heart disease at 4-5X the rate of counterparts

(credit: NASA ) Deep space travel takes a toll on the body—and it’s apparently something you can’t moon-walk off. Apollo astronauts who have ventured out of the protective magnetosphere of mother Earth appear to be dying of cardiovascular disease at a far higher rate than their counterparts—both those that have stayed grounded and those that only flew in the shielding embrace of low Earth orbit. Though the data is slim—based on only 77 astronauts total—researchers speculate that potent ionizing radiation in deep space may be to blame. That hypothesis was backed up in follow-up mouse studies which provided evidence that similar radiation exposure led to long-lasting damage to the rodents’ blood vessels. All of the data is published Thursday in the journal Scientific Reports . The study, while not definitive, may add an extra note of caution to the potential hazards of future attempts to fly to Mars and elsewhere in the cosmos. Read 9 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Apollo astronauts dying of heart disease at 4-5X the rate of counterparts

CBS and Showtime have two million internet-only subscribers

While CBS is busy licensing content to Netflix for display outside of the US and Canada , here its own streaming services are off to a good start. On today’s earnings call, execs said CBS All Access and the streaming version of Showtime have combined to reach more than two million subscribers, with the number “about evenly split” between the two. $CBS Moonves: “CBS All Access and Showtime OTT streaming services have surpassed two million subscribers” — CBS IR (@CBSInvestors) July 28, 2016 This is all well ahead of the upcoming All Access-exclusive Star Trek series, and in response to questions, the company stated that its service is helping to reach customers who get their TV only over the internet. The demographic is apparently “younger, skews slightly female…and consumes double the amount of content” as traditional viewers. The CBS digital news channel wasn’t included in those numbers, but still had “record” views in June. CEO Les Moonves claimed Star Trek: Discovery will be profitable “even before it launches, ” which makes it less likely we’ll see any changes made to the current strategy. Source: CBS Q2 2016 Earnings

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CBS and Showtime have two million internet-only subscribers