Answering “I need to hide a body” used to be one of Siri’s little jokes. She used to give suggestions. She doesn’t anymore. Why? We can’t be sure, but it miiight have something to do with an accused murderer who asked the question apparently in earnest . Read more…
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Yep, a Murder Suspect Actually Asked Siri Where to Hide the Body
What if the sweat produced by your body could power your gadgets? And what if the connection between the two could be made by a temporary tattoo, the more you sweat, the more power the tattoo generates? That’s exactly what researchers at UC San Diego have developed—and one day, it could power your wearables. Read more…
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This Temporary Tattoo Is Actually a Battery That’s Powered By Your Sweat
badger.foo (447981) writes Peter Hansteen reports that a new distributed and slow-moving password guessing effort is underway, much like the earlier reports, but this time with a twist: The users they are trying to access do not exist. Instead, they’re taken from the bsdly.net spamtrap address list, where all listed email addresses are guaranteed to be invalid in their listed domains. There is a tiny chance that this is an elaborate prank or joke, but it’s more likely that via excessive automation, the password gropers have finally Peak Stupid. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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Password Gropers Hit Peak Stupid, Take the Spamtrap Bait
Since file-encryption ransomware Crilock (also called CryptoLocker) has reared its head, the security industry has been hard at work finding ways to mitigate and neutralize these threats. We’ve also been hard at work finding ways to recover from the encryption and restore affected files – such as our recommendations on using version control and recovery options in SkyDrive and Windows . This week, researchers from FireEye and Fox-IT have released a tool that may be able to recover files encrypted by Crilock – without having to pay the malware authors. It’s important to note that the tool comes on the heels of a takedown of a Zeus/Gameover CnC server that was previously being used to authenticate and generate the encryption keys. This means the tool can only provide decryption keys for files that were encrypted by keys generated by that server. In other words, the tool comes with a caveat: it may not work in all instances. Ultimately, however, it’s still worth a try when you’ve tried everything else, and we want to share as many options and techniques to recover and protect your systems as possible The tool, created as a collaboration between FireEye and Fox-IT , is hosted at www.decryptcryptolocker.com (note that you’ll need to consent to their Terms of Use and Privacy Policy; Microsoft doesn’t own or operate the tool and we won’t be able to help you if it doesn’t work). The user uploads an encrypted file (it probably makes sense to use something without sensitive information or data) to the recovery portal, which searches for a matching private key from the database. If there is a match, the user receives an email with the actual private key which they can use to in a stand-alone command-line tool to decrypt each encrypted file on their own. Figure 1: Uploading a file to their online service We tested it out with files that were encrypted in November 2013 and received positive results (via email) for each file that was encrypted: Figure 2: Instructions from the DecryptCryptoLocker team Once downloaded, the tool can be launched with a command prompt: Decryptolocker.exe –key ” ” The command line operation would look like this (you just need to copy and paste the key from the email and specify the file): Figure 3: Decryption per file After applying the decryption key, you’ll receive an acknowledgement and consent request, and the file will be decrypted. Figure 4: File successfully decrypted It’s important to note that this tool will not work in every case – it depends on when the file was encrypted (and, therefore, if the CnC server that Crilock used was part of the takedown). You can read more about the tool at the FireEye blog Your locker of information for CryptoLocker decryption . Acknowledgements We would like to extend our thanks to colleagues at FireEye and Fox-IT for providing this kind of support for users whose files have been compromised by Crilock (CryptoLocker). Marianne Mallen MMPC Disclaimer The tool described in this blog is used at your risk. Read the instructions carefully on the tool’s website at https://www.decryptcryptolocker.com . In particular, note that you will be asked to consent to the site’s Terms of Use and the Privacy Policy. The site is not owned or operated by or affiliated with Microsoft. Follow us on Twitter ( @MSFTMMPC ) and like us on Facebook to get notifications of our blog posts and industry news.
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FireEye and Fox-IT tool can help recover Crilock-encrypted files
The FBI’s facial recognition initiative is big and getting bigger . And it’s just proved that it works too, by helping capture a fugitive who’s been on the run for 14 years, during testing in Asia. Read more…
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FBI Facial Recognition Caught a Fugitive on the Run For 14 Years
MediaPortal 1.9.0 Pre Release Attached to this news you will find the Pre Release version of MediaPortal 1.9.0. Pre Releases are provided as a way for the community to test and give feedback on all the exciting things we have lined up for the next release. We allocate about one month for Pre Release testing with your help. For this Pre Release we’ve put our focus once more on Bug fixing and improved stability. However, there are a couple of new features. Skin designers will like the new and functions. There are enhancements to the video resolution logos that will give you more information about the video you are watching. There is a new sort method in My Videos called Name with Duration. There are several improvements to logging, and a significant number of bug fixes. Scroll down to the ‘Full list of changes’ to read up on all of them! Highlights of this release UNC Streaming for Live TV The default protocol for LiveTV streaming on a multi-seat setup is RTSP. MediaPortal has an option to change this to UNC for those that experience problems with RTSP. In the last release, we fixed some long-standing issues with UNC paths. Therefore, this option (which was previously hidden) is now present in configuration. Thumbnails Thumbnails are a really important way for you to get feedback about video files, and these have been improved in several ways in this release. Individual plugins can now use their own default thumbs. Issues with large thumbnail creation are fixed. Content Protection We found a number of issues with content protection. It wasn’t working properly in date view in ‘Pictures’. Also, the PIN code was shown unencrypted in the configuration files. This is all now fixed, and the PIN code now supports letters as well as numbers. However, you will need to reset all your PIN codes for this release. Titan Extended The Titan team have decide to stop development on Titan Extended. Therefore it has been removed from the installer. If you already have Titan Extended, this won’t affect you. For clean installs you will need to download Titan Extended manually from the plugins repository in order to find skin files for plugins. For 1.9.0, plugin developers will need to provide the Titan skin files as part of their own installers. Titan TNC will be the new skin name of the Titan Extended theme, and this will be released as a stand-alone skin, probably at the same time as the 1.9 Final release. Full list of changes You can review the complete change log for 1.9.0 Pre Release by using the link below: Changelog: MediaPortal Documentation of new features can be found at the following link: What’s new for MediaPortal 1.9.0 (Pre Release ) Installation, Upgrade, Download and Feedback Installation Since we switched to .NET4 you need to make sure you have.NET4 installed on your computer (not needed if you are on Windows 8 because it comes with .NET4, but you NEED the .NET 3.5 features enabled! ). Otherwise you are not able to install MediaPortal and the installer just quits. Download-Link: Microsoft .NET Framework 4 (Standalone Installer) Aside from that when doing a clean installation of the 1.9.0 Pre Release there is nothing else to worry about. Upgrade Upgrading from 1.2.x, 1.3.0 Alpha/Beta/RC/Final, 1.4.0 until 1.8 to 1.9.0 Pre Release All MediaPortal 1.2.x, 1.3.0 Alpha/Beta/RC/Final, 1.4.0 till 1.8 installations can be upgraded to 1.9.0 Pre Release, without losing your settings. Plugins: If you are running MediaPortal 1.6.0 or earlier, then it is possible that some of your previously installed plugins will be shown as incompatible after the upgrade to 1.9.0 Pre Release! Whether or not a plugin is incompatible depends on the MediaPortal subsystems the plugin uses. All plugins that work for the 1.8 release, should also work with the 1.9.0 Pre Release. Skins: Warning! Due to the new features and changes introduced in 1.4.0, none of the 1.3.x skins are compatible with 1.9.0 Pre Release! Please contact the author of the skin you use for further information and updates. Upgrading Extensions: The easiest way to upgrade your extensions is by launching the MediaPortal Extension Installer , and let it check for updated versions. However this only works for extensions that use our MPEI system. If the author of the extension releases it as a stand alone installer, you must contact them for an updated version. Upgrading from 1.2.0 Alpha or earlier to 1.9.0 Pre Release All MediaPortal installations starting with 1.1.0 RC1 can be upgraded to 1.9.0 Pre Release, without losing your settings. If you are running MediaPortal 1.2.0 Alpha or earlier, then none of your extensions (plugins and skins) will work after the upgrade to 1.9.0 Pre Release! You must update your extensions after the upgrade! So, please make sure that 1.9.0 Pre Release compatible versions of your extensions are available before you start the upgrade! General note about Upgrades Manually stop TV-Service! On some systems our installer is not able to update the TV-Server installation because its files are locked or the service can not be stopped. For upgrades to 1.9.0 Pre Release we recommend that you manually stop the TV-Service and make sure, via Windows Task Manager (enable the “all users” option), that the TvService.exe process is really gone before starting to upgrade. Custom TV-Service properties If you manually changed the properties of the TV-Service (like restart on error options) , then you must redo these changes after the upgrade. The installer is not able to save and restore your custom service properties when it installs the new version of the TV-Service. Feedback If you think you found a bug then please post a detailed report in our Bug Reports Forum . Make sure your report includes all the required information . Incomplete reports will be removed to keep the forum clean. Download Finally – the download. We hope that you took the time to read this release news entirely because it includes vital information about the major changes. If you would like to support MediaPortal, we would be happy to receive a small donation ! The Team wishes you a lot of fun with this new release! .::. Download – MediaPortal 1.9.0 Pre Release .::. :: Post a Comment ::
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MediaPortal 1.9.0 Pre Released
Flexible touch screens have been “just round the corner” for some time now. Heck, Samsung showed off a flexible screen at CES in January 2013. Sadly, it was just a prototype. The truth is that flexible displays just haven’t been durable enough for mass production. Until now. Read more…
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This New Technology Will Finally Bring Flexible Displays To Market
I don’t know why you would use the official Facebook app on the iPhone — Paper’s fabulous — but just in case you do, you’ll be happy to know that Facebook has squashed a pretty major bug that reduces crash rates by 50%. Read more…
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Facebook Will Now Crash 50% Less On iOS
After eight months of beta testing, the Opera Max web compression app is finally getting a launch partner, and it happens to be in Vietnam. Opera’s joining forces with local carrier Mobiistar to have the app preloaded on select Android devices (Lai504m, Bean414 and Prime508). By way of multimedia content plus text compression, the service claims to save up to 50 percent of data bandwidth — it’s all visualized in the app for your viewing pleasure. For those outside of Vietnam, you can still install the beta app and try it out in the US, Europe, Brazil and Russia; or try the customized version of Opera Max if you’re in China. Filed under: Cellphones , Mobile Comments
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Opera’s web compression app can now save you some Vietnamese dong
Square’s grand plan to democratize credit card payments has inspired a clutch of imitators , the latest of which is Amazon . The company has just announced Amazon Local Register, a credit card reader and app combination that’ll enable small businesses to take payments they wouldn’t otherwise get, as long as they have a smartphone or tablet lying around. The retailer is savagely undercutting both Square and PayPal Here, offering a flat charge of 1.75 percent per payment until the start of 2016, a full percent lower than the 2.75 and 2.7 percent asked by the other two. On January 2nd, however, the fee rises to 2.5 percent, a smaller yet still significant cut compared to Amazon’s rivals in the space. The gear’s available for Android, iOS and the company’s own Fire devices, priced at $10, and there’s even a business bundle for $380 that’ll include a Kindle Fire HDX 8.9 — which we figure is a whole lot cheaper than trying to install a cash register in your taco truck. Filed under: Cellphones , Tablets , Internet , Amazon Comments Source: Amazon Local Register , (2) , (3)
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Amazon undercuts Square and PayPal with its own mobile card reader