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SanDisk crams 400GB into a microSD card

SanDisk just unveiled a 400GB microSD card, which it claims is the world’s biggest. Really, it was only a matter of time until something of this stature arrived. Especially, now that we’re capturing every aspect of our daily lives in glorious 4K , in 360-degrees , and from drones way up high. All those high-res images are taking up a lot of space on our devices. Therefore, storage providers had to step it up, which brings us to this miniature marvel. The 400GB SanDisk Ultra microSDXC UHS-I card (yes, it’s a mouthful) comes two years after the release of its 200GB predecessor . The company claims it can rack up transfer speeds of 100MB, meaning you can expect to move up to 1, 200 photos per minute. It also meets the A1 App Performance Class specification, allowing it to load apps faster. Ultimately, it can hold up to 40 hours of full HD video. That all sounds enticing, but it comes at a hefty price: The microSD card will set you back $250. For that money, you get 144GB more storage than any other microSD card out there. There were rumblings of a 512GB microSD card hitting the market this year (courtesy of Microdia ), but we’ve not heard anything recently. Plus, that half-a-terabyte of storage was going to set you back $1, 000 — which makes SanDisk’s card look cheap in comparison. All you iPhone owners feeling left out right now, SanDisk has your back. Well, kinda. The company’s also dropping a new local storage dock for Apple’s handset. Just plug your iPhone into the SanDisk iXpand Base to backup your files, with up to 256GB of storage (for $200). Additional versions include 32GB, 64GB, and 128GB storage, with prices starting from $50. Source: Business Wire (press release) , Business Wire (press release)

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SanDisk crams 400GB into a microSD card

The iPhone 8 reportedly swaps the home button for gesture controls

The folks over at Bloomberg got their hands on some images of the next iPhone as well as some information from people familiar with the new model. Some of the features confirmed in their report were already known or at least heavily suspected, but there are also some new details about how the phone will function without the home button. As has been reported before, the images viewed by Bloomberg show that the iPhone 8 will have thin bezels and a larger screen than the iPhone 7. It’s also going to have a facial recognition sensor that, along with the earpiece and front-facing camera, will be contained in a cutout at the top of the screen. Some other physical details include rounded edges for the screen, a longer power button, a glass front and back and stainless steel edges with antenna cuts on the corners. The app dock is also getting a redesign and looks a lot like the iPad iOS 11 dock, according to Bloomberg . But one of the bigger changes — the removal of the home button that’s been a part of the phone for a decade — comes with some tweaks to how users will access the features that the home button has brought them to in the past. Now, what was once the home button’s function is going the way of the iPad and Apple’s laptop trackpads. Gesture controls will now bring you to the main app grid and show you which apps are open. The bottom of the screen will host a software bar that can be dragged upwards to open the phone and also to get to the multitasking interface once the phone is unlocked. The new iPhone is expected to launch on September 12th alongside the 7s and 7s Plus models. Source: Bloomberg

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The iPhone 8 reportedly swaps the home button for gesture controls

The IRS Decides Who To Audit By Data Mining Social Media

In America the Internal Revenue Service used to pick who got audited based on math mistakes or discrepancies with W-2 forms — but not any more. schwit1 shares an article from the Vanderbilt Journal of Entertainment and Technology Law describing their new technique: The IRS is now engaging in data mining of public and commercial data pools (including social media) and creating highly detailed profiles of taxpayers upon which to run data analytics. This article argues that current IRS practices, mostly unknown to the general public, are violating fair information practices. This lack of transparency and accountability not only violates federal law regarding the government’s data collection activities and use of predictive algorithms, but may also result in discrimination. While the potential efficiencies that big data analytics provides may appear to be a panacea for the IRS’s budget woes, unchecked these activities are a significant threat to privacy [PDF]. Other concerns regarding the IRS’s entrée into big data are raised including the potential for political targeting, data breaches, and the misuse of such information. While tax evasion cost the U.S.$3 trillion between 2000 and 2009, one of the report’s authors argues that people should be aware âoethat what they say and do onlineâ could be used against them. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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The IRS Decides Who To Audit By Data Mining Social Media

Massive New Spambot Ensnares 711,000,000 Email Addresses

An anonymous reader quotes ZDNet: A huge spambot ensnaring 711 million email accounts has been uncovered. A Paris-based security researcher, who goes by the pseudonymous handle Benkow, discovered an open and accessible web server hosted in the Netherlands, which stores dozens of text files containing a huge batch of email addresses, passwords, and email servers used to send spam. Those credentials are crucial for the spammer’s large-scale malware operation to bypass spam filters by sending email through legitimate email servers. The spambot, dubbed “Onliner, ” is used to deliver the Ursnif banking malware into inboxes all over the world. To date, it’s resulted in more than 100, 000 unique infections across the world, Benkow told ZDNet. Troy Hunt, who runs breach notification site Have I Been Pwned, said it was a “mind-boggling amount of data.” Hunt, who analyzed the data and details his findings in a blog post, called it the “largest” batch of data to enter the breach notification site in its history… Those credentials, he explained, have been scraped and collated from other data breaches, such as the LinkedIn hack and the Badoo hack, as well also other unknown sources. The data includes information on 80 million email servers, and it’s all used to identify which recipients have Windows computers, so they can be targeted in follow-up emails delivering Windows-specific malware. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Massive New Spambot Ensnares 711,000,000 Email Addresses

Man in jail 2 years for refusing to decrypt drives. Will he ever get out?

Enlarge (credit: Yuri Samoilov ) A now-fired Philadelphia cop has been behind bars for almost two years for refusing to decrypt hard drives that authorities found at his residence as part of a federal child-porn investigation. On Thursday, his lawyers are set to ask a federal judge to release him while he appeals the reason for his confinement to the Supreme Court. If the justices take the case, it would be the first time they weighed the constitutionality of whether forcing somebody to decrypt hardware amounts to a Fifth Amendment violation. Francis Rawls The dispute concerns Francis Rawls, who has been serving an indefinite jail term after being held in contempt of court for refusing to unlock at least two FileVault-encrypted drives connected to an Apple Mac Pro. He has not been charged with any criminal offense even though the contempt order  (PDF) was issued September 30, 2015. Both a federal judge and the 3rd US Circuit Court of Appeals  did not agree with Rawls’ contention that forcing him to unlock the drives amounted to a violation of his Fifth Amendment right against being compelled to testify against oneself. The courts also concluded that it was a “foregone conclusion” that kid porn was on the drives because a forensic examination revealed that the “hash” values of the files have been linked by the authorities to known child pornography. Read 4 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Man in jail 2 years for refusing to decrypt drives. Will he ever get out?

Horrifying Blade Runner short film serves as prequel to 2049

2036: Nexus Dawn , directed by Luke Scott, shows us a key moment in history between the original Blade Runner and Blade Runner 2049 . With Blade Runner 2049 hitting theaters October 6, you might be wondering what’s been going on in the 30 years since the last film ended. The original Blade Runner ended ambiguously in 2017 when Deckard fled Los Angeles with the replicant Rachael. Now you can watch a short film called 2036: Nexus Dawn , directed by Luke Scott, who helmed the 2016 horror film Morgan . Nexus Dawn focuses on one, key meeting between biotech magnate Neander Wallace (Jared Leto) and some officials. We’re getting a feel for Wallace’s fragility and hubris here. Though he’s appeared as a builder of replicants in the 2049 trailers , it wasn’t clear who he was or how he fit into the story. Now we know he holds patents to some kind of agriculture-related biotech that saved the world from starvation. Wallace is also kind of a classic mad scientist, obsessed with creating new life. He shows the people at this meeting the Nexus 9, a new kind of replicant that lives as long as his human owner desires and will never disobey orders or run away. At Comic-Con last month, the filmmakers revealed what happened between the two films in a quick chart projected onscreen: Read 3 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Horrifying Blade Runner short film serves as prequel to 2049

An autonomous Ford Fusion will deliver Domino’s in Michigan

Domino’s has been experimenting with high-tech delivery methods for years, from UAVs to drones with wheels . This time, the pizza chain might send a self-driving Ford Fusion to deliver your food if you’re in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Domino’s has teamed up with the automaker to test people’s response to an autonomous delivery car. They’ll use one Fusion equipped with all the trappings of a self-driving vehicle, including Ford’s full suite of cameras, sensors, radar and LIDAR, to deliver pizza for the month-long test. Despite the full equipment, a human engineer will be behind the wheel, since the test is all about observing customers’ reactions. He’ll be hidden behind tinted windows, though, and won’t be ringing anybody’s doorbell. Customers who agree to be part of the trial will get a text when their order arrives. They’ll then have to walk out, meet the car, punch in the last four digits of their phone number on a touchscreen display installed at the rear passenger-side window and take out the pizza from a warming oven inside. The partners will be keeping an eye on whether customers are willing to meet the self-driving car at the curb or if they want it to park in their driveway. They’ll observe how long it takes for people to punch in their codes and to take out their pizza from the oven. Most importantly, the test will help them determine if people are inclined to touch the car’s pricey LIDAR system spinning atop the vehicle. Ford will tweak the self-driving Fusion based on the trial’s results — we’ll bet the LIDAR system will end up hidden inside a tough casing if customers can’t stop themselves from touching. The trial is a perfect fit for the automaker’s vision for its self-driving vehicles. Like many other companies working on autonomous vehicles, Ford aims to develop a self-driving car with no steering wheel, brake and accelerator pedals. The automaker plans to use them for ride-sharing fleets, but it believes the vehicle has many other potential applications, including delivery. Sherif Marakby, Ford VP of autonomous and electric vehicles, said: “It’s not just ride-sharing and ride-moving or people moving, but it’s also moving the goods. We develop the plan to go to market as we develop the tech. We work with partners (and) this is one example. There will be more in the future.” Source: Ford Motor Company , The Detroit News , Bloomberg

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An autonomous Ford Fusion will deliver Domino’s in Michigan

Watch how hard it is to make a traditional Korean inlaid lacquer box

From collecting seashells for the inlay, harvesting tree sap for the lacquer, to adding the final touches, creating these stunning lacquer boxes in traditional Korean style takes about a year. (more…)

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Watch how hard it is to make a traditional Korean inlaid lacquer box

India shut off the internet in an attempt to maintain order

Last week, local governments in the northern Indian states of Punjab and Haryana shut down citizens’ internet access and text messaging services just before a verdict was to be released on a high-profile rape case. The case involved a cult leader with a large following who was accused of raping two women in his group. A statement from the Additional Chief Secretary of Haryana said the order was “issued to prevent any disturbance of peace and public order” in the region. Around 50 million people lost internet access for five days. India has a history of censoring web content in the name of social order. Some areas of the country have made liking blasphemous social media posts punishable with jail time, it has blocked sex sites and has arrested WhatsApp group members who have posted altered, unflattering photos of the prime minister, which is against the country’s law prohibiting fake news. If the order to temporarily shut off the region’s internet had any effect, it wasn’t to prevent a disturbance of the peace. After the cult leader was found guilty, his followers violently protested the verdict, resulting in 38 deaths. Trains were also stopped from traveling to and from the states, schools and businesses were closed and security officers were sent to regain order. Internet and messaging services were restored this morning. Source: CNET

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India shut off the internet in an attempt to maintain order

How the NSA Identified Satoshi Nakamoto

An anonymous reader shares a report: The ‘creator’ of Bitcoin, Satoshi Nakamoto, is the world’s most elusive billionaire. Very few people outside of the Department of Homeland Security know Satoshi’s real name. In fact, DHS will not publicly confirm that even THEY know the billionaire’s identity. Satoshi has taken great care to keep his identity secret employing the latest encryption and obfuscation methods in his communications. Despite these efforts (according to my source at the DHS) Satoshi Nakamoto gave investigators the only tool they needed to find him — his own words. Using stylometry one is able to compare texts to determine authorship of a particular work. Throughout the years Satoshi wrote thousands of posts and emails and most of which are publicly available. According to my source, the NSA was able to the use the ‘writer invariant’ method of stylometry to compare Satoshi’s ‘known’ writings with trillions of writing samples from people across the globe. By taking Satoshi’s texts and finding the 50 most common words, the NSA was able to break down his text into 5, 000 word chunks and analyse each to find the frequency of those 50 words. This would result in a unique 50-number identifier for each chunk. The NSA then placed each of these numbers into a 50-dimensional space and flatten them into a plane using principal components analysis. The result is a ‘fingerprint’ for anything written by Satoshi that could easily be compared to any other writing. The NSA then took bulk emails and texts collected from their mass surveillance efforts. First through PRISM and then through MUSCULAR, the NSA was able to place trillions of writings from more than a billion people in the same plane as Satoshi’s writings to find his true identity. The effort took less than a month and resulted in positive match. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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How the NSA Identified Satoshi Nakamoto