Android Oreo now shows WiFi network speeds before you connect

Ever hop on a WiFi hotspot to save mobile data or boost speed, only to find out that it’s so slow that you might as well have stayed on cellular access? If you’re using Android 8.1 Oreo, that shouldn’t be a problem going forward. After several weeks of teasing , Google is rolling out a feature that gauges the speed of WiFi networks before you connect. It’s not giving you exact bandwidth readings — instead, it’s lumping the overall performance into categories that give you an idea of what to expect. You may want to avoid a “slow” (under 1Mbps) or “OK” (1-5Mbps) network unless you have no choice, but “fast” (5-20Mbps) and “very fast” (20Mbps and above) should do the job if you’re catching up on YouTube. The ratings are a bit conservative, and might not help much if you’re hoping to stream 4K or download a multi-gigabyte app. However, it should help you make more informed decisions. You might skip that overloaded airport connection instead of wasting minutes trying to visit a basic page. Now if only this prompted hotspot owners to improve the quality of their connections… Public Wi-Fi can be spotty. For the first time, #AndroidOreo 8.1 lets you take out the guesswork & see the speed of networks before you hit connect. Rolling out now: https://t.co/lSzvCFgNk7 pic.twitter.com/60EmoPxUX4 — Android (@Android) January 22, 2018 Source: Google Support , Android (Twitter)

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Android Oreo now shows WiFi network speeds before you connect

The first 512GB microSD card arrives in February

It didn’t take long for someone to topple 2017’s microSD storage record . The UK’s Integral Memory has unveiled what it says it the first shipping 512GB microSD card. So long as your device can handle microSDXC (most Android phones and tablets, as well as PCs like the Surface Pro ), you too can have half a terabyte in the space of a fingernail. The card’s 80MB/s peak transfer speed isn’t the fastest you’ll find, but it should be enough for apps and recording gobs of 4K video. The card arrives in February, although it’s not clear how much it will cost or how readily available it will be outside of the UK. Don’t expect it to be cheap, though — the 400GB card still carries a premium (around $250 on Amazon), and it’s virtually certain that 512GB will cost more. This is more about bragging rights, both for Integral Memory and for well-heeled techies who want the kind of capacity normally reserved for laptops. Source: BusinessWire

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The first 512GB microSD card arrives in February

These are not paintings of Jupiter

Citizen scientists Gerald Eichstädt and Seán Doran amped up the color and contrast of images of Jupiter’s turbulent atmosphere as captured by NASA’s Juno spacecraft . Below, for, um, comparison, Vincent van Gogh’s “The Starry Night” (1889) and Edvard Munch’s “The Scream” (1893). More of Eichstädt and Doran’s stunning work here .

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These are not paintings of Jupiter

Australian Birds of Prey Are Deliberately Setting Forests On Fire

An anonymous reader writes: If you’ve been counting the ways the Australian environment is trying to kill you, you can now add “arson” to the list. According to a six-year study published in The Journal of Ethnobiology, observers have confirmed what Aboriginal rangers have been observing for years: birds of prey routinely carry burning or smouldering sticks into dry grassy areas to scare small mammals into fleeing so they can be pack-hunted more effectively. This has implications for environmental management, since the best firebreak will not protect your controlled burn from a “firehawk” determined to breach it. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Australian Birds of Prey Are Deliberately Setting Forests On Fire

We All Nearly Missed the Largest Underwater Volcano Eruption Ever Recorded

schwit1 quotes ScienceAlert: She was flying home from a holiday in Samoa when she saw it through the airplane window: a “peculiar large mass” floating on the ocean, hundreds of kilometres off the north coast of New Zealand. The Kiwi passenger emailed photos of the strange ocean slick to scientists, who realised what it was — a raft of floating rock spewed from an underwater volcano, produced in the largest eruption of its kind ever recorded. “We knew it was a large-scale eruption, approximately equivalent to the biggest eruption we’ve seen on land in the 20th Century, ” says volcanologist Rebecca Carey from the University of Tasmania, who’s co-led the first close-up investigation of the historic 2012 eruption. The incident, produced by a submarine volcano called the Havre Seamount, initially went unnoticed by scientists, but the floating rock platform it generated was harder to miss. Back in 2012, the raft — composed of pumice rock — covered some 400 square kilometres (154 square miles) of the south-west Pacific Ocean, but months later satellites recorded it dispersing over an area twice the size of New Zealand itself… for a sense of scale, think roughly 1.5 times larger than the 1980 eruption of Mount St. Helens — or 10 times the size of the 2010 Eyjafjallajokull eruption in Iceland. When an underwater robot first sent back detailed maps, one volcanologist remembers that “I thought the vehicle’s sonar was acting up… We saw all these bumps on the seafloor… It turned out that each bump was a giant block of pumice, some of them the size of a van.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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We All Nearly Missed the Largest Underwater Volcano Eruption Ever Recorded

Self-destructing thumb drives with smoke loads, glowing elements, tiny explosives

MG’s Mr Self Destruct project takes the USB Killer to new levels, combining a $1.50 system-on-a-chip with a variety of payloads: smoke bombs, “sound grenades,” and little explosives, cleverly choreographed with keystroke emulation, allowing the poisoned drive to first cause the connected computer to foreground a browser and load a web-page that plays an appropriate animation (a jack-in-the-box that plays “Pop Goes the Weasel” with the drive’s explosive detonating for the climax). (more…)

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Self-destructing thumb drives with smoke loads, glowing elements, tiny explosives

EU standardizes edible insect rules

Alternative protein advocates in Europe have been stymied by the hodgepodge of national rules regarding insect consumption, but now the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) will approve applications for edible bugs that will then be legal to serve to Europeans throughout the EU. (more…)

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EU standardizes edible insect rules

US regulators charge three bitcoin operators with fraud

Today the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission announced that it has filed a federal civil enforcement action against three virtual currency operators. The details of one case remain sealed, but the other two companies facing charges are CabbageTech and Entrepreneurs Headquarters Ltd . The charges include fraud, misrepresentation, misappropriation and more, and are the first enforcement actions since the CFTC allowed trading bitcoin futures. Bitcoin has been on a rollercoaster recently. Its value has been in a freefall; two days ago, it tumbled below $10, 000, losing half of its peak value in less than one month . According to Coinbase , it’s risen a bit as of this writing. Bitcoin’s value is currently in the mid-$11, 000s. There are also fears that bitcoin and other cryptocurrency could threaten the security of the global economy; as a result, the US isn’t the only country taking action. China is moving toward an “orderly exit” from bitcoin mining because of its use of resources, as well as its affect on investors. Back in December, South Korea (which is the third largest market for cryptocurrency, after the US and Japan) banned all anonymous cryptocurrency accounts and enacted new regulations for monitoring exchanges. In a joint statement, the CTFC Enforcement Director and the Securities and Exchange Commision Enforcement Co-Directors made clear that the US government will be keeping a close eye on cryptocurrency action. “When market participants engage in fraud under the guise of offering digital instruments – whether characterized as virtual currencies, coins, tokens, or the like – the SEC and the CFTC will look beyond form, examine the substance of the activity and prosecute violations of the federal securities and commodities laws, ” they said in a joint statement. Via: Reuters Source: CFTC (1) , CFTC (2)

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US regulators charge three bitcoin operators with fraud

Tesla Is Last In the Driverless Vehicle Race, Report Says

Navigant Research has compiled a new report on 19 companies working on automated driving systems, and surprisingly, Tesla came in last place. U.S. News & World Report: Navigant ranked the 19 major companies developing AV technology based on 10 criteria, including vision, market strategy, partnerships, production strategy, technology, product quality and staying power. According to the report, General Motors Co. and Waymo, the auto unit of Alphabet, are the top two AV investment opportunities in the market today. Tesla and Apple are the two biggest laggards in the AV race, according to Navigant’s rankings. Investors are acutely aware of Tesla’s production and distribution disadvantages compared to legacy automakers like GM, but Navigant is also highly critical of Tesla’s technology. “The autopilot system on current products has stagnated and, in many respects, regressed since it was first launched in late 2015, ” Navigant says in the report, according to Ars Technica. “More than one year after launching V2, Autopilot still lacks some of the functionality of the original, and there are many anecdotal reports from owners of unpredictable behavior.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Tesla Is Last In the Driverless Vehicle Race, Report Says