Intel’s new cameras add human-like 3D vision to any machine

Intel has released two ready-to-use RealSense depth cameras, the D415 and the D435, that can add 3D capabilities to any device or machine. They both come in a USB-powered form factor and are capable of processing depth in real time, thanks to the chipmaker’s new RealSense vision processor D4. The models work indoors and outdoors in any lighting environment, so they can be used for almost any machine that needs a depth camera. Those include drones meant to soar the skies and robots with AR/VR features. Intel says the cameras’ target audiences aren’t just developers and manufacturers, but also makers and educators, since they’re easy to use and will work as soon as you plug them in. Also, it comes with Intel’s RealSense SDK 2.0, which is now a cross-platform, open source SDK. Intel RealSense VP Sagi Ben Moshe said in a statement: “Many of today’s machines and devices use 2D image recognition-based computer vision, but with Intel RealSense’s best-in-class depth technology, we are redefining future technologies to ‘see’ like a human, so devices and machines can truly enrich people’s lives. With its compact, ready-to-use form, the Intel RealSense D400 Depth Camera series not only makes it easy for developers to build 3D depth sensing into any design, but they are also ready to be embedded into high-volume products.” The D415 and the D435 are now available for pre-order for $149 and $145, respectively. D415 has a narrow field of view and a rolling shutter that scans its environment from one side to the other to take an image. It works best when dealing with small objects and anything that needs precise measurements. D435, on the other hand, has a wider field of view and has a global shutter that takes images all at once. That makes it ideal for capturing depth perception of objects in motion and for covering big areas, since it minimizes blind spots. Source: Intel

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Intel’s new cameras add human-like 3D vision to any machine

How to Make an Inexpensive DIY Sandblaster

Watching rust get blasted off of metal is always satisfying. It must be even more satisfying to do it, particularly when you’re using a self-made sandblaster. DIY’er Adam Fleisch figured out how to make one for under six bucks, using an airgun and a soda bottle, and the darn thing actually works:

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How to Make an Inexpensive DIY Sandblaster

Lebanese hackers stole a ton of data then left it on an open server

The Electronic Frontier Foundation and mobile security company Lookout released a report today detailing a major hacking campaign — dubbed Dark Caracal — that’s believed to have originated from Lebanon’s General Directorate of General Security (GDGS), one of the country’s intelligence agencies. The companies found information gathered from thousands of victims from over 20 countries through espionage efforts extending back to 2012. Targets included military personnel, journalists, activists, financial institutions and manufacturing companies and some of the stolen data included documents, call records, texts, contact information and photos. Michael Flossman, a Lookout security researcher, told the Associated Press , “It was everything. Literally everything.” The hackers used malicious apps that resembled legitimate communication platforms like Signal and WhatsApp to steal the trove of data, loading up the fake versions with malware that allowed them to tap into users’ conversations. “One of the interesting things about this ongoing attack is that it doesn’t require a sophisticated or expensive exploit, ” EFF Staff Technologist Cooper Quintin said in a statement . “Instead, all Dark Caracal needed was application permissions that users themselves granted when they downloaded the apps, not realizing that they contained malware.” However, the hackers’ storage of the stolen info also wasn’t terribly sophisticated, as it was all left exposed online on an unprotected server. “It’s almost like thieves robbed the bank and forgot to lock the door where they stashed the money, ” Mike Murray, Lookout’s head of intelligence, told the AP . The EFF and Lookout were able to link the data to a WiFi network coinciding with the location of Lebanon’s GDGS. “Based on the available evidence, it is likely that the GDGS is associated with or directly supporting the actors behind Dark Caracal, ” noted the report. EFF Director of Cybersecurity Eva Galperin said that pinpointing the campaign to such a precise location was remarkable, telling the AP , “We were able to take advantage of extraordinarily poor operational security.” Via: Associated Press Source: Lookout

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Lebanese hackers stole a ton of data then left it on an open server

NASA tests small nuclear reactor that could power a habitat on Mars

Everyone from Elon Musk to Donald Trump wants to send a manned mission to Mars in the not too distant future, but there are quite a few problems that need to be solved before we can achieve that goal. A major one is the issue of energy. Long-term stays on Mars, or anywhere else for that matter, will require lots of energy, as will the trip back to Earth. However, loading a rocket up with all of the necessary fuel won’t work — we would need too much. So a way to create fuel on the go is a must and researchers at NASA, Los Alamos National Laboratory and the Department of Energy announced today that they’ve conducted successful tests of a system that can do just that. Kilopower is a small nuclear reactor that can generate a reliable power supply. Versions range from 1 kilowatt — enough to power a basic toaster — to ten kilowatts and Kilopower project researchers said in a Space.com article that around four or five of the latter would be needed to power a habitat on Mars . “Kilopower’s compact size and robustness allows us to deliver multiple units on a single lander to the surface that provides tens of kilowatts of power, ” Steve Jurczyk, associate administrator of NASA’s Space Technology Mission Directorate, said during a press conference today. Testing of the Kilopower system has gone smoothly so far and in March, the team plans to conduct a full-power test. To hear more about how Kilopower works, check out the video below. Via: Reuters

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NASA tests small nuclear reactor that could power a habitat on Mars

Wine 3.0 Released

prisoninmate shares a report from Softpedia: The Wine (Wine Is Not an Emulator) project has been updated today to version 3.0, a major release that ends 2017 in style for the open-source compatibility layer capable of running Windows apps and games on Linux-based and UNIX-like operating systems. Almost a year in the works, Wine 3.0 comes with amazing new features like an Android driver that lets users run Windows apps and games on Android-powered machines, Direct3D 11 support enabled by default for AMD Radeon and Intel GPUs, AES encryption support on macOS, Progman DDE support, and a task scheduler. In addition, Wine 3.0 introduces the ability to export registry entries with the reg.exe tool, adds various enhancements to the relay debugging and OLE data cache, as well as an extra layer of event support in MSHTML, Microsoft’s proprietary HTML layout engine for the Windows version of the Internet Explorer web browser. You can read the full list of features and download Wine 3.0 from WineHQ’s website. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Wine 3.0 Released

Samsung starts producing GDDR6 RAM for next-gen graphics cards

You can start getting pumped about the next generation of graphics cards, as Samsung has announced that it’s building the first-ever 16-gigabit GDDR6 chips using its 10-nanometer class technology. The news isn’t a complete surprise, as Samsung previously said that GDDR6 was coming when it unveiled 8-gigabit DDR4 RAM chips last month and won a CES 2018 Innovation Award in November. “Beginning with this early production of the industry’s first 16Gb GDDR6, we will offer a comprehensive graphics DRAM line-up, with the highest performance and densities, in a very timely manner, ” said Samsung’s Senior VP Jinman Han. The company also did a minor tease, saying the chips “will play a critical role in early launches of next-generation graphics cards and systems.” The voracious demand from bitcoin mining has pushed the GeForce GTX 1070 from a $380 suggested retail price to $890. You may debate whether Samsung is behind TMSC with 7-nanometer tech, or if it’s 10-nanometer tech — now on its second generation — is inferior to what Intel ( still ) has in store for the future. However, at least Samsung’s foundries our stamping out the damn chips, which is all that really matters to consumers. The GDDR6 chips will make things all kinds of better for gamers. First off, they offer double the speed of previous 8-gigabit GDDR5 RAM, with speeds up to 72 GB/s (that’s gigabytes). They also consume about 35 percent less energy, Samsung says, and offer a 30 percent manufacturing productivity gain, so that its assembly lines can build more chips in the same amount of time. What that means to you, in theory, is better gaming performance, less power drain and cheaper graphics cards. That is, unless all the chips are gobbled up by bitcoin miners. The voracious demand from that industry has pushed a GeForce GTX 1070 from a $380 suggested retail price to $890, as Techspot noted. That’s killing gamers and folks who love to build rigs (and promoting pollution ), but all of it is obviously good for Samsung’s profits .

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Samsung starts producing GDDR6 RAM for next-gen graphics cards

"SANS Poster – White Board of Awesome Command Line Kung Fu (PDF Download)"

  by: SANS Pen Test Team Imagine you are sitting at your desk and come across a great command line tip that will assist you in your careeras an information security professional, so you jot the tip down on a note, post-it, or scrap sheet of paper and tape it to your white board… now … Continue reading SANS Poster – White Board of Awesome Command Line Kung Fu (PDF Download)

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Apple Gives Employees $2,500 Bonuses After New Tax Law

Apple told employees that it’s issuing a bonus of $2, 500 of restricted stock units, following the introduction of the new U.S. tax law. “The iPhone maker will begin issuing grants to most employees worldwide in the coming months, ” reports Bloomberg. Apple also announced today that it would bring back most of its cash from overseas and spend $30 billion in the U.S. over the next five years. From the report: Apple confirmed the bonuses in response to a Bloomberg inquiry Wednesday. The Cupertino, California-based company joins a growing list of American businesses that have celebrated the introduction of corporate-friendly tax law with one-time bonuses for staff. AT&T, Comcast, JetBlue, and Wal-Mart also said they were giving bonuses. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Apple Gives Employees $2,500 Bonuses After New Tax Law

The war over apostrophes in Kazakhstan’s new alphabet

There’s a fascinating linguistic fight brewing in Kazakhstan, due to the president’s decision to adopt a new alphabet for writing their language, Kazakh. The problem? It’s got too many apostrophes! For decades, Kazakhs have used the Cyrillic alphabet, which was imposed on them by the USSR back in the 30s. Now that Kazakhstan has started moving away from Russia — including making Kazakh more central in education and public life — the president decided he wanted to adopt a new alphabet, too. He wanted it based on the Latin one. But! Kazakh has many unique sounds that can’t be easily denoted using a Latin-style alphabet. Kazakhstan’s neighbors solved that problem by following the example of Turkey, where they use umlauts and phonetic symbols. But Kazkhstan’s president didn’t want that — and instead has pushed for the use of tons of apostrophes instead. Kazakhstan’s linguists intellectuals think this is nuts, as the New York Times reports: The Republic of Kazakhstan, for example, will be written in Kazakh as Qazaqstan Respy’bli’kasy. Others complained the use of apostrophes will make it impossible to do Google searches for many Kazakh words or to create hashtags on Twitter. “Nobody knows where he got this terrible idea from,” said Timur Kocaoglu, a professor of international relations and Turkish studies at Michigan State, who visited Kazakhstan last year. “Kazakh intellectuals are all laughing and asking: How can you read anything written like this?” The proposed script, he said, “makes your eyes hurt.” [snip] Under this new system, the Kazakh word for cherry will be written as s’i’i’e, and pronounced she-ee-ye. “When scholars first learned about this, we were all in shock,” Mr. Kazhybek said. What’s particularly interesting are the technological and geopolitical reasons behind the president’s embrace of apostrophes. He claims it’s about making the language easy to type on computers; no need to have a keyboard equipped with umlauts and other special characters. But critics say it’s about something else — the president’s desire to not alienate Russia, which doesn’t like the idea of the various former Soviet satellites adopting Turkic styles … The only reason publicly cited by Mr. Nazarbayev to explain why he did not want Turkish-style phonetic markers is that “there should not be any hooks or superfluous dots that cannot be put straight into a computer,” he said in September. He also complained that using digraphs to transcribe special Kazakh sounds would cause confusion when people try to read English, when the same combination of letters designates entirely different sounds. But others saw another possible motivation: Mr. Nazarbayev may be eager to avoid any suggestion that Kazakhstan is turning its back on Russia and embracing pan-Turkic unity, a bugbear for Russian officials in both czarist and Soviet times. Oh, and a director shot a video parodying the apostrophe-ridden words the president’s new language would produce . The image above is from it. It’s a great story , with fascinating nuance into Kazakhstan’s politics; go read it in full! A very good reminder of how deeply political language is, was, and probably always will be. (There’s a cool video embedded where you can learn Kazakh phrases , too.)

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The war over apostrophes in Kazakhstan’s new alphabet

Nile Rodgers shares unreleased, bare bones demo of Bowie’s ‘Let’s Dance’

To celebrate what would have been David Bowie’s 71st birthday, Chic’s Nile Rodgers shared this newly-mixed demo of the 1983 hit single, “Let’s Dance.” Rolling Stone reports : “I’ve been blessed with a wonderful career but my creative partnership with David Bowie ranks very, very, very high on the list of my most important and rewarding collaborations,” Rodgers said in a statement. “This demo gives you, the fans, a bird’s eye view of the very start of it! I woke up on my first morning in Montreux with David peering over me. He had an acoustic guitar in his hands and exclaimed, ‘Nile, darling, I think this is a HIT!'” Bowie was so eager to lay down the track that a makeshift band made up of local musicians was formed specifically for this recording of “Let’s Dance”; the identities of the drummer and second guitarist on the recording are still unknown. (“If you played 2nd guitar or drums let us know who you are,” Rodgers added.) Thirty-five years after recording the demo, Rodgers unearthed and then mixed the track at his Connecticut studio specifically for its digital-only release. The demo concludes with Bowie exclaiming, “That’s it! That’s it! Got it,” as if he knew he had just recorded one of his biggest hits. The demo was recorded at Mountain Studios in Montreux, Switzerland on December 19th and 20th, 1982.

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Nile Rodgers shares unreleased, bare bones demo of Bowie’s ‘Let’s Dance’