HP’s Spectre x360 13 Promises Up To 16 Hours of Battery Life in a Faster, Cooler Design

From a report: The HP Spectre x360 13 is already one of the most popular 360-degree convertible laptops, and it’s about to get faster and cooler, thanks in part to Intel’s latest 8th-generation Core CPUs. Announced Wednesday, the refreshed Spectre x360 13 also offers greatly improved thermals and other nice tweaks. The Spectre x360 13 will ship on October 29 with a starting price of $1, 150, including a color-matched pen. Best Buy will begin taking pre-orders October 4. Multiple configurations will be available, but we’re listing below the specs we were given for the higher-end model ae013dx: CPU: Intel 8th-generation Core i7-8550U, a quad-core CPU with a 1.8GHz base clock and turbo boost up to 4GHz. Core i5 CPUs will also be available. RAM: 16GB LPDDR3 SDRAM. Storage: 512GB PCIe NVMe M.2 SSD. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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HP’s Spectre x360 13 Promises Up To 16 Hours of Battery Life in a Faster, Cooler Design

How hitting a game cartridge unlocks gaming’s weirdest Easter egg

Here at Ars, we have a minor obsession with modern discoveries of Easter eggs from relatively ancient games. That includes a timing cue in Punch-Out!! , debug menus hidden in Mortal Kombat cabinets , and the first-ever Easter egg found in a game from 1977 . But a Level Select Easter egg that involves physically hitting a Sonic 3D Blast Genesis cartridge —and the story behind it—is probably the weirdest such hidden feature we’ve ever heard of. In a new video explanation , Traveller’s Tales founder Jon Burt, who worked on 3D Blast and a number of Sega games back in the ’90s, details how the unintended “smack the cartridge” Easter egg really grew out of an attempt to get around Sega’s onerous certification requirements for Genesis cartridges. As Burt explains it, Sega’s certification process at the time took “a few weeks” and required re-submission for any failures, including crashes after the game was left running for days at a time. So Burt started catching any generalized, crash-worthy errors the game might trigger and disguising them as Easter eggs the player had stumbled on—such as a “secret time warp” that bounced the player around in Mickey Mania . As Burt recalls, “most things that were to crash the game just brought up the secret time warp, so Sega wouldn’t know it was actually a bug.” Read 2 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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How hitting a game cartridge unlocks gaming’s weirdest Easter egg

Networked self-driving cars are smarter and safer

You know what’s better than one self-driving car on the road? Two, because then they can pool resources. Vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) communication isn’t anything new, of course, but researchers at Switzerland’s federal institute of technology, EPFL , are taking things one step further. By wirelessly connecting the LIDAR, sensors and navigation systems of two cars in convoy, both can get a fuller picture of the world around them. Put simply, if two autonomous vehicles are driving down a road, then all they can “see” is the data from their own systems. But if you can connect your car, say, to the one immediately behind you, then both systems get a wider field of view and better situational awareness. In an overtaking situation, the car behind can use its counterparts systems to scan for hazards out in front, including cars in the opposite lane. The team at EPFL have worked to iron out the kinks in such a system using a pair of Citroen electric cars equipped with Mobileye sensors. Both vehicles had WiFi gear and computers in their trunks, which helped the pair co-ordinate with each other on the road. One big issue, early on, was that both systems would count the same obstacle twice, once from each data source. Now that those problems have been resolved, bigger issues, like the fact that all of this computation has to be done on the fly, can be tackled. The hope is that, eventually, every autonomous car on the road will be talking to one another to ensure that crashes and angry fights at merge points are kept to a minimum.

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Networked self-driving cars are smarter and safer

Google Assistant will tell your kids a bedtime story

Kids don’t quite have the diction that adults to, which can make it hard even for us humans to understand them. Google knows this and has tweaked Assistant and Home to better pick up what your munchkins are laying down. The search juggernaut has also partnered with a number of providers for kid-specific things like stories from Disney and Sports Illustrated for Kids among others, and simple games (like musical chairs, for instance). The just announced Family Link will let you setup Google accounts for your under-13 youngsters, too. The updates will be rolling out later this month. Follow all the latest news from Google’s Pixel 2 event here!

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Google Assistant will tell your kids a bedtime story

The Google Pixel 2 vs. the original Pixel: What’s changed?

The new Pixel phones are here and, while they don’t give us much more to look at compared to last year’s models , it’s the inside that really counts. This year’s 5-inch Pixel gives us a better camera and more powerful processor compared to the original, but we’ve also lost the headphone jack. What else has changed? Give the specs below a peep, and stay tuned as we put Google’s new handset through its paces soon. Pixel 2 Pixel Pricing $649, $749 (off contract) $649, $749 (off contract) Known dimensions 145.7 x 69.7 x 7.8mm (5.7 x 2.7 x 0.3 inches) 143.84 x 69.54 x 7.31mm (5.66 x 2.74 x 0.29 inches) Weight 143g (5.04 ounces) 143g (5.04 ounces) Screen size 5.0 inches (127mm) 5.0 inches (127mm) Screen resolution 1, 920 x 1, 080 (441ppi) 1, 920 x 1, 080 (441 ppi) Screen type Full HD AMOLED Full HD AMOLED Battery 2, 700mAh 2, 770mAh Internal storage 64 / 128GB 32 / 128GB External storage None None Rear camera 12.2MP, f/1.8, 1.4μm pixel size 12.3MP, f/2.0, 1.55µm pixel size Front-facing cam 8MP, f/2.4, 1.4µm pixel size 8MP, f/2.4, 1.4µm pixel size Video capture 4K at 30fps 4K at 30fps NFC Yes Yes Bluetooth v5.0 v4.2 SoC Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 Qualcomm Snapdragon 821 CPU 2.35GHz octa-core 2.15GHz quad-core GPU Adreno 540 Adreno 530 RAM 4GB 4GB WiFi Dual band, 802.11ac Dual band, 802.11ac Operating system Android 8.0 Android 7.1 Other features Fingerprint sensor, IP67 certified, USB Type-C Fingerprint sensor, IP53 certified, 3.5mm headphone jack, USB Type-C Follow all the latest news from Google’s Pixel 2 event here!

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The Google Pixel 2 vs. the original Pixel: What’s changed?

Check Out the Newest "Blade Runner" Short: It’s Anime, Done by the Creator of "Cowboy Bebop"

As we mentioned earlier , Blade Runner 2049 director Denis Villeneuve commissioned three short films to bridge the gap between the original movie and his upcoming sequel. The first, featuring Jared Leto, was pretty darn good. The second, featuring Dave Bautista, was so-so. Both of those were live-action, but the third short, entitled “Black Out 2022” is anime and it’s fantastic. It was done by Shinichiro Watanabe, the creator of the wildly popular Cowboy Bebop series. Check it out (and be warned, there’s some graphic violence): I thought the flashback sequence was particularly artful. It was also cool to hear the return of Edward James Olmos (yes, that’s him voice his original character), and I dug how Trixie clearly references Pris from the original film. Blade Runner 2049 will go into wide release this Friday.

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Check Out the Newest "Blade Runner" Short: It’s Anime, Done by the Creator of "Cowboy Bebop"

Code-execution flaws threaten users of routers, Linux, and other OSes

Enlarge (credit: Christiaan Colen ) Google researchers have discovered at least three software bugs in a widely used software package that may allow hackers to execute malicious code on vulnerable devices running Linux, FreeBSD, OpenBSD, NetBSD, and macOS, as well as proprietary firmware. Dnsmasq , as the package is known, provides code that makes it easier for networked devices to communicate using the domain name system and the Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol . It’s included in Android, Ubuntu, and most other Linux distributions, and it can also run on a variety of other operating systems and in router firmware. A blog post published Monday by security researchers with Google said they recently found seven vulnerabilities in Dnsmasq, three of which were flaws that allowed the remote execution of malicious code. One of the code-execution flaws, indexed as CVE-2017-14493, is a “trivial-to-exploit, DHCP-based, stack-based buffer overflow vulnerability.” Combined with a separate information leak bug Google researchers also discovered, attackers can bypass a key protection known as address space layout randomization, which is designed to prevent malicious payloads included in exploits from executing. As a result, exploits result in a simple crash, rather than a security-compromising hack. By chaining the code-execution and information leak exploits together, attackers can circumvent the defense to run any code of their choosing. Read 2 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Code-execution flaws threaten users of routers, Linux, and other OSes

US Studying Ways To End Use of Social Security Numbers For ID

wiredmikey quotes a report from Security Week: U.S. officials are studying ways to end the use of social security numbers for identification following a series of data breaches compromising the data for millions of Americans, Rob Joyce, the White House cybersecurity coordinator, said Tuesday. Joyce told a forum at the Washington Post that officials were studying ways to use “modern cryptographic identifiers” to replace social security numbers. “I feel very strongly that the social security number has outlived its usefulness, ” Joyce said. “It’s a flawed system.” For years, social security numbers have been used by Americans to open bank accounts or establish their identity when applying for credit. But stolen social security numbers can be used by criminals to open bogus accounts or for other types of identity theft. Joyce said the administration has asked officials from several agencies to come up with ideas for “a better system” which may involve cryptography. This may involve “a public and private key” including “something that could be revoked if it has been compromised, ” Joyce added. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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US Studying Ways To End Use of Social Security Numbers For ID

According To Star Trek: Discovery, Starfleet Still Runs Microsoft Windows

AmiMoJo shares a report from The Verge: The third episode of Star Trek: Discovery aired this week, and at one point in the episode, Sonequa Martin-Green’s Michael Burnham is tasked with reconciling two suites of code. In the show, Burnham claims the code is confusing because it deals with quantum astrophysics, biochemistry, and gene expression. And while the episode later reveals that it’s related to the USS Discovery’s experimental new mycelial network transportation system, Twitter user Rob Graham noted the code itself is a little more pedestrian in nature. More specifically, it seems to be decompiled code for the infamous Stuxnet virus, developed by the United States to attack Iranian computers running Windows. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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According To Star Trek: Discovery, Starfleet Still Runs Microsoft Windows

Yahoo’s 2013 hack impacted all 3 billion accounts

Last year Yahoo (now part of Oath along with AOL after its acquisition by Verizon) announced that back in 2013, hackers had stolen info covering over one billion of its accounts . Today, the combined company announced that further investigation reveals the 2013 hack affected all of its accounts that existed at the time — about three billion. The information taken “may have included names, email addresses, telephone numbers, dates of birth, hashed passwords (using MD5) and, in some cases, encrypted or unencrypted security questions and answers.” For users being notified of the hack now, the notification is that their information is included. At the time the breach was first announced, Yahoo required everyone who had not reset their passwords since the breach to do so. According to the FAQ posted, it doesn’t appear there’s any new action being taken. The announcement isn’t very specific about why or how it determined the breach was so much larger — or how it was missed in the original forensic analysis, or how this happened in the first place — likely due to pending lawsuits over the issue. Subsequent to Yahoo’s acquisition by Verizon, and during integration, the company recently obtained new intelligence and now believes, following an investigation with the assistance of outside forensic experts, that all Yahoo user accounts were affected by the August 2013 theft. While this is not a new security issue, Yahoo is sending email notifications to the additional affected user accounts. The investigation indicates that the user account information that was stolen did not include passwords in clear text, payment card data, or bank account information. The company is continuing to work closely with law enforcement. Source: Oath , Yahoo FAQ

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Yahoo’s 2013 hack impacted all 3 billion accounts