This admin helped music pirates pilfer 1 billion copyrighted tracks

Enlarge / ShareBeast piracy site visitors are greeted with this FBI anti-piracy warning today. The admin for a prolific file-sharing site that helped pirates score more than 1 billion tracks now faces five years in prison after pleading guilty to a single count of criminal copyright infringement. Artur Sargsyan, the 29-year-old owner and operator of ShareBeast, is to be sentenced in Atlanta federal court in December for operating  (PDF) what the Recording Industry Association of America said was the most prolific US-based file-sharing site. The defendant also forfeited $185,000 in ill-gotten gains, the government said. The authorities in 2015 seized the ShareBeast domain and a few others connected to the site, which regularly allowed users to score pre-release music. Sargsyan was charged last month. Read 5 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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This admin helped music pirates pilfer 1 billion copyrighted tracks

‘Super Mario 64’ is an online multiplayer thanks to hero modders

Super Mario 64 turned 21 years old back in June, but the classic title lives on in the hearts and minds of players. A new fan project has taken that collective nostalgia to another level with a downloadable version of the game allowing up to 24 friends to play through the (formerly) single-player adventure. But given Nintendo’s extremely low tolerance for unauthorized versions of its games, play it now before the company DMCA’s it off the internet. Built by modders Kaze Emanuar, Melonspeedruns and Marshivolt, the Super Mario 64 Online project is a downloadable ROM, so you’ll need emulator software that plays N64 games. The project requires a little tinkering with settings (tutorial video here ) and drawing straws to see who will host your game session. After that, it’s off to the races for you and your friends to fiddle around Super Mario 64 ‘s original levels with a sprawling cast of characters, all with different abilities. Sure, the game’s content is unchanged, so having multiple players likely makes acquiring stars and advancing through the story easier — if that’s your only goal. But idle hands are the devil’s playground, and stuffing a bunch of your friends in what’s supposed to be a single-player game makes for a wild sandbox. Think of it like Mario Party where you make the rules. If you’re planning to boot up Super Mario 64 Online , do so now. The last time somebody released a computer-playable version of the classic N64 platformer, Nintendo shut it down within days. And if you come to this post too late, just remember: People have tried to give Super Mario 64 multiplayer before , and they will probably do so again. The dream lives on. Via: Mashable Source: ‘Super Mario 64 Online’ (YouTube)

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‘Super Mario 64’ is an online multiplayer thanks to hero modders

iPhone X: Software leak appears to confirm name, features, and specs

Enlarge (credit: Marques Brownlee ) Apple’s latest and greatest iPhone is called the iPhone X, according to information pulled from a leaked “Gold Master” of iOS 11, the operating system said to power the new phone. The same software leak also reveals the existence of the iPhone 8 and and iPhone 8 Plus, which are based on a similar design to the existing iPhone 7 and 7 Plus. According to 9to5Mac , which was one of two blogs able to download iOS 11 before it was pulled from Apple’s servers, the iPhone 8 and 8 Plus feature a faster processor, wireless charging, and a new glass back panel. Unlike the iPhone 8, the iPhone X features an all-new design with an edge-to-edge 5.8-inch OLED display that removes the chunky bezels and home button. The design—which was originally shown in a separate software leak earlier this year—is a dramatic departure from iPhones to date, which have largely kept the same front-facing aesthetic since the launch of the original in 2007. By shrinking the bezels, much like Samsung did with the Galaxy S8 , Apple can cram a larger display into a smaller body, making the device more comfortable to use with one hand. Read 9 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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iPhone X: Software leak appears to confirm name, features, and specs

Rare translucent ‘ghost’ lobster caught by Maine lobsterman

After more than 40 years on the job, 10th generation lobsterman Alex Todd of Chebeague Island, Maine recently pulled in a crustacean even he had never seen: a translucent lobster. He’s quoted in the Guardian as saying , “I was definitely surprised,” and “It was like it was clear but with white under the clearness and a blue tint, but you couldn’t see organs or anything under the shell, it wasn’t to that level.” The Maine Coast Fishermen’s Association shared a little info about the lobster’s unusual pearly look, on their Facebook page: A normal lobster gets its color by mixing yellow, blue, and red protein pigments. Through different genetic mutations you can get a blue, yellow, or red (uncooked) lobster. You can also get strange mixtures of those colors as well. This lobster probably has a genetic condition called Leucism which isn’t a total loss of pigment (which would make it an albino) but instead a partial loss. This is why you can still see some hints of blue on the shell and color on the eyes. Todd threw the lobster back into the ocean because it is an egg-bearing female . Such lobsters are protected under strict conservation laws.

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Rare translucent ‘ghost’ lobster caught by Maine lobsterman

TechCrunch: Equifax Hack-Checking Web Site Is Returning Random Results

An anonymous reader quotes security researcher Brian Krebs: The web site that Equifax advertised as the place where concerned Americans could go to find out whether they were impacted by this breach — equifaxsecurity2017.com — is completely broken at best, and little more than a stalling tactic or sham at worst. In the early hours after the breach announcement, the site was being flagged by various browsers as a phishing threat. In some cases, people visiting the site were told they were not affected, only to find they received a different answer when they checked the site with the same information on their mobile phones. TechCrunch has concluded that “the checker site, hosted by Equifax product TrustID, seems to be telling people at random they may have been affected by the data breach.” One user reports that entering the same information twice produced two different answers. And ZDNet’s security editor reports that even if you just enter Test or 123456, “it says your data has been breached.” TechCrunch writes: The assignment seems random. But, nevertheless, they were still asked to continue enrolling in TrustID. What this means is not only are none of the last names tied to your Social Security number, but there’s no way to tell if you were really impacted. It’s clear Equifax’s goal isn’t to protect the consumer or bring them vital information. It’s to get you to sign up for its revenue-generating product TrustID. Meanwhile, one web engineer claims the secret 10-digit “security freeze” PIN being issued by Equifax “is just a timestamp of when you made the freeze.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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TechCrunch: Equifax Hack-Checking Web Site Is Returning Random Results

An Intelligent Speed Bump Uses Non-Newtonian Liquid

turkeydance quotes Business Insider: A Spanish company has designed a speed bump that won’t hinder slow drivers but will still stop motorists driving too fast. The speed bump is filled with a non-Newtonian liquid which changes viscosity when pressure is applied at high velocity. They’ve been installed in Villanueva de Tapia, Spain and there has also been interest from Israel and Germany. There’s a video on the site showing the speed bump in action. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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An Intelligent Speed Bump Uses Non-Newtonian Liquid

The mysterious Voynich manuscript has finally been decoded

Enlarge / Roughly translated, many parts of the Voynich Manuscript say that women should take a nice bath if they are feeling sick. Since its discovery in 1969, the 15th century Voynich Manuscript has been a mystery and a cult phenomenon . Full of handwriting in an unknown language or code, the book is heavily illustrated with weird pictures of alien plants, naked women, strange objects, and zodiac symbols. Now, history researcher and television writer Nicholas Gibbs appears to have cracked the code, discovering that the book is actually a guide to women’s health that’s mostly plagiarized from other guides of the era. Gibbs writes in the Times Literary Supplement that he was commissioned by a television network to analyze the Voynich Manuscript three years ago. Because the manuscript has been entirely digitized by Yale’s Beinecke Library , he could see tiny details in each page and pore over them at his leisure. His experience with medieval Latin and familiarity with ancient medical guides allowed him to uncover the first clues. After looking at the so-called code for a while, Gibbs realized he was seeing a common form of medieval Latin abbreviations, often used in medical treatises about herbs. “From the herbarium incorporated into the Voynich manuscript, a standard pattern of abbreviations and ligatures emerged from each plant entry,” he wrote. “The abbreviations correspond to the standard pattern of words used in the Herbarium Apuleius Platonicus – aq = aqua (water), dq = decoque / decoctio (decoction), con = confundo (mix), ris = radacis / radix (root), s aiij = seminis ana iij (3 grains each), etc.” So this wasn’t a code at all; it was just shorthand. The text would have been very familiar to anyone at the time who was interested in medicine. Read 6 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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The mysterious Voynich manuscript has finally been decoded

Equifax’s dox of America: Sign up for "free" monitoring, get billed forever

Equifax dumped dox on 143 million Americans (as well as lucky Britons and Canadians!), sat on the news for five weeks, let its execs sell millions in stock, and then unveiled an unpatched, insecure WordPress site with an abusive license agreement where you could sign up for “free” credit monitoring for a year, in case someone used the immortal, immutable Social Security Number that Equifax lost control over to defraud you. (more…)

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Equifax’s dox of America: Sign up for "free" monitoring, get billed forever

US carriers partner on a better mobile authentication system

Two-factor authentication ( 2FA ) via SMS and a smartphone provides a heavy dose of additional security for your data, but as the US government declared last year, it’s not without its flaws. To fix that, the big four US mobile operators, Sprint, T-Mobile, Verizon and AT&T have formed a coalition called the Mobile Authentication Taskforce to come up with a new system. Working with app developers and others, they’ll explore the use of SIM card recognition, network-based authentication, geo-location, and other carrier-specific capabilities. The idea is to marry current 2FA with systems that “reduce mobile identity risks by analyzing data and activity patterns on a mobile network to predict, with a high degree of certainty, whether the user is who they say they are, ” according to the news release. The problem with SMS authentication is that skilled hackers have successfully hijacked SMS codes in the past, often simply by contacting the carrier and impersonating the victim. It also falls apart if thieves grab your smartphone along with your PC, gain access to your phone via malware, or just steal a glance at a 2FA message on your lockscreen. Through strong collaboration, the taskforce announced today has the potential to create impactful benefits for US customers by helping to decrease fraud and identity theft, and increase trust in online transactions. The system will be an open one that can work the four carriers and others. “We will be working closely with the taskforce to ensure this solution is aligned and interoperable with solutions deployed by operators, ” said Alex Sinclair, CTO of mobile industry group GSMA. The goal to improve 2FA security sounds like a noble one, but Congress, at the urging of carriers and ISPs, recently eliminated certain customer privacy protection rules. As such, consumer protection groups might have concerns about 2FA systems that could be used by operators to track customers, for example. The new system is supposed to arrive for “enterprises and customers in 2018, ” the group says. In the meantime, if you’re still not using two-factor authentication (SMS or otherwise), you really, really should be . Source: AT&T

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US carriers partner on a better mobile authentication system

‘Futurama’ returns for a one-off, 42-minute podcast episode

Apparently, the folks over at Nerdist “spend every waking hour of every day wishing that Futurama was still on TV.” We’re big fans of the show, for sure, but we still spend a few hours during our days thinking of other things, like anime parodies and South Park , for instance. The Nerdist crew, however, has taken their rabid fandom to a whole new level. On September 14th, the team will debut a brand new Futurama episode as a radio play on the Nerdist podcast . The new one-shot will run long at 42 minutes and will feature the original cast in a story written by original Futurama writers. The podcast is sponsored by TinyCo’s Futurama: Worlds of Tomorrow , which already includes in-game content from the new storyline. The game is already a brand-new Futurama episode in itself, so finding even more bonus stuff from the upcoming story could be a ton of fun, as well. The new radio play will reunite Fry, Bender, Leela, Professor Farnsworth, Zoidberg, Amy and Hermes as they try to stop Klaxxon, a being made up of soundwaves from, wait for it, podcasts from the 21st century. The Planet Express team meets the evil creature on a routine mission to the deleted file planet, Junkleon 7. “Last year I cornered two fine gentlemen–Matt Groening & David X. Cohen–and pitched the idea of doing a new Futurama episode as a podcast/radio play because it’s one of my favorite things and I need more of it, ” said Nerdist ‘s Chris Hardwick in a statement. “Today I am drooling with unfiltered joy to say that a) it’s actually happening, b) I got to voice the villain (Klaxxon), and c) I’m a freaking head in a jar in Futurama: Worlds of Tomorrow , a game I’ve been feverishly playing since it came out. Galaxies of thanks to Matt, David and TinyCo for acquiescing to the maniacal ravings of a well-meaning fanboy.” Source: Nerdist

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‘Futurama’ returns for a one-off, 42-minute podcast episode