That image above appears to show one giant seamless LED display, but Sony’s new CLEDIS system, presumably intended for use in convention centers like the one hosting CES in Las Vegas, is actually hundreds of LED tiles smooshed together. Read more…
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Sony’s Gigantic Space Wall Is Actually Hundreds of Tiny LED Tiles
An anonymous reader writes: “An attacker going by the name of Harak1r1 is hijacking unprotected MongoDB databases, stealing and replacing their content, and asking for a 0.2 Bitcoin ($200) ransom to return the data, ” reports Bleeping Computer. According to John Matherly, Shodan founder, over 1, 800 MongoDB databases have had their content replaced with a table called WARNING that contains the ransom note. Spotted by security researcher Victor Gevers, these databases are MongoDB instances that feature no administrator password and are exposed to external connections from the internet. Database owners in China have been hit, while Bleeping Computer and MacKeeper have confirmed other infections, one which hit a prominent U.S. healthcare organization and blocked access to over 200, 000 user records. These attacks are somewhat similar to attacks on Redis servers in 2016, when an unknown attacker had hijacked and installed the Fairware ransomware on hundreds of Linux servers running Redis DB. The two series of attacks don’t appear to be related. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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Over 1,800 MongoDB Databases Held For Ransom By Mysterious Attacker
There’s nothing quite like Psyche anywhere else in our solar system—a small asteroid belt object made entirely of iron-nickel metal. Which is why NASA has decided to send a probe to check out the bizarre beast up close. Read more…
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NASA Is Actually Going to Visit That Insane Metallic World
Whether it’s the Google Pixel or the Samsung Galaxy S7 —companies are betting that the future of virtual reality will be ushered in by your mobile device. Now, you can add Asus to that list. The company just announced a new smartphone at CES that takes an adventurous and somewhat experimental leap into the world of… Read more…
It may not cost much to mail a letter in the US, but that price is about to go up a tiny bit. The US Post Office is set to raise the price of its Forever Stamps from $0.47 to $0.49, so it’s a good time to get yours while you can. Read more…
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Buy Forever Stamps Now Before They Get More Expensive On January 22nd
Slashdot reader rudy_wayne writes: Despite constant claims of losing billions of dollars to “piracy”, the North American box office closed out 2016 with $11.4 billion in ticket sales. That marks a new record for the industry, bypassing the previous record of $11.1 billion that was established in 2015. Disney had four of the top five highest-grossing films, including “Finding Dory, ” the year’s top film with $486.3 million. “When holdovers are taken into account, Disney had six of the year’s ten highest-grossing releases, a group that includes Star Wars: The Force Awakens, which debuted in 2015, ” reports Variety. Other top films include Rogue One: A Star Wars Story ($408.2 million), Captain America: Civil War ($408.1 million), The Secret Life of Pets ($368.4 million), and The Jungle Book ($364 million). Disney “controlled more than a quarter of the domestic market share despite releasing fewer films than any of the major studios, ” according to the article, which notes that the record was achieved despite the absence of big releases in several major movie franchises partly through higher ticket prices (and possibly also inflation). Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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Despite Piracy Claims, North American Box Office Hits Record $11.4 Billion In 2016
An anonymous reader quotes IEEE Spectrum: This year, Verizon and AT&T plan to deliver broadband internet to select homes or businesses using fixed wireless networks built with early 5G technologies. These 5G pilot programs will give the public its first glimpse into a wireless future that isn’t due to fully arrive until the early 2020s. With 5G, carriers hope to deliver data to smartphone users at speeds 10 times as fast as on today’s 4G networks, and with only 1 millisecond of delay… Over the past year, companies have completed a flurry of lab tests and trials to figure out what types of radios, antennas, and signal processing techniques will work best to deliver 5G in hopes of bringing those technologies and their capabilities to market as soon as possible. The article notes that standards groups are halfway through their eight-year process of finalizing technical specifications (set to finish in 2020), but “With so much cash on the line, and facing pressure from data-hungry customers, carriers are moving fast.” In Japan, NTT Docomo has even tested dozens of programmable antennas simultaneously transmitting signals, resulting in transmissions at 20 gigabits per second. “At that speed, a complete 2-hour, 1080p, high-definition movie can be transmitted in a second and a half.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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Verizon and AT&T Prepare to Bring 5G To (Select) Markets In 2017
An anonymous reader writes: Remember that story about how women “get pull requests accepted more (except when you know they’re women).” The study actually showed that men also had their code accepted more often when their gender wasn’t known, according to Tech In Asia — and more importantly, the lower acceptance rates (for both men and women) applied mostly to code submitters from outside the GitHub community. “Among insiders, there’s no evidence of discrimination against women. In fact, the reverse is true: women who are on the inside and whose genders are easy to discern get more of their code approved, and to a statistically significant degree.” Eight months after the story ran, the BBC finally re-wrote their original headline (“Women write better code, study suggests”) and added the crucial detail that acceptance rates for women fell “if they were not regulars on the service and were identified by their gender.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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Pull Requests Are Accepted At About The Same Rate, Regardless of Gender
Image: Alex Cranz/Gizmodo One of the beauties of iOS versus other phone operating systems is its relative security and stability versus other phone operating systems. There just aren’t a lot of hacks that can harm an iPhone unless it has been jailbroken or hacked by Israeli cyber weapons dealers . But a new exploit will permanently disable the Messages app. So prepare to be wary of any text your asshole friends and colleagues send your way. Read more…
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A Single Text Can Disable iOS Messages Forever
Image: WikiMedia Commons Over the past two decades, HIV has gone from a lethal diagnosis to a manageable condition. And yet, the virus continues to spread as some 1.9 million new people are infected each year. HIV is no longer always the fatal disease it once was, but catching it is still common. An implant that offers to do for HIV what the IUD did for birth control now seeks to change that. Read more…
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The Gates Foundation Just Invested Millions in Technology to Stop the Spread of HIV