After an inexplicable shift into Emergency Mode, NASA managed to partially recover its planet-hunting Kepler spacecraft. But we still don’t know what caused it to freak out in the first place. Read more…
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NASA Just Recovered Its Drifting Kepler Spacecraft
If you’re thinking about buying a Kindle Voyage, you probably should hold off. Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos just tweeted this morning that the company is ready to release an “all-new, top of the line” Kindle next week. Presumably, that’ll be a replacement for the aging but still powerful Kindle Voyage , which was released back in the fall of 2014. It’s still an excellent e-reader (albeit an expensive one at $200), but the mid-range Kindle Paperwhite has since adopted its high-resolution screen at a much lower price. Heads up readers – all-new, top of the line Kindle almost ready. 8th generation. Details next week. — Jeff Bezos (@JeffBezos) April 4, 2016 The Voyage is still slightly smaller and lighter than the Paperwhite; it also features a screen with adaptive lighting technology and has pressure-sensitive page turn buttons. But for most readers, the cheaper Paperwhite is the better buy. We’ll see what Amazon has to differentiate its new e-reader from the Voyage next week, but as for now Bezos isn’t dropping any other details. It’s also worth noting that this is a pretty strange way to drop some news — most new device launches are obviously shrouded in secrecy. Bezos’ transparency around this implies that it’s not that big of a deal, despite his “all-new” proclamation. And e-readers aren’t exactly hotly anticipated gadgets at this point; Amazon got the formula right with the Kindle and continues to dominate the market with it. So there’s not a whole lot for Bezos to lose by giving the masses a little tease of what’s coming next. Source: Jeff Bezos (Twitter)
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Amazon CEO says a brand-new flagship Kindle is coming next week
OS X/Linux: CloudBerry Lab is giving away free licenses to its premium backup client, which normally costs $29.99. It offers encryption, compression, and unlimited backups to cloud storage providers such as Amazon S3, Google Nearline, Microsoft Azure, and Rackspace. Read more…
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Grab a Free License for CloudBerry Backup Pro for Mac or Linux, Normally $30
It’s long been said that space tourism will be big business. Whole spaceports have sprung up ( and basically died ) in belief of that economic promise. The problem is that shooting people past our bubble of atmosphere, safely and reliably, is still tricky. Not to mention you need to be rich as hell or dead to even consider it. Read more…
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The Concept Art for Las Vegas’ ‘Mars World’ Looks Nuts
Reader Richard_at_work writes: Dropbox today announced that it has been working on a “top secret” project called Magic Pocket for the past two and a half years to get data of more than 500 million users from Amazon S3 to its own custom-built infrastructure. The company says that it has migrated over 90% of its users’ data so far. Dropbox’s relationship with AWS isn’t completely over, however, as they will continue to use AWS for specific regional data stores where there is a requirement. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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Dropbox Moves Users’ Data Off Amazon S3 to Its Own Infrastructure
Airlines make a killing by charging fees for everything from checked bags to seat changes. A new bill—The Forbidding Airlines from Imposing Ridiculous (FAIR) Fees Act—aims to keep these fees in check. Read more…
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A New Bill Wants to Put an End to Ridiculous Airline Fees
Sonos has announced that it will be “letting go of some employees, “; forming part of reshaping the company in a new direction. In an (admittedly vague) blog post , CEO John Macfarlane doesn’t say exactly how many jobs are going to be cut, but he says its’s a consequence of the still in-transition music industry. “Everyone in the ecosystem is adjusting to a world of streaming services, ” he added, citing the addition of The Beatles back-catalogue across the top music streaming services. Macfarlane says it’s an inevitable change — and that’s why the company is now focusing on these users over customers that are playing from non-streamed files and physical music collections. How? He’s not saying, but it’ll apparently involve “building incredibly rich experiences that were all but unimaginable when we started the company.” (The company recently added Apple Music to its list of compatible services .) The second target is voice. Explicitly mentioning Amazon’s Echo products , the CEO said that voice recognition will be a big change for the company best known for speakers. Macfarlane adds that the company is investing into the technology to make sure it works like it should, reaffirming that the company wants to ensure it’s a sustainable, profitable one — and that means catering to the music streaming revolution. Source: Sonos
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Sonos announces layoffs, refocuses on streaming and voice tech
This summer, the 2nd US Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that Apple violated federal antitrust law by conspiring to fix the price of ebooks. The court called Apple’s price fixing the “supreme evil of antitrust.” Today, the Supreme Court has rejected Apple’s appeal . Read more…
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Apple Must Pay $450 Million for ‘Supreme Evil of Antitrust’ Ebook Scheme
While ransomware has sadly been a reality on smartphones and Windows PCs for a while, you haven’t really had to worry about it on a Mac… until now, that is. Palo Alto Networks claims to have discovered the first known instance of OS X-oriented ransomware in the wild, “KeRanger.” If you install software infected with the code (in this case, a version of the BitTorrent client Transmission ), it’ll encrypt your files after three days and demand that you pay a digital currency ransom to regain control. In practice, you’re likely already safe from KeRanger. Transmission has released a new version of its app that should be safe, and Apple has revoked a security certificate from another developer that KeRanger used to slip past OS X’s native defenses. Even so, this is a not-so-friendly reminder that malware of all stripes can potentially infect any given platform — you can’t assume that your operating system’s inherent security features (or simply avoiding the most targeted platform) will keep you safe. Source: Reuters
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First known Mac ransomware reaches the wild
Flight prices fluctuate quite a bit, so if you want to grab a good deal, you have to swoop in at the right time. CheapAir.com’s “when to buy” tool reveals the prime booking window for cheap flights between two cities. Read more…
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CheapAir’s “When to Buy” Tool Tells You the Prime Booking Window for Cheap Flights