Apple’s record-setting growth has finally come to an end. During the company’s first quarter earnings call on Tuesday, Apple reported its first year-over-year decline since 2003. Apple reported revenues of $50.6 billion, down from about $58 billion during the same period last year. Read more…
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iPhone Sales Slump Leads To Apple’s Worst Quarter in 13 Years
Researchers have developed a new image enhancement technique that allows them to boost the resolution of satellite images, revealing unprecedented levels of detail. Read more…
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New ‘Image Enhance’ Lets Satellites See 2-Inch Objects on Mars
If you’re one of the 500 million people who’ve used Dropbox at some point over the last few years, you know what you’re getting in to. It’s a reliable way to back up all the files on your computer, sync them across multiple devices and share them with friends, family or coworkers. It’s fast, it works and Dropbox has added a decent set of collaboration features over the years (like its strong Microsoft Office integration) — but by and large, its core “sync and share” features have remained largely the same. But today at the Dropbox Open event in London, the company is previewing an intriguing new feature called Project Infinite. In a nutshell, it looks to close the divide between our ever-increasing cloud storage vaults like Dropbox and the corresponding decrease in hard drive sizes. Back when Dropbox first launched, plenty of computers came with 500GB (or larger) hard drives, while paid Dropbox accounts only offered 50GB of space. However, since then, things have flip-flopped a bit — $10 a month gets you 1TB of Dropbox space, while the rise of SSD means that most computers have much smaller hard drives than that. And Dropbox for Business offers essentially limitless storage space, which means you’ll have to jump back and forth between files stored on your computer and Dropbox’s web interface to see everything you might want to access. Put simply, Project Infinite lets you see everything you have access to in Dropbox via your computer’s native interface (the Mac Finder or Windows Explorer). As before, files locally stored on your computer that are synced to Dropbox will have a green checkmark next to them, but everything else you might have access to will be visible as well. Those cloud-stored files will have a cloud icon next to them, but they’ll otherwise appear in your filesystem as if they’re stored on your hard drive. And if you want to open up those cloud files, you can just double-click. Dropbox will then download and open the file as if it was on your local storage, and any changes will be synced back to the cloud. It certainly sounds like it’ll be useful, as users will be able to store most of their digital materials in Dropbox and see it all on their computer without having to jump into Dropbox’s web interface. But there are some questions we have that are yet to be answered. It’s not clear if Project Infinite will be available to those paying $10 a month for Dropbox Pro or if it’ll only be available for business users. The Dropbox press release made it sound fairly focused on businesses, but hopefully consumers will also have access to the feature when it’s ready. There’s also no word on when the feature will be available. Dropbox says it’s testing Project Infinite with “a select number of sponsor customers” and says it’ll have more updates throughout the year, but there’s no word yet on when it’ll be widely available.
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Dropbox will soon show all your cloud-based files right in the desktop
John Romero and Adrian Carmack helped found id Software in 1991, and by 1993 the studio had changed the video game world forever. That’s when id released Doom , a genre-defining first-person shooter, and it was followed by Quake , another classic FPS, in 1996. Today, Romero and Carmack are back with Blackroom , a new FPS set in a future where lifelike holographic reality is the norm, but it’s being overrun with sinister visions. The game stars Dr. Santiago Sonora, an engineer at the massive holographic company, Hoxar, as he investigates irregularities in the Blackroom military training system. Blackroom is an action-heavy game, with rocket jumping and strafing, and there’s no limit on how many weapons you can carry (you’re in a holographic environment, after all). It features a single-player or co-op campaign, plus arena and one-on-one deathmatch modes. The game will be fully moddable and players will be able to run their own dedicated servers. Blackroom is in development for PC and Mac only, and it’s scheduled to release in winter 2018. Romero and Carmack launched a $700, 000 Kickstarter campaign today, and if they hit that goal, they’ll start development immediately and work with investors to secure the rest of the funding. Just because Blackroom is set in a world of touchable, lifelike virtual realities, that doesn’t mean it’s going to be a VR game. “I don’t know if this game would work really well in VR, ” Romero said during a livestream today . He worries that VR makes people sick and that the tech isn’t quite ready for prime time yet. “If there is any VR, it’ll have to be later, ” he said. The same goes for potential console versions of Blackroom — for now, the focus is PC and Mac only. Romero teased us about his new shooter back in 2014 during the Gamescom conference in Cologne, Germany. “I haven’t made a shooter since 2000, ” he said . “So I’m basically starting to work on another one.” Coming from the man who helped make Doom , Quake and Wolfenstein , the news was infinitely intriguing — and two years later, it’s wonderful to see Romero’s promise come to fruition as a futuristic, sci-fi shooter with a classic edge. Source: Blackroom
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The creators of ‘Doom’ and ‘Quake’ reveal a new sci-fi shooter
Honchos at NBC have told Ad Age that Saturday Night Live is going to show fewer commercials from next season. The 42nd year of the long-running sketch show will lose two whole ad breaks compared to the current season. That time will be handed back to producer Lorne Michaels to fill with the stated intention of making it “easier to watch the show live.” In exchange, the channel will let six companies pay to create “branded original content, ” that harnesses SNL’s cadre of writers and performers. We’re not sure how much paid-for programming will change the show’s slightly subversive tone , but as long as Kate McKinnon’s free to be Kate McKinnon, we’re not sure we care. It’s not explicitly addressed by either NBC Universal’s Linda Yaccarino or Lorne Michaels, but we’re fairly sure what’s causing the about-face. After all, cord-cutters and ad-averse millennials may prefer to watch the individual SNL sketches the morning after on YouTube. That way, they’re free from the burden of having to sit through an endless parade of commercials that break the mood of the comedy. The sort of young viewers that SNL is often designed for are increasingly used to watching shows without commercial breaks at all, thanks to Netflix and Amazon Prime. Hulu, even, offers smaller ad breaks than broadcast TV (and none when you upgrade to the premium tier). Ad Age says that around six-and-a-half-million people watch SNL during its traditional broadcast slot, er, live on Saturday nights. A further 2.2 million people subscribe to the show’s YouTube page, and even a lukewarm sketch like the Julia Louis-Dreyfuss cold open earned 1.4 million views. Clips that go viral , meanwhile, can get views an order of magnitude higher than that. Obviously, NBC and its advertising partners would like to get those eyeballs in front of their TV for the actual broadcast, and so it’s going to have to adapt to the modern era. Of course, some might say that nothing’s going to increase SNL’s audience unless it either: airs earlier or its creators work out a better ways to end a ske Source: Ad Age
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The Netflix effect: SNL to air fewer commercial breaks
Ancient astronomers have long been providing observations of supernovae, such as SN 185 by Chinese astronomers in 185 AD, SN 1054, which produced the Crab Nebula, and SN 1006, the brightest stellar event ever recorded. Now, a new paper has uncovered a new observation of the 1006 event. Read more…
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Researchers Discovered New Observations of the 1006 AD Supernova
Even a tech giant like Facebook isn’t immune to significant security breaches. Devcore’s Orange Tsai recently discovered that someone had installed a backdoor on one of Facebook’s corporate servers (that is, not the social network itself) in a bid to swipe workers’ login details. While it’s not clear how successful the script-based exploit was, Tsai noted that the file transfer app hosted on the server had several vulnerabilities that effectively gave any intruder free rein. The attacker could have checked employee email, for instance, or even connected to Facebook’s virtual private network to get access to the company’s inner workings. Thankfully, this is all past tense. You’re only hearing about this now because Tsai reported the bugs to Facebook (to get a bounty, naturally), and waited until the firm completed its investigation before disclosing the flaws. That backdoor isn’t there anymore, folks. All the same, the incident is bound to humble Facebook a bit — it’s proof that the company is a prime target for hackers, and that it can’t assume it’s always on top of every possible security flaw. Via: Hacker News Source: Devcore
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Facebook was the victim of a backdoor hack
Researchers looking for a better way to secure their face computers have come up with a novel solution for hands-free, head-mounted password entry. A device could potentially identify its wearer by emitting an ultrasonic hum through their skull and listening for the unique frequency that bounces back. The ” SkullConduct ” setup was devised by university researchers in Germany and works on a modified pair of Google Glass. Using the integrated bone conduction speaker and microphone, the device played an imperceptible sound that was then picked up by the microphone. A test device was able to correctly identify the user 97 percent of the time in a lab. While the researchers originally envisioned the system as a way to keep unwanted users from accessing devices like Glass, Gizmodo thinks it could potentially be another TouchID for your skull. Imagine, if you will, a scenario where you can unlock your phone by placing it against your ear. But, then again, who actually takes phone calls anymore?
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Log in with your skull via bone conduction biometrics
It’s incredible that it escaped notice for so long, but scientists have just discovered a massive, 9, 500 square-kilometer reef system at the mouth of the Amazon river. And it’s home to some truly bizarre life forms. Read more…
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There’s a Gigantic Reef Surrounding the Amazon River and Nobody Noticed
Lacking a decent keyboard for password entry, it’s tricky to secure a wearable computer so that someone else can’t just put it on and access your private files. But researchers have come up with a better alternative , by listening to the unique sound of the wearer’s skull. Read more…
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You’ll Never Forget Your Password When It’s the Sound Your Skull Makes