Amateur Astronomer Discovers Long-Dead NASA Satellite Has Come Back To Life

schwit1 shares a report from Behind The Black: In his hunt to locate Zuma, an amateur astronomer has discovered that a long-dead NASA satellite, designed to study the magnetosphere, has come back to life. IMAGE went dead in 2005, and though NASA thought it might come back to life after experiencing a total eclipse in 2007 that would force a reboot, no evidence of life was seen then. It now appears that the satellite came to life sometime between then and 2018, and was chattering away at Earth waiting for a response. NASA is now looking at what it must do to take control of the spacecraft and resume science operations. Zuma is the secret U.S. government payload that was launched by SpaceX earlier this month and reportedly lost. As for why Scott Tilley — the amateur radio astronomer — decided to have a look for the present of secret military satellites, Ars Technica reports that he apparently does this semi-regularly as a hobby and, in this case, was inspired by the Zuma satellite. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

See more here:
Amateur Astronomer Discovers Long-Dead NASA Satellite Has Come Back To Life

Two Technologists Create Black Metal Album Using An AI

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Outline: Coditany of Timeness” is a convincing lo-fi black metal album, complete with atmospheric interludes, tremolo guitar, frantic blast beats and screeching vocals. But the record, which you can listen to on Bandcamp, wasn’t created by musicians. Instead, it was generated by two musical technologists using a deep learning software that ingests a musical album, processes it, and spits out an imitation of its style. To create Coditany, the software broke “Diotima, ” a 2011 album by a New York black metal band called Krallice, into small segments of audio. Then they fed each segment through a neural network — a type of artificial intelligence modeled loosely on a biological brain — and asked it to guess what the waveform of the next individual sample of audio would be. If the guess was right, the network would strengthen the paths of the neural network that led to the correct answer, similar to the way electrical connections between neurons in our brain strengthen as we learn new skills. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

More here:
Two Technologists Create Black Metal Album Using An AI

Intel Planning To End Legacy BIOS Support By 2020, Report Says

Michael Larabel, writing for Phoronix: Intel is planning to end “legacy BIOS” support in their new platforms by 2020 in requiring UEFI Class 3 or higher. Making rounds this weekend is a slide deck from the recent UEFI Plugfest. Brian Richardson of Intel talked about the “last mile” barriers to removing legacy BIOS support from systems. By 2020, they will be supporting no less than UEFI Class 3, which means only UEFI support and no more legacy BIOS or CSM compatibility support mode. But that’s not going to force on UEFI Secure Boot unconditionally: Secure Boot enabled is considered UEFI Class 3+. Intel hasn’t removed legacy BIOS / CSM support yet due to many customers’ software packages still relying upon legacy BIOS, among other reasons. Removing the legacy BIOS support will mitigate some security risks, needs less validation by vendors, allows for supporting more modern technologies, etc. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

View the original here:
Intel Planning To End Legacy BIOS Support By 2020, Report Says

Netflix could spend $8 billion on content next year

Once again, Netflix’s quarterly earnings report ( PDF ) shows it’s added even more customers (5 million in the US alone), and now boasts more than 115 million subscribers worldwide. The company is now five years into its “original content strategy” that first drew attention with House of Cards , which turned into a string of series including hits like Stranger Things and Orange is the New Black . Of course, with more competition turning up (Amazon, Hulu, CBS All Access and, eventually, Disney), things are getting more expensive, as the company says it will spend “$7-8 billion on content” next year — even if it’s off the hook for 30 Rock . That’s potentially a billion dollars more than what Ted Sarandos predicted in August, and up to two billion more than it spent this year. Those differences also explain why prices are going up on some of its plans , as it continues a push to become more profitable. The company is predicting it will add slightly fewer new customers next quarter than it did last year, although it’s unclear if that’s due to the price changes or simply running out of people who want Netflix but don’t have it yet. The company will broadcast the video from its quarterly earnings call on YouTube at 6 PM ET, if there are any interesting anecdotes, we’ll update this post. Source: Netflix Q3 2017 earnings report (PDF)

Read the article:
Netflix could spend $8 billion on content next year

Boston Red Sox Used Apple Watches To Steal Hand Signals From Yankees

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Mac Rumors: Investigators for Major League Baseball believe the Boston Red Sox, currently in first place in the American League East, have used the Apple Watch to illicitly steal hand signals from opposing teams, reports The New York Times. The Red Sox are believed to have stolen hand signals from opponents’ catchers in games using video recording equipment and communicated the information with the Apple Watch. An inquiry into the Red Sox’ practice started two weeks ago following a complaint from Yankees general manager Brian Cashman, who caught a member of the Red Sox training staff looking at his Apple Watch in the dugout and then relaying information to players. It’s believed the information was used to determine the type of pitch that was going to be thrown. Baseball investigators corroborated the claim using video for instant replay and broadcasts before confronting the Red Sox. The team admitted that trainers received signals from video replay personnel and then shared them with some players. “The Red Sox told league investigators said that team personnel scanning instant- replay video were electronically sending the pitch signs to the trainers, who were then passing the information to the players, ” reports The New York Times. “The video provided to the commissioner’s office by the Yankees was captured during the first two games of the series and included at least three clips. In the clips, the team’s assistant athletic trainer, Jon Jochim, is seen looking at his Apple Watch and then passing information to outfielder Brock Holt and second baseman Dustin Pedroia, who was injured at the time but in uniform. In one instance, Pedroia is then seen passing the information to Young.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Originally posted here:
Boston Red Sox Used Apple Watches To Steal Hand Signals From Yankees

Horror adventure ‘The Black Mirror’ revived for modern gamers

Despite being released long after the point-and-click game genre’s heyday, 2003’s The Black Mirror became a gothic horror hit long before the unrelated British sci-fi anthology show. THQ Nordic tapped German developer King Art Games to revive the original game into modern adventure title, which is due for release on November 28th for Xbox One, PS4 and PC. The game puts you in the shoes of protagonist David Gordon as he explores his spooky family manor, Black Mirror, soon after the death of his father. It’s not the first time King has taken a stab at the franchise: In 2009, they created concept art for a full sequel, The Black Mirror II , which set the look for a third game released the following year that closed out the trilogy. It’s not THQ Nordic’s first rodeo with gothic darkness, either, given its experience with the Darksiders franchise. The last few years have seen a steady resurgence of interest in point-and-click legends. The old LucasArts game Full Throttle recently made it to iOS, the latest in a line of Tim Schafer reduxes. But more broadly, players are gobbling up remade versions of decades-old titles, from the relatively recent Modern Warfare Remastered to the resurrected PS2 cult classic Phantom Dust . If Crash Bandicoot can ride the redux train, then nostalgia is truly selling well.

See the original post:
Horror adventure ‘The Black Mirror’ revived for modern gamers

Anthem To Pay $115 Million In The Largest Data Breach Settlement Ever

An anonymous reader quotes CNET: Anthem, the largest health insurance company in the U.S., has agreed to settle a class action lawsuit over a 2015 data breach for a record $115 million, according to lawyers for the plaintiffs. The settlement still has to be approved by US District Court Judge Lucy Koh, who is scheduled to hear the case on August 17 in San Jose, California. And Anthem, which didn’t immediately respond to a request for confirmation and comment, isn’t admitting any admitting any wrongdoing, according to a statement it made to CyberScoop acknowledging the settlement. But if approved, it would be the largest data breach settlement in history, according to the plaintiffs’ lawyers, who announced the agreement Friday. The funds would be used to provide victims of the data breach at least two years of credit monitoring and to reimburse customers for breach-related expenses. The settlement would also guarantee a certain level of funding for “information security to implement or maintain numerous specific changes to its data security systems, including encryption of certain information and archiving sensitive data with strict access controls, ” the plaintiff attorneys said. The breach compromised data for 80 million people, including their social security numbers, birthdays, street addresses (and email addresses) as well as income data. The $115 million settlement averages out to $1.43 for every person who was affected. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Read more here:
Anthem To Pay $115 Million In The Largest Data Breach Settlement Ever

You Can Hack Some Mazda Cars With a USB Flash Drive

An anonymous reader writes: “Mazda cars with next-gen Mazda MZD Connect infotainment systems can be hacked just by plugging in a USB flash drive into their dashboard, thanks to a series of bugs that have been known for at least three years, ” reports Bleeping Computer. “The issues have been discovered and explored by the users of the Mazda3Revolution forum back in May 2014. Since then, the Mazda car owner community has been using these ‘hacks’ to customize their cars’ infotainment system to tweak settings and install new apps. One of the most well-designed tools is MZD-AIO-TI (MZD All In One Tweaks Installer).” Recently, a security researcher working for Bugcrowd has put together a GitHub repository that automates the exploitation of these bugs. The researcher says an attacker can copy the code of his GitHub repo on a USB flash drive, add malicious scripts and carry out attacks on Mazda cars. Mazda said the issues can’t be exploited to break out of the infotainment system to other car components, but researchers disagreed with the company on Twitter. In the meantime, the car maker has finally plugged the bugs via a firmware update released two weeks ago. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

See the original article here:
You Can Hack Some Mazda Cars With a USB Flash Drive

Qualcomm pays BlackBerry $940 million in royalty spat

Qualcomm hasn’t been very successful with its licensing practices. It’s gotten into trouble in South Korea for charging phone makers over an “unnecessarily broad set of patents” It has also been dealing with lawsuits from the FTC and Apple for similar tactics. Qualcomm was ordered to pay BlackBerry $815 million in an arbitration settlement last April. BlackBerry announced today that the two companies have reached a final agreement amount of $940 miillion, which includes the original arbitration amount along with interst and attorneys’ fees. The release says that Qualcomm will pay the full amount before the end of May. BlackBerry has been trying to change its fortune after getting out of phone design . It brought in $286 million in revenue last quarter, making this $940 million settlement a much needed infusion of cash to can help the beleaguered company pivot towards self-driving cars . For its part, Qualcomm seems to be weathering the storm of lawsuits and anti-trust fines with countersuits and settlements like the current BlackBerry agreement. Qualcomm’s chips power a large number of mobile devices, with a Snapdragon system-on-chips in high-end Android phones. The company also continues to expand to as many other devices as possible, including IoT and connected cars . We’ve reached out to Qualcomm for comment on this story and will update when we hear back. Source: Blackberry

More:
Qualcomm pays BlackBerry $940 million in royalty spat

The Most Interesting Part of Apple’s New $5 Billion Campus Is a Pizza Box

This morning, Wired magazine published an early look into Apple’s brand new spaceship campus. The giant circle features the kinds of ridiculous details you might expect from Apple, like sliding glass doors that weigh 440, 000 pounds each and 9, 000 trees supposedly durable enough to survive the forthcoming climate… Read more…

Read More:
The Most Interesting Part of Apple’s New $5 Billion Campus Is a Pizza Box