business – Page 19 – Tech Today w/ Ken May

Nintendo’s Fire Emblem Heroes will launch on Android before iOS

iOS users will have to wait longer for Nintendo’s next major smartphone game release. Nintendo’s push towards smartphone gaming will continue on February 2 with the launch of Fire Emblem Heroes , a touch-only take on the company’s longtime tactical RPG series—and possibly the company’s most micro-transaction driven game yet. Like Super Mario Run before it, Fire Emblem Heroes will have a period of platform exclusivity—but in a surprise twist, that exclusivity is reversed. Android users will get first crack at Heroes on that release date, while iOS users have been told their version is coming “soon.” (For an estimate of how long the left-behind platform might have to wait, remember: Super Mario Run has yet to launch on Android over a month after its iOS release.) During this announcement, Nintendo did not mention Animal Crossing , the other series set to receive a smartphone port in the near future. Read 5 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Nintendo’s Fire Emblem Heroes will launch on Android before iOS

It’s shockingly easy to hijack a Samsung SmartCam camera

Enlarge Smart cameras marketed under the Samsung brand name are vulnerable to attacks that allow hackers to gain full control, a status that allows the viewing of what are supposed to be private video feeds, researchers said. The remote code-execution vulnerability has been confirmed in the Samsung SmartCam SNH-1011, but the researchers said they suspect other models in the same product line are also susceptible. The flaw allows attackers to inject commands into a Web interface built into the devices. The bug resides in PHP code responsible for updating a video monitoring system known as iWatch. It stems from the failure to properly filter malicious input included in the name of uploaded files. As a result, attackers who know the IP address of a vulnerable camera can exploit the vulnerability to inject commands that are executed with unfettered root privileges. “The iWatch Install.php vulnerability can be exploited by crafting a special filename which is then stored within a tar command passed to a php system() call,” the researchers wrote in a blog post published to the Exploitee.rs website. “Because the webserver runs as root, the filename is user supplied, and the input is used without sanitization, we are able to inject our own commands within the achieve root remote command execution.” Read 5 remaining paragraphs | Comments

How a robot got Super Mario 64 and Portal “running” on an SNES

If you missed it live, watch TASBot’s AGDQ 2017 run then read about it below. Can you really, playably emulate games like Super Mario 64 and Portal on a stock standard SNES only by hacking in through the controller ports? The answer is still no, but for a brief moment at this week’s Awesome Games Done Quick (AGDQ) speedrunning marathon, it certainly looked like the impossible finally became possible. For years now , AGDQ has featured a block where TASBot (the Tool-Assisted Speedrun Robot) performs literally superhuman feats on classic consoles simply by sending data through the controller ports thousands of times per second. This year’s block (viewable above) started off simply enough, with some show-offy perfect play of Galaga and Gradius on the new NES Classic hardware (a system that TASbot organizer Allan Cecil says is “absolutely horrible” when it comes to automation). After that, TASBot moved on to a few “total control runs,” exploiting known glitches in Super Mario Bros. 3 and Mega Man to insert arbitrary code on the NES. This is nothing new for the computer-driven TASBot —the basics of the tricks vary by game, but they generally involve using buffer overflows to get into memory, then bootstrapping a loader that starts reading and executing a stream of controller inputs as raw assembly level opcodes. The method was taken to ridiculous extremes last year, when TASbot managed to “beat” Super Mario Bros. 3 in less than a second with a very specific total control glitch. Read 19 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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How a robot got Super Mario 64 and Portal “running” on an SNES

Someone Is Trying to Sell Those Stolen Three-Screen Razer Laptops in China

Just a few days ago, Razer’s awesome Project Valerie laptops — the one with three 4K displays — were stolen. Now it looks like whoever stole them is trying to sell them. From a report: It turns out that the thief (or thieves) didn’t just nab one Project Valerie prototype. They actually got ahold of a pair. Razer CEO Min-Liang Tan understandably wants them back, really, really badly. The company was willing to offer $25, 000 to anyone who could offer information that led to the prototypes’ return. So where did the laptops end up? Somewhere behind the Great Wall, apparently. Whoever has them isn’t trying to quietly fence them in some dark Beijing alleyway, either. They’ve actually been listed on the immensely popular Chinese e-commerce site Taobao — where they were spotted by writers at Engadget Chinese and Wccftech. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Someone Is Trying to Sell Those Stolen Three-Screen Razer Laptops in China

Private company says it is fully funded for mission to the Moon

An artist’s concept of Moon Express’ MX-1 lander on the surface of the Moon. (credit: Moon Express) Any organization wishing to accomplish a major spaceflight goal must address two basic sets of problems—rocket science and political science. And while the technical challenges of spaceflight are considerable, it’s arguable that political science remains the greater of these two hurdles. Building spacecraft and rockets requires lots of money, after all, and due to international law they can’t just be launched from anywhere to anywhere. So it is no small achievement for the private, US-based Moon Express to have conquered the political science part of sending a rover to the Moon. Last August, after a lengthy regulatory process, the company received permission from the US government to send a commercial mission beyond low Earth orbit. And on Friday, the company announced that it has successfully raised an additional $20 million, meaning it has full funding for its maiden lunar mission. “Now it’s just about the rocket science stuff,” said company co-founder and Chief Executive Bob Richards. That, he realizes, remains a formidable challenge. Moon Express is one of five entrants in the Google Lunar X Prize competition to finalize a launch contract. Each of the teams is competing to become the first to send a rover to the lunar surface by the end of this year, have it travel 500 meters, and transmit high-definition imagery back to Earth. First prize is $20 million. Read 6 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Private company says it is fully funded for mission to the Moon

Congress will consider proposal to raise H-1B minimum wage to $100,000

Enlarge / Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., is one of two sponsors on an H-1B reform bill. He’s pictured here House Republican Conference meeting in 2015. (credit: Bill Clark/CQ Roll Call via Getty) President-Elect Donald Trump is just a week away from taking office. From the start of his campaign, he has promised big changes to the US immigration system. For both Trump’s advisers and members of Congress, the H-1B visa program, which allows many foreign workers to fill technology jobs, is a particular focus. One major change to that system is already under discussion: making it harder for companies to use H-1B workers to replace Americans by simply giving the foreign workers a raise. The “Protect and Grow American Jobs Act,” introduced last week by Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif. and Scott Peters, D-Calif., would significantly raise the wages of workers who get H-1B visas. If the bill becomes law, the minimum wage paid to H-1B workers would rise to at least $100,000 annually, and be adjusted it for inflation. Right now, the minimum is $60,000. The sponsors say that would go a long way towards fixing some of the abuses of the H-1B program, which critics say is currently used to simply replace American workers with cheaper, foreign replacements. In 2013, the top nine companies acquiring H-1B visas were technology outsourcing firms, according to an analysis by a critic of the H-1B program. (The 10th is Microsoft.) The thinking goes that if minimum H-1B salaries are brought closer to what high-skilled tech employment really pays, the economic incentive to use it as a worker-replacement program will drop off. Read 9 remaining paragraphs | Comments

Verizon boosts top FiOS speeds to 750Mbps, has multi-gigabit in works

Enlarge (credit: Matthew Stevens ) Verizon will start offering a 750Mbps Internet package for $150 a month in parts of its FiOS fiber-to-the-home territory, the company announced today. “FiOS Instant Internet” with symmetrical upload and download speeds of 750Mbps will launch Saturday “to nearly seven million homes and businesses in greater New York City/northern New Jersey, Philadelphia and Richmond, [Virginia] with more to follow in 2017,” Verizon’s announcement said. The Boston and Norfolk, Virginia markets will get the new speed tier later in the first quarter, the company said. This is an improvement over the top speed tiers currently advertised on the FiOS website , which lists 300Mbps for $170 a month and 500Mbps for $270, plus taxes, equipment charges, and other fees. Those are promotional prices that last only a year before increasing. Read 8 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Verizon boosts top FiOS speeds to 750Mbps, has multi-gigabit in works

Yahoo to change name to Altaba once Verizon buys brand and operations

(credit: Photograph by Randy Stewart ) Yahoo, one of the Internet’s most venerable companies, won’t exist for much longer. Verizon confirmed plans to acquire Yahoo for $4.8 billion in July , and a new financial filing from Yahoo includes details of what’s going to happen next. However, Verizon has promised that—if the increasingly bumpy buyout completes—the Yahoo brand will live on. July’s proposed sale included the firm’s operating business, but it didn’t include the big chunk of Chinese e-commerce site Alibaba owned by Yahoo, and it didn’t include certain other assets, mostly shares of Asia-based companies and non-core patents. What remains, according to SEC paperwork filed on Monday, will be rolled into a publicly-traded investment company called Altaba. The size of the board will be reduced to five directors, and many key executives will leave, including—as expected—Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer and Yahoo co-founder David Filo. Also out are Eddy Hartenstein, Richard Hill, Jane Shaw, and Maynard Webb. The departures are not “due to any disagreement with the company on any matter relating to the company’s operations, policies, or practices,” Yahoo’s filing said. Read 4 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Yahoo to change name to Altaba once Verizon buys brand and operations

Breakthrough Starshot to fund planet-hunting hardware for telescope

Enlarge / The VISIR instrument before its impending upgrades. (credit: ESO ) Today, the European Southern Observatory announced an agreement with Breakthrough Starshot, the group dedicated to sending hardware to return data from the nearest stars. The agreement would see Breakthrough Starshot fund the development of new hardware that would allow the ESO’s Very Large Telescope to become an efficient planet hunter. The goal is presumably to confirm there’s something in the Alpha Centauri system worth sending hardware to image. Breakthrough Starshot’s audacious plan involves using ground-based lasers and light sails to accelerate tiny craft to a significant fraction of the speed of light. This would allow the craft to visit the stars of the Alpha Centauri system within decades. The company’s goal is to get data back to Earth while many of the people alive today are still around. Getting meaningful data requires a detailed understanding of the Alpha Centauri system, which is where the new telescope hardware will come in. Last year, scientists confirmed the existence of an exoplanet orbiting the closest star of the three-star system, Proxima Centauri. But we’ll want to know significantly more about it, its orbit, and whether there are signs of any other planets in the system before we send spacecraft. The other two stars of Alpha Centauri are also worth a closer look. Read 5 remaining paragraphs | Comments

Shamoon disk-wiping malware can now destroy virtual desktops, too

Enlarge / A computer infected by Shamoon System is unable to find its operating system. (credit: Palo Alto Networks) There’s a new variant of the Shamoon disk-wiping malware that was originally unleashed on Saudi Arabia’s state-owned oil company in 2012, and it has a newly added ability to destroy virtual desktops, researchers said. The new strain is at least the second Shamoon variant to be discovered since late November, when researchers detected the return of disk-wiping malware after taking a more than four-year hiatus. The variant was almost identical to the original one except for the image that was left behind on sabotaged computers. Whereas the old one showed a burning American flag, the new one displayed the iconic photo of the body of Alan Kurdi, the three-year-old Syrian refugee boy who drowned as his family tried to cross from Turkey to Greece. Like the original Shamoon, which permanently destroyed data on more than 30,000 work stations belonging to Saudi Aramco , the updates also hit one or more Saudi targets that researchers have yet to name. According to a blog post published Monday night by researchers from Palo Alto networks, the latest variant has been updated to attack virtual desktops, which have emerged as one of the key protections against Shamoon and other types of disk-wiping malware. The update included usernames and passwords related to the virtual desktop infrastructure products from Huawei, which can protect against a destructive malware through its ability to load snapshots of wiped systems. Read 4 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Shamoon disk-wiping malware can now destroy virtual desktops, too