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J. Michael Straczynski wants to reboot Babylon 5 as a big-budget movie

Warner Bros. According to a report from TV Wise , Babylon 5 showrunner J. Michael Straczynski will shortly begin work on a rebooted big-screen version of his 1990s sci-fi TV series. Straczynski made the announcement at San Diego Comic-Con last week. Babylon 5’s pilot episode originally aired in 1993, with the series beginning its regular run almost a year later as a foundational component of the now-defunct Prime Time Entertainment Network . The show lacked the production budget of its contemporary rival Star Trek: Deep Space 9 (which allegedly lifted some or all of its core concepts directly from Straczynski’s original—and rejected— Babylon 5 pitch meeting with Paramount). Still, it attracted enough of an audience to accomplish a noteworthy feat: Babylon 5 became the only non- Star Trek science fiction show on American television to reach its series completion without being cancelled. Not until 2004’s Battlestar Galactica reboot would another non- Star Trek show earn the same distinction. After Babylon 5 ended in 1998, Straczynski (usually referred to simply by his initials, “JMS”) tried multiple times to bring a B5 movie to theaters. The most recent attempt in 2004 came the closest, with a completed script and some preproduction work underway, but without financial backing from Warner Bros. the project had to be abandoned . Read 4 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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J. Michael Straczynski wants to reboot Babylon 5 as a big-budget movie

Netflix surpasses HBO in subscriber revenue

Reed Hastings’ Facebook update boasting about Netflix’s (possibly temporary) victory over its unwilling adversary. Netflix has surpassed HBO in subscriber revenue, according to a status update from Netflix CEO Reed Hastings on Wednesday. The company is now pulling in $1.146 billion compared to HBO’s $1.141 billion, and it boasts  50.05 million subscribers , according to its second-quarter earnings reported in July. Netflix has long seen HBO as a competitor in terms of audience and, more recently, in produced content. While HBO has slowly started to come down from the ivory cable tower and be more flexible about how it offers its subscriptions, Netflix has been making gains. Hastings acknowledged that HBO still surpasses Netflix “in profits and Emmy’s [sic], but we are making progress.” Hastings has said many times before that he considers HBO to be a media company that is well-positioned in the changing distribution landscape, where power is shifting away from cable providers and toward Internet streaming. Read 2 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Netflix surpasses HBO in subscriber revenue

After 10 years, Rosetta probe catches up with its comet destination

Today, the European Space Agency announced that its Rosetta mission successfully arrived at comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko after a 10-year journey. As the probe approached over the past several weeks, it provided greater detail on the oddly shaped comet, which was venting water as its orbit drew it closer to the Sun. Now, at just 100km from the comet’s surface, Rosetta is providing detailed images of a truly otherworldly landscape. 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko occupies an elliptical orbit that takes it from areas beyond Jupiter to somewhere in between Earth and Mars (currently, it’s midway between Jupiter and Mars). That presents a significant challenge, since any probe intended to track the comet must roughly match its orbit before approaching—or it would need a prohibitive volume of propellant to slow down. This explains Rosetta’s 10-year journey, which included four orbital flybys of Earth and Mars to put it in place for a gradual approach. Earlier this year, Rosetta successfully woke from hibernation , and it’s been imaging the comet during its approach. Early images indicated that 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko has a two-lobed structure that some have compared to a rubber duck, albeit one with an unusually large head. The second lobe, corresponding to the duck’s body, is broader and more oblong. Read 3 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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After 10 years, Rosetta probe catches up with its comet destination

What you should expect from Apple’s “iPhone 6”

It hardly seems like it’s been a year since the iPhone 5S was released, but word on the street is that Apple is planning to reveal its next-generation iPhone on September 9. That’s just over a month from now, and the rumor mill has been in full swing all summer, churning out speculation about what Apple will introduce. Since 2008’s iPhone 3G, iPhones released in even numbered years get a new design while phones in odd numbered years are just and sped up and tweaked. Since this is a redesign year, people are especially interested in seeing how Apple moves the platform forward. This close to a new iPhone’s launch, rumors firm up a little and begin to agree on specific aspects of the new hardware. Apple has a big supply chain and sells tens of millions of phones a quarter—given the sheer scale of the operation, it’s inevitable that details will leak. We knew most of the particulars about the iPhone 5S and 5C well before they were officially announced, and there’s no reason to believe that this year will be any different. Now that we have a probable date for the announcement, we’ve rounded up the most credible and plausible rumors (combined with a few educated guesses) to make a rough sketch of what the next-generation iPhone will probably look like. We tried to stick to sources that have been relatively reliable in the past—some of the better reporting from rumor sites and prominent Apple watchers, assertions from major publications like the Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg , and clear, not-obviously-faked pictures of individual components form the basis of our information here. In aggregate, everything we’ve heard so far gives us a pretty good idea of what we can expect next month. Read 26 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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What you should expect from Apple’s “iPhone 6”

Whitehats recover, release keys to CryptoLocker ransomware

It must be one of these… Joseph No Whitehat hackers have struck back at the operators of the pernicious CryptoLocker ransom trojan that has held hundreds of thousands of hard drives hostage. Through a partnership that included researchers from FOX-IT and FireEye, researchers managed to recover the private encryption keys that CryptoLocker uses to lock victims’ personal computer files until they pay a $300 ransom. They also reverse engineered the binary code at the heart of the malicious program. The result: a website that allows victims to recover the key for their individual content. To use the free service, victims must upload one of the files encrypted by CryptoLocker along with the e-mail address where they want the secret key delivered. Both FOX-IT and FireEye are reputable security companies, but readers are nonetheless advised to upload only non-sensitive files that contain no personal information. Read 3 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Whitehats recover, release keys to CryptoLocker ransomware

For months, 911 callers got automated message that said “hang up and dial 911”

No one suffering from an emergency expects to be greeted by a recording when they dial 911. Yet 911 callers in Caddo County, Oklahoma were unable to reach a human operator for months in 2013. Instead, they were routed to an automated message that “instructed callers to ‘hang up and dial 911’ if their call is an emergency,” the Federal Communications Commission said yesterday . The FCC issued a proposed fine of $100,000 to the Hinton Telephone Company, saying the telco “betrayed its customers.” Read 11 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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For months, 911 callers got automated message that said “hang up and dial 911”

Re/code: Apple’s next iPhone event happens on September 9

This iPhone 5S is likely to be superseded in September. Andrew Cunningham After a summer full of rumors and part leaks, Re/code reports that Apple is planning to hold its next iPhone event on Tuesday, September 9. Re/code co-founder Walt Mossberg has a long history with Apple and his prior publication AllThingsD correctly predicted the dates Apple’s iPhone and iPad events last year, so there’s a good chance this is the real thing. This year Apple is widely expected to release a redesigned “iPhone 6” with a larger screen. Reports have varied, but anonymous sources have told multiple publications that the company is planning a 4.7-inch phone to rival “normal” handsets from competitors, as well as a 5.5-inch version intended to compete with so-called “phablet” phones like Samsung’s Galaxy Note series. Last year’s top-end iPhone 5S and midrange iPhone 5C were both refinements of the iPhone 5 design introduced in 2012 . Apple also uses its iPhone events to announce final release dates for new iOS versions, which have for the past two years have come out on the second Wednesday after the iPhone unveiling. This means a final release of iOS 8 is likely on or near September 17, assuming Apple doesn’t change its plans. iOS 8 will refine the new design introduced in iOS 7 , allow iOS devices to work more closely with Macs running OS X Yosemite, and introduce a number of under-the-hood improvements including Extensions. Third-generation Apple TVs will receive an updated UI, as well. Read 1 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Re/code: Apple’s next iPhone event happens on September 9

Bio-high-tech treatment for Ebola may have saved two US citizens

The Ebola virus consists of small but lethal filament of RNA containing only seven genes. CDC Today, CNN is reporting that the two US citizens who were flown back to the states after contracting Ebola virus were given an extremely experimental treatment, one that’s still undergoing animal testing. While the treatment involves antibodies, it’s not a vaccine and can work effectively even after an infection has started. The process that produced it is a testament to the impressive capabilities developed in the field of biotechnology. The Ebola virus, known for its horrific symptoms and high fatality rate, currently has no established treatment. Which means that health care workers who are fighting the disease, and thus at high risk for becoming infected themselves, can do little more than put themselves in isolation and try to compensate for the damage the virus causes. That was apparently the case for two Americans who contracted the virus while working in Liberia. In this case, however, both were apparently given an experimental treatment developed in part by a company called Mapp Biopharmaceutical. Complicating matters, Mapp licenses its developments to a company called LeafBio for production and distribution. But LeafBio has also licensed an Ebola treatment from a second company, called Defyrus, and plans on combining the two. It’s unclear whether the Americans received the original or combined therapy. In either case, both therapies were based on the same developmental process outlined below. Read 9 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Bio-high-tech treatment for Ebola may have saved two US citizens

Mount your hard drive… on your RAM?

A weird place for an SSD. Apacer PC makers do all kinds of things to save space inside their cases, but this is a new one to us: Apacer  is apparently sampling sticks of DDR3 desktop RAM that include slots for M.2 SSD add-in boards and CFast  CompactFlash cards, allowing you to mount storage devices directly to your RAM rather than using slots on the motherboard. The slots will still use the SATA III interface to transfer data—they’re just mounted to the RAM and they draw power through the RAM slot. These sticks will support all three lengths of M.2 SSD boards (2242, 2260, and 2280). That’s especially useful because, as AnandTech points out , only one mini-ITX desktop motherboard can directly support full-length M.2 boards. Full-length M.2 boards are necessary to accommodate higher storage capacities—currently available drives top out at 512GB, but 1TB drives are on the horizon . Connectors visible on top of the DIMMs would likely need to be connected to the SATA connectors on your motherboard; unfortunately it doesn’t look like these can take advantage of the faster PCI-Express flavor of M.2. Read 2 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Mount your hard drive… on your RAM?

Chip-based credit cards are a decade old; why doesn’t the US rely on them yet?

Ciaran McGuiggan Earlier this week, mobile payments company Square announced that it had developed a credit card reader that will verify purchases from an embedded chip on the card. Currently, US consumers primarily rely on swipe-and-sign credit cards, which give card details to a merchant through the magnetic stripe on the back. But because the swipe-and-sign system became overburdened with instances of fraud, MasterCard, Visa, and other financial groups decided in 2012 that they would transition their systems to a chip-based setup called EMV (eponymous for EuroPay, MasterCard, and Visa, the three primary developers of the standard) by October 2015. Square is hoping to capitalize on this transition by being one of the first companies out of the gate in the US to offer small and medium-sized business owners a smaller, less-expensive alternative to buying a whole new set of credit card terminals. The EMV standard works using a chip that’s embedded in a credit card, which effectively acts as a mini-computer. Instead of swiping quickly and having your card give its details to a merchant’s point of sale (POS) system, an EMV card creates a unique code for each transaction and (ideally) requires the consumer to enter a PIN associated with the card instead of relying on a signature. Because of this, EMV is often called chip-and-PIN. Making a purchase with an EMV card also requires the card to be present in the card reader throughout the transaction. Read 15 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Chip-based credit cards are a decade old; why doesn’t the US rely on them yet?