Tag: deals

Tattoos Found To Interfere With Apple Watch Sensors

An anonymous reader writes: A number of early Apple Watch adopters have complained that their tattoos cause interference with many of the new product’s key features. According to multiple tattooed sources, inked wrists and hands can disrupt communication with the wearable’s sensors installed in the underside of the device leading to malfunction. Owners of Apple Watch have taken to social media to voice their frustration using the hashtag #tattoogate and sharing their disappointment over the newly discovered Apple flaw. One user reported that the Watch’s lock system did not disable as it should when the device was placed on a decorated area of skin – forcing those affected to constantly enter their security pins. A further source suggested that notification alerts would fail to ‘ping’ as they are supposed to, and that heart rate monitoring differed significantly between tattooed and non-tattooed wrist readings. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Tattoos Found To Interfere With Apple Watch Sensors

How One Tweet Wiped $8bn Off Twitter’s Value

An anonymous reader writes: Someone mistakenly published earnings information on a Nasdaq-run investor relations page for Twitter before the company officially released the news and it sent the stock into a tailspin. Initially the earnings statement went unnoticed, but soon a Tweet with the results got a lot of attention. The stock lost more than $8 billion at one point as news spread. “We asked the New York Stock Exchange to halt trading once we discovered our Q1 numbers were out, and we published our results as soon as possible thereafter, ” said Twitter’s senior director for investor relations, Krista Bessinger. “Selerity, who provided the initial tweets with our results, informed us that earnings release was available on our Investor Relations site before the close of market. Nasdaq hosts and manages our IR website, and we explicitly instructed them not to release our results until after the market close and only upon our specific instructions, which is consistent with prior quarters. We are continuing to investigate with them exactly what occurred.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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How One Tweet Wiped $8bn Off Twitter’s Value

Russian Cargo Spacehip Declared Lost

schwit1 writes: The Russians have declared lost the Progress freighter that had been launched to the ISS yesterday. They never could regain control of the craft, plus it was in an incorrect orbit. Moreover, the U.S. Air Force has detected debris nearby, suggesting a significant failure of some kind. The Russians are now considering delaying the next manned launch, scheduled for May 26, while they investigate this failure. Both Soyuz and Progress use some of the same systems, including the radar system that failed on Progress, and they want to make sure the problem won’t pop up on the manned mission. At the same time, they are also considering advancing the launch date of the next Progress to ISS from August 6. Based on these reports, I think they might swap the launch dates for the two flights. A Dragon is scheduled to go to ISS in between these missions, though that schedule could be changed as well to accommodate the Russian plans. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Russian Cargo Spacehip Declared Lost

US Successfully Tests Self-Steering Bullets

mpicpp sends this report from The Independent: The United States Department of Defense has carried out what it says is its most successful test yet of a bullet that can steer itself towards moving targets. Experienced testers have used the technology to hit targets that were actively evading the shot, and even novices that were using the system for the first time were able to hit moving targets. The project, which is known as Extreme Accuracy Tasked Ordnance weapon, or Exacto, is being made for the American government’s military research agency, DARPA. It is thought to use small fins that shoot out of the bullet and re-direct its path, but the U.S. has not disclosed how it works. Technology in the bullet allows it to compensate for weather and wind, as well as the movement of people it is being fired at, and curve itself in the air as it heads towards its target. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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US Successfully Tests Self-Steering Bullets

Pandora Paying Artists $0.0001 More Per Stream Than It Was Last Year

journovampire writes: Pandora has revealed that it’s paying a 10, 000th of a dollar more to music labels and artists than it was in 2014. From the article: “Pandora has revealed that its royalty payments to SoundExchange, the US licensing body which collects performance royalties on behalf of record labels and artists, have just increased by 8%. The news was confirmed in a call with investors following Pandora’s Q1 fiscal results announcement on Thursday (April 23), in which it posted a three-month net loss of $48.3m. In what Pandora CEO Brian McAndrews called a scheduled annual step-up, Pandora has from January 1 been paying out an average $0.0014 per ad-funded stream and $0.0024 per premium stream to SoundExchange.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Pandora Paying Artists $0.0001 More Per Stream Than It Was Last Year

Liquid Mercury Found Under Mexican Pyramid

An anonymous reader writes: An archaeologist has discovered liquid mercury at the end of a tunnel beneath a Mexican pyramid, a finding that could suggest the existence of a king’s tomb or a ritual chamber far below one of the most ancient cities of the Americas. Mexican researcher Sergio Gómez … has spent six years slowly excavating the tunnel, which was unsealed in 2003 after 1, 800 years. Last November, Gómez and a team announced they had found three chambers at the tunnel’s 300ft end, almost 60ft below the the temple. Near the entrance of the chambers, they a found trove of strange artifacts: jade statues, jaguar remains, a box filled with carved shells and rubber balls. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Liquid Mercury Found Under Mexican Pyramid

Tesla To Announce Battery-Based Energy Storage For Homes

Okian Warrior writes: Billionaire Elon Musk will announce next week that Tesla will begin offering battery-based energy storage for residential and commercial customers. The batteries power up overnight when energy companies typically charge less for electricity, then are used during the day to power a home. In a pilot project, Tesla has already begun offering home batteries to SolarCity (SCTY) customers, a solar power company for which Musk serves as chairman. Currently 330 U.S. households are running on Tesla’s batteries in California. The batteries start at about $13, 000, though California’s Pacific Gas and Electric Co. (PCG) offers customers a 50% rebate. The batteries are three-feet high by 2.5-feet wide, and need to be installed at least a foot and a half off the ground. They can be controlled with a Web app and a smartphone app. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Tesla To Announce Battery-Based Energy Storage For Homes

New Privacy Concerns About US Program That Can Track Snail Mail

Lashdots writes: A lawyers’ group has called for greater oversight of a government program that gives state and federal law enforcement officials access to metadata from private communications for criminal investigations and national security purposes. But it’s not digital: this warrantless surveillance is conducted on regular mail. “The mail cover has been in use, in some form, since the 1800s, ” Chief Postal Inspector Guy J. Cottrell told Congress in November. The program targets a range of criminal activity including fraud, pornography, and terrorism, but, he said, “today, the most common use of this tool is related to investigations to rid the mail of illegal drugs and illegal drug proceeds.” Recent revelations that the U.S. Postal Service photographs the front and back of all mail sent through the U.S., ostensibly for sorting purposes, has, Fast Company reports, brought new scrutiny—and new legal responses—to this obscure program. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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New Privacy Concerns About US Program That Can Track Snail Mail

Networking Library Bug Breaks HTTPS In ~1,500 iOS Apps

mrflash818 writes: A new report from analytics service SourceDNA found that roughly 1, 500 iOS apps (with about 2 million total installs) contain a vulnerability that cripples HTTPS and makes man-in-the-middle attacks against those apps easy to pull off. “The weakness is the result of a bug in an older version of the AFNetworking, an open-source code library that allows developers to drop networking capabilities into their apps. Although AFNetworking maintainers fixed the flaw three weeks ago with the release of version 2.5.2, at least 1, 500 iOS apps remain vulnerable because they still use version 2.5.1. That version became available in January and introduced the HTTPS-crippling flaw.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Networking Library Bug Breaks HTTPS In ~1,500 iOS Apps