Tag: entertainment

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.

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

60,000 Germans Evacuate While Officials Try To Defuse a WWII Bomb

More than 70 years ago the UK’s Royal Air Force dropped an 1, 100-pound bomb on Germany. They just found it. An anonymous reader quotes ABC: Residents in two German cities are evacuating their homes as authorities prepare to dispose of World War II-era bombs found during construction work this week. About 21, 000 people have been ordered to leave their homes and workplaces in the western city of Koblenz as a precaution before specialists attempt to defuse the 500-kilogram bomb on Saturday afternoon (local time). Among those moved to safety are prison inmates and hospital patients. Officials in the financial capital Frankfurt, meanwhile, are carrying out what is described as Germany’s biggest evacuation. Frankfurt city officials have said more than 60, 000 residents will have to leave their homes for at least 12 hours. Failure to defuse the bomb could cause a big enough explosion to flatten a city block, a fire department official said. “This bomb has more than 1.4 tonnes of explosives, ” Frankfurt fire chief Reinhard Ries said. “It’s not just fragments that are the problem, but also the pressure that it creates that would dismantle all the buildings in a 100-metre radius”… Police will ring every doorbell and use helicopters with heat-sensing cameras to make sure nobody is left behind before they start diffusing the bomb. Reuters notes that every year Germany discovers more than 2, 000 tons of live bombs and munitions, adding “In July, a kindergarten was evacuated after teachers discovered an unexploded World War Two bomb on a shelf among some toys.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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60,000 Germans Evacuate While Officials Try To Defuse a WWII Bomb

The Oldest Known Human Remains In the Americas Have Been Found In a Mexican Cave

schwit1 shares a report from Seeker: An ice-free corridor between the Americas and Asia opened up about 12, 500 years ago, allowing humans to cross over the Bering land bridge to settle what is now the United States and places beyond to the south. History books have conveyed that information for years to explain how the Americas were supposedly first settled by people, such as those from the Clovis culture. At least one part of the Americas was already occupied by humans before that time, however, says new research on the skeleton of a male youth found in Chan Hol cave near Tulum, Mexico. Dubbed the Young Man of Chan Hol, the remains date to 13, 000 years ago, according to a paper published in the journal PLOS ONE. How he arrived at the location remains a great mystery given the timing and the fact that Mexico is well over 4, 000 miles away from the Bering land crossing. For the new study, Gonzalez, Stinnesbeck, and their colleagues dated the Young Man of Chan Hol’s remains by analyzing the bones’ uranium, carbon, and oxygen isotopes, which were also found in stalagmite that had grown through the pelvic bone. The scientists believe that the resulting age of 13, 000 years could apply to at least two other skeletons found in caves around Tulum: a teenage female named Naia and a 25-30-year-old female named Eve of Naharon. Gonzalez said that the shape of the skulls suggests that Eve and the others “have more of an affinity with people from Southeast Asia.” He and his team further speculated that the individuals could have originated in Indonesia. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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The Oldest Known Human Remains In the Americas Have Been Found In a Mexican Cave

A Canadian University Gave $11 Million To a Scammer

A Canadian university transferred more than $11 million CAD (around $9 million USD) to a scammer that university staff believed to be a vendor in a phishing attack, a university statement published on Thursday states. From a report: Staff at MacEwan University in Edmonton, Alberta became aware of the fraud on Wednesday, August 23, the statement says. According to the university, the attacker sent a series of emails that convinced staff to change payment details for a vendor, and that these changes resulted in the transfer of $11.8 million CAD into bank accounts that the school has traced to Canada and Hong Kong. The school is working with authorities in Edmonton, Montreal, London, and Hong Kong, the statement reads. According to the university, its IT systems were not compromised and no personal or financial information was stolen. A phishing scam is not technically a “hack, ” it should be noted, and only requires the attacker to convince the victim to send money. The school’s preliminary investigation found that “controls around the process of changing vendor banking information were inadequate, and that a number of opportunities to identify the fraud were missed.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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A Canadian University Gave $11 Million To a Scammer

China Plans 600 MPH Train To Rival Elon Musk’s Hyperloop

In addition to relaunching the world’s fastest bullet train, China is working on developing technology similar to Elon Musk’s Hyperloop, which will allow passengers to travel at speeds up to 4, 000 km/h (~2, 500 mph). The first stage of the company’s plan, however, will be to create a network of these “flying trains” operating at 1, 000 km/h (~600 mph). Shanghaiist reports: Earlier today, the China Aerospace Science and Industry Corporation (CASIC), one of the nation’s major space contractors, announced that it had begun research and development into a new, futuristic type of transport which would operate via supersonic “near ground flight.” The system would presumably be similar to that of the Hyperloop, proposed earlier this decade by Elon Musk, in which capsules would fly at ultrafast speeds down reduced-pressure tubes, dramatically reducing travel times. Of course, the CASIC isn’t looking to reach speeds of 4, 000 km/h right away. The first stage of the company’s plan will be to create an intercity network of these “flying trains” operating at 1, 000 km/h. In the second phase, this network would be extended and the max speed of the pods increased to 2, 000 km/h. Finally, in the third stage, the speed would be boosted all the way up to 4, 000 km/h — five times the speed of civil aviation aircraft today. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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China Plans 600 MPH Train To Rival Elon Musk’s Hyperloop

Massive New Spambot Ensnares 711,000,000 Email Addresses

An anonymous reader quotes ZDNet: A huge spambot ensnaring 711 million email accounts has been uncovered. A Paris-based security researcher, who goes by the pseudonymous handle Benkow, discovered an open and accessible web server hosted in the Netherlands, which stores dozens of text files containing a huge batch of email addresses, passwords, and email servers used to send spam. Those credentials are crucial for the spammer’s large-scale malware operation to bypass spam filters by sending email through legitimate email servers. The spambot, dubbed “Onliner, ” is used to deliver the Ursnif banking malware into inboxes all over the world. To date, it’s resulted in more than 100, 000 unique infections across the world, Benkow told ZDNet. Troy Hunt, who runs breach notification site Have I Been Pwned, said it was a “mind-boggling amount of data.” Hunt, who analyzed the data and details his findings in a blog post, called it the “largest” batch of data to enter the breach notification site in its history… Those credentials, he explained, have been scraped and collated from other data breaches, such as the LinkedIn hack and the Badoo hack, as well also other unknown sources. The data includes information on 80 million email servers, and it’s all used to identify which recipients have Windows computers, so they can be targeted in follow-up emails delivering Windows-specific malware. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Massive New Spambot Ensnares 711,000,000 Email Addresses

Ancient Tablet Reveals Babylonians Discovered Trigonometry

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Science Magazine: Trigonometry, the study of the lengths and angles of triangles, sends most modern high schoolers scurrying to their cellphones to look up angles, sines, and cosines. Now, a fresh look at a 3700-year-old clay tablet suggests that Babylonian mathematicians not only developed the first trig table, beating the Greeks to the punch by more than 1000 years, but that they also figured out an entirely new way to look at the subject. However, other experts on the clay tablet, known as Plimpton 322 (P322), say the new work is speculative at best. Consisting of four columns and 15 rows of numbers inscribed in cuneiform, the famous P322 tablet was discovered in the early 1900s in what is now southern Iraq by archaeologist, antiquities dealer, and diplomat Edgar Banks, the inspiration for the fictional character Indiana Jones. Now stored at Columbia University, the tablet first garnered attention in the 1940s, when historians recognized that its cuneiform inscriptions contain a series of numbers echoing the Pythagorean theorem, which explains the relationship of the lengths of the sides of a right triangle. (The theorem: The square of the hypotenuse equals the sum of the square of the other two sides.) But why ancient scribes generated and sorted these numbers in the first place has been debated for decades. Mathematician Daniel Mansfield of the University of New South Wales (UNSW) realized that the information he needed was in missing pieces of P322 that had been reconstructed by other researchers. He and UNSW mathematician Norman Wildberger concluded that the Babylonians expressed trigonometry in terms of exact ratios of the lengths of the sides of right triangles, rather than by angles, using their base 60 form of mathematics, they report today in Historia Mathematica. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Ancient Tablet Reveals Babylonians Discovered Trigonometry

Hacker Claims To Have Decrypted Apple’s Secure Enclave Processor Firmware

According to iClarified, a hacker by name of “xerub” has posted the decryption key for Apple’s Secure Enclave Processor (SEP) firmware. “The security coprocessor was introduced alongside the iPhone 5s and Touch ID, ” reports iClarified. “It performs secure services for the rest of the SOC and prevents the main processor from getting direct access to sensitive data. It runs its own operating system (SEPOS) which includes a kernel, drivers, services, and applications.” From the report: The Secure Enclave is responsible for processing fingerprint data from the Touch ID sensor, determining if there is a match against registered fingerprints, and then enabling access or purchases on behalf of the user. Communication between the processor and the Touch ID sensor takes place over a serial peripheral interface bus. The processor forwards the data to the Secure Enclave but can’t read it. It’s encrypted and authenticated with a session key that is negotiated using the device’s shared key that is provisioned for the Touch ID sensor and the Secure Enclave. The session key exchange uses AES key wrapping with both sides providing a random key that establishes the session key and uses AES-CCM transport encryption. Today, xerub announced the decryption key “is fully grown.” You can use img4lib to decrypt the firmware and xerub’s SEP firmware split tool to process. Decryption of the SEP Firmware will make it easier for hackers and security researchers to comb through the SEP for vulnerabilities. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Hacker Claims To Have Decrypted Apple’s Secure Enclave Processor Firmware

PlayStation 4 Update 5.0 Officially Revealed

After the PlayStation 4’s 5.0 update was leaked last week, Sony decided to officially reveal what’s coming in the update. GameSpot highlights the new features in their report: Some of the enhancements center around streaming using the PS4’s built-in broadcasting capabilities. PS4 Pro users will be able to stream in 1080p and 60 FPS, provided their connection is strong enough, and PSVR users will be able to see new messages and comments coming through while broadcasting. PSVR is also adding 5.1ch and 7.1ch virtual surround sound support. Next up, the PS4’s Friends List is being updated with greater management tools, such as the ability to set up separate lists of friends. You’ll be able to create a list of all the people you play Destiny with and send them all an invite, for example. This feature replaces the old Favorite Groups tab. In another move to help reduce the amount of time spent in menus, the Quick Menu is being updated to have more options. For example, you’ll be able to check on download progress and see new party invites. You can also leave a party from within that menu and see your current Spotify playlist. Notifications are also being improved when watching films and TV, as you can now disable message and other notification pop-ups while watching media. You can also change how much of a message is displayed, as well as its color, when playing or watching any form of content. Finally, Parental Control features are being overhauled in favor of what Sony calls “Family on PSN.” This replaces the old Master/Sub account system; instead, one user is deemed the Family Manager, and they can set up other accounts and appoint them as a Parent/Guardian, Adult, or Child. Parents or Guardians can restrict Child accounts in their “use of online features and communication with other players, set restrictions for games, restrict the use of the internet browser, and set spending limits for PlayStation Store.” Note that Sony says the first time any North American user tries to set up an Adult account, they will be charged $0.50 “to verify that you are an adult.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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PlayStation 4 Update 5.0 Officially Revealed

Google Pays Apple $3 Billion Per Year To Remain On the iPhone, Analyst Says

In a note to investors on Monday, Bernstein analyst A.M. Sacconaghi Jr. said Google is paying Apple billions of dollars per year to remain the default search engine on iPhones and iPads. “The firm believes that Google will pay Apple about $3 billion this year, up from $1 billion just three years ago, and that Google’s licensing fees make up a large bulk of Apple’s services business, ” reports CNBC. From the report: “Court documents indicate that Google paid Apple $1 billion in 2014, and we estimate that total Google payments to Apple in FY 17 may approach $3 billion, ” Bernstein analyst A.M. Sacconaghi Jr. said. “Given that Google payments are nearly all profit for Apple, Google alone may account for 5% of Apple’s total operating profits this year, and may account for 25% of total company OP growth over the last two years.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Google Pays Apple $3 Billion Per Year To Remain On the iPhone, Analyst Says