Tag: entertainment

Scientist Shrinks Arduino To Size Of An AA Battery

An anonymous reader writes: Johan Kanflo has managed to make the already small Tiny328 Arduino clone into an even smaller computing platform about the size of a single AA battery. Not only will it fit in a typical AA battery holder, but it will actually draw power from the batteries beside it as it’s wired in “backwards” (with the + and – poles reversed). The Arduino platform consists of open-source hardware, open-source software, and microcontroller-based kits, making it easy to (re)program the processors, and develop software for hardware applications using a java-clone and an easy-to-learn IDE. For those interested in the AAduino, Johan has made his creation available online on Github with instructions and schematics to build your own. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Scientist Shrinks Arduino To Size Of An AA Battery

‘Hearthstone’ update brings drastic changes to the card game

Hearthstone is undergoing some changes in the interest of keeping the digital-trading-card game fresh. But in introducing the “Whispers of the Old Gods” — expansion out on the 26th — developer Blizzard is tweaking a bunch of cards and, based on the 5, 000-plus comment Reddit thread , this isn’t exactly for the better. Fan favorite cards like Molten Giant have gotten a casting cost increase up to 25 from 20, while the Knife Juggler card has had its attack decreased by a point. Polygon breaks the changes down on a card-by-card basis incredibly well. Blizzard says that “careful consideration” went into these choices, and that it was based on both the company’s own ideas and checking out community feedback. So, chances are that the developer is listening to what you have to say regarding the new expansion. Just remember to keep polite when airing your thoughts, okay? You can grab the expansion from the in-game store across all platforms next Tuesday. Via: Polygon Source: Blizzard (1) , (2)

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‘Hearthstone’ update brings drastic changes to the card game

San Francisco mandates rooftop solar panels starting in 2017

San Francisco has been pushing toward 100 percent of its energy to come from renewable resources for a while now. And to further that, the city recently passed legislation that would require new construction to install solar panels on building roofs — an extension of existing legislation that stated 15 percent of a rooftop be reserved for solar use. The city says this is the first mandate of its kind, and that new buildings 10-stories tall or shorter will have to install photovoltaic panels or solar water heaters. The law won’t go into effect until January 1st next year. However, this could just be seen as political grandstanding. The number of sub-10-floor buildings going up in San Francisco is pretty low, especially in terms of residential construction. More than that, buildings are already up against strong opposition from residents for blocking sunlight, so having anything blocking power sources could cause similar situations. We’ve reached out to the San Francisco Planning Department and the city’s Department of Building Inspection for comment and will update this post should either respond. Via: Business Insider Source: Scott Weiner (Medium)

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San Francisco mandates rooftop solar panels starting in 2017

Netflix details its HDR streaming lineup for this year

Netflix recently revealed it had rolled out support for high dynamic range video , starting with the first season of Marco Polo . This was the initial step in the company’s plan to go all in on that technology , which it believes is the perfect complement to 4K — something it’s been pushing since 2014 . By the end of 2016, the streaming service will have more than 150 hours of original programming in HDR, Netflix confirmed to Engadget. Of those, over 100 hours are expected to hit the platform in August, a figure that won’t be easy for competitors such as Amazon to match. While Marco Polo is the only show taking advantage of HDR (Dolby Vision, HDR10) right now, more content is going to follow suit in the next few months. That includes existing series like Bloodline , Daredevil , Jessica Jones and Chef’s Table , as well as The Ridiculous Six movie. Netflix will also feature HDR in the upcoming Luke Cage and The Defenders shows, plus The Do-Over film starring Adam Sandler and more. Here’s the full list, according to Netflix: A Series of Unfortunate Events Bloodline Chef’s Table Hibana Knights of Sidonia Marvel’s Daredevil Marvel’s Iron Fist Marvel’s Jessica Jones Marvel’s Luke Cage Marvel’s The Defenders The Do-Over The Ridiculous Six Unfortunately, there are no firm details on when these are scheduled to arrive. “Timing varies depending on the title, as we are in the process of remastering any existing TV shows and movies, ” a Netflix spokesperson said to Engadget. “It is also dependent on the title’s launch date. We don’t have any dates to confirm at this point in time.” But hey, at least you can be excited about all the HDR stuff that’s coming in the near future.

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Netflix details its HDR streaming lineup for this year

‘World of Warcraft’ keeps growing with ‘Legion’ in August

Blizzard will launch World of Warcraft ‘s sixth expansion, Legion , on August 30th, unleashing hordes of hellish beasts and fresh quests into the game world. Legion adds the Demon Hunter hero class, customizable artifact weapons and a new continent called the Broken Isles, among other updates. Pre-orders are live now in two flavors: the $50 Standard Edition or the $70 Digital Deluxe Edition, which includes an adorable demon dog as a pet, the Illidari Felstalker mount, and in-game goodies for Heroes of the Storm , StarCraft 2 and Diablo 3 (all of which are Blizzard properties as well). Pre-ordering the Standard or Digital Deluxe versions of Legion grants players the ability to boost one character up to level 100 and early access to the Demon Hunter class. Plus, there’s one more way to give Blizzard your money: The $90 Collector’s Edition includes everything from the Digital Deluxe version plus a hardcover art book, a two-disc behind-the-scenes Blu-ray / DVD set, a CD soundtrack and a Legion mousepad. This bundle will be available at retail only. World of Warcraft is an MMO that debuted in 2004 and quickly evolved into one of the most popular video games in the world. It hit a player-count high in 2010 with 12 million subscribers, but that number fell to 10 million in 2014 and finally 5.5 million in September 2015. That’s still millions of players, but the decline has fueled whispers of WoW ‘s demise — something that Blizzard will surely try to silence with Legion . Starting in 2016, Blizzard will no longer report subscriber numbers for World of Warcraft , so we’ll have to rely on gut feelings going forward. Source: BusinessWire

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‘World of Warcraft’ keeps growing with ‘Legion’ in August

Hacker’s Account of How He Took Down Hacking Team’s Servers

An anonymous reader writes: FinFisher, the hacker that broke into Italian firm Hacking Team, has published a step-by-step account of how he carried out the attacks, what tools he used, and what he learned from scouting HackingTeam’s network. Published on PasteBin, the attack’s timeline reveals he entered their network through a zero-day exploit in an (unnamed) embedded device, accessed a MongoDB database that had no password, discovered backups in the database, found a BES admin password in the backups, and eventually got admin access to the Windows Domain Server. From here, it was easy to reach into their email server and steal all the company’s emails, and later access Git repos and steal the source code of their surveillance software. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Hacker’s Account of How He Took Down Hacking Team’s Servers

Intel’s Apollo Lake chips promise slimmer, beefier budget PCs

Intel’s Atom-based processors have gotten much better at delivering a lot of bang for the buck , but there’s still little doubt that you’re using a low-cost system. PCs like HP’s Stream series still tend to be thick, carry a meager amount of RAM and rule out intensive tasks like 4K video. You might not have to make quite so many sacrifices going forward, though: Intel has offered a peek at Apollo Lake, a next-generation system-on-a-chip that promises to inject some life into the budget category. It’s not only more compact, but efficient enough that PC makers can afford to slim things down without as many compromises — they can use smaller batteries without hurting battery life, for instance. The more inclusive design (should also save several dollars (around $5-7) in parts that can be rolled into more RAM, better displays and similar upgrades. There’s more than size and cost savings, of course. Apollo Lake borrows the graphics technology from Intel’s Skylake architecture, which brings full hardware-based 4K video playback and an overall boost to visual performance. It’ll also help drag lower-cost computers into the modern era with richer support for technologies like USB-C . Intel isn’t yet revealing clock speeds, pricing and a few other key details for its new platform, but it’s promising Celeron- and Pentium-branded processors in the second half of 2016. They won’t make you forget about higher-end Core CPUs when they ship, but they might just raise the bar for computing — that starter laptop or tablet won’t be as likely to choke on basic duties. Via: AnandTech Source: Intel

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Intel’s Apollo Lake chips promise slimmer, beefier budget PCs

The Ars guide to building a Linux router from scratch

The Homebrew Special—looking a bit blurry, because I wanted to take a low-light shot to try to capture the disco glow. 2 more images in gallery After finally reaching the tipping point with off-the-shelf solutions that can’t match increasing speeds available, we recently took the plunge. Building a homebrew router  turned out to be a better proposition than we could’ve ever imagined. With nearly any speed metric we analyzed, our little DIY kit outpaced routers whether they were of the $90- or $250-variety. Naturally, many readers asked the obvious follow-up—”How exactly can we  put that together?” Today it’s time to finally pull back the curtain and offer that walkthrough. By taking a closer look at the actual build itself (hardware and software), the testing processes we used, and why we used them, hopefully any Ars readers of average technical abilities will be able to put together their own DIY speed machine. And the good news? Everything is as open source as it gets—the equipment, the processes, and the setup. If you want the DIY router we used, you can absolutely have it. This will be the guide to lead you, step-by-step. What is a router, anyway? At its most basic, a router is just a device that accepts packets on one interface and forwards them on to another interface that gets those packets closer to their eventual destination. That’s not what most of us are really thinking when we think of “a router” in the sense of something we’ll plug into our home or office to get to the Internet, though. What do we need to have before any homebrew device looks like a router? Read 66 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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The Ars guide to building a Linux router from scratch

New Full Duplex Radio Chip Transmits and Receives Wireless Signals At Once

Wave723 writes: A new chip by Columbia University researchers uses a circulator made of silicon transistors to reroute signals and avoid interference from a transmitter and receiver that share the same antenna. This technology instantly doubles data capacity and could eventually be built into smartphones and tablets. The chip enables them to work around the principle of Lorentz Reciprocity, in which electromagnetic waves are thought to always travel along the same path both forward and backward. Traditionally, electronic devices required two antennas — a transmitter and receiver — that took turns or operated on different frequencies in order to exchange signals. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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New Full Duplex Radio Chip Transmits and Receives Wireless Signals At Once

Homeland Security urges you to uninstall QuickTime on Windows

The Department of Homeland Security is echoing Trend Micro’s advice to uninstall QuickTime if you have it on your Windows computer. While the multimedia program’s working just fine, the security firm has discovered two new critical vulnerabilities lurking within it that could allow remote attackers to take over your system. Unfortunately, they might never be patched up: Trend Micro says Apple will no longer release security updates for the Windows version of the software, hence the call to jettison it completely. The good news is that Trend Micro hasn’t spotted any active attacks targeting those specific vulnerabilities yet. But both the firm and Homeland Security stress that because Apple has abandoned the program, the only way to protect yourself from potential threats is to dump it — Windows has a lot of safer alternatives you can use anyway. These flaws don’t affect QuickTime for Mac in any way, though, so OS X users can carry on. Source: Reuters , Department of Homeland Security , Trend Micro

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Homeland Security urges you to uninstall QuickTime on Windows