Tag: entertainment

Apple De-Certifies Monster Cables After Lawsuit Against Beats

An anonymous reader writes: Since 2005, Monster cables have been licensed under Apple’s “Made For iDevice” program, which lets cable manufacturers put a logo on their product signifying they work with Apple products. Now, Apple has revoked that certification. In January of this year, Monster sued Beats, accusing its founders of fraud. Beats was acquired by Apple in 2014, and Monster is accusing Apple of bullying them by terminating the licensing deal. Monster’s general counsel said the move would “significantly disrupt Monster’s business and that the two companies had worked well for years, with Monster paying Apple more than $12 million in licensing fees since 2008.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Apple De-Certifies Monster Cables After Lawsuit Against Beats

Researchers Find Major Keychain Vulnerability in iOS and OS X

An anonymous reader notes a report from El Reg on a major cross-app resource vulnerability in iOS and Mac OS X. Researchers say it’s possible to break app sandboxes, bypass App Store security checks, and crack the Apple keychain. The researchers wrote, “specifically, we found that the inter-app interaction services, including the keychain and WebSocket on OS X and URL Scheme on OS X and iOS, can all be exploited by [malware] to steal such confidential information as the passwords for iCloud, email and bank, and the secret token of Evernote. Further, the design of the App sandbox on OS X was found to be vulnerable, exposing an app’s private directory to the sandboxed malware that hijacks its Apple Bundle ID. As a result, sensitive user data, like the notes and user contacts under Evernote and photos under WeChat, have all been disclosed. Fundamentally, these problems are caused by the lack of app-to-app and app-to-OS authentications.” Their full academic paper (PDF) is available online, as are a series of video demos. They withheld publication for six months at Apple’s request, but haven’t heard anything further about a fix. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Researchers Find Major Keychain Vulnerability in iOS and OS X

AMD unveils R9 Fury X, Fury, and Nano graphics cards

25 more images in gallery There’s not one, not two, but three brand new high-end graphics cards on the way from AMD. As rumoured, AMD is dropping the numerical branding and is instead grouping its top cards under the “Fury” banner. All are based on its new Fiji chip, which is a tweaked version of the company’s long-standing GCN architecture, and—as expected—all will come equipped with 4GB of stacked, on-package high bandwidth memory (HBM). The flagship is the $649 R9 Fury X, which launches on June 24. At that price, it is pitched directly against Nvidia’s GTX 980 Ti . It features 4096 stream processors—a huge jump over the 2816 stream processors found in the R9 290X—”up to” 1050MHz core clock, 256 texture units, 64 ROPs, HBM memory with 512 GB/s of bandwidth, a 67.2 GP/s pixel fill rate, and a six-phase VRM (voltage regulator module), which AMD claims is ideal for overclocking the card. We don’t yet have UK pricing, but it’ll probably be around £550. Despite using two 8-pin power connectors, the Fury X’s power consumption isn’t as high as some feared: the TDP is 275W, just a tad higher than the R9 290X’s, although it’s worth bearing in mind that in real-world usage, the R9 290X was much closer to 300W. The Fury X supports up to 375W of power for overclocking. Read 7 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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AMD unveils R9 Fury X, Fury, and Nano graphics cards

Restaurateur Loses Copyright Suit To BMI

Frosty P writes: BMI claims Amici III in Linden, New York didn’t have a license when it played four tunes in its eatery one night last year, including the beloved “Bennie and the Jets” and “Brown Sugar, ” winning $24, 000 earlier this year, and over $8, 200 in attorney’s fees. Giovanni Lavorato, who has been in business for 25 years, says the disc DJ brought into the eatery paid a fee to play tunes. “It’s ridiculous for me to pay somebody also, ” he said. “This is not a nightclub. This is not a disco joint . . . How many times do they want to get paid for the stupid music?” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Restaurateur Loses Copyright Suit To BMI

Hands-on with YouTube Gaming—Google built itself a Twitch Killer

NEW YORK—YouTube Gaming is coming! YouTube’s Twitch Killer was announced on Friday , so we stopped by the YouTube Space in Manhattan to try out a pre-release version of the service. (And we took a  ton of screenshots, see below.) YouTube says the service will launch “this summer”—it’s kind of “this summer” right now— and sure enough, the version we tried out seemed 99% finished. We spent most of our time with the desktop website, and we weren’t even on a developer sandbox—it was just the live gaming.youtube.com site with a properly-flagged account. Let’s get started! The Interface Ron Amadeo An open live stream, complete with chat. It’s Twitch! Note the “-1:43” tooltip: you can rewind the stream! 3 more images in gallery In its blog post, YouTube neglected to show the most important screenshot: the live streaming video page, so that was the first place we explored. The live video page is an all-dark interface with a large video player and a tabbed interface to the right. The tabs house chat, the typical YouTube related videos list (which should be great for discovery), and a description tab. Read 27 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Hands-on with YouTube Gaming—Google built itself a Twitch Killer

Surface Pro 3 Handily Outperforms iPad Air 2 and Nexus 9

An anonymous reader points to an interesting comparison of current tablets’ peformance, as measured with the Geekbench benchmarking tool, which boils down various aspects of performance to produce a single number. The clear winner from the models fielded wasn’t from Apple of Samsung (Samsung’s entrants came much lower down, in fact), but from Microsoft: the i5-equipped Surface Pro 3, with a Geekbench score of 5069.; second place goes to the Apple iPad Air 2, with 4046. The Nexus 9 rated third, with 3537. One model on the list that U.S. buyers may not be familiar with is the Tesco Hudl 2, a bargain tablet which Trusted Reviews seems quite taken by. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Surface Pro 3 Handily Outperforms iPad Air 2 and Nexus 9

Fake Mobile Phone Towers Found To Be "Actively Listening In" On Calls In UK

New submitter nickweller writes: More than 20 Stingray fake phone towers which can collect data from passing devices and listen in on calls have been discovered operating in the UK. The Metropolitan Police have refused to say who is controlling the IMSI catchers, also known as Stingrays, or what is being done with the information they are gathering. Met Commissioner Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe said: “If people imagine that we’ve got the resources to do as much intrusion as they worry about, I would reassure them that it’s impossible.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Fake Mobile Phone Towers Found To Be "Actively Listening In" On Calls In UK

Ask Toolbar Now Considered Malware By Microsoft

AmiMoJo writes: Last month Microsoft changed its policy on protecting search settings to include any software that attempts to hijack searches as malware. As a result, this month the Ask Toolbar, which most people will probably recognize as being unwanted crapware bundled with Java, was marked as malware and will now be removed by Microsoft’s security software built in to Windows 7 and above. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Ask Toolbar Now Considered Malware By Microsoft

Signs of Ancient Cells and Proteins Found In Dinosaur Fossils

sciencehabit writes: The cupboards of the Natural History Museum in London hold spectacular dinosaur fossils, from 15-centimeter, serrated Tyrannosaurus rex teeth to a 4-meter-long hadrosaur tail. Now, researchers are reporting another spectacular find, buried in eight nondescript fossils from the same collection: what appear to be ancient red blood cells and fibers of ancient protein. Using new methods to peer deep inside fossils, the study in this week’s issue of Nature Communications backs up previous, controversial reports of such structures in dinosaur bones. It also suggests that soft tissue preservation may be more common than anyone had guessed. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Signs of Ancient Cells and Proteins Found In Dinosaur Fossils

Why So Many Robots Struggled With the DARPA Challenge

stowie writes: The DARPA Robots Challenge concluded recently, and three teams were given prizes for completing all the tasks. The other robots in the competition struggled — not only were they unable to complete the required tasks, many of them were unable to even stay standing the entire time. So why did these robots have such a hard time? “DARPA deliberately degraded communications (low bandwidth, high latency, intermittent connection) during the challenge to truly see how a human-robot team could collaborate in a Fukushima-type disaster. And there was no standard set for how a human-robot interface would work. So, some worked better than others. The winning DRC-Hubo robot used custom software designed by Team KAIST that was engineered to perform in an environment with low bandwidth. It also used the Xenomai real-time operating system for Linux and a customized motion control framework. The second-place finisher, Team IHMC, used a sliding scale of autonomy that allowed a human operator to take control when the robot seemed stumped or if the robot knew it would run into problems.” If nothing else, the competition’s true legacy may lie in educating the public on the realistic capabilities of high-tech robots. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Why So Many Robots Struggled With the DARPA Challenge