Leave it up to Apple to downplay a surprisingly useful engineering feat: A water-resistant iPhone. It turns out the iPhone 6s and 6s Plus sport a combination of new technology that makes them far more resistant to liquid damage than past iPhones, iFixit reports . Apple packed in a new gasket around the sides of the phone, and it incased every cable connector on the phone’s logic board with a waterproofing material. Given that the logic board that includes most of the iPhone’s sensitive electronics and is the most prone to water damage, Apple’s solution is particularly clever. Most other water-resistant phones focus on protecting external ports, rather than internal electronics. While it’s far from being truly waterproof, there are plenty of videos online showing iPhone 6s models surviving water dunks. The truly strange thing is Apple has never mentioned the feature — unlike Samsung and Sony, both of which championed water resistance as key features of some recent phones (though Samsung gave up on it for the Galaxy S6, and Sony is backtracking on its claims). From a consumer psychology perspective, it makes sense for Apple to keep quiet. Once you tell people your phone is water resistant, they will inevitably send their phones flying into glasses to test out that claim (at least, that’s what I did with the Galaxy S5). Now, people who accidentally drop their iPhones into the toilet might be pleasantly surprised to discover their phone didn’t die. Additionally, the increased water resistance means used iPhone 6s models will last a lot long longer and have fewer costly repairs, which will be particularly useful for Apple and its new iPhone upgrade plan. [Photo credits: iFixit ] Via: Wired Source: iFixit
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Apple made the iPhone 6s nearly waterproof and didn’t tell anyone
msm1267 writes: Security researcher Joshua Drake today disclosed two more flaws in Stagefright, one that dates back to the first version of Android, and a second dependent vulnerability that was introduced in Android 5.0. The bugs affect more than one billion Android devices, essentially all of them in circulation. One of the vulnerabilities was found in a core Android library called libutils; it has been in the Android OS since it was first released and before there were even Android mobile devices. The second vulnerability was introduced into libstagefright in Android 5.0; it calls into libutils in a vulnerable way. An attacker would use a specially crafted MP3 or MP4 file in this case to exploit the vulnerabilities. Google has released patches into the Android Open Source Project tree, but public patches are not yet available. Read more of this story at Slashdot. 
AmiMoJo writes: In a blog post Jake Conte, CEO and co-founder of Patreon, writes: “There was unauthorized access to registered names, email addresses, posts, and some shipping addresses. Additionally, some billing addresses that were added prior to 2014 were also accessed. We do not store full credit card numbers on our servers and no credit card numbers were compromised. Although accessed, all passwords, social security numbers and tax form information remain safely encrypted with a 2048-bit RSA key.” Read more of this story at Slashdot. 
the_newsbeagle writes: With electrodes implanted in their neural tissue and a new brain-computer interface, two paralyzed people with ALS used their thoughts to control a computer cursor with unprecedented accuracy and speed. They showed off their skills by using a predictive text-entering program to type sentences, achieving a rate of 6 words per minute. While paralyzed people can type faster using other assistive technologies that are already on the market, like eye-gaze trackers and air-puff controllers, a brain implant could be the only option for paralyzed people who can’t reliably control their eyes or mouth muscles. Read more of this story at Slashdot. 
Uber is launching yet another new product , but this one targets a specific group of people: event organizers, especially those tired of fielding calls from guests who can’t make it due to car troubles. The service called UberEvents allows organizers to buy and secure passes ahead of the occasion to send to guests, clients or whoever needs one to get to the location via email. Guests will only have to enter the code under the Promotions section of the Uber app to hail a ride. Now, nobody will be able to use car issues as an excuse anymore, and party planners won’t have to worry about how to send drunk guests home. Uber is initially making Events available to Business users and select people in New York City, though the service will be accessible by everyone in the metropolis within the coming weeks. Via: TechCrunch Source: Uber 