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Sonos announces layoffs, refocuses on streaming and voice tech

Sonos has announced that it will be “letting go of some employees, “; forming part of reshaping the company in a new direction. In an (admittedly vague) blog post , CEO John Macfarlane doesn’t say exactly how many jobs are going to be cut, but he says its’s a consequence of the still in-transition music industry. “Everyone in the ecosystem is adjusting to a world of streaming services, ” he added, citing the addition of The Beatles back-catalogue across the top music streaming services. Macfarlane says it’s an inevitable change — and that’s why the company is now focusing on these users over customers that are playing from non-streamed files and physical music collections. How? He’s not saying, but it’ll apparently involve “building incredibly rich experiences that were all but unimaginable when we started the company.” (The company recently added Apple Music to its list of compatible services .) The second target is voice. Explicitly mentioning Amazon’s Echo products , the CEO said that voice recognition will be a big change for the company best known for speakers. Macfarlane adds that the company is investing into the technology to make sure it works like it should, reaffirming that the company wants to ensure it’s a sustainable, profitable one — and that means catering to the music streaming revolution. Source: Sonos

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Sonos announces layoffs, refocuses on streaming and voice tech

No More Public Access To Google PageRank Scores

campuscodi writes: Google has confirmed with Search Engine Land that it is removing PageRank scores from the Google toolbar, which was the last place where someone could check their site’s PageRank status. Many SEO experts are extremely happy at this point, since it seems that PageRank is responsible for all the SEO spam we see today. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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No More Public Access To Google PageRank Scores

ScummVM, Update With a Bang

KingofGnG writes: The developers of ScummVM have announced a new version for the virtual machine preferred by graphic adventure fans: also known as “Lost with Sherlock, ” ScummVM 1.8.0 is hailed as one of the heftiest releases ever prepared by the team, with the addition of many games and game engines, the substantial update of graphics and sound sub-systems and the availability of new conversions for minor platforms. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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ScummVM, Update With a Bang

Seagate Debuts World’s Fastest NVMe SSD With 10GBps Throughput

MojoKid writes: Seagate has just unveiled what it is calling “the world’s fastest SSD, ” and the performance differential between it and the next closest competitive offering is significant, if their claims are true. The SSD, which Seagate today announced is in “production-ready” form employs the NVMe protocol to help it achieve breakneck speeds. So just how fast is it? Seagate says that the new SSD is capable of 10GB/sec of throughput when used in 16-lane PCIe slots. Seagate notes that this is 4GB/sec faster than the next-fastest competing SSD solution. The company is also working on a second, lower-performing variant that works in 8-lane PCIe slots and has a throughput of 6.7GB/sec. Seagate sees the second model as a more cost-effect SSD for businesses that want a high performing SSD, but want to keep costs and power consumption under control. Seagate isn’t ready yet to discuss pricing for its blazing fast SSDs, and oddly haven’t disclosed a model name either, but it does say that general availability for its customers will open up during the summer. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Seagate Debuts World’s Fastest NVMe SSD With 10GBps Throughput

Using Kexec Allows Starting Linux In PlayStation 4

jones_supa writes: Team fail0verflow, the hacker group who made Sony PlayStation 4, has introduced another method to start Linux in the game console. Instead of the previous exploit which was based on a security hole in an old PS4 firmware version, the new trick allows a kexec call to start Linux through Orbis OS (the FreeBSD-based system software of PS4). The code can be found in GitHub. Maybe this will lead to more and better PlayStation clusters. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Using Kexec Allows Starting Linux In PlayStation 4

New Ransomware-as-a-Service Speaks To Victims

itwbennett writes: Cerber, a new file-encrypting ransom ware, has a couple of interesting features. First, according to cyber intelligence outfit SenseCy, it is available for sale ‘as a service’ on a private Russian-language forum, which makes it ‘available to low-level criminals who might not have the coding skills or resources to create their own ransom ware, ‘ writes Lucian Constantin. Second, one of the 3 files it drops on a victim’s desktop is a VBS (Visual Basic Scripting) file containing text-to-speech code that converts text into an audio message. ‘When the above script is executed, your computer will speak a message stating that your computer’s files were encrypted and will repeat itself numerous times, ‘ said Lawrence Abrams, administrator of the technical support forum BleepingComputer.com, in a blog post. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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New Ransomware-as-a-Service Speaks To Victims

SpaceX’s Latest Launch Successful, But Ends With a "Hard Landing"

Eloking writes with this news from The Verge: SpaceX successfully launched its Falcon 9 rocket into space this afternoon, but — as expected — failed to land the vehicle on a drone ship at sea afterward. CEO Elon Musk said the rocket ‘landed hard’ on the drone ship. The mission requirements made a successful landing unlikely. This was SpaceX’s fourth attempt to land the Falcon 9 post-launch on an autonomous drone ship floating in the ocean. All of the previous sea landings failed too, though the third attempt came very close. The company had low hopes of a successful landing from the start of this mission, since the rocket had to send a heavy satellite into a high orbit. That requires a lot of fuel for the launch itself, so there wasn’t much fuel left for the rocket’s return to Earth and powered landing. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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SpaceX’s Latest Launch Successful, But Ends With a "Hard Landing"

MAME Released Under OSI-Compliant, FSF-Approved License

New submitter _merlin writes: MAMEdev just announced that MAME (formerly Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator) is now entirely available under OSI-comliant, FSF-approved licenses. The project as a whole is available under the GNU General Public License, version 2 (GPL-2.0), while individual source files are available under BSD-3-Clause, LGPL-2.1 or GPL-2.0 (all compatible with GPL-2.0). Over 90% of the code, including core functionality, is available under the BSD-3-Clause license. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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MAME Released Under OSI-Compliant, FSF-Approved License

Google Building a 100kW Transmitter at Spaceport America

szczys writes: Google is building a 100kW transmitter at Spaceport America. As is becoming the regular source of early info, this comes via an FCC filing in which Google has asked the agency to keep the project secret. The signal strength itself isn’t [groundbreaking] until you learn this is a directional antenna. Some of the most powerful FM radio transmitters get to 100kW, but those are omnidirectional. This is a highly focused directional antenna and that makes it sound like a big piece of Google’s hushed Broadband Drone program. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Google Building a 100kW Transmitter at Spaceport America