Tag: lucky-modern

What we know (and suspect) is coming in iOS 8.1

Apple Pay is one of the biggest features expected to launch with iOS 8.1 later this month. Apple Last week, numerous publications ( including Ars ) reported seeing references to iOS 8.1, 8.2, and 8.3 in their site analytics pages. iOS versions 5, 6, and 7 only saw one major point update apiece during their respective lifespans, so evidence of three different updates being tested simultaneously just weeks after the release of iOS 8.0  came as a surprise. It looks like we’ll be seeing the first of those updates sooner rather than later. Today Apple pushed out the second beta build of iOS 8.1 in as many weeks to its registered developers, and the final version of the software is rumored to be released at or near Apple’s event later this month . Obviously such a quick turnaround time will make iOS 8.1 a smaller update than iOS 7.1 , which gestated for around six months and fixed a host of problems when finally released. But the update is still rumored to include a handful of significant features—here’s a list of the most important additions. Read 11 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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What we know (and suspect) is coming in iOS 8.1

Borked Belkin routers leave many unable to get online

Owners of Belkin routers around the world are finding themselves unable to get online today. Outages appear to be affecting many different models of Belkin router, and they’re hitting customers on any ISP, with Time Warner Cable and Comcast among those affected. ISPs, inundated with support calls by unhappy users, are directing complaints to Belkin’s support line, which appears to have gone into meltdown in response. The reason for the massive outages is currently unknown. Initial speculation was that Belkin pushed a buggy firmware update overnight, but on a reddit thread about the problem, even users who claim to have disabled automatic updates have found their Internet connectivity disrupted. Others suggest that there is some kind of DNS problem at work. Although the routers are correctly picking up their DNS settings from DHCP, they’re apparently unable to resolve domain names correctly. Connecting to the Internet using IP addresses alone does, in fact, appear to work, but with most of us dependent on DNS, this is of little value. Read 2 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Borked Belkin routers leave many unable to get online

Soylent gets a version bump to 1.1—new flavor, new gut flora help

A single week of Soylent contains seven meal pouches and seven oil containers. Total weight is just about 10 lbs (4.5 kg). Lee Hutchinson Soylent, the slushy slightly sweet meal supplement/replacement from California engineer Rob Rhinehart and his company Rosa Labs, has by most accounts been a smashing success story. We tried it and liked it a year ago. While we wrote more about why folks might (or might not) want to drink it once it hit its official release , the Rosa Labs development team has continued work even as shipments of the powder leave the factory by the truckload. In an update e-mail yesterday morning, Rosa Labs announced two major milestones: first, that shipments have (finally) been completed to everyone who backed the Soylent crowdfunding project prior to its closure, and secondly, that Soylent is getting its first major update to version 1.1. It seems a little weird that food (or “food”) has a version number, but Rhinehart always intended Soylent to be a product that changed over time based on feedback and market forces. In a quick post on the official Soylent blog, Rhinehart explains that the bump to 1.1 brings with it a decrease in the product’s sucralose level, dialing down the release version’s vague sweetness to a more truly neutral taste. The logic here, explains the post, is that it’s easier to add sweetness than to take it away, and many Soylent 1.0 users have expressed a desire to flavor the product with add-ons (peanut butter is a popular one, as is blended fruit). The second change deals with my biggest issue with Soylent—what can be politely termed as “a bit of gas.” Regular Soylent use eliminates the gas, but using Soylent as an occasional substitute for a missed meal—which is my preferred usage of the stuff—can introduce some thunderous gut activity (which I referred to in my original Soylent review as ” horse-killing farts “). Read 5 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Soylent gets a version bump to 1.1—new flavor, new gut flora help

How to win friends, influence people, and have businesses magically text you

Cyrus Farivar This week, I downloaded a new iPhone app, Path Talk , and I texted actual questions to local businesses near where I live in Oakland, California. In some cases I got answers back within minutes, but most took longer, even over an hour. Nevertheless, it was almost like magic. Without interrupting my work day, I learned some crucial information about my favorite East Oakland taco truck ( Tacos Sinaloa ): “Can I place an order by phone?” “Hi! Unfortunately, you would have to come to our restaurant in person since we do not take orders over the phone. Sorry about that. Have a nice day!” Read 25 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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How to win friends, influence people, and have businesses magically text you

Fans raise cash to help phone phreaker John Draper, aka Cap‘n Crunch

Aaron Getting An online fundraiser for legendary phone phreaker John Draper , better known as Cap’n Crunch, has passed its target $5,000 in just three days .  Draper himself doesn’t even know who started the fundraiser, but the money is intended to help with his medical bills. According to a recent blog post , he suffers from both degenerative spine disease and C. Diff, an inflammation of the colon . I want to thank with the bottom of my heart for an anonymous person for setting me up with qikfunder…. http://t.co/mwzDLLRpHH — John Draper (@jdcrunchman) September 25, 2014 In conjunction with others in the late 1960s and early 1970s, Draper figured out that a toy whistle given out in boxes of Cap’n Crunch cereal emitted a tone at 2600 Hertz. By pure coincidence, that happened to be the tone AT&T used to reset its trunk lines. As a result, Draper became a legend in the nascent world of phone phreaking, a predecessor to early personal computer hacking. Read 5 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Fans raise cash to help phone phreaker John Draper, aka Cap‘n Crunch

Using new Corvette’s valet-recording tech could be a felony in 12 states

© General Motors Over the past few months, General Motors and its Chevrolet dealerships have been selling the 2015 Corvette with an interesting feature called Valet Mode. Valet Mode records audio, video, and driving statistics of the person in the driver’s seat when the driver isn’t around, thus keeping low-life valets from being too loose with their filthy mitts while inside a Corvette owner’s fancy car. Trouble is that in at least 12 states, using Valet Mode might be considered a felony. Federal wiretapping laws generally require only one party to consent to a recording of an interaction. But in California, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Hawaii, Illinois, Louisiana, Maryland, Massachusetts, Montana, Nevada, New Hampshire, Oregon, Pennsylvania, and Washington, all parties are required to consent before a recording happens. So if a Corvette owner turns on Valet Mode in California and turns the car over to the unknowing attendant, that Corvette owner could be committing a felony. Read 6 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Using new Corvette’s valet-recording tech could be a felony in 12 states

Samsung has more employees than Google, Apple, and Microsoft combined

Samsung loves “big.” Its phones are big, its advertising budget is big, and as you’ll see below, its employee headcount is really big, too. Samsung has more employees than Apple, Google, and Microsoft combined . We dug through everyone’s 10-K (or equivalent) SEC filings and came up with this: Samsung Electronics vs the headcounts of other companies. Ron Amadeo At 275,000 employees, Samsung ( just Samsung Electronics) is the size of five Googles! This explains Samsung’s machine-gun-style device output; the company has released around 46 smartphones  and 27 tablets  just in 2014. If we wanted to, we could cut these numbers down some more. Google is going to shed 3,894 employees once it finally gets rid of Motorola. Over half of Apple’s headcount—42,800 employees—is from the retail division, putting the non-retail part of the company at only 37,500 employees. The “Sony” on this chart only means “Sony Electronics,” the part of the company that is most comparable to Samsung Electronics. Sony Group has a massive media arm consisting of Sony Pictures Entertainment, Sony Music Entertainment, and Sony Financial Services. Read 9 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Samsung has more employees than Google, Apple, and Microsoft combined

Update: Bug in Bash shell creates big security hole on anything with *nix in it

Mac OS X Mavericks is also a *nix, and also vulnerable to the Bash bug. Sean Gallagher Update: The Bash vulnerability, now dubbed by some as “Shellshock”, has been reportedly found in use by an active exploit against web servers. See Ars’ latest report for further details. A security vulnerability in the GNU Bourne Again Shell (Bash), the command-line shell used in many Linux and Unix operating systems, could leave systems running those operating systems open to exploitation by specially crafted attacks. “This issue is especially dangerous as there are many possible ways Bash can be called by an application,” a Red Hat security advisory warned. The bug , discovered by Stephane Schazelas , is related to how Bash processes environmental variables passed by the operating system or by a program calling a Bash-based script. If Bash has been configured as the default system shell, it can be used by network–based attackers against servers and other Unix and Linux devices via Web requests, secure shell, telnet sessions, or other programs that use Bash to execute scripts. Read 8 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Update: Bug in Bash shell creates big security hole on anything with *nix in it

Google stops malicious advertising campaign that could have reached millions

Malicious ads appears on Last.fm after advertising network Zedo serves up malicious content. Courtesy Malwarebytes Google shut down malicious Web attacks coming from a compromised advertising network on Friday. The move follows a security firm’s analysis that found the ad platform, Zedo, serving up advertisements that attempted to infect the computers of visitors to major websites. In an attack that ended early Friday morning, visitors to Last.fm, The Times of Israel, and The Jerusalem Post ran the risk of their computers becoming infected as Zedo  redirected visitors’ systems to malicious servers . Because the advertisements hosted on Zedo’s servers were distributed through Google’s Doubleclick, the attack reached millions of potential victims, Jerome Segura, senior security researcher at Malwarebytes Labs, told Ars. Distributing malware through legitimate advertising networks, a technique known as “malvertising,” has become an increasingly popular way to compromise the systems of consumers and workers alike. Read 9 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Google stops malicious advertising campaign that could have reached millions

Cray brings top supercomputer tech to businesses for a mere $500,000

A Cray XC30-AC server rack. Cray Cray, the company that built the world’s fastest supercomputer, is bringing its next generation of supercomputer technology to regular ol’ business customers with systems starting at just $500,000. The new XC30-AC systems announced today range in price from $500,000 to roughly $3 million, providing speeds of 22 to 176 teraflops. That’s just a fraction of the speed of the aforementioned world’s fastest supercomputer, the $60 million  Titan , which clocks in at 17.59 petaflops. (A teraflop represents a thousand billion floating point operations per second, while a petaflop is a million billion operations per second.) But in fact, the processors and interconnect used in XC30-AC is a step up from those used to build Titan. The technology Cray is selling to smaller customers today could someday be used to build supercomputers even faster than Titan. Read 19 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Cray brings top supercomputer tech to businesses for a mere $500,000