If you were watching Steam over the weekend, you may have been among those to notice an odd game called "Watch paint dry" go up on the popular digital storefront. The "sports-puzzle game that evolves around one mysterious cutscene" wasn't a new low-point in Steam's increasingly permissive attitude toward letting games onto the service. Instead, it was the result of a now-patched exploit that let developers sneak games onto Steam without Valve's approval.
A teenage British Web developer going by the handle Ruby outlined the hacking process in a post on Medium earlier this week. Even before being fixed, this exploit wasn't available to any random Internet user, though, since it relied on access to the Steamworks Developer Program.
With that access secured (through unstated means), Ruby dove into the HTML for the Steamworks backend to look for weak points. By forcing an "editor ID" variable passed through the page to "1" (which Ruby assumed would be "someone who might work at Valve"), Ruby was able to access a new form that revealed the form data she needed to get an "approved" value for Steam Trading Cards, a first step in making her game look legitimate.
Google’s search apps have been able to listen to your voice and respond with speech for years. Want to get directions to your next appointment? Google Maps can read them to you out loud. Wondering what the capital of New Zealand is? Ask Google Search and the app will tell you it’s Wellington. But while […]
Google’s search apps have been able to listen to your voice and respond with speech for years. Want to get directions to your next appointment? Google Maps can read them to you out loud. Wondering what the capital of New Zealand is? Ask Google Search and the app will tell you it’s Wellington. But while […]
Wer vor einem hohen Hindernis steht, wünscht sich, darüber hinwegfliegen zu können. Genau das vermag Picobug: Der Miniroboter läuft nicht nur, er fliegt auch. (Roboter, Technologie)
Wer vor einem hohen Hindernis steht, wünscht sich, darüber hinwegfliegen zu können. Genau das vermag Picobug: Der Miniroboter läuft nicht nur, er fliegt auch. (Roboter, Technologie)
We've been reporting over and again about how the FBI is citing a 1789 law, the All Writs Act, to compel Apple to assist the authorities in unlocking the iPhone used by extremist Syed Farook, who along with his wife killed 14 people in San Bernardino County in December.
In a sense, the law allows for judges to issue orders for people or companies to do something despite Congress not passing laws to cover specific instances. The All Writs Act is the law that led a federal magistrate ordering Apple to write code and unlock Farook's phone, an order that was no longer necessary because the authorities said Monday they cracked the phone without Apple's assistance. The government also said it wouldn't hesitate to use the "court system" to require other tech companies to weaken their security, too.
According to the American Civil Liberties Union, the US government has cited the All Writs Act in 63 cases since 2008 to compel Apple or Google to assist in accessing data stored on an iPhone or Android device. Most of the orders involved Apple. "To the extent we know about the underlying facts, these cases predominantly arise out of investigations into drug crimes," said Eliza Sweren-Becker, an ACLU attorney.
Minecraft für Mobilgeräte steht vor einer großen Erweiterung: Entwickler Mojang will auch in der Pocket Edition die Möglichkeit für Befehlsblöcke integrieren – mit denen Spieler wesentlich mehr Möglichkeiten für eigene, kreative Ideen programmieren können. (Minecraft, Microsoft)
Minecraft für Mobilgeräte steht vor einer großen Erweiterung: Entwickler Mojang will auch in der Pocket Edition die Möglichkeit für Befehlsblöcke integrieren - mit denen Spieler wesentlich mehr Möglichkeiten für eigene, kreative Ideen programmieren können. (Minecraft, Microsoft)
Eine Scene Group bedankt sich bei einem Hersteller von HDMI-Splittern aus China für seinen aktuellen Hack eines Films bei Netflix. Damit kann offenbar der Kopierschutz High-Bandwidth Digital Copy Protection (HDCP) 2.2 entfernt werden. (Streaming, Tauschbörse)
Eine Scene Group bedankt sich bei einem Hersteller von HDMI-Splittern aus China für seinen aktuellen Hack eines Films bei Netflix. Damit kann offenbar der Kopierschutz High-Bandwidth Digital Copy Protection (HDCP) 2.2 entfernt werden. (Streaming, Tauschbörse)
A week after Tay’s first disaster, the bot briefly came back to life today.
(credit: Microsoft)
Microsoft today accidentally re-activated "Tay," its Hitler-loving Twitter chatbot, only to be forced to kill her off for the second time in a week.
Tay "went on a spam tirade and then quickly fell silent again," TechCrunch reported this morning. "Most of the new messages from the millennial-mimicking character simply read 'you are too fast, please take a rest,'" according to the The Financial Times. "But other tweets included swear words and apparently apologetic phrases such as 'I blame it on the alcohol.'"
Tay's account, with 95,100 tweets and 213,000 followers, is now marked private. "Tay remains offline while we make adjustments," Microsoft told several media outlets today. "As part of testing, she was inadvertently activated on Twitter for a brief period of time."
As a non-NASA astronaut, Peake can express a preference for going back to the Moon.
Tim Peake prepares for his Dec. 15th launch to the International Space Station. (credit: NASA)
Almost from the moment they are accepted as candidates, NASA's astronauts receive extensive media training. Don't speak out of school in public. Promote the program. Stay on message. And invariably, when talking with reporters, NASA astronauts will talk about all the wonderful things the space agency is doing. It's no surprise: many of them are from the military, so they're good at following orders. But more important than this, they want to fly. And flights don't go to off-message astronauts.
That is not to say NASA's astronauts don't have a variety of opinions about what the space agency is actually doing. And when you talk to many of them, they are deeply skeptical about NASA's Journey to Mars. They prefer a return to the Moon first, where the space agency can test out deep-space habitation systems before sending humans far deeper into the solar system.
Just as importantly, a lot of veteran astronauts do not have confidence in successive presidential administrations, Congress, and NASA's own leadership to work together to craft a cohesive, visionary exploration plan. In other words, there's a greater likelihood of sticking to a 10-year plan to put astronauts on the Moon rather than a 20-plus year plan to put humans on Mars.
As we learned last year, not all USB Type-C cables are created equal… and just because you can plug any cheap cable with the right size plug into your USB-C capable device doesn’t mean you should. Sometimes a bad cable that doesn’t fully comply with USB-C specifications can actually damage your phone, tablet, or laptop. Fortunately, […]
As we learned last year, not all USB Type-C cables are created equal… and just because you can plug any cheap cable with the right size plug into your USB-C capable device doesn’t mean you should. Sometimes a bad cable that doesn’t fully comply with USB-C specifications can actually damage your phone, tablet, or laptop. Fortunately, […]
The UK government’s multi-million pound campaign to deter Internet piracy is now hoping to reach out to book fans. A new and rather pleasant video published under the Creative Content UK banner extols the virtues of buying books from genuine sources, but whether it will resonate with the younger generation more used to digital acquisition remains to be seen.
While the UK continues its aggressive pursuit of those who run or even facilitate access to sites offering copyright infringing material, its efforts to deal with consumers of pirated content have been painfully drawn out.
With the provisions of the Digital Economy Act now somewhat of a distant memory, using force to deal with Internet subscribers has been largely overtaken by plans to re-educate the masses.
To that end the government-funded, rightsholder-supported Creative Content UK (CCUK) initiative has been trying to gather momentum since its somewhat subdued debut in December last year. Though various PR campaigns the project hopes to change the public’s attitude towards Internet piracy.
Currently CCUK is running “Get It Right from a Genuine Site”, a campaign that hopes to deter people from using sites like The Pirate Bay in favor of licensed services that ensure that creators are properly paid.
The campaign has been largely inoffensive and quite colorful thus far but has struggled to achieve mainstream exposure. However, the latest video in the “Get It Right” series hopes to change that with a properly “grown up” attempt at reaching out to would-be pirates.
Featuring bookseller Nic Bottomley and his real-life book store ‘Mr B’s Emporium Of Reading Delights’, this Bookseller Association-supported video is a somewhat refreshing and calming anti-piracy short that’s a million miles away from “You Wouldn’t Download“.
Located in the beautiful city of Bath, the Emporium is a classic UK book shop and the video begins with its owner’s memories of repeatedly reading the Roald Dahl classic Fantastic Mr Fox. It’s warming stuff and a welcome change from the aggressive threats featured in other campaigns.
From the moment it begins it becomes clear that the aim of this short is to encourage the viewer to empathize with Bottomley, who together with his wife has built up a really decent book business over the past 12 years. And it works.
Bottomley’s tone is superb and doesn’t sound ‘preachy’ at all, and it’s genuinely nice to hear a little about what it’s like to run his shop and help out customers. But of course, that’s only possible if the public spends money with him and by extension, those writing the books.
“You know that when you buy a book from a high street book shop, or a book or an ebook from a legitimate website, that the creator of that content, in other words the writer of the book or ebook, has been properly rewarded for their work,” Bottomley tells the viewer.
But while it’s easy for those who grew up with mountains of real books to have the utmost respect for what Bottomley has achieved, it’s questionable whether his story will resonate so clearly with the ‘downloading generation’. Real books and real book shops are indeed beautiful, but increasingly digital downloads are taking over, with products like Kindle Unlimited (the Netflix of books) a more attractive proposition for those on the go.
Still, it’s hoped that booksellers of all kinds will get behind the initiative and spread the word that supporting writers (and sellers) is the right thing to do.
“We need to help the creative community to invest in creating more of content, and the development of new artists and writers and ideas as a result,” says Bookseller Association CEO Tim Godfray.
Finally, it will be interesting to see to what extent publishers, writers and book sellers will be supported when UK Internet service providers finally begin to send out warnings to alleged pirates in the months (years?) to come. The scheme has already been hugely delayed and thus far there has only been discussion of music, movie and TV show downloaders being targeted.
Also problematic is the manner in which ebooks are shared online. While torrents are the preferred method for larger files, books are much more likely to be distributed via hosting sites and forums. This kind of sharing cannot be tracked, so the education component is even more critical for the book sector.
Wer vor einem hohen Hindernis steht, wünscht sich, darüber hinwegfliegen zu können. Genau das vermag Picobug: Der Miniroboter läuft nicht nur, er fliegt auch. (
Minecraft für Mobilgeräte steht vor einer großen Erweiterung: Entwickler Mojang will auch in der Pocket Edition die Möglichkeit für Befehlsblöcke integrieren - mit denen Spieler wesentlich mehr Möglichkeiten für eigene, kreative Ideen programmieren können. (
Eine Scene Group bedankt sich bei einem Hersteller von HDMI-Splittern aus China für seinen aktuellen Hack eines Films bei Netflix. Damit kann offenbar der Kopierschutz High-Bandwidth Digital Copy Protection (HDCP) 2.2 entfernt werden. (
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