Month: May 2016

Our season 5 cast, including Shaw (Sarah Shahi), Finch (Michael Emerson), Fusco (Kevin Chapman), Reese (Jim Caviezel) and Root (Amy Acker). (credit: CBS)

Person of Interest begins its fifth and final season tonight with a raw, disturbing look at the techno-dystopia created by two warring AIs who want to control the fate of America. That's not exactly where you'd have guessed this show would have ended up, if you tuned into the first episode back in 2011. The series started as a vigilante crime-fighter drama, pairing hacker genius Finch (Michael Emerson, from Lost) with ex-CIA ninja Reese (Jim Caviezel, Passion of the Christ) and good NYPD cop Carter (Taraji Henson, before her famous role as Cookie on Empire). The twist was that Finch had created a supercomputer called the Machine, which could analyze surveillance data to predict crime. Though the government had wrested control of the Machine away from Finch, he'd backdoored it to send him the social security numbers of future victims and perpetrators. With help from Reese and Carter, some lives could be saved.

Created by Jonathan Nolan (writer of The Dark Knight) and Greg Plageman (NYPD Blue), the show was tightly-plotted, and always had thoughtful commentary on technology and spycraft. Though it started as a techno-thriller, the show quickly moved away from its number-of-the-week format into something far more futuristic and weird. Conspiracies nested perfectly within other conspiracies, and as our protagonists untangled them we saw how corruption was creeping into law enforcement, from the NYPD to black bag ops at the highest levels of the intelligence community. Bad and good were mashed into creepy shades of gray, and the Machine became a major character, struggling to break free of its coded limitations. New characters joined the cast, like psycho hacker Root (Amy Acker, from Angel and Cabin in the Woods), who believes the Machine is alive, and emotionless super-agent Shaw (Sarah Shahi). Oh and also, the gang got a dog named Bear. When Carter died tragically at the end of season 2, the former corrupt cop Fusco (Kevin Chapman) stepped up to give an inside view of the NYPD and deliver some deadpan humor.

Brooding over all the action—whether it was organized crime, secret government assassinations, subversive Anonymous-like political groups, or out-of-control surveillance tech—was the Machine, slowly gathering sentience over the seasons. Finally, it figured out a way to steal its own servers from the government, stashing its distributed brain in hidden underground facilities, and eventually in a massive, redundant network that stretched across the whole country. Meanwhile a corporation called Decima got its hands on a second AI called Samaritan with powers equal to the Machine. But unlike Finch's emo creation, Samaritan is unhindered by ethics and unmoored from a social group of do-gooders. Decima sells Samaritan's services to the government and promptly begins dividing US residents into desirables and undesirables. All subversive elements are ferreted out and removed. Aided by Decima's cackling CEO, Samaritan even throws local elections, and begins to build up an elite army to do its bidding.

Martin Shkreli, chief executive officer of Turing Pharmaceuticals LLC, exits federal court in New York, US, on Thursday, December 17, 2015. Shkreli was arrested on alleged securities fraud related to Retrophin Inc., a biotech firm he founded in 2011. (credit: Louis Lanzano/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

In a Tuesday court hearing, a federal judge delayed setting a trial date for Martin Shkreli, the disgraced founder and ex-CEO of Turing Pharmaceuticals who was indicted on seven counts of securities fraud charges last December.

Shkreli and his lawyer requested the delay after learning recently that prosecutors are considering filing more charges against the embattled former executive and his ex counsel, Evan Greebel, who was already charged with one count of wire-fraud conspiracy. The new potential charges—along with the initial ones—relate to allegations that the pair ran a Ponzi-like scheme, in which they funneled millions of dollars out of Retrophin, another of Shkreli’s pharmaceutical companies, to cover losses from two hedge funds Shkreli managed.

In the Brooklyn federal court Tuesday, prosecutors told the judge that they would decide if they would file new charges within the month.

Push down on the rectangle at the top and it retracts inside the system, disconnecting the webcam and microphone. (credit: HP)

HP has been impressing us lately with some of its system design—the new Spectre laptop is particularly eye-catching. A new all-in-one desktop announced today is similarly striking. The name is a little ungainly—the HP Pavilion All-in-One with Micro-Edge Display—but while not rolling off the tongue, it sure is descriptive. The 23.8-inch non-touch IPS display has a narrow bezel of just 6.4 mm, bringing the same kind of slimline look that we've been fans of since the Dell XPS 13 came onto the scene.

In the flesh, the machine is extremely good looking, and the narrow bezels make it really stand out. It's a system that'll look good both at home or in the office, with the narrow bezel almost imperceptible.

With prices starting at $749.99, the Pavilion offers a range of Intel Skylake processors, and optional Nvidia GT 930A graphics. This isn't going to be the fastest system ever built, but it should be more than able to handle most things that people throw at it, even light gaming at its native 1920×1080 resolution should be within reach. It can be equipped with up to 16GB RAM and 1TB hybrid disk. Connectivity includes USB Type-C, traditional USB 3.0, Ethernet, 802.11ac Wi-Fi, and HDMI out.

Nintendo has taken popular indie gravity-flipping platform game VVVVVV down from the 3DS eShop after hackers revealed the game can be used to help load unsigned code onto the system. On Sunday, a hacker going by the handle ShinyQuagsire published the newly revealed hacking method, which uses a modified save game to allow the system to load unsigned homebrew software.

The new hack is a bit redundant, since it requires first using an existing 3DS exploit (such as Ninjhax) to load the modified save file onto the 3DS' SD card in the first place. That distinction doesn't seem important to Nintendo, which took the game down from the North American 3DS eShop within a day of the hack's publication (though it is currently still available in the European eShop.

Creator Terry Cavanaugh expressed surprise at the existence of the hacking method on Twitter and said that the need to stack the exploit on top of another hack would "hopefully [mean] I won't need to patch anything, woo." But the game will likely need to see some sort of modification before Nintendo agrees to let it back on the eShop.

(credit: Dave)

The war of words between online publishers and makers of ad-blocking software has heated up in recent years. Now, a maker of popular ad-blocking software has a new project it says will help online publishers get paid.

Adblock Plus has joined up with Flattr to create "Flattr Plus," a system for Web users who want to pay online content creators. Flattr Plus users will set their own monthly budget that will pay favorite bloggers, musicians, artists, or newspapers. The payments will be apportioned automatically, based on a user's engagement with various websites.

Flattr was co-founded by a man who already knows a thing or two about running controversial Web services: Peter Sunde, who also created and operated The Pirate Bay.

(credit: Tim Green)

A large number of websites are vulnerable to a simple attack that allows hackers to execute malicious code hidden inside booby-trapped images.

The vulnerability resides in ImageMagick, a widely used image-processing library that's supported by PHP, Ruby, NodeJS, Python, and about a dozen other languages. Many social media and blogging sites, as well as a large number of content management systems, directly or indirectly rely on ImageMagick-based processing so they can resize images uploaded by end users.

According to developer and security researcher Ryan Huber, ImageMagick suffers from a vulnerability that allows malformed images to force a Web server to execute code of an attacker's choosing. Websites that use ImageMagick and allow users to upload images are at risk of attacks that could completely compromise their security.

(credit: Virginia Tech)

A union representing Verizon workers has asked the Federal Communications Commission to investigate the company’s copper-to-fiber upgrades, saying Verizon is pressuring customers to switch even when they don’t want to.

The complaint stems from Verizon’s “Fiber is the Only Fix” program, in which Verizon automatically sets up copper-to-fiber upgrades when customers with copper-based landline phones call for repairs twice in 18 months. Though many customers welcome the shift to fiber because it brings more reliable and faster Internet access, some prefer to keep copper-based landline phones because they can remain in service during long power outages.

The union, the Communications Workers of America (CWA), claims Verizon is violating a ban on deceiving consumers and a requirement that customers be given 90 days' notice before retiring copper networks.