Month: December 2017

Enlarge (credit: Two Sixes Labs)

One of Amazon's top-selling electronic gun safes contains a critical vulnerability that allows it to be opened by virtually anyone, even when they don't know the password.

The Vaultek VT20i handgun safe, ranked fourth in Amazon's gun safes and cabinets category, allows owners to electronically open the door using a Bluetooth-enabled smartphone app. The remote unlock feature is supposed to work only when someone knows the four- to eight-digit personal identification number used to lock the device. But it turns out that this PIN safeguard can be bypassed using a standard computer and a small amount of programming know-how.

As the video demonstration below shows, researchers with security firm Two Six Labs were able to open a VT20i safe in a matter of seconds by using their MacBook Pro to send specially designed Bluetooth data while it was in range. The feat required no knowledge of the unlock PIN or any advanced scanning of the vulnerable safe. The hack works reliably even when the PIN is changed. All that's required to make it work is that the safe have Bluetooth connectivity turned on.

FCC Chairman Ajit Pai at Fox Studios on November 10, 2017 in New York City. (credit: Getty Images | John Lamparski )

On Thursday night in Washington, DC, net neutrality advocates gathered outside the annual Federal Communications Commission Chairman's Dinner to protest Chairman Ajit Pai's impending rollback of net neutrality rules.

Inside the dinner (also known as the "telecom prom") at the Washington Hilton, Pai entertained the audience with jokes about him being a puppet installed by Verizon to lead the FCC.

Pai was a Verizon associate general counsel from 2001 to 2003, and next week he will lead an FCC vote to eliminate net neutrality rules—just as Verizon and other ISPs have asked him to.

Enlarge / Influenza virus. Image produced from an image taken with transmission electron microscopy. Viral diameter ranges from around 80 to 120 nm. (credit: Getty | BSIP)

The 2017-2018 flu season is off to an early start, potentially hitting highs during the end-of-year holidays. Data so far suggests it could be a doozy. The predominant virus currently circulating tends to cause more cases of severe disease and death than other seasonal varieties. And the batch of vaccines for this year have some notable weaknesses.

To help you prepare—or just help you brush up on your flu facts—here are answers to every critical flu question you might ever have (well, hopefully). We’ll start off with the basics...

Table of Contents

• What is the flu?
• Why does flu strike in the winter each year, anyway?
• This is just the seasonal flu we’re talking about. It’s not that big of a deal, right?
• In general, how long is a person sick and contagious?
• Some flu viruses are worse than others, right? So, what are the different types of flu virus and what’s up with all those numbers and letters?
• I hear about the Hs and Ns the most. Why are they so important?
• Cut to the chase: What’s up with this year’s flu season?
• How do experts know what to expect and prepare vaccine in advance?
• How closely does that match with what experts are seeing in the US so far?
• So it sounds like a pretty good match. Shouldn’t this mean that the vaccines will work well?
• How do we make vaccines, and what went wrong with this one?
• Should I even bother getting vaccinated?
• Is one type of vaccine better than the others?
• It’s late in the game—should I still get vaccinated? What if I’m already sick or feel like I’m getting the flu?
• Man, what a pain all this is. Are we ever going to get better vaccines or—dare we ask—a single one that protects against all the possible kinds??

What is the flu?

The flu, or influenza, is a contagious respiratory infection caused by the influenza virus (not to be confused with Haemophilus influenzae, an opportunistic bacterium that can cause secondary infections following sicknesses, such as the flu). Symptoms of the flu include chills, fever, headache, malaise, running nose, sore throat, coughing, tiredness, and muscle aches.

Enlarge (credit: Amazon)

Warning: this post contains some spoilers about the first episode of the new season of The Grand Tour.

Some say it's the greatest car show... in the world. Others say it started well but had a very patchy first season. All I know is that The Grand Tour came back to Amazon Prime on Friday for a second season.

If you loved the first season of The Grand Tour, you'll have a fine old time with season 2. The idea behind the show is to keep all the bits that you loved about Top Gear but without pissing off the BBC's lawyers. And based on the season preview clips we saw during the intro to the first episode of season 2, there should be plenty of that in store—particularly the episode that features a Bugatti EB110 and a Jaguar XJ220. But if you find Jeremy Clarkson's antics boorish, be warned; on that front, season 2 is very much more of the same.

Enlarge / This real Mercedes-Benz GL450 was one of the cars that Vlad Diaconu tried to trick people into believing that he was selling. (credit: FREDERIC J. BROWN/AFP/Getty Images)

It’s like your parents always told you: if something’s too good to be true, it probably is.

Or, translated into the online world: if a guy in Romania claiming to be an American service member overseas wants to sell you a Mercedes at a really good price and all you have to do is send some money to an escrow account, he’s probably scamming you.

On Friday, a Romanian man was sentenced by a federal judge in Tennessee to two years and five months in prison for participating in a scheme to defraud Americans out of over $870,000 in goods that never existed.

Enlarge / Meet Thelma. Medical professionals can't seem to nail down what's happening in her brain... (credit: Fantastic Fest / Thelma)

You might not see a more stunning film in 2017 than Director Joachim Trier’s Thelma, Norway’s submission for Best Foreign Language Film at the Oscars. It tonally combines the unbridled happiness of a coming-of-age/first love film with the creepy stillness and angularity of arthouse horror. And aesthetically it unleashes sequences that will inevitably play silently on repeat at the hippest bar you can think of once Thelma hits a streaming service.

With all that beauty, it’s a shame the film seems so reductive at first—forbidden love and a cursed child; a body horror like Carrie but set in Europe. Luckily, that impression proves to be as window dressing-y as the title character’s minimalist Nordic dorm room. With a dash of the supernatural and a mystery that ultimately reveals answers by excluding explanation, Thelma offers more depth (and fun) than the clichés of its film blurb would lead you to believe.

Go to college, see the world

Shy Thelma leaves her religious, conservative family in small-town Norway to pursue university in vibrant Oslo. The lifestyle proves to be quite different. Kids drink and go out late, they try weed and stuff. Accordingly, Thelma doesn’t seem to be connecting much if at all at first (but you’re making new friends on Facebook, her dad encourages). Worse, one day early in the semester, she suffers a very public and sudden seizure in the library. Her parents already ask her daily for every little detail (Mom overlooks nothing: what’s for dinner? Isn’t your next class tomorrow, what are you doing tonight?). This isn’t a welcome development.