Month: May 2019

Enlarge (credit: Thomas Trutschel / Getty Images News)

Last Wednesday we reported that bitcoin had risen to $6,000 for the first time this year. On Monday, just five days later, bitcoin reached a new 2019 high of $8,000. As I write this one bitcoin is worth about $7,900.

Of course, bitcoin reached much higher levels in late 2017 and early 2018. Bitcoin's current price just under $8,000 is less than half the all-time high of $19,500 set in December 2017. Bitcoin was last worth at least $8,000 in July 2018.

As often happens, bitcoin's rise is part of a broader cryptocurrency boom. On Saturday, the price of ether—the currency of the Ethereum network—rose above $200 for the first time in 2019. Other cryptocurrencies, including Litecoin, Bitcoin Cash, Monero, and Dash are at or near 2019 highs.

Enlarge (credit: Santeri Viinamäki)

Attackers have been exploiting a vulnerability in WhatsApp that allowed them to infect phones with advanced spyware made by Israeli developer NSO Group, the Financial Times reported on Monday, citing the company and a spyware technology dealer.

A representative of WhatsApp, which is used by 1.5 billion people, told Ars that company researchers discovered the vulnerability earlier this month while they were making security improvements. CVE-2019-3568, as the vulnerability has been indexed, is a buffer overflow vulnerability in the WhatsApp VOIP stack that allows remote code execution when specially crafted series of SRTCP packets are sent to a target phone number, according to this advisory.

According to the Financial Times, exploits worked by calling either a vulnerable iPhone or Android device using the WhatsApp calling function. Targets need not have answered a call, and the calls often disappeared from logs, the publication said. The WhatsApp representative said the vulnerability was fixed in updates released on Friday.

Enlarge / The Trump administration's lunar plan finally has a price. Sort of. (credit: NASA)

NASA revealed Monday that it needs an additional $1.6 billion in funding for fiscal year 2020 to stay on track for a human return to the Moon by 2024. The space agency's budget amendment comes in addition to the $21 billion the Trump administration asked Congress for in March.

In a teleconference with reporters on Monday evening, NASA administrator Jim Bridenstine said the budget amendment was a "down payment" on what will be needed in future years to fund the program. "In the coming years, we will need additional funds," he said. "This is a good amount that gets us out of the gate." He and the other NASA officials on the call would not say how much that would be.

Two people familiar with NASA's internal deliberations say the agency has estimated that it needs as much as $6 billion to $8 billion a year for a lunar return by 2024. (Bridenstine has said the amounts will not be this high). These funds would be needed to design and build a lunar lander, accelerate the Space Launch System rocket so that it can perform three launches by then, design new spacesuits, build elements of the Lunar Gateway, and for related programs.

Enlarge / Apple announced some of these features at its services-and-TV-focused event on March 25. (credit: Ron Amadeo)

Today, Apple began rolling out new versions of its iOS, macOS, watchOS, and tvOS operating systems for iPhones and iPads, Macs, Apple Watches, and Apple TVs, respectively.

The updates are largely focused on the video services that Apple announced at its March 25 event—namely, a revamped Apple TV app, Apple TV Channels, and an expansion of AirPlay 2 to devices produced by Apple's partners. A handful of bug fixes, performance optimizations, and other small tweaks are also included in the updates.

And no doubt deliberately timed with these updates, AirPlay 2 and Apple TV app support has finally rolled out to supporting Samsung TVs as planned. Apple says they'll roll out to supporting LG, VIZIO, and Sony smart TVs "later this year."

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  Lenovo folding PC prototype. [credit: Lenovo ]

It doesn't have a name (but it'll be in the ThinkPad X1 family), it doesn't have a spec (but it's using an Intel processor), it doesn't have an operating system ("Windows" but, not specifically "Windows 10"), it doesn't have a release date more specific than "2020," and of course it doesn't have a price. But these are I suppose minor details. The big picture: Lenovo has built a laptop with a folding 13.3-inch OLED 1920×1440 screen made by LG. The screen occupies both halves of the laptop's interior space, including where the keyboard would normally go, and the machine can be folded open to turn it into a flat 13-inch screen that you'd frankly never guess could fold.

Things we do know: Lenovo has been working on this thing for three years already. The company sees it as being a full-fledged PC that can take the place of your laptop, specifically not a mere secondary or companion device. Both halves have batteries, so it's not top-heavy, and it has a proper laptop-style stiff hinge to hold the screen at pretty much any angle up to 180 degrees. The screen supports a Wacom pen, and drawing on the screen feels great. When opened up, there's a barely perceptible dip when drawing across the hinged part. But if you weren't looking for it, you'd be hard-pressed to spot it. The unnamed machine has an IR camera for facial-recognition authentication along with two USB Type-C ports.

As we've seen on other devices with folding screens (such as Samsung's ill-fated Galaxy Fold and Huawei's fabulous-looking Mate X), the folded screen doesn't have a tight crease where it bends. Instead, it curves when closed, though Lenovo won't let us show you that curve. Similarly, when the screen is fully opened, one might imagine that it would be useful if there were some way of supporting it upright so that you can use it to watch movies and so on. There's a way to do this, but Lenovo won't let us show you how. We can say that there will be a keyboard accessory that uses Bluetooth, and while you're free to imagine just how such an accessory might be placed on a clamshell type machine, the company didn't want us to mention any specifics.