Month: December 2021

Enlarge / The smart home market grew in Q3. (credit: Yagi Studio/Getty Images)

The COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in people spending more time in their homes. And while that has led to investments in home offices and banana bread baking bonanzas, it also gave people a reason to try out some new smart home tech.

According to numbers that research firm IDC shared today, the smart home market has survived "persistent supply chain disruptions, unemployment, and an uneven economic recovery," leading to growth of 10.3 percent in Q3 2021 over Q3 2020.

"The smart home market continues to fare better than other consumer goods during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, although to varying degrees in different regions," Senior Research Analyst Adam Wright said in a statement. "By and large, consumers have shifted their spending priorities from other areas like vacations and going out to eat to focus on adding more comfort, conveniences, and entertainment at home."

Enlarge (credit: Getty Images)

As many as 300,000 routers made by Latvia-based MikroTik are vulnerable to remote attacks that can surreptitiously corral the devices into botnets that steal sensitive user data and participate in Internet-crippling DDoS attacks, researchers said.

The estimate, made by researchers at security firm Eclypsium, is based on Internet-wide scans that searched for MikroTik devices using firmware versions known to contain vulnerabilities that were discovered over the past three years. While the manufacturer has released patches, the Eclypsium research shows that a significant proportion of users has yet to install them.

“Given the challenges of updating MikroTik, there are large numbers of devices with these 2018 and 2019 vulnerabilities,” Eclypsium researchers wrote in a post. “Collectively, this gives attackers many opportunities to gain full control over very powerful devices, positioning them to be able to target devices both behind the LAN port as well as target other devices on the Internet.”

Enlarge / The Curta mechanical calculator. (credit: Getty Images)

It’s no bigger than a drinking glass, and it fits easily in the palm of the hand. It resembles a pepper grinder—or perhaps a hand grenade.

The diminutive “Curta” is a striking machine, a mechanical calculator that combines the complexity of a steamship engine and the precision craftsmanship of a fine pocket watch. It first appeared in 1948, and for the next two decades—until it was displaced by the electronic calculator—it was the best portable calculating machine on the planet. And its story is all the more compelling in light of the extraordinary circumstances in which it was invented.

The idea of the Curta came to its Austrian-born inventor in the darkness of the Buchenwald concentration camp.

Nintendo's Family Computer, or Famicom, turns 30 today! (credit: Evan-Amos)

Update, December 9, 2021: Masayuki Uemura, the lead architect for both the Famicom and Super Famicom, passed away on December 6th at the age of 78. Uemura worked at Nintendo from 1971 to 2004 and oversaw notable accessories like the Famicom Disk System and the Super Famicom's Satellaview modem accessory.

In honor of Uemmura's career and his lasting impact on the game industry, we're republishing this 2013 piece we ran on the Famicom's 30th birthday, diving deep into the technical details of the system and exploring its history and legacy.

We're right on the cusp of another generation of game consoles, and whether you're an Xbox One fanperson or a PlayStation 4 zealot, you probably know what's coming if you've been through a few of these cycles. The systems will launch in time for the holidays, each will have one or two decent launch titles, there will be perhaps a year or two when the new console and the old console coexist on store shelves, and then the "next generation" becomes the current generation—until we do it all again a few years from now. For gamers born in or after the 1980s, this cycle has remained familiar even as old console makers have bowed out (Sega, Atari) and new ones have taken their place (Sony, Microsoft).

It wasn't always this way.

Enlarge / Theranos founder and former CEO Elizabeth Holmes and her partner, Billy Evans, right, leave the Robert F. Peckham Federal Building on November 23, 2021, in San Jose, Calif. (credit: Ethan Swope/Getty Images)

Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes took one last shot at ex-boyfriend Ramesh “Sunny” Balwani yesterday, attempting to reinforce her defense’s strategy of blaming the former COO.

Once Holmes was finished, the defense rested. It was a surprise move. The other defense witnesses—a former Theranos board member who joined the company in 2016 and a paralegal who provided a summary of the defense’s view of the case—were relatively small players. Many people had expected that Mindy Mechanic, an expert on intimate partner violence, would help the defense contextualize Holmes’ testimony about Balwani’s allegedly abusive and controlling behavior.

But the defense never called Mechanic, and at the end of the session, assistant US attorney Robert Leach told Judge Edward Davila that the government would be filing a motion asking the court to strike Holmes’ testimony relating to Balwani’s alleged abusive behavior. Why? The defense didn’t call an expert to explain the psychological effects the alleged abuse had on Holmes, making certain events irrelevant to the case.

Enlarge (credit: Getty | Noam Galai)

Update 12/9/2021, 2:55 pm ET: The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has signed off on the FDA's authorization and now recommends booster doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine for teens ages 16 and 17. This final step now means that boosting in this group can begin nationwide.

"Although we don’t have all the answers on the omicron variant, initial data suggests that COVID-19 boosters help broaden and strengthen the protection against Omicron and other variants," CDC Director Rochelle Walensky said in a statement. "We know that COVID-19 vaccines are safe and effective, and I strongly encourage adolescents ages 16 and 17 to get their booster if they are at least six months post their initial Pfizer vaccination series."

Original Story, 12/9/2021, 12:21pm ET: The Food and Drug Administration on Thursday authorized the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine for use as a single booster dose in teens ages 16 and 17.