Month: April 2025

Roku, owner of one of the most popular connected TV operating systems in the country, walks a fine line when it comes to advertising. Roku's OS lives on low-priced smart TVs, streaming sticks, and projectors. To make up the losses from cheaply priced hardware, Roku is dependent on selling advertisements throughout its OS, including screensavers and its home screen.

That business model has pushed Roku to experiment with new ways of showing ads that test users’ tolerance. The company claims that it doesn't want ads on its platform to be considered intrusive, but there are reasons to be skeptical about Roku's pledge.

Non-“interruptive” ads

In an interview with The Verge this week, Jordan Rost, Roku’s head of ad marketing, emphasized that Roku tries to only deliver ads that don't interrupt viewers.

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Russian military personnel are being targeted with recently discovered Android malware that steals their contacts and tracks their location.

The malware is hidden inside a modified app for Alpine Quest mapping software, which is used by, among others, hunters, athletes, and Russian personnel stationed in the war zone in Ukraine. The app displays various topographical maps for use online and offline. The trojanized Alpine Quest app is being pushed on a dedicated Telegram channel and in unofficial Android app repositories. The chief selling point of the trojanized app is that it provides a free version of Alpine Quest Pro, which is usually available only to paying users.

Looks like the real thing

The malicious module is named Android.Spy.1292.origin. In a blog post, researchers at Russia-based security firm Dr.Web wrote:

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Director of the National Science Foundation Sethuraman Panchanathan abruptly resigned Thursday, Science Magazine first reported.

Panchanathan, who goes by Panch, did not cite a reason for his departure, which comes as 16 months are left in his six-year term. However, like most other federal agencies, the scientific funding agency is awash in turmoil due to the Trump administration. Specifically, the NSF is facing a 55-percent cut to its $9 billion annual budget in the next fiscal year, as well as a mass layoff of half of its 1,700-person staff, according to Science.

Earlier this month, the NSF announced that it would be canceling active grants totaling up to $1 billion in scientific research funding. The reason given was that the research the grants funded was no longer a priority for the agency. They appear to include research focused on environmental justice, the spread of misinformation, and fostering diversity in the scientific community. The New York Times reported earlier this week that it had tallied more than 400 active NSF grants that have been terminated so far.

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The MINISFORUM G1 Pro is about the size and shape of a game console, but it’s a full-fledged desktop computer with an AMD Ryzen 9 8945HX Dragon Range processor and an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5060 discrete GPU. While AMD’s Dragon Range processors are ostensibly mobile chips designed for gaming laptops, the computer’s graphics card is a […]

The post MINISFORUM G1 Pro is a console-sized desktop PC with Ryzen 9 8945HX and RTX 5060 appeared first on Liliputing.

Wer als gesetzlich Versicherter einen Arzttermin sucht, bekommt auch viele zahlungspflichtige Behandlungen angezeigt. Verdient Doctolib daran? (VZBV, Datenschutz)

The Amazon Book Sale runs form April 23 through April 28 with discounts on bokos, eBooks, audiobooks, and subscriptions. Amazon is also offering a rare discount on the Kindle Colorsoft, its first eReader with an E Ink color display…. although it’s still not exactly cheap: it’s selling for $225 after a $55 discount. Meanwhile Humble […]

The post Daily Deals (4-24-2025) appeared first on Liliputing.

We think of moths and butterflies as relatively harmless creatures, but there are certain species with a darker side—for example, carnivorous caterpillars that eat aphids, butterflies that drink alligator tears, or "vampire" moths that feed on livestock blood. Add to that list the newly discovered "bone collector" caterpillar, which conducts daring raids on spider webs for sustenance, camouflaging itself in the body parts of already-consumed insects to avoid being eaten. Not only that, but according to a new paper published in the journal Science, the caterpillars can tailor those insect parts, nibbling away at any excess material to ensure a proper fit.

Daniel Rubinoff, an entomologist at the University of Hawaii, Manoa, studies a genus of moths found in Hawaii called Hyposcoma, or as he has dubbed their larval form, "Hawaiian Fancy Case" caterpillars, so named because they spin their own casings, adding to them as they grow, although the materials used can vary widely.  There are now more than 600 species within this genus, many of them not yet officially described, so it was a rich research area to explore.

The discovery of the bone collector species was serendipitous. "You never forget your first bone collector," Rubinoff told Ars. His team was on Oa'hu looking for Hyposcoma when they came across a little tree hollow and spotted something at the bottom that at first glance just looked like "a bag of bug bits." The caterpillar then stuck its head out, and the researchers realized it was a new kind of case. Rubinoff assumed that the spider web also found in the tree hollow was a coincidence; the caterpillar just used the materials readily available in the tree hollow to make its fancy case.

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Motorola has been offering flip-phones with foldable OLED displays under the Razr brand for the past few years, and this year the company is expanding the lineup to include three models instead of two. The Motorola Razr (2025) and Motorola Razr+ (2025) are modest updates over last year’s models, while the new Motorola Razr Ultra (2025) brings true […]

The post Motorola Razr, Razr+ and Razr Ultra (2025) coming in May for $700 and up appeared first on Liliputing.

Freie Meinungsäußerung und Forschunsgfreiheit werden in den USA eingeschränkt. Spitzenforscher wollen da weg. (Studium, Politik)

Der lokale Netzbetreiber Ewe Tel und der MVNO Freenet wollen sich in die bestehenden Mobilfunknetze einklagen. Ohne Diensteanbieterverpflichtung kein Wettbewerb, hat es geheißen. (EWE-Tel, Freenet)