Deals of the Day (7-21-2016)

Deals of the Day (7-21-2016)

The Acer Chromebook R11 is one of the first laptops to feature support for Android apps and the Google Play Store.  New models typically sell for around $280, although you can currently pick up a version of the 11.6 inch convertible notebook with 2GB of RAM and 32GB of storage from Walmart for $259.

But right now Acer is offering an even better deal if you don’t mind buying refurbished products. The manufacturer is selling a recertified Acer Chromebook R11 with 4GB of RAM, 16GB of storage, and a black case for $200.

Continue reading Deals of the Day (7-21-2016) at Liliputing.

Deals of the Day (7-21-2016)

The Acer Chromebook R11 is one of the first laptops to feature support for Android apps and the Google Play Store.  New models typically sell for around $280, although you can currently pick up a version of the 11.6 inch convertible notebook with 2GB of RAM and 32GB of storage from Walmart for $259.

But right now Acer is offering an even better deal if you don’t mind buying refurbished products. The manufacturer is selling a recertified Acer Chromebook R11 with 4GB of RAM, 16GB of storage, and a black case for $200.

Continue reading Deals of the Day (7-21-2016) at Liliputing.

New brain map more than doubles charted regions of the human noggin

Mix of structure, function, and connectivity data plots cerebral cortex territory.

(credit: Nature Video/Matthew F. Glasser, David C. Van Essen)

Despite the advances of modern medicine, the wrinkled, twisted expanse of the human noodle has been mostly an uncharted frontier, with sparse territories and regions staked off so far. In the past, scientists have merely cordoned off sections based on a single type of brain feature, such as cell structures, brain topography, or identified functions. But now, in a comprehensive analysis of 210 healthy brains published Wednesday in Nature, researchers have merged such data sets and drawn an inclusive map of the mind's provinces.

The newly inked atlas, hatched from the National Institutes of Health’s Human Connectome Project, more than doubles the identified realms of the human brain’s outer shell, the cerebral cortex. This is the dominant part of the human brain, responsible for our minds’ higher functions, such as language, consciousness, information processing, and problem solving. The map depicts 360 cortex areas or 180 symmetrical, paired regions in each hemisphere, of which 83 were known and 97 are new.

While the new map is still a first draft, to be adjusted and honed with more research, the study's authors are hopeful that the cerebral sketch may quicken the pace toward understanding how the mind’s hardware works. Plus, it may provide a guide for neurosurgeons’ scalpels and more detail for researchers examining how the primate brain has evolved.

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Gadget alerts you to smartphone snooping, designed by Edward Snowden and bunnie Huang

Gadget alerts you to smartphone snooping, designed by Edward Snowden and bunnie Huang

NSA whistleblower and privacy activist Edward Snowden has partnered with hardware hacker bunnie Huang to develop a tool that lets you know if your smartphone may be spying on you (or rather, assisting someone else to spy on you).

The two have published a paper about a system which they describe as a tool for “countering lawful abuses of digital surveillance.” In other words, it’s a design for smartphone case that monitors your phone’s wireless activity and could let you know if government agencies are spying on you.

Continue reading Gadget alerts you to smartphone snooping, designed by Edward Snowden and bunnie Huang at Liliputing.

Gadget alerts you to smartphone snooping, designed by Edward Snowden and bunnie Huang

NSA whistleblower and privacy activist Edward Snowden has partnered with hardware hacker bunnie Huang to develop a tool that lets you know if your smartphone may be spying on you (or rather, assisting someone else to spy on you).

The two have published a paper about a system which they describe as a tool for “countering lawful abuses of digital surveillance.” In other words, it’s a design for smartphone case that monitors your phone’s wireless activity and could let you know if government agencies are spying on you.

Continue reading Gadget alerts you to smartphone snooping, designed by Edward Snowden and bunnie Huang at Liliputing.

Verizon to disconnect unlimited data customers who use over 100GB/month

Customers using more than 100GB must move to limited data plans by August 31.

(credit: Mike Mozart)

Verizon Wireless customers who have held on to unlimited data plans and use significantly more than 100GB a month will be disconnected from the network on August 31 unless they agree to move to limited data packages that require payment of overage fees.

Verizon stopped offering unlimited data to new smartphone customers a few years ago, but some customers have been able to hang on to the old plans instead of switching to ones with monthly data limits. Verizon has tried to convert the holdouts by raising the price $20 a month and occasionally throttling heavy users but stopped that practice after net neutrality rules took effect. Now Verizon is implementing a formal policy for disconnecting the heaviest users.

The news was reported by Droid Life yesterday, and Verizon confirmed the changes to Ars this morning.

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Solarmovie Disappears Following KAT Shutdown

Following the news that KickassTorrents (KAT) has been shut down and its alleged owner arrested, another big site has disappeared from the Internet. Popular streaming portal Solarmovie went offline overnight without explanation and it seems possible that connections to KAT are to blame.

Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and ANONYMOUS VPN services.

solarmovieIn the most dramatic turn of events since the raid of The Pirate Bay in December 2014, KickassTorrents went dark yesterday.

Previously the world’s largest torrent site, KAT shut down following the arrest of its alleged founder. Artem Vaulin, a 30-year-old from Ukraine, was arrested in Poland after his entire operation had been well and truly compromised by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).

When large sites are raided it is common for other sites in a similar niche to consider their positions. This phenomenon was illustrated perfectly when the 2012 raids on Megaupload resulted in sites such as BTjunkie taking the decision to shut down.

At this point, most other torrent sites seem fairly stable but there appears to have been at least one ‘pirate’ casualty following yesterday’s drama.

For many years, Solarmovie has been one of the most visible and visited ‘pirate’ streaming portals. Like many others, the site has had its fair share of domain issues, starting out at .COM and more recently ending up at .PH. However, sometime during the past few hours, Solarmovie disappeared.

solar-large

No official announcement concerning the site’s fate has been made but it’s clear from the criminal complaint filed against KickassTorrents that Artem Vaulin had close connections to Solarmovie.

As reported yesterday, the Department of Homeland Security obtained a copy of KickassTorrents’ servers from its Canadian host and also gained access to the site’s servers in Chicago. While conducting his inquiries, the Special Agent handling the case spotted an email address for the person responsible for renting KAT’s servers.

Further investigation of Vaulin’s Apple email account showed the Ukrainian corresponding with this person back in 2010.

“The subject of the email was ‘US Server’ and stated: ‘Hello, here is access to the new server’ followed by a private and public IP address located in Washington DC, along with the user name ‘root’ and a password,” the complaint reveals.

Perhaps tellingly, the IP address provided by this individual to Vaulin was found to have hosted Solarmovie.com from August 2010 through to April 2011. Furthermore, up until just last month, the IP address was just one away from an IP address used to host KickassTorrents.

“As of on or about June 27, 2016, one of the IP addresses hosting solarmovie.ph was one IP address away (185.47.10.11) from an IP address that was being used to host KAT (185.47.10.12 and 185.47.10.13),” the complaint adds.

While none of the above is proof alone that Vaulin was, for example, the owner of Solarmovie, it’s clear that at some point he at least had some connections with the site or its operator.

On the other hand, in torrent and streaming circles it’s common for people to use services already being used by others they know and trust, so that might provide an explanation for the recent IP address proximity.

In any event, last night’s shutdown of Solarmovie probably indicates that the heat in the kitchen has become just a little too much. Expect more fallout in the days to come.

Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and ANONYMOUS VPN services.

Elite: Dangerous players inch closer to solving game’s big mystery

Secret codes, unknown objects, spooky signals might be precursor to alien invasion.

Enlarge (credit: /u/TheZ1mb1nator)

Space flight sim Elite: Dangerous has been officially available on PC for about 19 months (and on Xbox One for about nine), but players have still explored only a vanishingly small fraction of the game’s 400,000,000 suns. Frontier Developments has repeatedly said that there are plenty of strange things out in the galaxy that no one has yet found—though one of those mysteries might soon be coming to a head.

Strange objects called "unknown artifacts" have been showing up in the game for months, all appearing as a rough sphere a bit more than 100 light years in diameter surrounding a particular star system: Merope. The artifacts would transmit strange messages to ships that got close enough to scan them. Sleuthy players eventually decoded the signals, revealing them to be encoded wireframe images of the players’ ships. The unknown artifacts also seemed to cause problems when collected by players—shutting down systems and even disabling entire space stations if sold on those stations’ black markets.

Call of the wild

Now, a second class of unknown objects, called "unknown probes," have recently been spotted. These appear to point at a particular planet in the Merope system, Merope 5C. Further, the probes exhibit some remarkable behavior when players scan them with system discovery scanners:

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Antrag: Drei Jahre Mindesthaltbarkeit für Smartphones und IT

Verbraucherexperten von der Linken, der SPD und den Grünen wollen Mindestnutzungszeiten für Elektronik. Drei Jahre sollen Geräte mindestens funktionieren. Auch das Umweltbundesamt hatte eine Forderung zu Elektronikschrott und geplanter Obsoleszenz eingereicht. (Elektronikschrott, Internet)

Verbraucherexperten von der Linken, der SPD und den Grünen wollen Mindestnutzungszeiten für Elektronik. Drei Jahre sollen Geräte mindestens funktionieren. Auch das Umweltbundesamt hatte eine Forderung zu Elektronikschrott und geplanter Obsoleszenz eingereicht. (Elektronikschrott, Internet)

Andromium’s $99 Superbook turns your Android phone into a laptop (crowdfunding)

Andromium’s $99 Superbook turns your Android phone into a laptop (crowdfunding)

Smartphones have changed the way the world gets online, by letting you put a tiny, touchscreen computer in your pocket or handbag. But sometimes it’s still nice to have a larger screen, a full-sized keyboard, and a mouse or touchpad.

The Superbook is a smartphone accessory that gives you all those things. It looks like a laptop, but all the processing power and software comes from your phone.

Plug your Android smartphone into the Superbook with a USB cable and you can interact with your Android apps in a notebook-like environment.

Continue reading Andromium’s $99 Superbook turns your Android phone into a laptop (crowdfunding) at Liliputing.

Andromium’s $99 Superbook turns your Android phone into a laptop (crowdfunding)

Smartphones have changed the way the world gets online, by letting you put a tiny, touchscreen computer in your pocket or handbag. But sometimes it’s still nice to have a larger screen, a full-sized keyboard, and a mouse or touchpad.

The Superbook is a smartphone accessory that gives you all those things. It looks like a laptop, but all the processing power and software comes from your phone.

Plug your Android smartphone into the Superbook with a USB cable and you can interact with your Android apps in a notebook-like environment.

Continue reading Andromium’s $99 Superbook turns your Android phone into a laptop (crowdfunding) at Liliputing.

Searching the cosmos from under the ice of Antarctica

Antarctic neutrino detector could find the origins of cosmic rays, dark matter.

The building that houses the IceCube servers. (credit: USAP.gov)

Neutrinos have precious little mass and no charge, meaning the usual ways of accelerating particles won't work on them. Yet something, somewhere out in space pushed one to energies a thousand times higher than we can reach in the Large Hadron Collider. And we only know that because we finally built a detector that could spot high-energy neutrinos when they travel through the Earth.

In a recent paper in the journal Nature Physics, Francis Halzen, the principal investigator for the IceCube detector, discussed current efforts to learn about the Universe using neutrinos. As it turns out, neutrinos are surprisingly informative about the origins of cosmic rays and potentially about dark matter as well.

Neutrinos are a fantastic tool for astronomy. Their properties—no charge and very little mass—mean that they can arrive here on Earth unobstructed by almost anything in between their source and Earth. Neutrinos generated inside the Sun, for instance, can travel right out far faster than photons, which spend time interacting with the Sun's matter.

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