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- Colorado citizens queue for a licence to hunt drones
- Xbox 360 has three years left to live
- Nvidia shows off uses of a Tegra 4 SoC
- Microsoft's picture passwords unsafe
- FBI makes Syrian Electronic Army a public enemy
- Politicians, celebrities increasingly gaming search results
| Colorado citizens queue for a licence to hunt drones Posted: 06 Sep 2013 05:41 AM PDT What became as a tongue in cheek internet protest against the domestic use of drones by the US government has backfired. In June, a resident of Deer Trail, Colorado proposed a bylaw that would offer $25 licences to hunt and shoot down government drones if they flew within 1,000 feet above private property. According to the Denver Post, the idea actually took off and the town's clerk Kim Oldfield stopped counting the flood of requests for the licences two weeks ago when the tally of personal checks made out to the town hit 983. If the town had been banking the licence money it would have made $19,006. Hunters from all over the state were applying for a licence and seemed keen to come to the town to try and bag them a drone. Oldfield went on to say she returned as many of the checks as she could before the work became too silly. "I'm still getting the letters," she said. "I'm just throwing them in a big pile." The town's board had a chance to approve the licence ordinance last month but deadlocked 3-3. The Federal Aviation Administration has hit out at the Deer Trail idea. In July it said anyone who fire guns at drones is endangering the public and property and could be prosecuted or fined. It pointed out that a drone "hit by gunfire could crash, causing damage to persons or property on the ground, or it could collide with other objects in the air". |
| Xbox 360 has three years left to live Posted: 06 Sep 2013 04:38 AM PDT Xbox 360 users who do not upgrade to the Xbox One will find their console is totally unsafe and will not be supported in three years. Microsoft has announced that it will stop supporting the console in three years. Although three years is a fairly decent amount of time at the end of a console's life cycle, the 360 is still on the market and has not been replaced quite yet. Marketing executive Yusuf Mehdi says Microsoft is going to release 100 games for the aging console in the next three years and he promised that the platform will be supported through at least 2016, though in effect this is likely to mean until 2016. Talking at the Citi Global Technology Conference, Mehdi said that the XBox 360 platform lasted for seven to eight years and it's going to go for another three years. He added that it is still incredibly profitable. According to Expert Reviews, Mehdi insisted that the arrival of the Xbox One is not a death knell for the Xbox 360 and Microsoft will continue to invest in it. Mehdi said that it would not be as if the day the Xbox One is shipped, a customer's Xbox 360 won't work. The Xbox One will be in the shops in November. |
| Nvidia shows off uses of a Tegra 4 SoC Posted: 06 Sep 2013 03:59 AM PDT Nvidia has been busy at Berlin's IFA Consumer Electronics Show trying to convince the world+dog that its Tegra 4 SoC should get a life away from its own Shield gaming handheld. It was using Asus's Tegra 4-powered Transformer Pad TF701T just and Xiaomi's 5-inch Mi3 Android smartphone as a case in point. The new Mi3 has a 5-inch IPS display with a full HD 1080p resolution, 2GB of RAM, 64GB of on-board storage and a 13MP camera. It then uses the Tegra 4, with a quad-core ARM Cortex-A15 CPU and 72 GeForce GPU it had some positive reviews from those who saw it at the Berlin show. The device reportedly supports full 4K HD video playback which is just what you need from a five inch screen. Nvida has been saying that the Mi3 will retail for the equivalent of $327 for an unlocked phone but will not be available in the US. However, Sony is planning a similar offering in the US so the tech will get out there eventually. Still with 64GB of storage, a 5-inch display and one the fastest ARM-based SoCs it is certainly better than anything else that is on the market for that price. It is not as if Nvidia is getting everything its own way. There will be a version of the MiPhone 3 with a Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 clocked at 2.3GHz, whereas the Tegra 4 version will be clocked at 1.8GHz. The new ASUS Transformer Pad features a 10.1-inch high-performance IGZO-TFT display with reduced energy consumption and a very wide color gamut. The 2560 x 1600 WQXGA resolution gives an extraordinarily sharp image, while IPS (In-Plane Switching) technology ensures accurate color reproduction, wide 178-degree viewing angles and excellent daylight visibility. Powered by an Tegra 4 processor with a quad-core ARM Cortex-A15 CPU and a 72-core GeForce GPU, the new ASUS Transformer Pad is designed for HD movies and the Android games. Miracast wi-fi video streaming means the new ASUS Transformer Pad can mirror its display to a compatible HDTV for big-screen entertainment without cables, while a wired HDMI connection can drive a 4K Ultra HD display for truly immersive enjoyment. The machine has a front 1.2-megapixel camera for video chat and a rear 5-megapixel camera that captures full-resolution photos while shooting simultaneous 1080p Full HD video. An ASUS press statement said that the Transformer Pad is perfect for on-the-go entertainment, thanks to a metallic design that's just 8.9mm thick and weighs 585g. The Transformer Pad lasts for two full working days between charges. It also comes with Miracast wi-fi video streaming which means the Transformer Pad can mirror its display to a compatible HDTV for big-screen entertainment without cables, while a wired HDMI connection can drive a 4K Ultra HD display. The show seems to indicate that Nvidia does have a few clear customers, but at the moment the Tegra 4 is still making baby steps. |
| Microsoft's picture passwords unsafe Posted: 06 Sep 2013 03:45 AM PDT Microsoft has been touting picture passwords as the next top trend in security, but researchers have discovered that these are not as difficult to crack as the company thinks. Microsoft offered a Picture Gesture Authentication (PGA) system on Windows 8 and many thought it was a wizard idea. But a paper issued to the USENIX Security Conference has proved that some setups are easier to crack than others. The paper, penned by Arizona State University, Delaware State University and GFS Technology researchers with the catchy title "On the Security of Picture Gesture Authentication", said that unique picture password gestures may not be so unique. Using a picture of a person and then three taps as your gestures - with one of them on the eyes - is equivalent of making your text password "password". The researchers also developed an attack framework and attack models which can take out PGA. All you have to do is work out a user's password selection process to crack a considerable portion of collected picture passwords under different settings. One of the problems is that most people choose to upload one of their own photos to setup their picture gesture password, instead of using one that Microsoft provides. Obviously there is a relationship between background pictures and a user's identity, personality or interests with 60.3 percent of them selecting areas on an image where "special objects" are located. Eyes are the most frequently chosen point of interest, followed by nose, hand or finger, jaw and face. While some users chose a landscape photo because it "usually doesn't have any information about who you are," others selected computer games posters or cartoons, and the researchers said that doesn't necessarily protect your privacy. |
| FBI makes Syrian Electronic Army a public enemy Posted: 06 Sep 2013 02:58 AM PDT The FBI has decided that the Syrian Electronic Army is really a criminal organisation and has listed it on its wanted posters. It's an unusual move because the SEA is seen not as a hacker organisation, like LulzSec, but as a division of the Syrian army. It is loyal to Syrian president Bashar al-Assad if not directly under military control. This means the FBI seems to be taking on another country's military, something that you would expect the Pentagon to be more interested in doing. Last week the SEA went too far and tinkered with the New York Times, which meant that Apple fanboys had no ready source of press releases from their favourite company. The SEA also hit the Twitter feed of Associated Press, which led to a temporary stock market crash. Normally acting as a paid police force for Big Content, the FBI Cyber Division unit has officially added the pro-Assad hacker collective to its wanted list. The FBI issued an advisory that included information about the SEA, its capabilities, and some of its more heinous attacks. The advisory warns networks to be on the lookout for attacks, and that anyone found to be aiding the SEA will be seen as terrorists actively aiding attacks against US websites. |
| Politicians, celebrities increasingly gaming search results Posted: 05 Sep 2013 07:10 AM PDT Politicians and celebrities are increasingly turning to reputation management companies to push out unwanted search results that reflect on them in a negative way. The spokesperson said the company mainly works on search engines to alter the visibility of search, rather than affecting actual content. |
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