77300675
submission
jfruh writes:
Etsy has long been the home for artisans who want a storefront for their cute, handmade items like jewelry and clothes. But as the company has expanded, it's allowed sellers to put partially factory-made items into their inventory. Now they're getting competition from an unlikely place: Amazon, whose new "Handmade At Amazon" store only sells hand-crafted items.
77285953
submission
itwbennett writes:
Peter Smith writes that he 'had more or less written off the Nook when Barnes & Noble farmed hardware duties out to Samsung.' But now that Amazon is aiming for the low end with its downgraded Fire tablet line, Barnes & Noble has an opportunity to 'carve out a niche on the higher end of things,' says Smith. And so it has been quietly moving in that direction. Yesterday, Venture Beat wrote about the newly (and stealthily) launched $250 Samsung Galaxy Tab E Nook. As Smith notes, 'the specs for this new tablet aren't anything special,' which might explain the stealthy launch, except that another, pricier Nook tablet apparently came out a month ago (again, according to VentureBeat), the Samsung Galaxy Tab S2 Nook.
77283261
submission
itwbennett writes:
Apple is splitting the manufacture of the A9 processor for its iPhone 6S between TSMC (~60%) and rival Samsung (~40%) — 'and they are not created equal', writes Andy Patrizio. For starters, Chipworks noted that Samsung uses 14nm while TSMC uses 16nm. And a Reddit user posted tests of a pair of 6S Plus phones and found the TSMC chip had eight hours of battery life vs. six hours for the Samsung. Meanwhile, benchmark tests from the folks at MyDriver (if Mr. Patrizio's efforts with Google Translate got it right) also found that the Samsung chip is a bigger drain on the phone's battery, while the TSMC chip is slightly faster and runs a bit cooler. So how do you know which chip you got? There's an app for that.
77210017
submission
jfruh writes:
The average price of a 4GB DDR3 memory DIMM at the moment $18.50 — a price that silicon tech blogger Andy Patrizio calls "just crazy." Why is it so cheap? The memory business tends to go in boom and bust cycles, but the free availability of Windows 10 means that fewer people are upgrading their PCs, reducing RAM demand — and prices might stay low for another two years.
77152777
submission
jfruh writes:
More and more research is suggesting that it isn't safe to text or even talk on our phones hands-free while driving, but one brave car company is pushing full-speed in the other direction. Nissan has created a concept car in which every surface, including the entire dashboard and even the seats, is a display device. The car is the result of "extensive" surveys with the younger generation that came to the conclusion that, according to Nissan, young people "feel that time spent in a car should be time for connecting and sharing experiences with friends."
76877877
submission
jfruh writes:
Didi Kuaidi is China's biggest native ride-sharing app, and it's using its cash hoard to build an alliance and global giant Uber. On the heels of a $100 million investment in Lyft, the company is also investing in Ola, India's biggest entry in the market. The deals have been described as involving sharing technology and market knowledge.
76877693
submission
jfruh writes:
Nearly 18 million people were victims of identity theft in the U.S. last year — an alarmingly high number that nevertheless has held steady for the last several years. Victims spanned racial groups and income levels, and about 40% had their credit card or bank accounts compromomised.
76872191
submission
itwbennett writes:
Following agreements signed by the EU with South Korea in June 2014 and with Japan in May 2015, the EU and China 'have agreed to agree by the end of the year on a working definition for 5G,' reports Peter Sayer. 'About the only point of agreement so far is that 5G is what we'll all be building or buying after 4G, so any consensus between the EU and China could be significant,' says Sayer.
76765109
submission
itwbennett writes:
The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has jumped through all the necessary hoops to become a certificate authority and soon will begin offering trusted SSL certificates to the public, for free. The official certificate authority is called Let's Encrypt and it just issued its first certificate 10 days ago, but it has not yet been added as a trusted authority. Let's Encrypt has set a public availability date of November 14th 2015, at which time their root certificate will have been cross-signed and the general public will be able to obtain free, trusted certificates.
76718745
submission
jfruh writes:
IBM's Jeopardy-winning supercomputer Watson is now suite of cloud-based services that developers can use to add cognitive capabilities to applications, and one of its powers is visual analysis. Visual Insights analyzes images and videos posted to services like Twitter, Facebook and Instagram, then looks for patterns and trends in what people have been posting. Watson turns what it gleans into structured data, making it easier to load into a database and act upon — which is clearly appealing to marketers and just as clearly carries disturbing privacy implications.
76717119
submission
itwbennett writes:
Researchers have been demonstrating attacks against printers for years. Now, Hewlett-Packard has started building defenses directly into its printers' firmware instead of just patching individual vulnerabilities. The company's new M506, M527 and M577 series of LaserJet Enterprise printers, set to go on sale in October and November, will have built-in detection for unauthorized BIOS and firmware modifications.
76578881
submission
jfruh writes:
Nigel Wilson of Nottingham was quite a drone enthusiast: he flew a drone over a Champions League soccer match low enough to startle police horses, and at other times flew drones over iPro Stadium in Derby, the Emirates Stadium in north London, and near the Houses of Parliament, Buckingham Palace, the HMS Belfast and the Shard tower in London. He's been convicted under the Air Navigation Order 2009 and fined £1,800.
76403935
submission
itwbennett writes:
After just under 8 years at Canonical where he was Community Manager of Ubuntu, Jono Bacon left in search of a new challenge. Now, a year and a half into his tenure at the XPRIZE Foundation as Senior Director of Community, Bacon reflects on the changing nature of community and how he is working to bring the 'anybody can play a role in a bigger picture' aspect of open source to 'solve the grand challenges facing humanity.'
76390121
submission
jfruh writes:
Harm de Vries, a post-doctoral researcher at the Université de Montréal, is trying to build an algorithm that will sort through pictures on Tinder and OKCupid and pick out women he'll find attractive. His program, built using deep learning techniques, has about a 68 percent success rate, which isn't that bad. (A human friend to whom de Vries described his preferences managed 76 percent.)
76356963
submission
itwbennett writes:
Researchers from Mandiant have detected a real-world attack that has installed rogue firmware on Cisco business routers in four countries. The router implant, dubbed SYNful Knock, implements a backdoor password for privileged Telnet and console access and also listens for commands contained in specifically crafted TCP SYN packets — hence the name SYNful Knock. In the cases investigated by Mandiant the SYNful Knock implant was not deployed through a vulnerability, but most likely through default or stolen administrative credentials.
