Tuesday, August 18, 2015

IT News Head Lines (Engadget) 19/08/2015





Humanoid bot goes for a walk in the woods, terrifies nature on the way

Boston Dynamics' six-foot humanoid bot Atlas is breaking out of the lab... and going for walkies in nearby forests. After demonstrating that its four-legged dog robot can now open doors courtesy of a new limb, the Google-owned robot company showed h...

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Next month Comcast will turn off the Xbox 360 app Netflix hated


When it launched in 2012, Comcast's Xfinity Xbox 360 app became a lightning rod for controversy. That's because to some (like Netflix CEO Reed Hastings) it was a symbol of the cable giant's abuse of network neutrality by streaming video that didn't...

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Darkode hacker pleads guilty to spreading Facebook malware


One of the 12 people charged when the Darkode cybercrime forum was seized has pled guilty and will be sentenced on November 23rd. According to Reuters, Eric Crocker aka Phastman from Birmingham, New York, has admitted that he and other hackers from...

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Samsung's new SmartThings home automation Hub ships next month


Samsung quickly announced a second generation of SmartThings home automation hardware after acquiring the tech for $200 million last year... and then just as quickly delayed their release in March. Fortunately, there's good news: the new Hub and se...

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Hack Amazon's Dash buttons to do things other than buying stuff


Amazon's Dash buttons are tiny adhesive physical triggers that can order for you, through the magic of WiFi, anything you need to stock up on. But that's not the limits of their power, if you're willing to tinker with them. Ted Benson, (who works a...

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NASA's LADEE confirms the moon's atmosphere has neon


NASA's LADEE ran out of fuel and crashed into the lunar surface in 2014, but not before it collected the data needed to answer some decades-old questions about the moon. One of those is confirming that our natural satellite's atmosphere contains ne...

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Google builds a standalone Hangouts website


Google has built Hangouts its own website, but it's not spinning it out of Gmail completely like the company did with several properties to form its new parent corporation. It's just one of the (many, many) ways to access the messaging service, in...

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FTC names its $25,000 counter-robocall contest winner


Despite being banned by the Federal Trade Commission, prerecorded robocalls are still a common hassle for Americans. That could soon change now that the FTC has announced the winner of its $25,000 Robocalls: Humanity Strikes Back contest. The winni...

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GE's robotic inspector dives in nuclear containment vessels


Normally when workers at the Edwin Irby Hatch Power Plant in Georgia want to inspect welds on the water-filled containment tank that houses the plant's nuclear fuel, they have stick pole-mounted inspection cameras in there while potentially exposin...

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Phone network security flaw lets anyone bug your calls


Remember that vulnerability in the SS7 inter-carrier network that lets hackers and spies track your cellphone virtually anywhere in the world? It's worse than you might have thought. Researchers speaking to Australia's 60 Minutes have demonstrate...

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Google Photos lets you tell it when your pictures were taken


Google just announced that it has pushed live a host of user-requested features for its Photos service. These include the ability to edit an image's timestamp, rearrange the image order in albums, change an album's cover photo and remove inaccurate...

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This is the desk lamp of your (robotic) dreams


It's back-to-school season. For some of you, this means needing a fancy new lamp for your home or dorm room desk. Unfortunately whatever Walmart, Amazon or IKEA may have in stock won't come anywhere close, both in terms of looks or functionality, t...

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What's on your HDTV: 'Fear the Walking Dead', 'Punk'd' and 'Zombi'


This week a spinoff for AMC's popular The Walking Dead series is premiering, along with the very familiar Zombi game for PC, PS4 and Xbox One. Previously seen on the Wii U as Zombi U, it's (appropriately) making a return on new platforms, with some...

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Windows 10 won't run old games with dodgy copy protection


Do you recall the bad old days of PC games in the mid-2000s, when titles were loaded with copy protection that was not only a hassle, but horribly insecure? Well, Microsoft does -- and that could be a problem if you're trying to run some of those v...

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Google Maps wants to include more of your photos


Remember Views, Google's repository for geotagged Photo Spheres and panoramas? Honestly, many of us around the Engadget compound had forgotten about it too. Mountain View has decided that rather than hide away these features on some separate site t...

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The most dangerous voting machines in America are retired


After more than a decade of use and dozens of reported security problems, the Virginia Board of Elections voted to decommission the last of the 3,000 WINVote touchscreen voting machines being used in the state. The machines have experienced issues...

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The 17 best laptops you can buy today


Our last buyer's guide update had a pretty solid list of laptops, so if it ain't broke, don't fix it, right? We do have a couple of new additions to spice things up, however. We felt compelled to add the agile ASUS Chromebook Flip, which serves up...

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Modular mobile phone Project Ara is delayed until 2016


The much-anticipated Google-backed modular phone from Project Ara was supposed to make its debut in Puerto Rico later this year. However, the device won't be coming until at least 2016, thanks to an unexpectedly long prototyping phase, and likely w...

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Developer reveals Mac security hole without telling Apple


Typically, coders and researchers who discover security vulnerabilities in software will tell the companies involved before posting their findings -- it's a courtesy to make sure that those holes are patched before attackers can use them. Don't tel...

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IBM wires up 'neuromorphic' chips like a rodent's brain


IBM has been working with DARPA's Systems of Neuromorphic Adaptive Plastic Scalable Electronics (SyNAPSE) program since 2008 to develop computing systems that work less like conventional computers and more like the neurons inside your brain. After...

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This drone can steal data while hovering above your office


It's the job of a security researcher to figure out how the company they are working for could be compromised. Apparently that now means using a drone sniff out vulnerabilities a few dozen feet off the ground. The Aerial Assault drone houses a rasp...

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Samsung imagines Earth-wide internet through 4,600 satellites


Facebook, Google and SpaceX aren't the only big names envisioning a world blanketed with satellite-based internet access. Samsung has published research proposing Earth-wide internet through a cloud of roughly 4,600 micro satellites. The vehicles w...

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This year's IRS breach is way bigger than the agency initially thought


Back in May, the Internal Revenue Service said thieves nabbed info for 100,000 people through its transcript website. Today the agency increased that number by an additional 200,000 folks, bringing the total number of potential cases to 334,000. Us...

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LG bets that OLEDs are the future of displays


It's no secret that LG has been fond of OLED screens as of late, but the company is now proving that it's committed to those organic displays for the long haul. It's investing the equivalent of $8.5 billion into developing OLED technology over the...

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Android 'M' is for Marshmallow


As is tradition (Lollipop, KitKat, Jelly Bean, Ice Cream Sandwich, etc.) Google has revealed the version name for the upcoming sixth version of Android with a new statue in front of its Mountain View, CA HQ. The "polish and quality" focused Android...

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