Amazon may take on Blue Apron’s prepared meal-kit service

Amazon’s grocery aspirations go beyond offering a drive-through store, AmazonFresh, Pantry and its recent Whole Foods acquisition. Bezos’ shopping juggernaut is looking to get into the boxed meal service a la Blue Apron, according to British publication The Times. Apparently, Amazon has registered a slogan for “We do the prep. You be the chef,” and the service will offer “prepared food kits” that are “ready for assembly as a meal” according to the application.

If anything, it underscores the ways Amazon is trying to branch out from just selling general merchandise. Blue Apron hasn’t had the best run of business lately, but given that this would just be one aspect of Bezos’ offerings versus the entire company’s focus, Amazon can make it work.

Via: Ars Technica

Source: The Times

South Carolina hit with 150,000 Election Day hacking attempts

More information about the scale of attempted election hacks has been released and it involves a rather surprising target — South Carolina. Donald Trump took the state by 54.9 percent and there was never any doubt that he had the advantage in the historically republican-swinging South Carolina. However, even with almost certain projected results, the state’s voter-registration system was hit with nearly 150,000 hack attempts.

After the FBI sent out warnings to state election officials about the potential for cyberattacks, South Carolina officials met with the agency and later hired a private cybersecurity firm to fix a number of vulnerabilities in the State Election Commission’s systems discovered by the DHS. All but one was resolved by Election Day and while the state didn’t release any data on how many hacking attempts occurred prior to Election Day, its report did show a drop off in hacking attempts after November.

South Carolina was obviously not the only target during the election, but it does speak to how widespread the attacks may have been. Some of the successful election hacks included those of the Democratic National Committee’s emails and Illinois’ registration records, of which 90,000 were stolen. In a report, the Illinois State Board of Elections noted that its IP addresses were hit five times per second, 24 hours per day prior to the election. In all, there’s evidence that hackers attacked voting systems in 39 states.

In regards to many of the other known election hacking attempts, US intelligence agencies have pointed the finger at Russia. But it’s unknown as of now who was behind the South Carolina attacks.

Via: Wall Street Journal

Source: South Carolina State Election Commission

US lifts laptop ban from final Middle Eastern airline (updated)

If you’re a business traveller who wants to use your laptop on a flight originating in the Middle East, things are looking up. The US started to lift restrictions for passengers carrying large electronics like laptops on flights originating in the Middle East earlier this month, including lifting the ban at Abu Dhabi airport, and exempting Emirates and Turkish Airlines from the ban. Now, according to a report by Reuters, the US Transportation Security Administration (TSA) has finally lifted the laptop ban on inbound passengers on Saudi Arabian Airlines, the final airline to be under restriction.

Last March, the US banned most electronics from the cabins of Middle Eastern airlines headed to the US. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) ban — which disallowed cameras, laptops and other larger gadgets — was instated in one major airport each in Abut Dhabi, Dubai, Egypt, Jordan, Kuwait, Morocco and Turkey, along with two airports in Saudi Arabia. The ban only affected flights entering the US from these countries. The DHS considered banning laptops on flights from Europe, as well, but has not moved to implement such an order, as yet.

According to Reuters, the ban has been lifted from airlines as they comply with new security requirements for all airlines. As noted in the tweets in the update below, Jeddah has complied, Riyadh has not.

Update: The TSA responded to a request for confirmation via email, saying “TSA issued the attached tweets (below) earlier this afternoon to notify the public and media of the lifting of the laptop ban. The ban was lifted because the airline met additional security requirements necessary. Please note that the ban was lifted from Jeddah, not from Riyadh.”

1: Saudia / Jeddah In’t have implemented the required initial enhanced security measures.

— TSA (@TSA) July 17, 2017

2: Travelers from Jeddah are now allowed to bring devices in the cabin of US bound flights.

— TSA (@TSA) July 17, 2017

Source: Reuters

Listen to tunes in Google Play Music’s search results

If you use Google Play Music on the road, we have good news: you can listen to the latest summer jams faster than ever. In a mirror of an update to the web player from several months back, the streaming service revamped search results field in its Android and iOS apps, centering around “play” buttons for every result it finds. So long as you find what you’re looking for, you can start playback the moment you’ve finished typing instead of visiting a dedicated search results page. Just be aware that it starts a radio station when you hit that button for a song — you may not enjoy this feature so much if you only wanted to listen to one cut.

The results themselves are also cleaner. Before, Play Music would just show a list of plain autocomplete results. Now, it highlights up to three immediately playable results from the catalog (such as albums, artists or songs) and includes a handful of autocomplete results below. This could be a pain if you’re looking for music that rarely turns up in as-you-type search results, but it’ll be much more helpful in the majority of situations when you know what you want.

Via: 9to5Google

Source: Google Play, App Store

Here’s a sneak peek at Nokia’s first high-end Android phone

Finnish startup HMD Global resurrected the Nokia name with a new line of Android smartphones unveiled back in February. Undaunted by lack of carrier deals, they’ve kept releasing more throughout the year, including the Nokia 6 back in June. But a few leaks have revealed images of and specs for the next smartphone in the series, the powered-up Nokia 8, which looks to be HMD’s first stab at a higher-end smartphone. And yes, it will reportedly come with Zeiss optics.

This is the Nokia 8 https://t.co/YUUbFOgbBX pic.twitter.com/xrHBRx4H8I

— Evan Blass (@evleaks) July 17, 2017

The Nokia 8 first appeared by accident when a company photographer erroneously uploaded a short video containing it and another as-yet unannounced smartphone (possibly the Nokia 9). HMD model number TA-1012 was recently uploaded to the FCC database, making it a likely contender for the Nokia 8 — and giving us a look at its benchmarks. Allegedly, the phone will be powered by a Snapdragon 835 processor and sport dual rear-facing cameras.

Scandinavian site WinFuture referred to a different model, TA-1004, as the Nokia 8 with a bit lower performance than the TA-1012. Sources told them the phone would retail for just under 600 euros. We’ll find out which is the right model when HMD announces the phone, which is rumored to be on July 31st.

Source: VentureBeat

Twitter porn bots drew in over 30 million clicks

For the past few months ZeroFOX, a social media-focused digital security company, has been looking into a massive pornogrophy botnet targeting Twitter. Dubbed SIREN, after the mythical Greek creatures said to lure sailors to their deaths with song, the botnet campaign reportedly included around 90,000 accounts that produced over 8.5 million tweets.

Each of the associated accounts had a pretty typical set up. Their profiles featured a photo of a woman and a female display name and tweets from these accounts nearly always included a sexually explicit phrase, followed by an exclamation point and an additional phrase meant to get targets to click the shortened URL at the end of the tweet. Once a user clicked on the link, they would be taken through a series of redirects before finally landing on a website that encouraged them to sign up for subscription pornography, webcam sites or fake dating webpages. SIREN accounts were able to attract over 30 million clicks.

ZeroFOX suggests that those behind the SIREN accounts were likely located in Eastern Europe due to many of the accounts’ user languages being set to Russian and a chunk of the display names containing cyrillic letters. It also noted that the tweets’ phrasing was often written in poor English. Some examples include “I want to fondle me?” and “Boys like you, my figure?” which sound a lot like the silly pickup lines produced by neural networks, but dirtier.

Last week, ZeroFOX reportedly submitted all of the SIREN Twitter profiles and URLs to Twitter, which then removed the accounts from the site and blacklisted the URL domains. “To our knowledge, the botnet is one of the largest malicious campaigns ever recorded on a social network,” ZeroFOX said in a blog post. Twitter hasn’t yet responded to a request for comment.

[Image: ZeroFOX]

Source: ZeroFOX

Netflix blows past 100 million subscribers

A year after subscriber growth slowed due to price hikes, Netflix says (PDF) it added more US customers in the last quarter than it has since 2011. The company is now up to 103.95 million subscribers worldwide, up 5.2 million from last count. The company also unveiled a new strategy (PDF) for explaining its spending on content, that’s presumably more appropriate for its abundance of award-nominated shows. In the letter to investors, execs also discussed recent series cancellations, saying “As much as we dislike ending a series early, it consoles us that it frees up investment for another new show, or two.”

Developing…

Source: Netflix Q2 2017 Investor Letter (PDF)

DC security robot says everything is fine, throws itself into pool

Don’t read too much into this, but a security robot face-planted into an indoor fountain inside of a Washington, DC office building today. It’s a coincidence, we’re sure, but maybe this robot just knows what everyone else in DC does. Robots tasked with securing even small areas of our capital can sense what a joke it’s become.

Our D.C. office building got a security robot. It drowned itself.

We were promised flying cars, instead we got suicidal robots. pic.twitter.com/rGLTAWZMjn

— Bilal Farooqui (@bilalfarooqui) July 17, 2017

You can catch even more robots falling down here.

Samson Q2U Podcasting Pack

This is something a little different, Android Guys. As per our name, we normally focus on the mobile side of technology – specifically, the Google-centric brand of mobile technology – but today I’m writing to you about a podcasting microphone that I’ve been toying around with, instead.

While Samson’s (rather boringly named) Q2U Recording and Podcasting Pack won’t win any style awards – it very much looks like every other microphone you’ve seen since your school days – it’s a very solid wired mic (for use with a computer or as stage performing) that includes everything you need to get started. This microphone offers both XLR and USB connections, letting it handle live performances or virtual podcasts with equal ease.

Top – Mini-USB | Right – 3.5mm | Bottom-Left – XLR

What’s in the box

Q2U Mic  |  Tripod (w/Mic Clip and Extension)  |  Windscreen  |  USB and XLR Cables

Essentially, the Q2U bundle brings everything you need to get your voice to the world, assuming you already have a computer or sound system. The mic itself has both XLR and Mini-USB (in a world now rife with MicroUSB and Type-C USB, this struck me as very, very odd), meaning it’s equally capable of serving as a plug-and-play mic for recording, podcasting, or streaming as it is broadcasting your voice to a live audience.

The mic looks like exactly what you’d expect when someone tells you to imagine what a microphone looks like.

Setup using a computer is almost painfully simple; unfold the tripod, screw on the mic clip (or extension, then mic clip), plug the Mini-USB cable into its respective ports on the computer and mic, and you’re good to go – just remember to change your sound input and output to your proper settings. I learned this the hard way, grumbling as I couldn’t figure out why my YouTube videos weren’t outputting any sound.

Which brings me to my petty gripe of the day; the fact that “Samson” looks way too much like “Samsung” on-screen. A few times now I’ve had to change my audio output from the Mic – which is silly – to my Samsung monitor, and it’s taken me a few seconds too long to realize it wasn’t already set to the SAMSUNG, not SAMSON.

Performance

While it’s not a premium studio mic, the Q2U should be more than sufficient for most recording purposes in the comfort of your home. I’ve recorded school projects, hosted teleconferences, and used it for Skype calls – audio quality was clear in all three instances. I haven’t tested its functionality using the XLR connection – I’m no performer – if the quality of output via USB is indicative of the XLR output, you won’t be disappointed.

Value

At $54.99, this bundle is a touch pricey when compared to other, USB only microphone offerings. So if you’re looking to get a mic that only handles digital recording and live streaming via USB, you may be better served checking out one of the more inexpensive, specialized offerings from Tonor or Neewer. If you have need of a mic with an XLR connection, though, you can do a lot worse than Samson. Most XLR/USB Microphones start at $50 and range all the way up to $500+, so Samson’s Q2U bundle is a good starting point, and a great value at that price point.

See Playerunknown’s Battlegrounds’ famous Erangel Island in 4K glory

In just a few shorts months, Playerunknown’s Battlegrounds has taken the PC gaming world by storm. It has sold millions of copies in Early Access, beaten out massive titles like League of Legends for concurrent streamers on Twitch, and briefly had more players in-game than Counter-Strike: Global Offensive. It offers constantly intense gameplay, and an engaging “last man standing” loop that keeps the action going over and over. With that in mind, we fired up our test rig, plugged it into a 4K monitor, and cranked the settings to show how attractive a modern game can be, even while still in Steam Early Access.

Our test rig was powered by an Intel Core i7-6950X with 16GB of RAM, and we paired it up with a Zotac GTX 1080 Ti Amp! Edition card with 11GB of memory. That card is well suited for running Playerunknown’s Battlegrounds at 4K, even in its under-developed phase.

The game certainly looks sharp at high resolution, particularly as you get close to buildings and cars. There’s a level of detail that’s surprising, considering Erangel Island’s massive scale. The downside, of course, is that a lot of these objects and houses are duplicated across the landscape, so you’re likely to see the same tree or car a number of times during a match.

As we tested and took screenshots of the game, it also inspired a conversation among our writers about Playerunknown’s Battlegrounds and its graphical style. Or more accurately, the lack thereof. The game isn’t built to look fancy, or fit any specific art direction. Instead, it’s meant to be gameplay-oriented and mechanically functional, with the repetition allowing experienced players to easily see opponents, or know where to hide to avoid detection.

For better or worse, the game’s simple look has certainly caught on, and draws inspiration from Arma 3, where the previous version of the game by Brendan Greene (AKA Playerunknown) existed as a mod. Straightforward, clean, and detailed, the world stays out of the way to ensure you can spot enemy movement, or tell when someone is looking out of a distant window.