This Star Wars OnePlus 5T can make the Kessel Run in less than 12 parsecs

At the Bengaluru Comic Con festival in India, OnePlus teased an upcoming limited-edition Star Wars version of its flagship OnePlus 5T. Although no real details were provided, and the reveal consisted solely of the “Coming Soon” image, it’s sure to be a must-have for any dedicated Star Wars fan.

No release date was announced, although the tie-in with Star Wars: The Last Jedi, which hits theaters in just two weeks, is obvious. The new design features a white finish on the rear of the device, along with a Star Wars logo and the OnePlus graphic beneath the fingerprint sensor. The front still has the same black finish, although the volume and power buttons provide a nice contrast against the white background. Some themes and wallpaper are expected to be included, as well as various sound effects, likely related to the latest film.

Rumors of a Star Wars-themed edition have been swirling around the internet for a month or so, after a poster at the XDA Developers site noticed some unusual strings were found in the APKs for Launcher, Settings and System UI. That particular post has since been deleted, but 9to5 Google notes that the “accent_star_wars” string information also included the hex code #ff2837, which is a dark red color similar to that found on The Last Jedi posters.

No price was announced for the limited edition, although the regular OnePlus 5T starts at $499. Tech PP is reporting that it will go on sale December 16, and availability will be limited to India. The4ir sources also indicate that as few as 15,000 will be available, and more will be revealed at a launch event in Mumbai on December 16.

The OnePlus 5T has a six-inch 18:9 AMOLED display, a Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 processor, and either 6GB or 8GB of RAM. The 5T is powered by a 3,300 mAh battery with Dash Charge, and includes Bluetooth 5.0 and USB Type-C. The cameras included are 16 MP (front) and 20MP (rear).

In our review of the OnePlus 5T, we gave it high marks for its gorgeous look, fast performance, and competitive price. We also tried out a side-by-side comparison against a couple of competing Android phones, and in addition, we’ve got a few tips and tricks to get you started.

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Deal: Get Netflix free for 6 months with a Samsung Chromebook or Pixelbook

Google and Netflix have teamed up for a great deal.

Freebies are always nice, especially when they are included with an expensive product. Chromebooks have long had offers for free Google Drive storage or Google Play Music, but Google and Netflix are partnering for an even sweeter deal.

ChromeUnboxed reports that buyers of the Samsung Chromebook Pro, Chromebook Plus or Google Pixelbook can redeem six months worth of free Netflix streaming. The offer unlocks $65.94 worth of credit for Netflix, which is equivalent to six months of the $10.99, two-screen plan. Users can also still subscribe to the other tiers and have the credit applied to those.

The offer is good until December 31, so don’t fret if you haven’t purchased one of these devices yet. And with the Netflix Android app, you’ll be able to download your shows and movies to your Chromebook for offline playback. The offer can be redeemed for the Chromebook offers page.

See Samsung Chromebook Plus at AmazonSee Google Pixelbook at Best Buy

Are you going to use the six months of free Netflix? Let us know down below!

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Ex-NSA worker pleads guilty to taking data involved in Russian hack

The NSA hasn’t been having the best week when it comes to security, but it’s getting at least some closure. A former employee, now known as Nghia Pho, has pleaded guilty to bringing home classified data that was later stolen in a hack linked to Russian intelligence. Pho is expected to face prison time when he’s sentenced on April 6th, but prosecutors have capped the maximum penalty to 8 years (versus the typical 10) and are open to calls for a lighter sentence given the non-malicious nature of the case.

Pho took a mix of digital and physical info home between 2010 and 2015. According to New York Times sources, he was using it to rewrite his resume — this was intentional, but not spiteful. The Russian hackers reportedly exploited the Kaspersky antivirus software on his PC to take data, but it’s not clear that Kaspersky was aware of what happened. The company previously acknowledged that it briefly held some NSA data, but there’s no word on whether or not it held that data.

The plea is only going to help so much when the NSA has bigger fish to fry, such as the Shadow Brokers leaks (there’s no indication that Pho is connected). It does show that the agency is racing to crack down on the multiple leaks it has suffered over recent months and years, however. The effort might also serve as a warning shot to NSA staff that may be tempted to leave with data, even if it’s for innocuous reasons.

Via: New York Times

Source: Department of Justice

California axes self-driving car rule limiting liability for crashes

California has been happy to tweak the rules to get more self-driving cars on the road, but it still has its limits. The state’s DMV has eliminated a planned rule (suggested by GM) that would have let companies avoid liability for an autonomous vehicle crash if the machine hadn’t been maintained to manufacturer specs. In other words, they could have been let off the hook if your car’s sensors were muddy, even if an accident was really due to bad code.

The DMV ditched the idea after reading comments objecting to the potential rule. The comment period ends December 15th, and the completed regulations should take effect sometime in early 2018.

California’s change of heart doesn’t amount to a sudden crackdown on self-driving cars, but it does reflect an evolving approach where it’s not quite so willing to give brands everything they want. This might also help settle the ongoing questions about liability in driverless car crashes. If owners are less likely to be blamed for accidents, automakers may be more cautious with development in order to avoid paying for costly mistakes.

Source: Associated Press

After 37 years, NASA fires up engines on the Voyager 1 space explorer

Voyager 1 is the only man-made object that has crossed the border of our solar system into interstellar space. Launched in 1977, it carries greetings from the planet Earth and some information about our little blue marble. Over the past four decades, as it flew past Jupiter and Saturn and eventually out into the vast reaches of space, it’s been using tiny thrusters to position its antenna so it can communicate with Earth.

Since 2014, engineers at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) had noticed that the craft’s regular engines, known as altitude control thrusters, were deteriorating after all this time and had become less effective.

The engineers began exploring the possibility of using the secondary engines, called trajectory control maneuver thrusters, which are located at the back on the probe. They are identical to the primary control thrusters, but the problem was that they hadn’t been used since 1980, when the spacecraft flew past Saturn.

“The Voyager flight team dug up decades-old data and examined the software that was coded in an outdated assembler language, to make sure we could safely test the thrusters,” said Chris Jones of JPL.

Voyager 1 is some 13 billion miles away, and radio signals take about 10 hours to travel between the spacecraft and the Deep Space Network here on its home planet. On November 28, the team sent out instructions to the far away spacecraft to fire up the secondary thrusters. 19 hours and 35 minutes later, they got their answer.

The secondary thrusters worked perfectly, orienting the probe just as the scientists had hoped. “The Voyager team got more excited each time with each milestone in the thruster test,” said Todd Barber of JPL. “The mood was one of relief, joy and incredulity after witnessing these well-rested thrusters pick up the baton as if no time had passed at all.”

Unfortunately, the secondary thrusters require power to provide heat to operate — a limited resource on the tiny probe. When there’s no longer enough power to supply heat, the spacecraft will switch back to its primary thrusters. Voyager Project Manager Suzanne Dodd said the new workaround would extend the life of the Voyager 1 project by two or three years.

The engineers plan to use a similar test on Voyager 2, which was launched earlier than its twin, but is still within the realm of our solar system. It’s expected to enter deep space within the next few years.

It will still be quite some time before either probe gets anywhere close to another star, however. In the year 40,272, Voyager 1 will get within two light years of a star in the Little Dipper constellation, and Voyager 2 will reach a similar distance from a star in the Andromeda constellation.

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Amazon may be seeking to enter the healthcare industry

One of the world’s largest online retailers may be getting into the healthcare industry. The Verge reports that Amazon is in “high level” talks with industry representatives regarding prescription drugs.  Anonymous sources report that Amazon has been in talks with Mylan and the Sandoz branch of Novartis. A note from Leerink bank confirmed that the Sandoz meeting happened. Both of these companies are fairly large players in the generic prescription drug industry.

This is hardly the first time that Amazon has expressed an interest in entering the healthcare industry. Earlier this year, it was reported that Amazon was hiring personnel to help it enter the healthcare field, and that the company has a license to sell medical equipment.

Initial reports have not made it clear what Amazon’s role in the healthcare market might be. It is possible it could work as a wholesaler, selling drugs to businesses, or sell them as a retailer.

Amazon’s entry into the healthcare industry could bring some major changes to the field. After all, the company has greatly disrupted traditional retail and bookstores, but representatives from Sandoz have said it does not expect Amazon to have a “major impact” on its business. Other players in the pharmaceutical industry are also skeptical of Amazon’s entry into this field.

At the recent Forbes Healthcare Summit, Walgreens Boots Alliance CEO Stefano Pessina said that he believes the regulations and complexities of the pharmaceutical industry may be more than Amazon wants to deal with.

“I believe that they will not come in an industry so complicated as our industry,” he said. “I believe in the end they will use their technology in a different way.”

Despite this skepticism, the leaders of major drug companies have expressed interest in work with the online retailer in the past. The CEOS of Pfizer and Allergan were asked about Amazon during a recent conference call and expressed a willingness to engage with the retail giant, but nothing official has been announced.

“Just like science is disrupted with gene therapy or novel treatments, I think the drug distribution channel also should be disrupted with improvements based on technology or efficiency,” Allergan’s Brent Saunders said during a recent conference call.

Who knows, one day ordering your medication might be as easy as using Alexa to check WebMD.

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In Cyberwar class, college students learn to think like hackers

At the University of California, Berkeley, college students are learning to think like hackers in order to find exploits and bugs in applications and websites that consumers use every day. These students are taking a class called Cyberwar.

The applications range from government websites to commercial banking and shopping applications, though one student admitted that local government websites were often more insecure.

“I mostly focused on government websites, specifically voter registration websites,” Vy-An Phan, a junior studying computer science, told CNN. “What I found was state websites and local websites were usually extremely poorly run. If I can find [bugs], certainly someone else can.”

Professor Doug Tygar says the goal of his class is to teach his students how to think like hackers so that they can design secure websites and apps.

“The goal is to train students to build super secure systems,” Tygar said. “But in order to do that, they have to be able to think like a hacker.”

The class has partnered with HackerOne, an organization that hires hackers to help companies repair vulnerabilities in their security systems. Every bug a student finds is reported to HackerOne and, sometimes, the students are paid for their work. Most of the students do their classwork for organizations that use HackerOne.

In addition to possibly earning them some extra cash, the class may also help them prepare for careers in cybersecurity. It’s estimated that by 2021, there will be more than 3.5 million unfilled cybersecurity positions worldwide.

HackerOne has expressed an interest in expanding the program’s reach, though the Berkeley offering won’t be available next year. However, Tygar has said that he hopes to bring the class back in the future, though he says he will be changing the name.

For her part, Phan says that she hopes to fill one of those jobs as she finds security work “much more rewarding” than the work of a developer.

Cyberwar might not be offered next year, but Berkeley offers plenty of unique courses. For instance, if you’ve ever wanted to learn the language of Game of Thrones’ horse lords, then you might be interested in Berkeley’s class on Dothraki.

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CryptoKitties lets you buy, sell, and breed virtual cats — all for real digital currency

If you’re tired of trading tokens and mining for digital currency, CryptoKitties is a new “game” on the Ethereum blockchain that lets you purchase and collect virtual cats, and then breed them with each other to try to create valuable new creatures with rare attributes, or “catributes,” in the game’s parlance.

Blockchain systems are based around tokens, or virtual properties that are individually owned and not controlled by a central proprietor. The most well-known blockchain is Bitcoin currency, but the same market-driven principles can be applied to almost anything. Animated cats, for example.

CryptoKitties is developed by Axiom Zen, and it seems it’s taking a humorous approach while still hoping to make blockchain transactions and technology accessible to more casual users. “Our approach to brand and marketing is, in part, a tongue-in-cheek critique of the ICO market today,” marketing director Elsa Wilk said in a press release.

It’s proven to be very popular, as the game just launched a few days ago and has already zoomed to the top of all the transactions on the Ethereum network according to the tracking site ETH Gas Station, with more than 10 percent of all trading activity as of this writing.

How does it work? Each virtual cat is a unique object or “token” on the Ethereum blockchain, and it’s as real as a unit of Ether (ETH, or the unit of currency used on the trading platform). Each one is coded with a 256-bit genome, which includes a set of phenotypes (visible features) and genotypes (genetic features). When two of your little critters breed, their new kitty’s appearance, biography, and traits are the resulting combination of each parent’s attributes, resulting in four billion possible variations.

According to the official site, Generation Zero cats are created by the developers themselves and let loose on the network every fifteen minutes. The gen-zero cats will not be available any more after the end of the year, meaning they will become more valuable.

The market for CryptoKitties is already thriving according to the tracking site Crypto Kitty Sales, with almost ten thousand virtual cats changing hands and a top price of nearly 12 thousand dollars.

If you’re worried about any behind-the-scenes funny business, the developers claim that it’s not possible. “The CryptoKitties economy is entirely decentralized and impossible for the development team to manipulate,” technical architect Dieter Shirley said. “Anyone on the team with knowledge of the breeding algorithm is prohibited from playing.”

How do you get started? You’ll need a computer with a Chrome browser, some Ethereum to buy your first cats, and the MetaMask wallet app.

Who knows, you could even end up with a rare and valuable Fancy Cat such as Chairman Meow, Feline Musk, or Kitty Perry. As it says on the website, “The future is meow.”

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CryptoKitties lets you buy, sell, and breed virtual cats — all for real digital currency

If you’re tired of trading tokens and mining for digital currency, CryptoKitties is a new “game” on the Ethereum blockchain that lets you purchase and collect virtual cats, and then breed them with each other to try to create valuable new creatures with rare attributes, or “catributes,” in the game’s parlance.

Blockchain systems are based around tokens, or virtual properties that are individually owned and not controlled by a central proprietor. The most well-known blockchain is Bitcoin currency, but the same market-driven principles can be applied to almost anything. Animated cats, for example.

CryptoKitties is developed by Axiom Zen, and it seems it’s taking a humorous approach while still hoping to make blockchain transactions and technology accessible to more casual users. “Our approach to brand and marketing is, in part, a tongue-in-cheek critique of the ICO market today,” marketing director Elsa Wilk said in a press release.

It’s proven to be very popular, as the game just launched a few days ago and has already zoomed to the top of all the transactions on the Ethereum network according to the tracking site ETH Gas Station, with more than 10 percent of all trading activity as of this writing.

How does it work? Each virtual cat is a unique object or “token” on the Ethereum blockchain, and it’s as real as a unit of Ether (ETH, or the unit of currency used on the trading platform). Each one is coded with a 256-bit genome, which includes a set of phenotypes (visible features) and genotypes (genetic features). When two of your little critters breed, their new kitty’s appearance, biography, and traits are the resulting combination of each parent’s attributes, resulting in four billion possible variations.

According to the official site, Generation Zero cats are created by the developers themselves and let loose on the network every fifteen minutes. The gen-zero cats will not be available any more after the end of the year, meaning they will become more valuable.

The market for CryptoKitties is already thriving according to the tracking site Crypto Kitty Sales, with almost ten thousand virtual cats changing hands and a top price of nearly 12 thousand dollars.

If you’re worried about any behind-the-scenes funny business, the developers claim that it’s not possible. “The CryptoKitties economy is entirely decentralized and impossible for the development team to manipulate,” technical architect Dieter Shirley said. “Anyone on the team with knowledge of the breeding algorithm is prohibited from playing.”

How do you get started? You’ll need a computer with a Chrome browser, some Ethereum to buy your first cats, and the MetaMask wallet app.

Who knows, you could even end up with a rare and valuable Fancy Cat such as Chairman Meow, Feline Musk, or Kitty Perry. As it says on the website, “The future is meow.”

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Comcast is also interested in buying most of Fox’s assets

It’s not just Disney interested in snapping up a large chunk of 21st Century Fox. Wall Street Journal tipsters claim not just that Disney has resumed “active talks” to buy most of Fox’s movie and TV assets, but that Comcast has entered discussions as well. Apparently, the initial leak of Disney-Fox negotiations prompted a frenzy of interest. Sony and Verizon have reportedly shown interest at the same time, but it’s not certain that they’re as deeply involved as Comcast and Disney.

Hulu’s streaming TV plays an important role in the discussions, according to the rumor. Both Comcast (via NBCUniversal) and Disney own 30 percent stakes in Hulu, so either of them could take majority control of the internet service simply by acquiring Fox’s existing 30 percent stake. As before, Fox would keep most of its broadcast networks (regional sports could be up for grabs) but would likely sell off its movie and TV studios, cable networks like FX as well as stakes in non-US networks like Sky and India’s Star TV.

The Murdoch family will supposedly decide on whether or not to make a sale before the end of 2017. Ostensibly, a selloff would let Fox focus its efforts and compete more effectively than it could while trying to take on media giants like Disney, which tend to do better at juggling movies and TV.

There’s no guarantee that talks would lead to a deal. Disney’s negotiations have been off-and-on, and it wouldn’t be surprising if Comcast’s chats went the same way. There’s also the not-so-small matter of antitrust concerns: Comcast raised eyebrows when it bought NBCUniversal, and taking on Fox is only going to prompt further worries about media consolidation. Verizon might have its own issues — if AT&T is facing a lawsuit over its attempt at a Time Warner merger, why would Big Red fare better buying large portions of Fox? Whatever happens, Fox’s decision is likely to have a significant repercussion on what you can watch, especially online.

Source: Wall Street Journal