Miscellaneous Tech News
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Hands-on with a $434 replica lightsaber: May the dork be with you
From the archives: It's awesome. It might not be worth $434, but it's awesome.
For those who insist on dressing in their finest Vrogas Vas linens and representing the Jedi Order in our own, simpler galaxy, replica lightsabers are the only way to go. I don't mean the fold-up, whip-out toy sabers that you can buy at Target. For whatever reason, the legal eagles at the Disney/Lucasfilm trust have stood back and let custom saber makers run amok. As a result, you can now buy sabers that purport to be on par with movie set props—and aim to be the coolest dude in line for the next Star Wars film.
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Four months after its debut, sneaky Mac malware went undetected by AV providers
Does Apple give malware definitions to AV providers? New analysis suggests no.
Four months after a mysterious group was outed for a digital espionage operation that used novel techniques to target Mac users, its macOS malware samples continued to go undetected by most antivirus providers, a security researcher reported on Thursday.
Windshift is what researchers refer to as an APT—short for "advanced persistent threat"—that surveils individuals in the Middle East. The group operated in the shadows for two years until August, when Taha Karim, a researcher at security firm DarkMatter, profiled it at the Hack in the Box conference in Singapore. Slides, a brief description, and a report from Forbes are here, here and here, respectively.
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Using molten salt to store electricity isn’t just for solar thermal plants
Startup follows on a number of innovative ideas to make renewable energy more flexible.
An energy storage startup that found its footing at Alphabet's X "moonshot" division announced last week that it will receive $26 million in funding from a group of investors led by Breakthrough Energy Ventures, a fund that counts Jeff Bezos and Michael Bloomberg as investors, and whose chairman is Bill Gates. The startup, called Malta, uses separate vats of molten salt and antifreeze-like liquid to store electricity as thermal energy and dispatch it to the grid when it's needed.
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Sure this doesn't go here, but I wasn't sure where it should go.
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@Dashrender said in Miscellaneous Tech News:
Sure this doesn't go here, but I wasn't sure where it should go.
Saw this email. it is a good deal. Buy a DID, get the credit, cancel the DID.
Net gain $14
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Office installations will default to 64-bit versions starting in Jan 2019 -
(I couldn't find a link that would work outside of Office admin center)"We’re making some changes to default installation settings
MC171479
Stay Informed
Published On : December 22, 2018
Office ProPlus and Office 2019 will now be installed with 64-bit as the default setting. Previously, the default setting was 32-bit at installation. This change will begin rolling out in mid-January, 2019.How does this affect me?
After this change takes place, the 64-bit version of Office will automatically be installed unless you explicitly select the 32-bit version before beginning the installation process.
If you install the 64-bit version, but wanted the 32-bit version instead, you must first uninstall the 64-bit version before installing the 32-bit version. The same is true if you installed the 32-bit version but want to install the 64-bit version.
This change will begin rolling out in mid-January, 2019.
What do I need to do to prepare for this change?
There’s nothing you need to do to prepare for this change. Please click Additional Information below to learn more."
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@wrx7m This makes it easier for us just because of fewer clicks. That is about the only thing that changes for us.
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@wrx7m said in Miscellaneous Tech News:
Office installations will default to 64-bit versions starting in Jan 2019
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Review: The June oven made me want a camera in every cooking device
A fast convection oven and a host of other functions make this toaster oven worth a look.
Enter the June Oven. Ars heard about this Silicon-Valley marvel several months ago, and I was sent a review unit to test out. The appliance, which ships in February, is a $600 Internet-connected toaster oven that acts as a convection oven, toaster, air fryer, dehydrator, slow cooker, broiler, and warming drawer. (Although you'll need to buy June's Air Baskets separately to actually use the device as an air fryer or as a dehydrator, which will set you back another $50.) You can operate the June from the touch screen on the front or from the June app. Most importantly, there's a camera inside the oven, which totally changed the way I cook.
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A tour of elementary OS, perhaps the Linux world’s best hope for the mainstream
With its new release, pay-what-you-want OS project now has a pay-what-you-want app store.
veryone is a Linux user, but almost no one knows it. The operating system is a strange beast. You'd be hard pressed to come up with another tool so widely used, so widely deployed, and so absolutely necessary to the functioning of the modern world that is simultaneously so utterly unknown outside the tech community.
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@mlnews said in Miscellaneous Tech News:
fryer, dehydrator, slow cooker, broiler, and warming drawer. (Although you'll need to buy June's Air Baskets separately to
it's super expensive - but if I can get two/three devices in one on my counter - that's a win!
We recently purchased an air fryer - these things rock! tater tots without the oil.. and they taste good too. But now we have two large appliances on the counter.
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@Dashrender said in Miscellaneous Tech News:
@mlnews said in Miscellaneous Tech News:
fryer, dehydrator, slow cooker, broiler, and warming drawer. (Although you'll need to buy June's Air Baskets separately to
it's super expensive - but if I can get two/three devices in one on my counter - that's a win!
We recently purchased an air fryer - these things rock! tater tots without the oil.. and they taste good too. But now we have two large appliances on the counter.
We bought one and took it back. No one liked the food from it.
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@scottalanmiller said in Miscellaneous Tech News:
@Dashrender said in Miscellaneous Tech News:
@mlnews said in Miscellaneous Tech News:
fryer, dehydrator, slow cooker, broiler, and warming drawer. (Although you'll need to buy June's Air Baskets separately to
it's super expensive - but if I can get two/three devices in one on my counter - that's a win!
We recently purchased an air fryer - these things rock! tater tots without the oil.. and they taste good too. But now we have two large appliances on the counter.
We bought one and took it back. No one liked the food from it.
Interesting - I've heard about 5 reviews now - yours being the only non 'reviewer' type, and you are the only one who doesn't like it. Of course reviewers are likely biased.
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Pilot project demos credit cards with shifting CVV codes to stop fraud
Trial will last 90 days to test effectiveness and timing of CVV change.
Services like Apple Pay and Google Pay try to combat online card theft by using tokenization to obscure a person's card numbers from theft while online. But if your credit card number has already been stolen (if a cashier's chip reader is broken and they direct you to swipe your card on a compromised point-of-sale terminal, for example) then even having a chip-based card can't stop bad actors from buying things on your dime.
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@mlnews said in Miscellaneous Tech News:
Pilot project demos credit cards with shifting CVV codes to stop fraud
Trial will last 90 days to test effectiveness and timing of CVV change.
Services like Apple Pay and Google Pay try to combat online card theft by using tokenization to obscure a person's card numbers from theft while online. But if your credit card number has already been stolen (if a cashier's chip reader is broken and they direct you to swipe your card on a compromised point-of-sale terminal, for example) then even having a chip-based card can't stop bad actors from buying things on your dime.
Since chip is almost never required - there is no security.
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@Dashrender said in Miscellaneous Tech News:
@scottalanmiller said in Miscellaneous Tech News:
@Dashrender said in Miscellaneous Tech News:
@mlnews said in Miscellaneous Tech News:
fryer, dehydrator, slow cooker, broiler, and warming drawer. (Although you'll need to buy June's Air Baskets separately to
it's super expensive - but if I can get two/three devices in one on my counter - that's a win!
We recently purchased an air fryer - these things rock! tater tots without the oil.. and they taste good too. But now we have two large appliances on the counter.
We bought one and took it back. No one liked the food from it.
Interesting - I've heard about 5 reviews now - yours being the only non 'reviewer' type, and you are the only one who doesn't like it. Of course reviewers are likely biased.
I’ve talked to a number of people in person that have bought one and love it. No reviewers involved. I have not talked to anyone that did not like it.
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@Dashrender said in Miscellaneous Tech News:
@mlnews said in Miscellaneous Tech News:
fryer, dehydrator, slow cooker, broiler, and warming drawer. (Although you'll need to buy June's Air Baskets separately to
it's super expensive - but if I can get two/three devices in one on my counter - that's a win!
We recently purchased an air fryer - these things rock! tater tots without the oil.. and they taste good too. But now we have two large appliances on the counter.
Devices on counter is a big issue here. The only one Motoko allows to stay is the coffe maker. Everything else has to go back in storage after use.
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@JaredBusch said in Miscellaneous Tech News:
@Dashrender said in Miscellaneous Tech News:
@mlnews said in Miscellaneous Tech News:
fryer, dehydrator, slow cooker, broiler, and warming drawer. (Although you'll need to buy June's Air Baskets separately to
it's super expensive - but if I can get two/three devices in one on my counter - that's a win!
We recently purchased an air fryer - these things rock! tater tots without the oil.. and they taste good too. But now we have two large appliances on the counter.
Devices on counter is a big issue here. The only one Motoko allows to stay is the coffe maker. Everything else has to go back in storage after use.
I have no storage for most things.
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Roku Channel now lets users sign up for new streaming services with one click
One monthly bill from Roku will organize all of these subscription payments.
Premium Subscriptions will have 25 partners when it debuts, including Starz, Showtime, Epix, and others. If you subscribe to many of them through The Roku Channel, you'll get one bill from Roku each month for the total amount you owe for all services to which you subscribe. Roku will offer at least a seven-day free trial for all partner programs, so you can try out these streaming services before you actually pay for them.
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Nokia 9 leak shows off all five rear cameras
Crazy quintuple-camera design promises better low-light photos.
The Nokia 9 first leaked in September, when the trypophobia-inducing camera array immediately turned heads. The rear camera setup features seven holes housing five cameras, with the extra two holes used for an LED flash and what looks to be a sensor cluster. For the first time, a video from MySmartPrice gives us an idea of what all of these cameras are actually supposed to do: it promises the phone will take "5 simultaneous shots," which will result in "10x more light captured" compared to a regular camera sensor. This sounds a lot like the computational photography work Google does with a single-lens Pixel camera, where it takes multiple shots in rapid succession and merges them all for better low-light shots. The multi-image idea is proven to work, but we'll have to see if extra physical lenses improve on it
