Microsoft removes 260 characters for NTFS Path limit

The maximum length for a path (file name and its directory route) - also known as MAX_PATH - has been defined by 260 characters. But with the latest Windows 10 Insider preview, Microsoft is giving users the ability to increase the limit. The recent most Windows 10 preview is enabling users to change the 260 characters limit. As mentioned in the description, "Enabling NTFS long paths will allow manifested win32 applications and Windows Store applications to access paths beyond the normal 260 char limit per node." Did anyone ever run into this limit? It seems like something that would really be bothersome on servers.

Read the full article here by OSNews

Arcan: A New Open-Source Display Server Built Atop A Game Engine

What happens when a game engine meets a display server meets a multimedia framework? Oh yeah and whereby the behavior is controlled with Lua. No, it's not a joke, just the latest creation in the open-source world. Say hello to Arcan as a new Linux display server...

Read the full article here by Phoronix

Nest's co-founder is releasing a smart kids' go-kart

Nest co-creator Tony Fadell isn't focused solely on making intelligent thermostats and smoke detectors. He recently unveiled Actev Motors, a company whose inaugural Arrow Smart-Kart promises to give kids a taste of what smart cars are like. The electric go-kart includes GPS, a and WiFi to keep junior drivers safe. Parents using a mobile app can geofence the kart's driving area, limit the top speed or hit a stop button in an emergency. In other words, even younger kids (5- to 9-year-olds are the main targets) can motor around without getting in over their heads. There's also a proximity sensor to automatically prevent accidents.

Older children can use the Arrow, too, and it's customizable. You can slap on different body styles (there's a Formula 1-style kit), install a higher-capacity battery or even get a drift kit to unleash your kid's inner Ken Block. It's not a trivial purchase -- a starter kit costs $600 if you pre-order, and it'll normally cost $1,000 -- but it could easily beat your neighbor's Power Wheels when it arrives in early summer.

For Fadell, this is as much about education as spoiling young ones. He explains to Forbes that he hopes to "teach the new generation" about electric cars. The tyke driving an Arrow this year could be driving their own EV a couple of decades down the line. And before you ask: yes, there's the possibility of an adult version for grown-up racers.

Via: Forbes

Source: Actev Motors

Read the full article here by Engadget

Feel Old

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Intel Acquires Computer Vision for IOT, Automotive

Intel is transforming from a PC company to a company that powers the cloud and billions of smart, connected computing devices. These devices will use the power of Intel technology to process data being generated from "things," connect to and learn from data being analyzed in the cloud, and deliver amazing new experiences. One of the amazing Internet of Things (IoT) experiences Intel is gearing up to deliver is autonomous driving. Americans spend some 75 billion hours a year driving. Morgan Stanley estimates that self-driving vehicles could deliver $507 billion in annual productivity gains – to cite just one compelling benefit. While the possibilities are exciting, the reality requires solving a myriad of technology challenges. Solutions will need to seamlessly deliver a combination of compute, connectivity, security, machine learning, human machine interfaces and functional safety. To win in automotive today and help deliver its exciting future, Intel is adding new capabilities to our automotive portfolio like functional safety and over-the-air software management. Another key requirement for self-driving cars is the ability to see and accurately interpret surroundings. One of the technologies necessary to support this capability is computer vision. Computer vision includes methods for acquiring, processing, analyzing and understanding images from the real world in order to make informed decisions and automate actions. Computer Vision technology is quickly becoming critical for the future of smart and connected "things" from autonomous vehicles, security systems, medical imaging and more. Comments

Read the full article here by [H]ardOCP News/Article Feed

How Deep Learning Can Paint Videos in the Style of Art's Great Masters

Thanks to Instagram and Snapchat, adding filters to images and videos is pretty straight forward. But what if you could repaint your smartphone videos in the style of van Gogh's "Starry Night" or Munch's "The Scream"? A team of researchers from Germany's University of Freiburg has made significant strides toward this goal using an approach to artificial intelligence called deep learning. The team developed a method that uses a deep neural network to extract a specific artistic style from a source painting, and then synthesizes this information with the content of a separate video. NVIDIA GPUs make it possible to crunch through this computationally intensive work with striking results. Comments

Read the full article here by [H]ardOCP News/Article Feed

Confindustria, Boccia è il nuovo presidente

Confindustria resta divisa: Vincenzo Boccia è il nuovo presidente, ma quasi un terzo dei voti espressi dall’assemblea dei soci che si è riunita in forma privata non è andato al presidente designato. Boccia infatti su 1367 votanti presenti è stato eletto con 914 voti a favore (87% dei 1046 voti validi) e 132 voti contrari. Ma “pesano” quelle 305 sch...

Read the full article here by lastampa.it - La Stampa

Pyston 0.5 Released As A Faster Python JIT

The Dropbox engineers working on their Pyston project as a high-performance JIT implementation today announced version 0.5 of the software...

Read the full article here by Phoronix

Google to bring official Android support to the Raspberry Pi 3

The Raspberry Pi 3. (credit: Raspberry Pi Foundation)

The Raspberry Pi 3 is not hurting for operating system choices. The tiny ARM computer is supported by several Linux distributions and even has a version of Windows 10 IoT core available. Now, it looks like the Pi is about to get official support for one of the most popular operating systems out there: Android. In Google's Android Open Source Project (AOSP) repository, a new device tree recently popped up for the Raspberry Pi 3.

Raspberry Pis, if you're not aware, are cheap, credit card-sized, single board ARM computers with a focus on education and open source software. Hardware hackers and DIYers love the Pi due to its open nature, small size, and plethora of ports and software.

For just $35, you get a 1.2GHz 64-bit Broadcom BCM2837 ARMv8 CPU, 1GB of RAM, a VideoCore IV GPU, 802.11n Wi-Fi, and Bluetooth 4.1. From there, it's up to you to add all the missing components via external devices. For storage, toss in a MicroSD card. For a display, hook up to the full-size HDMI port. For sound, use the 3.5mm audio/composite video jack. For everything else, use the 4 USB ports, Ethernet jack, 40 GPIO pins, CSI camera port, or the DSI display port.

Read 2 remaining paragraphs | Comments

Read the full article here by Ars Technica

Microsoft is using Windows 10 to see just how far it can push customers before they break

If you believe what comes out of Microsoft's figurative mouth, these days the company is all about listening to feedback. That's certainly the message that has been put forward with Windows 10, with the Feedback Hub app being made available to everyone with the operating system installed. Microsoft makes much of the fact that Windows 10 is installed on around 300 million computers, but the reality is that a portion of these installations relate to people who have been hoodwinked into upgrading from Windows 7 or Windows 8. The latest trick (tricking users in to installing Windows 10 by clicking… [Continue Reading]

Read the full article here by BetaNews

New Build and New Map “Underland” released for Unreal Tournament

Epic Games released a fully meshed Deathmatch level called Underland with the new Unreal Tournament build. This level is designed for 6 to 8 players who fight across a hidden outpost, once lost for a thousand years, that guards the entrance to the massive Underland caverns.

To learn the difference between the prototype shell and the final meshed level, look at these the before and after screenshots.

Also in the new build there are 8 new Blue Star offline challenges, four in Underland and four in Chill.

You can also check out all of the release notes for the new build here.

Source: Epic Games

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CRYENGINE Source Code Available Via GitHub

Good news, everyone! Crytek has made their CryENGINE available via GitHub. This step will certainly bring more improvements to the popular engine with the help of community.

The complete source tree is available via CRYTEK-CRYENGINE/CRYENGINEon GitHub. You can also check out build instructions here. Note that CryENGINE isn’t a free software project, so make sure to read licensing terms.

Open-source development community can make CryENGINE even better, so we’ll be looking forward to learning how this step turns out. You can find more details in the documentation for the engine.

Source: GitHub

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CRYENGINE Source Code Now Available Through GitHub

It looks like in the past few days Crytek has made their CryENGINE game engine available via GitHub,..

Read the full article here by Phoronix

Ron Gilbert wants to buy Monkey Island and Manic Mansion back from Disney

The creator of Manic Mansion and Monkey Island wants Disney to sell the rights to both series back to him.

Ron Gilbert took to Twitter last night to request that the house of mouse relinquish their hold on both IP following the firm’s decision to pull out of the video games industry – starting with the scrapping of Disney Infinity.

Gilbert developed Manic Mansion and the first two Monkey Island games in the late ‘80s/early ‘90s, and is currently returning to this style of game design for his crowdfunded adventure Thimbleweed Park.

However, the rights to both series was passed to Disney when the firm purchased LucasFilm and LucasArts in 2012.

Here’s Gilbert’s tweet:

Dear @Disney, now that you're not making games, please sell me my Monkey Island and Mansion Mansion IP. I'll pay real actual money for them.

— Ron Gilbert (@grumpygamer) May 23, 2016

And yes, Gilbert realised he spelled Manic Mansion wrong, later tweeting that: “I’m incapable of proof reading my own tweets, that’s part of the charm in following me.”

Read the full article here by Develop Feed

Play Store comes to Chrome OS, but not the way we expected

It's really happening. Android apps are coming to Chrome OS. And it's not just a small subset of apps; the entire Google Play Store is coming to Chrome OS. More than 1.5 million apps will come to a platform that before today was "just a browser," and Android and Chrome OS take yet another step closer together. In advance of the show, we were able to sit down with members of the Chrome OS team and get a better idea of exactly what Chrome OS users are in for. The goal is an "It just works" solution, with zero effort from developers required to get their Android app up and running. Notifications and in-line replies should all work. Android apps live in native Chrome OS windows, making them look like part of the OS. Chrome OS has picked up some Android tricks too - sharing and intent systems should work fine, even from one type of app or website to another. Google is aiming for a unified, seamless user experience. Interestingly enough, this project is actually not ARC, the technology Google used before to bring Android applications to Chrome. ARC wasn't good enough for Google, as it still required developers to make changes to their code. In fact - and this is kind of funny - ARC didn't even pass Google's own Compatibility Test Suite Android variants have to comply with. So, they started from scratch, and used containers instead. The new model dumps the native-client based implementation for an unmodified copy of the Android Framework running in a container. Containers usually bundle an app up with all of its dependencies, like the runtime, libraries, binaries, and anything else the app needs to run. This allows the difference between application environments to be abstracted away. In this case, Google is putting the entire Android Framework into a container, all the way down to the Hardware Abstraction Layer. I'm hoping Google will eventually bringing Android applications to all variants of Chrome, including the one on Windows.

Read the full article here by OSNews

Google Turns Firebase Into Its Unified Platform For Mobile Developers

An anonymous reader writes: Google has

announced a plethora of new features to Firebase

, its cloud services provider that mobile developers can use to power their apps. TechCrunch reports:

"In its previous incarnation, Firebase was somewhat similar to Facebook's now-defunct Parse in that it offered a database service, user authentication features and hosting tools. In this new version, Firebase takes many of Google's existing developer tools, like Google Cloud Messaging, and combines them with new and existing Firebase services. With this update, Google is turning Firebase into a unified app platform for its now 470,000 developers on the service (up from 110,000 when it acquired Firebase)."

The new

Firebase

features deeply integrated analytics services, allowing developers to track specific parts of their apps with fine-grained events. Firebase can build audience segments and allow developers to analyze their behavior in even more detail than before, and view how their advertising campaigns are performing. With these audience segments, developers can make remote configuration changes in apps and take advantage of Firebase's new notifications system. This feature is based on Google Cloud Messaging, which is now changing its name to Firebase Cloud Messaging. Google is offering all Firebase users free and unlimited notifications with support for iOS, Android and the Web. They're also integrating its

Cloud Test Lab

into Firebase for testing mobile apps on real hardware, renaming it the Firebase Test Lab. Other new features include crash reporting, the ability to create dynamic deep links into your app, Firebase Invites for allowing app users to share referral codes, Firebase App Indexing for bringing app content into Google Search, and integration with Google's AdWords and AdMob advertising platforms. Last but not least, Google is introducing new pricing plans for Firebase, including a new free plan, a fixed-rate plan, and a pay-as-you go plan.

Read the full article here by Slashdot

When you need to create a mock service ASAP

Xiaomi’s 4K Mi Box is Google’s newest Android TV device

Today's announcement of Google Home is likely to be the most exciting "living room" news that comes out of the company's annual developers conference, but that doesn't mean TV has been completely forgotten. Google today announced a bunch of new hardware partners for Android TV and Google Cast, its two solutions (just two!) for watching web content on TV screens.

read more

Read the full article here by Tux Machines

Pointer Overflow Checking

Most programming languages have a lot of restrictions on the kinds of pointers that programs can create. C and C++ are unusually permissive in this respect: pointers to arbitrary objects and subobjects, usually all the way down to bytes, can be constructed. Consequently, most address computations can be expressed either in terms of integer arithmetic or pointer arithmetic. For example, a function based on array lookup:

void *memcpy(void *dst, const void *src, size_t n) {
  const char *s = src;
  char *d = dst;
  for (int i = 0; i < n; ++i)
    d[i] = s[i];
  return dst;
}

can just as easily be expressed in terms of pointers:

void *memcpy(void *dst, const void *src, size_t n) {
  const char *s = src;
  char *d = dst;
  while (n--)
    *d++ = *s++;
  return dst;
}

Idiomatic C tends to favor pointer-based code. For one thing, pointers are more expressive: a pointer can name any memory location while an integer index only makes sense when combined with a base address. Also, developers have a sense that the lower-level code will execute faster since it is closer to how the machine thinks. This may or may not be true: the tradeoffs are complex due to details of the semantics of pointers and integers, and also because different compiler optimizations will tend to fire for pointer code and integer code. Modern compilers can be pretty bright, at least for very simple codes: the version of GCC that I happen to be using for testing (GCC 5.3.0 at -O2) turns both functions above into exactly the same object code.

It is undefined behavior to perform pointer arithmetic where the result is outside of an object, with the exception that it is permissible to point one element past the end of an array:

int a[10];
int *p1 = a - 1; // UB
int *p2 = a; // ok
int *p3 = a + 9; // ok
int *p4 = a + 10; // ok, but can't be dereferenced
int *p5 = a + 11; // UB

Valgrind and ASan are intended to catch dereferences of invalid pointers, but not their creation or use in comparisons. UBSan catches the creation of invalid pointers in simple cases where bounds information is available, but not in the general case. tis-interpreter can reliably detect creation of invalid pointers.

A lot of C programs (I think it’s safe to say almost all non-trivial ones) create and use invalid pointers, and often they get away with it in the sense that C compilers usually give sensible results when illegal pointers are compared (but not, of course, dereferenced). On the other hand, when pointer arithmetic overflows, the resulting pointers can break assumptions being made in the code.

For the next part of this piece I’ll borrow some examples from a LWN article from 2008. We’ll start with a buffer length check implemented like this:

void awesome_length_check(unsigned len) {
  char *buffer_end = buffer + BUFLEN;
  if (buffer + len >= buffer_end)
    die_a_gory_death();
}

Here the arithmetic for computing buffer_end is totally fine (assuming the buffer actually contains BUFLEN elements) but the subsequent buffer + len risks UB. Let’s look at the generated code for a 32-bit platform:

awesome_length_check:
        cmpl    $100, 4(%esp)
        jl      .LBB0_1
        jmp     die_a_gory_death
.LBB0_1:
        retl

In general, pointer arithmetic risks overflowing when either the base address lies near the end of the address space or when the offset is really big. Here the compiler has factored the pointer out of the computation, making overflow more difficult, but let’s assume that the offset is controlled by an attacker. We’ll need a bit of a driver to see what happens:

#include <limits.h>
#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>

#define BUFLEN 100
char buffer[BUFLEN];

void die_a_gory_death(void) { abort(); }

void awesome_length_check(unsigned len) {
  char *buffer_end = buffer + BUFLEN;
  if (buffer + len >= buffer_end)
    die_a_gory_death();
}

int main(void) {
  // volatile to suppress constant propagation
  volatile unsigned len = UINT_MAX;
  awesome_length_check(len);
  printf("length check went well\n");
  return 0;
}

And then:

$ clang -O -m32 -Wall ptr-overflow5.c
$ ./a.out 
length check went well
$ gcc-5 -O -m32 -Wall ptr-overflow5.c
$ ./a.out 
length check went well

The problem is that once the length check succeeds, subsequent code is going to feel free to process up to UINT_MAX bytes of untrusted input data, potentially causing massive buffer overruns.

One thing we can do is explicitly check for a wrapped pointer:

void awesome_length_check(unsigned len) {
  char *buffer_end = buffer + BUFLEN;
  if (buffer + len >= buffer_end ||
      buffer + len < buffer)
    die_a_gory_death();
}

But this is just adding further reliance on undefined behavior and the LWN article mentions that compilers have been observed to eliminate the second part of the check. As the article points out, a better answer is to just avoid pointer arithmetic and do the length check on unsigned integers:

void awesome_length_check(unsigned len) {
  if (len >= BUFLEN)
    die_a_gory_death();
}

The problem is that we can’t very well go and retrofit all the C code to use integer checks instead of pointer checks. We can, on the other hand, use compiler support to catch pointer overflows as they happen: they are always UB and never a good idea.

Will Dietz, one of my collaborators on the integer overflow checking work we did a few years ago, extended UBSan to catch pointer overflows and wrote a great blog post showing some bugs that it caught. Unfortunately, for whatever reason, these patches didn’t make it into Clang. The other day Will reminded me that they exist; I dusted them off and submitted them for review — hopefully they will get in this time around.

Recently I’ve been thinking about using UBSan for hardening instead of just bug finding. Android is doing this, for example. Should we use pointer overflow checking in production? I believe that after the checker has been thoroughly tested, this makes sense. Consider the trapping mode of this sanitizer:

clang -O3 -fsanitize=pointer-overflow -fsanitize-trap=pointer-overflow

The runtime overhead on SPEC CINT 2006 is about 5%, so probably acceptable for code that is security-critical but not performance-critical. I’m sure we can reduce this overhead with some tuning of the optimizers. The 400.perlbench component of SPEC 2006 contained two pointer overflows that I had to fix.

Pointer overflow isn’t one of the UBs that we can finesse away by adjusting the standard: it’s a real machine-level phenomenon that is hard to prevent without runtime checks.

There’s plenty more work we could do in this sanitizer, such as catching arithmetic involving null pointers.

Update: I built the latest releases of PHP and FFmpeg using the pointer overflow sanitizer and both of them execute pointer overflows while running their own test suites.

Read the full article here by Embedded in Academia

Hideo Kojima reveals the character behind the new Kojima Productions logo

QEMU 2.6 Officially Released with Raspberry Pi 2 Emulation Support, New Features

Michael Roth has had the great pleasure of announcing the release of QEMU 2.6, the latest and most advanced version of the widely-used and highly customizable virtualization software for GNU/Linux operating systems.

read more

Read the full article here by Tux Machines

Hyperloop One CEO wants us riding in tubes in 2021

The company formerly known as Hyperloop Technologies has had a busy couple of days. It has renamed itself Hyperloop One, announced partnerships with governments and investors, launched a competition and performed a public test of its propulsion system.

At the helm of the company's evolution from being a pretty cool idea to testing a functional sled in the desert is CEO Rob Lloyd. The former Cisco president obviously knows a bit about networks and scale. Both skills are needed if Hyperloop One wants to bring an actual transportation system to the world.

We sat down with Lloyd to talk about government partnerships (someone needs to build all of those tube networks), when people will be allowed inside the pods and if we'll ever travel under the sea.

This interview has been edited and condensed.

As a private company, how do you see governments partnering with Hyperloop One?

I think first and foremost it's going to take government support to create a regulatory framework to make Hyperloop a possibility. We're seeing some very good support from federal transportation authorities and state and local transportation groups around the world. We'll need a supportive environment for regulations. We need people that want to move faster than the status quo.

Also, we think we support many of the priorities that governments have, which includes less destruction of the environment and a more sustainable all-electric transportation. It makes no noise. While the system today was on rails, Hyperloop in the future doesn't have anything touching a rail while it's being levitated. So there's no friction. You won't hear a Hyperloop go past your house. We think we're generally so much aligned with government policy, we just need to educate governments and get them on our side.

So that involves governments building the tracks and tubes like the construction of the interstate system?

Exactly. The interstate system gets built from high-density point-to-point locations. You solve a real problem, and you build the network. Hyperloop is a network. You start with a few nodes in the network, where you really solve a problem. Then you build extensions to those nodes. I think governments are instrumental. They may be a bigger challenge than building the Hyperloop technology itself.

If everything goes according to plan, how far is Hyperloop from becoming a reality?

I'm convinced that we will be building freight transportation systems in 2017 and 2018. I'm very convinced we'll be working collaboratively with a government and regulatory environment to start construction of passenger systems in 2018. I'm entirely convinced we'll be seeing freight moved in a Hyperloop by 2020, maybe 2019, and our first passengers by 2021.

So freight is the first application?

It's an easier step. There are less systems that need to be designed and certified. And for passengers, they should be certified. We all want to have a trusted relationship when we do anything. When we drive our car, when we fly in a plane or when we travel in a Hyperloop. That's important to use. We've actually brought people on that are beginning to help us with the safety-certification process. When people ride Hyperloop we want them to feel comfortable and confident.

You talked about underwater routes. Is that a pie-in-the-sky idea or something we'll see in the 2020s?

Let's go in this order: Aboveground first. Belowground in a tunnel through very rapid boring technology that allows us to do very straight and direct tunnels next, and then underwater. Probably in that sequence.

Read the full article here by Engadget

Black Hole

Read the full article here by xkcd.com

Linux Is the Largest Software Development Project On the Planet: Greg K-H

sfcrazy writes: Greg Kroah-Hartmant, the Linux superstar, delivered a keynote at CoreOS Fest where he gave some impressive details on how massive is the Linux project. Kroah-Hartman said the latest release (4.5) made two months ago contains over 21 million lines of code. More impressive than the amount of code, and what truly makes Linux the world's largest software project is the fact that last year around 4,000 developers and at least 440 different companies that contributed to the kernel. Kroah-Hartman said, "It's the largest software development project ever, in the history of computing -- by the number of people using it, developing it, and now using it, and the number of companies involved. It's a huge number of people."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Read the full article here by Slashdot

Rumor: “Android VR” Will Launch At I/O With Standalone Headset, Reference Appears In Unreal Engine

The man best known for cofounding the tech blogs Gizmodo and Engadget, Peter Rojas, said today that Google will be unveiling a new platform known as “Android VR” along with a standalone VR headset at Google I/O next week.Rojas says the experience will not quite be up to Vive or Oculus Rift, which given that it is standalone and using mobile-grade hardware (i.e., will not use your phone or a connected PC to power the visuals, it has its own full mobile chipset) makes a lot of sense. At least one mention of Android VR has also been spotted in the latest Unreal Engine preview.
According to our source, Android VR may include not only a headset, but a controller of some kind – it’s unclear if we’re talking about Vive-style hand controllers or a single gamepad-style device, or something in-between. As you may have intuited by now (it’s kind of obvious), Android N will also support VR – though we expect Google to bake in VR support to an extent that gets all the way down to things like the homescreen. This could mean a new, VR-specific Android launcher or launcher layout. Finally, we know that Google’s internal codename for the project is “Mirage,” which seems quite fitting.

Source: http://ift.tt/24OCERX
Submitted by: Arnfried Walbrecht

Read the full article here by Full Circle Magazine

Chrome dev asserts browser is viable VR platform, targets 90 FPS rendering

Hyperloop Technologies gets a new name ahead of propulsion test

The world of Elon Musk-imagined levitating super trains that fly through tubes is finally a little bit less confusing. Today Hyperloop Technologies changed it's name to Hyperloop One. The new moniker should help reduce any mix ups with competing company Hyperloop Transportation Technologies (HTT). More importantly, the company is ready to publicly demo its propulsion system.

Tomorrow, the company formerly known as Hyperloop Technologies will show off its propulsion system in the Nevada Desert outside of north of Las Vegas. The company says that it can currently hit 400 MPH along an open-air test track but is shooting for 700 MPH within the confines of a vacuum-sealed Hyperloop tube. CTO and Co-founder Brogan BamBrogan said that the company would have a full system, full scale test (a pod racing through a tube) by the end of 2016.

During a presentation in Las Vegas the company also announced Hyperloop One partnerships both in the private and public sector. Probably the most important of those is the state of Nevada. In a statement, Nevada governor Brian Sandoval said, "we believe that Hyperloop One will develop the next mode of transportation while also providing a significant revenue stream and job opportunities for Nevadans."

Because the Hyperloop community loves competition, the company dropped that it's starting the Hyperloop One Global Challenge. It says the event will be an "opportunity for individuals, companies and governments to develop competitive proposals for using the first Hyperloop One solutions on transport corridors in their regions." Proposals are due on September 15, 2016 with the winners announced in March of 2017.

At the event the company also announced that it's taking part in studies to see if routes are feasible in Finland, Norway and between the Los Angeles and Long Beach ports.

But again, the real news is tomorrow's open-air test of its propulsion system. All the partnerships and competitions in the world won't matter if the Hyperloop One can't get its pods through the tubes. While the chances of confusing it with its rival Hyperloop Transportation Technologies have been reduced thanks to the new name, there's still competition between the two endeavors. Yesterday, HTT announced that it will use the government-developed Inductrack levitation system. It will be partnering with Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory to bring the passive magnetic system to its pods.

If successful, Hyperloop One is looking beyond passengers to cargo. BamBrogan even hypothesized the potential of moving an entire port offshore and using underwater Hyperloop tracks and pods to move goods from ships to the land. This would expand the company's idea to put tubes underwater along the shoreline.

We'll be covering the Hyperloop One propulsion test tomorrow.

Source: Hyperloop One

Read the full article here by Engadget

Bryan Cranston to lead new anthology series based on work of Philip K. Dick

Breaking Bad's Bryan Cranston has signed on for a new television project that will use the work of sci-fi author Philip K. Dick to tell a 10-part series.

Cranston will play the lead in the series, called Electric Sheep: The World of Philip K. Dick, but his exact role is still up in the air. Each episode of the anthology series will focus on some of Dick's most popular works, including Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, A Scanner Darkly and The Man in the High Castle.

The series is being produced in collaboration between Sony Pictures Television and Channel 4 in England, with Battlestar Galactica and Justified writers being brought on to produce. Cranston will also serve as an executive producer on the show. Cranston said that the show is an "electric dream come true" in a press release for the series.

There's no word on when Electric Sheep: The World of Philip K. Dick will debut, but it will air on Channel 4 in the U.K. with Sony Pictures Television distributing it in North America.

Read the full article here by Polygon - Full

New security vulnerability affects one in four Android devices

A security vulnerability on Google’s Android OS has exposed users’ text messages, call histories and other sensitive data for the past five years. The security firm FireEye has released a blog post detailing how it affects smartphones running Android 4.3 Jelly Bean as well as earlier versions of the OS. The bug, which has been indexed as CVE-2016-2060, allows apps to access sensitive user data by taking advantage of Android’s permission system. All of the apps on Google Play request permission from their users regarding whether they are able to use the system’s camera or have access to the device’s… [Continue Reading]

Read the full article here by BetaNews