At the hacker conference DefCon in Las Vegas tomorrow, Kamkar plans to present the details of a gadget he’s developed called “RollJam.” The $32 radio device, smaller than a cell phone, is designed to defeat the “rolling codes” security used in not only most modern cars and trucks’ keyless entry systems, but also in their alarm systems and in modern garage door openers.
To appreciate just how amazing the concept of car navigation was in 1985, you need to recall that the Global Positioning System—the constellation of satellites operated by the U.S. government—didn’t come fully online until a decade later, in 1995. Even then, the feds crippled GPS to be no more accurate than within 100 meters to ensure it wouldn’t help bad guys aim guided missiles. In 2000, that restriction was lifted, allowing a new era of consumer GPS navigational gadgets to flourish.
Toy Story 2 was one of the trickiest films Pixar ever produced. It was originally set to be a straight-to-DVD release (and video too), until the decision was made to go for a full cinema outing. But barely a year before release, the film was in trouble: as many at the firm were candidly appreciating, Toy Story 2 wasn’t working.
Writing in his book Creativity Inc, Pixar co-founder Ed Catmull recalled that in the winter of 1998, a year out from the release of Toy Story 2, somebody (he never reveals who in the book) entered the command ‘/bin/rm -r -f *’ on the drives where the film’s files were kept.
The e-commerce giant is developing a new drive-up store concept in Silicon Valley that will allow consumers to order grocery items online, then schedule a pickup at a dedicated facility, according to industry sources familiar with Amazon’s plans. If confirmed, the project could signal a new distribution strategy for Amazon, the world’s biggest online retailer, while adding an additional threat to a grocery industry already in the throes of change.
Are you piggybacking on the Netflix, HBO Go, Amazon Prime, Hulu, etc, account of a friend or family member? A new report claims that you’re part of the 6% of U.S. households that are costing these companies $500 million in revenue this year.
This is according to a new report from Parks Associates, which found that 1-in-5 young adults in the U.S. are using someone else’s account to watch a streaming (or over-the-top [OTT]) video service.
When you go to Google for anything, be it a weather report or a phone number or an explanation of string theory, you assume that the top results will always be the very best. Those are, at least, the only ones you click: Studies suggest it’s a rare, rare Googler who bothers scrolling past search result number five.
But according to a highly critical new paper out from legal scholar Tim Wu, Harvard Business School professor Michael Luca and data scientists at Yelp, many of us are totally missing out on the information that’s most relevant, and critical, to our lives.
