Tag: TechTips

Enlarge / Ukrainian Vice Prime Minister Mykhailo Fedorov shared this photo of Starlink user terminals on March 18. (credit: Mykhailo Fedorov)

SpaceX’s Starlink Internet is proving to be useful for Ukraine’s military as it fights the Russian invasion. In an article Friday titled, “Elon Musk’s Starlink helping Ukraine to win the drone war,” The Telegraph described how the satellite connection helps the Ukrainian army’s Aerorozvidka (Aerial Reconnaissance) unit do its work of “using surveillance and attack drones to target Russian tanks and positions.”

The Telegraph wrote:

Amid Internet and power outages, which are expected to get worse, Ukraine is turning to the newly available Starlink system for some of its communications. Drone teams in the field, sometimes in badly connected rural areas, are able to use Starlink to connect them to targeters and intelligence on their battlefield database. They can direct the drones to drop anti-tank munitions, sometimes flying up silently to Russian forces at night as they sleep in their vehicles.

The Ukrainian unit’s “most sophisticated drones are connected using Starlink,” The Times of London wrote. “If we use a drone with thermal vision at night, the drone must connect through Starlink to the artillery guy and create target acquisition,” an Aerorozvidka officer told the paper.

Enlarge / The Apple Park campus stands in this aerial photograph taken above Cupertino in October 2019. (credit: Sam Hall/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

Apple is experiencing far-reaching network outages that have affected services like Apple Music, iCloud, iMessage, Apple Maps, Apple Card, Apple TV+, the App Store, FaceTime, Siri, and more.

Users began complaining of strange app behavior and outages earlier this morning. For example, searches for locations or requests to initiate driving directions in Apple Maps stopped working completely.

Further, Bloomberg reporter Mark Gurman claimed on Twitter that the outage didn’t just affect services used by consumers—it also affected Apple’s internal tools and services. One Twitter user posted a picture (seen below) of Apple Store employees frantically attempting to keep their store running using pens and paper.

Enlarge (credit: Getty Images)

When we teach people how to avoid falling victim to phishing sites, we usually advise closely inspecting the address bar to make sure it does contain HTTPS and that it doesn’t contain suspicious domains such as google.evildomain.com or substitute letters such as g00gle.com. But what if someone found a way to phish passwords using a malicious site that didn’t contain these telltale signs?

One researcher has devised a technique to do just that. He calls it a BitB, short for “browser in the browser.” It uses a fake browser window inside a real browser window to spoof an OAuth page. Hundreds of thousands of sites use the OAuth protocol to let visitors login using their existing accounts with companies like Google, Facebook, or Apple. Instead of having to create an account on the new site, visitors can use an account that they already have—and the magic of OAuth does the rest.

Exploiting trust

The photo editing site Canva, for instance, gives visitors the option to login using any of three common accounts. The images below show what a user sees after clicking the “sign in” button; following that, the image show what appears after choosing to sign in with a Google password. After the user chooses Google, a new browser window with a legitimate address opens in front of the existing Canva window.

Enlarge / LG’s prior 8K OLED TV (pictured) started at $19,999.99. (credit: LG)

8K TVs aren’t that popular yet. There’s limited content to watch on them, and it can be hard to tell the difference between 4K and 8K resolutions in a home theater setup. But perhaps the most obvious obstacle is price. And if you throw OLED into the mix, the price tag becomes astronomical. LG’s current 8K OLED TV proves that with a starting price of $20,000. The company’s 2022 models will be a bit less expensive, though they’re still out of reach for most consumers.

After announcing the Z2 series of 8K OLED TVs in January, LG said on Monday that the TVs will release in April, coming in at $12,999 for the 76.7-inch TV and $24,999 for the 87.6-inch model. That’s $7,000 cheaper than 2020’s ZX 76.7-inch 8K OLED TV and $5,000 cheaper than the 88-inch class.

LG’s upcoming Z2 lineup is pricey, but the sets are among the only options if you want 8K in contrast-rich OLED. B&O’s 8K OLED TV starts at $18,125 for 65 inches. Samsung’s 8K TVs use a Mini LED backlight, but the 2022 Neo QLED is $6,500 for an 84.5-inch model. The 74.5-inch version, meanwhile, costs $4,700.

Enlarge (credit: CDPR | Aurich Lawson)

The Witcher is coming back. No, there won’t be a new TV series, novel, virtual card game, or other project affiliated with the popular Polish fantasy series. Today, CD Projekt Red confirmed that its tentpole video game series will continue with an entirely new adventure game.

The news arrived on Monday via an image of the game series’ trademark wolf medallion covered in snow, with glowing eyes peeking through the frost. The announcement included a four-word tagline: “A new saga begins.”

“Decided from the earliest possible phase”

The teaser image was quickly followed by an official CDPR press release, which confirms that the game studio will be using Unreal Engine 5 to develop the new game, as opposed to the internally developed REDengine used in prior Witcher games and 2020’s Cyberpunk 2077. The press release says that the company will continue REDengine development to support ongoing CP77 expansion content, patches, and other updates.