Microsoft will Launch Disc-Less Xbox One for Under $200 in 2019

Microsoft may launch a disc-less Xbox One in 2019 according to sources familiar with the company's plans. In addition to forsaking physical media, it also plans to allow Xbox One owners to trade in their existing games on disc for digital downloads. The reason for such a drastic move is to get the price of the Xbox One lower and ensuring its under $200 (around Rs. 14,000).
br />"Currently, it costs about $299 to buy into the Xbox One family of devices," writes Xbox insider Brad Sams. "Microsoft is looking to lower that price by possibly as much as $100; the new console price point is expected to be $200 or less."

If you're in the market for a new Xbox One that can play games without having to go online or worry about Microsoft's servers being unavailable, you're in luck. There will be another Xbox One S variant that ships with a disc drive. Sams states that "Microsoft is moving forward very carefully with this product as it knows that a sizeable portion of its users do prefer to buy physical games and not download them." Though if this was really the case, it wouldn't be exploring a disc-free Xbox One to begin with.

And while the company may allow Xbox One owners to trade their games on discs for digital downloads, it's not entirely new. Sony had a similar program for its PSP users in Japan during the launch of the PS Vita though it never saw the light of day outside of that country.

Previously Sams stated that Microsoft had two Xbox One streaming devices in the works. The first will be built along the lines of the Chromecast and priced at around $100. The other will be "like the Apple TV", possibly integrating with Windows 10 apps and supporting lightweight games. It could be priced between $150 and $175. These will help Microsoft target and hopefully win back the living room. It appears that these plans have been put on the back burner as it focusses on simply removing the disc drive from the Xbox One, which we hope doesn't come to fruition given that accessing your library of content depends on Microsoft's servers being online and having a super fast Internet connection is mandatory.

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Let us allow e-voting despite hack fears said by US JUDGE:

A judge in the US state of Georgia has approved the use of electronic voting machines - despite being "gravely concerned" that they could be hacked.

There wasn't enough time before November's mid-term elections to switch to a secure paper-based alternative, said District Judge Amy Totenberg.

Fears that e-voting machines could be hacked have caused some to warn against their adoption in some countries.

The judgement was a "significant" one, according to one e-voting expert.

A lawsuit was filed in May last year against Georgia's Secretary of State over the Direct-Recording Electronic (DRE) voting machines.

There are now less than two months until the US mid-term elections in November, when many new members of the US Senate and House of Representatives will be elected.

Judge Totenberg said in her judgement the lawsuit had taken place at the "eleventh hour" and that switching to a paper-based voting system now could "just as readily jeopardize the upcoming elections, voter turnout and the orderly administration of the election".

However, she also acknowledged the seriousness of the threat posed by hackers, and rebuked state officials for not dealing with the problem sooner.
'Heads in sand'

"The court is gravely concerned about the state's pace in responding to the serious vulnerabilities of its voting system - which were raised as early as 2016 - while ageing software arrangements, hardware and other deficiencies were evident still earlier," she said.

Later, she concluded, "The state's posture in this litigation - and some of the testimony and evidence presented - indicated that the defendants and state election officials had buried their heads in the sand."

There are 14 US states which use machines to record votes. No paper record of the voting is made in the process.

"I think that judgement is really significant," said e-voting expert Prof Steve Schneider at the University of Surrey.

"The judge is asking for it to be addressed… saying that the 2020 elections are around the corner."

Prof Schneider told the luckycoders that there was a risk people using the machines would begin to distrust the democratic process if security researchers' concerns weren't taken seriously.

"I would hope that the authorities would take whatever steps they could to regain that trust while they're still using these machines," he told the luckycoders.

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New iPhones can read NFC tags in the background

The New iPhones can read NFC tags in the background, no app needed whatsoever

The new iPhone Xs and Xs Max, as well as a colorful family of the new iPhone Xr handsets, include advancements in near-field communication (NFC) technology that allow the handsets to automatically read nearby NDEF (NFC Data Exchange Format) tags and send any collected assets to appropriate apps without needing to open any specific app beforehand.

Before this change, users were required start an NFC reader session from an app.

Introducing Background Tag Reading:

As highlighted in the “What’s New in Core NFC” video available on Apple’s developer site, the Core NFC framework has introduced a brand-new feature, called Background Tag Reading.

A developer document explains how the feature works:


On iPhones that support Background Tag Reading, the system scans for and reads NFC data without requiring users to scan tags using an app. The system displays a pop-up notification each time it reads a new tag. After the user taps the notification, the system delivers the tag data to the appropriate app. If iPhone is locked, the system prompts the user to unlock the phone before providing the tag data to the app.

Background Tag Reading can read NDEF-formatted tags of type 1 to 5.

To prevent potential security issues stemming from background tag reading, explicit user action is required before the system passes any collected NFC data to an app. Specifically, the user must tap the NFC notification in order to avoid performing an action accidentally.

A system like that would allow, say, metro passes to work with a simple tap and go.

The document suggests that background NFC tag reading is supported only by the new iPhone Xs, Xs Max and Xr: “iPhone X and earlier devices don’t support background tag reading.”

According to the iPhone Xs/Xs Max and iPhone Xr tech specs, the handsets support NFC with reader mode and NFC for Apple Pay, like previous models.

If an NFC tag includes an underlying Apple Universal Link URL, iOS will automatically send data to the right app without any intervention on the user’s part. Otherwise, an NFC link is simply passed to Safari. On new iPhones, these embedded links can automatically trigger actions such as starting a HomeKit setup process, preparing a text or a FaceTime call and more.

NFC security and privacy

In terms of strengthening your security and bolstering privacy, iOS is smart enough to prevent Background Tab Reading from working in the following situations:
Device has never been unlocked
Another NFC reader session is active
Camera is recording video
The Wallet app is being used
Apple Pay is being used
Airplane mode is on

In other words, Core NFC reads tags in the background only when your iPhone is in use—i.e. the Lock screen is on, the Home screen is displayed or you’re happening to use an app.

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Warning over satellite security bugs

Satellite systems used on aircraft, ships and by the military contain bugs that could let hackers take control of them, a security researcher has warned.

The worst bugs could let attackers overcharge satellite antenna to damage the equipment or harm operators.

And others could be used to betray the exact location of military forces in crisis zones, the researcher said.

IO Active, which found the bugs, said it was working with manufacturers to harden devices against attack.
Backdoor access

"The consequences of these vulnerabilities are shocking," said Ruben Santamarta, from IOActive, in a statement explaining some of his findings.

Details of the vulnerabilities will be presented later on Thursday at the Black Hat security conference in Las Vegas.

The broadest group of devices vulnerable to attack were in use on commercial aircraft, Mr Santamarta told technology news site eWeek.

Some of the vulnerabilities affecting aircraft required an attacker to be on that flight, he said, but he had also found "hundreds" of vulnerable devices that could be accessed remotely via the internet.

None of the loopholes gave an attacker access to the avionics systems used to control flight, however.

Other problems had been found with satellite ground stations on ships and in US military bases, Mr Santamarta said.

On ship systems, attackers could potentially gain control over satellite receivers to aid eavesdropping or damage the antenna by pumping up its power output, he said.

Mr Santamarta had won access to the satellite communication systems via backdoors in their controlling code, he said.

The backdoors had not been inserted maliciously but had probably been added during software development.

Although, in some cases the devices being used could not be updated with secure software.

Instead, the entire device would have to be swapped for a more modern version running less hackable code.

IOActive says it delayed publishing details of its findings while manufacturers act to negate the bugs.

And the latest research builds on work done by Mr Santamarta in 2014 which first unearthed potential problems with the satellite communication systems and devices.
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Google gives Scummy Welsh' translations

It is an amazing piece of technology - put a sentence in a box and see it translated into any of 103 languages. But what impact for good or bad does Google Translate have on a minority language?

That is what we explore in Click for Cymraeg, a BBC Radio Wales programme looking into how the search giant's translation service has affected the Welsh language.

It was in August 2009 that Welsh arrived on Google Translate, relatively early in the history of a service which was launched in 2006.

"The reason was that it worked," says Macduff Hughes, the engineering director leading the project.

"Google Translate is built by finding language data on the web."

There were enough examples of Welsh translations online for Google's computers to crunch and build a machine translation service of sufficient quality.

That was the theory at least. But not everyone agreed about the quality.

Very quickly people began to spot that Google Translate was often throwing up mangled or nonsensical sentences.

And often, according to the comedian Gary Slaymaker, these were making their way into public documents and signage when companies saw an easy way of cutting the cost of translation.

"Rather than pay for a living breathing Welsh translator they'll put their translations through Google Translate and end up with word porridge," he says.

Soon the term Scymraeg, or scummy Welsh, was born and it has really caught on - it is part of Gary's stand-up routine, and examples are posted via a Twitter hashtag and in a Flickr group.

Among them, a sign reading "Blasting in Progress" was rendered as "Gweithwyr yn ffrwydro" or "workers exploding".

Ben Screen, a translator working for the NHS, says this all created "negative feelings" about the service.

"There's so much translation in the public sector," he explains.

"People were using Google Translate all the time for their documents and websites and signs in particular and they were wrong."

There was concern too about the impact on learning the language - once schoolchildren knew they could just go to a website to do their Welsh homework, wouldn't that stop them really getting an understanding of the language?


At Willows High School in Cardiff, the head of Welsh, Abi Rees, gets together half a dozen Year 10 pupils to chat about this question.


All but one of them admit they use Google Translate for their homework.



"It's a really good method of learning new languages and it's so accessible just having it in your pocket," says Isabel.

Somewhat to my surprise, Ms Rees is also enthusiastic.

"Personally I think it's a good thing because it gives pupils the confidence to complete their work," she says.

"As long as they're using it as a means of support, and not relying on it for long pieces of text."

But she then takes the pupils through an exercise that illustrates the limits of the technology.

They are given Welsh words with double meanings - "ysgol" for instance can mean school or ladder, and Google Translate ends up telling them "the school is in the shed".

Ms Rees says she spots these kind of errors popping up in homework but still thinks Google Translate is "a really good tool" to support pupils.

"But I don't think any translators around the world need to be worried about their jobs," she adds.
'Life or death matters'

It is clear that this technology has been advancing rapidly since Google decided to include Welsh on the service, with a leap forward in the last two years as a technique called deep learning produced much more accurate translations.

But Google's Mr Hughes, who has Welsh forebears and took a course in the language a few years back, urges caution with how the service is used.

"You should use it when you need to communicate and understand and you have reasonable tolerance for mistakes," he says.

As an example he explains how he used it successfully in Japan on a hunt for some shoelaces. But he says: "I would not use it for high stakes things today without review - legal contracts, life or death matters."

And even professional translators like Mr Screen are coming round to the idea that Google Translate can be a useful tool.

"The way we'd use it is you'd use a source text for English and put it through Google first - Google would give you something," he explains.

"More often than not it will need to be corrected but correcting is easier cognitively - most of it has been done for you ."

Surely though as the technology gets ever better and is integrated more smoothly into phone apps and earbuds, the day when we can dispense with a human translator is not far away?

Mr Hughes does not believe that will happen any time soon - instead he thinks that the technology will make translators' lives more creative.

"I think it will move their work up to higher value and more interesting kinds of work because really basic routine work will be done by machines."

And he has a message for those wanting the language and its translators to thrive in the machine age - it "depends on the Welsh community continuing to care about and embrace the Welsh language".

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Twitter users told to change passwords after internal leak

Twitter's 330 million users are being urged to change their passwords after some were exposed in plain text on its internal network.

An error in the way the passwords were handled meant some were stored in easily readable form, said Twitter.
The passwords should have been put through a procedure called "hashing" making them very difficult to read.
Security experts said the way Twitter handled the potential breach was "encouraging".

Substantial exposure

The bug caused the passwords to be stored on an internal computer log before the hashing process was completed.


In a blog, the social network said once the mistake was uncovered it carried out an internal investigation which found no indication passwords were stolen or misused by insiders.
However, it still urged all users to consider changing their passwords "out of an abundance of caution".

Twitter did not say how many passwords were affected but it is understood the number was "substantial" and that they were exposed for "several months".
Twitter discovered the bug a few weeks ago and has reported it to some regulators, an insider told Reuters.

Chief executive Jack Dorsey tweeted to say the "bug" had been fixed.
Skip Twitter post by @jack



 

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