https://kotaku.com/drawing-anime-style-characters-just-got-easier-1827281258
Pixvi, Japan’s online art community, is rolling out new software to create anime-style 3D models for Windows and Mac.
via Kotaku http://kotaku.com
July 2, 2018 at 06:39AM
Japan’s latest chance at private rocket launch ends in flames
https://www.engadget.com/2018/06/30/japan-interstellar-private-rocket-crash/
Jiji Press/AFP/Getty Images
Japan’s hopes for a thriving private spaceflight industry have been dashed once again. Interstellar Technologies’ second attempt at a rocket launch has ended in spectacular fashion, with its 33-foot MOMO-2 vehicle crashing (and bursting into flames) just moments after liftoff. The company put on a brave face with word that the launch facility remained intact and a promise that it would continue the program, but it’s hard to be optimistic when the 2017 launch at least cleared the launchpad area.
It’s not certain how this will affect plans to put a satellite into low Earth orbit by 2020.
Interstellar has yet to indicate what might have caused the crash (besides a sudden lack of thrust, that is). However, this doesn’t speak well of the company’s strategy so far, which has relied on using existing parts where possible instead of designing everything from scratch. It promises to dramatically reduce the cost of flights (the original MOMO cost $440,000 versus the government’s $1.8 million or more), but that only holds true if it works.
It also doesn’t help the reputation of Interstellar founder Takafumi Horie, who rose to prominence as the creator of internet service provider Livedoor but has earned a reputation as a rogue entrepreneur and spent two years in prison for accounting fraud. It’s hard to shake comparisons between him and other space-minded luminaries like Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos, both of whom have made considerably more progress (albeit not without failures). Horie may not be as ambitious, but there’s more pressure than ever for him to show that he can compete and give Japan an option beyond the government’s space program.
via Engadget http://www.engadget.com
June 30, 2018 at 10:21PM
Permanent LTE exploits steer users to rogue websites
https://www.engadget.com/2018/07/01/permanent-lte-exploit/
Daniel Acker/Bloomberg via Getty Images
LTE was theoretically supposed to fix the security holes baked into earlier wireless standards, but it isn’t completely immune. An international team of researchers has discovered a attack methods (nicknamed aLTEr) that takes advantage of inherent flaws in LTE to direct users to hostile websites. An active exploit uses the lack of integrity checks in LTE’s lower layers to modify the text inside a data packet. Since that’s easy to determine with DNS packets, which direct traffic to website addresses, you can steer requests to malicious DNS servers and thus take the user to a website of your choice.
A passive attack, meanwhile, uses a sniffing device near the user to intercept leaked info about a user’s LTE data transmissions (when and how much data they use, for instance) and compares those to data ‘fingerprints’ for popular websites. If there’s a match, you know where they’re going despite encryption ostensibly keeping the destination a secret.
These attacks aren’t exactly trivial. You need to be physically close to your target, and sniffing hardware isn’t cheap (Ars Technica places the cost at roughly $4,000). Whoever uses the attacks will likely be either a committed thief or a surveillance agency. The problem, as you might have gathered, is that you can’t patch against this. Your best bet is to only visit sites using HTTP Strict Transport Security or DNS Security extensions, and that isn’t always easy. Although the like of facing an attack isn’t that high, there might not be a permanent solution until you’re using 5G.
via Engadget http://www.engadget.com
July 1, 2018 at 03:39AM