Tag: Recently Read

A metronome is a handy little tool that can help keep musicians on their rhythm. It’s also easy to forget yours when you need it most. Don’t worry, though. Google’s got you covered.

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You’re not the only one who gets frustrated when videos buffer too much and too often. Ericsson found that the stress caused by trying to load videos on a slow mobile connection is comparable to the stress you feel while watching a horror movie. The Swedish company discovered that when it conducted an experiment called "The Stress of Streaming Delays." Sure, Ericsson did it to show brands how slow internet affects them, and it’s true it only had 30 subjects. But we don’t think anyone would disagree that having to endure several seconds to minutes of buffering is frustrating.

Ericsson’s researchers, who measured the subjects’ brain, pulse and heart activities while they were performing tasks on a phone, found that video streaming delays increase heart rate by 38 percent. They also found that a two-second buffering period can double stress levels. When the researchers observed the subjects who were subjected to longer delays (around six seconds), though, they saw their stress levels rise, then fall. The participants showed signs of resignation, including eye movements that indicated distraction — they were already giving up.

We’ll bet that’s a feeling you only know too well. It’s like where you’re pumped to watch the next episode of a series on Netflix/Hulu/YouTube, and it buffers so much, you end up losing interest. The company published its results, which you can view as a PDF right here. It’s a pretty short read for a study if you want to know more about its methodologies… or if you need something to do while the movie you’re watching is buffering.

Via: New York Mag

Source: Ericsson (1), (2)

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What do developers do after discovering a software vulnerability? Why, patch it, of course. Ironically, criminals have learned that lesson too, as one gang has updated the notorious TeslaCrypt ransomware with new features that are impossible to crack, according to Cisco’s Talos security arm. That means user infected with the latest version (3.01) of the malware can no longer use white hat-engineered software to get their files back. Until someone finds a new solution — and that seems unlikely — victims will have to pay.

Companies like Kaspersky and Cisco’s Talos have reverse-engineered various pieces of ransomware, helping corporate clients and anyone else rescue files without paying. The security community has also developed better detection and distribution disruption methods for the scourge. According to Talos, "this has lead adversaries to iterating and improving upon the previous release of TeslaCrypt."

We can not say it loud and often enough, ransomware has become the black plague of the internet, spread by highly sophisticated exploit kits and countless spam campaigns.

Previously, it stored the private key needed to unlock files on your own machine. However, after generating the key locally, TeslaCrypt 3.01 transfers it to the bad guy’s server and deletes it from your PC. As a result, "the private key never has to leave the [attacker’s] server and the ransomware uses a different key for each victim," according to Talos. With the 256-bit key nowhere to be found and impossible to brute force, the only way you can get your files is to pay.

"We can not say it loud and often enough, ransomware has become the black plague of the internet, spread by highly sophisticated exploit kits and countless spam campaigns," Talos says. Attackers are going after bigger targets that can afford to pay more, with potentially catastrophic consequences, as we saw at a Hollywood hospital. The best defense is to back up your files, but even that might not help. The FBI recently said that "in a new scheme, cyber criminals attempt to infect whole networks with ransomware and use persistent access to locate and delete network backups."

Via: PC World

Source: Cisco Talos

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An immersive experience is the name of the game in virtual reality, but how far are you actually willing to go? Samsung thinks making you feel seasick by electrocuting your inner ear is a good idea, and actually, it might be onto something.

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A small flock of pigeons have been given tiny backpacks to monitor air pollution in London. The project was dreamt up by Plume Labs, a company focused on the environmental problem, and the marketing agency DigitasLBi. The rucksacks are fitted to the birds using small fabric vests, and the sensors inside are able to measure nitrogen dioxide and ozone levels. Only 10 birds are in flight at any one time, so the amount of data being collected is pretty small. However, it’s still a creative way of analysing the air that millions breathe in every day in the capital.

If you’re interested in tracking the birds’ progress, a live map is currently available on the project’s microsite. Alternatively, you can tweet the @pigeonair account on Twitter for a quick summary of a specific borough or neighborhood. The project is a three-day affair, designed to attract new beta testers for a wearable pollution monitor built by Plume Labs. As such, the new "Pigeon Air Patrol" feels more like a marketing campaign than an evolution in air pollution management. Still, it’s neat to know that there are birds in the sky with backpacks — and maybe, just maybe, there’s scope to expand and refine the idea if these experimental test flights take off.

Source: Pigeon Air Patrol

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Researchers at the Mayo Clinic have developed a novel spinal graft that automatically "grows" to the requisite size and shape when implanted. The spongy polymer isn’t meant to be a formal replacement like the 3D printed neck bones recently installed by a team from the Prince of Wales Hospital in Sydney. Instead, it’s designed to act as a bone graft — a biodegradable scaffold through which a cancer patient’s own bones can regrow after surgery.

See, for whatever biological reason, when cancer metastasizes — that is, when it spreads through the body from the original tumor — it predominantly tends to settle in the spinal column. Doctors can cut out the infected bone tissue (or flat-out replace it as they did in the Sydney case) but that leaves large gaps in the spine. Normally, doctors would either have to open the chest cavity and access the spine from far side (which entails a lengthy recovery and high probability of complications) or they’d make a small incision in the neck/back and inject expandable titanium rods into the bone gap (which is super expensive because titanium). This new technique combines the easy access and short recovery of the titanium rod method with the low cost of the open chest operation.

Doctors simply cut a small hole in the patient’s neck/back and inject a hydrogel polymer into the bone gap much the same way they would a titanium rod. This polymer absorbs fluids from within the wound and grows to fill the gap. Doctors control how far the polymer expands in any specific direction by first inserting a "cage" — basically a pre-expanded shell that the polymer fills in as it spreads. Think of it as the wooden frame that keeps a freshly-poured concrete sidewalk in place until it hardens. Once the polymer fills in the cage, which takes 5 to 10 minutes on average, it will set and harden into a viable prosthetic. From there, surrounding bone tissue grows into and through the polymer, reinforcing and cementing it in place.

The Mayo team plans to begin initial cadaver-based tests of the new method in the coming months. Should those succeed, trials on living people will follow in the next couple of years.

Via: Motherboard

Source: American Chemical Society

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