Weekend tech reading: SNES Mini hacks, inside Lenovo's testing lab, 500 million PCs quietly...

Matthew DeCarlo

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SNES Mini Classic Hacking | More games, more borders, more gooder. With the first official final release of hakchi now out and working with the SNES Mini, it made sense to dedicate a thread to this wonderful little tool. So what are the basics? https://github.com/ClusterM/hakchi2/releases will always be the link to get the latest release. Right now we are on version 2.21d (internal version 2.0.21.50). Download the .zip file, unzip to a folder, and then follow these instructions to get adding your own games. NeoGaf

Microsoft's anti-malware sniffing service powers Edge to top spot in browser blocking tests Microsoft's Edge browser, the default in Windows 10, blocked a higher percentage of phishing and socially-engineered malware (SEM) attacks than Google's Chrome and Mozilla's Firefox, a Texas security testing firm said Friday. According to NSS Labs of Austin, Tex., Edge automatically blocked 92% of all in-browser credential phishing attempts and stymied 100% of all SEM attacks. Computer World

Analysis: AT&T's race against time to save its TV business AT&T's push to acquire DirecTV in 2015 looked like brilliance at first. Having captured most of the low-hanging fruit in the telephone and wireless markets already, AT&T's expansion into the television industry promised much more room for growth. By offering DirecTV directly to consumers, AT&T might gain new customers, hang on to old ones and take advantage of viewing data for advertising purposes. Houston Chronicle

Over 500 million pcs are secretly mining cryptocurrency, researchers reveal Over 500 million people are inadvertently mining cryptocurrencies through their computers after visiting websites that are running background mining software, researchers have discovered. Research by ad blocking firm AdGuard found 220 popular websites with an aggregated audience of half a billion people use so-called crypto-mining scripts when a user opens their main page. Newsweek

The impossible dream of USB-C I love the idea of USB-C: one port and one cable that can replace all other ports and cables. It sounds so simple, straightforward, and unified. In practice, it’s not even close. USB-C normally transfers data by the USB protocol, but it also supports Thunderbolt… sometimes. The 12-inch MacBook has a USB-C port, but it doesn’t support Thunderbolt at all. Marco.org

A peek inside Lenovo's Yamato ThinkPad testing laboratory During Lenovo's recent ThinkPad 25th Anniversary Event in Yokohama, Japan, we were given an opportunity to learn a lot about the evolution of the ThinkPad brand over the years. One of the most significant sources of pride mentioned by the Lenovo executives in charge of the ThinkPad division during this event was the team's Yamato Laboratory. PC Perspective

Paris plans to banish all but electric cars by 2030 The move marks an acceleration in plans to wean the country off gas-guzzlers and switch to electric vehicles in a city often obliged to impose temporary bans due to surges in particle pollution in the air. Paris City Hall said in a statement France had already set a target date of 2040 for an end to cars dependent on fossil fuels and that this required speedier phase-outs in large cities. Reuters

A Fitbit for the stomach We admit to a weird fascination with electronics that can be swallowed. Whether its robots, cameras, or edible actuators, we find them James Bond-level cool. So here’s another one for you: A flexible sensor developed at MIT and Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston can monitor movements in the stomach, sense ingestion, and power itself for at least two days without degrading. IEEE Spectrum (also, A microbot a day keeps the doctor away: Scientists close to perfecting edible gelatin nanobots)

Kuo: All iPhone Models in 2018 likely to abandon fingerprint recognition All of the iPhones Apple plans to produce in 2018 are likely to abandon the Touch ID fingerprint sensor in favor of facial recognition, KGI Securities analyst Ming-Chi Kuo told investors in a note sent out this evening. According to Kuo, Apple will embrace Face ID as its authentication method for a competitive advantage over Android smartphones. Mac Rumors

2.5D printing? Casio — the company famous for calculators, watches, and calculator watches — is touting a 2.5D printer. We aren’t sure we are impressed with the marketing hype name, but it is an interesting innovation for people prototyping new designs. The printer can create material that appears to be leather, fabric, and other materials. With some additional work, the printer can even mimic hard materials like stone or wood. Hackaday

Twitter is crawling with bots and lacks incentive to expel them On Wednesday, the exterior of Twitter's San Francisco headquarters bore an eerie message: "Ban Russian Bots.” Someone— the company doesn’t know who— projected the demand onto the side of its building. Bots, or automated software programs, can be programmed to periodically send out messages on the internet. Bloomberg

Are loot boxes gambling? Sin City is the global capital of gambling. Casinos with colourful chips, well-postured croupiers and automaton pensioners plugged into slot machines. At first glance it might not seem sinister, but strip back the glamour and Las Vegas paints a sad picture - its denizens cogs in a billion-dollar machine fuelled by potentially addictive gaming. The novelty of the place can hide its true intentions. EuroGamer

Project Zero In this blog post we’ll complete our goal of achieving remote kernel code execution on the iPhone 7, by means of Wi-Fi communication alone. After developing a Wi-Fi firmware exploit in the previous blog post, we are left with the task of using our newly acquired access to gain control over the XNU kernel. To this end, we’ll begin by investigating the isolation mechanisms present on the iPhone. Google Project Zero

Fullbright's Steve Gaynor on Tacoma and the changing state of indie Tacoma is a marvellous piece of interactive fiction set onboard an abandoned space station. You play a mercenary on a mission to download important data from the vessel, but as the data slowly streams onto your neat futuristic hard drive you're free to wander the corridors and examine augmented reality recordings of the final days of the crew. PC Gamer

Sakaki's EFI install guide/disabling the Intel Management Engine The Intel Management Engine ('IME' or 'ME') is an out-of-band co-processor integrated in all post-2006 Intel-CPU-based PCs. It has full network and memory access and runs proprietary, signed, closed-source software at ring -3, independently of the BIOS, main CPU and platform operating system — a fact which many regard as an unacceptable security risk...Gentoo Linux

Synthetic organs, nanobots and DNA ‘scissors’: the future of medicine In a new film to coincide with the recent launch of the Cambridge Academy of Therapeutic Sciences, researchers discuss some of the most exciting developments in medical research and set out their vision for the next 50 years.The University of Cambridge (also, Brain scientist Christof Koch maps out a path to merge humans and machines)

What would it look like if we put warnings on IoT devices like we do cigarette packets? A couple of years ago, I was heavily involved in analysing and reporting on the massive VTech hack, the one where millions of records were exposed including kids' names, genders, ages, photos and the relationship to parents' records which included their home address. Troy Hunt

Time to call it: The Chromebook is the new Android tablet Riddle me this, dear reader: If you've got a device that looks like a tablet, acts like a tablet, and runs Android apps, what do you call it? Odds are, your gut answer is "an Android tablet" — right? (Either that, or "a parsnip." But seriously, if that's what you thought, seek immediate counseling.) Computer World

Researcher turns HDD into rudimentary microphone Speaking at the Ekoparty security conference in Buenos Aires, Argentina, security researcher Alfredo Ortega has revealed that you can use your hard disk drive (HDD) as a rudimentary microphone to can pick up nearby sounds. Bleeping Computer

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