January, 2018 - itbusinessdirect

Study Shows that Top Video Games Depict Unrealistic Drugs Use

January 25, 2018 Dianne Jacobs

Harmful narcotics often give unlikely strength and health boosts to characters, a study of real and made-up drugs in best-selling video games has highlighted. The report also details how players are often prompted to create drug cocktails to gain new or enhanced abilities. The work was done by Archstone, an addiction awareness organisation. It said parents needed to be cautious about what their children are playing and learning. The Entertainment Software Rating Board (ESRB), which assigns age and content ratings to games in the US, says it is happy with…

Sky TV Will No Longer Use Satellite Dish

January 25, 2018 Dianne Jacobs

Sky TV’s move to make all its channels and content available online means customers will no longer need a satellite dish on their property. The pay TV company already offers some programming online on its Sky Go and Now TV services and through Sky boxes. Sky termed the move a “major development” that would reduce costs and allow it to enter new markets. It hopes that making its hundreds of channels more widely available will increase both revenue and profits. Italy will be its first market to get all Sky…

Two Separate Self Drive Car Accidents Reported

January 25, 2018 Dianne Jacobs

Two self drive cars, namely a Tesla Model S and a General Motors Chevy Bolt, have been involved in separate road accidents in California. Culver City’s fire service said the Tesla had “ploughed into the rear” of one of its fire engines parked at the scene of an accident on Monday. On his part, the car owner claimed it had been in Autopilot mode at the time. The GM incident resulted in a collision with a motorbike in San Francisco. The rider says the car – which was using GM’s…

Hackers can see your Tinder photos and figure out your matches

January 24, 2018

Tinder isn’t using encryption to keep your photos safe from strangers who are sharing the same coffee shop Wi-Fi as you, security researchers have found out. Researchers from the Tel Aviv-based firm Checkmarx found that Tinder’s iOS and Android mobile apps still lack basic HTTPS encryption, meaning that anyone sharing the same Wi-Fi as you can see your Tinder photos or add their own into the photostream. The firm built a proof-of-concept app called TinderDrift, demoed on YouTube, that can reconstruct a user’s session on Tinder if that person is…

Microsoft boss: World needs more computing power

January 24, 2018 Dianne Jacobs

The world is rapidly “running out of computing capacity”, the head of tech giant Microsoft has warned. Satya Nadella said at the World Economic Forum in Davos that superfast quantum computers were needed to solve some of the most difficult problems. Mr Nadella cited the quest to create a catalyst that can absorb carbon, in order to help tackle climate change. This, he cautioned, would likely not be achieved without an increase in computer processing power. “Moore’s Law is kinda running out of steam,” Mr Nadella told assembled delegates, referring…

Stripe’s Ditch of Bitcoin Calls for Rethink of what the Cryptocurrency is good for!

January 24, 2018 Dianne Jacobs

Stripe has announced that it’s dropping support for Bitcoin-based transactions on its payments platform, citing high transaction confirmation times and numerous failures, as well as fees that are now as expensive as bank wires. That’s a huge blow to the cryptocurrency, not just because it’ll see fewer transactions, but also because it’s a sign that companies and consumers are growing disinterested in using Bitcoin to pay for things. Valued at $9 billion, Stripe is a major payments service provider in 25 countries, and the company claims to process billions of…

Cryptocurrency boom prompts graphics card rationing

January 23, 2018 Dianne Jacobs

Booming interest in crypto-currencies has been blamed for pushing up the prices of graphics cards. The cards are popular because they speed up the process of minting or “mining” crypto-coins. Keen miners are buying graphics cards in large quantities and running them in parallel to boost their coin-producing efforts. Their actions have led some makers and sellers of graphics cards to limit how many people can buy at any time. Writing on PC Gamer, Jarred Walton said: “Right now is the worst time in the history of graphics cards to…

Intel tells users to stop installing chip patches

January 23, 2018 Dianne Jacobs

Software patches issued to fix serious security flaws on Intel chips should no longer be applied, the company has said. The patches tried to tackle flaws called Meltdown and Spectre that, if exploited, could expose important data. Many reported that their machines slowed down or stopped working when they applied Intel’s updates. Intel said it now knew what caused these problems and was developing fresh patches that would work better. In a statement, Intel spokesman Navin Shenoy said it had been investigating why the earlier patches caused “higher-than-expected reboots and…