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A Laptop Containing Six Devastating Viruses is on Sale

Charlotte Henry ·

Normally, computer users, do everything they can to avoid getting malware on their machine. However, there is one laptop on sale that contains six of the world’s deadliest viruses, reported The Verge. Artist Guo O Dong produced the work, called The Persistence of Chaos, to bring digital threats into the physical world.

“We have this fantasy that things that happen in computers can’t actually affect us, but this is absurd,” says Guo. “Weaponized viruses that affect power grids or public infrastructure can cause direct harm.” The six viruses in the laptop (a 10.2-inch Samsung NC10-14GB) were chosen for the magnitude of economic damage they’ve caused. They include the ILOVEYOU virus, a computer bug from 2000 that often appeared as a “love letter” attached to emails; and WannaCry, a ransomware attack that shut down computers in hospitals and factories around the world in 2017, and which intelligence agencies blamed on North Korea.

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Galaxy Fold Could Be Delayed Beyond June

Charlotte Henry ·

More problems reported for the Samsung Galaxy Fold. According to local outlet The Korean Herald, the launch of the much-maligned device could be delayed beyond June. Samsung has taken longer than expected to fix the problems that beset the Galaxy Fold’s initial rollout.

It has been more than one month since the South Korean tech giant officially announced the postponement of the foldable device’s launch in the United States, but it keeps maintaining that a new schedule will be announced in “coming weeks.” Some telecom officials say that the launch is likely to take place after June, Samsung’s initial goal. Since the firm has been conducting network connection tests on devices with local mobile carriers, the process of addressing the display defect is known by industry sources. However, the company denied such speculation saying, “The improvement process is taking place extremely confidentially, and comments from telecom industry sources can’t be confirmed.”

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What You Need to Know: 4K/UHD/HDR Blu-ray Players

John Martellaro ·

Digital Trends writes:

While streaming is obviously more convenient for most of us, anyone who wants the best possible picture and sound quality for their home theater needs Ultra HD Blu-ray. The format offers more stability and better fidelity than streaming, and it’s a pretty significant leap forward from 1080p HD Blu-ray, too

This is a really well-written article and covers a lot of ground.

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TMO Background Mode Interview #2 with TMO Contributor John Kheit

John Martellaro · · 2 Comments

John Kheit is a New York attorney and a regular Contributor to The Mac Observer. We share many common interests, including the 4K/UHD/HDR TV revolution, 8K TV and displays, Wi-Fi/5G technologies, and the state of Apple.

We chatted about the legacy magic touch of Apple exemplified by the launch of the iPhone in 2007. Has Apple lost the ability to surprise us with solutions to problems we didn’t know we had? Along the way, the touchy subject of Apple’s Butterfly keyboard came up. In the second segment, we discussed 8K TV, mostly with regard to 8K as a computer display, but also from the perspective of the near future of 8K television and what the HDMI 2.1 standard might bring us. J.K. has some strong opinions, so brace yourself.

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Google Image Search's Creepy Sexism Problem

Charlotte Henry ·

Google Image’s search algorithm is fantastically useful a lot of the time. Other times, it is kind of creepy, especially if you’re searching for female stars. Wired looked at the different results the service produced when users searched for pictures of men and women.

If you’re searching for a man, Google’s image-hunting algorithm will mostly focus on his career. If you’re searching for a woman, Google’s algorithm will focus on her body. Do a Google Images search for Robert Downey, Jr., for example, and only four out of the 30 algorithmically-generated related search terms relate to his physical appearance: workout, body, handsome, cute. The vast majority focus on films he has starred in and actors he has appeared alongside. Do the same for Avengers co-star Scarlett Johansson and Google will recommend no fewer than 14 related visual searches based on her physical appearance, from “stomach” to “figure” and “big” to “rack”. It’s the male gaze, algorithm style.

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Colorado Students Secretly Photographed for Military Research

Andrew Orr ·

From 2012 to 2013, students at the University of Colorado’s Colorado Springs campus were secretly photographed as part of a research project. The U.S. Navy wanted to improve its facial recognition algorithms.

To conduct the study, [professor] Boult set up a long-range surveillance camera in an office window about 150 meters away from the West Lawn of the Colorado Springs campus, a public area where passers-by would not have a reasonable expectation of privacy. The camera surreptitiously photographed people walking in the area of the West Lawn on certain days during the spring semesters of 2012 and 2013.

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First T-Mobile 5G Test Reaches 493 Mbps in New York

Andrew Orr ·

During the first T-Mobile 5G test in New York City, the service scored 493 Mbps using a Verizon phone.

T-Mobile’s feat becomes greater when you understand that the carrier is using much less spectrum than Verizon is. Allnet Insights says T-Mobile is using 80MHz of spectrum in New York, which would make its theoretical maximum speed 500Mbps, but I’ve also heard that T-Mobile is using 100MHz, which would make the theoretical maximum 625Mbps.