Category: iT news

Tracking cellphone signals is much, much easier than you think. This demo from Danish IT pro Keld Normal uses a $7 USB device to snoop in on cell signals, essentially sniffing out any cellphones connected to a tower nearby.

There’s a lot of Ubuntu and Python stuff going on under the hood, but it’s not as complicated as it looks. The USB doohickey is basically an antenna, picking up signals as they pass between phones and cell towers. This won’t get everything, but it’ll get more data the closer you are to a tower (here’s a good database), and the programs mentioned in the video are pretty good at sorting through the incoming data.

The end result is a database of every phone that connected in the area, along with the unique phone ID,…

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In a new short film called They Will All Die In Space, a technician is awoken from cryo-sleep and is told that his starship has gotten lost in the cosmos. He’s needed to help repair the communications system to call for help, but quickly realizes that something has gone horrifyingly wrong.

The film channels the claustrophobic tension of Alien and the desperate situation of Passengers, and ends with a neat twist that pays off exceptionally well. Spanish director Javier Chillon told The Verge in an e-mail that after directing two other short films Die Schneider Krankheit and Decapoda Shock, he wanted to do something a bit more conventional, a science fiction film that was straight up science fiction with no supernatural elements.

What’s…

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Beginning runners worry about having the perfect stride, but a new study suggests that sticking with the way you naturally run — even if you’re inexperienced — is the most efficient option.

Scientists recruited 33 runners — some experienced and some beginner — to do a 20-minute treadmill run. The participants tried out five different stride rates while wearing masks that measured how much oxygen their bodies were using. By this measure, the body used oxygen most effectively when people were running naturally. The results were published in the International Journal of Exercise Science by scientists, professors at Brigham Young University, who are runners themselves. Jared Ward finished sixth in the marathon in the 2016 Olympics, while I…

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Game of Thrones has never been about giving readers or viewers what they most want. Its author and screenwriters prefer to build fan expectations, then overturn them for narrative impact — and sometimes for pure shock value. And yet we fans maintain hope that at least a few of the characters will reach a satisfying, well-deserved ending. That’s why there’s Game of Thrones Hope Chest, a new weekly poll where we put all our hopes together in one place. We aren’t asking what you think is going to happen on Game of Thrones, we’re asking: what do you most hope to see happen?

This week, we’re looking back at an episode filled with boat murder, alliance-building, secret messages, and callbacks to season one — and ignoring all of it in order to…

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Honolulu pedestrians will need to start putting their phones away when they’re crossing the street later this year. Earlier this week, the city passed Bill 6, an ordinance that enacts fines against anyone crossing “a street or highway while viewing a mobile electronic device.”

On Thursday, Honolulu Mayor Kirk Caldwell held a news conference at one of the city’s busiest intersections, where he said the measure was a reminder for “people to use common sense as they walk around this beautiful city, [and] so they don’t become another statistic.” According to Reuters, there were more than 11,000 injuries stemming from distracted pedestrians between 2000 and 2011.

The city becomes…

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Tesla handed over the first Model 3 cars to customers Friday night at an event just outside the company’s headquarters in Fremont, California. But before those happy early adopters drove home in their all-electric dream cars, Elon Musk spent a few minutes speaking to the crowd and to a live stream. It went about as well as most of his public speeches go, with the Tesla CEO oscillating between funny, awkward, and sort of heartfelt. And then, of course, he made the same sex joke he’s been making for years.

It’s time he stopped.

If you’re unfamiliar with what I’m talking about, here’s a mercifully quick recap: at some point early in his tenure with Tesla, Musk decided that he wanted the naming convention for Tesla’s cars to follow a…

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Spoilers ahead for Game of Thrones and A Song of Ice and Fire.

Theon Greyjoy is Westeros’ most popular punching bag. Since his introduction in the show as a ward of the Starks — not exactly a prisoner, but certainly not there of his own free will — we’ve watched him transform from a horny ne’er-do-well to a pitiable shell of a person. For a while, Theon had it coming. He pledged himself to Robb Stark, then betrayed Robb Stark in favor of Theon’s jerk of a father. He murdered two innocent boys and passed them off as the corpses of Bran and Rickon Stark. When he was finally captured by Ramsay Bolton, his misfortune felt karmically fitting. What do child-murdering traitors deserve, if not to lose everything? But Theon’s punishment has…

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All-electric racing has come a long way in three years

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China famously censors the internet within the country, preventing its citizens from accessing websites such as Facebook or Google, and has pushed companies to register their App stores with government regulators or remove content that it deems illegal. Now, it appears that Apple has purged its Chinese App store of major VPN apps, according to The New York Times.

As a result of the country’s online censorship, many citizens and visitors have turned to Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) as a means to access the sites and content that have been banned by the government. Today, several companies have reported receiving notifications from Apple stating that their Apps have been pulled from the Chinese store.

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Earlier this month, LG sent out invitations for an upcoming event expected to reveal the company’s flagship LG V30 phone on August 31st. It now looks like consumers will be able to get their hands on one soon thereafter: Android Authority reports that it’ll first go on sale in South Korea on September 15th, and in the US on the 28th.

Android Authority says that its reviewed internal documents that lay out the timeline for the phone’s release: it’ll be announced on August 31st at IFA Berlin, before going on sale later in the month, with the company taking preorders on September 17th for US customers. The documents also indicate that the phone will be available in Europe for the first time, although it’s not clear if it’ll do so at the…

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