Wednesday, December 04, 2013

Raspberry Pi-equipped AR.Drone can hijack other quadcopters' WiFi link (video)

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2013/12/04/skyjack-parrot-drone-raspberry-pi/

There might come a time when you'll wait for a drone instead of a truck for your Amazon or UPS package, while worrying about tech-savvy thieves instead of armed robbers. Let's just hope no ne'er-do-well uses Samy Kamkar's SkyJack for evil, because the software can worm its way into flying machines to take over their brains. Kamkar, who hacks things presumably to spread security awareness, loaded the offending code onto a Raspberry Pi-equipped Parrot AR.Drone 2.0. The result is a flying contraption that's capable of seeking out other drones' wireless signals and forcefully severing their connection from their true owners. Worse, the software works just as well installed on a land-based computer.

Curious folks can check out Kamkar's video after the break for a quick demo, but those tech-savvy enough can get a deeper understanding through SkyJack's source code. The system can only hijack drones with Parrot's WiFi MAC addresses at this point, but here's hoping companies take note and make future delivery drones more secure just in case.

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Via: SlashGear

Source: SkyJack, GitHub

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Google creating a tool to port Chrome apps to Android and iOS

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2013/12/03/google-mobile-chrome-apps/

Google's been shepherding web applications to the desktop as packaged Chrome apps (think the browser-based Google Keep) for a while now, and it turns out the search titan is building a tool to help them go mobile. The Next Web noticed that Googler Michal Mocny has been hard at work on a project dubbed Mobile Chrome Apps that's been hosted on Github since May. The repository's description reveals the code is a toolkit for porting Chrome packaged apps to ones that will run on Android and iOS by using Apache Cordova (formerly known as PhoneGap). Though the applications will retain their HTML, CSS and Javascript innards, they'll look like native apps and can even be submitted to their respective app stores. While the software is publicly available, it's not expected to be in beta form until January. Ready to lunge into development anyway? Venture to the source and hack away.

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Via: The Next Web

Source: Mobile Chrome Apps (Github)

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Tuesday, December 03, 2013

Vuzix's Android-powered M100 Smart Glasses now available to pre-order for $1,000

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2013/12/03/vuzix-m100-smart-glasses-now-available-to-pre-order/

If you want Android-powered eyewear that's readily available, you won't have to wait for Glass' commercial launch next year; Vuzix has already beaten Google to the punch. The company's M100 Smart Glasses have started shipping to developers, and the general public can now pre-order the eyepiece ahead of its expected December release date. Do be prepared to pay for the privilege of seeing your Android and iOS apps on a heads-up display, however. The M100 will officially sell for $1,000 -- about twice as much as Vuzix predicted in January.

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Via: Electronista

Source: Vuzix, PRNewswire

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Square absorbs Viewfinder team, picks up some ex-Googlers in the process

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2013/12/03/square-viewfinder/

If you're in the market for a few more engineers, you could go through the rigamarole of posting a listing on some job site - or you could just pick up a whole team. The small staff behind photo-sharing app Viewfinder will be setting up shop in Square's New York offices, including co-founders Spencer Kimball and Peter Mattis, who'd previously done time at Google and created image editor GIMP. While Square's engineering blog happily talks up the fact that the move will effectively triple the company's NYC staff, no mention is made regarding the fate of Viewfinder itself, which may not bode well for the future of the app.

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Via: Techcrunch

Source: Square

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KYLE BASS: My Worst Trade Was One Of The Best Things To Ever Happen To Me

Source: http://www.businessinsider.com/kyle-bass-interview-in-steve-drobny-book-2013-12

Kyle Bass

Hedge fund advisor Steven Drobny, the author of global macro books "Inside The House of Money" and "The Invisible Hands", is coming out with another book called "The New House of Money." 

Drobny has just released the first chapter available for free on his website.  It's a Q&A with Texan hedge fund manager Kyle Bass.

Bass, who runs Dallas-based Hayman Capital, crushed it by shorting subprime.

In his interview with Drobny, Bass discussed a gamut of topics, including how he got into the hedge fund business and how he stays grounded by spear fishing in the Bahamas.  Bass also talked extensively about his Japan trade where he's been predicting a debt collapse for some time. Bass said that he's also worried about inflation.  He thinks that globally we're going to be hit with the "ugly kind" of inflation (cost-push inflation) due to having too much money in the system.  

Bass also revealed the worst trade he has ever made and what he learned from that experience.   

From "The New House Of Money": 

What was the worst trade of your career?

The second company I ever sold short was a disaster. The first one was actually a great trade. It was an East German shipbuilder that was being heavily subsidized by the government when the Berlin Wall came down. The executives were not applying the subsidies to the shipyards. We shorted the stock around 100 Deutsche marks and it never saw an uptick – it went from 100 to 80 to 60 to 40 to 20 to zero, where they were literally chaining the gates after that.

The second short was a technology company. The COO had just quit under suspicious circumstances and in doing our homework on the capital structure we figured it could be a zero.

Right after we got short this stock, an active and influential newsletter at the time came out and said they thought it was the stock of the century. It doubled! on me s o fast that it carried me out. All the money I had saved up until that time was literally gone. I did an enormous amount of work on the balance sheet, met with some of the players, thought I understood what was going wrong, had almost all of the data, and in the end,
was even right. But I just couldn’t withstand the move.

It was such a beautiful learning experience because I came from no money. I was so broke in college. I came from a middle class family, and by that point I had made a few hundred thousand dollars and saved it, and it was gone. I was apoplectic.

When I think back now, thankfully it happened to me then – it only cost me a couple hundred thousand bucks, and it was the most important lesson in short selling that anyone could ever learn. It taught me the humility and the respect that you must have when you’re on the short side of anything. It wound up being one of the best things that ever happened to me.

What do you do differently today with short sales?

We do a lot differently. We do short individual equities from time to time, but we short with respect, experience, and proper sizing and stop-loss levels.

Read the full chapter here >

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