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Television

Eavesdropping With a Smart TV 93

Posted by Soulskill from the i'll-stick-with-a-dumb-tv,-thanks dept.
An anonymous reader writes "A article on The Register titled talks about a demo that was given in London last month by NCC Group where they turned a modern TV into an audio bug. 'The devices contain microphones and cameras that can be utilized by applications — Skype and similar apps being good examples. The TV has a fairly large amount of storage, so would be able to hold more than 30 seconds of audio – we only captured short snippets for demonstrations purposes. A more sophisticated attack could store more audio locally and only upload it at certain times, or could even stream it directly to a server, bypassing the need to use any of the device’s storage.' Given the Snowden revelations and what we've seen previously about older tech being deprecated, how can we protect ourselves with the modern devices (other than not connecting them to the Internet)?"
Google

German Pranksters Spoof Google Nest At Tech Conference 45

Posted by Soulskill from the not-enough-skydiving-for-a-real-google-demo dept.
phmadore writes: "Some clever German pranksters managed to put one over on a sect of the intelligentsia just the other day. In this 30-minute presentation (video) at the re:publica 2014 tech conference, activists going under the pseudonyms of Paul von Ribbeck and Gloria Spindle presented four new (and moderately credible) Google products making up the 'Google Nest': Google Trust, Google Hug, Google Bee, and Google Bye. 'We can't really guarantee that we protect your information, but we can do our very best to protect you,' says Spindle about eight minutes in. Google is reportedly rather upset about the whole affair. The conference organizers were in on the joke — the audience were clued in afterward and asked to participate in order to fool the media. For me, the discussion-worthy items here are: data insurance and the value of data."
Star Wars Prequels

Why Disney Can't Give Us High-Def Star Wars Where Han Shoots First 210

Posted by Soulskill from the i-find-your-lack-of-distribution-rights-disturbing dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Lost amid the disappointment of the Star Wars prequels were the unfortunate edits George Lucas has made to the original trilogy when he re-released them. Lee Hutchinson points out a few of the worst: 'In Return of the Jedi, Jabba's palace gains an asinine CGI-filled song-and-dance interlude. Dialogue is butchered in Empire Strikes Back. And in the first movie, perhaps most famously, Han no longer shoots first.' Lucas flat-out refused to spend time and money remastering the original versions of the movies. But now Disney is in control of the franchise (and the business case for releasing different versions of the same films has been proven). So there's hope, right? According to Hutchinson: maybe, but not for a while. While technological advances have reduced the price tag for such an endeavour, lawyers will keep it expensive. It turns out 20th Century Fox still owns distribution rights to the Star Wars films. Because of complex and irritating legal reasons, Disney was not able to acquire those as well. Thus, Disney will have to get Fox's approval and probably cut Fox in for some of the profits, if they were to re-release the series."

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