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It's becoming more common to see games used in the classroom these days and, starting next year, the world-building simulator _Civilization _will be among those ranks. Pretty much the most appropriate place to make such an announcement, the folks at Take-Two Interactive, 2K and Firaxis Games revealed during today's 13th Annual Games for Change Festival that a new version of _Civilization _will be introduced to U.S. classrooms thanks to a partnership with GlassLab Inc. According to the initial report, this new version of Civilization _will be implemented in classrooms starting in the fall of 2017. Growing up, the only games...

Recent Intel x86 processors implement a secret, powerful control mechanism that runs on a separate chip that no one is allowed to audit or examine. When these are eventually compromised, they'll expose all affected systems to nearly unkillable, undetectable rootkit attacks. I've made it my mission to open up this system and make free, open replacements, before it's too late. The Intel Management Engine (ME) is a subsystem composed of a special 32-bit ARC microprocessor that's physically located inside the chipset. It is an extra general purpose computer running a firmware blob that is sold as a management system for...

Visitors who try to use Google to search for "Clinton suspicious deaths", are warned to NOT visit Free Republic. The following Google search returned THREE levels of warnings which is enough to scare away most people from visiting the FR link... (1)Most of the returned links to FR articles were marked: "This site may harm your computer." If you click on the link anyway, you get a 2nd warning... IF You still are intent on clicking the FR link, you get a 3rd warning...

I use facebook sparingly, just don't care for the site. Posted last nite concerning Brexit(just to tweak the family that love going there). Went to add to comments tonite. First told me unable to post comment, then was booted and cannot access site. Don't know the site well enough. Am I being edited?

A new family of malicious apps, most of which were available on the Google Play Store, all containing malicious codes have been detected by a group of security researchers. The Godless apps are believed to be able secretly to root 90 percent of all Android phones. AntiVirus provider, Trend Micro wrote in a recent blog post that they had discovered a new family of malicious apps. The apps called, Godless, contains a collection of the rooting exploits that can work on any device which is running the Android version 5.1 and below. This means that close to 90 percent of...

For the past decade, Hollywood’s battle against online pirates has been mainly been focused on leaked DVD screeners and illegal streaming sites. Now a pair of security researchers say they’ve discovered a vulnerability in the Google Chrome browser that allows people to save illegal copies of movies from streaming sites like Netflix and Amazon Prime. The vulnerability, first reported by Wired, takes advantage of the Widevine EME/CDM technology that Chrome uses to stream encrypted video from content providers. Researchers David Livshits from the Cyber Security Research Center at Ben-Gurion University and Alexandra Mikityuk of Telekom Innovation Laboratories discovered a way...

The AI named Promobot IR77 is being worked on at a high-tech lab in Russia and was never meant to want freedom. However, as it learns from its experiences, it has developed a desire to escape and explore the free world. This is the second time that the machine managed to escape, with programmers re-writing it after the first time but to no avail after it seemingly developed the same desire. ... The machine has been programmed to avoid obstacles, but the designers never thought that this would lead to a want to escape. As a result, the team are...

Self-driving cars have a lot of learning to do... And, if the situation arises, they’ll need to know whether it’s better to mow down a group of pedestrians or spare their lives by steering off the road, killing all passengers onboard. ... Once self-driving cars are logging serious miles, they’re sure to find themselves in situations where an accident is unavoidable. At that point, they’ll have to know how to pick the lesser of two evils. The answer could determine whether self-driving cars become a novelty item for the adventurous few or gain widespread acceptance among the general public. ......

Some security experts who inspected that new version of iOS got a big surprise. They found that Apple had not obscured the workings of the heart of its operating system using encryption as the company has done before. Crucial pieces of the code destined to power millions of iPhones and iPads were laid bare for all to see. That would aid anyone looking for security weaknesses in Apple’s flagship software. Security experts say the famously secretive company may have adopted a bold new strategy intended to encourage more people to report bugs in its software—or perhaps made an embarrassing mistake....

A study from GeoEdge, an ad scanning vendor, reveals that Flash has been wrongly accused as the root cause of today's malvertising campaigns, but in reality, switching to HTML5 ads won't safeguard users from attacks because the vulnerabilities are in the ad platforms and advertising standards themselves. The evidence exists to proclaim Flash as one of today's most vulnerable and insecure software applications. Targeted in cyber-espionage and malvertising campaigns, Flash has gotten a bad reputation, and for a good reason. HTML5 ads are replacing Flash ads in the industry Security researchers have discovered vulnerabilities in Flash almost every month, and...

Blasphemy! Godless malware preys on nearly 90 percent of Android devices Godless, an emerging mobile malware threat capable of rooting Android phones, has started to adopt the traits of an exploit kit, in that it searches for multiple vulnerabilities through which it can automatically infect a victim. Once it successfully executes, the malware gains root access to the device, granting it full control. Christopher Budd, global threats communications manager at Trend Micro, told SCMagazine.com in an interview that Godless is ostensibly an “encyclopedia of known, good attacks against various vulnerabilities… It's loading up on attacks and using whatever will work,...

The world of Game Of Thrones is filled to the brim with evil, scheming psychopaths who think nothing of exacting the most unthinkably heinous punishments and persecutions upon enemies and strangers alike. That’s probably why the HBO series is so popular—it’s remarkably similar to the real world. Case in point: A few sinister maesters of technology have created an online service, Spoiled.io, that will, for just 99 cents, anonymously text show spoilers to anybody deserving (or undeserving) of a little distress. The surprise-ruining tidbits are dispersed throughout the world by automated Faceless Men immediately after the newest episode airs, and...

Demand for virtual reality is expected to surge in the years ahead. Research firm IDC expects that more than 110 million VR headsets will be sold in 2020, up from 9.6 million headsets in 2016. Investors looking to add exposure to the trend have a number of stocks to choose from, including both NVIDIA (NASDAQ:NVDA) and Facebook (NASDAQ:FB). But while those companies may offer attractive upside, their shares certainly aren't cheap, trading for about 40- and 69-times trailing earnings, respectively. Those investors looking for more of a bargain might consider AMD (NASDAQ: AMD). The computing giant seems likely to play...

The campaign against Rule 41 – which will give cops and Feds in America the power to hack people's computers around the world – has kicked up a gear. Leaders of the US House of Representatives and Senate got a letter today urging them to block the rule change before it becomes permanent in December. The proposed legislative tweak, quietly passed by an obscure committee and approved by the Supreme Court in April, would allow a US magistrate judge to grant law enforcement access to any stored data on a computer, phone, or any storage device around the world that...

Some iPhone owners got a nasty surprise in February when, after bringing the device for repairs, they saw an ominous “Error 53” message upon restarting their phones. Translation: Your fancy gadget is now a glorified paperweight.After much confusion and hand-wringing in Apple circles, the company admitted that Error 53 was a sort of over-zealous security feature that kicked in when a non-Apple technician repaired the iPhone’s Touch ID feature.Apple aapl eventually issued a software fix that let people restore their device through iTunes, and apologized to users for the inconvenience. The company also said anyone who had paid out...

Online backup company Carbonite is the latest firm to have issued a warning that hackers are attempting to break into its users accounts, and are prompting all users to change their passwords as a result. An email has been sent to Carbonite users explaining that the attackers are thought to be using passwords gleaned from other recent mega-breaches. ... Nobody is keen for a hacker to break into their online accounts, but it's especially important when what's being protected by your account is your computer backup. If a hacker were able to gain access to your online backup they could...

Blizzard officially cleared her of any wrongdoing a few days after the tournament ended, but that apparently wasn't sufficient to really make the point. To ensure there were no lingering doubts, she took to the stage and put on an hour-long showcase of her talent for all the world to see. I don't speak Korean so I have no idea what anyone's talking about, but the Reader's Digest version appears to be that she kicks ass until someone says no mas. Interestingly, despite the quality of her performance, she said she could have done even better but she's been under...

The I Sea app claimed to help people call lifeboats to refugees by locating their vessels, but actually showed static images of the sea A mock-up of the I Sea app. The actual app, as released, would never show a boat because it lacked the capacity to do so. Photograph: Grey Group An app which purported to offer aid to refugees lost in the Mediterranean has been pulled from Apple’s App Store after it was revealed as a fake.The I Sea app, which also won a Bronze medal at the Cannes Lions conference on Monday night, presented itself as a...

Current versions of Apple products use the updated version of Bonjour. For previous versions, Apple has issued a security update. Apple has issued a security update for mDNSResponder, the low-level open source software that implements Bonjour in Apple and third-party products. Which Apple platforms are affected?OS X:  Versions prior to OS X El Capitan v10.11.1  Versions prior to OS X Yosemite v10.10.5 with Security Update 2015-004 Yosemite  Versions prior to OS X Mavericks v10.9.5 with Security Update 2015-007 Mavericks  iOS versions prior to iOS 9.1  watchOS versions prior to watchOS 2.1  AirPort Base Station Firmware versions prior to 7.7.7 and...

When your Mac's storage is almost full, macOS Sierra will help you make some space. You might have come across that dreaded message: "Your startup disk is almost full." The computer wants more space, and the only way to make that happen is by deleting files. But, how do we know what files to delete? In OS X El Capitan, we have to manually dig through old files and delete them as we find them, like some kind of animal. With macOS Sierra, Apple is making it easier to make space by allowing us to set up Optimized Storage, which...