LG Unveils 88-inch 8K TV That Doubles as a Giant Speaker Slashdotby msmash on tv at January 1, 1970, 1:00 am (cached at January 6, 2019, 11:34 pm)

Last year LG Display unveiled a rollable OLED TV prototype, which is reportedly becoming a real retail product in 2019. This year they're at it again with a giant 8K OLED set that doubles as a speaker and a weird flower sculpture made entirely of the flexible OLED panels. From a report: As TV's get thinner, it's getting harder and harder to produce audio that isn't thin. Enter LG Displayâ(TM)s 88-inch Crystal Sound OLED set. It has a 3..2.2 sound system embedded directly into the display. The sounds emanate from the panel itself. And, thanks to Dolby Atmos support, LG Display says that viewers will be able to hear dynamic sound come from their top, bottom, left and right. Sony introduced similar technology on its A8F OLED TV, but that was a 4K set.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

US will 'assure' Israel's security before Syria pullout AL JAZEERA ENGLISH (AJE)(cached at January 6, 2019, 11:00 pm)

John Bolton says US troops withdrawal from Syria conditioned on security of Israel and other allies and defeat of ISIL.
'Venezuela will be respected': Maduro defends rule as legitimate AL JAZEERA ENGLISH (AJE)(cached at January 6, 2019, 11:00 pm)

Nicolas Maduro defends 'legitimacy' ahead of his controversial inauguration for a second-six year term.
Google Drive Has a Serious Spam Problem, But Google Says a Fix is Coming Slashdotby msmash on spam at January 1, 1970, 1:00 am (cached at January 6, 2019, 10:34 pm)

Google Drive has a pretty bad spam problem, and it seems Google doesn't care. Spammers can share files that automatically appear in your Drive, and there's no way to stop it. From a report: Google Drive's sharing system is the problem. Since it doesn't offer any sharing acceptance, all files and folders shared with your account are automatically available to you in Drive -- they just show up. To make matters worse, if you only have "View" permission, you can't remove yourself from the share. It's a mess. And to make matters even worse, this is far from a new problem, but Google still hasn't done anything to fix it. Google got back to us with a statement saying that changes are coming to Drive's sharing features and they're"making it a priority." Here's the statement in full: "For the vast majority of users, the default sharing permissions in Drive work as intended. Unfortunately, this was not the case for this user and we sincerely apologize for her experience. In light of this issue, we are evaluating changes to our spam, abuse, and blocking features that will prevent this kind of activity from taking place on Drive. In the interim, users who are experiencing similar issues can remove themselves from the folder, and the folder should not reappear in either 'My Drive' or 'Shared with Me' unless they revisit it."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Saudi women to get divorce notification by text message AL JAZEERA ENGLISH (AJE)(cached at January 6, 2019, 10:30 pm)

The new law, which came into effect on Sunday, is being seen as a way to end secret divorces and protect their rights.
Will Donald Trump build the wall or hit a wall? AL JAZEERA ENGLISH (AJE)(cached at January 6, 2019, 10:30 pm)

US President has threatened years of government shutdown if Congress doesn't approve money for his border wall.
AMD Gets Serious About Chromebooks at CES 2019 Slashdotby msmash on amd at January 1, 1970, 1:00 am (cached at January 6, 2019, 10:05 pm)

An anonymous reader shares a report: AMD's early CES 2019 announcements brought us some updates on its laptop processors, which include a targeted attempt to capture some of the growing cheap Chromebook market, slightly faster mobile Ryzens and a promise to keep everyone's AMD laptop drivers up to date with the latest zero-day game-release optimizations. Sadly, the news didn't include the much-anticipated, high-performance 7-nanometer Navi GPUs or the rumored Ryzen 3000-series desktop CPUs -- hopefully, the company's just holding back that info for its CEO's keynote on Wednesday. For the first time, AMD has gained a little bit of traction in Chromebooks with some partner announcements at CES such as the HP Chromebook 14 AMD and the Acer Chromebook 315. The announcements are in conjunction with the new A4-9120C and its sibling, the A6-9220C, which have slower CPU and GPU clock speeds than the 15-watt full-fat versions. That allows AMD to match the 6-watt target power draw of Intel's competing Celeron and Pentium models. AMD claims somewhat better performance on both Chrome OS and Android apps, which is possible given that their clock speeds are still faster despite the drop.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

NSA To Release a Free Reverse Engineering Tool Slashdotby msmash on opensource at January 1, 1970, 1:00 am (cached at January 6, 2019, 10:05 pm)

The US National Security Agency will release a free reverse engineering tool at the upcoming RSA security conference that will be held at the start of March, in San Francisco. From a report: The software's name is GHIDRA and in technical terms, is a disassembler, a piece of software that breaks down executable files into assembly code that can then be analyzed by humans. The NSA developed GHIDRA at the start of the 2000s, and for the past few years, it's been sharing it with other US government agencies that have cyber teams who need to look at the inner workings of malware strains or suspicious software. GHIDRA's existence was never a state secret, but the rest of the world learned about it in March 2017 when WikiLeaks published Vault7, a collection of internal documentation files that were allegedly stolen from the CIA's internal network. Those documents showed that the CIA was one of the agencies that had access to the tool.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

British PM warns of 'uncharted territory' if Brexit deal rejected AL JAZEERA ENGLISH (AJE)(cached at January 6, 2019, 8:30 pm)

Theresa May urges MPs to honour the UK's EU referendum result as parliamentary vote on her Brexit deal approaches.
Indonesia: Magnitude 7.0 quake hits Moluccas islands AL JAZEERA ENGLISH (AJE)(cached at January 6, 2019, 8:30 pm)

The quake hit at a depth 10 km about 173km north-northwest of Ternate, a city with about 200,000 population.
US shutdown: Trump expects little headway in second day of talks AL JAZEERA ENGLISH (AJE)(cached at January 6, 2019, 8:00 pm)

US president warns "we have no choice" as he threatens to invoke emergency powers to get wall built on US-Mexico border.
Apple Took Out a CES Ad To Troll Its Competitors Over Privacy Slashdotby msmash on privacy at January 1, 1970, 1:00 am (cached at January 6, 2019, 7:04 pm)

An anonymous reader shared a report: Historically, Apple hasn't had an official presence at CES. It's not surprising given the company's success at hosting and hyping its own product launch events -- long before the iPod and iPhone brought Apple to the top of the technology mountain, Steve Jobs keynotes were can't miss events. The company is also very deliberate about its marketing campaigns; when I see Apple billboard ads, they focus on new product close-ups with minimal messaging. This is why the giant ad banner I saw when I arrived in Las Vegas yesterday for CES 2019 caught my eye. Positioned not far from the convention center where CES takes place, the sign is a cheeky riff on the old "what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas" slogan -- and with just a few words, it casts an Apple-shaped shadow over the convention.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

'This is how we welcomed 2019': Civilians killed in Houthi attack AL JAZEERA ENGLISH (AJE)(cached at January 6, 2019, 6:30 pm)

A woman and a child killed and 16 others wounded after Yemeni rebels shell a residential neighbourhood in besieged Taiz.
Al-Qaeda operative linked to USS Cole attack killed: Trump AL JAZEERA ENGLISH (AJE)(cached at January 6, 2019, 6:30 pm)

Strike on January 1 targeted Jamal al-Badawi, blamed for deadly attack in 2000 that killed 17 Americans, Trump claims.
As Smartphones and Internet Connections Rise in Africa, So Does Entertainment Stream Slashdotby msmash on entertainment at January 1, 1970, 1:00 am (cached at January 6, 2019, 6:04 pm)

Growing smartphone and internet penetration across many African countries saw global streaming companies make a deeper play for audiences here this year. From a report: Netflix signaled its interest in Africa by hiring a content producer for the region and took on the MultiChoice, the continental satellite TV giant owned by Naspers, Africa's most valuable company. The Los Gatos, California company spooked MultiChoice with everything from trolling online ads to billboards placed conspicuously close to their Johannesburg headquarters. MultiChoice has clearly taken notice and has called for Netflix to be regulated. No African regulator has shown the appetite to rein Netflix in, though. Indeed, Netflix has bolstered its library of African content with a first original movie from Nigeria's Nollywood movie industry and committed to producing its first original African series. [...] Altogether, there's clearly a growing market as content consumption habits evolve among Africa's youth -- a majority of the continent's population. For example, Nigerians are already consuming more video on mobile devices than on television. Platforms like Tv2Go, which launched in South Africa in November, are experimenting with free mobile platforms, but may find that increasingly discerning streaming audiences need binge-worthy content to attract them.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.