Siri won't help you hide a body today. Back in 2012, however... Casey Johnston

Update: The Gainesville police department has clarified that, while a department detective did show a screenshot of the "hide my roommate" query from the suspect's phone, the question was not necessarily asked in connection with the alleged murder. The suspect's attorney told CBS Miami that the query was found "among hundreds of pictures that were on Bravo’s phone and that the search may not have been initiated by his client." The CBS report also notes that the suspect admitted to beating the victim the night of the alleged murder, and that police found the shovel with which the victim was buried. Original story is below.

A murder suspect may have actually used a Siri Easter egg while hiding the body of his victim, according to a news report Tuesday from the Palm Beach Post and later picked up by BuzzFeed. Gainesville, Florida detective Matt Goeckel presented evidence in court Tuesday that showed the suspect, Pedro Bravo, telling Siri, "I need to hide my roommate." He received as suggestions: "Swamps. Reservoirs. Metal Foundries. Dumps."

The response from Siri was originally meant to be a macabre joke; it's one of the virtual assistant's first Easter eggs from when it launched on iOS in 2011. According to the Gainesville police, Bravo actually asked his phone for advice when looking for somewhere to hide roommate Christian Aguilar's body on September 20, 2012, after the two had a fight.

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President Obama has urged the community in St Louis, Missouri, to remain calm following the killing of an unarmed teenager that has sparked two days of unrest.

An Arbor Networks graphic showing the sudden drop-off in network traffic from Syria on November 29, 2012 as the country was essentially erased from network routing tables.

In a Wired interview with well-known National Security Agency journalist James Bamford that was published today, Edward Snowden claimed that the US accidentally took most of Syria off the Internet while attempting to bug the country's traffic. Snowden said that back in 2013 when he was still working with the US government, he was told by a US intelligence officer that NSA hackers—not the Assad regime—had been responsible for Syria’s sudden disconnect from the Internet in November and December of 2012.

The NSA's Tailored Access Office (TAO), Snowden said, had been attempting to exploit a vulnerability in the router of a “major Internet service provider in Syria.” The exploit would have allowed the NSA to redirect traffic from the router through systems tapped by the agency’s Turmoil packet capture system and the Xkeyscore packet processing system, giving the NSA access to enclosures in e-mails that would otherwise not have been accessible to its broad Internet surveillance.

Instead, the TAO’s hackers “bricked” the router, Snowden said. He described the event as an “oh shit” moment, as the TAO operations center team tried to repair the router and cover their tracks, to no avail.

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Bravely exploring tombs... but only on Xbox, to start.

Update (August 13): In an interview with Eurogamer, Microsoft's Phil Spencer clairified that the Tomb Raider deal is a timed exclusive, though he wouldn't comment on the precise length of the deal. "Obviously the deal does have a duration. I didn't buy the IP in perpetuity," he said.

Spencer also said that the game will be coming to Xbox 360 as well as Xbox One.

Original story: Since its start in 1996, the Tomb Raider series has been proudly platform agnostic, launching on PlayStation, PC, and Sega Saturn back in the day. So it came as some surprise this morning when Microsoft announced that Rise of the Tomb Raider will be coming exclusively to Xbox One in time for the 2015 holiday season.

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The outlook for Australia's Great Barrier Reef is poor, a new report says. The BBC's Matt McGrath said the Great Barrier Reef posed a "difficult economic dilemma" for the Australian government.

The Shadow Realms teaser shown at EA's Gamescom press conference last night.

Last night's pre-Gamescom press conference from Bioware owner EA didn't bring any additional news about the still-nebulous Mass Effect 4, but it did bring the surprising announcement of a quite different kind of game from the studio best known for epic single-player RPGs. Shadow Realms is more directly inspired by tabletop RPGs, pitting a single "Shadowlord" (read: Dungeon Master) against a team of four heroes drawn from the usual set of RPG classes in a trap-filled dungeon.

In an announcement post, lead designer James Ohlen notes that while previous Bioware RPGs have been successful in their own ways, "The stories always come to an end and AI systems can’t replace the creativity of a human Dungeon Master. Shadow Realms aims to change that."

Unlike a traditional Dungeon Master, though, the Shadowlord in Shadow Realms won't be an all-seeing omnipotent force hovering over the battlefield and controlling dice rolls. Instead, as Bioware explains, he or she will invisibly roam the dungeon halls from an over-the-shoulder perspective, "setting traps, casting spells, summoning monsters, and controlling any monster in the level."

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Security camera footage captures the moment a wall of water gushes through a Nebraska hospital.

The deadly virus Ebola has claimed a third victim in Nigeria, taking the overall death toll to over 1,000 people.

The BBC's Barbara Plett Usher meets Yazidi Americans who have dropped everything to keep Washington's attention on the tragedy in their homeland.

Immigration centres in southern Spain are overflowing after a wave of small boats and dinghies carrying more than 1,200 migrants made it to the Spanish mainland.

The 3-2-1 data backup strategy involves keeping three copies of all essential data, spread over at least two different devices with at least one of them being off-site or disaster-resistant in some way. It is almost impossible to keep copies of large frequently updated data sets current in an off-site data backup strategy. This is where ioSafe's disaster-resistant units come into the picture. Products such as the SoloPRO and the ioSafe N2 show how ioSafe has continued to innovate in this space. The ioSafe 1513+ is their most ambitious product to date, attempting to place Synology's most powerful 5-bay NAS unit inside a fire- and waterproof package. Read on for a closer look at the hardware and performance of the unit.

Ukrainian refugees have flown from Crimea to the Russian city of Ulyanovsk, according to Russian television station Channel 1.

Aid worker Taban Sami Shoresh describes the ''heart-breaking'' sight of people scrambling for survival during a delivery of aid to people fleeing Islamist militants in Iraq.

Russian lorries taking aid to conflict-hit east Ukraine are heading towards the border, as Daniel Sandford reports.

Samsung today announces the new Galaxy Alpha, a mid-range "premium" built device that creates a new range in Samsung's lineup. The Alpha totes a 4.7" 1280x720 AMOLED screen, coming with either a yet unnanounced Exynos 5430 SoC with 4 A15 cores running at 1.8GHz and 4 A7 cores running at 1.3GHz and a Mali T628MP6 GPU for the international market, or with a Snapdragon 801 SoC for select markets such as the US. Both versions come with 2GB of memory on board.

A new 12MP rear sensor and a 2.1MP front camera can be found. 

The device comes in a new aluminium frame, marking this as a change in build material from Samsung's usual plastic. The phone is extremely thin at only 6.7mm and weighing a lightweight 115g. The footprint of 132.4 x 65.5mm matches the 4.7" screen format of the phone. The back cover is removable and sports a 1860mAh replaceable battery. Strangely, Samsung omitted a microSD card slot in this device which comes at a standard 32GB of internal storage space. We find the same fingerprint and heatbeat sensor as on the S5, however it lacks the waterproofing of the former. It's shipping with Android 4.4.4 KitKat version with the same TouchWiz iteration as the S5.

More interestingly the international version of the device should sport LTE-A category 6 with help of an Intel XMM7260 modem. This would be the first device announced with Intel's new LTE modem and mark a break from Qualcomm's dominance in the sector.

The Alpha is an intriguing device that apparently to wants to fill in a gap in Samsung's lineup which has seen device size go up with each iteration of the S-series. The 720p screen, its slimness and design seems to target directly the iPhone instead of other high-end Android handsets, pricing should also end up in the higher end.

Source: SamsungTomorrow

Former Israeli President Shimon Peres says he seeks peace over the Gaza conflict, as talks continue on a third day of a fresh ceasefire.

The BBC's Alan Kasujja has been to meet a refugee family originally from the Democratic Republic of Congo as they prepare to leave Rwanda for America.

Version:next-20140813 (linux-next) Released:2014-08-13

Today it was announced by the USB-IF (USB Implementers Forum) that the latest USB connector which we first caught a glimpse of in April has been finalized, and with this specification many of the issues with USB as a connector should be corrected. USB, or Universal Serial Bus, has been with us for a long time now, with the standard first being adopted in 1996. At the time, it seemed very fast at up to 12 Mbps, and the connector form factor was not an issue on the large desktop PCs of the day, but over the years, the specifications for USB have been updated several times, and the connectors have also been updated to fit new form factor devices.

In the early ‘90s, when USB was first being developed, the designers had no idea just how universal it would become. The first connectors, USB-A and USB-B, were not only massive in size, but the connection itself was only ever intended to provide power at a low draw of 100 mA. As USB evolved, those limitations were some of the first to go.

First, the mini connectors were introduced, which, at approximately 3 mm x 7 mm, were significantly smaller than the original connector, but other than the smaller size they didn’t correct every issue with the initial connectors. For instance, they still had a connector which had to be oriented a certain way in order to be plugged in. As some people know, it can take several tries to get a USB cable to connect, and has resulted in more than a few jokes being made about it. The smaller size did allow USB to be used on a much different class of device than the original connector, with widespread adoption of the mini connectors on everything from digital cameras to Harmony remotes to PDAs of the day.

USB Cables and Connectors - Image Source Viljo Viitanen

In January 2007, the Micro-USB connector was announced by the USB-IF, and with this change, USB now had the opportunity to become ubiquitous on smartphones and other such devices. Not only was the connector smaller and thinner, but the maximum charging rate was increased to up to 1.8 A for pins 1 and 5. The connection is also rated for at least 10,000 connect-disconnect cycles, which is much higher than the original USB specification of 1,500 cycles, and 5,000 for the Mini specification. However once again, the Micro-USB connector did not solve every issue with USB as a connector. Again, the cable was not reversible, so the cable must be oriented in the proper direction prior to insertion, and with USB 3.0 being standardized in 2008, the Micro connector could not support USB 3.0 speeds, and therefore a USB 3.0 Micro-B connector was created. While just as thin as the standard connector, it adds an additional five pins beside the standard pins making it a very wide connection.

With that history behind us, we can take a look at the changes which were finalized for the latest connector type. There are a lot of changes coming, with some excellent enhancements:

• Completely new design but with backwards compatibility
• Similar to the size of USB 2.0 Micro-B (standard Smartphone charging cable)
• Slim enough for mobile devices, but robust enough for laptops and tablets
• Reversible plug orientation for ease of connection
• Scalable power charging with connectors being able to supply up to 5 A and cables supporting 3 A for up to 100 watts of power
• Designed for future USB performance requirements
• Certified for USB 3.1 data rates (10 Gbps)
• Receptacle opening: ~8.4 mm x ~2.6 mm
• Durability of 10,000 connect-disconnect cycles
• Improved EMI and RFI mitigation features

With this new design, existing devices won’t be able to mate using the new cables, so for that reason the USB-IF has defined passive cables which will allow older devices to connect to the new connector, or newer devices to connect to the older connectors for backwards compatibility. With the ubiquity of USB, this is clearly important.

There will be a lot of use cases for the new connector, which should only help cement USB as an ongoing standard. 10 Gbps transfer rates should help ensure that the transfer is not bottlenecked by USB, and with the high current draw being specified by connectors, USB may now replace the charging ports on many laptops as well as some tablets that use it now. The feature that will be most helpful to all users though is the reversible plug, which will finally do away with the somewhat annoying connection that has to be done today.

As this is a standard that is just now finalized, it will be some time before we see it in production devcies, but with the universal nature of USB, you can expect it to be very prevalent in upcoming technology in the near future.

 

Vermont Attorney General William Sorrell in 2012. billsorrell.com

MPHJ Technology became infamous by sending out thousands of letters demanding $1,000 per worker from small businesses using basic scan-to-e-mail functions. The company says it owns several patents that cover those basic functions and has sent out more than 10,000 letters demanding payment.

That behavior led MPHJ to be the first patent troll ever to be sued by the government. Vermont Attorney General Bill Sorrell filed a lawsuit against MPHJ in May of last year that accuses MPHJ of making misleading statements in its demand letters and doing "little, if any, due diligence to confirm that the targeted businesses were actually infringing its patents." In addition to targeting a variety of small businesses, MPHJ sent letters to two Vermont nonprofits that help disabled residents and their caregivers.

For the past year, MPHJ has pushed back, demanding that its case be heard in federal court and even suggesting that the Vermont AG should be sanctioned for going after it.

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