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Hiding messages in a deck playing cards

hiding messages in playing cards I was recently thinking about the huge number of ways you can shuffle a deck of 52 cards and wondered if it would be possible to store arbitrary data, which I explore in this blog post. This blog post will go into the detail of how I found a way to store text inside the order of a deck of cards. If you want to play around with the tool, go here. How many different ways can we shuffle a deck of 52 cards? We can think of it like picking one card from 52, then one

Topics: 52 bits cards deck number

New Phobos ransomware decryptor lets victims recover files for free

The Japanese police have released a Phobos and 8-Base ransomware decryptor that lets victims recover their files for free, with BleepingComputer confirming that it successfully decrypts files. Phobos is a ransomware-as-a-service operation that launched in December 2018, enabling other threat actors to join as affiliates and utilize their encryption tool in attacks. In exchange, any ransom payments were split between the affiliate and the operators. While the ransomware operation did not receiv

This AI Warps Live Video in Real Time

Dean Leitersdorf introduces himself over Zoom, then types a prompt that makes me feel like I’ve just taken psychedelic mushrooms: “wild west, cosmic, Roman Empire, golden, underwater.” He feeds the words into an artificial intelligence model developed by his startup, Decart, which manipulates live video in real time. “I have no idea what’s going to happen," Leitersdorf says with a laugh, shortly before transforming into a bizarre, gold-tinged, subaquatic version of Julius Caesar in a poncho. L

Elgato brightens up its Stream Deck and mics with four new colors

is a senior reporter who’s been covering and reviewing the latest gadgets and tech since 2006, but has loved all things electronic since he was a kid. Elgato has released four new color options for its Stream Deck and other streaming accessories as part of a new Dreamscape collection designed to better match the aesthetic of a studio or gaming room. The devices and accessories have previously typically only been available in white or black, but are now available in forest green, pink petal, wil

Topics: 99 color deck new wave

HBO confirms The Last of Us season 3 will arrive in 2027

If you’re all caught up on The Last of Us (the TV version that is) then you’ll know that season two made clear that when the show returns it will focus a lot more on Kaitlyn’s Dever’s Abby. But it sounds like we’re going to have to wait a while to see that side of the story unfold. Speaking to Variety off the back of The Last of Us netting HBO 16 Emmy nominations this week, the company’s CEO, Casey Bloys, said season three is "definitely planned for 2027." Bloys didn’t offer any more specific i

Roman dodecahedron: 12-sided object has baffled archaeologists for centuries

A dodecahedron was discovered in Lincoln in the U.K. in the summer of 2023. QUICK FACTS Name: Roman dodecahedron What it is: A 12-sided bronze object Where it is from: Northwestern provinces of the Roman Empire When it was made: Second to fourth centuries A.D. Roman dodecahedrons have baffled archaeologists since 1739, when the first example of the 12-sided bronze object was discovered in the English Midlands. For nearly three centuries, experts and hobbyists have put forth dozens of theories

Blood, Fire and Demogorgons Rain Down in New 'Stranger Things 5' Trailer

Remember that little-known Netflix show, Stranger Things? A new trailer is here to remind us that the super-famous sci-fi series is coming back later this year, and things in Hawkins are looking ominous. Fans are preparing to say goodbye to the iconic series with the release of the fifth and final season over three separate drops. The first four episodes will debut on Nov. 26, followed by three more on Dec. 25 and one more on Dec. 31. We last saw Eleven and the rest of the gang more than three

How AI can make us better decision-makers, with Cassie Kozyrkov

Hello, and welcome to Decoder! This is Jon Fortt, CNBC journalist, cohost of Closing Bell Overtime, and creator and host of the Fortt Knox podcast. As you just heard Nilay say, I’m stepping in to guest host a few episodes of Decoder this summer while he’s out on parental leave, and I’m very excited about what we’ve been working on. For my first episode of Decoder, a show about how people make decisions, I wanted to talk to an expert. So I sat down with Cassie Kozyrkov, the founder and CEO of AI

These are the closest-ever images of the sun from Parker Solar Probe's historic flyby

NASA's Parker Solar Probe made history with the closest-ever approach to the sun last December, and we're finally getting a look at some of the images it captured. The space agency released a timelapse of observations made using Parker's Wide-Field Imager for Solar Probe (WISPR) while it passed through the sun's corona (the outer atmosphere) on December 25, 2024, revealing up close how solar wind acts soon after it's released. The probe captured these images at just 3.8 million miles from the so

What's Free in the Epic Games Store This Week?

Have you done the impossible and run out of new video games to play? Or are you someone who simply enjoys free stuff? There's no shame in that, especially with game prices rising and tariffs looming. Who isn't eager to save a bit of money? If that does sound like you, then we've got just the place you should check out: the Epic Games Store. The store launched in 2019 after Epic capitalized on the massive success of battle royale game Fortnite. Addictively fun, Fortnite quickly became a cultural

Topics: dec epic game games july

If You’re a Prime Member, This TP-Link WiFi 6 Mesh System Is at a Record Low with a Coupon on Amazon

TP-Link has been the default go-to for high-powered routers that provide consistent Wi-Fi across the entire home. Budget-friendly or a bit more, TP-Link has something for every home. Currently, Amazon is offering record-low prices on some of its most popular models for Prime Day, and the Deco AX3000 (Deco X55) 3-pack is taking the cake. This is Amazon’s number-one TP-Link best-seller, and with the promo code DECOPRIME, you can purchase it for its lowest price ever: It’s discounted to as low as

Topics: amazon deco fi home wi

Data everywhere, alignment nowhere: What dashboards are getting wrong, and why you need a data product manager

Want smarter insights in your inbox? Sign up for our weekly newsletters to get only what matters to enterprise AI, data, and security leaders. Subscribe Now In the past decade, companies have spent billions on data infrastructure. Petabyte-scale warehouses. Real-time pipelines. Machine learning (ML) platforms. And yet — ask your operations lead why churn increased last week, and you’ll likely get three conflicting dashboards. Ask finance to reconcile performance across attribution systems, and

Pet ownership and cognitive functioning in later adulthood across pet types

Age-related cognitive decline is an increasingly pressing concern in public health, which may begin in early adulthood and accelerate with increasing age1,2. While much research is still investigating the precise mechanisms of cognitive ageing, previous studies have identified several contributing factors, including for example genetics, general health and lifestyle choices3,4,5,6,7. Cognitive decline is a major public health concern on both individual and societal levels due to its association

Judge: You can’t ban DEI grants without bothering to define DEI

In mid-June, a federal judge issued a stinging rebuke to the Trump administration, declaring that its decision to cancel the funding for many grants issued by the National Institutes of Health was illegal, and suggesting that the policy was likely animated by racism. But the detailed reasoning behind his decision wasn't released at the time. The written portion of the decision was finally issued on Wednesday, and it has a number of notable features. For starters, it's more limited in scope due

Microsoft is laying off as many as 9,000 employees

Today we are sharing decisions that will impact colleagues across our organization. To position Gaming for enduring success and allow us to focus on strategic growth areas, we will end or decrease work in certain areas of the business and follow Microsoft’s lead in removing layers of management to increase agility and effectiveness. Out of respect for those impacted today, the specifics of today’s notifications and any organizational shifts will be shared by your team leaders in the coming days.

FCC chair decides inmates and their families must keep paying high phone prices

Federal Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr has decided to let prisons and jails keep charging high prices for calling services until at least 2027, delaying implementation of rate caps approved last year when the FCC had a Democratic majority. Carr's office announced the change yesterday, saying it was needed because of "negative, unintended consequences stemming from the Commission's 2024 decision on Incarcerated People's Communications Services (IPCS)... As a result of this waive

Hikvision Canada ordered to cease operations over security risks

The Canadian government has ordered Hikvision’s subsidiary in the country to cease all operations following a review that determined them to pose a national security risk. The order was forwarded to Hikvision last Friday, and the matter was made public over the weekend by Mélanie Joly, Canada's Minister of Innovation, Science and Industry. “Following a National Security Review under the Investment Canada Act, the Government of Canada has ordered Hikvision Canada Inc. to cease all operations in

I made my VM think it has a CPU fan

Why bother? Some malware samples are known to do various checks to determine if they are running in a virtual machine. One of the common checks is to look for the presence of certain hardware components that are typically not emulated in virtualized environments. One such component is the CPU fan. One of the observed ways malware checks for the presence of a CPU fan is by looking for the Win32_Fan class in WMI: wmic path Win32_Fan get * And the reason they do this is they want to avoid runnin

Lenovo’s Legion Go S With SteamOS Is the Only Real Alternative to a Steam Deck

2025 For the last several years, most of us thinking about buying a handheld PC have heard the refrain “just get a Steam Deck.” The reasons are two-fold: one, the OLED version at $550 is the cheapest of its class, and two, it’s so damned easy to use thanks to SteamOS. No other company has come close to offering similar bang for the buck—until now. At $600, Lenovo’s Legion Go S with SteamOS is a superior handheld for on-the-go gaming compared to the Windows version released earlier this year, w

PJ5 TTL CPU

Well, we did it… we cracked 4MIPS on our TTL CPU. I have to admit I’m both relieved and surprised. The key parts to achieving this was to decrease the latency for the instruction decode and also the flag register writing. The time to decode an instruction, perform a bit of math and then write to the flags was at around 270nS. With the changes we made, the instruction decode had a radical reworking and the flag writing had some big changes as well, means we go this down to under 200nS. Which m

The Steam Deck OLED is back in stock

is a news writer who covers the streaming wars, consumer tech, crypto, social media, and much more. Previously, she was a writer and editor at MUO. If you’ve been itching to get a handheld, but the Switch 2 isn’t quite up your alley, now you can get your hands on a Steam Deck OLED. As spotted by @Wario64, Valve has started selling the device on its online store again after it was out of stock in the US and Canada for over a week. Earlier this month, Valve cited “recent supply chain constraints

Final Fantasy fans, now is the time to get into Magic: The Gathering

The Final Fantasy Magic: The Gathering set is here, and there’s never been a more perfect assemblage of Magic cards. The set features cards taken from every mainline Final Fantasy title, including the two MMOs, so there’s something for every generation of Final Fantasy lovers. And while Magic has featured other video game crossovers in the past (hello, Assassin’s Creed and Fallout!), with the way this set is constructed, from card mechanics to art, you can tell this one is a developer favorite,

Chip stocks fall on report U.S. could terminate waivers for Taiwan Semi and others

A motorcycle is seen near a building of the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC), which is a Taiwanese multinational semiconductor contract manufacturing and design company, in Hsinchu, Taiwan, on April 16, 2025. Semiconductor stocks declined Friday following a report that the U.S. is weighing measures that would terminate waivers allowing some chipmakers to send American technology to China. Commerce Department official Jeffrey Kessler told Samsung Electronics , SK Hynix and Taiw

Open source can't coordinate?

Open Source Can’t Coordinate I was taking a shower this morning, and was pondering yesterday’s problem, where I suspect that I have an outdated version of hotspot Linux profiler, but I can’t just go and download a fresh release from GitHub, because hotspot is a KDE app, and I use NixOS. And NixOS isn’t a problem — it’s a solution. Linux on desktop is a rickety tower of competing libraries, protocols and standards, which is always in an Escheresque sort of perpetual motion, taking off but simul

Marvel Just Added a *Fourth* Movie to Its 2028 Plans

Marvel’s been having a pretty quiet time at the box office as of late, as it prepares to head into a new Avengers duology to cap off its latest, up-and-down era in a pretty subdued manner. 2025 may have 3 MCU movies to its name (and a host of TV projects), but after Fantastic Four: First Steps, just four movies will release across 2026 and 2027. But once the dust settles on Secret Wars? Marvel Studios is cranking things back up. Variety reports that Disney has now dated a fourth untitled Marvel

A real fixed-point decimal crate in Rust

Primitive fixed-point decimal types. Rust built-in f32 and f64 types have two drawbacks: can not represent decimal numbers in base 10 accurately, because they are in base 2; can not guarantee the fraction precision, because they are floating-point. This crate provides fixed-point decimal types to address the issues by using integer types to represent numbers with a scaling factor (also called as "scale") in base 10 to achieve the accuracy. This is a common idea. Many other decimal crates do

Open source can't coordinate

Open Source Can’t Coordinate I was taking a shower this morning, and was pondering yesterday’s problem, where I suspect that I have an outdated version of hotspot Linux profiler, but I can’t just go and download a fresh release from GitHub, because hotspot is a KDE app, and I use NixOS. And NixOS isn’t a problem — it’s a solution. Linux on desktop is a rickety tower of competing libraries, protocols and standards, which is always in an Escheresque sort of perpetual motion, taking off but simul

Krispy Kreme says November data breach impacts over 160,000 people

U.S. doughnut chain Krispy Kreme confirmed that attackers stole the personal information of over 160,000 individuals in a November 2024 cyberattack. The American multinational coffeehouse chain employed 22,800 people in 40 countries as of December 2023 and operates 1,521 shops and 15,800 points of access. It also manages four "Doughnut Factories" in the United States and 37 others internationally, and it partners with McDonald's to have its products sold in thousands of McDonald's locations wo

Paddle settles for $5 million over facilitating tech support scams

Paddle.com and its U.S. subsidiary will pay $5 million to settle Federal Trade Commission (FTC) allegations that the company facilitated deceptive tech-support schemes that harmed many U.S. consumers, including older adults. Paddle, a UK-based payment processor, offers payments, tax handling, compliance, and checkout infrastructure for software and digital product sellers by acting as a "merchant of record." According to the FTC, Paddle failed to perform adequate screening and fraud prevention

Four reasons why it’s a surprisingly bad time to buy a gaming handheld

is a senior editor and founding member of The Verge who covers gadgets, games, and toys. He spent 15 years editing the likes of CNET, Gizmodo, and Engadget. I love modern handheld gaming, and I recommend it to anyone and everyone. Just maybe not today? If you decided today was the day to finally drop hundreds of dollars on your first handheld, I might advise you to wait. Four reasons: The best handhelds are sold out The second-best handhelds just got more expensive Third-tier handhelds are