In this week's crucial round-up, our Agents expose a dangerous Android virus, reveal the latest Pokemon game and venture out to the furthest reaches of Jupiter – all in all, an average week at Geek Squad HQ! Get the lowdown on the week's most fascinating stories in the Week in Geek.
It's been another wild week in the world of science, technology and geeky entertainment – and as usual, our Agents are ready to update you on all the hottest stories.
Top trending tech news
NASA’s Juno probe reaches jupiter
Five years ago, NASA launched a probe to visit Jupiter, the largest planet in our solar system – and this week, they announced it had arrived. The probe, named Juno after the wife of Roman god Jupiter, is now in a 53-day orbit around the planet’s poles,which by October will have tightened to a 14-day orbit.
The mission has been described by NASA as one of the most difficult things they’ve ever done, as the probe is now the furthest-ever solar-powered spacecraft from Earth. The probe will orbit Jupiter only 37 times over the course of the next 20 months before plummeting into the planet's dense atmosphere.
The probe will use scientific instruments including microwave radiometers to look below the cloud tops of Jupiter for the first time and measure temperature, air pressure and water abundance. The results should give us a 3D image of Jupiter’s atmosphere. There’s also a camera which will allow the probe to take photos of Jupiter’s north pole – something nobody has ever seen before.
Finally, there are also a few special passengers on board in the form of three aluminium Lego miniature figures of Jupiter, Juno and astronomer Galileo – the first scientist to discover the moons of Jupiter.
Fearsome Android malware infects 10 million devices worldwide
Back down to Earth, this week also saw the troubling news that a particularly nasty piece of Android malware is doing the rounds.
The ‘Hummingbad’ malware, as it’s known, has been under investigation by cybersecurity firm Check Point Software Technologies since February – and this week, they revealed that a staggering 10 million devices worldwide are infected, including at least 100,000 in the UK.
Devices can become infected simply by browsing infected sites – and if the first attempt fails, the malware can even send fake ‘system update’ notifications to trick users into granting it the necessary permissions. The virus was developed by a team of criminals called Yingmob, who are based in China and responsible for a host of other malicious software, including the iOS malware ‘Yispecter’.
Once it’s installed, the software serves fraudulent ads to users, earning the criminals behind it a pretty penny. Indeed, Check Point estimate that the device delivers about $300,000 a month in revenue for the hackers. What’s more, infected handsets can be taken over to form a ‘botnet’ – a swarm of devices that can be used to mount cyberattacks against targets like businesses and government agencies.
If you’re interested, you can read Check Point’s full report here– but to keep your own device safe, there are a few precautions you can take. First and foremost is to make sure all of your apps and software are kept updated – but for true peace of mind, Check Point (and Geek Squad) recommends that you install one of the many reliable anti-virus apps for Android.
BlackBerry ditches its classic keyboard design
Just 18 months after its launch, troubled mobile phone manufacturer BlackBerry has announced that they will no longer be making their latest 'Classic' model.
Designed to appeal to BlackBerry fans of the past, the handset was a mix of the old BlackBerry Bold design with their latest Q10 operating system. It featured a physical keyboard, trackpad, longer battery life as well as full touchscreen and messaging hub – but didn’t manage to recapture their former popularity.
The company’s chief operating officer and GM of devices, Ralph Pini, shared the news in a blog on Blackberry’s website. He said, "To keep innovating and advancing our portfolio, we are updating our smartphone lineup with state of the art devices. As part of this, and after many successful years in the market, we will no longer manufacture BlackBerry Classic."
He also confirmed that BlackBerry will continue to support devices running Q10, with version 10.3.3 of the OS due to arrive next month.
New on the High Street
Spector puts incredible power in your hands
This week also saw the announcement of a strange and fantastic new gadget created by Fiona O'Leary, a student at the Royal College of Art.
The Spector, as it's known, is a hand-held scanner that allows the user to digitally 'capture' any colour or font they encounter in the real world, and load it back into their computer at home for digital art and design work.
In other words, it's much like the 'colour dropper' tool found in Paint, Photoshop and the like – but for reality. It's a truly amazing piece of technology with some incredible potential – and while it's not actually commerically available yet, we couldn't resist including it in this week's round-up!
You can find out more about how it works and see it in action in the video above.
The return of Red Dead Redemption
Gamers rejoiced this week with the news that Rockstar’s open-world western epic Red Dead Redemption would be coming to Xbox One’s backwards compatibility program.
Sales of the Xbox 360 title jumped 6,000% on Amazon after the news broke, with many fans desperate to slip back into the spurs of former outlaw John Marston. Indeed, the six-year-old title is currently listed as the 17th most popular video game on the site.
Fans have long been calling for the game to be remastered for the current generation of consoles, and it was number three on the list of the most-requested titles for Xbox's backwards-compatibility program.
This development has actually been in the works for a while: Microsoft accidentally released the game earlier in the year, meaning the game became available to download and play on Xbox One. It was removed and made unplayable shortly afterwards – and the debacle blamed on an error made while testing a collection of titles.
This time, though, we're assured that Red Dead is here to stay – and to get you in the mood, why not check out the game's trailer above?
Pokemon Go released into the wild
Wednesday saw the long-awaited release of a new Pokemon game for smartphones, Pokemon Go. Using 'augmented reality' to project virtual Pokemon into the real world, this game has already garnered a lot of attention from Pokemon and technology fanatics over the few months – and with good cause!
To play the game, you’ll need to physically walk around your neighbourhood with your phone in hand, ready to spot wild Pokemon. Your phone will use its GPS location to find Pokemon near you, which you can spot using your phone’s camera! You can then fling a Pokeball at a wild Pokemon to catch it, adding it to your collection – and increasing your Pokedex count with every new Pokemon you find.
Augmented reality games have been around for a while, but developers Niantic are certainly leading the charge with Pokemon Go and their previous AR game, Ingress. While both games work in a similar manner, Ingress relies on you picking one of two sides to join, then contesting points on a map to decide who’s the winner (or, more accurately, who’s got the most free time).
Pokemon Go can be played much more casually, and is much more suitable for younger children. We’ll certainly be playing more of this game over the next few weeks, hunting down elusive Pokemon and training them up to battle against other players. Find out more in the video above from the nice people at IGN.
The latest movies and TV
Lethal Weapon reloaded for TV...
We’ve known since last October that 80s action flick Lethal Weapon was getting a TV reboot, starring Clayne Crawford and Damon Wayans Sr as cops Martin Riggs and Roger Murtaugh – but we’ve learned this week that ITV will picking up the show for a primetime slot! In fact, it’s the first US TV series to be given such a major slot on ITV since The Americans in 2013.
The show will premier in the US in late September, but a UK date hasn’t yet been announced. ITV’s director of television Kevin Lygo said, “It's rare that we find an acquisition with that sweet spot potential – the best production values and hugely entertaining drama – that we think can appeal to the biggest and broadest audiences and take up a place in ITV primetime”.
It remains to be seen whether the TV show will capture the spirit of the movie series, but we’re looking forward to it all the same.
...and the Warriors come out to play
Lethal Weapon isn't the only classic movie getting the small-screen treatment: we also learned this week that the classic 1979 action movie, The Warriors, will be reimagined as a television series by Joe and Anthony Russo – the brothers behind the successful Marvel superhero movie, Captain America: Civil War.
For the uninitiated, The Warriors takes place in a dark yet cartoonish version of New York City, where gangs of elaborately costumed youths do battle for control of the streets. The titular Warriors are one such gang – and after being framed for the murder of another popular gang leader, the group have to make their way home through hostile neighbourhoods over the course of one long, violent night.
Oddly enough, the new TV series will be an adaptation of an adaptation of an adaptation. The original movie was adapted from a 1965 novel by Sol Yurick, which was in turn loosely based on Anabasis by the ancient Greek soldier and historian Xenophon, written at some time in the 4th century BC!
Whether or not the new series lives up to its illustrious pedigree remains to be seen – but to get yourself in the mood, check out the trailer for the original film above.
And finally...
Man spends £40,000 building room-sized computer; uses it to play Tetris
Finally this week, we learned about one man’s bizarre quest to build his own giant supercomputer, not unlike the room-sized behemoths of the mid-20th century.
This particular machine was developed by James Newman, who spent £40,000 putting it together and calls it the ‘Megaprocessor’ – and for the record, that’s mega as in ‘big’, not mega as in ‘powerful’.
The unwieldy beast is 33 feet wide, 6 feet high and weighs a staggering half a ton. While modern computer processors are constructed from tiny transistors built into silicon chips, the Megaprocessor uses full-size ones – over 40,000 of them. Add 10,000 LEDs to the mix and you’ve got a seriously hefty piece of hardware.
For all that, though, the processor only runs at a rate of 20 kHz. For reference, that’s about 92,500 times slower than the chip in an iPhone 6S – a device that’s more than 3,000 times lighter.
But as any geek will tell you, it’s not the speed of your processor that counts – it’s what you do with it. To that end, Newman has been using the Megaprocessor to play Tetris. Sir, we salute you!
You can take a virtual tour of the Megaprocessor in the video above – it's a fascinating project and a real labour of love.
That's it for another crucial round-up of the week's tech news – but for more great stories from our Agents direct to your inbox each month, get your name down below for our Geek Squad newsletter!