Category: Tech news

For those who have recently injured or lost their dominant hand, everything from apps to bungees exist to ease the frustration.

Baby herring adapt to extra carbon dioxide in the water; cod and clams, not so much.

After years of letting algorithms make up our minds for us, the time is right to go back to basics.

Was the movie everything we hoped it would be? Two WIRED editors (and proud ’80s kids) hash things out.

This week the USDA announced it has no plans to regulate gene-editing technologies like Crispr, opening the door to a boom in designer foods.

Facebook has been updating its privacy settings for more than a decade. Will this time be different?

John Collins shows you how to fold the innovative paper airplane design that earned him a spot in the Guinness Book of World Records.

Tesla has shed some more light on the fatal crash and fire involving a Model X car last week. In a blog post tonight, Tesla said it’s not yet clear what happened in the time leading up to the accident. Tesla also said it does not yet know what caused it.

Tesla did note that, according to its data, Tesla owners have driven that same stretch of Highway 101 with Autopilot engaged about 85,000 times since Tesla first rolled out the automated control system in 2015. Since the beginning of this year, Tesla drivers have successfully handled that stretch of the highway 20,000 times, according to Tesla.

“The reason this crash was so severe is that the crash attenuator, a highway safety barrier which is designed to reduce the impact into a concrete lane divider, had either been removed or crushed in a prior accident without being replaced,” the company wrote.

Below, you can see what the barrier was supposed to look like versus what it looked like the day before the accident.

Tesla says it obtained the image of the more recent photo from the dash cam of a witness who regularly makes the commute. The company went on to say it has “never seen this level of damage to a Model X in any other crash.”

As previously reported, the accident also caused a fire. In the event there is a fire, Tesla says its battery packs are designed so that people have enough time to get out of the car.

“According to witnesses, that appears to be what happened here as we understand there were no occupants still in the Model X by the time the fire could have presented a risk,” Tesla wrote. “Serious crashes like this can result in fire regardless of the type of car, and Tesla’s billions of miles of actual driving data shows that a gas car in the United States is five times more likely to experience a fire than a Tesla vehicle.”

The promise of Tesla’s Autopilot system is to reduce car accidents. In the company’s blog post, Tesla notes Autopilot reduces crash rates by 40 percent, according to an independent review by the U.S. government. Of course, that does not mean the technology is perfect in preventing all accidents.

Earlier today, the National Transportation Safety Board announced it is conducting an investigation into the accident, which killed the driver and resulted in a fire.

“Out of respect for the privacy of our customer and his family, we do not plan to share any additional details until we conclude the investigation,” Tesla’s blog post stated. “We would like to extend our deepest sympathies to the family and friends of our customer.”

If you thought the Oracle v. Google saga was over at last, we have some bad news for you. On Tuesday, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit breathed new life into the case, ruling that Google violated copyright law when it used Oracle’s Java APIs to create the Android mobile operating system. You can read the full ruling here.

The case revolves around a central question: Is a programming language like Java covered by copyright protection? The advent of a third Oracle v. Google trial demonstrates that the far-reaching copyright debate is far from over.

Google has maintained that its use of Java fell under fair use, an argument that a jury agreed with in 2016. Google also won the first round, when Oracle sued the company in 2010. Oracle was previously seeking $9 billion in damages, making the financial stakes just as massive as the implications for the broader software development world.

Oscar Health, the startup run by Josh Kushner (yes, brother of Jared), has raised $165 million at a reported valuation of $3.2 billion, CNBC’s Christina Farr reports. The funding comes from Alphabet’s Capital G investment company and Verily life sciences corporation, Founders Fund and others.

Oscar’s goal is to outpace existing industry-leading insurers, including UnitedHealth and Aetna, with an emphasis on mobile technology, including an appointment booking app and other tools for encouraging engaged consumers across its platform.

The startup seemed to be in some potential trouble because of its focus providing an insurance marketplace for Affordable Care Act beneficiaries, but the company has changed its model to one in which customers are charged higher premiums, and with closer relationships with a select group of care providers to help them work out more competitive pricing.

Per CNBC, Oscar Health also left the door open for potential partnerships with one of its newest investors, Verily. The Alphabet-owned healthtech company has a number of potential ventures it’s working on, and insurance could feature in a few of those plans, so this could turn out to be a very strategic investor partner.

Life360, the app for networking families together via mobile devices, has acquired the developer team behind PathSense, responsible for the creation of a location-based mobile application toolkit, to build out its location-based offerings.

The San Francisco-based Life360 will see all of PathSense’s employees joining its staff, while the tech that PathSense developed will be licensed by the family networking and security monitoring service.

PathSense uses location software and sensing technologies that use less battery power than other GPS apps, according to the company.

“For Life 360 it is very critical to have accurate geofencing to locate assets especially family members and if they leave specific geofenced areas,” wrote Neil Shahe, an analyst for Counterpoint Research.

Specifically, Life360 is applying the technology to crash detection services for families in the event of an accident.

“The PathSense technology, and the team’s expertise in utilizing all of the sensors available on smartphones in a unique way, provides our users with a world-class car crash detection and response system,” said Alex Haro, co-founder and CTO of Life360. “This ensures we fulfill our vision to make every family member a safer driver and be there for them when accidents happen.”

That service will detect when an accident occurs and initiates a call to the phone of whichever subscriber was in the accident. If the user needs assistance, Life360 says it will notify emergency contacts and dispatch emergency services to a location.

The feature is part of the company’s Driver Protect subscription service — which also includes monitoring of phone usage in cars.

PathSense’s team, now a part of Life360 was behind the development of Trapster — a Waze -like app using crowd-sourced data to provide traffic and accident alerts.

As part of the talent acquisition, Life360 gets a new technology development hub in San Diego — which the company intends to continue to staff up as it develops new location-based applications.

PathSense will also remain a going concern and will look to bring on new clients in its Southern California office.

 

Considering we’ve got simulators for everything from driving a junker (x2) to moving into a neighborhood with a bunch of hot dads in it, I suppose it was only a matter of time until someone made a game where you assemble your own PC. It’s called PC Building Simulator, as you might guess, and it looks fabulous.

I’ve built all my PCs over the years, including my current one, which I really should have waited on, since the early Skylake mobos were apparently trash. I’m sure we can line up the screw holes better than that, MSI!

What was I talking about? Oh yes, the simulator. This is no joke game: it uses real, licensed parts from major manufacturers, which are (or will be) simulated down to their power draws, pins, draw counts and so on. So if you pick a power supply without enough molex connectors to handle your SLI rig and PCIe solid state system drive (or whatever), it won’t start. Or if you try to close the ultra-slim case with an 8-inch-tall heatsink on your overclocked CPU, it’ll just clank. (Some of these features are still in development.)

Add LEDs inside the case, replace the side panel with acrylic (no!), try out a few cooling solutions… the possibilities are endless. Especially since manufacturers like Corsair, AMD and so on seem hot to add perfectly modeled virtual versions of their components to the selection.

There’s even a “game” aspect where you can start your own PC repair business — someone sends you a machine that won’t boot, or shuts down randomly, and you get to figure out why that is. Run a virus scan, reseat the RAM, all that. Damn, this sounds just like my actual life.

Seriously though, this is great — it might help more people get over the idea that building a PC is difficult. I mean, it is, but at least here you can go through the motions so it isn’t a total mystery when you give it a shot.

The best part is that this game is made by a teenager who put together the original as a lark (it’s free on itch.io) and attracted so much attention that it’s been blown up into a full-blown game. Well, an Early Access title, anyway.

Today’s Apple event in Chicago was about more than just showing off new hardware and software in the classroom — the company was reasserting itself as a major player in education. The category has long been a lynchpin in Apple’s strategy — something that Steve Jobs held near and dear.

Any ’80s kid will tell you that Apple was a force to be reckoned with — Apple computers were mainstays in computer labs across the country. It’s always been a good fit for a company focused on serving creators, bringing that extra bit of pizzazz to the classroom. In recent years, however, there’s been a major shift. The Chromebook has become the king of the classroom, thanks in no small part to the inexpensive hardware and limited spec requirements.

Based on Google’s early positioning of the category, it appears that the Chromebook’s classroom success even managed to catch its creators off-guard. The company has since happily embraced that success — while Microsoft appears to have shifted its own approach in response to Chrome OS’s success.

Apple’s own responses have been less direct, and today’s event was a reconfirmation of the company’s commitment to the iPad as the centerpiece of its educational play. If Apple can be seen as reacting, it’s in the price of the product. Gone are the days that schools’ entire digital strategy revolved around a bunch of stationary desktops in a dusty old computer lab.

But while education has been a piece of the iPad strategy since the product launched eight years ago next month, the tablet was long price-prohibitive. The company has addressed that through school discounts and lowering the overall cost of the line, as the tablet market has started to stagnate, but the last couple of upgrades have dropped pricing down to a far more approachable $299.

A one-iPad-per-child approach is still out of the realm of plenty of public schools, but it’s easy to see how the product could be appealing for school IT managers looking to roll out the iPad cart to classrooms. And additions like Managed Apple IDs have made it easier for multiple kids to share the same device, as a cost-cutting measure.

Along with devoted educational software, the company demonstrated how existing apps like Clips and Garage Band can be repurposed within the educational context to help bring a level of multimedia interactivity to the learning process. The company even sat us down in classrooms today to walk us through some of those projects.

Of course, right now, the market is Google’s to lose. The company reportedly controls around 60 percent of the market. Much like Android, the heart of Chrome OS’s approach is an embrace of third-party manufacturers, which have helped keep the cost down.

Schools with tight budgets can pick up a dirt-cheap Chromebook for $100-$150 less than an iPad. It’s easy to see how that’s an appealing proposition, especially when broken units are just par for the course in the hands of students.

In spite of its success, Google’s certainly not an island. Yesterday’s announcement of the first Chromebook tablet was both a response to Apple’s involvement in the space and a preemptive strike against today’s event, though the new Acer device is actually $30 more expensive than Apple’s educational discount. The company sort of shot itself in the foot on that one, but expect to see more competitively priced slates from other hardware partners.

Microsoft held its own education event in May of last year, showing off its solution to Chrome OS. Thus far, however, Windows 10 S has been kind of a mess, thanks in no small part to some pretty convoluted messaging on the company’s part. The company plans to streamline things a bit by making 10 S a mode inside of Windows 10.

The idea is basically the same, either way, offering a stripped-down version of the operating system that can be locked down from outside apps, so teachers can make sure nothing unseemly makes its way onto the device. It takes less of a toll on the hardware, with the company introducing a new line of PCs starting at $189 — a clear swipe at the Google’s dominance.

In fact, the company came out and said as much in the accompanying press material, saying the products were “the same price as Chromebooks, with none of the compromises.” And while Google’s online office applications have grown in popularity, Microsoft software is still nearly ubiquitous in offices, so there’s something to be said for prepping kids for the real world through use of such applications.

Take a break from the dumpster fire that is 2018. This electric Mini will make you smile.

Built as a show piece, the car features an electric powertrain in a restored 1959 Mini Cooper. Of course it’s red with a white stripe, and, of course, there are rally lights across the grill. This is how a Mini should look, and an electric powertrain should make it feel the part, too.

Minis are supposed to be oversized go-karts that go like mad with near-instant acceleration. And that’s the best part of electric vehicles: instant torque that produces insane acceleration.

Mini hasn’t revealed the range or capabilities of this show car. Its purpose is mostly to draw attention to Mini’s other electric vehicles and concepts. Mini has been producing electric vehicles since 2008 when it created a limited run of Mini E, which was used to make the BMW i3. More recently Mini announced the Mini Electric Concept and intends to put it on the market by 2019.

But forget about that new car that’s sure to be overloaded with screens, LEDs and silly things like airbags. None of that stuff will make people smile as much as a classic Mini Cooper.

The Office of the Inspector General has issued its report on the circumstances surrounding the FBI’s 2016 lawsuit attempting to force Apple to unlock an iPhone as part of a criminal investigation. While it stops short of saying the FBI was untruthful in its justification of going to court, the report is unsparing of the bureaucracy and clashing political motives that ultimately undermined that justification.

The official narrative, briefly summarized, is that the FBI wanted to get into a locked iPhone allegedly used in the San Bernardino attack in late 2015. Then-director Comey explained on February 9 that the Bureau did not have the capability to unlock the phone, and that as Apple was refusing to help voluntarily, a lawsuit would be filed compelling it to assist.

But then, a month later, a miracle occurred: a third-party had come forward with a working method to unlock the phone and the lawsuit would not be necessary after all.

Though this mooted the court proceedings, which were dropped, it only delayed the inevitable and escalating battle between tech and law enforcement — specifically the “going dark” problem of pervasive encryption. Privacy advocates saw the suit as a transparent (but abortive) attempt to set a precedent greatly expanding the extent to which tech companies would be required to help law enforcement. Apple of course fought tooth and nail.

In 2016 the OIG was contacted by Amy Hess, a former FBI Executive Assistant Director, who basically said that the process wasn’t nearly so clean as the Bureau made it out to be. In the course of its inquiries the Inspector General did find that to be the case, though although the FBI’s claims were not technically inaccurate or misleading, they also proved simply to be incorrect — and it is implied that they may have been allowed to be incorrect in order to further the “going dark” narrative.

The full report is quite readable (if you can mentally juggle the numerous acronyms), but the findings are essentially as follows.

Although Comey stated on February 9 that the FBI did not have the capability to unlock the phone and would seek legal remedy, the inquiry found that the Bureau had not exhausted all the avenues available to it, including some rather obvious ones.

For instance, one senior engineer was tasked with asking trusted vendors if they had anything that could help — two days after Comey already said the FBI had no options left. Not only that, but there was official friction over whether classified tools generally reserved for national security purposes should be considered for this lesser, though obviously serious, criminal case.

In the first case, it turned out that yes, a vendor did have a solution “90 percent” done, and was happy to finish it up over the next month. How could the director have said that the FBI didn’t have the resources to do this, when it had not even asked its usual outside sources for help?

In the second, it’s still unclear whether there in fact exist classified tools that could have been brought to bear on the device in question. Testimony is conflicting on this point, with some officials saying that there was a “line in the sand” drawn between classified and unclassified tools, and another saying it was just a matter of preference. Regardless, those involved were less than forthcoming even within the Bureau, and even internal leadership was left wondering if there were solutions they hadn’t considered.

Hess, who brought the initial complaint to the OIG, was primarily concerned not that there was confusion in the ranks — it’s a huge organization and communication can be difficult — but that the search for a solution was deliberately allowed to fail in order that the case could act as a precedent advantageous to the FBI and other law enforcement agencies. Comey was known to be very concerned with the “going dark” issue and would likely have pursued such a case with vigor.

So the court case, Hess implied, was the real goal, and the meetings early in 2016 were formalities, nothing more than a paper trail to back up Comey’s statements. When a solution was actually found, because an engineer had taken initiative to ask around, officials hoping for a win in court were dismayed:

She became concerned that the CEAU Chief did not seem to want to find a technical solution, and that perhaps he knew of a solution but remained silent in order to pursue his own agenda of obtaining a favorable court ruling against Apple. According to EAD Hess, the problem with the Farook iPhone encryption was the “poster child” case for the Going Dark challenge.

The CEAU Chief told the OIG that, after the outside vendor came forward, he became frustrated that the case against Apple could no longer go forward, and he vented his frustration to the ROU Chief. He acknowledged that during this conversation between the two, he expressed disappointment that the ROU Chief had engaged an outside vendor to assist with the Farook iPhone, asking the ROU Chief, “Why did you do that for?”

While this doesn’t really imply a pattern of deception, it does suggest a willingness and ability on the part of FBI leadership to manipulate the situation to its advantage. A judge saying the likes of Apple must do everything possible to unlock an iPhone, and all forward ramifications of that, would be a tremendous coup for the Bureau and a major blow to user privacy.

The OIG ultimately recommends that the FBI “improve communication and coordination” so that this type of thing doesn’t happen (and it is reportedly doing so). Ironically, if the FBI had communicated to itself a bit better, the court case likely would have continued under pretenses that only its own leadership would know were false.