Google Assistant Shines in Pint-Sized Home Mini

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The first wave of reviews touting Google's Home Mini smart speaker surfaced this week, on the heels of reports that the company had to quash a top touch function to prevent the device from accidentally activating and recording conversations without users' knowledge.

Google has promised to roll out an update to the device by Oct. 15.
The hardware glitch didn't seem to dim the spotlight on the potential of the smart speaker, however, which is a slimmed-down version of the flagship Google Home product, powered by Google Assistant.
The small round gizmo comes in chalk, charcoal and coral (Google online exclusive). It is only 3.86-inches in diameter and just 1.65 inches in height, yet it provides 360-degree sound with a 40mm driver. It supports HE-AAC and LC-AAC+ audio formats, and it supports WiFi and Bluetooth connectivity. It runs on the Android operating system.
Among its capabilities, the Home Mini can provide reports on weather, traffic, news, sports and more. Like the original Google Home, the Mini can keep track of schedules and calls, provide reminders, and act as a virtual assistant. In addition, it can serve as the control center for compatible home automation devices. It can be used with Chromecast to stream music, movies and TV shows to a TV or external speakers.
The Google Home Mini is available to order at the Google Store for US$49.00, and it will begin shipping by Oct. 18.

Form and Function

The early hands-on reviewers gave kudos to the looks and functionality of the Google Home Mini.
"The Google Home Mini is a handsome little thing," wrote Adam Clark Estes for Gizmodo. "The device actually looks nice, like an eccentric decoration that connects to the internet and does things."
Reviewers appreciated the material and construction of the device.
"The top is covered in a woven cloth material, while the bottom half is plastic with a big rubber foot," wrote Ron Amadeo for Ars Technica. "It looks like someone stuck a donut inside a sock. Since the Google Home Mini looks like a piece of laundry or a couch cushion, it blends in to a home environment much easier than the white plastic obelisk that is the original Google Home."
The Google Home Mini scored points for functionality as well as form.
"On the software end of things, the Google Home Mini also excels," added Gizmodo's Este. "Set up takes approximately six seconds with the Google Home app -- which you won't really need to use afterwards since you program all of the actions with the separate Google Assistant app."

Sound Device

Among the biggest negatives reviewers cited was the Google Home Mini's limited projection capability.
"While the larger Home has three speakers to drive an impressively full sound, the Home Mini makes do with one, top-firing speaker," noted Dan Seifert in his review for The Verge. "As a result, it does not sound nearly as good as the larger Home, and does not work well to fill medium to large rooms with music."
The Home Mini's speaker points straight up, which likely isn't the best way to disperse sound.
"The Mini isn't any good at playing music," Ars Technica's Amadeo said bluntly. "It seems tuned for voice and voice only, which is fine for hearing command affirmations and the weather report."
The quality of the voice is clearly where the Home Mini make maximum impact.
"Voice responses from the Home Mini sound great -- much better than the can of bees you get from Amazon's Echo Dot," added Seifert. "And it does get loud enough to hear from across my living room."

Shutting Down the Recording

Even with its attractive gateway pricing, the Google Home Mini will have to overcome one significant issue -- namely that a potential privacy concern already has been discovered.
Google quickly responded by disabling the device's ability to listen in -- some would say spy -- but it isn't clear if the damage control was enough.
"The glitch is an embarrassing episode for Google, but their response to permanently disable the feature shows how seriously Google takes privacy," explained Josh Crandall, principal analyst at Netpop Research.
"They are reacting in a responsible way to the situation -- and luckily, the market is still nascent," he told TechNewsWorld.
The hardware snafu may reflect Google's zeal to push a competitive product into the market quickly, even if it meant taking some quality control risks.
"Early adopters of new technology products are more familiar with these kinds of hardware and software glitches," Crandall added. "In fact, it's part of the game to try and find the bugs that embarrass the big tech companies. It's becoming part of the process in today's fast-moving markets."

Maximizing the Mini

With the Home Mini, Google may be hoping to attract interest beyond the early adopter crowd. The Mini may serve as an affordable gateway to smart speakers in general.
"Google Home Mini, Amazon Echo Dot, and the rest of the crowded field are still very early to market," said Paul Teich, principal analyst at Tirias Research.
"Household adoption of virtual assistant appliances is still very low, so this is not a zero-sum game at all," he told TechNewsWorld.
"Given that consumers in general have short memories and the products and product features are evolving so fast, I expect that both Amazon and Google virtual assistant appliances have a lot of growth ahead of them," Teich added.
Still, the Google Home Mini could be more an attempt to catch up than to break out.
"While there are a number of competitors in the game, the main contenders continue to be the big technology companies -- Amazon, Google, Microsoft and Apple," suggested Crandall. "Amazon's Echo has quickly taken the lead, but Google and others aren't going to cave."

Battle for the Home

Smart speakers in general showcase a different way of capturing an audience that traditionally has used a screen -- whether it is the second screen on the desktop or the third screen on mobile devices -- to connect to the Internet. They are an extension of the larger smart home play, which in itself is just one facet of the enormous Internet of Things.
"One of the most interesting aspects of the recent Home Mini launch was how it reflected Google's growing presence in smart home infrastructures," said Charles King, principal analyst at Pund-IT.
"That's sizably different than Amazon's play in tying Echo devices to its shopping functions and media services, and Apple's growing interest in becoming a media player," he told TechNewsWorld.
"Aside from the spying glitch," King said, "Google appears well positioned to compete against its rivals for a place in increasingly intelligent homes and consumer services."

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TOYOTA BACKS PROJECT TO LAUNCH FLYING CAR IN 2020

Japanese automaker Toyota has decided to participate in the financing of a flying car project developed by a group of young engineers who dream of seeing their vehicle lighting the Olympic flame of the Tokyo Olympics in 2020.This group, which was born in 2012 under the name Cartivator, announced this weekend that it gathered 42.5 million yen (about 345,000 euros) for the next three years from 15 companies of the Toyota group, including the company itself .The engineers involved, from different companies, say they develop this futuristic car christened "SkyDrive" in their spare time. "By 2018 we plan to finish a prototype," said Tsubasa Nakamura, technical director of Cartivator, for whom the aim is "to light the flame at the opening ceremony of the 2020 Olympic Games.""We want to create a world where anyone can fly in the sky any time by 2050," in order to unlock urban transport, particularly in developed countries, where the number of drivers increases rapidly, project proponents explain."To make our vision real, we need to develop a flying car that can take off and land vertically, without the need for special tracks," they added."SkyDrive", 2.90 m long and 1.30 m wide, can fly at 100 km / ha at a height of 10 meters and on three wheels at 150 km / h, with a single pilot driver on board, According to program details posted on the internet.Other big companies have recently begun to imagine flying cars. The Uber American service announced in April a series of partnerships through which it expects to achieve the first demonstrations of a futuristic system and transportation by 2020 using small aircraft.Google co-founder Larry Page also appreciates the idea and supports such projects as the European group Airbus

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Your anti-virus software is not enough

There was a time when anti-virus software was the height of computer security, especially if you were a Windows user. But the landscape of threats has changed, and we live in an era of sweeping, global campaigns, like the ransomware “WannaCry” infection and the more recent Ukraine-focused “NotPetya” attack. What role does anti-virus and antimalware software play in keeping your machine safe? We spoke with four security experts to hear what they had to say.

Across the board, each expert still recommends using software that protects your personal computer from attack. But modern anti-virus software is not the last word in defending your computer; rather, it’s part of a multi-faceted approach involving some common sense steps to keep your machine and personal information safe.

No connected machine is totally immune

Bob Gourley, cofounder of the security consultancy firm Cognitio and veteran of the intelligence community, says that his company recommends that people install protective software, as it will mitigate the risks people face.

“There’s a lot of security professionals who will point out that anti-virus software will not stop everything,” he says. “That’s true—it’s not the last line of defence. But it helps keep the noise down.”

His specific recommendation is that Mac users may want to use Sophos, which has a free antimalware program, and that Windows users should think about Symantec. (I tried the free version of Sophos on my Macbook Air, and it detected a virus hiding in a text document attached to an email that the Mail app had downloaded. I deleted it.)

One issue that Mac users should keep an eye out for, according to Gourley? Adware. This type of code is typically picked up when using a software as a service, like email or other things that require logging into an account. FCC rules state that adware has to identify itself to prevent classification as "spyware," but it's easy to pick up some adware, especially if you speed through those terms of service agreements.

Run a modern system, and keep it updated

Like Gourley, Kurt Baumgartner, a principal security researcher with security company Kaspersky Lab (which makes products that defend against malware and viruses), recommends that individuals use anti-malware software.

While that may not be surprising advice from someone who works at a security company that makes anti-malware software, he also emphasizes the importance of keeping your computer’s other software—especially the operating system—up-to-date in the fight against malicious code.

Take the WannaCry malware attack, also known as WannaCrypt, which struck machines running Windows in May. Microsoft had already provided a software update about two months before, in March, that protected customers running operating systems like Windows 7 or Windows Vista from WannaCry. Machines that hadn’t been updated or that were running older versions like Windows XP were left vulnerable. And Microsoft says that users who were running Windows 10, the most current version of the operating system, weren’t affected by that attack.

As for a recent attack last month, called “Petya” or “NotPetya,” Microsoft said in an article that most of those infections happened in computers running Windows 7.

Don’t forget to keep your anti-virus software, like Windows Defender, updated too. The software can't fight a threat it doesn't yet know about, and that information is typically found in regular updates.

Make yourself a smaller target

Tomer Weingarten, CEO and cofounder of security company SentinelOne, is lukewarm on the benefits of consumer anti-virus or anti-malware protection software. He recommends it as a better-than-nothing approach.

“Right now, attackers have evolved much beyond the current protections that all of us can install,” he says. “Even if we keep up-to-date with all the signatures, and whatever mechanisms that they offer us, it still becomes very problematic for them to deal with unknown attacks.”

As for the idea that the Macs and macOS is inherently more resistant to attacks, Weingarten is skeptical. “It’s really more about the fact that attackers are targeting the biggest bang for buck, and right now it’s the Windows system," he says. In short, Windows offers "more targets," according to Weingarten.

And while he emphasizes how crucial it is to keep your operating system updated, he also has another simple solution for people who may not be the most security proficient, and just want to do tasks like send emails: Use an iPad and a keyboard.

That’s because iOS, which powers iPhone and iPads, is “the one operating system that we can say is inherently more secure,” Weingarten says. The closed-down environment of iOS makes it impossible for someone to run foreign code on that device, unless, of course, it is through the highly-regulated official App Store. The only other way to run foreign software on the device would be if an attacker has a pricey and rare “zero day” exploit that could do so, meaning that a malevolent party has had found a way to exploit a vulnerability that has not yet been patched.

However, relying on an iPad or iPhone still doesn’t protect someone from clicking on a malicious link that then takes them to a dummy site, prompting them to enter personal information. In other words, vigilance and common sense are still key.

Think about your email provider

In the movie Shrek, the film’s namesake famously compares ogres to onions. Why? Because they “have layers.”

Like an ogre (or onion), good security has layers, a point that Shalabh Mohan, vice president for products and marketing at Area 1 security, emphasises. Area 1 sells protection to companies against phishing attacks; phishing attempts happen when you get an email with a malicious link in it, or are asked to enter your username and password on a website that impersonates your bank’s, for example.

Mohan says that software that protects your personal computer (or endpoint, in the industry jargon) is just part of a “layered approach.” The first step, Mohan argues, is recognizing that phishing attacks are the most common way that attackers get into your system.

The next step is easy: being smart about what email service you use. Mohan points to both Google and Microsoft as good choices, because they help prevent phishing in their Gmail and Outlook.com email services.

“Folks like Google, Microsoft have inbuilt controls and security that go way above what an end user could do themselves,” he says, meaning that phishing emails may just get filtered out before they reach you. Anti-virus software like Sophos and other network security systems can also help protect against phishing attempts.

And for security-conscious people concerned about their entire home network, devices like a mesh-network Wi-Fi system from Eero, or the forthcoming Norton Core Router, bundle security protection together with a wireless network.

In short, perhaps the smartest approach to protecting your machine in the current climate is to install anti-malware software, but also to take other steps, too, like using a solid email provider like Gmail, keeping your operating system up-to-date, and being vigilant and using common sense against phishing attacks.

Finally, back up your data, so in a worse-case scenario in which a computer is infected by something like ransomware, a savvy user could wipe their computer, install the operating system from scratch, and then restore it from the backed-up version. That’s no fun, but it’s better than losing everything.

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All good sunglasses have these five things

Almost any pair of sunglasses, even those cheap gas-station shades, can make you instantly look cooler. Decidedly uncool are the benefits that single-digit spectacles can’t afford—like cutting down on glare on sunny or snowy days, and preventing UV rays from slowly cooking your eyeballs. Luxottica, the company behind Ray-Ban and its iconic Wayfarers, has a very particular recipe for the sandwiched stack of materials that make up its Sun RX prescription lenses.

Layer 1: Scratch-Resistant Shell

Ray-Ban encases the entire lens in a layer of silicone resin to protect the surface from scratches and nicks. Applied via wet-bath for uniform coverage, the coating hardens under heat and UV light.

Layer 2: Colored Tint

Rather than tinting the lens itself—which could lead to uneven coloration as a result of the prescription-cutting process—Ray- Ban applies color as a separate polycarbonate layer. Dyes mix with the molten raw material prior to molding.

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Layer 3: Polarizing Film Light reflecting off flat surfaces such as lakes and roads oscillates horizontally, creating glare in situations where sunglasses matter most. A thin layer of polyvinyl alcohol with a series of microscopic vertical slits stretches across the lens, canceling out (or polarizing) the harsh light.

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Layer 4: Prescription Lens A computer-guided diamond cutter contours polycarbonate lenses to ‘script-perfect magnification. The impact-resistant material filters vision-impairing UV light and is roughly half the weight of hardened glass common in other shades.

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Layer 5: Anti-Reflective Coating

A dark, shiny surface tends to act like a mirror, especially in bright sun. To combat this effect, invisible layers of silica oxide, titanium oxide, and zirconium oxide bounce light in a different directions, keeping reflections of your face out of sight.

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Japan's zero-gravity space drone sends first pictures from ISS

Image copyrightEPA

Japan's space agency has released the first images taken by a drone it operates on the International Space Station (ISS).

The so-called Internal Ball Camera drone was sent to take pictures and video of the work of the astronauts.

The drone can float in a zero-gravity environment and is operated from earth.

Dubbed a little ball of cuteness floating about in space it has been offering a window into life on the ISS.

Japan's Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) said the drone was delivered to the ISS in early June. But only now have the first images and videos that it captured been released.

Image copyrightJAXA

Image captionA still from JAXA's video shows the drone floating on the ISS

Image copyright

Image captionAnd here's what the drone sees

According to the space agency, it can move "anywhere at any time via autonomous flight and record images from any angle".

Its purpose is quite simply to take pictures and videos - which until now had been done by the astronauts themselves as they document their work and experiments.

According to JAXA this currently "amounts to about 10% of their working hours".

The images can be sent in real time back to earth and will allow "flight controllers and researchers on the ground to check the crew's work from the same viewpoint as the crew".

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HP Is Back: Should It Rename Itself Compaq?

 

HP just took over the PC market lead worldwide. You probably don't get how incredible this is, so here's an analogy: It's as if a crooked referee put a bunch of lead on a racer who already was overweight and shuffled him to the back of the pack, but in the end, the guy finished first. You'd seriously want to look under his T-Shirt to see if you'd find Superman's costume.

This isn't Apple coming up with an iPod or iPhone and flanking the market -- this is a firm that simply pushed on the gas pedal at a time when everyone said it was going in the wrong direction (PCs were dead, remember?) -- and kicked everyone's ass.
As impressive as that is, there's more. This is also basically a brand new firm with a new focus, but people still see it with all the baggage the "HP" name brings, including the bad reflection from the massive mismanagement over at its sister company, HPE -- which, in contrast to HP, had all the advantages but couldn't seem to find the gas pedal.
This is a perfect example of why a firm should consider changing its name -- and Compaq, a powerful brand it owns, could be the perfect answer.
I'll expound on that and close with my product of the week: the Smartflower, which must be the coolest solar solution for your home in the world now.

HP's Turnaround

I'm simply amazed by HP's performance. It was clear when Meg Whitman spun out HP that she didn't believe it had a chance in hell of succeeding. Firmly convinced that both PCs and printers were dead, she saddled the firm with virtually all the combined company's debt -- pretty much stacking the deck to ensure that HP died while HPE succeeded.
Many of Dion Weisler's peers privately thought that he wanted to be CEO so badly he simply didn't see that he couldn't succeed and foolishly took the job. Maybe it's good no one told him that because now, when you look at the two companies, HP is a stunning success -- HPE not so much.
In fact, HPE is a bit of an industry joke now. I mean, how do you stack the deck like that and still find it impossible to execute? What is scary is that if Meg Whitman had won the California election, Southern California likely would be part of Mexico today.
You can just imagine, at the split, the HPE employees looking down on their HP compatriots, thinking just how screwed those poor suckers were going to be -- and now realizing they're the ones screwed. At the next joint company reunion, HP employees should wear T-Shirts with two letters: The first should be "H" but the second should be "A," as in "HA!" It does show that strong leadership, focus, and simplicity can do amazing things in any firm.

Changing a Company Name

There is a rule of thumb in marketing that says that one of the telltale signs that a CMO (chief marketing officer) has no clue what to do is a decision to change the firm's name or logo. As with all rules, however, there is one big exception -- and that exception is when the brand is working against you.
Now the brand "HP" doesn't have negative equity. The fact they sales are as good as they are showcases this. The problem is the image of the company and how it is trading.
The big indication of this is that both HPE and HP made a recently published list of the most-hated CEOs, placing at No. 8 and No. 10 respectively. It is clear from the criteria that it was attitudes toward the legacy HP and HPE that drove the decisions.
Dion Weisler is almost unknown outside of HP -- but in HP, as you might expect, he is a bit of hero, and HP's performance has been well beyond expectations. The employees there seem to love him, the channel seems to love him, and the investors should love him because they love anyone who can execute -- and man can he execute! These are the groups that picked the supposedly most-hated CEOs.
My takeaway is that it is the drag from HPE and the history of HP before the breakup that is causing Dion to be so badly reviewed. In short, it isn't his performance that is hurting him -- it is Meg Whitman's performance that is driving the perceptions surrounding both HP brands. If HPE continues to underperform and be defined by market mistakes, executive instability and layoffs, HP and Dion won't be able to own their own image.
Even though the HP brand doesn't have negative equity (by the way, that is when a consumer would pay more for a non-branded product than one with the negative brand), HPE is creating an ongoing drag on the image of HP, which must be hurting sales and company valuation.
Granted, given how tightly printers and PCs are tied to the HP brand, such a move wouldn't come easily or cheaply -- but unless HPE can be convinced to rebrand (in contrast, it seems very close to dropping into negative equity in the enterprise space), HP's only fix is to bite the bullet and take full control over its destiny.
Now, you wouldn't just cut the brand -- you'd transition it, and the likely first step would be to strengthen the sub-brands, similar to what IBM did with ThinkPad before selling the line and firm to Lenovo. But which brand?

Bring Back Compaq!

While HP always has been bigger in printers, Compaq was by far the bigger player in the PC space. It too had its operational and leadership problems, but even though it has been well over a decade since it operated under its own brand, I expect that folks mostly remember it fondly (or don't remember it at all).
In any case, it is a storied brand, HP owns it, and were HP to migrate to Compaq it would free it from all the negative equity it is getting from HPE's problems, and allow it to take a clean step away from the HP history that it is ever more slightly connected to.
Think about this another way. Right now, HP sells PCs and printers and looks far more like Apple prior to the iPhone than like the old HP, which historically was far more of a big iron back-office company.
Admittedly, printers would be a big problem given the firm's dominance, and perhaps maintaining HP as a sub-brand for the printers alone might be the safest path going forward -- much like Lenovo maintains the sub-brand ThinkPad and likely always will, even though the "Think" part of the brand still has heavy IBM connections.

Wrapping Up

There are a lot of amazing and somewhat ironic things this decade. We have a government run by the Republicans, who currently are doing more to advance a variety of social agendas they don't agree with (albeit unintentionally) than the Democrats who support those agendas are able to do.
The auto industry is rushing to autonomous cars, which likely will destroy the auto industry as we know it (not that it has a choice).
Massive firms are working on artificial intelligence to make everyone but their CEOs smarter, which is where AI would have the greatest impact.
Global warming advocates are overstating the horrendous outcomes so aggressively that they are discrediting the entire effort.
Also, a little company with a big brand showed the world that even with the deck stacked against you, you still can prevail, through leadership, focus, strategy and execution.
So, I think HP should rebrand, step away from the past, and fully embrace the future it can define rather than be defined by the past or by a sister firm where execution, even with the deck stacked in its favor, is an almost impossibly elusive thing. What do you think -- should HP bring back Compaq?

Solar power is incredibly attractive to me because it seems so much like magic. You put some glass panels on your roof or in your yard, and magically you have electrical power. I took our last house to solar power in the early part of last decade, and it cut my power bill substantially -- even though the panel yields were a fraction of what current panels put out.
However, I live in Oregon now, and our house isn't ideal for a roof-mounted solution. Plus, with roof-mounted solutions, the panels don't move, so much of the time they are facing in the wrong direction.
Putting panels on tracking frames so they follow the sun isn't just more expensive -- the result looks like crap. The typical solution looks little better than if your kid built a poorly-thought-through science project in your yard, which you couldn't take down without causing hurt feelings.
What I needed was a yard implementation of a tracking solution that didn't look like crap. You'd think that would be easy, but apparently it isn't.
However, what I found was the Smartflower.

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Smartflower POP

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This thing is brilliant. In the morning, it opens like a flower. Then it tracks the sun till the end of the day, closing down again at night or during harsh weather (to protect the panels). It looks cool, it comes in purple (a requirement for my wife), it has decent yields for its size (largely due to the tracking part), and it is relatively simple to set up. (You can simply drill it into the ground and trench to your power meter). It comes mostly pre-assembled in a box. You likely will need a crane, though, as it isn't light.
It also has that critical wow factor, as folks simply have not seen one of these before. Be aware, though, that getting one is a bit of an issue right now. Since it came to the states from Europe, it has been selling out, and until the company builds a U.S. factory (in planning), supply is a tad light and thus there aren't a lot of installers yet (I'm having trouble buying one myself).
Still -- man is this thing ever cool, and it likely is the only product like this that my wife has seen and just immediately said "buy it." High-tech lawn art that pays the bills? That's a natural for my product of the week!

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This new ramjet engine could triple the range of Chinese missiles

KILLS OF THE FUTURE

This 2014 computer-generated image shows a J-31 stealth fighter launching a long-range ramjet BVRAAM (beyond-visual-range air-to-air missile).

lt.cdjby.net via errymath

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GoPro Fusion first look: going beyond VR

Microsoft is dropping the Xbox One S price on the same day it's expected to unleash a flurry of details on its 4K-ready Project Scorpio console at E3 2017. 

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Microsoft at E3 2017: 6 things we want to see

Microsoft at E3 2017 introduction

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What People Don't Get About Tesla

Tesla is like Apple in that it represents a revolution in thinking. Although everyone seems to focus on the electric power plant, that is really a small part of the Tesla revolution, and I'm convinced that if Musk were to launch an almost-identical company but with gas engines, it would cut through the market like a hot knife through butter. In terms of volume, the electric part isn't as much a sales accelerant as it is an impediment.

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MIT used bacteria to create a self-ventilating workout shirt

Do these vents look cool, or gross? You be the judge.

Hannah Cohen / MIT

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EU antitrust regulators to investigate $38 billion Qualcomm, NXP deal

A Qualcomm sign is pictured at one of its many campus buildings in San Diego, California, U.S. April 18, 2017. REUTERS/Mike Blake

By Foo Yun Chee | BRUSSELS

EU antitrust authorities opened an investigation on Friday into Qualcomm's (QCOM.O) $38-billion bid for NXP Semiconductors (NXP.N), ratcheting up pressure on the U.S. smartphone chipmaker to offer concessions to address their concerns.

Qualcomm, which supplies chips to Android smartphone makers and Apple (AAPL.P), is set to become the leading supplier to the fast growing automotive chip market following the deal, the largest-ever in the semiconductor industry.

The European Commission listed a raft of concerns about the combined company's ability and incentives to squeeze out rivals and jack up prices. It said the company may bundle its products, excluding rivals in baseband chipsets and near field communication (NFC) chips.

The combined entity would also have the ability and the incentive to change NXP's intellectual property licensing practices, in particular the NFC technology, by tying this to Qualcomm's patent portfolio, the EU watchdog said.

It also voiced concerns about reduced competition in semiconductors used in cars. The Commission will decide on the deal by Oct. 17.

Qualcomm said it was confident of allaying the EU's worries and that it still expects to close the deal by the end of the year. U.S. antitrust enforcers gave the green light for the deal in April without demanding concessions.

Reuters reported on June 2 that Qualcomm may face a lengthy EU investigation after it declined to offer concessions to address the bloc's concerns in a preliminary review.

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Flaw in Intel Chips Could Open Door to Botnet Armies

A 7-year-old flaw in Intel chips could enable hijackers to gain total control of business computers and use them for malicious purposes.

The Intel AMT (active management technology) vulnerability is the first of its kind, according to Embedi, which released technical details about it last week.
Attackers could take advantage of the flaw to get full control over business computers, even if they were turned off, provided they were plugged into an outlet, according to the firm, which makes security products for embedded and smart devices.
Intel's AMT, which is installed on many vPro chipsets, is designed to allow computers running the chips to be accessed remotely.
"Hardware integrated management and security solutions like AMT provide powerful capabilities that can do a lot of good, like making power management more efficient and ensuring updates are installed," said John Morello, CTO ofTwistlock.
"However, they sit so low in the stack that any flaw in them effectively means the whole system is owned," he told TechNewsWorld.

In a Botnet Soon

Although the vulnerability has existed for years, Intel is not aware of any exploitation of the flaw, said company spokesperson William Moss.
As many as 8,500 devices -- 3,000 of them in the United States -- are affected by the flaw and facing the Internet, according to Data Breach Today. There might be many more vulnerable devices that could be accessed and exploited by hackers even though they are not connected to the Internet.
"We have implemented and validated a firmware update to address the problem, and we are cooperating with equipment manufacturers to make it available to end-users as soon as possible," Intel's Moss said. "Consumer PCs with consumer firmware and data center servers using Intel Server Platform Services (SPS) are not affected by this vulnerability."
The need for a firmware update to address the vulnerability is what makes the flaw dangerous, maintained Twistlock's Morello.
"Many organizations are happily running hardware that's no longer being serviced by the OEM, particularly when you're talking about low-margin small business PCs and servers with short support lifecycles," he said.
"The reality is that many of those systems will never be fixed and will forever be vulnerable," Morello continued, "meaning there's a high likelihood you'll see them in a botnet near you one day soon."

Firmware Patches Challenging

Firmware vulnerabilities can be more troublesome than other kinds of flaws, noted Morey Haber, vice president of technology for BeyondTrust.
"Patching firmware on servers is always a challenge for remote management tools, since many operating systems do not support the vendor supplied utilities to initiate them," Haber told TechNewsWorld.
This problem affects every original equipment manufacturer that uses the solution, he said, including Dell, HP, Fujitsu and Lenovo, and they will have to test and supply the patch as well.
"Patching this fault on every server and every hypervisor will take time and cause potential outages," Haber added. "Businesses must plan for a massive update in order to stay safe and stay compliant."
Until the patch can be installed, those who might be at risk should turn off AMT, he recommended, especially on Windows machines, as they will likely be the first to be attacked. They also should filter AMT ports, and allow communications to them only from trusted sources. Further, they should take care to avoid exposing AMT posts to the Internet.

Lessons Learned

What can be learned from the AMT flaw?
"No software, not even firmware, is safe -- and even tools that have existed for years can have critical vulnerabilities discovered that can lead to an incident, or worse, a breach," Haber said.
Intel likely learned something about its quality and assurance procedures from this incident, observed Bobby Kuzma, a system engineer with Core Security.
"This vulnerability should have been caught by Q&A long ago," he told TechNewsWorld. "The fact that it wasn't should be a question that they have to reflect on for awhile."
If Intel's Q&A process needs tightening up, now might be the right time to do it, as firmware vulnerabilities are attracting the attention of more and more researchers.
"That tends to mean that more vulnerabilities are going to be identified," said Todd O'Boyle, CTO of Strongarm.
"This is one in a long list of things like this we're going to see," he told TechNewsWorld, "so people should be prepared to deal with this again in the near future."

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Amazon Adds Show to Echo's Tell

Echo isn't just for sound anymore.

Amazon on Tuesday announced Echo Show, a new version of its popular smart speaker that comes with a 7-inch color touchscreen, 5-inch front-facing camera and dual 2-inch Dolby speakers.
The unit is priced at US$230 -- or two for $330 -- and will start shipping June 28.
Show can do everything Echo does, and more. With its screen, it can show YouTube videos, access home security cameras, display photos and scroll lyrics as you listen to songs from streaming services like Amazon Music, Pandora, Spotify, TuneIn, iHeartRadio and others.
Show's Drop In feature makes it easy to video conference with friends and family who have an Echo or the Alexa app.

Virtual Drop In

With Drop In, people can place each other on contact lists for Drop In calls. When you want to drop in on someone, you can tell Amazon's digital assistant Alexa to perform the task.
Initially your screen will appear as a pane of frosted glass. If the person you're calling wants to accept the call, the frost will melt away after 10 seconds. They may opt to take the call as a voice-only conversation or reject it.
Drop In users can activate a "Do Not Disturb" mode to ensure they won't be interrupted. They also can leave voice messages when they can't reach a Drop In buddy.
While a display may broaden Echo's features, it may be only a marginal improvement over Echo's existing interface.
"I think the voice interface is more convenient," said Kevin Krewell, a principal analyst at Tirias Research and an Echo owner.
"The ability for Echo's microphones to pick up voices across the room is great," he told TechNewsWorld.

No Tablet Replacement

For many people, Show would be redundant device, Krewell said.
"Amazon is trying to solve a problem that most people have already found a solution for -- it's called a tablet," he said.
"I'm skeptical that this is going to be popular," Krewell added.
While Show adds a range of new ways to retrieve information and control functions, the addition of a display could complicate matters for Echo developers.
"Adding a screen to the Echo compromises its proposition of 'eyes-off' functionality," said Ross Rubin, principal analyst at Reticle Research.
"Amazon will have to be careful to manage developers' assumptions of when the screen is there and when it is not, or it can fragment the platform," he told TechNewsWorld.

Aggressive Pricing

Show's screen gives Echo users a more comprehensive connection to Amazon's services, noted Rob Enderle, principal analyst at the Enderle Group.
"You can see what it is you are buying, you can read the lyrics of the songs you are playing and sing along, and you can better interact with Amazon's store -- track orders and such," he told TechNewsWorld.
Show is a logical step for Amazon to take with its voice products, observed Charles King, principal analyst at Pund-IT.
"It seems to leverage technologies and lessons learned from other efforts, like the Fire tablets," he told TechNewsWorld. "The company is also being aggressive in regards to pricing, especially for customers buying multiple units. That's likely to be highly attractive since the Show is designed to be stationary."

Defending Its Turf

The addition of a screen also could make Show popular in some vertical markets.
"The combination of screen and calling moves Amazon into delivering a device for elderly care and home monitoring -- a market that has long lagged behind technology capabilities due to the lack of major consumer brand support," said Jonathan Collins, a research director at ABI Research.
"The Echo Show has the potential to really bring the potential of that market to the fore," he told TechNewsWorld.
Show also will help Amazon defend its turf in the living room.
It allows Amazon to maintain its leadership in the market, Enderle said.
"Currently they are at more than 70 percent, but Google and, more recently, Microsoft are making runs at this segment," he pointed out, "and Apple is coming. Adding features will help Amazon hold on to that lead."

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Gadget Ogling: Amazon Gives Fashion Advice, Snacks Get Musical, and Coffee Tables Get Smart

Spring is in full swing, and what better way to celebrate the start of the warmer months than by poring over the most interesting recent gadget announcements in this, your latest edition of Gadget Dreams and Nightmares.

This time around, we take a look at a fashion-savvy Amazon Echo, a bag of chips with some snarl, and a smart coffee table.
As always, these are not reviews. The ratings are included to indicate how much I'd like to try each item myself and are not an indicator of their quality.

Visual Echoes

There are few companies that can make a voice assistant a truly mainstream endeavor in homes, and Amazon is absolutely one of them. Its Echo system, which brought its Alexa assistant to tables and countertops as a hub for your home, now has evolved into something a little more visually minded. I don't mean the brand new Echo Show -- it's the Echo Look that has caught my eye.
The Echo Look has a built-in camera that captures both audio and video. That might prove incredibly valuable for parents who can't grab their phone and open its camera in time to record whatever a young 'un is doing -- a quick shout to Alexa might be the better option to snag the moment for posterity.
Amazon has different ambitions for its Echo Look, though -- namely, it wants to help you choose your outfits. The camera can take full-length images, and you have the option of blurring out the background to bring your look completely into focus. The LED lights can act as a flash if you need one.
There's an accompanying app that stores all your outfits in a look book, and if you've recorded a getup on video, it can provide a 360-degree view. You can get advice on what to wear too: Upload two photos of different outfits, and the app will rate each based on trends, fit, color and style, through a combination of machine learning and expert guidance.

Outside of the fashion focus and (presumably) basic camera functions, the Echo Look has the same functions as the Echo and Echo Dot, and it's compatible with the Alexa app.
It feels like a harbinger for Echo in the home. It could be, for instance, an experiment that leads to an Echo monitoring what's inside your fridge and automatically ordering goods from Amazon Fresh when you need them.
For me, fashion advice would be more than welcome, since I have all the style of Santa Claus dressing in the dark. My wardrobe is not exactly festooned with great pieces, so Echo Look wouldn't have a lot to choose from, but if it could stop me from going outside without looking like a scarecrow, it would be a worthwhile investment.
Rating: 4 out of 5 Sharp Suits

Space-Age Snacks

I don't much care for promotional tie-ins, but this bag of Doritos caught my eye. It contains a custom MP3 player that includes the soundtrack to Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2.
I've yet to see the movie, though I adore the first installment and its soundtrack, festooned with pop and rock tracks from the '70s and early '80s, which plays a critical role in the narrative. The new flick's soundtrack is nothing to sniff at -- anything with the supremely joyful "Mr. Blue Sky" gets my vote -- though issuing it inside bags of chips is an eyebrow-raising move.

It's a kitschy piece of merchandising, and for many of the movie's fans -- particularly those who love Doritos -- it'll surely prove a welcome addition to a collection. I just can't ever imagine a world in which I'll plug earphones into a bag of chips.
Rating: 3 out of 5 Hooked on a Feelings

Put Your Feet Up

Sobro is a coffee table that wants to do it all. It has built-in speakers, can recharge your devices with USB and AC ports on each end, and includes a fridge. Naturally, you can control it using your smartphone or tablet.
It has a sleek, modern design with a tempered glass top that houses LED lighting to help you set the mood. The fridge isn't huge, but it should provide plenty of space for enough beverages to last the evening when you have friends over.
You can control the temperature with your phone, but that seems unnecessary -- a beer chilled to 42 degrees probably won't be much different to one cooled to 41 degrees.

The speakers connect over Bluetooth, and there are track and volume controls built into the table. There's an included Bluetooth dongle if you'd care to connect the speakers to your television for slightly more immersive shows and movies.
Even though my kidney-shaped coffee table doesn't quite make sense in my current living room space, I love it dearly. It's my favorite piece of furniture. If anything can make me give it up, it's one that makes sure I don't have to run to the kitchen every time I'd like a drink or a snack, or walk over to my console when it's time to recharge my PS4 controller.
The expected retail price of US$1,200 seems fair, which means the $650 that crowdfunding backers can grab one for seems a bit of a steal. Just make sure not to spill too many drinks on this one.

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The Massive Unintended Consequences of Self-Driving Cars

I attended last week's opening of Intel's big new Autonomous Driving Lab in Silicon Valley, and it is an impressive effort.

One of the most interesting parts is that the garage in the lab was built for a past CEO of the firm Intel acquired in order to challenge for technology leadership in this space. The chief clearly didn't want his four-wheeled baby left out it the sun.
However, car residual prices are collapsing, based on an alert that crossed my desk last week, and it struck me that we haven't considered much the secondary impacts of having self-driving cars, and the changes that will result from turning automobiles into four-wheeled elevators.
I'll address that this week and close with my product of the week: an amazingly fun Windows 10 math teaching application that I wish I'd had when I was a kid.

Self-Driving Cars

Many industry players are treating self-driving cars much like you would a feature such as cruise control: a nice-to-have option that will make driving much easier and safer.
There are a lot of industries that will be impacted by this, though, both positively and negatively -- not the least of which is the car industry itself, which could find the majority of car companies either vastly changed or out of the market entirely.

Replacement Parts for Humans

This is perhaps the least obvious change, but with 35K deaths attributed to them each year in the U.S., car accidents have been a huge source of organs for those who need them. Self-driving cars will massively reduce those deaths to near zero, and that could result in a huge imbalance between those who need organs and the available supply. It could lead to a sharp price increase for organs and likely a huge increase in illegal harvesting, particularly in regions where this is already a problem.
Efforts to create a cloned alternative in the U.S. have been hampered by the religious right. That could result in a distinct and massive spike in illegal organ harvesting in the U.S., and a huge push for people who need them to go to countries that don't have these restrictions in order to save their lives. This is big enough that it could have a massive impact on which party is in power.

Used Cars

There recently have been reports that the used car market is beginning to collapse, which is having an adverse impact on car lease and car payment rates because residuals on cars appear to be dropping rapidly.
The cause is thought to be Uber (though part of it could be a hot stock market which may be pushing some typical used car buyers to new cars). Uber plans to massively increase its service coverage once it can use autonomous cars.
This massive increase should reduce the demand for cars massively, on top of the massive reduction in demand for cars that can't do self-driving (which are expected to be banned in a few years on many roads).
That means not only that there will be an increasing inability to resell cars that don't have self-driving capabilities, but also that large numbers of people will feel they don't need cars at all.

New Cars

If you think about it, fully self-driving cars are like rolling elevators, and in areas covered by services like Uber the cost will be very low and the availability very high. They come without insurance, without parking or fuel charges, and without the need to garage or pay for parking.
The cost reduction for going to a service like Uber, which may provide subscription services -- a monthly fee for all you can ride -- should be massive. What that suggests is that the market for new cars should collapse in favor of Cars as a Service. Only the very rich will own cars, as a sign of status.
I am surprised that the car companies aren't all joining Toyota in an IBM-like strategy to create cars that use an autonomous car approach called "Guardian Angel," which enhances the driver's capabilities but does not completely eliminate the driver like the Uber and Google approaches do. It's one possible way to preserve their market.

Litigation/Insurance

The massive reduction in accidents should eliminate much of the need for litigation, both civil and criminal. That change also will impact insurance. I've seen models that suggest car insurance revenues will decrease in the 90 percent range, largely because much of the risk will be mitigated.
The need to have car insurance -- outside of firms like Uber, which either will buy in volume or self-insure -- should evaporate. If most folks don't own cars, they won't need to insure them.

Media Consumption

Media consumption should increase dramatically, because folks who currently are driving to work and unable to consume visual media or read books during their commute will be able to do so.
Many will choose to work either coming or going, but most likely will use at least some of the time to watch movies, play video games, or read books and magazines.

Law Enforcement

With the combination of cars with massive numbers of sensors (including cameras), centralized tracking, and near constant oversight, traffic cops should become redundant. Both on-car and in- street tracking systems will report folks who are misbehaving in real time, and folks who are behaving badly and overriding or not using self-driving will receive tickets in the mail or have law enforcement waiting for them at their next stop or home.
The need to put police on the roads should evaporate, except for extreme measures like catching terrorists or robbers. This need likely could be met with weaponized drones designed to eliminate the related threat from the air, and that could respond quickly from centralized depots.

Automated On-Site Car Repair

Given that many of these cars will be operating 24 hours a day and 7 days a week, the likelihood of an on-road failure will go up, needing a service that can repair the autonomous car where it failed.
Much like support for other technology products is outsourced to firms specializing in that service, this too could lend itself to service companies that can span service providers, allowing higher economies of scale, better coverage and lower costs.
The easiest system would be an automated service that retrieved the car and delivered it to a regionalized repair depot. You wouldn't be abandoned -- a replacement car likely would pick you up long before the repair vehicle arrived. In fact, given an early warning, it likely would be dispatched before you were stuck.

Car Repair/Paint Shops

Autonomous cars are basically rolling appliances. With the Uber model, they are also electric. They don't get into accidents, and increasingly, you won't own the vehicle, so why would you need to fix the engine or repaint the body?
Granted, there likely will be road damage and repair needs, but they likely will be done by large shops designed to handle Uber-level volumes, or an automated centralized service that probably could do both kinds of repairs in-house.
To keep cost down, low-cost replicable body panels and Gorilla Glass likely would reduce dramatically both the need for and cost of repairs.

Wrapping Up

Autonomous cars represent a massive game change for the car industry. The biggest driver is that this technology could save nearly one and a half million lives worldwide each year. Basically, the long-term plan is to change cars from what they are today into four-wheeled elevators.
On the positive side, this will save a massive number of lives and free time up for folks to be more productive or enjoy media. However, it also will lead to massive reductions in industries that make their living off the older model.
Self-driving cars are just one aspect of what many are calling "the second industrial revolution," and likely only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the changes robotics and artificial intelligence are likely to bring.

I also attended the Microsoft education event last week, and while I did fall in love with the Surface Laptop the company launched, the product that just set me back on my heels was from Fluidity Software's webFluidMath.
Like many guys, I'm pretty good with math, but this offering targeting K-12 students provided one of the most fun and capable methods for teaching kids math I've ever seen.
Using touch and a low-level AI, the result is a whiteboard space where you can draw figures like triangles and have the system immediately not only render them accurately but also generate the angles and tables that define them.
You even can draw cars and the calculations that define the old "if a train traveling at, etc." problems, and not only see how the result was generated but also create animated simulations of the trip -- both individually and across models. In short, you easily can create train drag races and see the math.

webFluidMath Software

A younger me would have played this like a video game and likely ended up far more capable with algebra and geometry in a relatively short time. Making math fun is a critical part of improving STEM skills, and webFluidMath does that.
Granted, it requires a touchscreen computer to work, but it really is the first product I've seen that combines artistic skills, math and a touchscreen into something that truly moves the math skill ball forward.
It also would be a useful tool for adults who struggle with math. Making math fun is critical to our future, I think, and thus webFluidMath is my product of the week.

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