Sometimes, a Chromebook is better

For a lot of us, a Chromebook does everything we need a laptop to do.

I really love my mom. I’d do anything for her, including walking her through how to do “stuff” to her computer. While that’s always a nice way to spend time on the phone with her, it’s something I don’t have to do anymore since I bought her a Chromebook.

Mom’s not a complete luddite — she’s been around my computers and gadgets for more years than I like to mention. She also used a computer at work for years, so she isn’t afraid to do things, she’s just unsure about some of it. When an update would go off the rails on her old laptop, or she wanted to install Firefox as the default browser, she needed someone to walk her through the process. We all have someone in our family or circle of friends who aren’t quite sure how to do more than the basics.

The final straw was when she called me because some company she never heard of from a place she’s never been wanted $79 to “decrypt her data” and relinquish control of her web browser. Thankfully it wasn’t a real extortion scheme and was just a pop-over that hijacked her browser and we were able to fix things. After she was squared away, I immediately went to Amazon and had a Dell Chromebook 13 shipped out to her, with a gift card that said “Call Jerry.”

A Chromebook can do everything my mom needs a laptop to do.

A few days later, we had her up and running with Chrome OS and a handful of extensions as well as a short explainer on Google Drive, the cloud and what she could and couldn’t do. She loves her new laptop, because it does everything she wants it to do without any fussing.

And that’s the important thing — Chrome OS can do everything she needs a laptop to do. She’s not writing software or playing immersive 3D games. She doesn’t need Photoshop — Google Photos lets her look at her pictures and share them. All her passwords are safely stored in her personal cloud (as safe as a cloud can be, anyway) and her laptop remembers who she is and signs her in when she wants to do some online shopping or visit her bank’s website as long as she’s signed in with her Google account.

For my Mom, a Chromebook is better.

We have Chrome Remote Desktop setup in case things go wrong, but (knock on wood) so far she’s not had any issues using her new computer. She turns it on, logs in, and does her thing. I imagine it makes her feel better knowing she doesn’t have to ask for help with things, and I know I feel better knowing she can be on the Internet safely and free of malware and assorted headaches. Dad’s even thinking of getting one of his own so he can do his thing without waiting for mom to finish doing her thing.

A Chromebook wont work for everyone. I don’t want anyone to think I’m insinuating anything of the sort. There are times when I have to use my MacBook because I need to do things that Chrome can’t handle, and I know that I’ll never be able to play the games I like to play on a Chromebook. But we’re not all the same and we all have different needs, and for someone like my mom a Chromebook does everything without her needing to fiddle around with anything. It’s literally plug and play.

Now she can call me just to say hello without feeling like a dummy because she needs help on the computer. And that’s the best part.

See Chromebooks on Amazon

Insomniac Games CEO on the challenges of making games for VR

As the Founder and CEO of Insomniac Games, Ted Price is responsible for esteemed console games like Ratchet and Clank, Sunset Overdrive and Fuse. Then there’s Song of the Deep, a gorgeous 2D platformer that’s slated to release this summer with GameStop as the publisher. But for Insomniac and other developers, virtual reality’s arrival onto the scene has opened up a world of new possibilities in game-making. And Price’s team is already dipping its toes in VR, with projects such as Edge of Nowhere, an insane third-person adventure designed for the Oculus Rift.

To that end, I sat down with him at GDC 2016 to talk about developing for virtual reality, the promise of PlayStation VR, Oculus, and the relationship between Insomniac and GameStop.

Ted Price.

How does working with Oculus compare to working with traditional console manufacturers?

Ted Price: I think there’s been much more mutual discovery, because we as a developer and Oculus as a hardware manufacturer are still figuring out how to create experiences in VR. It’s a brand new frontier for everybody, and as an example, when we lay out our levels we have to think very differently about the design versus in a traditional game like a Ratchet and Clank or a Sunset Overdrive.

And that’s because there are different rules that we’ve discovered one should follow when dealing with camera, when dealing with character controls, when dealing with passthrough levels, and we discovered this in sync with oculus and we collaborated with them. They’ll give us research that they’ve created by taking people through various iterations of our games and another games, and they’ll share those findings with us and we apply them in our designs.

For Edge of Nowhere, what did you find was the most challenging part of building something that immersive?

Price: The first challenge that we ran into was understanding how much we could and couldn’t move the camera, and in VR, your head is generally the camera, and as soon as you take control away from the player then it can be uncomfortable. At the same time, there are tricks that we can play that allows us to move the camera in slight ways to make the experience a little bit more visceral for players. So we had to find that sweet spot, as we were playing with our characters and controls in the very, very first iterations of Edge of Nowhere.

But the second big learning was how to lay out a space in VR. How do you do it to ensure that players have plenty of areas to discover, but don’t become uncomfortable that they’re moving backwards or laterally. Given that we were making a third-person game, those challenges were exacerbating, because we are also controlling controlling a character who is running around on the screen.

Sony’s PlayStation VR on display.

PlayStation VR has been the talk of GDC, is that a platform your studio’s exploring?

Price: We don’t talk about our other projects, but I will say that we’re really excited to see Sony reaching out to such a broad market with a peripheral like PlayStation VR. And, as somebody who owns a PlayStation 4, I’m really curious to see what other developers are doing for console VR versus what we’re doing on Oculus Rift. The cool aspect of VR in general is that it is a blind canvas for most developers. We aren’t looking at prior VR games to take inspiration; we’re actually just pulling stuff straight out of our head and asking, “Will this work? Let’s try it.”

As a console developer, how does working on VR compare?

Price: If you’re talking about the difference between developing a VR game like Edge of Nowhere and a more traditional game, the biggest difference for us has been in the design. But then there’s also thinking about controls. When you’re wearing a headset you can’t see the controller that you’re holding in your hand, so you have to be a little bit more thoughtful about how you lay out your buttons on the controller and what you ask players to do in your game, because you can’t expect people to be looking down at their hands.

With traditional games we can use more complex control schemes, but at the same time, that can be a trick because if things get too complex — especially for console audiences that are used to, say, high action games — then you can lose your players. Personally, when I encounter a game and I play maybe 10-12 hours and I take a break and go back to it, I know it’s a good control scheme if I remember what I was supposed to do without having to go look at a help screen. That’s something that, as designers, we are constantly struggling with: How do we find that balance between controls that give you a lot of options as a player and controls that aren’t too complex.

A screenshot from Song of the Deep.

Let’s switch gears and talk about Song of the Deep. How was working with Gamestop?

Price: It’s been great. Gamestop is publishing Song of the Deep, but we [Insomiac Games] are the intellectual property owners and we also have full creative control. It’s been a really straightforward and symbiotic partnership.

Do you think the relationship will grow from here?

Price: I would say that about every publisher that we work with. We have been very fortunate to have strong, long relationships with our partners. Sony is a great example with Ratchet being one of many, many games we’ve released with Sony.

I ask that because there was some concern you wouldn’t keep full creative control.

Price: We did. And I think what’s been great is that Gamestop has been very open about that as well. Gamestop has been very clear about how Song of the Deep is a story that they believe in. This pitch was basically Mark Stanley [Gamestop’s VP of marketing] and me talking about the game we were making and the vision he had for Gamestop. It was the story that really caught his attention and it was what we connected over.

I also think that Gamestop wants to bring something unique to its players. If you go into any game store these days, whether it’s Gamestop or a different game store, you tend to see AAA shooters dominating the space. It’s rare that you see a smaller scope, lower-priced game that’s stylized like Song of the Deep standing out on shelves. But I believe that Gamestop wants to bring that kind of game to players and elevate those games’ presence in the market.

[Image credits: Insomniac Games, Getty Images.]

Recommended Reading: Olivia Munn on why we’re all nerds now

Putting on Her Game Face
Connie Guglielmo,
CNET

Olivia Munn plays Psylocke in the upcoming X-Men: Apocalypse movie and CNET caught up with the actress to chat gaming, smart home tech and more. Munn says that there’s no reason to continue to call folks geeks or nerds now that tech is everywhere. She also has a solid solution for how to remedy traffic jams.

FTC issues warning to apps covertly monitoring TV broadcasts

It’s like the those skeevy flashlight apps all over again. The Federal Trade Commission has sent out a warning to mobile software developers using the Silverpush framework that their applications could be invading the privacy of unknowing consumers. As Fortune notes, Silverfish and others of its ilk are why some apps that don’t do anything in terms of voice transmission ask for permission to access your microphone. This alone sounds a bit creepy, but trust me, it gets even more gross.

The FTC alleges that some unnamed app developers are using this tech to monitor the TV shows you’re watching. Those warning letters (PDF) mention that the apps “would be capable of producing a detailed log of the television content viewed while a user’s mobile device was turned on for the purpose of targeted advertising software and analytics.” Told you it got worse.

In case you’re unfamiliar (which is totally understandable), Silverpush is a company that uses your device’s microphone to listen for ultrasonic sounds to identify when the same person is using multiple devices like a laptop and a smartphone or tablet. This ties the two separate gadgets to the same person and creates a more comprehensive advertising profile based on his or her habits. It’s baked into the back-end of messaging app Line and presumably a whole slew of others. Apparently, it can pick up the inaudible audio beacons from TV broadcasts as well.

Silverpush claims it isn’t using the tech domestically, but that doesn’t make it any less offensive. The FTC has requested that the India-based company alert customers that installed apps could grant third parties rights to keep tabs on their TV viewing habits should said applications make their way stateside. More over, the warning letters request that developers should explicitly ask permission to use your gizmo’s mic.

Whether or not this is in use on iOS isn’t known, as the dozen notices that were sent only call out apps published on Google Play. We’ve reached out to Silverpush for more information and will update this post should we hear anything back.

Via: Fortune

Source: Federal Trade Commission (1) (PDF), (2)

Netflix reportedly pays $90 million for Will Smith and ‘Bright’

A couple of weeks ago rumors surfaced that Netflix was in the lead to sign its biggest movie deal yet, and now Deadline says it is the winner of a bidding battle (over Warner Bros./MGM and PalmStar) for Bright. Pitched as an R-rated thriller with fantasy elements, it carries a reported price tag of about $90 million — $30 million or so more than it paid for War Machine with Brad Pitt. In it, Smith is apparently playing cop partnered with an orc (Joel Edgerton) Alien Nation-style. That includes $45 million to shoot it, with another $45 million used to pay the talent and buy out back end residual fees that they won’t get because of its anticipated limited theater release.

Max Landis wrote the script, while David Ayer (who just finished working with Smith on Suicide Squad and is on deck to produce a sequel for that movie) is attached as director. For all that cash, Netflix has obtained a high-profile exclusive with a recognizable face to advertise on its (now-worldwide) streaming service — just the kind of thing that might attract some of the millions of people who don’t already have an account to sign up and try it out. Also, it’s supposed to launch a franchise, which would help keep those subscription fees rolling in for years to come.

Source: Deadline

Blackberry revived on the Samsung Galaxy S7 edge: Keyboard Cover review

One of Samsung’s less talked about accessories is the Keyboard Cover designed for the S7 and S7 edge. It’s obscure because many get by with the keyboard on the full

Nexus devices to get a mid-month security patch after critical Linux kernel exploit discovered

App used to root Nexus 5, Nexus 6 found to have exploited ‘local elevation of privilege vulnerability,’ but .

Google has issued a supplemental update to its monthly Android Security Advisory after a critical flaw in the Linux kernel was found to be exploited in a rooting app. The flaw as originally reported was scheduled to be patched in a coming monthly security update, but that changed once researchers from Zimperium were able to demonstrate an exploit, and an application using it to root a Nexus 5 and a Nexus 6 was found in the wild. (Google did not name the rooting application in question.) The issue was then rated as a Critical severity issue, and the patch has been sent to AOSP and Android partners.

While software exploiting the issue is available, Google reminds us that it has checks in place — in Google Play itself (which doesn’t allow rooting apps), as well as outside the Play Store — that will keep any possible consumer impact low. Verify Apps (Google’s “Bouncer”) already has been updated to detect and block installation of apps that are attempting to exploit this vulnerability both within and outside of Google Play. In addition, any Android device using Linux kernel version 3.18 or higher is not vulnerable. (The new Samsung Galaxy S7, for example, is on kernel version 3.18.20.)

Writes Google:

To provide a final layer of defense for this issue, partners were provided with a patch for this issue on March 16, 2016. Nexus updates are being created and will be released within a few days. Source code patches for this issue have been released to the Android Open Source Project (AOSP) repository.

While the potential impact from this particular issue seems low, it’s nice to see any critical issue being addressed in a timely manner and outside of the normal patch schedule. Interested parties can learn more at Google’s security advisory page.

Microsoft is trying to make Chrome extensions work on Edge

Microsoft’s very first batch of Edge browser extensions is small, but it seems the company’s taking steps to make sure Windows users get more in the future. According to Microsoft Senior Program Manager Jacob Rossi, the tech titan is developing a “porting tool to run Chrome extensions in Edge.” It will presumably make things even easier for developers to create Edge versions of their extensions, though Rossi clarified that it doesn’t support all APIs. The tool isn’t finished yet, as well, but it’s not like most users can start installing plug-ins on their browsers anyway. Redmond has just begun testing the feature, and for now, only Windows Insiders in the Fast ring can enjoy it.

Lots of questions on this: yes we’re working on a porting tool to run Chrome extensions in Edge. Not yet finished and not all APIs supported

— Jacob Rossi (@jacobrossi) March 18, 2016

Via: Windows Central

Source: Jacob Rossi (Twitter)

Steam is ready to play all your games in VR

Not too long ago Valve announced that it had a way to play all of your Steam games in virtual reality, rather than just those built solely for the medium. Well, it’s officially out in beta form and if you’re one of the lucky folks who already has an Oculus Rift or Vive Pre, you can take it for a spin right this moment. Valve says that any game that supports Steam Broadcast should work with Desktop Game Theater, but you might have to fiddle with graphics settings on a per-game basis to get everything working properly. Consider it the modern analog of jiggling the handle to get the giant virtual screen working in your VR cave.

With the Rift releasing March 28th and the Vive coming out in April, this essentially amounts to the PC gaming giant prepping the runway. If you can’t get enough news about VR today, then you should definitely check out our feature on how cellphone maker HTC and Valve collaborated to bring the Vive to the world.

Source: Steam Community

Johns Hopkins’ drone flies straight from an underwater station

A UAV developed by a Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Lab team can stay underwater for months, waiting out of sight until it’s called to duty. When the machine does get deployed, it can swim up and fly into the air, just like any other quadcopter. The team calls their creation the KRAKENS CRACUNS or Corrosion Resistant Aerial Covert Unmanned Nautical System, made using additive manufacturing (3D printing) and other techniques. It can stay submerged hundreds of feet beneath the water’s surface, thanks to its composite airframe that can withstand the pressure.

In addition, the engineers sealed its most sensitive components inside a dry pressure compartment. They also painted its exposed parts with commercially available coatings that can protect them against the corrosive properties of saltwater. Both measures seem to have worked well during their experiments: the drone the researchers kept in sea water for two months showed no signs of damage.

CRACUNS doesn’t have any metal parts that can rust and malfunction in the water — best of all, it’s lightweight and doesn’t cost much. Those factors make it a good candidate for big research or military operations. Not to mention, if the company/government agency/university operating a fleet of these machines lose some to inclement weather or high-risk missions, it wouldn’t hurt too much.

Source: Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory