LG made a new Rolly plastic Bluetooth keyboard you can actually roll up

Have you ever wanted a Bluetooth keyboard you could roll up and stuff in your pocket (one with five rows of keys instead of four)? Well, LG has you covered.

Last year, LG announced a wireless keyboard product, called Rolly, which does exactly that. It basically folds up along four rows of keys in order to turn into a stick of sorts that can be thrown into a bag or even your pocket, meaning it’s ultra portable and perfect for those of you who do typing while on the go.

LG has now updated that product, giving it five rows of keys instead of four. Instead of rolling into a square like the old keyboard, the new keyboard rolls into a pentagon. It’s called LG Rolly Keyboard 2. From what we can tell, there are no other differences. It even has two plastic arms that fold out to support a tablet or smartphone in upright mode.

The original Rolly required one single AAA battery, providing three months of life. We’re assuming that’s the same with LG Rolly 2. Ir costs 129,000 KRW ($112 USD) but is only available in South Korea at the moment.

LG Korea

Play Doom’s open beta: How to get it now on PS4, Xbox One, and Steam

Anyone can get a taste of the new Doom’s multiplayer portion this weekend.

Bethesda announced earlier this month that anyone with a Windows PC, Xbox One, or PS4 could experience Doom from 15 April to 17 April, thanks to an open beta. Pocket-lint has explained everything you need to know about how to get the open beta running on your system this weekend, so you can experience the same content as the closed betas.

What is Doom?

Doom is a reboot of the Doom series, as well as the first major installment of the series since Doom 3 came out in 2004. The upcoming first-person shooter is developed by id Software and published by Bethesda.

What is the Doom open beta?

Unlike past Doom betas, which were limited in their availability, an open beta means anyone with a Windows PC, Xbox One, or PlayStation 4 can join (between 15 April and 17 April) and play the new Doom before it gets a full release. This early access to Doom is available worldwide and is all about the multiplayer component.

Here’s how Bethesda described it:

“In the Doom Multiplayer Beta, fans will have the opportunity to play the brutally fun and challenging shooter weeks before its release. The Beta is expected to feature two maps, Heatwave and Infernal, and two modes, Team Deathmatch and Warpath, along with never-before-seen weapons, armor sets, taunts and hack modules.”

When will Doom release?

Doom is in open beta right now. It will get a full release on 13 May.

How do you download Doom’s open beta?

Xbox One

• On your Xbox One, go the Xbox Store.
• Select ‘Search all games.’
• In the search field, type ‘DOOM.’
• Find and select the ‘Doom Open Beta’ product.
• Click the ‘Download’ button.

PS4

• On your PS4, Go to the PlayStation Store.
• Select ‘Search’ from the top menu.
• In the search field, type ‘DOOM.’
• Select ‘DOOM Open Beta’ from the search result list.
• Click the ‘Download’ button.

Steam

• Open the Steam client and select the ‘Store’ button.
• In the ‘search the store’ field type in ‘DOOM’.
• Select ‘DOOM Open Beta’ from the search interface.
• Scroll down and press the ‘Play Game’ button.

How do you provide feedback?

Keep in mind a beta’s purpose is to collect feedback from testers. If you want Doom to be great from day one after it releases in May, visit the Open Beta Forum to provide feedback, report issues, and discuss your beta experience.

Want to know more?

Check out the Doom Beta page for more FAQ and details.

The CIA is investing in social media surveillance even more

Now that even terrorist organizations are savvy with social media, the CIA’s investment arm, In-Q-Tel, is pouring more money into companies that help make sense of noisy social networks. As The Intercept reports, In-Q-Tel quietly made investments in Dataminr, a company that uses a Twitter stream to spot trends and threats for authorities; Geofeedia, which collects geotagged social posts; PATHAR, a company that directly mines social accounts for ties to terrorism and radicalization; and TransVoyant, which also monitors social networks.

In-Q-Tel has been making bets on similar companies over the last decade, so these investments aren’t particularly shocking. But they show what’s important to the agency today: It needs solid tools for sorting out everything happening on social networks. These four companies are just a handful of the 38 new investments revealed by The Intercept, via a program from this year’s CEO Summit. The firm also invested in the likes of Lookout, which focuses on mobile security, and Transient Electronics, which is developing dissolvable semiconductor tech.

While better social media analysis makes sense, there’s also the danger of unlawfully singling out people based on their race or religion, says Lee Rowland, a senior staff attorney at the ACLU. Our ability to sift out data from social networks is progressing far faster than the laws protecting civil rights, so it’s worth questioning how, exactly these companies get results.

Source: The Intercept

Apple responds to government request in NY drug case

Remember when we said the fight between Apple and the government wasn’t over? Well, its battle in New York just got a little more interesting. The Cupertino-based company responded to the Department of Justice’s request to unlock an iPhone 5s involved in a Brooklyn drug case. It says that it isn’t convinced that the government has exhausted all alternative methods to crack the phone, calling back to an earlier decision by a US magistrate judge that says it can’t compel Apple to do so.

In a briefing filed today, Apple said this:

“As a preliminary matter, the government has utterly failed to satisfy its burden to demonstrate that Apple’s assistance in this case is necessary — a prerequisite to compelling third party assistance under the All Writs Act.”

As a reminder, the All Writs Acts is a 227-year-old law designed to address cases that defy an existing legal process. Apple’s briefing today essentially claims that the government’s attempt at forcing Apple and other tech companies to unlock encrypted data is a misinterpretation of the All Writs Act.

The battle in New York is just the latest in the saga between Apple and the government. Earlier this year, the FBI had made a request to Apple to create a way to circumvent the security of an iPhone used by one of the perpetrators of the San Bernardino terrorist attack. Apple refused, and that led to a drawn out fight between the company and the government. Eventually, the FBI backed down after finding an alternate means into the phone, which so far doesn’t seem to have led to any useful discoveries.

Get streaming video of your innards using ultrasound

Current medical implants use radio waves to talk to receivers outside the human body at a paltry 50Kb per second. Fortunately, there’s a faster way! And we already use it to check on babies (and pumping hearts) in real-time: ultrasound. Researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign have used ultrasonic waves that travel fast enough through flesh to deliver streaming video.

To simulate the human soft tissue that slows radio waves, scientists hung slabs of pork loin and beef liver in water tanks and fired data through the mixtures. They achieved 30Mb of data transfer per second — about 1000 times the maximum speed that existing bodily implants achieve via radio waves.

That 30mb/s is fast enough to stream Netflix, but the real value will be in broadcasting live video and other data from within the body. Currently, video feeds require a bulky receiver sitting just outside the body. Possible, but not comfortable.

The scientists still have to test data transmission through multiple organs, which may have different thicknesses. This might slow things down some, but we won’t know until they throw more meat in front of the signal.

Via: Gizmodo

Source: New Scientist

Apple Fights Government Demand to Unlock iPhone in New York Drug Case

Following the U.S. Department of Justice’s decision to dismiss its lawsuit against Apple after it managed to access the iPhone 5c of San Bernardino shooter Syed Farook, the agency announced its intention to continue on with a similar New York lawsuit where it is attempting to get Apple’s help to breach an iPhone 5s used in a drug case.

In a filing this afternoon, Apple again refused to help the DOJ gain access to the device in question and asked the judge to dismiss the lawsuit, claiming the government has not proven that it has exhausted all other means of getting the data. There are specific references made to the San Bernardino case, where the FBI did manage to find another way into the iPhone without involving Apple. Via The Wall Street Journal:

“The government has utterly failed to demonstrate that the requested order is necessary to effectuate the search warrant, including that it exhausted all other avenues for recovering the information it seeks,” Apple argued in the new filing to U.S. District Judge Margo Brodie. “Before the government demands that Apple do the work of law enforcement, the government must offer evidence that it has performed an ‘exhaustive search’ and that it remains unable to obtain the data it seeks without Apple’s assistance.”

According to Apple, the FBI has not adequately demonstrated that the method it used to gain access to the iPhone 5c used by Syed Farook does not work on the Brooklyn iPhone 5s. Apple also argues the FBI has not proven it has consulted with the third party that helped with the San Bernardino iPhone or other third parties that could provide assistance.

In late February, U.S. Magistrate Judge James Orenstein ruled the FBI lacked the legal authority to force Apple to breach the New York iPhone, but the U.S. Justice Department filed a formal appeal in early March in an effort to turn over the ruling, which is what Apple is responding to with today’s filing.

In the New York case, which dates back to October 2015, the FBI is aiming to access data on an iPhone 5s belonging to Brooklyn drug dealer Jun Feng. While the FBI employed the help of “professional hackers” to access the iPhone 5c in the California case, FBI Director James Comey has said the method used to gain entry to that device does not work on the iPhone 5s or later.

The iPhone 5s in question is running an earlier version of iOS (iOS 7) that Apple does have the means to access, but Apple is refusing to do so after taking a stronger stance on encryption and customer privacy. While Apple can obtain data from that particular iPhone 5s, it does not have the means to do so on devices running iOS 8 or iOS 9 due to a change in its encryption methods.

Note: Due to the political nature of the discussion regarding this topic, the discussion thread is located in our Politics, Religion, Social Issues forum. All forum members and site visitors are welcome to read and follow the thread, but posting is limited to forum members with at least 100 posts.

Tag: Apple-FBI
Discuss this article in our forums

Senior Apple Engineers Say Hackers Are Main iPhone Security Threat, Not Government

Apple may be embroiled in an ongoing battle with the U.S. government over privacy rights and the boundaries of encryption, but in a meeting with reporters (via TechCrunch), Apple security engineers said the government is not the threat they aim to counter when implementing new security features for iOS devices.

Senior Apple engineers feel that government intrusion is not their primary threat model when designing iPhone security and said they instead prefer to focus on fending off hackers.

The engineers also characterized Apple’s pushback against the FBI as motivated not by a desire to impede a terrorism investigation, but rather to defend its ability to protect users against non-governmental threats.

Hackers, not the government, are what Apple aims to counter by beefing up security, and Apple engineers don’t want to be “viewed as government adversaries.” With every iOS update, hackers, some malicious and some not, make an effort to discover previously unknown security flaws able to be exploited to gain access to iOS devices. Apple has to continually work to eliminate vulnerabilities and improve security in never-ending race.

In the call, TechCrunch says Apple engineers explained features in its Security White Paper [PDF] to reporters in an effort to emphasize the work that goes into protecting data, highlighting features like the Secure Enclave, Touch ID, two-factor authentication, and end-to-end encryption in iMessage.

Built into devices utilizing an A7 or later, the Secure Enclave is a separate chip with its own secure boot and personalized software that’s updated separately from the application processor. It maintains encryption keys directly on the chip. Since iOS 8, Apple has also stopped storing encryption keys for devices, making it impossible for the company to access data on a locked iPhone.

According to Apple engineers, who reportedly “disputed the theory” the iPhone’s security allows criminals to evade law enforcement, implementing strong security measures is necessary to protect personal privacy for all people. In past arguments, Apple executives have also pointed out that even if the iPhone did have weaker encryption, criminals would be savvy enough to seek out other encryption methods like messaging apps with end-to-end encryption while the average consumer would be left more vulnerable.

Amid its dispute with the FBI, reports suggested Apple had already begun work on implementing stronger security measures to protect iOS devices, and in today’s call with reporters, Apple said it has revamped its internal security teams.

Update: The Verge has shared additional details on the press briefing.

Note: Due to the political nature of the discussion regarding this topic, the discussion thread is located in our Politics, Religion, Social Issues forum. All forum members and site visitors are welcome to read and follow the thread, but posting is limited to forum members with at least 100 posts.

Tag: Apple-FBI
Discuss this article in our forums

Roundup – Absolutely Essential Android Keyboards

One of Android’s biggest draws used to be the ability to use whatever keyboard you wanted to your heart’s desire. While Apple may have caught in that field, Android still has a huge library of keyboards available to users. What follows is my personal list of favorite Android keyboards.

Spoiler Alert: #4 is my personal favorite.

PrevNext

1. SwiftKey

If you’ve been on Android for more than a few days, the inclusion of Swiftkey on this list should be of no surprise to you. SwiftKey is perhaps the most well-known third-party keyboard on the market, and with good reason – in a world of autocorrect and predictive text input, SwiftKey is King. With a feature list as long as it is robust (Auto-Correct, Gesture Typing, Themes, Predictive Text, etc.), SwiftKey is a must-have for any Android-user.

2. Fleksy

Originally backed on Fundable on the tenants of blind texting, gesture navigation (manipulating text, entering spaces and adding punctuation via gestures), and a revolutionary, error-tolerant auto-correct algorithm, Fleksy is a unique and powerful texting platform. If you frequently find yourself typing while walking (or doing anything without looking at your phone), Fleksy is probably worth your time to try.

3. Minuum

This minimal, tiny Keyboard originally raised over $85,000 on IndieGoGo back in 2013 with the goal of bringing space efficient texting to screens of any size. The biggest draw of this quirky keyboard is obviously it’s tiny, two-row design, in which letters are crammed together and an algorithm sorts out which word your taps form. A series of gestures allow for spaces, punctuation and deletions without tapping the screen. I found this keyboard to be delightfully innovative and a real life-saver on smaller screens, where display real-estate is crucial. Experience it for yourself.

4. Clarity

If you try only one keyboard on this list for an extended period of time, it’s Clarity. This keyboard is a (now expired) Greenhouse project from SwiftKey, whose big feature is multi-word auto-correction. If you’ve ever typed “in” when you meant “on,” (or vice versa), most keyboards won’t notice because both are words. Clarity, however, notices the context in which you’ve typed a word and corrects it for you. For me, a clumsy tap-typer, this feature is an absolute must. This has been my daily driver keyboard, and I’ve never looked back. It’s basically a one-trick pony – no gesture typing, no themes, no predictive text – but that one trick really is amazing, in my experience. Trust me on this one. Try it.

5. Google Keyboard

Similar to the AOSP Keyboard, Google Keyboard offers a versatile, feature-filled – if slightly bland – typing experience that is proficient in almost every way, but excels in none. Keyboard offers Autocorrect, Emojis, Gesture Input, Custom Input Styles (QWERTZ, AZERTY), and a few themes consistent with Google’s aesthetic. In my personal experience with this keyboard, I’ve found all the features to be solid, but not particularly amazing in any way. It doesn’t have the text prediction of SwiftKey, the multi-word corrections of Clarity, the clever layout of Minuum or the error-tolerant nature of Fleksy, but does all of these things perfectly competently.

Iris by Lowe’s Second Generation review – CNET

The Good The second generation of Iris by Lowe’s smart-home system features a much better app than the first time around, along with snappier response times and simple setup instructions. Iris has promised a lot of future upgrades that make this system sound particularly appealing.

The Bad At present, the app is tedious and counterintuitive to use, and too much basic functionality is inexplicably locked behind a $10 pay wall. Multiple user integration isn’t fleshed out. And devices lose connection to the hub too often to be reliable as a security system.

The Bottom Line Iris shows a lot of potential with this second-generation smart-home system, but more of that potential needs to be realized before Iris by Lowe’s is a good buy.

On paper, Iris by Lowe’s handled the transition from the first to the second generation of the company’s smart home system well. Iris took note of the problems with generation one, and promised faster response time, easier device pairing, and more robust app controls. The company even offered existing customers a free upgrade to the $60 next-gen hub along with a migration tool to help with the transition.

Take a look at the comments in the iOS app store, in Google’s Play store, or even on the new hub’s page on Lowe’s site (at the bottom of this page, too) and you’ll notice lots of customers unhappy with the upgrade. The migration tool wasn’t ready at launch, and the second-gen system wasn’t fully compatible with all first gen devices. Lots of customization options were lost in translation. Many of these details have been added back in through updates since the second-gen launched in November, but customers who relied on a web interface instead of the app to interact with the system are still out of luck. Rightly, they’re pissed.

Transition issues aside, Lowe’s Iris generation two doesn’t hold up on its own merits as a good smart-home system. It is more responsive, but using the app is tedious and counterintuitive. Some pieces of hardware don’t work consistently. Worse, you still have to pay a $10 monthly fee just to use some of the basic features of the system. Wink, SmartThings and Insteon all have similar features for free, and all are a better buy than the second generation Lowe’s Iris system right now.

Peer into the smart home of Lowe’s Iris (pictures)
See full gallery

1 – 5 of 8

Next
Prev

What does Lowe’s Iris work with?

For the review process, I primarily looked at the devices contained with the $130 Iris Automation Pack — the hub, two contact sensors to detect when a door opens and closes, a smart outlet you can use to automate a lamp or anything else with a plug, a button you can map to rules or use as a panic button, and a motion sensor.

• A beginner’s guide to smarter home automation
• Seven smart hubs vying for a spot on your router shelf
• Best smart home devices of 2016

The $60 hub has antennas for ZigBee, Z-Wave and Bluetooth wireless radios — covering the bases for typical smart-home connection standards. In theory, Iris should be widely compatible with third party devices. You plug it into your router so you can control your devices from anywhere over Wi-Fi. And it uses four AA batteries as a backup in case power goes down — Lowe’s has on optional cellular backup plan for $5 a month so you can access the system even when your router is offline.

Other first party Lowe’s devices include a garage door controller, a range extender, an indoor and outdoor camera, a keypad and a water sensor. The hub works with third party devices like GE plugs, First Alert smoke detectors, Honeywell thermostats, Osram lights and locks from Schlage, Yale, and Kwikset. In all, it’s a lineup competitive with SmartThings, Wink, and Insteon. Though Wink and SmartThings get lots of additional interoperability via integration with IFTTT — the online rule maker. Iris doesn’t have that.

I primarily tested the $130 Automation Pack.

Tyler Lizenby/CNET

You can buy the Lowe’s Iris hub, the Automation Pack, the $100 Security starter pack, and any other Lowe’s Iris accessory, as well as a number of compatible third party devices now from Lowes.com and in Lowe’s retail outlets.

Lowe’s Iris only officially supports the US, but according to the company, does have customers using the system overseas. The price of the hub converts to approximately £40 and AU$80 for our readers in the UK and Australia respectively. The $130 Automation Pack converts to £90 and AU$170. The $100 Security pack costs roughly £70 and AU$130.

What can you do with Lowe’s Iris?

With the first generation, we were annoyed by how little you could do with the app. For the most part, you needed to control the system with the Web interface. That isn’t a problem anymore. Anything you control with Lowe’s Iris, you control via the app. In fact, now the Web interface is bare-bones. You can use it to manage your billing, though Iris Vice President Mick Koster promised that core services are coming back to the web later this year.

Between rules, schedules, scenes, and managing alerts and alarms, you can do a lot with the app to make your Lowe’s Iris smart home pretty smart. For instance, the hub comes with a built-in alarm, and you can set up your motion sensor or contact sensor to trigger the alarm and send you a push notification when the system is armed. Unfortunately, a lot of this functionality sits behind a paywall. By comparison, with SmartThings, you can use IFTTT to create a wide variety of recipes using a large catalog of interoperable devices and platforms for free. To do something similar, even with first-party Lowe’s Iris accessories, you need to pay $10 a month. Here’s the breakdown of what’s free and what’s not in the app on IrisbyLowes.com.

You can set an alarm to trigger when motion is detected.

Tyler Lizenby/CNET

That could all change in the coming months. Lowe’s Iris will offer contract free monitoring as an optional add-on soon. At that point, a $20 monthly fee will include professional monitoring and the premium version of the app, plus cellular backup of the hub. That price feels much more worth it, given that monitoring alone costs $25 a month with SimpliSafe. AT&T’s Digital Life charges as much as $65 a month for monitoring.

Plus, once monitoring becomes a reality for Lowe’s, Koster assured me the company would start looking at the basic to premium breakdown, and moving some premium features to the other side of the paywall. But I can’t give any credit now to a smart-home system based on how good it might be in a couple of months. As it stands, that $10 monthly fee is dumb.

Livestream’s Mevo camera lets you edit video on the fly

Broadcasting live video is one of the biggest tech trends of the last year. It started with Meerkat, but now Facebook and Twitter (via the Periscope app) are unsurprisingly the dominant players in the space. Most of that video streaming is done using smartphones, but Livestream — one of the first big players in the livestreaming video space — thinks there’s a market for dedicated video cameras. Enter Mevo, the company’s tiny, dedicated camera for streaming video to Facebook Live.

My first thought upon hearing about the camera, which was officially introduced at Facebook’s F8 conference earlier this week, was: Who exactly is Livestream targeting here? Facebook Live video has boomed in a big way with people shooting on their phones, and lots of those users aren’t going to shell out for a $399 external camera. Livestream admits that the Mevo isn’t for everyone, but the company also thinks it’s an opportunity to reach people (or businesses) who want to stream for more than a few minutes at a time.

Specifically, the Mevo camera is aimed at people who want to stream an event, be it a concert, company presentation or anything where it makes more sense to set up a camera on a stand rather than hold your phone up for a long time. From that perspective the Mevo sounds like a solid solution — not least because it lets you keep your phone in your pocket or continue to use it throughout the event you want to livestream.

The hardware itself is small and unobtrusive, with a power button on top, an LED ring around the chassis and a 150-degree lens and microphone up front. That power button also lets you automatically start livestreaming, provided you have all of your settings locked and ready to go. As for storage, the camera includes an SD slot and comes with a 16GB memory card in the box so that it’s good to go from day one. You can record video to that card, but most people who use this device are going to be interested in its livestreaming capabilities.

There are two ways to make that happen: You can connect the Mevo to a local WiFi network or stream video directly with your phone’s cellular connection. For the longer sort of streaming events that Livestream imagines users will want to do, WiFi is preferable — particularly because you’ll need to keep your phone out with the Mevo app running to livestream over cellular.

The Mevo experience can be extremely simple: Once you have the camera set up, you can automatically start broadcasting video by pressing the top button. Even so, the software allows for a significant range of editing features that can make your Mevo videos look a lot more professional. In particular, the Mevo app provides a great on-the-fly editing experience that lets you make videos that give the illusion of a multicamera setup, all with a single Mevo.

By default, the app shows what the camera sees; by tapping and pinching on the screen you can edit the video feed. For example, you can pinch the screen to zoom in on a particular part of the view, be it a closeup shot on a person’s face or something else. You can also tap the screen to automatically switch to a closer view and drag to pan around. It’s hard to explain without seeing it in action, but it’s an effective setup for editing video on the fly.

If you don’t want to do the work (or don’t have a friend handy to act as director), the Mevo app also features some auto-edit features. It has built-in face detection, and you can also tap on objects in the frame to identify them as areas to focus on. Once you’ve done that minimal setup, the app will cut between those faces and objects as it sees fit; if someone is talking animatedly, the camera might do a close cut on that person’s face and then pull back when she’s finished, for example. The results won’t be as good as those you can get with a real editor, but they’ll still likely be better than just going with a single-camera wide shot.

That’s a pretty good way to sum up Livestream’s strategy with the Mevo, in fact: The Mevo isn’t going to beat dedicated video-streaming rigs, but it’s a lot better than shooting with your iPhone. Whether it’s good enough to get people to shell out the somewhat-steep $399 asking price remains to be seen, but it’s not hard to imagine YouTube enthusiasts recording video with a Mevo. And those who love Facebook video but feel constrained by shooting with a phone will likely find the Mevo worth a look.