The most important news from the Android Security recap had nothing to do with malware

Viruses and exploits get headlines, but they’re not the most promising news coming out of Google’s 2015 security recap.

The funny thing about security, of course, is most of us on the end-user side of things tend to not worry about it until it’s too late. That’s natural, of course. It’s why we close the barn door after the horse is long gone.

For most of us, security isn’t sexy — it’s a hindrance. It’s our IT department requiring us to change an already pain-in-the-ass-to-remember password to another pain-in-the-ass-to-remember password that we haven’t used once before — and then we write it down and leave it under our keyboard anyway. It’s why our PIN codes are fewer characters than they would be — or why we forgo them at all on our devices.

Fingerprint sensors are changing that. They’re making it easier than ever to keep our devices locked, but still make it relatively easy for the phone owner to unlock. Comparing the 2013 Nexus 5 and 2014 Nexus 6 — two phones that don’t have fingerprint sensors — to the 2015 Nexus 5X and Nexus 6P, Google found that lock screens were being used about 64 percent more often — on about 91 percent of those new phones.

That little tidbit is perhaps the most promising news to come out of Google’s “Android Security 2015 Year In Review.” (Read the PDF here.) It’s not as sexy as learning how many billions of scans were performed in the background, or how small a percentage of devices ever come in contact with a “Potentially Harmful App.” But combined with the 43 percent increase in use of the Android Device Manager — which helps you locate, lock and/or wipe a missing device — it’s perhaps the single-most important thing anyone can do to safeguard their data.

There is one last hurdle, however. Tablets.

By now the Samsung Knights are screaming that their chosen devices have had fingerprint scanning for years. And indeed they have, and Samsung should be commended for that sort of forward (if proprietary, at the time) thinking. But by moving the fingerprint scanning support into the whole of Android and not just a (large) subset of devices means that any manufacturer can take advantage of this increased security. And that any app developer can tap into the APIs to make their apps more secure.

And that there’s now absolutely no excuse for any of us to not have a lockscreen set on our phones.

There is one last hurdle, however. Tablets. Again, a scant few models have fingerprint readers. Samsung is the Android leader in this, naturally. But not even Google’s own Nexus 9 or Pixel C tablets have the hardware to support fingerprint security. That’s something we’d love to see change in the next Nexus iteration, even while we continue use other on-device security mechanisms like Smart Lock, which allows you to bypass the lock screen when connected to a trusted Bluetooth device, or in a preset location.

Fingerprints are more secure than geofencing. They’re easy to use. And they shouldn’t be overlooked.

Amazon Echo gets cozier with Google Calendar, now lets you add events

The Amazon Echo is now more capable of handling your schedule, allowing you to add items directly to your Google Calendar. While you could previously ask Alexa about your upcoming events, now you can use your voice to manage your calendar as well, using only your voice. Just say something like “Alexa, add dinner with Kathleen to my calendar for Thursday at 7:30 p.m.” and that event will be added.

Alexa has also expanded her skill set, adding content to its Flash Briefing feature. Fans of NBC’s The Voice singing contest can now play exclusive behind-the-scenes interviews with current contestants on the show. All you have to do is add “Inside The Voice” to your Flash Briefing in the Alexa app.

In celebration of Earth Day, Amazon has created a playlist called “The Great Outdoors” to Prime Music, which you can of course play through your Echo. You can also ask Alexa what you can do for Earth Day to get some environmentally-friendly activity ideas.

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Five things you need to know about the Oculus Rift

There are some good reasons to doubt the potential success of Oculus and their Rift headset.

This first generation effort is expensive, the controllers meant to truly elevate the experience aren’t available yet, and there are still plenty of folks out there who think VR is this year’s version of the 3D TV. While it’s still early days for this generation, and the cost of ownership is indeed higher than your average Xbox or gaming PC build, it’s an experience well worth the early adopter itch.

If you’re one of the folks on the fence about the Oculus Rift, there’s a few things you should know about the headset before clicking the buy button.

If you wear prescription lenses, things get a little awkward

Oculus designed the Rift headset to hug your head without resting on your nose, which is a big deal. Distributing the weight the way Oculus has makes sure you can wear it a long time without feeling fatigued, which translates to more gaming time.

It also means those of you with prescription glasses are going to experience a bit of discomfort. Most folks will be able to slide the Oculus Rift on like a baseball cap, but if you wear glasses you almost have to put them in the headset first in order to avoid smudging the lenses with your eyelids. Once the headset is on and positioned, it all works fine, and if you have a narrow face you may not notice a problem at all, but if you have glasses and need them all the time it may get awkward.

This is not fixed position VR

Oculus Rift is commonly referred to as a souped-up version of the Samsung Gear VR, which incorporates Oculus technology. While it’s true the company has built the software for both and they feel somewhat similar, the hardware isn’t nearly as basic. Getting past the much higher resolution display and much more capable graphics cards that power this experience, the biggest difference in using the two headsets is the way you as the player are positioned in space.

In both the Oculus Rift and Gear VR, you can look up and down or left and right in virtual environments, and the experience is similar, but in many Rift games you can also move forward and backwards or side to side. You can even move up and down depending on the title, though it doesn’t usually make a huge difference. The closest comparison is to the HTC Vive in Standing Only mode without the controllers.

Nausea can happen, but probably won’t

A big concern with older VR systems was the frequent occurrence of nausea during gameplay, often the result of something called cue correction. Basically, what your eyes see and your body feels aren’t the same, and your brain tries to compensate. Oculus eliminates a lot of that with their impressive head tracking and 90fps visuals, but if something happens in the game that your body thinks is different from reality, nausea can occur.

In our experiences so far, this frequently happens in racing games. Your body doesn’t feel the bump from the car beside you, or the slide to the left and right as you drift, and that can result in cue correction. It doesn’t happen with every racing game, but that seems to be the biggest cause of sickness so far.

Oculus Rift is surprisingly portable

While it’s unlikely you’re going to be taking your gaming PC to the local coffee shop and busting out the Rift to play a little EVE: Valkyrie — seriously, please don’t do that — the Rift packaging was built to act as a carrying case. The headset, IR sensor, and Xbox Controller tuck away nicely and the box isn’t too much bigger than your average briefcase. The Rift also doesn’t have any external power requirements, since everything is powered by the PC itself.

This probably isn’t reason enough to drop cash on a VR-ready gaming laptop or anything, but if you find yourself away from home for a week or two and are expecting downtime there are certainly worse ways to entertain yourself.

Don’t expect popular AAA titles

If you go into buying an Oculus Rift expecting to be looking around as Lara Croft or wrecking Covenant Wraiths as only Master Chief can, you’re going to be disappointed. Designing a game for VR requires doing so from scratch, and right now there aren’t enough users for massive game studios to cater to this audience. We’ll absolutely see some things from those publishers before long, but out of the box what you have access to is quite limited.

That’s the point, though. These experiences are unique and new. You aren’t playing reheated arcade VR games, these are new and often remarkably compelling experiences from developers who have decided to try something new for a burgeoning audience. You’re looking at a whole new kind of gameplay, and those new experiences are going to bring new and incredible IP along for the ride. Enjoy it!

Five things you need to know about the HTC Vive

There’s nothing else quite like it, but the HTC Vive probably isn’t for everyone.

Deep down, every kid who has ever played a video game has been preparing to use the HTC Vive. The way we turn our bodies to match a turn in a racing game, or jump when something scary happens, or even throw a controller when we’re mad is something that can actually be done in Vive. Whether you’re sidestepping zombies for that perfect headshot or crawling around on the floor to get a better look at that Fantastic Contraption you’ve been working on all day, the way your physical body interacts in the real world matters.

These are incredible experiences, but the HTC Vive as a whole requires some thought as you decide whether it is for you.

With that in mind, we’ve assembled some of the most important things for you to know about the HTC Vive before you start planning out where it’s going to live in your home.

Setup can be a little complicated

On top of already owning a powerful computer, the HTC Vive requires some thoughtful setup out of the box. The Lighthouses that provide the room-scale experience need to be mounted around 6 to 7 feet up, and positioned to work with one another diagonally across your room. HTC provides mounting equipment, but you need to know where to put the boxes before you start drilling into your walls. Part of that is making sure you have power outlets nearby, as each Lighthouse requires power.

The Vive headset also requires power separate from the PC, as there’s a connector box that communicates with all of the hardware involved in this process before it hits your PC. The bottom line is you’re going to want to make sure you know where everything is going to go ahead of time, and while that’s not a deal-breaker by any stretch it does require some careful planning.

This doesn’t mean Vive isn’t portable

To test just how portable the HTC Vive is, we packed everything up and went to the local radio station to give a demonstration. Outside of making sure you have enough power for everything, the real challenge is the Lighthouses. The mounting connectors for the Vive are standard tripod screws, so if you have a tripod that can reach the appropriate height you’re good to go.

In a pinch, we used a pair of $20 lighting tripods and mounted the brackets with zip ties just to be sure. It turns out that last part was entirely unnecessary. Everything but the PC fit in a backpack, and the demonstration went off without a hitch. If you’re interested in taking your Vive somewhere to share with friends, it’s not nearly as complicated as it seems if you have the right tools.

Standing-only mode is still pretty great

Vive’s setup process offers two modes of configuration — room scale or standing-room only. One asks you to walk the perimeter of your space and map out the play area, while the other sets a small virtual square for you to stand in and interact. Not being able to walk around means some games aren’t available to you, but right now that number is fairly small.

Standing-only mode still lets you wave your arms around, still lets you move your head around, and still lets you reach down and pick things up off the virtual ground. It’s still a great experience, just not quite as immersive. In fact, if the Oculus Rift had touch controllers already, the experience would be fairly similar to Vive’s standing only mode.

Using your phone in VR is a little limited

The HTC Vive app lets you send calls, texts, calendar notifications, and one or two other things to the Vive menu for you to interact with while inside VR. In the headset, the phone features take up one of the side panels in the menus you have available to you any time you want. This means you can quickly see the notification and choose to either act on it or go back to enjoying whatever you were doing. It’s simple, straightforward, and slightly limited.

The SMS function in Vive includes a series of auto-responders you can quickly select to fire off a reply, but you have to choose what options are available to you before you put the headset on. There’s no voice-to-text option or anything like that, and most of your normal phone notifications aren’t actionable. While we’re not suggesting Valve and HTC should full on mirror your phone to the Vive so you can interact with the whole interface in VR — though since we’re on the subject, how awesome would Visor be in VR? — there’s some room for this experience to improve.

If you’re going to share Vive, keep cleaning stuff nearby

People are gross. When people put their faces on things, the end result is usually gross. This isn’t likely to stop many people from sharing the HTC Vive, and that’s a good thing. Sharing these experiences are awesome, but often lead to a deep desire to scrub your own face for a while.

There’s a quick solution here. Keep a microfiber cloth — like the one HTC included in the box — and maybe an alcohol wipe or two nearby when you plan to share Vive. You can use the microfiber cloth on the lenses and headset, and use the alcohol wipe on the padding and controllers. Everyone wins, and everyone has fun.

Chinese search giant Baidu is forming a self-driving car team in Silicon Valley

Baidu is giving people another reason to call it the Google of China; it’s investing deeply in a Silicon Valley self-driving car team.

Baidu said last December that it had 657 million monthly active users conducting mobile searches, effectively solidifying its status as a Chinese search giant, but it’s also so much more. Baidu offers close to 60 additional services, such as Baidu Encyclopedia (an index sort of like Wikipedia), Baidu Space (a social network), Baidu Games, Baidu Youa (an eCommerce platform), Baidu Yi (a mobile operating system), etc.

Soon it’ll be able to add a self-driving cars to its portfolio. The company announced it is forming a team in Silicon Valley specifically for autonomous car efforts. The team, which will be part of Baidu’s Autonomous Driving Unit, will grow to include more than 100 researchers and engineers by late 2016. However, this isn’t the first time Baidu has invested in driverless technology.

Baidu and BMW have been working on a joint project to produce a self-driving car for the Chinese market. According to the BMWblog, both companies completed the first successful tests of their driverless car in December 2015 – using a retooled BMW 3 Series. BMW entered into a partnership with Baidu in 2014 and has been testing their car tech in Beijing and Shanghai.

READ: 14 automakers betting on driverless vehicles

While BMW is handling the automotive side of things in the retooled 3 Series, Baidu is providing the AutoBrain software, which adds artificial intelligence, image comprehension, voice recognition, automated driving maps, positioning, detection, and more. Baidu’s Silicon Valley team, which will be called ADU-US, is presumably leveraging some of that AutoBrain software.

But Baidu has only said its new team will work on areas “integral to self-driving car development, including planning, perception, control and systems. ADU-US will work alongside Baidu’s existing Silicon Valley-based teams, including Baidu Research.” It also plans to make incremental progress, starting with small “autonomy-enabled” regions and designing “clearly recognisable” cars.

It’s been said that Baidu is looking to produce a car by 2018.

The collapse of Microsoft and Nokia’s mobile business

Microsoft’s smartphone business is in free fall, with the company selling just 2.3 million devices in the last three months. It’s likely that you’ll still be able to buy a Microsoft-branded smartphone, but it’s probably not something the firm will devote a lot of time and energy to. After all, making phones is an expensive business, and if there’s no chance to make any sort of profit, it’s not worth the effort. If you’ve been watching Microsoft over the last five years, it’ll come as no surprise that its smartphone plans have foundered. If you want to explore the evolution and collapse of Microsoft’s mobile ambitions, check out our timeline.

Amazon Echo can now add events to your Google Calendar

It’s Friday, so that means Amazon is pushing out some updates to the Echo, and todays’ big addition sounds like a very useful one. You can now ask Alexa to schedule events on your Google Calendar — it’ll interpret your request and add an item for you. To set it up, just go to the settings section of the Alexa app and tap the “calendar” item.

The Echo has been able to read back your schedule for a while — including shared Google calendars — but the ability to actually add events is a pretty great addition. Whether or not that’s easier for you than shouting “hey Siri” or “OK Google” and adding items directly through your smartphone remains to be seen, but if Alexa is your digital assistant of choice, you’ll definitely enjoy this new feature.

The last few Alexa updates have been more focused on enhancing its smart home credentials. In late March, Amazon added the ability for Echo to control the Nest Learning Thermostat, and Lutron’s connected lighting systems started working with the Echo earlier this month.

Microsoft rolls out Windows Ink for beta testers

Windows Ink is available today for Insiders in the Fast ring, allowing users to sketch, write notes on sticky pads and draw all over screenshots with a digital pen (or your finger, if you’re an au naturel kind of person). The update adds a Windows Ink Workspace, which is accessible from the system tray or by clicking the back of your connected pen. The Workspace brings up pen-enabled apps like the sketchpad, sticky notes and screen sketch, and it has a space to suggest more pen-friendly experiences.

The sketchpad is a blank canvas with a slim selection of drawing tools, including a ruler and various ink colors. Screen sketch allows you to draw on top of a screenshot and then share the finished product with friends or colleagues. The sticky notes app receives some updates, such as the ability to customize the notepads by size and color. In the future, users will be able to jot down a flight number and Bing will pull up the relevant info, and they’ll be able to set Cortana reminders attached to their notes, among other planned upgrades.

Users can also customize their pens, changing what happens when they click, double-click or press and hold the back. All of this is part of the big Windows 10 Anniversary Update.

Source: Windows

Accidental discovery could help batteries last years longer

Today, most smartphone and device batteries are made from lithium and slowly lose capacity over thousands of recharges. Researchers at UC Irvine built a battery that substituted gold nanowire in electrolyte gel for the lithium and lost barely 5% battery capacity over 200,000 charge cycles — but they aren’t totally sure how it worked.

The researchers were hunting for an alternative to lithium, whose liquid state helps conduct charge but is combustible and sensitive to temperature. Nanowires have been a long-theorized dream battery material as their high surface area holds a lot of electric charge, but wire corrodes in traditional lithium environments after several thousand cycles.

The researchers discovered how to prevent that corrosion while fiddling with different materials. They coated the gold nanowire they were using in manganese dioxide and swapped the lithium for electrolyte gel. The gel and oxide fused into a protective sheath around the wire, and voila: the experimental battery completed hundreds of thousands of cycles over a period of three months with no detectable degradation.

Of course, even the tiny amount of gold wire used was expensive. While they haven’t tested it yet, the researchers suggest nickel as an adequate substitute should the concept reach mass production.

Source: Popular Science

Twitch transforms into a social network with new ‘Friends’ feature

It’s been happening in subtle increments, but the transformation is nearly complete. After launching private messaging, Party Chat and profile updates to Twitch, Amazon’s livestreaming service will finally become a niche social network with today’s announcement: Friends. Twitch users can add up to 500 friends to a list that shows who’s online and allows them to send Whispers (private messages) with a click.

The Friends beta kicks off today, April 22nd, for select community members, including those who witness the announcement first-hand at PAX East’s Twitch Town Hall. Anyone else at PAX East can sign up for the beta starting on Saturday, April 23rd at the Twitch booth (#9044). The company wants its users to view their profile pages as ways to connect with fellow viewers and streamers, and the Friends addition is a big part of that goal.

“Friends is the latest social feature in Twitch’s ongoing effort to help gamers connect with one another,” Twitch director of programming Marcus Graham says. “While Twitch has always been a great platform for broadcasters to connect with viewers, now viewers will be able to connect with each other, too.”