How the AC editors do phone security

Secure your stuff.

Keeping your personal data secure is important. That’s your stuff, and most of us don’t want anyone else peeking at the things we’d rather keep private or semi-private. I treat my personal data the same way I treat my underwear — I don’t care that you know I’m wearing a pair, but I’d rather not have you digging through my top dresser drawer even though you’ll only find boring solid-color boxers. You don’t have to have anything fancy or embarrassing in your top drawer to want to keep people out of it, it’s still something you’re not ready to share.

As phones do more and hold more personal info, keeping them secure matters.

As phones do more, and we depend on them to manage our lives more, keeping them secure matters. Things like pictures, banking information, website login details and your daily activities are all in your phone and you would be surprised at how many people would like to take a look at it. We’re not afraid to ask what Google or Microsoft or Facebook is doing with all the information they have on us — so being concerned about what happens when someone can get the same data from your phone is equally important. You — and only you — should decide who gets to see what color your undies are.

All of us here at Android Central have previously mentioned the different things we do to keep personal things from turning into public things, but usually only in passing. Today, we’re going to focus on that a little more closely.

Phil Nickinson

The first rule about Fight Club is you do not talk about Fight Club. That’s also the general rule (and the second rule) about security. Don’t tell folks exactly how you do things.

Trading a little security for simplicity.

So here’s how I do things. It starts with the password. (It probably should start with the username itself, now that I think about it.) I use one of the password management services to not just keep track of my passwords, but to make them, as well. I don’t even know what most of my passwords are. They’re strong passwords, full of random letters and numbers and characters and symbols. The down side is that I have to have a single password to get into that password manager. But you trade security for simplicity, and that’s the compromise I’ve made for making sure my passwords aren’t all 123456.

I also use two-factor authentication on just about every service I use — I use Authy to handle all that across multiple phones. But there are still several layers of security therein, even when it’s available on multiple devices at once. Again, that’s the trade-off I made.

I don’t use Authy for everything. I use different methods for other services — generally just because I never switched them over. And that’s OK. 2FA is 2FA. And it’s one of the most important things you can do.

On my phone itself, I use a long password or PIN code or pattern. And I use fingerprints for simplicity — and they’ve meant that none of my devices goes without a lockscreen anymore. And, for that matter, you have to know the code to decrypt the device on boot.

Layers and layers of security, folks. It takes a little more thought, but not a lot of effort. And it’s a must.

Alex Dobie

I’ve used two-factor authentication on my Google accounts and other mission-critical stuff (Dropbox, VPNs, and so on) for the past few years. In that time it’s gotten a lot easier to use 2FA, in particular with Google accounts on Android and iOS. (Gone are the days when you’d need to create a rat’s nest of app-specific passports for Mail, Calendar, and so on.) Many of the pain points have disappeared — aside from the requirement of having to open the app on your phone, of course.

Really good fingerprint scanners mean there’s no excuse to not lock things up.

As for device security, I’ve used a bunch of different phones — both with and without fingerprint scanners — over the past year. In the pre-fingerprint days, Smart Lock was my weapon of choice, tying my lock screen security to whichever smartwatch I happened to be using at the time. But with newer devices featuring really good, fast fingerprint scanners — like the LG G5, Galaxy S7 and HTC 10 — there’s basically no excuse to not set a lock screen PIN or pattern of some sort. It also makes it easier to use a relatively complex pattern or PIN (as I do), as the times you actually need to input it are fewer and further between.

That’s besides all the stuff Android now does as standard, like allowing the Android Device Manager to remotely wipe and lock by default. Which amounts to a lot of extra stuff I just don’t have to think about now.

And finally, with Marshmallow and the full-disk encryption requirement for new Android phones, it’s less burdensome to require a PIN or pattern to start your phone, which is a great protection against theft. (Oftentimes the first thing a thief will do is shut down a phone and yank the SIM.)

Overall I’m not hyper-paranoid about security, but I like to think I’ve got the essentials covered pretty well.

Andrew Martonik

I’ve always been diligent about keeping at least a pattern lock screen on my phones, but with the proliferation of great fingerprint sensors on newer phones we have no excuse not to secure them. The fingerprint sensors are secure and convenient, and having one means I’m not tempted to use a long screen timeout setting or other features like Smart Lock that could potentially open up my phone to unwanted eyes. Having my fingerprints registered also open up possibilities for quickly unlocking secure areas of apps, which is an added convenience.

Having my fingerprints registered also open up possibilities for quickly unlocking secure areas of apps.

When it comes to online accounts — either on my phone or a computer — I keep everything safe inside the Enpass app. The app is also locked up behind fingerprint authentication, and keeps everything encrypted locally before syncing across my devices. Not only do I keep regular usernames and passwords in here, but also other sensitive information like credit card numbers. Having this app do it all means I’m never tempted to have important data in unsecured places.

The final part is enabling two-factor authentication for every possible service that offers it. Rather than go insane with different authentication methods for each service, I keep all of my codes locked up in the Authy app, which keeps me sane by syncing the codes across my phones as a switch. It may not be as convenient as just typing in a username and password to log in somewhere online, but knowing that nobody can get into your account without the two-factor code relieves a lot of stress about my online security.

Russell Holly

Security on your phone is incredibly important. It keeps other people from joke-posting a picture of a cat that looks kinda like your cat in a microwave to your Facebook on your behalf, which of course leads to a 20 minute phone call with relatives about how that photo made it to your wall.

We’re getting off topic.

What I do on the phone is fairly simple. Six-digit pin to encrypt the phone, so you can’t start the phone without using that code. Pattern lock or fingerprint to unlock on a day-to-day basis. It’s simple, mostly stays out of the way, and Android Device Manager lets me remotely wipe the phone if I “lose” it.

Off the phone, I use two-factor authentication for anything and everything that supports the feature. Google’s 2FA works well for Google stuff, and I use Authy for everything that doesn’t require a dedicated app or SMS because I like the way the app looks.

It doesn’t matter if your life is an open book and you really don’t want to be inconvenienced by a password when trying to check Twitter, shut up and do it anyway. When your phone is compromised — yeah, when — you introduce every person you talk to on that phone to the person or software that will attempt to target them next. Secure your phone.

Daniel Bader

These days, there is no excuse for poor security. I believe in two things: setting up a strong six-digit passcode, and ensuring that it is required to start my phone. That way, should my device fall into the wrong hands, there is a very small chance its contents will be accessible to a would-be hacker. Moreover, using Android Device Manager ensures that I can remotely locate or wipe my phone in a worst-case scenario.

1Password Family keeps our shared logins in sync.

Once inside the operating system, I use the excellent 1Password, which recently went through a Material Design overhaul, to keep safe all my login information. While I used to synchronize my personal 1Password account through Dropbox, I now use the impressive and secure 1Password Family feature with my wife to keep our shared logins in sync. While 1Password Teams is accessible through a web portal, each login requires a unique access code that the company generates upon account creation, and is only stored locally; should you lose the code, you lose access to the account. That, along with a strong password, reassures me that my information is safe.

Of course, I do use a fingerprint on devices that support it, which is an increasing number even at entry level price points, but I understand that I am sacrificing some level of security for the convenience of it. Still, if it gets more people to enable six-digit passcodes as a result, I am all for it.

Jerry Hildenbrand

For starters, I want to say my way isn’t necessarily the right way. You need to decide what things you can do that work best for you. A fingerprint scanner or password manager that stores a database online isn’t the most secure thing in the world, but both are immeasurably better than a security routine that you won’t bother using. It’s just too easy to keep your stuff pretty damn secure to not do it.

If it’s not running the latest version of Android, I’m going to pass on it.

I start with the phone software itself. If it’s not updated with the latest security patch and running the latest version of Android (or has secondary security measures in place like Samsung or BlackBerry) I’m going to pass on it, because there are other great choices that are up to date where it counts. Seeing Samsung push patches so quickly to the Galaxy S7 since it was released makes me incredibly happy. Sure, it’s only been two months, but so far they are batting a thousand. Hopefully the next Note is the same way. Then they can work on pushing out those timely updates to the rest of their models …

I encrypt my phones, and make sure a password is required decrypt and start them. I also encrypt my SD card if the phone has a slot for one, which means I’m diligent on keeping everything backed up in case I break a phone. I get that some people want the small performance gain that comes with disabling encryption, but I’m not one of them. If you are, that’s OK, just be careful in other ways. You don’t want someone like me finding your unencrypted phone at the park or Red Robin, right?

I keep my phone lock screen password protected, and I don’t use my fingerprints to make unlocking easier. Yes, this can be a pain in the ass, and I have no good reason for it other than a tinge of paranoia. My fingerprints are my identity, not my password — something that never changes. I certainly hope nobody ever finds a way to break in and figure out how to “fake” a fingerprint-generated secure token, but if they do I can’t change it. So far, it looks pretty damn secure and my reasoning is unfounded. Fingerprint security on Android is awesome, because it looks to be pretty secure and so easy that everyone will use it. Pay no mind to me unless you think the same way about it, and use that finger.

I also use a password manager for things like website logins, insurance information and banking details. I prefer mSecure because it allows me to sync with a computer on my local network to keep the database updated. (A directory on my little closet server mounted as a remote share on my desktop and laptop, if you’re interested.) I trust companies like 1Password or LastPass to keep my cloud database records safe, but I just trust myself a little more. You should use the password manager you trust and find easy to use — that means you’ll use one, and that’s the important part.

I just switched to Authy for two-factor authentication token management. So far I like it, as much as one can actually like an app that only exists to serve 2FA tokens. Using 2FA is another of those things everyone needs to enable, because you don’t have to be a movie star or millionaire to get your accounts hacked.

Your way?

None of us claim to be security experts or that our lives are unhackable. We just make a conscious effort to keep it as secure as we can.

We’re always ready to hear your ideas about the things you do, and we’ll not be shy about copying the good ones. Drop a comment and let everyone know how you do it so we can all learn a thing or two.

Virgin Media has a 4K box in the works and existing TiVo boxes get upgrade

Virgin Media is soon to replace its TiVo box as the flagship set-top-box in its TV line-up. There is a new device coming in the next few months and it will be capable of 4K video output.

In its first quarter financial results for 2016, the company revealed that it is “preparing to launch [a] new set-top-box platform”.

What that will entail is yet to be determined, although a Virgin Media spokesman told What Hi-Fi that it will definitely be 4K-ready: “There will be a new set-top-box coming later this year, and it will support ultra high definition video,” he said.

It will undoubtedly first be offered as a premium service, much like Sky Q. It might also stick with TiVo considering the platform company has recently been acquired by Rovi in the US and is therefore in a strong position to develop new ideas.

READ: Virgin Media continues to take on Netflix with MMA drama Kingdom exclusive

Existing TiVo users need not think they are being left behind, however. Virgin Media plans to roll out a new interface for the standard TiVo boxes out there too.

The company will be enhancing its TV platform through “working on further improvements to [its] user-interface in the second half of 2016”.

The Virgin Media spokesman told What Hi-Fi that will include slicker menus and will be “more picture based”.

How to build an amazing Raspberry Pi 3 retro games console for just £50

Like vinyl records, Robot Wars and football hooliganism, retro gaming is in the middle of a resurgence. There are reimagined consoles coming based on both the ZX Spectrum and Commodore 64, and the Xbox, PlayStation and Nintendo download stores are crammed with old classics or retro-inspired games.

Did you know though that you can ride this wave on the cheap by making your own retro games console, with very little technical knowledge and for roughly the price of one PS4 game?

And instead of playing remastered versions of your favourite games from yesteryear, you can play the actual games of yesteryear in your living room and with a controller you might already have lying around.

We’re doing it ourselves right now, thanks to a Raspberry Pi 3 Model B and a free download of Retropie. What’s more, because the latter software sets up the final build with emulation for a vast number of computers and consoles, it can be argued that you end up with a machine that’s better than anything you can buy on the market today.

READ: 5 fun Raspberry Pi projects you can do with your kids

You have to source the games online yourself, as you can only legally download and play them if you own the originals or if their licence has expired, but technically you can build a console that is capable of playing games for more than 50 systems. That includes NES, SNES, Megadrive/Genesis, N64, ZX Spectrum, C64, PlayStation, Amiga, Atari St and more.

Interested? Well, here’s how to do it…

What you need and how much it costs

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Raspberry Pi 3 Model B – £30

You can actually use a Raspberry Pi 2 or even a first generation version, but they are slower in operation and will therefore struggle with some games. For the price you are best opting for the Pi 3 Model B and then you also get Wi-Fi and Bluetooth connectivity built in.

Raspberry Pi 3 case – £5

There are plenty on the market including some for even less than a fiver. It’s up to you how you’d like your finished console to look. We particularly like the sloped white and red case recently released, but are equally as enamoured by the simple black case that suits the rest of the kit under our telly.

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microSD card (32GB) – £8

We actually opted for a 64GB microSD card at around £16, but to keep within the £50 budget, the 32GB version does the job just as well. It will more than hold the Retropie operating system, plus has plenty of space left over for games.

Raspberry Pi 3 power supply – £6

If you have a standard mini-USB cable to hand, that will do to power your Pi. However, for the full effect we’ve added its own, dedicated power unit. Third-party versions can be sourced for cheap.

HDMI cable – £1

A HDMI cable from the pound shop will do just as well as any other.

Additional accessories

You will also need a joypad of some description. There are dedicated USB controllers, even some styled around the original SNES or N64 pads, which go well. That’s why we’ve chosen the former – a Buffalo Classic USB Gamepad, which looks exactly like the PAL Super Nintendo pad from yesteryear. You can also get versions based on the purple Super Famicom design.

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If you have a spare Xbox 360 or PS3 pad lying around, they work perfectly too. We particularly like the fact you can pair a PS3 DualShock with the final console to work wirelessly, even turning the machine on using the PlayStation button. Even a PS4 DualShock 4 is claimed to work wirelessly.

It’s a complicated process though, which you can read about here. And USB connections are more stable and don’t suffer from reported lag problems.

It is also handy to have a USB keyboard to hand too as you will need to input text during the process.

Software

The Raspberry Pi 3 itself comes with four USB 2.0 ports, an Ethernet port, HDMI output and power socket. It also has a microSD card slot which is compatible with a large array of different cards, including some 128GB cards.

The card will double as storage space for the device, but you also flash it with the user interface and software you desire.

There are several operating systems available, with Noobs and Raspian being the most popular. They are all based on Linux, but the one we are interested in for our retro games console is Retropie.

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Retropie

Retropie is free software available to download here. It builds upon the Raspbian system but stands alone. It gives access to the host of console and computer emulators needed to play games, and also other software such as the media player and streaming platform Kodi.

You essentially download it and install it onto your microSD card (previous Pi computers use a standard sized SD card instead). Then, when inserted into the Raspberry Pi, it will boot automatically and present a user-friendly interface that makes it a doddle to get to and choose your favourite games.

In essence it turns a small, barebones computer into a fully-fledged games console. For free.

Step 1: Install Retropie

After downloading the file marked as a Retropie SD-card image from the Retropie website (there are two different files, one for Pi 0 or 1 and one for the Pi 2 or 3, so make sure you get the right one), you need to install it onto your microSD card.

You’ll need a PC or Mac and a microSD card slot or reader. You will also need software that can extract a .gz file. And a tool to install the .img file found in the compressed file onto the card.

For the PC, you can use Win32DiskImager. Mac users can use Apple Pi Baker. They are both free to download and install.

Linux users can get instructions of how to burn the image onto a card here.

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Step 2: Insert microSD card into Raspberry Pi 3

On the underside of the Raspberry Pi 3 there is a tiny slot for the microSD card. Most cases also have an opening for you to insert the card without having to take the Pi board back out.

Insert the card and plug the Raspberry Pi in to power it (it doesn’t come with a physical power switch as standard). Beforehand, also ensure that it is connected to your TV, monitor or AV receiver through HDMI. And it is advised at this point that you have a keyboard plugged into one of the USB ports – a gamepad too.

Step 3: Boot-up and joypad configuration

The first time you switch it on, the Raspberry Pi will run through installation procedures and set itself up fully. You will be greeted by the Retropie loading screen and then joypad configuration software.

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You have to assign the different buttons of the gamepad by pressing each as requested. Sometimes you will be asked to press the corresponding key when there isn’t one, such as on the SNES-style pad. Just hold any button in that case and it will skip that input. We also found that the SNES pad’s top bumpers worked as LEFT BOTTOM and RIGHT BOTTOM buttons rather than those listed TOP.

Once the pad is configured you will find yourself in Emulation Station, a front-end that has easy, graphical access to each of the different emulators on offer.

At the beginning, you’ll not see that many as they only appear when you add ROMs – the game files for each system. Before you do though, there are a few sub-steps we advise going through first.

Step 4: Wi-Fi and screen size

To begin with, the Raspberry Pi 3 has wireless and wired internet connectivity. If you want to set it up through Wi-Fi, you need to go into the Retropie menu and down to the “WIFI” section. There you will be given the option to choose your Wi-Fi connection from a list and enter your security key. You’ll need a keyboard plugged in for this.

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Another thing you might find that you need to do from the off is change the screen size. We run our Raspberry Pi console on a 55-inch 4K Samsung TV and from the beginning it doesn’t expand to fit the entire screen – there is a large black border surrounding the menu and, subsequently, any games we run.

There doesn’t seem to be a menu option to correct this, but you can simply get rid of the borders by editing a config file in the command prompt. You get there by quitting EmulationStation. Then enter “sudo nano /boot/config.txt” on your keyboard without the quotation marks. Note there is also a space between “nano” and “/boot”.

This will open the boot config file. Scroll down to “#disable_overscan=1” delete the hashtag so it just reads “disable_overscan=1”. Save it using CTRL X and then Y, then press ENTER to confirm. Now reenter EmulationStation by typing “emulationstation” into the prompt (without the quote marks again) and then quit and restart system.

The black surround should be gone.

Step 5: Add ROMs (games)

While Retropie and the EmulationStation are fantastic pieces of software, bar one or two exceptions, the emulators don’t come with games pre-installed. You’ll have to therefore find the games yourself.

This is where it gets a bit dodgy when it comes to copyright.

If you don’t already own a game, downloading and installing a ROM on Retropie is 99.9 per cent of the time illegal. That’s why we’re not going to actively tell you to go and download classic SNES, NES, Mega Drive or other console games from the past. We will though point you to some online resources that might have them available for download and then you can decide whether you want to or not.

One excellent site for ROM files is Emuparadise. It has a vast number of ROMs and ISO files for many of the consoles and computers supported by Retropie, including Super Nintendo, NES, N64 and many more, even PSOne games.

Another we have loved throughout the years is World of Spectrum, which stores thousands of ZX Spectrum games available to download. It’s a fantastic resource of everything Speccy even if you don’t download the files.

Then there’s c64.com for Commodore 64 games.

To be honest, you only need type “ROMs” into Google and you’ll find plenty of download sites.

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Once you’ve downloaded ROMs onto your PC you need to transfer them onto the Raspberry Pi itself and you’ll need a USB memory stick for that. It’s actually a doddle to do and here’s how:

• Insert a USB stick (formatted to FAT32) into a spare port on your PC.
• Create a folder on the stick called “retropie” (without the quotation marks).
• Remove the stick from your computer.
• Insert the stick into one of the spare ports on your Raspberry Pi and wait for a while. This is because Retropie is creating the correct folder system on the stick that it needs to recognise ROMs.
• Remove it from the Raspberry Pi.
• Insert it back into your computer’s USB port and you’ll see that there are are folders for all the major different console and computer types inside “retropie/roms/”.
• Just add the relevant ROMs into the respective console or computer folder.
• Unplug the stick from your computer and plug it back into your Raspberry Pi.
• You’ll need to wait for the Pi to recognise all of the ROMs and it can take quite a while depending on how many you have.
• Refresh EmulationStation by hitting “F4” on your keyboard or through the start menu.
• The games should be available under the logo for each console or computer.
• Bingo.

We’ve actually found that this process can take a while to complete for the ROMs to be ready and playable. You might also find some ROMs just won’t work. Not all the emulators are perfect and the older the games machine, the more likely they will work properly.

In addition, not all file types will be recognised by each emulator. And some emulators require BIOS images before they work (such as the Amiga).

You can find out more, and which file types are best for each emulator at github.com.

Step 5: Tidying the games lists

When you first add ROMs, they will be presented in the menu for each emulator in a list as a file name. However, you can make the whole interface look more professional and Plex-like by “scraping” the metadata and cover art from the internet.

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Before you start, you should expand the usable space left on your microSD/SD card. When Retropie installs, it only uses a fraction of the card’s storage space, but the installation process can lock off the rest of the card, preventing you from writing information – such as metadata – to the remainder.

Just head to the Retropie menu, select Raspi-config and the top option in the subsequent menu enables you to expand the filesystem.

When you return, there is a Scraper option in the menu which will search for the correct game art and details for every ROM you have stored. You can also filter for a specific machine and there are two different resource sites that can be selected.

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Depending on your internet connection, this is either a speedy or lengthy process, but we think it’s worthwhile for the end results.

Conclusion

Those are the basic steps you need to perform to set up your Raspberry Pi/Retropie games console. There are plenty of other tweaks and improvements you can make, including the installation of less stable emulators to play even more game types (such as Sega Saturn).

You can also overclock your Raspberry Pi 3 to get rid of some errors in games, specifically with N64 games where they can often have issues with sound. Overclocking the Pi might be hazardous and cause it to dramatically overheat – it will shorten its life for sure. If you really want to though, here’s a video on how to do it.

We’re just thrilled to have a fully working SNES and Mega Drive games console that’s the size of a kitchen box of matches, to be honest. One that we can tap into any time we like. The upscaling tech also works brilliantly on our 4K TV, with no blur or drop out.

It is, quite simply, awesome and we thoroughly recommend it to every games player out there.

IMAX’s laser projectors are worth the pricier ticket

I’m no fan of movie theater gimmicks. 3D glasses, giant screens, 4D “sensory experiences,” food and drink service have simply never been worth the added ticket prices for me. That was, at least, until I sat down to watch Captain America: Civil War on IMAX’s newest 3D laser projector system.

All told, IMAX invested a whopping $60 million over four years to develop its new laser projector system, making this the company’s largest R&D investment to date. It’s designed specifically for IMAX’s largest screens — in my case, the 100-by-80-foot behemoth at the AMC Metreon — and marries a pair of 4K DLP laser projectors with a new optical engine. Together the system can generate a picture up to 1.43:1 aspect ratio, which gives filmmakers an unprecedented amount of space to work with, all while rendering images in 4K resolution. Of course, the added quality does also drive up the ticket price — $19.69 per person at the Metreon in my case.

The system’s optical engine is especially impressive. Conventional projectors still use prisms to split white light into its component colors. In normal cinemas, these prisms are fine; however, when you’re throwing a 4K image up on a 100-foot screen, they tend to muddle the contrast a bit. That’s why, according to IMAX’s Chief Quality Officer David Keighley the company went a different route. It bought some IP from Kodak and ditched the prism system altogether. Instead, the new laser system uses six Digital Micromirror Devices (three per projector) to generate pure red, green and blue light, which are reflected through a thermally stable piece of invar and recombined onscreen. “It produces an extremely pure light, that’s why we get such amazing contrast,” Keighley continued.

What’s more, because the projectors utilize lasers rather than conventional xenon bulbs, they’re able to produce a 22-foot-lambert image (that’s 50 percent brighter than the industry standard) with superior contrast and clarity. I noticed this as soon as the film started. Normally, the coating on 3D glasses makes the on-screen image appear darker that how the director envisioned it. However, even with glasses on, the image’s whites were bright. The same could be said for the on-screen black levels. They were downright inky without a hint of graying or light bleed. This all translates into a vastly expanded contrast ratio — that’s the brightness difference between the brightest and darkest parts of an image. This in turn means that the image as a whole appears more vibrant and lifelike.

The new system also significantly expands the available color palette into HDR territory. According to Keighley, the projectors are capable of producing the Rec. 2020 gamut though no films have yet to take advantage of it. Watching the latest Suicide Squad and Dr Strange trailers were a delight, both practically exploded off the screen in hyper-saturated hues. The clarity was equally impressive: I could have sat through Civil War and counted Robert Downey Jr’s pores if I’d wanted.

The new projectors are joined by a new 12-channel surround-sound system built to compete with Dolby Atmos but without the need for 40 individual channels. IMAX demonstrated this capability during a pre-film walkthrough. Still, the 12-channel sound isn’t quite as nuanced as a 40-channel Atmos. As Keighley explained that was intentional. By using wider channels and reducing the number of required speakers, the IMAX system requires less upkeep and therefore costs less to maintain and operate. That said, the 3D sound profile was still quite impressive. Combined with 3D visuals, the on-screen action breaks the fourth wall more often than Schwarzenegger did in Last Action Hero.

The new technology is currently available in 30 of IMAX’s 1,067 theaters worldwide and is generally going to be limited to the company’s marquee locations. Still, seeing a blockbuster film like Civil War or The Jungle Book in this format will be well worth the trip.

Volvo’s two-hour delivery leaves packages in your trunk

Volvo has been toying with the idea of delivering goods to your car instead of your home since 2014. After some testing, the company’s so-called in-car delivery service is ready for the masses. Teaming up with Swedish startup Urb-it, Volvo is offering drop-offs for the items that you order online in under two hours. Urb-it’s speedy service is guaranteed to deliver items a couple of hours after you complete a purchase on your phone, only instead of bringing it to your home, the package is left in the trunk of your Volvo automobile.

Of course, the immediate concern is security. Can you really trust someone who has access to the inside of your car? Volvo says that every “urber” is “strictly vetted” by the delivery company which uses a pool of part-time and student employees based on location. The app gives you the name of the person handling your goods, and you can even choose who you want to complete the task. Once you place an order, the “urber” retrieves the items from a shop with an order code before dropping them off in your car.

That app also lets you follow the delivery progress and offers confirmation once the package is safely in your Volvo. You can opt for a specific time to have the order placed in the trunk or for the items to arrive as soon as possible. What’s more, if you select that latter time period, the delivery is free if the two-hour window is exceeded.

Volvo’s in-car service first launch commercially on Black Friday last year, teaming up with an online food store and a distribution company in Sweden. For now, the partnership with Urb-it is limited to Stockholm, but Volvo is planning expansion to other European cities by the end of the year. The company want to offer delivery in 200 cities worldwide by 2025, which means if you live outside of Europe, you may have to wait a while to give it a try. And, of course, you’ll need to own a Volvo.

Urbanears turned its Active Hellas headphones ‘clay red’ for Roland-Garros

Urbanears has collaborated with the Roland-Garros 2016 French Open.

The Swedish headphone brand basically took its new wireless Active Hellas headphones and coloured them “Clay Red” as a tribute to the tennis tournament held annually in Paris. Described as “sweat-friendly”, the Active Hellas are Bluetooth headphone with a washable headband and ear cushions, a built-in mic, and an interface you can swipe on to navigate through playlists.

Urbanears described its new edition of Hellas headphones and the collaboration with Roland-Garros as an “epic moment” that celebrates the “creative flair and passion we see played out” at the tournament each year. And a brand manager from the French Tennis Federation said it was “delighted” to work with a “design-conscious brand” to colour a pair of headphones in its trademark clay-red (an orange/red colour).

Roland–Garros is run by the French Tennis Federation and held every year at the Porte d’Auteuil in Paris, while a clay court is a type of tennis court. The French Open uses clay courts, and is the only Grand Slam to be played on clay. So if you’re super into clay-court tennis and consider yourself an audiophile, you’ll likely be super excited about these Roland-Garros edition headphones.

They cost $120 and will be available for purchase at Roland-Garros stadium shops, select stores, and Urbanears.com.

Shape-shifting interface lets you touch computer simulations

Researchers want us to better interact with machines via screens and VR, but let’s face it, we humans like to touch real objects. MIT’s Tangible Media Group has been playing with that idea for awhile now with projects like InForm, an uncanny telepresence interface. It has now taken it further with Materiable, a shape-changing interface that lets you see and even touch physical simulations. The idea is to let users visualize and interact with materials or mathematical models of things like earthquakes and landslides.

The Materiable is built from motor-driven blocks called “pixels” that respond to touch and give haptic feedback in return (the colors come from an overhead projector). Driven by basic physics simulations, the blocks (arrayed in groups of 24×24) can move on their own to mimic liquids and solid materials with different properties, much like InForm. What’s new is that user can now push the blocks with any part of their bodies, and the blocks push back with varying speed and force, depending on the material being simulated. With water, for example, the level of touch is light, and for foam, it’s firmer.

The team sees it as a powerful educational too. Children, for instance, can touch rendered animals like turtles, an architect can visualize and manipulate a complex landscape design, and buildings can be redesigned on the fly just by “shaping” them. Mathematicians can also see and “feel” wave equations, and even manipulate them with their hands. Many participants said that the touch perception was stronger than the visual, such that many didn’t even look at the Materiable when describing what was happening.

The team plans to increase the force, speed and resolution of the shape display, to better simulate materials. The aim is to eventually create a new type of display that lets us use a sense other than our eyes to better understand the physical world.

Via: CNET

Source: MIT (PDF)

uHoo edges other air quality monitors out with extra sensors

We’ve now gotten to the point where we can rely on pigeons for monitoring outdoor air quality, and there are plenty of conventional options for indoor as well. But there’s always room for improvement, which is why we’re looking at the uHoo. Impressively, this pint glass-sized device packs up to five air pollutant sensors, thus allowing it to measure the usual dust and volatile organic compounds, as well as carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide and ozone — these three can’t be detected by most other monitors in the consumer market. On top of that, the uHoo can also keep an eye on the temperature, humidity and air pressure, which comes in handy as these contribute to our wellness, too. The live data is fed to your iOS or Android device via Wi-Fi, and the app will alert you when the air goes bad in one of the rooms.

The concept of uHoo came together when CEO Dustin Onghanseng and CTO Brian Lin met at the MBA program at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology back in 2013. Onghanseng has rhinitis and Lin has asthma, so they bonded over a common goal: Preventing air pollutants from affecting our health. They managed to win at a 24-hour hackathon with their first indoor air quality monitor prototype, but it wasn’t until after they graduated when they could focus on developing this product.

Today, the uHoo team consists of six full-time staff members, and they are assisted by an agency in Oakland, California. According to Onghanseng, his startup is currently backed by the likes of AIA, KPMG and Konica Minolta who see opportunity in the corporate space: Rather than having to bring in large old monitors that lack live feedback, air quality consultancies can just station several uHoo devices across an office, and then only alert their clients when bad air is detected. Similarly, these firms can use the data to help optimize a building’s air-conditioning efficiency by targeting crowded spots — these would be indicated by higher levels of carbon dioxide and temperature. For the sake of tweaking its algorithm, uHoo has already done pilot runs in both Singapore and Hong Kong.

That’s not to say uHoo will only serve the corporate space, though, as it’s considering an online direct-sale model and a referral program through air quality service providers — the latter will apparently be quite effective in Scandinavian countries like the Netherlands, where home air quality services are regulated. This, along with the fact that many Europeans have already signed up on uHoo’s wait list, is why Onghanseng is confident that his device will do well in Europe, followed by the US. Eventually, he also hopes to sell uHoo units in China where the air is notoriously bad.

The uHoo is now live on Indiegogo, with the “classic” version starting at $89 a pop but lacks sensors for carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide and ozone, whereas the full “premium” version starts at $139 per unit; both are shipping as early as November. Onghanseng reasoned that the cheaper model is there to encourage the more cost-conscience folks to hop on board, and after this campaign, his team will use this sales data to determine their retail plan. But if you ask us, we’ll say you might as well get the whole package, because it’s those extra sensors that make the uHoo stand out from the crowd.

Source: Indiegogo