Clinton’s campaign was also hacked in breach of Democratic Party
The most recent cyberattacks against the Democratic Party, revealed today, also included attacks on Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign, Reuters reports. It’s unclear if any data was actually compromised, and the Clinton campaign didn’t offer up any comment on the attack. Sources tell the news agency that the Justice Department’s national security division is investigating all of the recent hacks against the Democratic Party, and they note that’s a sign that the Obama administration believe the attacks are state sponsored.
Earlier this week, the FBI revealed that it’s investigating Russia’s potential involvement in the email hack on the Democratic National Convention. Reuters reports that intelligence officials also believe that Russian hackers were responsible for yesterday’s attack on the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. That would have given the hackers access to things like strategy memos and opposition research, as well as even more emails.
In his usual off-handed style, Donald Trump also called for “Russia or any other person or country” to find emails deleted by the Clinton campaign to “share them with the FBI.” Essentially, he was asking foreign countries to hack the US government. The Clinton campaign was quick to push back, and Trump’s campaign manager later said he wasn’t asking anyone to hack Clinton’s emails.
Source: Reuters
Review: Standzout’s Helix Dock for Apple Watch is Compact and Convenient
While I have long used the Twelve South Forté on my bedside table to dock my Apple Watch each night, I lacked a convenient alternative for on the go until last week. Enter the Standzout Helix Dock, a compact and convenient charging solution for the Apple Watch.
Helix is an Apple Watch dock made from injection molded polycarbonate plastic. It stores between a 0.3-meter and two-meter Apple Watch charging cable and Apple’s official USB wall charger in a compact and convenient housing, available in clear, black, white, and a phosphorescent glow-in-the-dark color options.
I was sent all four colors for the purposes of this review, and the white one was my personal favorite; however, the glow-in-the-dark version is a unique concept for night use. If you purchase the glow-in-the-dark version, remember that phosphorescent materials require some exposure to bright light before they can glow.
The housing consists of an outer piece that holds the Apple Watch charging puck on the top, and an inner piece that you tightly wrap the charging cord around. The wall charger then slides into the middle, with its prongs extending through cutouts in the plastic, and you plug the USB end of the Apple Watch charger into it.
The assembly process is simple and took me less than one minute, but the cord can get in the way unless it is wrapped very tightly around the inner piece — the compact design leaves very little excess room. The snug fit can make sliding on the outer piece a bit of a challenge, and I also found that the charging cable comes unravelled when I remove the outer piece regardless of how careful I am.
Helix comfortably fit into power outlets around my apartment, including those in tight spaces, and most importantly it worked properly. I have a stainless steel Apple Watch, but the dock works with any models. However, its usage is limited to the United States, Canada, Mexico, Japan, and elsewhere Type A plugs/sockets are used.
Helix Dock retails for $19.99, which is somewhat expensive for what is essentially two small pieces of plastic — nothing else is included in the box. But what you are truly paying for is an innovative idea for charging your Apple Watch at home, work, or on the go. The product is also designed and manufactured in the United States.
Several options exist for Apple Watch chargers and docks by now, and the Helix competes well in terms of price, size, and grab-and-go simplicity. It is particularly useful to throw into a backpack before heading out somewhere like the gym or airport, and having one less cable to untangle is always a plus.
How to Buy
Helix Dock retails for $19.99 on Amazon and the Standzout website in clear, black, white, and glow-in-the-dark. Free standard shipping within the U.S. is included, while international shipping to other countries is available.
Note: Standzout provided four Helix Docks to MacRumors free of charge for the purposes of this review. No other compensation was received.
Related Roundups: Apple Watch, watchOS 2, watchOS 3
Tags: Apple Watch accessories, Standzout
Buyer’s Guide: Apple Watch (Caution)
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Is the new Microsoft Pix app smarter than the stock iOS Camera app? – CNET
Microsoft this week released Pix, an iOS camera app that it claims “is so smart that you won’t have to waste time on adjusting settings, focus hunting, or reviewing and choosing from multiple shots.”
I checked out the app to put Microsoft’s claims of higher intelligence to the test and to find out if it’s smarter than the stock Camera app I use almost exclusively to take photos and shoot videos on my iPhone 6S. What I found in my side-by-side tests was Pix produced superior results, particularly when photographing people, but forces you to cede a great deal of creative control. The app is smart but knows it’s smart and assumes full control of each shot.
Pix primer
Before we get to my side-by-side tests, allow me to present a quick primer on how the app works. Pix offers minimal controls. At the top, there is a button to view your photo gallery and another to switch cameras. At the bottom, the shutter-release button sits in the middle, flanked by a button to open Pix’s edit tools and another that lets you toggle between capturing photos and videos. You can tap on the screen to set a focus/exposure point, but only when in video mode do you have the option to enable the flash.
Pix’s edit tools are also minimal. You can crop and straighten a photo and choose among eight filter. That’s it.
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Screenshot by Matt Elliott/CNET
When you snap a photo, the app captures a burst of 10 frames — some before and some after you snap the shot — and quickly goes about analysing the frames to pick the best image (and occasionally the best two or three). It discards the rest of the frames it captures so they don’t clutter your camera roll but not before using data from them to improve elements of the image it deemed the best, including noise reduction and adjusting ISO, exposure and more. Pix also recognizes faces in your shots and prioritizes its Best Image selection and image adjustments to make your human subjects look their best.
Similar to Live Photos with iOS, Pix offers Live Images. Unlike Live Photos, you don’t have control of when Pix captures a Live Image. On the flip side, you can’t forget to turn off the setting, which then fills your camera roll and local iPhone storage with dozens or hundreds of Live Photos you don’t want. When Pix senses interesting movement — flowing water, swaying leaves, a passing car, for example — it offers up a Live Image. Here’s an example of a Live Image I captured with Pix. Or, rather, it decided to capture for me:
With videos, Pix offers image stabilization and the ability to turn new and old videos alike into looping time-lapse videos by way of Microsoft’s Hyperlapse technology. Hyperlapse is a fun feature and I appreciate the ability to select between 2x and 32x speed, but at the heart of any photo app is, of course, its ability to capture photos.
Side-by-side tests
With that, let’s take a look at some side-by-side comparisons where you’ll see photos on the left from Microsoft Pix and images on the right taken with the stock iOS Camera app.
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Shooting against a bright background is difficult for any camera, but the Pix photo on the left got the exposure right with the foreground subject while not overexposing the bright background.
Matt Elliott/CNET
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In direct sunlight, the Pix photo on the left offers accurate color. The iOS Camera photo on the right looks a bit washed out.
Matt Elliott/CNET
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In this scene, the Pix photo on the left looks oversaturated in its attempt to provide detail of the tiger lily blooms.
Matt Elliott/CNET
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In this landscape, the differences are slight but the Pix photo on the left offers vivid, accurate color and more detail.
Matt Elliott/CNET
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Pix is less concerned with canine faces than human faces, but it handled the bright background better in this scene. The iOS Camera photo is a bit overexposed.
Matt Elliott/CNET
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In this scene, the Pix photo on the left is a bit loses some detail to the bright background in an attempt to provide detail in the foreground subject. The iOS Camera photo on the right offers better balance.
Matt Elliott/CNET
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In this low-light situation, the Pix photo on the left offers more accurate color.
Matt Elliott/CNET
Verdict
After shooting with Microsoft Pix for the past two days, my admittedly unscientific tests revealed that it is smarter than the stock iOS Camera app in analysing faces in a shot and adjusting the exposure and tone accordingly, though if it errors, Pix errors on the side of oversaturation. When faces aren’t in the frame, the differences between Pix and the Camera app are less noticeable.
Personally, I enjoy photography and take multiple shots at a time and like being able to choose the best of the bunch. With Pix, it does the selecting for you, which will certainly appeal to many iPhone users. All of Pix’s image processing takes a bit of time, however, and results in a second or two delay after each shot.
A troubling side effect of all of the image processing Pix does behind the scenes is that my iPhone got fairly warm after using the app for only a handful of shots.
Microsoft has an uphill climb to change the shooting habits of iPhone shutterbugs, but the early results are promising. If it can shorten the delay after each shot and would offer a setting that would let me choose for myself the best shot of the 10 frames it captures before it works its image-processing magic, it may push the Camera app off of my iPhone’s home screen.
Microsoft Pix is free and works with the iPhone 5S and later, the iPad Air and later, the iPad Mini 2 and later, and the iPad Pro. An Android version is in the works.
SwiftKey is ‘working quickly’ to address bug that causes predictions to show for the wrong account
The mobile keyboard app company SwiftKey says that it is “working quickly” to fix an issue that was causing some users to see phones numbers and email addresses from strangers.
Earlier this week, online reports posted on Reddit and elsewhere stated that unknown email addresses and phone numbers were showing up in some users’ SwiftKey predictions. The company, which was acquired by Microsoft a few months ago, has now addressed those reports in a blog post:
This week, a few of our customers noticed unexpected predictions where unfamiliar terms, and in some rare cases emails, appeared when using their mobile phone. We are working quickly to resolve this inconvenience. While this did not pose a security issue for our customers, we have turned off the cloud sync service and are updating our applications to remove email address predictions. During this time, it will not be possible to back up your SwiftKey language model.
The vast majority of SwiftKey users are not affected by this issue. If you have any reason to believe you are seeing unfamiliar predictions, please contact reviews@swiftkey.com. We take users’ privacy and security very seriously and are committed to maintaining world-class standards for our community.
SwiftKey says it will continue to offer updates on this situation on its blog site.
HTC Vive will soon be more expensive in the UK, thanks to post-Brexit pound devaluation
HTC will be adjusting the price of the Vive VR headset in the UK due to changes in the value of the pound. While the headset was previously priced at £689, it will now come in at £759.
From HTC:
HTC continuously monitors and adjusts pricing to ensure we are providing our customers with the best value possible. Due to recent currency valuation changes and the current value of the GBP we are adjusting the price of the HTC Vive in the UK to £759 + P&P. The adjustment will come into effect on Monday 1st August.
The value of the pound has dropped over the last month, leading to many companies raising the prices of their products in order to maintain their margins within the UK. We have seen similar moves companies like Dell with its PCs, as well as OnePlus, which raised the price of its latest phone, the OnePlus 3, in response to the weaker pound.
Pokémon Go master getting free global trip to catch ’em all
Nick Johnson, the first person to catch all 142 known Pokémon in America in Pokémon Go, is getting a free trip around the world to complete his collection. The trip, sponsored by Expedia and Marriott Rewards, will see Johnson head to locations such as Paris, Sydney, and Hong Kong.
From Business Insider:
First, Johnson and his girlfriend will fly to Paris on Friday evening, with flights covered by Expedia, to catch Europe’s exclusive Mr. Mime. A day later, they’ll take off for Hong Kong in search of Farfetch’d, and then a day after that it’s off to Sydney for two days to catch Australia’s Kangaskhan.
Johnson says that he won’t be using Pokémon Go mapping apps to help him find each remaining creature. He’ll instead rely on each city’s Pokémon Go player community. If you want to follow along, Johnson will be writing up his experiences in each city for Expedia’s Viewfinder blog, while also posting updates to Twitter and Snapchat.
Pokémon Go
- Join our Pokémon Go forums!
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- The Ultimate Pokémon Go Game Guide!
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How to fix Galaxy S7 battery life problems
The Galaxy S7’s battery is bigger than before, but you still don’t want to waste what you have.
The eternal quest for longer battery life in smartphones continues on, as evermore efficient chips and bigger batteries are in a battle with new software, apps, features and big screens. You want your phone to do everything, but also do it for a very long time — and those things are at odds, especially if you don’t want to be chasing around a wall outlet everywhere you go.
The Galaxy S7’s 3000 mAh battery is bigger than last year’s Galaxy S6 and offers really solid battery life, actually, but if you consistently find your GS7 coming up short at the end of the day we have a handful of tips for you to get the most out of what battery you have.
Keep on the lookout for battery-hungry apps
As much as we wish that every app out there was written to be a great phone citizen and be cautious in its use of your phone’s limited resources, this unfortunately isn’t the case. If you have a bunch of apps installed and find your phone’s battery is draining faster than you’d like, you can take a look in the phone’s settings to try and diagnose what’s going on.
Head into the phone’s settings, tap Battery and then Battery usage. This isn’t a definitive list of apps that are using up your battery, and of course if you actually use an app a lot it’ll show up, but the battery usage screen can point out if something is chewing up your battery without your knowledge. If you find an app that’s consistently misbehaving, consider uninstalling it.
Check out ‘App power saving’ settings
Even if you identify and remove power-hungry apps from your phone, there are plenty of other apps you want to keep around but are still unnecessarily running in the background. The best way to handle this is in the Galaxy S7’s “App power saving” settings, which can be found inside the Battery area of your phone’s settings.
With App power saving turned on, your phone will restrict the ability of apps to run in the background if you haven’t used them in more than five days. For example, if you haven’t opened up the Foursquare app in five days, it won’t be able to run rampant in the background because you’ve expressed that you aren’t interested in having it running all the time. The app will still work when you open it up and that’ll reset the counter for it to be optimized again.
In the settings you can define on an app-by-app basis what the settings will be, if you wish — the default will have the app save power after five days of inactivity, but you can also set it to always save power or never save power. For example, you may want a travel utility like the American Airlines app to always be able to run for flight updates, even though you may not open it every five days.
Uninstall or disable unused bloatware
If you bought your Galaxy S7 from a carrier, chances are it’s been loaded up with a good number of apps — call ’em “bloatware” if you wish — that you don’t want. These apps can run and use up your battery, and even if you don’t have one egregious culprit a handful of bad actors could add up to a meaningful impact on battery life.
So instead of just ignoring these pre-installed apps or hiding them in your launcher, go through and uninstall what you can and disable the rest. Head into your phone’s settings, find Applications and then tap Application manager to get a list of apps. To find everything, tap More and then Show system apps.
Turn off unused radios like Wi-Fi and Bluetooth
This is something that’s true no matter what phone you have — if you don’t plan on using Wi-Fi or Bluetooth for a long period, just turn them off. With the Galaxy S7’s quick toggles in the notification shade it’s easy to just tap and turn them off, and quickly flip them back on when you need. Now of course there’s no reason to bother shutting off these two radios if you’re going to turn them on over and over again throughout the day — convenience is important — but if you’re going to go a long stretch without either one, take the two seconds to turn them off.
If you do want to keep Wi-Fi on, you can at least turn off a few advanced features that will take up a little extra juice. In your Wi-Fi settings, tap More then Advanced and turn off Network notification, as well as any other hotspot auto-join settings your carrier may have added.
Use Power saving and Ultra power saving modes
Samsung has awesome built-in power saving modes on all of its recent phones, and they really work well. The one that most people will find useful is the standard “Power saving mode,” while “Ultra power saving mode” remains as the absolute last-ditch toggle to use.
When you turn Power saving mode on, your phone will do a handful of things to eke out a handful of extra percentage points when your battery reserves are low. The Galaxy S7 will limit its performance, turn off vibration feedback and restrict location services to offer battery savings with minimal effect on your use of the phone. If you want to go a step further, tap the settings toggle to restrict all background data, which will keep apps from using data while they aren’t open and in use. You can set Power saving mode to turn on automatically at 50, 20, 15 or 5% battery, or you can just toggle it on manually as you need.
Ultra power saving mode goes several steps further, switching your phone to the absolute bare minimum of performance and features in order to maximize limited battery resources. Your phone’s display will switch to a greyscale mode, apps usage will be restricted, mobile data will turn off with the screen and extra radios are turned off. This is really designed for last resort situations, and should really only be used when keeping your phone alive is far more important than actually using your phone.
Make a few changes to your Display settings
The Galaxy S7 has an industry-leading display, and while it’s actually really efficient it will still take up a large chunk of your battery over the course of the day. If you dive into your phone’s display settings, you’ll find a few different tweaks you can make that won’t change the way your experience your phone while also saving a few percentage points on your battery.
- Screen brightness: Consider lowering your screen brightness just a tad. You can still keep automatic brightness checked for proper visibility in a variety of conditions, but moving the slider down a bit will drop the brightness in many situations.
- Screen timeout: The lower the better. Your screen isn’t using power when it’s off!
- Smart stay: This feature keeps the screen on when you’re actively looking at it, which may help you cope with turning down your overall screen timeout setting.
- Always On Display: Depending on which AOD mode you use it use take too much battery, but if you can handle not having information on your otherwise “off” display, you can save a few percentage points by turning off AOD altogether.
Turn off automatic updates from Google Play and Galaxy Apps
If there’s one thing we’ve established at this point, it’s that apps running when you’re not expecting them to can be annoying. This also goes for the app stores that download and manage those apps, which in this case are Google Play and Galaxy Apps.
When it comes to Google Play, head into the app’s settings, tap Auto-update apps and set to Do not auto-update apps for the most battery savings. If you’d prefer to get those updates automatically but want to find a healthy middle ground, select Auto-update apps over Wi-Fi only, which will also save you on mobile data costs.
In Galaxy Apps, tap the More button and then Settings to reveal the auto-update settings. Here, Samsung makes a distinction between auto-updating its own apps and auto-updating other apps you’ve installed through the store. When it comes to Samsung’s own apps, your best option is setting Via Wi-Fi only. For other apps, you have the option to select Turn off.
Take advantage of Fast Charge when you do have to power up
No matter what you do to extend the battery life on your Galaxy S7, the sad truth is you’ll have to actually charge it up at some point. When you do finally charge up your GS7, consider using the power brick and cable that came with the phone. With this charger, your Galaxy S7 will charge at the fastest possible rate, meaning you can get the phone back off the charger in less time — just 30 minutes on the charger will add a substantial amount to you battery.
If you want to have a secondary charger, look for chargers that are certified for Qualcomm Quick Charge 2.0 to get a similar experience when you don’t have the in-box charger available.
Last resort: Consider a battery case
Though all of the above tips can add up to a pretty substantial increase in battery longevity, some people just can’t do what they need on their phones and keep the battery lasting all day. When push comes to shove, we (reluctantly) recommend you check out a battery case for your phone. Our leading choices come from Samsung itself and well-known case maker Mophie, which both make really solid options for the Galaxy S7.
Samsung’s Wireless Charging Battery Pack is slick (by battery case standards), simple and will add 50% to your Galaxy S7’s battery with wirelessly charging that leaves your ports uncovered.
See at Amazon
Mophie’s Juice Pack is a bit bigger and adds 60% battery to your phone in about half the time of Samsung’s own case — and while it charges the phone over Micro-USB, the case itself can be charged wirelessly.
See at Amazon
Both will add substantial bulk to your phone, but if you just can’t make it through the day any other way, give these a look.
Samsung Galaxy S7 and S7 edge
- Galaxy S7 review
- Galaxy S7 edge review
- U.S. unlocked Galaxy S7
- Should you upgrade to the Galaxy S7?
- Best SD cards for Galaxy S7
- Join our Galaxy S7 forums
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This is how much space PlayStation VR requires for you to play
PlayStation VR is still a few months away from release, but new documentation released by Sony has finally revealed how much space its virtual-reality headset requires in order to properly work.
It needs an area of about 60-square feet. Also, players must try to remain seated while playing. Reddit user Shockwave187 shared these details from an official sales brochure, which is also available on Sony’s Asia website. The brochure and site further confirmed information about a “social screen” mode, “cinematic” mode, headphone compatibility, and some warnings.
As you can see in the illustrated figure below, Sony recommended playing in cleared space with a width of 1.9 meters and a depth of 3 meters. The height depends on the size of the area captured by the PlayStation Camera, a device used by the PlayStation VR. Sony said PS VR users should clear the play area and stay seated unless instructed to move by the game.
Sony
The “social screen” mode will display gameplay on a TV, allowing others gamers to observe and join, while the “cinematic” mode will let them watch movies or play standard PS4 games in 2D. As for headphones, PS VR will be compatible with any headphones sporting a 3.5mm jack. The headset will come with a set of stereo headphones, too, which is something that was unknown until now.
PlayStation VR will be available on 13 October for $399. There will also be a $499.99 bundle package that includes the headset, PlayStation camera, two PlayStation Move controllers, and a copy of PlayStation VR Worlds.
Oh, and Sony suggested you try the headset in a store before purchasing. It also warned against letting children under 12 use PS VR.
PSA: Download Windows 10 by 6AM ET or pay full price
This is it, everybody: Last call for a free Windows 10 upgrade. Starting tomorrow, Microsoft will stop pestering you to claim your free Windows upgrade and start charging you for it. If you think you might cave sometime today, start your download sooner rather than later — if you PC isn’t running Windows 10 by midnight, UTC-10 (6AM ET tomorrow morning) the upgrade will cost you $119.
Yes, we’re aware you probably know this already — goodness knows Microsoft hasn’t let you forget — but the specifics of the deadline were a little unclear. When we asked Microsoft to clarify, we were told that 23:59 UTC-10 marked when the upgrade downloads would be cut off, meaning that your download must be complete, not initiated, by that time in order to receive the free upgrade. If you try to upgrade tomorrow morning at say, 5:30AM, you may be too late.
Have you downloaded @Windows 10? Will you? https://t.co/f0IVDvoOgM
— Engadget (@engadget) July 29, 2016
If you still haven’t upgraded at this point, you probably have your reasons — but don’t say we didn’t warn you.
Sony sued for not preventing piracy of movie leaked in 2014 hack
The fall 2014 Sony megahack leaked a massive amount of internal documents and content, resulting in plenty of fallout. Even two years later, they company is still not off the hook. The film To Write Love On Her Arms was one of four movies released online in the colossal data dump, and its producers are suing Sony Pictures failing to safeguard it from piracy thereafter.
Possibility Pictures, the producers of the film, point to a specific clause in their contract with Sony requiring it “to protect the Picture worldwide on the Internet directly or through third party vendors, representative or agents.” In the court brief, the plaintiffs point to an article claiming that the movie was subsequently downloaded 20,000 times, but that doesn’t even fully account for how far it spread thereafter. It was slated to hit theaters in March 2015, but was released Direct-to-DVD instead, a quiet death instead of dumping publicity money on a film that was freely available online.
The producers are asking for all the film’s projected revenue had Sony properly protected the film and released it in theaters normally, which is some $8.7 million. The company declined to give comment to The Hollywood Reporter, but was alleged to have replied to producers that it had no obligation to take any anti-piracy measures. If Possibility Pictures wins, it could set precedent for deciding who is responsible for a film’s performance should hacks and/or leaks cripple its revenue.
Source: The Hollywood Reporter
AIVAnet 