Roku OS 7.5 rolling out from today, includes live pause and private listening

Roku has announced a new software update that is available now for select Roku streaming devices and all Roku TVs. The update brings with it two big features, although these are reserved solely for Roku TVs, which for now are only available in the US.

• What is Roku and which player is best for you?
• These are the new Roku boxes with 4K HDR, specs and pics revealed

The first feature is live pause, which as the name suggests lets you pause live TV. Roku says you can pause digital broadcasts for up to 90 minutes, although you will need a USB flash drive with at least 16GB of space to use the feature.

The other feature is mobile private listening. This feature is already available on some of Roku’s more premium streaming devices, such as the Roku 3 in the UK. With it, you’re able to connect a pair of headphones to the supplied remote control to divert the sound from the TV, so you can listen in private.

The feature is now being made available for all Roku TV models by way of the mobile app for iOS and Android. Instead of connecting headphones to a remote control, you can connect them to your smartphone to listen in private. To enable the feature, your mobile device will need to be connected to the same network as your Roku TV.

Roku is also introducing a new audio guide for select players: the Streaming stick in the UK and the five new players released in the US. The audio guide can help with navigating menus and is activated by pressing the * button four times.

Roku players that come with remote controls with volume buttons, such as the streaming stick and Roku 3 in the UK, can now be used to control the volume of your TV or AV receiver if it supports HDMI via CEC (Consumer Electronics Control).

Multiple users can now connect to a Roku player and use the Play on Roku feature, which lets you instantly share photos on your TV. Finally, Roku has implemented a number of updates to improve the overall streaming performance of all players, and the Streaming Stick can now automatically detect the TV’s display setting and select the best setting for itself based on the resolution of the TV.

The Roku OS 7.5 update is available now to download for free and you can check to see if your player is ready to be updated by going into the settings menu.

ICYMI: Robots so advanced, they cool themselves with sweat

Today on In Case You Missed It: Researchers from the University of Tokyo devised a better air cooling system for robots that is modeled on their as-yet-overlords, sweaty humans. The 3D-printed bones have spaces for tiny pores, allowing Kengoro to do pushups for 11 minutes without overheating. Next up, world domination.

Meanwhile MIT discovered that spinach plants can be engineered into living sensors that send notifications when they detect pollutants in their water. It’s an interesting bit of engineering with plants that they are calling “plant nanobionics,” read more about it here.

Finally the NASA video is here while the poor schlub who got punked by his friends as Woody from Toy Story is here. As always, please share any interesting tech or science videos you find by using the #ICYMI hashtag on Twitter for @mskerryd.

Canadian cops spied on journalist’s phone for months

The Montreal police tapped the iPhone of a columnist writing for Canadian French-language newspaper La Presse, according to the publication itself. La Presse said it discovered 24 surveillance warrants granted by Montreal Judge Josée De Carufel giving the cops’ special investigations unit the legal right to spy on Patrick Lagace’s incoming and outgoing texts and calls. That’s not all they did, though — they also tracked his whereabouts through his iPhone’s GPS.

Montreal police chief Philippe Pichet argued that they had to do it in order to investigate one of their own officers. In a meeting with Lagace on Friday — something, he stressed, the cops were “not legally obliged to” do — he explained that they spied on his phone to investigate allegations that some anti-gang officers fabricated evidence. They believed there was a possibility that some those officers were feeding Lagace information on the side, as well. The Montreal cops began monitoring Lagace’s phone calls and location in December 2015, and their investigation ultimately led to the arrest of five officers in July.

Pichet said in a statement:

“The City of Montreal Police Force recognizes freedom of the press. But on the other hand, there were criminal allegations against a police officer… and we have a job to do.”

Lagace, however, remains unconvinced. He believes the cops weren’t happy with a few pieces he wrote over the years and that the move was actually a ploy to identify his sources and to scare cops away from talking to journalists in general. He told AP:

“I was living in the fiction that police officers wouldn’t dare do that, and in the fiction that judges were protecting journalists — and hence the public — against this type of police intrusion. Clearly, I was naive.”

The story blew up as soon as details came out, especially since Pichet admitted that he couldn’t guarantee whether authorities spied on (or are spying on) other journalists besides Lagace. Even famed whistleblower Edward Snowden took to Twitter to air his thoughts:

Are you a journalist? The police spying on you specifically to ID your sources isn’t a hypothetical. This is today. https://t.co/6JtOIb7Q4n pic.twitter.com/p4pURXH4nU

— Edward Snowden (@Snowden) October 31, 2016

Source: AP, The Globe and Mail, CBC News, The Star

You can now legally hack your own car or smart TV

Researchers can now probe connected devices, computers and cars for security vulnerabilities without risking a lawsuit. Last Friday, the FTC authorized changes to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) that will allow Americans to do hack their own electronic devices. Researchers can lawfully reverse engineer products and consumers can repair their vehicle’s electronics, but the FTC is only allowing the exemptions for a two-year trial run.

The FTC and US Library of Congress enacted similar legislation in 2014 that allows you to unlock your own smartphone. Until today, however, it was illegal to mess with the programs in your car, thermostat or tractor, thanks to strict provisions in the DMCA’s Section 1201. That applied even to researchers probing the device security for flaws, a service that helps both the public and manufacturers. For example, researchers commandeered a Jeep on the road to show it could be done, an act that was technically illegal.

You could have also been sued just for trying to repair your own electronics. In a well-publicized example, John Deere told farmers that they have no right to root around in the software that runs their tractor even when they’re just trying to fix the damned thing. That issue alone prompted over 40,000 public comments to the US Copyright Office demanding stronger ownership rights.

DMCA 1201, and the rulemaking process, create unconstitutional restraints on speech, and need to be struck down by a court or fixed by Congress.

The exemptions have certain restrictions — consumers are only allowed to do “good-faith” hacking on “lawfully-acquired” devices. That means, for instance, that you can still get in trouble if you gain unauthorized access to a device you don’t own. Also, researchers can’t probe internet services or public services like airlines either, meaning that the jet hack done last year would still be illegal now.

Groups like the Electronic Frontier Foundation, iFixit and Repair.org fought to have research and repair activities exempted from the DMCA, since they actually have nothing to do with copyright law. “You could be sued or even jailed for trying to understand the software in your devices, or for helping others do the same,” the EFF wrote.

The new exemptions are nice, but critics are still fuming over the fact that they took a year to kick in and are only good for two years. Repair and research advocates say that the process for changing copyright law is unnecessarily expensive and onerous, too. “The one year delay … was not only a violation of law, not only pointless, but actively counterproductive,” the EFF wrote. “DMCA 1201, and the rulemaking process, create unconstitutional restraints on speech and need to be struck down by a court or fixed by Congress.”

Source: FTC

Future MacBooks Said to Adopt Brighter OLED Displays That Consume Less Battery Life

Apple is looking to use OLED displays rather than current LCD technology for its future MacBook series, according to Korean website ETNews.

The report, citing unnamed sources, said Apple is currently looking into ways of using OLED displays for MacBooks and testing their performance. It does not provide a timeline as to when Apple might release its first OLED-based MacBook.

The switch to OLED technology could have several benefits for future MacBooks, including lower power consumption for longer battery life. OLED panels are often thinner, too, which could allow for a slimmer and lighter MacBook design.

Other potential advantages of OLEDs include increased brightness, sharper colors, and faster response times compared to LCDs.

The report said Apple is actively expanding uses of OLED displays for its major products, one of which is widely rumored to be the iPhone starting next year.

Apple already has experience using OLED displays in limited applications, including the Apple Watch and the new MacBook Pro’s Touch Bar, but adapting the technology to larger screens can pose manufacturing challenges.

Today’s report pegged Samsung as Apple’s supplier of Touch Bar panels, and that partnership could extend to MacBook displays in the future.

KGI Securities analyst Ming-Chi Kuo yesterday said Apple will release new MacBooks in the second half of 2017. New and existing notebooks are said to receive price cuts, while adoption of Intel’s Cannonlake processors if readied could allow for up to 32GB of RAM versus the max 16GB of RAM in current models.

Related Roundups: MacBook Pro, Retina MacBook
Tags: etnews.com, OLED
Buyer’s Guide: Retina MacBook Pro (Buy Now), MacBook (Neutral)
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iFixit Tears Down Battery, Improved Keyboard, and Removable SSD of MacBook Pro Without Touch Bar

iFixit has published a teardown of the new 13-inch MacBook Pro without Touch Bar, which the site calls the “Escape Edition” because of its adherence to the traditional row of function keys, along with a tangible Escape key. In the teardown, iFixit delves deeper into the MacBook Pro, uncovering a battery that is 27 percent less powerful than last year’s model, along with the Butterfly 2.0 keyboard that’s been slightly updated since the 2015 MacBook.

After removing the extra-large new trackpad from the body of the laptop, iFixit gets a better look at the MacBook’s battery. Rated for 54.5 watt hours, the 13-inch MacBook might include less battery life than last year’s generation, but it does come in above the Touch Bar MacBook Pro model, which clocks in at 49.2 watt hours. In a recent performance comparison provided by Geekbench, the new 13-inch MacBook Pro sans Touch Bar’s 15-watt chip was proven to be more energy efficient than the 28-watt chip in last year’s entry-level model.

A new spring mechanism is discovered housed next to the MacBook Pro’s hinge protector, which “rolls a flat cable up when the display is closed, and unravels when the display opens.” This not only seems to make it easier to close the lid of the MacBook, but suggests the overall lighter body of the MacBook Pro needed extra help and couldn’t “rely on gravity to close nicely as much as previous models have.”

One of the last points iFixit focuses on is the updated Butterfly 2.0 keys on the MacBook Pro’s keyboard. Comparing it with the 2015 MacBook, iFixit describes the new MacBook Pro’s keys as “a little taller at the edges,” so it’s slightly easier to find each key with your fingers without looking directly at the board. The dome switches hiding under each key also appear to have more heft than the 2015 MacBook’s, further supporting the overall better feel and increased travel on the MacBook Pro.

iFixit also looked at the MacBook’s removable SSD, powered by SanDisk 64GB NAND flash memory and Apple’s custom SSD controller. Then, the site dove into the logic board to hunt for the “advanced thermal architecture” described in the MacBook’s press release. The board appeared mostly the same as previous MacBooks, with Apple’s new architecture apparently describing the “relocation of the heat sink screws to the backside of the logic board.”

Other interesting tidbits from the teardown include the MacBook Pro’s fans, and the single modular unit taped to the bottom of the notebook’s fan, which houses the 3.5mm headphone port. Its location, and Apple’s removal of the same port on the iPhone 7, means it “could easily be dropped in favor of a Lightning or USB-C connector” in future MacBook Pro generations. Ultimately, iFixit gave the 13-inch MacBook Pro without a Touch Bar a repairability score of 2, with a 10 being the easiest to repair.

Check out the full teardown on iFixit’s website.

Related Roundup: MacBook Pro
Tag: iFixit
Buyer’s Guide: Retina MacBook Pro (Buy Now)
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Star Ratings Make a Return to Apple Music on iOS 10.2 Beta

In iOS 10, Apple Music lost the star rating system that allowed users to personally rate a song on a scale of 1-5, which was then saved in their library so they could remember and later sort tracks via the ranking system. Following the release of the iOS 10.2 beta yesterday, iTunes expert Kirk McElhearn discovered that star ratings have returned to the Apple Music app on iOS, now appearing as a toggle option in Settings > Music.

After turning on “Show Star Ratings,” users will be able to once more give each track a personal rating, through a few added steps, however. The process required to get to the “Rate Song” menu is as follows: tap the ellipsis menu at the bottom right of the screen when a song is playing to bring up its action sheet, scroll down to “Rate Song,” choose the star rating, then tap “Done.” In prior versions of iOS, users simply tapped on the artwork of a song to bring up the star rating menu.

As the Settings submenu clarifies, “Star Ratings do not affect For You recommendations,” so Apple Music’s binary like/dislike system is still the only resource for subscribers to teach the streaming service which songs they enjoy, and which they don’t. Besides Star Ratings, it was also discovered that within the beta of iOS 10.2, there’s a new option to sort playlists by type, title, and recently added, as well as new options for sorting songs and albums by title or artist.

Tag: Apple Music
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Apple Pay Expands Widely in Russia

Apple Pay launched in Russia last month in partnership with Sberbank for MasterCard cardholders, and today the mobile payments service has expanded to nine additional financial institutions in the country.

Today’s additions include Tinkoff Bank, Bank Saint Petersburg, Raiffeisenbank, Yandex.Money, Alfa-Bank, MTS Bank, VTB 24, Rocketbank, and MDM Bank. Russian Standard Bank is listed as coming soon. The banks, just added to the regional Apple Pay website in Russia, support Apple Pay as of November 1.

Eligible cards can be added to Apple Pay by tapping “Add Credit or Debit Card” in the Wallet app on iPhone 5 and later running at least iOS 8.1.

Participating retailers include ATAK, Magnit, Media Markt, Auchan, Azbuka Vkusa, bp, M.Video, TsUM, authorized Apple reseller re:Store, and elsewhere contactless payments are accepted. Burger King is also listed as a future partner once it implements contactless payments infrastructure in the country.

Apple Pay is currently available in the United States, Australia, Canada, China, France, Hong Kong, Japan, New Zealand, Russia, Singapore, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom. Apple Pay vice president Jennifer Bailey has said Apple is “working rapidly” to expand the service to additional countries in Asia and Europe.

Related Roundup: Apple Pay
Tag: Russia
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