How to control your TV with Amazon Echo

Amazon Echo can replace your remote control, with a little help.

As nice as it would be for every television to include a simple local network access function, most TVs still rely on good old fashioned Infrared (IR) to receive commands. This isn’t the best news for someone looking to convert the living room into Smart Home 2.0, but there are some tools available that make this a little easier to deal with than you’d think.

For example, you can pair a Logitech Harmony Hub and an Amazon Echo to create a totally voice controlled television. Here’s how you set it up!

See Logitech Harmony Hub at Amazon

The Harmony line from Logitech has been the best option for universal remotes for a long time, but recently the company has moved from baking all of those smarts into a better remote control to building a hub that controls way more than just the TV. On its own, Harmony Hub can give you the ability to control just about anything connected to your Wi-Fi network as well as anything you can control with IR in a single app. You can even build little scripts inside of Harmony, so a single button press turns on the TV, sets the input you want to be on, and can even be activated on a schedule. It’s an impressive setup, made all the more impressive when you add an Amazon Echo.

Starting your smart living room conversion is fairly easy. Set up your Harmony Hub anywhere that lets you mount the IR sensor pointed right at the television. It doesn’t have to be close, but if you want to set Harmony up with your entertainment center you can. After it is set up and connected to your network, you can add Harmony to Alexa just like any other skill.

Open your Alexa App.
Go to Home –> Skills.
Search for Harmony.
Select the blue icon that appears.
Enable the Harmony Skill.
Log in to Harmony from the Alexa app.

Once Alexa is connected to Harmony, you have the ability to turn the television on and off automatically. Just about everything else requires a little bit of extra work. Harmony is aware of what channels are available with your provider, but you can’t just ask for a specific channel out of the box unless your television is connected directly to cable. If you use an HD cable box that connects via HDMI, or something like a Tivo, you have to create actions in Harmony under the Smart TV settings.

Volume control isn’t available through Alexa because Harmony doesn’t have it set as an Action function. Alexa also doesn’t have the ability to switch inputs through Harmony without actions, but an IFTTT trigger can be set up to allow this. Harmony and Alexa absolutely can be better integrated, but right out of the box this is a great way to control your television with your voice.

Amazon Echo

• Amazon Echo review
• Echo Dot review
• Top Echo Tips & Tricks
• Tap, Echo or Dot: The ultimate Alexa question
• Amazon Echo vs. Google Home
• Get the latest Alexa news

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Fukushima radiation skyrockets after possible fuel breach

Radiation levels inside the damaged Fukushima nuclear reactor are over 100 times fatal levels, the highest they’ve been since the triple meltdown in March, 2011, according to operator Tepco. The company recently sent a camera-equipped robot into the reactor, which relayed images showing a meter-wide hole in the pressure vessel (above), with possible melted uranium fuel on a grating below. “It may have … melted and made a hole in the [containment] vessel, but it is only a hypothesis at this stage,” a company spokesperson told the AFP.

Since the accident, the highest recorded level in the plant was around 73 sieverts per hour, but a new reading, estimated from a camera that was sent in on Monday, shows an “unimaginable” 530 sieverts per hour, according to an expert. A dose of one sievert can cause radiation sickness, while 10 sieverts would kill you in a few weeks.

Tepco and its partners had been unable to locate the exposed low-enriched uranium fuel (LEU), a prerequisite to decommissioning the plant. So far, the levels of radiation made it impossible to get cameras and robots in close in close enough to gauge the damage — of the five sent in, none returned.

Until Monday, it was believed that the radioactive fuel was contained within the reactor’s pressure vessel. However, if it broke through into the larger containment vessel, the situation could be much worse than previously thought. The company had planned to deploy a robotic camera in March that can withstand 1,000 sieverts per hour, but the latest readings indicate it would last less than an hour.

Authorities are supposed to figure out a plan to remove the fuel by 2018, but the latest discovery could delay that. In December, the Japanese government pegged the plant decommissioning cost at 21.5 trillion yen ($190 billion), nearly double the original estimate.

Via: The Guardian

Source: The Japan Times

The Engadget Podcast Ep 27: American Tune

Managing editor Dana Wollman and reviews editor Cherlynn Low join host Terrence O’Brien to discuss the biggest tech news of the week. First they’ll debate OnePlus’ benchmark scandal, then try to sort out why the ACLU is partnering with startup incubator Y Combinator and take the “artists” behind the Tinder for baby adoption Kickstarter to task. Finally it’s another week of Trump talk as the panel addresses the impact of the recent immigration ban on the tech industry and how the political climate is impacting our social media habits.

Relevant links:

• OnePlus 3T caught cheating on benchmarks
• ACLU signs on with Y Combinator after $24 million donation
• Kickstarter shuts down sketchy Adoptly campaign
• Sketchy adoption app Adoptly is a hoax after all
• Using Tinder’s swipe UI isn’t always a good idea
• Mark Zuckerberg lightly criticizes Trump order on immigration
• Apple, Microsoft and Uber help staff stranded by Trump ban
• Lyft donates to the ACLU in response to Trump’s immigration ban
• Uber sets up $3 million fund for drivers hurt by immigration ban
• Google gives $4 million to pro-immigrant causes
• New York City tech leaders object to Trump immigration ban
• GitHub rallies Silicon Valley companies to oppose Muslim ban
• Game developers take a stand against Trump’s immigration ban

You can check out every episode on The Engadget Podcast page in audio, video and text form for the hearing impaired.

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The PS4 will soon support external drives and 3D movies in VR

It’s been a little while since we last saw an update for the PlayStation 4, but that doesn’t mean Sony hasn’t been hammering away on new tweaks for the console. Today, the company unveiled plans for its version 4.50 (codenamed Sasuke) system update, confirming support for some oft-requested and useful new features like external hard drive support for games, custom wallpaper and and the ability to view 3D Blu-rays via PSVR. PS4 Pro owners will also be pleased to know that they may be getting some love too (more on that later).

Although the PlayStation 4 has supported external hard drives for some time now, Sony limited it to system upgrades and media like videos and music, not games. With Sasuke, Sony will let you download and install games directly to USB 3.0 hard drives up to 8TB in size, so if you’ve converted to an all-digital library — and still own the basic 500GB model — you no longer have to worry about constantly managing or deleting old games. Everything you install will appear in the Content Launcher, ensuring apps and games are a button press away.

Like on Xbox One, the update will also enable you to select any in-game screenshot as your home screen background. Sony will offer tools to adapt it to your liking, allowing you to add drop shadows to text and dim the Function Area to make your icons easier to see. Staying with the visual theme, both the Quick Menu and Notification List have been given a tune-up, making it easier for you to invite friends and join parties, and parse Alerts, Downloads and Uploads in one simple list (removing the old tabs completely).

In its announcement, Sony notes that there are more features included in 4.50, but isn’t sharing all of them right now. Thanks to NeoGAF, we know that one of those tweaks could be the addition of a new “Boost Mode,” which forces the console to support higher framerates for games that have yet to be optimized for the Pro.

If you signed up for the beta update programme, there’s every chance you will have been selected to receive version 4.50, which begins rolling out today. For everyone else, additional features and launch timing will be disclosed “in the weeks to come.”

Source: PlayStation Blog

LG is fixing its 5K monitor so it’ll work near your WiFi router

It’s not a good sign when your pricey new 5K monitor is affected by proximity to your wireless router. After reports of the monitor becoming unstable, if not unusable, when in close company — under two meters away — to WiFi routers. It’s a difficult issue to resolve if your router is already close to your internet pipeline. LG now tells Engadget that signal interference is to blame, when said routers are placed near to the rear of the display.

The company still advises you move the router for the quickest fix, but says that those “continuing to experience issues with their UltraFine displays” can contact their nearest LG customer center for “prompt service” — although the statement doesn’t specify whether the fix would involve some sort of after-sale refit or simply replacing the 5K monitor with a new one. We’ve reached out to check with LG which one it’ll be. The company added that displays manufactured after February 2017 will be fitted with enhanced shielding to solve the issue.

Hacker Leaks Cellebrite’s iOS Bypassing Tools, Tells FBI ‘Be Careful What You Wish For’

It’s been nearly a year since a U.S. federal judge originally ordered Apple to help the FBI hack into an iPhone owned by Syed Farook, one of the shooters in the December 2015 attacks in San Bernardino. As we learned in the months after the initial court order — which Apple continually opposed — the FBI enlisted the help of Israeli mobile software developer Cellebrite to open up the iPhone 5c in question.

Now a hacker has reportedly stolen and publicly released a cache of Cellebrite’s most sensitive data, including its tools used to hack into older iPhones, as well as Android and BlackBerry smartphones (via Motherboard). Techniques that the firm uses to open “newer iPhones” were not included in the public posting, but it’s also not clear exactly which models of iPhone are considered “older.” Farook’s iPhone 5c, which launched in 2013, is likely in that category.

Apple’s main stance against the court order last year was its fear that creating such an operating system that bypassed the iPhone’s basic security features — essentially creating a “master key” for all iOS devices — would set a “dangerous precedent” for the future of encryption and security. The bypass could also potentially make its way into the public and affect hundreds of millions of Apple customers, with Apple CEO Tim Cook claiming that the software the FBI wanted to use to force open Farook’s iPhone was “the equivalent of cancer.”

As pointed out by Motherboard, the newly leaked tools “demonstrate that those worries were justified.” According to the hacker in question who shared Cellebrite’s tools on Pastebin, the purpose behind the leak was to highlight the importance of the inevitability that any brute force tools aimed at bypassing encryption software “will make it out” into the public.

“The debate around backdoors is not going to go away, rather, its is almost certainly going to get more intense as we lurch toward a more authoritarian society,” the hacker told Motherboard in an online chat.

“It’s important to demonstrate that when you create these tools, they will make it out. History should make that clear,” they continued.

Back in January the same hacker stole 900GB of sensitive Cellebrite data, but according to a Cellebrite spokesperson, only its customers’ “basic contact information” had been put at risk. Delving into the cache of information, it was proven that the breach had uncovered much more detailed “customer information, databases, and a vast amount of technical data regarding Cellebrite’s products.”

In a README file posted alongside the more recent data dump on Pastebin, the hacker in question left a message directly addressing the FBI: “@FBI Be careful in what you wish for.”

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

Tags: Apple-FBI, Cellebrite
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Apple accused of intentionally breaking FaceTime on iOS 6

We don’t normally cover individual lawsuits against corporations because, hey, they make a lot of money, and everyone wants a slice. But the circumstances around this one are sufficiently controversial that we’ve made an exception. A woman from California has filed a claim against Apple saying that the company intentionally broke FaceTime on iOS 6 to force users to upgrade to iOS 7.

The complaint stems from internal emails that were released as evidence in a case Apple fought against a patent troll, VirnetX. The story goes that when Apple launched FaceTime, it used third-party servers from Akamai to help handle the calls. But as time progressed, Akamai began hosting a significant proportion of all FaceTime calls, costing Apple millions of dollars a month in fees.

iOS 7 altered the way that FaceTime worked, reducing the load on Akamai’s servers and potentially saving Apple a fat stack of cash. But some users of older handsets, in this case the iPhone 4 and 4S, were still clinging to the older operating system. So, the company allegedly let a security certificate lapse well ahead of time, breaking FaceTime for iOS 6 users. At the time, it was described as a bug that was only fixed if people upgraded to the newer OS.

There is, apparently, a smoking gun buried in the paperwork, although it’s worth noting that we can’t substantiate this ourselves. According to the claim, Apple engineer Patrick Gates sent an email asking what the company had done “in April around iOS 6 to reduce relay utilization.” In response, engineer Gokul Thirumalai responded by saying “It was a big user of relay bandwidth. We broke iOS 6, and the only way to get FaceTime working again is to upgrade to iOS 7.”

But iPhone 4 and 4S users upgrading to iOS 7 found that the user experience was actually pretty damn bad. To quote AnandTech’s detailed review of the operating system, “performance however on the iPhone 4 and iPad 3 leaves a lot to be desired.” That same piece added, “the iPhone 4 stutters through all of its animations.” and “generally feels like it’s on its last legs.”

As both AppleInsider and MacRumors have pointed out, at the time that FaceTime was allegedly broken 87 percent of iPhone users were on iOS 7. Although if all of this is true, then it’ll give plenty of fuel to those folks who love to crow about planned obsolescence. Not to mention what a court will decide should it decide to take the case further, or potentially mark it as a class action lawsuit. We’ve emailed Apple, but the company has yet to tell us that it has no official comment at this time, but will update this when it does.

Source: AppleInsider, Scribd

Government watchdog says SpaceX Falcon 9s are prone to cracks

SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rockets apparently have a serious issue that could delay the company’s manned missions. According to the Wall Street Journal, the Government Accountability Office investigated both Boeing and SpaceX — the corporations that won NASA’s space taxi contracts — and found that Falcon 9’s turbine blades suffer from persistent cracks. GAO’s preliminary report says these turboblades’ tendency to crack is a “major threat to rocket safety,” since they pump fuel into Falcon 9’s rocket engines.

NASA’s acting administrator Robert Lightfoot told the WSJ that government officials have known about the issue for months or even years. The agency even told SpaceX that the cracks are too much risk for manned flights. However, the congressional watchdog will still write about the issue in the final report it’s slated to publish in the next few weeks because the company found cracks in their turboblades as recently as September 2016.

A spokesperson said SpaceX has “qualified [its] engines to be robust” to cracks, but it’s now “modifying the design to avoid them altogether.” The company has been working with NASA to fix the problem, though they’re unsure if it would require a complete redesign. If it does, it’ll likely take a lot of time, which will, in turn, push back the company’s launch schedule.

In fact, GAO has already determined that both companies will likely miss their goal to start ferrying astronauts to the ISS in 2018. Besides this particular problem, the investigators cite Falcon 9’s frequent modifications for the delay. In Boeing’s case, the investigators have raised concerns about the status of the tests designed to determine if its manned capsules’ landing parachutes are reliable.

Source: The Wall Street Journal

Apple Raises $10 Billion in Debt Ahead of Trump’s Plans for Tax Holiday

Apple has raised $10 billion in debt through a nine-part bond sale of both fixed and floating rate notes, according to the company’s final pricing term sheet filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on Friday.

The nine-part sale includes:

• $500 million maturing in 2019 with a floating interest rate based on three month LIBOR plus 8 basis points
• $500 million maturing in 2020 with a floating interest rate based on three month LIBOR plus 20 basis points
• $1 billion maturing in 2022 with a floating interest rate based on three month LIBOR plus 50 basis points
• $500 million maturing in 2019 with a fixed 1.55% interest rate
• $1 billion maturing in 2020 with a fixed 1.9% interest rate
• $1.5 billion maturing in 2022 with a fixed 2.5% interest rate
• $1.75 billion maturing in 2024 with a fixed 3% interest rate
• $2.25 billion maturing in 2027 with a fixed 3.35% interest rate
• $1 billion maturing in 2047 with a fixed 4.25% interest rate

Apple held $246.1 billion in cash and marketable securities last quarter, but around 94% of that money is held overseas and would be subject to high U.S. taxes upon repatriation—something U.S. President Donald Trump plans to change. In the meantime, by raising debt through bonds, Apple can pay for its U.S. operations at a much lower rate, particularly given its low-risk Aa1/AA+ bond credit rating.

Apple typically uses the capital raised to fund dividend payments to shareholders and its share buyback program. Last quarter, Apple returned almost $15 billion to investors through dividends and buybacks. $201 billion of $250 billion capital return program has been completed. The company also uses the capital for general corporate purposes, such as the repayment of earlier debt and acquisitions.

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

Tags: bonds, SEC
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Next time you’re in London, watch out for shameless scooter-riding phone thieves

Why it matters to you

A reminder that criminals will try and steal our phones by any means, so stay vigilant when out and about in the city

Anyone who lives in a major city knows the dangers of pick-pockets or opportunistic thieves, but not everyone will be on the lookout for phone-snatchers riding scooters. However, video footage released by London’s Metropolitan Police shows why we should all be a little more aware of our surroundings, and tuned to the usually awful sound that accompanies an approaching moped.

The incident in the latest video occurred in November last year, and shows a man in a suit walking casually along the sidewalk while using his phone. A moped with two people riding it suddenly enters the frame, and the pillion rider casually reaches out and grabs the phone from the man, leaving him bewildered as he watches the bike and his phone speed away.

More: Man takes down bike-riding phone thief with a kick

It all happens in less than 6 seconds, and even though the man isn’t making a call at the time of the theft, he’s engrossed enough in what he’s doing not to notice the bike coming up behind him. The police hope by showing how quickly this type of crime happens, people will avoid having their phone on display unless absolutely necessary. And just in case you’re not familiar with London, motorbikes, regardless of the type, are usually found on the road, not the sidewalk.

Sadly, it’s not an isolated incident. At the beginning of the year, CCTV cameras caught another pair of criminals on a moped, targeting various people, snatching phones, and riding away. Another, from October, captures a moped crime spree where 21 phones are stolen in just an hour. At the end of 2016, data from the Metropolitan Police estimated 22 moped-related offenses took place everyday in the city, and that bikes were often stolen before being used in a further crime. Police particularly warn tourists enjoying the city to be protective of their phones.

The Metropolitan Police department is battling what it calls two-wheel-enabled crime in Operation Attrition.