Police make first arrest in Facebook Live sexual assault case

Law enforcement is taking sweeping action following a horrific sexual assault streamed on Facebook Live. Chicago police report that they’ve made the first arrest in the case, bringing a 14-year-old boy into custody. There will be more arrests soon, according to the CPD, including a 15-year-old who’s next in line. Details of the case are mostly under wraps beyond a connection between the victim and one of her attackers (their age prevents disclosing some of the facts). However, it’s already clear that the livestream wasn’t the end to the internet-based trauma — in fact, it’s still ongoing.

Superintendent Eddie Johnson told a media gathering that the girl in the video has been subject to “off-color comments” and other forms of online bullying. The CPD is open to the possibility of charges for anyone caught making threats against the victim, but didn’t have any concrete action planned as of this writing.

The assault has already drawn attention to the ongoing problems with livestreaming, such as the challenges of enforcing policy mid-stream and a disturbing tendency for viewers to look on rather than call for help. And the arrests are likely to lay the groundwork for responses to future cases like this. However, the bullying suggests that Facebook and other social networks have more work to do. Ideally, they’d be quick to clamp down on harassment after a stream incident so that cruel commenters can’t make a bad situation even worse.

Via: Reuters

Source: Chicago Police Department (Facebook)

You can now search for Snapchat Stories thanks to advanced machine learning

Why it matters to you

Snapchat is looking to stay relevant, now that its highly anticipated IPO is history. It could do that with the introduction of searchable Snapchat Stories.

If browsing through your friends’ (and some strangers’) self-documented experiences via Snapchat Stories isn’t enough to satisfy your penchant for vicarious living, then perhaps the ability to search for specific uploads will help. On Friday, the social media platform announced “a new way to understand what’s happening in Snaps that are submitted to Our Story, and to create new Stories using advanced machine learning.” All that to say that as of now (in select cities), you can search more than one million unique Stories on Snapchat.

The new feature takes Snapchat out of the more passive realm of watching content and into a more active arena; one already inhabited by other platforms like YouTube or Twitter. And like Twitter, Snapchat is also deviating from one of its most defining features — it’s not character count, but rather ephemerality. With the introduction of searchable Stories, Snapchat confirmed in a statement to TechCrunch that “some Snaps submitted to Our Stories that appear in the new Search feature will be visible for less than a day to up to a few weeks or even months.”

More: Apple’s new Clips app is taking the fight to Instagram and Snapchat

So if you want to know what happened at the high school football game you missed or the latest looks from a Fashion Week anywhere around the world, you can look for it directly instead of trying your luck by scrolling endlessly. “The best part of Stories is seeing the world through the eyes of our community. It’s easy to add your point of view — simply take a Snap and add it to Our Story,” Snapchat wrote in a blog post announcement. “You might see it included in relevant Stories depending on what you’re Snapping.”

As Snapchat continues to refine this latest feature, it’ll add more functionality as well. In particular, the social media platform hopes to make it possible to categorize Story submissions by what voices are saying or by what music is playing, so you could even search for a specific conversation topic or song lyric.

So start searching, friends. You never know how deep and dark this rabbit hole might be.

Your Smart TV could be hacked a lot more easily than you might think

Why it matters to you

Smart home devices are useful, but are they leaving us vulnerable to attack? A new demonstration of Smart TVs suggests yes.

Your smart TV may know exactly what Netflix show you want to watch at the end of a long day, but it could also be letting hackers know more than you want them to about … well, you. As first reported by Ars Technica, there’s a new hack whose proof of concept suggests that terrestrial radio signals could be used to take control of a large swath of Smart TV sets without having actual physical access to any one of them.

In the demonstration of the hack, security consultant Rafael Scheel used a cheap transmitter to embed malicious commands into a rogue TV signal, Ars reports. When that signal is broadcast to devices in the vicinity, it’s able to gain access to the televisions. The key to the attack is the exploitation of two documented security flaws in the Web browsers that run in the background of the TV models used in the test, both manufactured by Samsung. But that doesn’t mean that other sets are immune — if the attack were engineered to target other browser bugs, it would likely be just as effective.

More: Samsung’s exotic new QLED televisions will start at $2,800

“Once a hacker has control over the TV of an end user, he can harm the user in a variety of ways,” Scheel told Ars. “Among many others, the TV could be used to attack further devices in the home network or to spy on the user with the TV’s camera and microphone.” Indeed, in Scheel’s demonstration, he was able to remotely control the TV, and even rebooting and resetting the device didn’t lock him out of the smart appliance.

Perhaps the most terrifying aspect of Scheel’s proof of concept is that a hacker wouldn’t need any physical access to any of the devices. That means one could control a much larger number of smart TVs, too. And as an increasing number of concerns are raised about smart home devices overall, this demonstration certainly serves to underscore our vulnerability.

“This research is significant because TVs are used by a fundamentally different demographic than computers,” Yossef Oren, a security researcher told Ars. “People who use TVs don’t know/care about security, they aren’t used to getting security prompts from their TVs, they don’t have the discipline of installing security updates, and so on.”

Control this racing car without actually touching anything

Why it matters to you

Wearables are for much more than tracking your steps and your calories — they can also be used to control toy racing cars.

Why use a joystick when you can just flick your wrist? That’s the question Ultigesture is asking now that it’s debuted its new toy racing cars that promise to be “intuitively controlled by gestures from the wristband-wearing driver.” That’s right — no more fiddling around with remotes. Now, your body is all your need to drive a car; even a miniature one.

Your gestures will tell the racing car to do just about everything it can. Whether you want it to move in a different direction, speed up, slow down, or stop altogether, you can do it with your wearable-clad wrist. Promising a more natural and connected driving experience, Ultigesture believes it’s come up with the ultimate toy for racing enthusiasts.

More: World’s tiniest car race takes place at nanoscale, will stream live on YouTube

“There are plenty of remote-controlled toy cars which are fun to play, but we have discovered that wearing the wristband and using gestures makes for a much more realistic racing experience,” said Gang Zhou, CEO, Ultigesture. “The user experience is really improved by literally putting your body — or at least your arm — into the driving. It is very exciting to feel like you are connected to this small toy car as it goes racing down the street.”

Low power Bluetooth is all the wristband needs to power your car; when you raise your forearm, your car will go forward, and if you lower your arm, it’ll go backwards. Turn your writs clockwise and the car will go right, and go counter-clockwise to get it to go left. And thanks to the band’s accelerometer, you can control the speed of the car with your wearable as well.

Ultigesture can hit a top speed of 13 mph, and the car itself comes in at 13 inches, weighs 17 ounces, and six different color choices.

“We want to make remote control racing cars that are really cool and intuitive. With the wristband and gestures, it is amazing how much closer you feel to the car — especially when you compare it with using a remote controller,” Zhou concluded.

The gesture-controlled car and wristband are now available for pre-order now Ultigesture’s Kickstarter campaign for $89 with an estimated delivery date of August 2017.

Get the most out of your space for playing PlayStation VR

Making the most out of your playspace will make jumping into VR easier than ever.

PlayStation VR brought VR experiences to your console, which likely means you’re playing right in the living room. If you have roomies, pets, children, or other distractions this can make things a bit more difficult. There are a few things you can do to make carving out a space for VR a bit easier on yourself. These tips ought to help make sure you get the most out of your PlayStation VR playspace, no matter where you have it set up.

Read more at VR Heads!

What will we do when the first Galaxy S8 catches on fire?

The Galaxy S8 is fresh and new, but is saddled with the baggage of the Note 7.

Lithium-ion and Lithium-polymer batteries can fail, and when they do, they often do so catastrophically. This was the crux of the Galaxy Note 7 saga: phones didn’t just stop working or even puff a little smoke, they caught on fire and damaged property and harmed people. The new Galaxy S8 and Galaxy S8+ have the same type of batteries in them as the Galaxy Note 7 did — a different design, and with dramatically more quality control checks for sure, but the same basic battery technology.

The problem for Samsung is that the Note 7 has not been completely forgotten.

And just like we’ve seen for years, some very small percentage of any given phone model — even prestigious brands like Samsung and Apple — will have instances of battery failures. That’s unfortunately expected, and a good reminder for everyone that you shouldn’t consider these devices entirely failproof — they can be dangerous if not designed and managed properly. The problem for Samsung, of course, is that the Note 7 has not been completely washed from our collective minds. The instances of “Note 7” written in articles about the newly announced Galaxy S8 are inescapable, and average consumers still make that association.

So even though the Galaxy S8’s battery design is dramatically improved, and the quality control standards have been beefed up, there is bound to be a battery failure at some point — there’s a good chance it would be completely unrelated to Samsung’s technology, like a physically damaged device, a bad charger or a combination of outside factors. But unlike the dozens of instances that happen every year with other phones, a new Galaxy phone catching on fire will unfortunately be headline news once again, even though no physical components carried over from the Note 7 to the Galaxy S8.

A Galaxy S8 will catch fire — the question is how people react.

The question for me is how responsible news outlets handle the information, and how Samsung reacts to the situation. At the start of the Galaxy Note 7’s battery fiasco, it was a rational response to say “well, these lithium batteries can fail, that’s not surprising” and give Samsung the benefit of the doubt for having sourced high-quality batteries until it was proved otherwise (which it eventually was). The issue now is that second part isn’t a given — Samsung can’t prove that its batteries won’t catch fire … because the only way it can do that now is to have something not happen. It has to ship tens of millions of Galaxy S8s and then wait for the public to regain whatever trust was lost.

There will be overreactions from some if this situation plays out as expected. Overreaction isn’t warranted, I don’t think, but skepticism certainly is.

Now for some quick hits on the week that was:

• As for the Galaxy S8 as a whole, I think it looks great and has the features required to be a big hit.
• Also, as we agreed on our Galaxy S8 special edition podcast, the Galaxy S8 is the model to get — very few will need the extra screen and cost of the GS8+.
• Just as I wrote in regards to the Note 7, you shouldn’t be worried about the curved screens — they’re very subtle.
• After a whole month with the LG G6, I’m still super happy with it; and still just absolutely loving the dual cameras.
• In my general quest to go all USB-C, I’m still in need of a battery pack that does USB-C right. Only a couple exist, and most seem to be funky and not fully compliant.

And with that, I’m off on a vacation for the next two weeks. My goal, of course, is to make everyone jealous via posts on social media.

-Andrew

New York Post’s mobile news alerts fall victim to a hack

If you’re a hacker looking to grab attention by attacking a news outlet, what do you do? Deface their website? Take control of their social media accounts? Those are old hat — apparently, you compromise the company’s mobile app. An unknown party hijacked the New York Post app’s push notification system on the night of April 1st, sending a flurry of alerts that were clearly meant as a protest against President Trump. The perpetrator left precious few clues as to their identity, but they’re cultured — they signed off with the ancient word “selah” (used in the Bible to encourage pause and reflection), and even borrowed lyrics from Nirvana’s song “Come As You Are.”

The Post regained control not long afterward, but didn’t provide details at the time beyond saying that it was “working to resolve the issue.” We’ve asked the publication for comment and will let you know if it can shed more light on the situation.

By itself, this incident was relatively harmless. It didn’t do any lasting damage, and anyone could tell that the notifications were bogus. However, the attack is a not-so-friendly reminder to news outlets that they need to secure their apps just as thoroughly as anything else. A less benign intruder could easily have pushed plausible-sounding alerts that sowed confusion.

What appears to be full @nypost alerts thread: pic.twitter.com/uW6dMZRqiB

— Jack Sterne (@JRSterne) April 2, 2017

Source: Jack Sterne (Twitter), AP