DJI is offering a huge cash reward in a bid to solve an airport drone mystery

Why it matters to you

DJI’s actions highlights the seriousness of the issue of illegal drone flights in restricted airports as the aviation industry continues to seek effective methods to deal with such incursions.

With drone ownership skyrocketing in the last couple of years, it seems sadly inevitable that there’s always going to be a few ne’er-do-wells getting kicks out of flying their machines in places where they really shouldn’t.

Airports spring to mind, and for the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) the troubling issue of rogue drones flying close to planes is a growing one.

The most recent FAA data, collected between February and September 2016, listed 1,274 possible drone sightings by U.S. air traffic facilities compared to 874 for the same period a year earlier.

But the problem isn’t confined to the U.S. Pretty much any airport in the world faces the same danger from rogue drones, with one unlucky hub in China currently experiencing a string of illegal incursions. Indeed, the airport has been so badly affected that drone giant DJI has stepped in with the offer of a cash reward of up to one million yuan (about $145,000) to help catch those responsible.

Across four days in April spanning one week, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) disrupted multiple flights — 60 on one particular day — at Chengdu Shuangliu International, 950 miles south-west of Beijing, the BBC reported.

While it’s not clear if the authorities have proof that the flying machines are made by DJI, the Shenzhen-based company evidently feels compelled to help catch those behind the rogue flights. DJI said in a statement that flying a UAV close to an airport threatened public safety while also damaging the reputation of the consumer drone industry. A machine translation of the statement goes so far as to describe the illegal flights as “acts of evil.”

DJI includes software with its drones that prevents pilots from operating them inside restricted zones, so if the drones flying near the airport are indeed made by the company then the owner has clearly overridden these restrictions.

Such incidents have prompted a slew of companies to develop their own hardware solutions to bring down rogue drones and include everything from net-firing bazookas to electromagnetic defense shields. In the Netherlands, they’ve even trained eagles to pluck the flying machines out of the sky.

Little Nightmares review: A dreamy little horror game

When small, so-called indie developers get together to make a game, they have a massive advantage over their established peers: a complete lack of expectations. So they can let their imaginations run riot, without having to worry about commercial viability and concentrate on creating something fresh and original.

Little Nightmares operates according to just those criteria: it’s a 3D, side-scrolling platform/stealth/puzzle game which extensively mines the sort of bizarre, feverish nightmares we can all remember having as kids, to pleasingly macabre effect.

It’s also a game with a slightly unexpected provenance: publisher Bandai Namco was hitherto seen as very Japanese and parochial, but Little Nightmares is the first of a new programme of indie games that its European division is nurturing. Developer Tarsier Studios is Swedish, has been around since 2004 and its highest profile previous effort was bringing LittleBigPlanet to the PS Vita.

Little Nightmares review: Stripped back simplicity

In time-honoured indie-game fashion, Little Nightmares keeps things as minimal as possible – for example, there isn’t a single line of dialogue in the entire game, nor will you find any conventional form of storytelling in it.

However, its story does unfold as you progress through it – in large part through your own imagination, trying to make sense of the weirdness it contains. Which is a property that marks out the very best indie games from the rest: if you had to compare it to an existing game, Limbo would spring most readily to mind.

Little Nightmares’ plot is thus: you control a tiny little girl (at one point, you encounter a pigeon, which is barely smaller than she is), called Six, who wears a yellow oilskin to give the character some distinctive on-screen presence.

Bandai Namco

Six wakes up in a pretty inhospitable place which has the feel of a prison to it – dark, dank and uninviting. The only item she has is a lighter. You understand that she must escape from the hellhole in which she finds herself.

Little Nightmares review: Simple mechanics

Six can do all the things that any little girl can: jump, run (not very fast), crouch, pick up and throw objects and climb – and that’s it; she has no special powers whatsoever. So, Little Nightmares’ gameplay revolves around working out what you must do to keep her moving forward. That it game ebbs, flows and evolves is a testament to Tarsier Studios’ ingenuity.

At first, Six is more or less on her own, bar the odd rat, and black slug-like creatures that will kill her if they catch her (the game is heavily checkpointed, and whenever you resume after a mishap, cutely, you must wake Six up). Next you encounter robot eyes, which frazzle Six if they catch her in the light they shine. But then weird, misshapen humanoids begin to enter the equation: sinister figures with ridiculously short legs and long arms, and later obese, vaguely troll-like creatures.

Bandai Namco

There are some great, Limbo-style mechanical puzzles to negotiate too: Six can pull levers (usually by jumping up to them and swinging on them; even door-handles are too high for her to reach without something to stand on) which, for example, de-electrify bars that she must squeeze through, and you encounter moving contraptions which might, say, let her hang from meathooks (as long as those meathooks aren’t already carrying a butchered body) and move to inaccessible areas.

Little Nightmares review: Stealth gameplay

Stealth mechanics soon come into the mix, as Six escapes from one area to the next, each of which has its own distinct feel.

One group of enemies is blind, but has preternatural hearing, so you must figure out how to keep to sound-muffling carpets and avoid creaky floorboards – and use sound-making objects as lures.

Bandai Namco

Another set of enemies can see, but has such a short attention-span that if you hide Six underneath a table or the like, they soon give up looking for her. While you have to use stealth techniques in such sequences, Little Nightmares stops a long way short of Metal Gear Solid levels of stealth-rigour.

By the end, Six becomes bolder in her encounters with humanoids, and things eventually hit a really freaky crescendo – there’s even a final boss-battle, in which Six’s sole item of equipment is a mirror.

At that stage, you’re left in no doubt that she isn’t as sweet and innocent as she looks. The first indications of that appear when she periodically experiences hunger pains and must find food before being able to carry on her escape (she makes some very strange meal-choices). That’s an example of how Tarsier Studios has taken every opportunity to ensure that Little Nightmares is satisfyingly dark, often gruesome and always riven with black humour. Its macabre ambience is perhaps its best aspect – at times, it’s reminiscent of the film Delicatessen.

Bandai Namco

Of course, it isn’t perfect. After all, it’s a little indie game which will only set you back £16, so it was always bound to be short, and indeed it is – you can breeze through it in maybe three hours. Nor is there a vast amount of replay value, although you can revisit particular chapters that stuck in your mind, should you so wish.

Verdict

Little Nightmares offers a perfect illustration of what the indie development sector brings to gaming.

It’s out-there, endlessly clever, truly original and very entertaining – especially if you have a sense of humour which tends towards the darkest end of the spectrum.

Although short and without much replay value, Little Nightmares is impressive entry from Bandai Namco into the curious world of indie games.

Little Nightmares is available now, priced £16, for PlayStation 4, Xbox One and Microsoft Windows

Nintendo 2DS XL gives you massive screens to play on but none of that 3D nonsense

Nintendo is fully on the comeback path. Not only is the Nintendo Switch going great guns, breaking all manner of launch sales records, it is breathing new life into the DS range with an all-new handheld.

The Nintendo 2DS XL expands upon the success of the 2DS, a console designed to play 3DS games but without the 3D screen younger kids are dissuaded from using. However, it ditches the flat design in favour of a clamshell body, like its 3DS equivalents. It also ramps the screen sizes up a fair notch.

Coming in black and turquoise, or white and orange, the 2DS XL has two screens. A 2D 4.88-inch at the top and a slightly smaller touchscreen at the bottom. It also has Amiibo support thanks to an NFC sensor under the lower screen.

It weighs 260g and packs the exact same power as the current 3DS XL. All 3DS games (and DS games) will work on the 2DS XL.

The new handheld comes with a 4GB microSD card in the box to expand its storage capabilities and, importanly, a power adapter. Nintendo famously left out chargers in former releases, presuming that people were simply upgrading and had one already.

The Nintendo 2DS XL will be available from 28 July. Its UK price is yet to be revealed although it is listed in the US for $150 (around £116 at today’s exchange rate).

There are three new games also coming to 2DS, 3DS, 3DS XL and the new 2DS XL on the same launch day. Hey! Pikmin, Miitopia and Dr Kawashima’s Devilish Brain Training: Can you stay focused? will each expand their respective franchises.

Facebook’s Messenger Lite expands to 132 more countries

From the text-only Facebook Zero way back in 2010, to more recent Project Aquila, Mark Zuckerberg and company have made it clear that reaching the developing world is a huge priority for the company. So there was little surprise when it announced Facebook Lite and Messenger Lite, which offer stripped-down, low-bandwidth versions of Facebook’s two main products for users in emerging markets with spotty service and expensive data rates. After officially launching in just five countries last year, Facebook is now expanding the rollout of Messenger Lite to another 132 countries.

Facebook’s head of Messenger David Marcus shared the major expansion in a status update today, noting that the Lite version is designed for older phones with limited memory and processing power. Users will still be able to chat with Messenger’s more than 1.2 billion users, but they’ll be limited to sharing text, photos, links and stickers. Processor-heavy features like Messenger Day, photo filters and third-party apps won’t be available, but the app itself is designed to use less memory and data while compensating for unstable networks at the same time. Although Facebook has been coming after Snapchat’s users hard in recent months, Messenger Lite will compete more directly with it’s own WhatsApp as the messaging platform with the lowest barrier to entry.

Germany, Colombia, Italy, Vietnam, Algeria, Morocco, Nigeria, Peru, Turkey, Japan, Taiwan and the Netherlands are all included in the new rollout, according to Marcus. Meanwhile, as TechCrunch points out, Messenger Lite is not available in Bangladesh, Brazil, Canada, China, Cuba, India, Indonesia, Iran, Ireland, Mexico, New Zealand, Philippines, Sudan, UK, US and North Korea, but the vast majority of the planet now has access to Messenger’s core features. From a hardware perspective, Messenger Lite is only available on Android, but it works with older versions of the operating system all the way back to Android 2.3 Gingerbread.

Via: TechCrunch

Source: Facebook

Google+ ‘Topics’ highlight active users and communities

Google’s latest feature for its social network can make your home stream look a little bit less lonely. Next time you check Google+, you’ll see a new block in your stream listing topics you can explore. The social network already has hundreds of topics on rotation that you can click through, including Black & White Photography, Art, Science, Toy Models & Crafts. They’re all in English, Spanish and Portuguese, though, and it’s unclear if they’ll ever be available in other languages.

By exploring the topics listed, you could find new or hidden communities and individuals who share your interest. It could also show you relevant collections you might not see otherwise. Google is rolling out the feature within the next day or so — keep an eye out for it if you’re looking for contacts to add, because everyone else you know is on Facebook.

Source: Google

M&S to trial online grocery deliveries

As the UK online food delivery market continues to grow, some big name businesses are worrying that they’re missing out. Amazon finally threw its hat in the ring almost a year ago and now Marks and Spencer (M&S) has announced it’s preparing sell groceries online from this autumn.

According to CEO Steve Rowe, online groceries didn’t make financial sense for the company in the past, mainly because customers don’t spend enough on food to make the service profitable. However, M&S now says it can no longer ignore one of the fastest growing areas of the UK grocery market.

“We continue to review food online carefully,” said Rowe, reported by The Guardian. “It has not cost us anything over the last five years by not being online with food. Our customers haven’t moved yet, but they will and we need to ensure that we are ready with the right response. There are unanswered questions over what this means for M&S and we have a team looking at this now with a view to undertaking a soft trial in the autumn.”

M&S already provides a small food delivery service, offering a small selection of entrees and alcohol online. A wider launch will see it go head-to-head with Tesco, Sainsbury’s, Asda, Ocado and Amazon, which are often associated with a “big shop.” Although M&S’ food business has grown substantially over the last decade, it’s used to customers filling small baskets of own-brand speciality goods.

The announcement comes soon after the company announced it will close six stores as part of a wider plan to boost its food business. Over the next five years, 30 stores will close indefinitely and 45 others will be “downsized or replaced” as “Simply Food” shops.

Source: The Guardian

PlayStation 4 has never been more important to Sony

Sony’s PlayStation division has never been more important to its bottom line. The company posted some lacklustre numbers today for the fiscal year ending on March 31st, but its video game efforts continue to impress. The company sold 20 million PlayStation 4 consoles over the 12-month period, beating the 17.7 million figure posted in its 2015 fiscal year. Those numbers helped Sony’s gaming division pull in 1,650 billion yen (roughly $14,730 million), a 6.3 percent increase year-over-year. More importantly, gaming profit rose by an impressive 46.9 billion yen to 135.6 billion yen (roughly $1,210 million), up from 88.7 billion yen the year prior.

Sony says that profit is mostly down to “hardware cost reductions.” That’s probably a reference to the cheaper, slimmer PS4 that came out last September — a common move (hello, PSone and PlayStation 2 slimline) to reduce manufacturing costs. Software sales played a part too, especially those sold direct through the PlayStation Network. The PlayStation 4 is unquestionably a juggernaut — the 20 million sold last year puts the console close to 60 million lifetime sales. While impressive, Sony expects that momentum to slow down a little. A slide in today’s earning report shows predicted console sales at 18 million for the 2017 financial year.

While PlayStation 4 soars, the rest of Sony’s business is stumbling. The company’s mobile division saw revenue drop 32.7 percent year-over-year, from 1,128 billion yen to 759 billion yen. Some smart restructuring and “a focus on high value-added models” did, however, help the team swing from a 61.4 billion yen operating loss in 2016 to a 10.2 billion yen ($92 million) profit in 2017. Sony’s Xperia X Performance was a total dud last year, priced too high and offering little over its flagship competition, which makes the feat all the more impressive. Hopefully the Xperia XZ Premium, with its 4K display and super slow-mo video camera, fares better.

Sony’s camera sensors have always been a decent money-maker, however revenues fell from 684 billion yen in 2016 to 580 billion yen ($5,175 million) in 2017. Profit dropped by 22.1 billion yen year-over-year to 47.3 billion yen ($422 million), due to foreign exchange rates and the knock-on effect of the 2016 Kumamoto earthquakes. Sony’s movie and TV business was also poor, posting an 80.5 billion yen ($719 million) loss in 2016.

All told, Sony’s financial results weren’t too pretty. The company reported revenue of 7,603 billion yen (roughly $67,886 million), which is down 6.2 percent on the previous year. Operating income, or profit, was down 5.5 billion yen, or roughly 1.9 percent to 288.7 billion yen (roughly $2,578 million). There is cause for optimism, however — as Reuters reports, the company expects profits to rise 73.2 percent in the next financial year. That’s because its image sensor business should be back at full-strength, propping up the other parts of Sony that regularly post a loss.

Source: Sony

Apple is said to be ‘finalizing’ the design of its Amazon Echo killer

Why it matters to you

There’s still no official word but the latest information suggests Apple is close to completing work on a digital assistant device to take on Amazon’s Echo speaker.

Several years after Amazon launched its Alexa digital assistant as part of its Echo home speaker, Apple is said to be moving toward the launch of its own version of the device.

The claim comes from blogger Sonny Dickson, a guy who over the years has called it right with a number of Apple leaks. In a tweet posted on Thursday, Dickson said the Cupertino-based company is “currently finalising designs for their Alexa competitor, expected to be marketed as a Siri/AirPlay device.”

Apple is currently finalising designs for their Alexa competitor, expected to be marketed as a Siri/AirPlay device.

— Sonny Dickson (@SonnyDickson) April 27, 2017

The blogger added that the product is may carry some form of Beats technology, and run a variant of iOS, with the latter point suggesting it could come with a touchscreen, something Amazon’s Echo device lacks though might one day include.

There have long been rumors that Apple is looking to build Siri — its own digital assistant that launched five years ago with the arrival of the iPhone 4S — into a piece of hardware similar to the Echo, and Dickson’s tweets this week suggest the company could be gearing up to unveil it in the coming months.

So, what would Apple’s offering let you do? Well, if it’s anything like Amazon’s Echo speaker and its Alexa assistant, or Google’s Home offering incorporating Google Assistant — or indeed Siri — users will be able to call out questions on any number of topics and expect a spoken reply within seconds. Want to listen to a song from your music library? Then simply call out the track and let your digital assistant take care of it. Echo and Home also let you control your integrated smart home appliances, so we can expect similar functionality involving Apple’s own technology.

We can also expect the tech giant to offer up something special in the way of features or hardware quality to help it stand out from its rivals and grab attention in the marketplace.

News that Apple may be close to unveiling its Echo/Alexa rival came on the same day that Amazon unveiled the Echo Look, a hands-free, voice-activated camera for the home that the ecommerce company is touting as a kind of fashion assistant so you can see how your outfits look in full-length snaps. Wonder if Apple is already working on a rival offering …

Facebook report admits foreign governments are influencing discourse

On the same day Facebook released its report on global government requests for the second half of 2016, its Threat Intelligence team announced new steps the social giant is taking to combat so-called “Information Operations.” The report is tacit acknowledgment that foreign governments are manipulating public opinion on the network to further their geopolitical agendas.

These campaigns go beyond just spreading fake news, the report said, including pushing disinformation and using networks of fake accounts (which Facebook calls “false amplifiers”) to manipulate public opinion. Governments are using some or all of these tactics to shape public opinion at little cost and risk. Their “InfoOps” have a three-part strategy: collecting and releasing confidential data to control public discourse (think Wikileaks), creating content (either fake or real) and coordinating to silence unfavorable voices and amplify ones that will sway public opinion in their favor.

Facebook has adopted more aggressive policies to detect and stop fake news on its site, but combating these campaigns requires a different playbook. They’ve already made some headway eliminating inauthentic “false amplifier” accounts, like those they took down ahead of the first round of the French presidential election. Behavioral analysis has pointed out whether an account is inauthentic, including irregular bursts of activity and repeated posting of the same material.

As for data collection, Facebook users have yet to be targeted in large numbers by these campaigns. But out of concern that compromised accounts could give nefarious users personal info for phishing attempts, the social network has beefed up security and privacy features. Facebook’s also notifying people when they’ve been targeted and even proactively warning some they believe will be attacked.

Broadly, Facebook listed its efforts to combat these campaigns, including alerting candidates and campaigns of potential risks, offering training materials and cooperation to government agencies and helping the press via its Journalism Project.

But the report paints a picture of increasingly coordinated efforts to rile up online populations and direct their opinions. Fake account wranglers seemed to have a basic knowledge of local politics and fluency to orchestrate their sock puppet profiles, “suggesting a higher level of coordination and forethought.” And not least worrying were several incidents where fake accounts jockeyed on both sides of the political spectrum to agitate groups, fracture their supporting base and purposely muddy discourse.

Via: Reuters

Source: “Information Operations and Facebook” (PDF)

Google and Facebook named as victims to $100 million scam

The tech companies that fell victim to a $100 million email scam reported in March are no inexperienced newbies fresh off their first funding round. According to Fortune, they’re none other than Google and Facebook. When the incident was first exposed, feds revealed that they arrested a Lithuanian man named Evaldas Rimasauskas for perpetrating the phishing scheme. However, they chose to keep the companies’ identities a secret. It became pretty easy to find the victims once Taiwanese parts supplier Quanta Computer admitted that the scammer used its company’s name.

Quanta supplies parts for various tech titans, including Apple and Amazon. The sources Forbes talked to pinpointed Google and Facebook, though: one said the social network asked the US Attorney’s Office in Manhattan for help in getting back its money. Both companies eventually admitted that they were the unnamed victims in the case.

Facebook told the publication that it “recovered the bulk of the funds shortly after the incident and has been cooperating with law enforcement in its investigation.” Google said it “detected this fraud against [its] vendor management team and promptly alerted the authorities.” Mountain View also confirmed recouping the funds it lost. While they already got their money back, the investigation still isn’t done. Rimasauskas, who allegedly stashed the money in banks across Europe, continues to deny his involvement and to fight his extradition to the US.

Fortune’s source said companies fall to phishing schemes involving fake suppliers all the time, and Facebook was far from the the first one to ask the US Attorney’s Office for help. The office’s personnel thought this particular case was huge, though, considering how much was involved. That’s why it was a bit strange that neither corporation disclosed the incident to their investors, which they’re legally required to do. While the companies declined to comment on that, it could be because Google and Facebook don’t consider $100 million big enough to require disclosure. Whatever their reasons are, fact remains that even they aren’t immune to phishing schemes, and ordinary folks who fell victim to them shouldn’t feel that bad either.

Source: Fortune