Trump signs executive order for sweeping review of US cybersecurity

Today, Trump finally signed an executive order for an extensive review of the US government’s cybersecurity, which has been some months coming. He was originally set to sign an earlier version back in January, but postponed it for unknown reasons. A draft of the revised EO surfaced in late April, which was an improvement over earlier versions, cyber experts told Politico — but today’s order essentially maintains the cybersecurity path set by the last two administrations. What it concretely does is order reviews of the government’s digital security, find issues and report them back to the White House and Department of Homeland Security.

The reviews aim to point out holes in the nation’s cybersecurity that have been abused by pranksters, hackers and foreign government-directed data thieves. The EO further directs agencies to adopt better digital safety practices, though details are scarce at the moment pending the full release of the order. The Obama-formed cybersecurity commission’s report released in December did recommend specific security-improving policy changes, but it’s unclear if today’s EO follows those directives.

The order also commissions a survey to determine the feasibility of transitioning the government’s aging individual IT systems into shared services and networks. As Politico points out, 80 percent of the $80 million federal IT budget goes toward maintaining legacy setups.

This will be the first cybersecurity measure ordered by Trump. It comes a week after his previous EO created the American Technology Council, which includes senior Trump adviser and son-in-law Jared Kushner, and gestured vaguely toward modernizing the IT systems and information delivery used by the government. Sources tell Politico that both the Council and Kushner’s Office of American Innovation will implement the modernization of the government’s IT systems.

Oh, and before you ask: The EO reportedly vowed to improve security against foreign threats, but said nothing about Russia. Yet, on the same day, the Director of National Intelligence told the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence that Russia will continue to be a cyber threat to the US.

Via: Politico

Source: The White House

Google’ Allo chat app crafts custom emoji using your selfies

Google’s Allo chat program is still missing some basic features, but hey, you’re a fan of Bitmoji right? That’s the line of thinking for the app’s latest add-on: personalized emojis, made from your face. Unlike Snapchat’s Bitmoji, though, Google’s version relies on computer vision and neural networks to craft a likeness from your selfies. Yup, algorithms are being tapped to draw your face.

In a blog post, Allo’s expressions creative director Jennifer Daniel writes that while humans use context clues to suss out a things like a person’s eye color in a variety of lighting conditions, computers can’t quite do that. So her team turned to neural networks for help in that matter.

“We discovered that a few neurons among the millions in these networks were good at focusing on things they weren’t explicitly trained to look at that seemed useful for creating personalized stickers,” Daniels writes.

From there a team of humans was tasked with rating the output of the neural networks. According to Fast Company, there are around 563 million possible permutations. To deal with the issue of the uncanny valley, Google sidestepped off-putting caricatures by going for stickers/emoji versus an exact replication of a face. Sort of like the way a caricature artist at the boardwalk or county fair might.

“Pursuing a lower-resolution model, like emojis and stickers, allows the team to explore expressive representation by returning an image that is less about reproducing reality and more about breaking the rules of representation,” according to Daniels.

How does it fare? If today’s “sarcastic” style pack from Steven Universe designer Lamar Abrams and the samples we’ve seen are any indication, pretty well. Should you be an Allo user on Android, Daniels’ blog post says the feature has begun rolling out today. Folks using the app on iOS will have to wait a bit longer, however.

Source: Google Research

Fossil hopes you’ll like one of its 300 smartwatches

Back in March, Fossil revealed its plans to introduce 300 smartwatches in 2017, including a mix of hybrid analogs and others running Android Wear 2.0. The new wearables come from Fossil itself as well as brands like Misfit, Diesel, Emporio Armani and Skagen, all of which are owned by parent company Fossil Group. The firm says the idea here is to offer consumers more choices, since not everyone likes the same style of watch. Pictured above, for one, is Skagen’s Hagen Connected Steel-Mesh, a $220 hybrid smartwatch with a traditional design and features such as activity tracking, sleep monitoring and support for phone notifications.

Asides from those specs, Fossil’s hybrid pieces have another thing in common: they come with a standard, replaceable coin-cell battery. Essentially, you just have to worry about downloading Fossil’s companion app to keep track of your data. As for the fully fledged smartwatches, there’s the Misfit Vapor, which sports a Moto 360-like design, heart-rate sensor and is powered by Android Wear 2.0. Naturally, Fossil has pieces for both men and women, so it shouldn’t be too hard to find a model you may be interested in. Let’s take a look at some of them.

Ticketmaster shows you the view from any seat in the house

When you buy a ticket to a concert or sports event, you want to make sure your view is a good one. The days of peering at a line drawing of a venue’s seating plan to figure that out could soon be a thing of the past. Ticketmaster confirmed to Engadget today that its new Virtual Venue technology is ready to roll out. Created by Io-Media, Virtual Venue uses gyroscopic and panoramic views to show you the view from any seat in the stadium or concert hall. The technology is now integrated into Ticketmaster’s desktop and mobile sites. There are currently 110 venues across North America with the capability.

According to Ticketmaster, an exact replica of each venue is created with a 3D wireframe model made from CAD documents, onsite surveys and photos. These are then given textures, lighting and “branding elements” to accurately represent what it looks like from every seat in the house. Just like with Facebook’s 360 videos, you can pan your phone around to see the entire view from your planned seats. You can use your mouse to navigate around with your mouse, too.

Ticketmaster has been working on interactive seat maps for a while. Back in 2011, it rolled out a way to see if any of your Facebook friends had bought tickets to the same event as you. The virtual view tech has been brewing since 2015, too, though this is the first time it’s been available to consumers like you and me.

Via: The Verge

Apple Watch Able to Detect Abnormal Heart Rhythm With 97% Accuracy

The Apple Watch’s built-in heart rate monitor is 97 percent accurate when detecting the most common form of an abnormal heart rhythm when paired with an algorithm to sort through the data, according to a new study conducted by the University of California, San Francisco and the team behind the Cardiogram app (via TechCrunch).

There were 6,158 participants in the study, all of whom used the Cardiogram app on the Apple Watch to monitor their heart rate. Most were known to have normal EKG readings, but 200 suffer from paroxysmal atrial fibrillation (an occasional irregular heartbeat).

Data from these participants, along with data taken from normal Cardiogram users, was used to build a neural network that could recognize the abnormal heart rhythms solely from data collected by the Apple Watch. As of today, Cardiogram says its algorithm can almost always successfully determine when a patient is in atrial fibrillation.

In order to validate the model, we obtained gold-standard labels of atrial fibrillation from cardioversions. In a cardioversion, a patient experiencing atrial fibrillation is converted back to normal sinus rhythm, either chemically or with a shock to the heart. 51 patients at UCSF agreed to wear an Apple Watch during their cardioversion.

We obtained heart rate samples before the procedure, when the patient was in atrial fibrillation, and after, when patient’s heart was restored to a normal rhythm. On this validation set, our model performed with an AUC of 0.97, beating existing methods.

Cardiogram is a startup that’s aiming to garner more information from the data collected by the Apple Watch. The study, which Cardiogram has raised funding for, started in March of 2016 and will continue as UCSF and Cardiogram work to refine the neural network and detect other conditions beyond atrial fibrillation.

Cardiogram plans to put in additional work before using its algorithm to start notifying Cardiogram users of arrhythmias. The company needs to conduct further testing to make sure the algorithm works in a variety of conditions and it needs to work on scaling it so it can be used continuously by all Cardiogram users.

The Cardiogram app can be downloaded from the App Store for free. [Direct Link]

Related Roundups: Apple Watch Series 2, watchOS 3
Buyer’s Guide: Apple Watch (Neutral)
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Apple to Announce Amazon Prime Video for Apple TV at WWDC

Apple plans to make a major Apple TV announcement at WWDC that should delight Amazon Prime subscribers – the addition of an Amazon Prime Video app for the Apple TV.

The news comes courtesy of BuzzFeed’s John Paczkowski, who often accurately shares details on Apple’s plans ahead of events. According to Paczkowski, sources of Apple’s plans say the company will announce an Amazon Prime Video app during its keynote event.

There are tentative plans for the app to go live in the summer, but its official release date could change.

With Amazon Prime Video on the Apple TV, Amazon also plans to resume offering the Apple TV through Amazon.com. Amazon stopped offering the Apple TV and the Google Chromecast in 2015, citing Amazon Prime Video incompatibility as the reason why. It is not known when the Apple TV will return to the Amazon website.

News of a potential deal between Apple and Amazon that would see the app made available on the Apple TV first surfaced last week. At the time, Apple and Amazon were said to be close to an agreement, and now an agreement has been reached.

Amazon Prime Video is one of the only major streaming video services that is currently absent from the Apple TV, and Apple TV owners have long wanted to see the Prime Video app on Apple’s device.

Related Roundups: Apple TV, tvOS 10, WWDC 2017
Tags: Amazon, Amazon Prime Video
Buyer’s Guide: Apple TV (Don’t Buy)
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Sleep Expert Who Worked on Apple’s Night Shift and Bedtime Features Leaves the Company

Sleep expert Roy J.E.M Raymann, who joined Apple back in 2014, has left the company and moved on to SleepScore Labs, where he will serve as Vice President of Sleep Science and Scientific Affairs.

Raymann joined Apple as the company was developing the Apple Watch, and at the time, his hiring spurred rumors that the device would have sleep tracking capabilities, which never materialized.

Prior to joining Apple, where he served as “Health and Health Technologies Staff,” Raymann was at Philips where he founded the Philips Sleep Experience Laboratory, a non-clinical sleep research facility.

According to his LinkedIn profile, while at Apple, Raymann worked on Night Shift, the Bedtime alarm, display recommendations and color filters, and HealthKit and ResearchKit.

News of Raymann’s departure comes just days after Apple acquired Beddit, a company that produces a sensor-equipped sleep monitoring system.

It’s not yet clear what Apple plans to do with Beddit’s technology, but Apple is continuing to sell the Beddit sleep monitor and has updated its privacy policy to note that it is collecting sleep-related data that could influence future projects at the company.
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Smash Hit: Elegancy meets amusement in this superb arcade game (Review)

In an era of soulless clones being uploaded every day to the Play Store, it is always good news to see refreshing games that bring forth new ideas or consolidate previous ideas in a nice package. Or sure, why not both?

Enter Smash Hit, by developer Mediocre, who isn’t mediocre at all, since it has delivered a neat, polished game, distancing itself from the masses who offer endless games with unforgiving difficulty and pixel graphics. Instead, Smash Hit provides a relaxed but challenging gameplay with some of the most refined graphics I’ve seen in a game lately.

Developer: Mediocre
Price: Free

Overview

Think of Smash Hit as a first-person on-rails shooter. But, instead of firing bullets, you fire metal spheres. Your goal is to go as far as you can while using these spheres as protection from incoming hazards. You do this by tapping anywhere on the screen, but you have to be careful and account for gravity.

Almost all of the elements you can interact with are made of glass, so throwing a ball at them will break them. There are some pyramid-like elements that, when broken, yield three new spheres. However, the rest of the glass barriers are there for blocking your progress, so you need to break them to progress. The game is over when you run out of spheres.

And it’s easy to run out of spheres, especially if you’re not careful. This is because you lose TEN spheres when you hit a hazard. Yes, ten. That’s a lot but it makes you super cautious about your movements, increasing the tension and immersion in the process.

The game gives you some instructions to get you going, but you could figure everything for yourself.

After a certain distance, you will reach checkpoints. When you eventually die, you can choose to start your game from these checkpoints instead of starting from the beginning. To use this feature, however, you will need to pay for the premium version ($1.99). This will also unlock new game modes and add a cloud save option. If you decide to go the free route, then you’re stuck with starting from the very beginning on all of your runs.

General Impressions

This is the kind of surreal environments you’ll find in Smash Hit.

Every day we are seeing more and more games throwing insanely difficulty levels for no reason. Your mental health will thank you, then, because Smash Hit is not a difficult game in the sense that it doesn’t throw you impossible tasks. You just have to be careful and you’ll be fine.

This is not to say that it will be a walk in the park. There are a lot of things wanting to block your progress. I still have a hard time trying to hit the switches for opening doors between sections. However, this is the kind of game you would want to play to sit back, relax, and have a good time.

Levels get progressively more difficult and imaginative as you traverse the game. A lot of moving, spinning, and rotating elements will start to appear out of nowhere. There’s even some kind of electricity walls that you disarm by hitting a block on the side of them. It’s really fun to discover new stuff as you progress through the game, preventing the novelty from wearing off.

In a really strange decision, Smash Hit doesn’t log you into Google Play Games automatically. Instead, you have to do it through the options screen yourself. This means that, until you log into it, your progress will not count towards achievements.

I still don’t know how to get around these giant hammer-like things.

Make sure you do this as soon as you start playing, and let’s hope that the developer implements a more streamlined way of connecting to Play Games, as thousands of other developers have already done.

Anyways, the achievements aspect of the game is very entertaining, and there are some pretty complicated ones that should give you a decent challenge, such as gathering 300 balls or playing 2000 meters without crashing.

Graphics and Sound

What a terrible player I was at first. Not that I’m that good right now either…

Graphics are, without a doubt, the highest point of this game. The environments you fly through are very varied and imaginative, and, even though there’s a rather limited colored palette, the game’s elements look fantastic and detailed. Special mention for the animations, All animations are very fluid, even in a device with average specs as the Nomu S10.

There are several areas and each one of them has a different design theme, so the game feels less monotonous this way. Coupled with the impressive sound effects, the audiovisual experience provided by this game is absolutely top-notch.

Speaking of sound, the developer has done an awesome job in converging both audio and graphics to create a cohesive experience. Not only the music is of great quality but it does a fantastic job of bringing a distinguishable aspect to each section of the game. It features very relaxing tunes that let you enjoy the journey through this glass-ridden land.

The nice environments are coupled with great music and sound effects to create a great experience.

Also, sound effects are really fantastic and believable. It seems like there was a lot of effort put into audio and graphics, and it has paid off. I assure you that it will take a long time for you to get bored of the fantastic sound of glass breaking. It seems like there was a lot of effort put into audio and graphics, and it has paid off.

Conclusion

Smash Hit deviates from traditional offerings in the Play Store in a good way. Providing gorgeous visuals, respectable audio elements, and a fun gameplay that is as simple as it is entertaining, this game manages to offer gamers a lot more fun than the normal “endless and unforgiving difficulty” combo that we see with more and more frequency in Android’s marketplace. In order to fully enjoy the game, the developer asks for a $1.99 purchase, but I think that it is totally worth it to pay such a small fee for a highly polished and elegant game as this.

Download and install Smash Hit from the Google Play Store.

Placeholders are making a comeback to OneDrive for Windows 10 in a fall update

Why it matters to you

Microsoft listened to customers, and is bringing placeholders back to OneDrive this fall, but the feature will be more than just visual thumbnails of cloud-stored files.

During Microsoft’s second Build 2017 keynote, Corporate Vice President in the Operating Systems Group Joe Belfiore introduced a new feature coming to Windows 10 this fall, called Files On-Demand. Based on OneDrive, the new service will help free up local device storage by pushing files into the cloud even though they’re still visible through File Explorer.

Files On-Demand seemingly brings the old “placeholders” feature back to OneDrive. It was originally offered on Windows 8.1. When users wanted to view or edit a file, they simply double-clicked on the placeholder, and OneDrive automatically downloaded it to the device. However, Microsoft replaced this feature with “selective sync” when it launched Windows 10 in 2015.

Currently, selective sync allows users to choose specific cloud-stored folders and files they want to synchronize locally on a Windows device. These locally stored files and folders are accessible through File Explorer, while all other cloud-stored data must be accessed via the OneDrive website or OneDrive app. However, Microsoft’s new Files On-Demand feature will provide local, visual placeholders in the OneDrive folder as well.

But that’s not all. Now that the Windows 10 platform knows what the user stores in the OneDrive cloud, desktop programs and Windows Store apps will be able to access these files. The files will seemingly work like any other locally-stored file unless the user doesn’t have an internet connection. If that becomes an issue, users can simply right-click on the file or folder and select “Always keep on this device.”

So how can users tell what files and folders are stored in the cloud? The Files On-Demand feature will inject File Explorer with a new cloud-shaped “status” column seated between the file/folder name and the modification date. Files and folders downloaded to the device will have a green check mark instead of the blue cloud icon.

“In addition to users, Files On-Demand benefits organizations and IT admins,” added Jeff Teper, corporate vice president for the Office, OneDrive and SharePoint teams. “Today, when someone syncs a SharePoint Online team site, files are re-downloaded on all synced devices when anyone makes a change. Files On-Demand will reduce network bandwidth by eliminating the need to continuously sync shared files on every synced device as teams collaborate.”

Windows 10 isn’t the only platform getting a OneDrive update. Android and iOS devices will soon have the ability to save entire OneDrive folders locally for offline use. Called OneDrive Offline Folders, any change made to the folders and their files while the user was offline will be synced once the Android or iOS device reconnects. The feature is available now for OneDrive Business accounts and Office 365 Personal/Home subscribers using Android devices.

As for iOS device owners, OneDrive Offline Folders will roll out over the next several months. Until then, Apple customers can test drive OneDrive for iMessage now, after updating the OneDrive app. This feature allows iOS device owners to share documents, photos, and other files with friends and family, without having to exit the iMessage app. Users can even share an entire folder if needed.

Placeholders are making a comeback to OneDrive for Windows 10 in a fall update

Why it matters to you

Microsoft listened to customers, and is bringing placeholders back to OneDrive this fall, but the feature will be more than just visual thumbnails of cloud-stored files.

During Microsoft’s second Build 2017 keynote, Corporate Vice President in the Operating Systems Group Joe Belfiore introduced a new feature coming to Windows 10 this fall, called Files On-Demand. Based on OneDrive, the new service will help free up local device storage by pushing files into the cloud even though they’re still visible through File Explorer.

Files On-Demand seemingly brings the old “placeholders” feature back to OneDrive. It was originally offered on Windows 8.1. When users wanted to view or edit a file, they simply double-clicked on the placeholder, and OneDrive automatically downloaded it to the device. However, Microsoft replaced this feature with “selective sync” when it launched Windows 10 in 2015.

Currently, selective sync allows users to choose specific cloud-stored folders and files they want to synchronize locally on a Windows device. These locally stored files and folders are accessible through File Explorer, while all other cloud-stored data must be accessed via the OneDrive website or OneDrive app. However, Microsoft’s new Files On-Demand feature will provide local, visual placeholders in the OneDrive folder as well.

But that’s not all. Now that the Windows 10 platform knows what the user stores in the OneDrive cloud, desktop programs and Windows Store apps will be able to access these files. The files will seemingly work like any other locally-stored file unless the user doesn’t have an internet connection. If that becomes an issue, users can simply right-click on the file or folder and select “Always keep on this device.”

So how can users tell what files and folders are stored in the cloud? The Files On-Demand feature will inject File Explorer with a new cloud-shaped “status” column seated between the file/folder name and the modification date. Files and folders downloaded to the device will have a green check mark instead of the blue cloud icon.

“In addition to users, Files On-Demand benefits organizations and IT admins,” added Jeff Teper, corporate vice president for the Office, OneDrive and SharePoint teams. “Today, when someone syncs a SharePoint Online team site, files are re-downloaded on all synced devices when anyone makes a change. Files On-Demand will reduce network bandwidth by eliminating the need to continuously sync shared files on every synced device as teams collaborate.”

Windows 10 isn’t the only platform getting a OneDrive update. Android and iOS devices will soon have the ability to save entire OneDrive folders locally for offline use. Called OneDrive Offline Folders, any change made to the folders and their files while the user was offline will be synced once the Android or iOS device reconnects. The feature is available now for OneDrive Business accounts and Office 365 Personal/Home subscribers using Android devices.

As for iOS device owners, OneDrive Offline Folders will roll out over the next several months. Until then, Apple customers can test drive OneDrive for iMessage now, after updating the OneDrive app. This feature allows iOS device owners to share documents, photos, and other files with friends and family, without having to exit the iMessage app. Users can even share an entire folder if needed.