Should you buy the all new Amazon Fire 7?

Is Amazon’s newest budget tablet worth your $50?

The online giant is calling it the “all new Fire 7,” which is perhaps more a marketing thing than actual hard truth when it comes to the tablet in question. It is new, and it is improved, but marketing hype is still marketing hype.

So, let’s actually break down what is new and whether this latest budget tablet is worth your time.

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What’s actually new?

There are subtle differences in the hardware on the all new Fire 7, but ones that will make for a solid improvement in user experience. The first of these is that it now supports the microSDXC standard which means you can now expand your internal storage by up to 256GB based on currently available cards.

The next important improvement is the inclusion of dual-band Wi-Fi, which means you’re now able to use the Fire 7 on the 5GHz band. Traditionally these give you better speeds over your local network, and it’s a notable upgrade over the single-band available in the old model.

Amazon has also an improved 7-inch IPS display in the new Fire 7, though just how good that is will have to wait until we actually see one.

Then there’s a little thing called Alexa. Amazon’s AI platform continues to grow, and following its inclusion on the most recent Fire TV products, Alexa is now on the basic Fire tablet, too. Holding the home button launches Alexa and from there you can ask questions and control your connected home devices just as you can with an Echo.

Is it worth getting one?

Absolutely. We’ve long recommended the Fire 7 as a cheap tablet that’s actually worth buying and that hasn’t changed with the new one. The improvements that have been made strengthen an already great product for $50.

Alexa is probably only going to excite you if you’re already getting into that ecosystem, but if you are, it’s yet another piece of tech you can use to turn on your lights and much more besides.

If you already have a Fire 7, it’s not necessarily worth ditching it just to grab the latest one. If it’s working just fine still, keep hold of it for now. Then again, $50 is almost an impulse buy, which is part of what makes the Fire 7 so good in the first place.

See at Amazon

Garmin Virb 360 continues action cam line with 360-degree 5.7K thrills

Garmin has announced its first 360-degree action cam, the water and dust proof Virb 360 that captures all the action around it in up to 5.7K resolution.

The Garmin Virb 360 also captures 360-degree audio, to ensure that surround sound systems expand the experience.

Strangely, for a 360-degree camera, it’s square rather than round, but comes with two extreme angle lenses and Garmin’s automatic in-camera stitching technology to ensure completely spherical images and video are seamless.

It shoots up to 5.7K at 30fps and uses 4K Spherical Stabilisation to ensure that footage is smooth and steady.

It offers one hour of rechargeable battery life, which you can see on the built-in mini display. There are also one-touch button controls, voice control to start and stop recordings, and it links with the Virb Android or iOS app to edit, share and even livestream video.

The camera can take 360-degree, 15-megapixel photos, including burst and time lapse. It has Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, ANT+ and NFC connectivity.

You will require external storage for saving footage on the Virb 360 itself, with microSD cards up to 128GB supported.

The Garmin Virb 360 will be available from June for a recommended retail price of $799.99 in the US. We’re still waiting on pricing details for the UK.

The Long Now: Planning for a future 10,000 years away

In an age of self-driving cars, virtual reality worlds and artificial intelligence, some would say the future is already here. Technology moves at such breakneck speeds that companies in Silicon Valley often have product roadmaps that stretch five to ten years ahead. But what about decades? Centuries? Millenia? In the search for the next big thing, we often lose sight of the even bigger picture: of how the actions of today can affect our great-great grandchildren of tomorrow. The Long Now, however, is a foundation that aims to correct that.

Created in 1996, the Long Now is a San Francisco-based non-profit organization dedicated to long-term thinking. Among its founders are prominent luminaries in science and technology. Examples include Stewart Brand, who’s an editor of The Whole Earth Catalog and co-founder of The WELL (an online community that’s been around since 1985); Danny Hillis, a computer theorist who worked on the idea of parallel computers — the basis for supercomputers and RAID arrays; and Kevin Kelly, the founding executive editor of Wired.

“They were all kind of part of Silicon Valley, realizing that a lot of things were happening that were not allowing for some of the longer-term issues in society that needed to be addressed,” said Alexander Rose, executive director of the Long Now. “There wasn’t an excuse to think of certain things in long enough terms, like climate change or hunger. None of these things have a ‘return on investment’ as it were. We were just writing them off as things we weren’t going to deal with. And if we’re going to address these large and important issues, we need to have a frame of reference.”

Clock One: Winder & Main Differential from The Long Now Foundation on Vimeo.

This prompted Hillis to have an idea for a 10,000-year clock, which would be the first-ever project of the Long Now. “I want to build a clock that ticks once a year,” he said, in a description of the clock on the Long Now’s website. “The century hand advances once every 100 years, and the cuckoo comes out on the millennium. I want the cuckoo to come out every millennium for the next 10,000 years.”

If that sounds like fantasy, well, it isn’t. The clock is real, and it’s being built in the mountains of western Texas, on a plot of land owned by none other than Amazon founder Jeff Bezos. The entire clock will be mechanical, made out of stainless steel, titanium and ceramic. It will chime every thousand years, and thanks to a special melody-generator, the chimes are programmed never to repeat.

The composer behind the tunes is musician Brian Eno, who also coined the “Long Now” name of the foundation. Stewart Brand writes that it indicates “not the short now of next quarter, next week, or the next five minutes, but the ‘long now’ of centuries.” Rose was hired to work on the prototype in 1996 — essentially the Long Now’s first employee — and has only now just finished most of the underground excavation. There is no timeline for completion; it’ll be done when it’s done.

But why go through all this trouble? The purpose is to get people to ask that question; to prompt themselves to think about time in the frame of centuries and generations, rather than weeks and months. “If a clock can keep going for ten millennia, shouldn’t we make sure our civilization does as well?” asks Brand. The clock is thus a symbol, an icon to long-term thinking. “That is really what the Long Now is all about,” says Rose. “Our hope is to inspire people to think in a different time frame.”

The Rosetta Wearable Disk from The Long Now Foundation on Vimeo.

The Clock, as it is known, is not the Foundation’s only project. Over the past decade, the Long Now has launched a series of different ventures, some more ambitious than others. There’s the Rosetta Project, which started as a collection effort of parallel texts and information in thousands of different languages, which the foundation then micro-etched into a tiny three-inch solid nickel disk using the same technology as silicon chip fabrication. On this disk is more than 13,000 pages of information in more than 1,500 human languages. All you need to read it is a microscope. The purpose of such a project is to keep these languages alive, tens and thousands of years into the future.

Perhaps the most controversial is a project co-founded by Brand called Revive & Restore, which aims to bring extinct species back to life through a process known as de-extinction. Using methods like genome mapping and genetic engineering, the team hopes to revive extinct species in order to “preserve biodiversity and genetic diversity,” and also to undo the harm that humans have caused in killing them off in the first place. Right now, they’re working on bringing back the passenger pigeon, the heath hen, the black-footed ferret and even the wooly mammoth.

One of the reasons this project is perfect for long-term thinking is that de-extinction is a science that will likely take years, if not decades, to implement properly. Not only is the actual genome mapping a chore — turns out harvesting DNA from ancient parts is pretty difficult — there also needs to be studies done on whether it’s a good idea. After all, the world has changed a lot since these animals died off and many living species have evolved to adapt to the changed world. “If you’re going to bring the species back, fundamentally you’re asking yourself if there’s a place for the species to live in the here and now,” says Rose.

Projects aside, perhaps the one venture that the Long Now is most known for is its ongoing lecture series, where it invites experts from around the world to talk about topics in the long term — be it predictions of the next 30 years or how certain industries can benefit from thinking so far into the future.

Kevin Kelly, for example, gave a talk recently about the next 30 digital years, where he talked about how you can apply long-term thinking to today’s fast-paced technological world. Observations include how the shift in the industry is moving more toward services rather than products, and that we’re all in a perpetual newbie state because there’s always something new to learn. He also talked about the rise of artificial intelligence and machine learning, and how it doesn’t really replace us so much as helps us. He posits that, in future, we’ll all operate as sort of “cybercentaurs,” where we’ll be part human and part AI. “The best doctor diagnosticians are not Watson, or AI — it’s the team of doctor and AI,” said Kelly. “We’re going to be paid by how well we work with AI.”

Rose has his own thoughts about how technology companies can benefit from long-term thinking. One example is with data archiving. “With so many governments and NGOs using Google Docs and Microsoft’s Office suite to archive birth records, death records, marriage records, infrastructure records … all of these things go into these data formats that are owned by these companies,” says Rose. “We’re talking about data that we would want in a thousand years. These companies need to take that responsibility very seriously. They think of themselves as technology companies, but actually what they are now are infrastructure companies.”

[Photo credit: Because We Can]

Of course, one of the issues with technology is that it’s always evolving, so it’s hard to predict about what will happen tens of years down the line. “There was a very strong belief in the early days of the internet that all we had to do was connect everybody and then everything was going to be great,” Rose says. “We’re just now learning that there are downsides to connecting everybody…. there used to be a world where all the news went through three major news agencies with hundreds of people doing fact checking for every single thing. We were annoyed by that, but they were doing it in a way that’s vastly more careful and researched than what we now see as news.”

He added: “It is very new to us, this idea of where all communication is infinite and free and instantaneous. I believe we’re not good at it yet.”

By its very nature, the Long Now is always looking to the future. Three years ago, it opened The Interval, a bar in San Francisco that serves tea and coffee by day and cocktails by night. It serves two functions: as a venue for Long Now events and as a public space for anyone and everyone to come together to discuss long-term thinking. The Interval also houses a small collection of artifacts from several Long Now projects. Upcoming talks include how to be prepared for a catastrophic event (“Imagining catastrophe from the Cold War to Bird Flu”) and what geological records tell us about the human relationship with the natural world.

When asked what he thought would be good lessons that people take from long-term thinking, Rose says he thinks we’re far better off creating “principle-based systems rather than rule-based systems.” “One example is the Bill of Rights,” he says, pointing to an example of a principles-based system. “It’s a page and a half document. It’s very simple. It was designed to be reinterpreted by every generation into the future. That’s one way of making the law.”

“Another way of making the law is a twelve-hundred-page health care law that no one’s ever read that is self-contradictory,” he added, commenting on the recent health care repeal bill. “One trusts the future. The other doesn’t.”

Welcome to Tomorrow, Engadget’s new home for stuff that hasn’t happened yet. You can read more about the future of, well, everything, at Tomorrow’s permanent home and check out all of our launch week stories here.

Apple launches free courses for the next generation of app coders

Apple has unveiled a free curriculum designed to teach high school and community college students app coding schools. The Swift language course has already been adopted by six US community college systems that will distribute it to half a million students this fall. While it’s generous on Apple’s part, Tim Cook acknowledged that it needs to address an industry-wide shortage of coders, especially for enterprise apps. “That’s really in its infancy, in terms of explosion, and so there’s just a ton of opportunity here,” he told USA Today.

The course entails around 180 hours of training with lesson plans, instruction and exercises for teachers. Students will “learn to code and and design fully functional apps, gaining critical job skills in software development and information technology,” writes Apple. The program is an extension of Apple kindergarten to grade 12 “Everyone Can Code” curriculum that helps students get comfortable with code.

It will be offered in the community college curriculum’s in Alabam, Columbus STate, Harrisburg Area, Houston, Mesa and San Mateo. Houston is also opening an iOS Coding and Design School, Apple says.

The availability of the course just ahead of Apple’s WWDC is just a coincidence, Cook said, adding that’s more about getting it ready ahead of the Fall 2017 semester. However, we wouldn’t be surprised to hear him trumpet the program during the event’s keynote address.

Apple wrote that like the recently announced $1 billion Advanced Manufacturing Fund, “the new Swift coding curriculum is another example of Apple’s commitment to economic development [in the US].” However, in an interview with Mashable, he dismissed the idea that Apple was trying to curry favor with Trump’s “America first” White House. “We began working on Swift many years ago. It spanned multiple administrations. No this isn’t related to anything to do with politics.”

While Swift is open source, it’s primarily used to build iOS apps, so coders would want to learn another language to do Android apps (for now). By getting as many students as possible hooked on Swift, however, Apple is obviously aiming to gain an advantage for its own ecosystem. “It’s sort of the next step of a long plan for us with Swift and trying to help prepare people for the new economy,” Cook said.

Source: Apple

Get a lifetime of Zoolz 1TB of cloud storage for $30

If you’ve ever been on the wrong side of a hard drive crash, you know the stress and frustration that goes along with losing your valuable data. There’s no shortage of cloud backup services out there, but the cost can be hard to justify, especially when you just need some extra space for old photos and personal documents. That’s why we recommend Zoolz for long-term storage. A 1TB account normally runs for around $40 / year, but for a limited time you can get a lifetime subscription for just $30.

Zoolz Dual Cloud splits your cloud drive between on-demand and cold storage. You can retrieve frequently accessed files from your instant vault, while lesser-used data gets stored in your archive. Both vaults protect your files with military grade 256-AES encryption to ensure that your digital assets stay private before leaving your computer.

It’s only a matter of time before your hard drive fails, so don’t wait until then. Get a lifetime subscription to Zoolz for $30 today and rest easy knowing your data is securely backed up.

Check out these other popular offers from GDGT Deals:

• Save over 70 percent on a 6-pack of vintage style Edison Bulbs

• The Aerix FPV racing drone is down to just $100

• Get the Pioneer X-CM56B Stereo System for 25 percent off

Sphero’s latest app-controlled toy is a ‘Cars 3’ tie-in

Sphero’s made a name for itself with connected, rolling toys like the Ollie, SPRK and, perhaps most famously, the Star Wars-inspired BB-8. Of course, the company couldn’t have brought its replica of the Force Awakens character to market without Disney’s approval, and the two seem to be keen on working together. Today, Sphero introduced its first app-controlled car, based on the “Ultimate Lighting McQueen” personality from Pixar’s Cars franchise. Sphero says the new toy is its most animatronic device yet, featuring five motors for steering, drifting, lifting and moving up and down, as well as animated eyes and a mouth that make it feel more realistic.

In addition, there are capacitive touch panels around the vehicle’s shell, which let you do things like wake it up and have it talk to you by simply rubbing your hands on spots like the windshield. The companion app isn’t only for driving, as Sphero’s built-in a few games and activities, including a training mode that helps you to get used to Ultimate Lightning McQueen quickly. The car is said to last about 40 minutes on a charge, with top speeds hitting about 6mph (10kmh). If you’re into it, its price may bring your spirits down a bit: Sphero’s pricing its new toy at a whopping $299. If that’s not a deal-breaker, you can order one today from the company’s site. The toy is expected to ship in time for the premiere of Cars 3 on June 16th.

Xbox’s Game Pass offers 100 titles starting June 1st

Remember when we told you that Microsoft was launching its own Netflix-style subscription service for games? Well, thanks to Danny Mcbride, we now know that it’s coming to an Xbox One near you on June 1st. As we reported previously, Xbox Game Pass will set you back $10 a month, allowing users to download anything they wish from a library of over 100 Xbox 360 and Xbox One titles. The initial lineup looks fine, if unremarkable, featuring the likes of Halo 5: Guardians, Payday 2, NBA 2K16 and Soul Calibur II. While we know a handful of other titles coming to the service, the vast majority of the 100 plus game library still remains unknown.

Still, a new subscription service is a big ask, especially when most Xbox gamers are already paying $60 for a Live Gold membership. Sensibly then, Microsoft has decided to offer everyone a free 14-day trial, so Xbox One owners can see whether the service is really for them.

With the full game lineup still under wraps, it remains to be seen whether this package will actually offer enough Xbox One games to make it good value. One thing’s for sure though, at $120 a year, Microsoft will need to continuously pull out the big titles if it’s going to convince gamers that Xbox Game Pass is worth the price of admission.

Source: Xbox (Facebook)

‘Battlefield 1’ DLC adds a playable female soldier class

By turning the clocks back to World War 1, DICE has created arguably one of the best games in the Battlefield series. Now, with Battlefield 1’s latest DLC, the developer is using our tragic past to drag its franchise kicking and screaming into the 21st century. Taking inspiration from Russia’s infamous 1917 military unit, The Women’s Battalion of Death, this summer’s ‘In the Name of the Tsar’ expansion introduces a female soldier class to Battlefield for the first time.

As you’d expect from a unit with such an intimidating name, these soldiers were pretty badass, taking over 200 prisoners as they fought valiantly on the Western Front. The new multiplayer class these real world soldiers have inspired is called the Russian Scout — and that’s all that we know so far. EA has said it will reveal more information about the Russian Scout at E3, alongside the new maps that fan can expect from the upcoming expansion.

With the first Battlefield game launching back in 2002, it’s strange to think that it’s taken 15 years for the franchise to include a female class. Yet, unfortunately, this isn’t just a Battlefield specific problem, but arguably a genre one. Online shooters have a bit of a reputation of being a boy’s club, and with female characters still a rare sight in most first person shooters, adding women into the mix is still seen as just as much of a milestone as changing the game’s setting.

Thankfully, things are changing. Overwatch is a shooter that features a brilliant mix of genders and ethnicities without feeling like a cynical box-ticking exercise, and unsurprisingly, women are flocking to the game. With angry gamers on Twitter ironically complaining about the inclusion of female soldiers in Battlefield 1 not being historically accurate, it begs the question, why are so many male gamers threatened by the idea of women in video games?

Source: Battlefield (Twitter)

The law isn’t ready for the internet of sexual assault

If the Mirai botnet taught us anything, it’s that no device connected to the internet is safe from hacking.

In that incident, malware hijacked thousands of devices, including DVRs, modems and security cameras. But as the worlds of sex and technology begin to intersect, the threat of hacking will enter a new, potentially more dangerous realm. Already, one connected vibrator has had its security called into question, and it won’t be the last. When the inevitable happens, is there a legal framework to deal with such a crime?

The following article contains a discussion of topics that some may find upsetting.

There is no universal definition of rape. In the US, the law varies from state to state, but the FBI and Title 10 of the United States Uniform Code of Military Justice both reflect a common standard. For rape to occur, there needs to be penetration of a person’s anus or genitals (the FBI includes “mouth” in its definition). This penetration can either be with the attacker’s body or with an object.

It’s crucial to prove that the act took place without the consent of the victims. That can be because they did not consent, their consent was obtained under duress or they were incapable of giving consent. In addition, it’s not legal to “trick” a person into consenting by withholding information or actively deceiving them.

We are slowly approaching a world in which people can be intimate without being physically close to one another. The internet allows us to have sex with people situated on the opposite side of the world. To bridge that distance, we use web-connected devices like masturbation sleeves and vibrators.

What would the legal implications be if, say, skilled and malicious hackers were able to hijack one of these devices? On one hand, they will have gained control of an object that is used to penetrate, and therefore are potentially responsible for it. On the other, the device’s owner is likely to have overall control of the hardware and, we assume, consents to its use.

“That would, I suppose, be sexual assault,” says robot ethicist Dr. Kate Devlin, a senior lecturer at Goldsmiths, University of London. Writer and broadcaster Girl on the Net agrees, saying that “controlling someone’s sex toy without their consent is sexual assault.” She adds that “you’re doing something that someone has not fully consented to, at least by not knowing who you are.”

But it may be the case that US law, as of right now, doesn’t support these assertions about what constitutes online sexual assault. Much like the definition of rape, the country has a patchwork of laws that cover the crime, many of which require unwanted sexual touching. For instance, Title 18 of the US Code states that “sexual contact” must be made — but where is it in our example?

Think about the hacking of a sex toy: The offense is electronic, but the harm it causes is human.

A functional criminal justice system creates a series of boxes into which you can categorize offenses and their punishments. We do this in order to avoid individuals being punished differently for committing a materially similar crime. But when these laws were written, there was no idea of what the future would hold. Think about the hacking of a sex toy: The offense is electronic, but the harm it causes is human. There are other crimes that, as of right now, are enabled and magnified by the internet yet aren’t yet codified in statute.

Another example: In 2011, a Los Angeles court sentenced California resident Luis Mijangos to six years in federal prison. Mijangos was found to have hacked into dozens of computers, many of which were owned by underage girls. Mijangos appropriated nude images and recorded their keystrokes, webcam feeds and intimate voice conversations. He then threatened to publish those files to the girls’ close friends and family unless they provided more images to him.

Those threats weren’t idle. When one of his victims attempted to raise the alarm through a friend, Mijangos knew. In revenge, he posted nude images of her to her MySpace page for all to see. In court, District Judge George H. King said that Mijangos had engaged in “psychological warfare” and “cyberterrorism.” His victims say they have been traumatized and terrorized, with many exhibiting signs of severe stress.

But the crime that Mijangos committed — covered under the umbrella of “online sextortion” — doesn’t exist in either federal or state law. It’s an issue that was highlighted by the think tank the Brookings Institution. It published a paper early last year explaining how digital sextortion was not anticipated by the law.

Like online sexual assault, digital sextortion is a sexual crime, and as such, getting accurate data on the issue is a problem. Brookings researchers admitted that they struggled to find cases for analysis, thanks to issues with underreporting. America’s largest anti-sexual-violence organization, RAINN, believes that two out of every three instances of sexual violence are not reported.

“These cases … produce wild, and in in our judgment indefensible, disparities in sentencing.”

The Brookings Institution

It should be noted that in instances involving crimes against minors, stringent child-pornography laws are in place. But, as the Brookings paper outlines, adult sextortion crimes are prosecuted under a “hodgepodge of state and federal laws,” a Wild West of lawmaking that results in “indefensible disparities in sentencing.” Mijangos, for instance, was given a “dramatically lighter sentence” than he would have received for a physical attack on a “fraction of the people” he victimized. Another perpetrator, Joseph Simone, was sentenced to just three years in jail despite “victimizing up to 22 young boys.”

The Brookings paper points out that predators can take advantage of this inconsistency to target their attacks. Because there is such a wide disparity in sentencing, it’s possible to seek out victims who are based in states with weaker laws. A well-read criminal could direct attention toward victims in Rhode Island, where punishments are soft, and avoid Maryland, where penalties are far harsher.

More generally, states don’t seem to be able to join up their thinking on how to sentence connected crimes — yet. In New York state, for instance, hacking someone else’s computer is a Class E nonviolent felony that carries a sentence between 16 months and four years on probation. Sexual assault, meanwhile, is a Class B violent felony that carries a custodial sentence of anything up to 25 years.

If we are to avoid similar controversies in the future, it is likely that we will need to create a law that covers this type of crime. The Brookings paper asserts that there needs to be a federal sextortion law that will cover threats of online sexual exploitation. Similarly, it seems clear that we need legislation that will cover instances of online sexual assault. Thankfully, we may be able to draw inspiration from a good example on the opposite side of the pond.

Neil Brown is an English lawyer and co-founder of decoded:Legal, a law firm with a specific interest in technology law. He says a clause in the Sexual Offenses Act 2003 could be the magic bullet. “When you look at the act,” he says, “you’ve got this quite interesting provision at Section 62.” In it, people are guilty of a sexual offense if they commit any offense with the intent to commit a sexual offense.

“There is a lack of current legislation to deal with online sexual issues.”

“Let’s say that it was an internet-connected vibrator,” says Brown, and someone hacked the device “with the intent of committing either sexual assault or assault by penetration.” The crime is likely to fall “both under the computer-misuse framework and the provisions of Section 62.” This hybrid offense would also aid sentencing; Brown says that a computer-misuse crime has a maximum “of up to two years in prison. “But,” Brown adds, “if you commit a computer-misuse offense with an intent to commit a sexual offense, then that can go up to 10 years.”

California attorney Michael Fattorosi, who has expertise in adult law, agrees about the need for new laws to cover such a crime. “There is a lack of current legislation to deal with online sexual issues,” he said, “whether it be rape, revenge porn or sexual assault.” The issue will continue to exist “until more legislators around the US wake up and understand current technology,” he said.

Anatomy of a sex-toy scare

If we’re going to begin creating legislation based on the potential harms of digital sex crimes, it’s worth analyzing if those dangers are real.

Svakom is a sex-toy manufacturer based in the US and China that produces the Siime and Siime Eye lines of connected vibrators. These devices are famous, or infamous, for having a small camera embedded in the tip. Such technology caters to those with a penchant for footage taken from a more anatomical angle than is usual in traditional pornography. It is also sufficiently attention-grabbing to have received special attention from security researchers.

Earlier this year, British security firm Pen Test Partners purchased a Siime Eye to examine the security of its camera feed. Pen Test claimed it was possible to gain access to the device remotely over the internet. As well as the risk of having the device controlled by a third party, users are also at risk of having strangers see images of their genitals. In addition, because the device offers itself up as a WiFi hotspot, broadcasting its SSID, it risks outing its owner.

Of course, Siime Eye is such a niche device that reporting on the story provided an easy win for journalists. Some tabloids called it a “spybrator,” while others said that the hardware could be hijacked remotely over the internet to let hackers “livestream the inside of your vagina.” Other stories latched onto a throwaway comment in the report suggesting that there was potential for the Siime Eye to connect to a Skype account. The controversy prompted US privacy organization Access Now to demand that the FTC ban the device from sale.

RenderMan is the pseudonym of a Canadian security researcher who runs the Internet of Dongs project, an initiative to educate sex-toy manufacturers on the risks that connected devices face. He posted a rebuttal to the Pen Test report, saying that its findings were both “sensationalist” and “designed to make a splash in the press.”

In an interview with Engadget, RenderMan explained that the Siime Eye’s key WiFi vulnerability does not enable remote attacks. Only users within the device’s 30-meter broadcast range would be able to attempt to gain access to it. And on that point, RenderMan quipped that “if you’re that close that you’re connecting to it and issuing commands directly, I mean, stick a camera in the window.” He added that an issue like this is not likely to affect general internet users or “every single [Svakom] customer” but is likely to be isolated “to that one person with a stalker.”

“Wardriving” is the practice of touring a location like a city and cataloging the SSIDs of local WiFi networks. Wardrivers upload their findings to an open database, like Wigle.net, that allows other users to search the information. But RenderMan believes the risk of being outed by the device’s SSID in this way has been overstated. He said that in the two years since the device has been on sale, only two have ever been found in this way, and both were demo units in a Tokyo sex shop.

Anuj Saroch is the digital marketing manager for Svakom, makers of the Siime Eye, who disputed some of Pen Test’s claims. For instance, he says that the “WiFi features of Siime Eye do not support networking” and that the device “cannot connect to Skype” at all. Pen Test “did so much research to hack this device,” Saroch adds, but “we don’t agree that they really hacked the device.”

Saroch believes that “currently, the device is still secure” and that his company has “answered each and every question” asked of it. Despite this, Svakom is working on an update to the product that he says will arrive within two months. The fix will ensure that the Siime Eye will connect only to smartphones, and the app will remind users to update their passwords.

Have the risks of having your connected sex toy taken over by a malicious third party been overstated and sensationalized? RenderMan doesn’t believe so; he says he has found “many instances of account takeover vulnerabilities” in his research. “It’s a very real threat, but one that, so far, has remained thankfully theoretical,” he added.

Svakom is not the only company that has come under public pressure for its attitude toward privacy.

In 2016, Standard Innovation was the subject of a class-action lawsuit stemming from its data-collection policies. The company, which produces the We-Vibe range of connected vibrators, tracked the temperature of each hardware unit and the vibration patterns used.

Standard Innovation later explained that the data collection was for hardware diagnosis and that it needed to be more explicit about its policy. It had to pay around $3.75 million in settlement fees to customers whose information had been stored without their consent. Standard Innovation’s motivation may have been innocent — as far as it claims — but the idea of collecting data in this way troubles many.

Devlin, the University of London robot ethicist, believes that such data collection creates two distinct risks for users. In the short term, the information could be compromised, “like the Ashley Madison breach.” From there, it’s a short step to hacking, blackmail and, according to some reports, even suicide.

In the longer term, however, users who buy devices from companies that harvest all of their relevant data could be at even greater risk. “You’re signing the terms and conditions now,” she said, “but what is going to change further down the line? … There are people who say, ‘If you’ve got nothing to hide, you’ve got nothing to fear,’ but I don’t think that’s true at all.”

You could travel to another country where your private life could land you in trouble. “You say, ‘Why would they care about my sex tech records?’” Devlin says. But imagine if during a trip to, for example, Chechnya, and people learn you are gay. Given that gays and lesbians are currently being murdered in that region, this type of data collection is a potential threat to people’s lives.

This sort of oppression also takes place in the United States, and Devlin is reminded of Alabama’s Anti-Obscenity Enforcement Act. The law prohibits the sale of sex toys in the state, and those in violation face up to 10 years in jail. It’s not that far from where we are at the moment, now that surveillance agencies can learn “something about your sexual behavior that could be used to discriminate against you.”

So…if I gave a distinct pattern of blowjobs…I could look for that pattern in the global shared data set & identify my partner’s history

— Sarah Jamie Lewis (@SarahJamieLewis) March 3, 2017

Privacy researcher Sarah Jamie Lewis believes that the ability to collect and track data is even more pernicious. She said data stored by quantified sex devices — such as the quantified cock ring Lovely — could be enough to identify individuals. “If you do a blowjob in such a way that it has very unique characteristics when you observe the data,” she said, “then you could identify that pattern in the data and track back.” At this point, it’s all “very theoretical and messy,” but there is a potential that anonymous tracking data could be used to “fingerprint” people.

Brown agrees, saying that manufacturers need to “think long and hard” about whether their devices need to be connected. His concern is that, much like in the Ashley Madison breach, these companies’ central repositories make a good target for hackers. He added that it’s virtually impossible to anonymize the data “so that it doesn’t identify an individual, or [is] stored in such a way that it simply cannot be compromised.” And, much like Devlin, Brown feels that the risks to reputation, well-being and life cannot be overstated.

We cannot, and should not, blindly trust manufacturers to be eternally vigilant about threats against us.

We know that there is a hole in the current law, and we know that there is a risk — however small — that this may take place.

Users should be educated about those dangers; as Girl on the Net says, “All sexy situations involve some level of risk.” But, she adds, those who are dipping a toe into the world of teledildonics “are unprepared for what can happen.” Potential attackers too should be reminded about the real harm their actions could cause.

RenderMan believes there is a huge moral imperative for manufacturers to do everything they can to ensure the security of their devices. He says that “the emotional trauma from a remote assault may be on par with a physical assault.” Prevention, therefore, is better than cure. “The possibility of remote hacking should be front of mind,” says Girl on the Net.

Those inside the industry agree, with Svakom’s Anuj Saroch says manufacturers will “have to take care of these things.” Stephanie Alys, co-founder of MysteryVibe, a British sex-toy manufacturer, says that “like any other industry, [sex toy] companies have a responsibility to protect their customer data.”

Alys also believes that to avoid another We-Vibe-esque situation, businesses need to be up front about data collection. “We are talking about sex, so people should be able to give informed consent,” she added.

Lewis thinks that manufacturers are already missing out on easy methods of improving their security. “Communication between sex devices should be like a Signal or WhatsApp message — end-to-end encrypted.” In addition, there should be “no way for a company to be able to extract that data out of the device.” The alternative is “a very weird and complex issue around what happens when this data is stolen, interfered with or swapped,” she says.

Lewis says users should closely scrutinize the data-collection practices of the companies they buy toys from, ensure their devices are encrypted, and take care not to leave any piece of gear with someone they do not trust. Alys, meanwhile, suggests that users create separate online identities to connect to their sextech to help avoid detection.

We cannot, and should not, blindly trust manufacturers to be eternally vigilant about threats against us. We must be thoughtful and careful about how we use our connected sex toys. We must also accept that, inevitably, this theoretical issue will become a practical one. As a consequence, we should urge our lawmakers to develop a proper federal framework to ensure that those who commit crimes are punished for it, and as few people suffer as possible.

T-Mobile Will Pay Off Your iPhone If You Switch From Verizon

T-Mobile today introduced a limited time promotion to encourage Verizon customers with select iPhone models to switch to their network.

Starting May 31, when a Verizon customer with an iPhone 7, iPhone 7 Plus, iPhone 6s, iPhone 6s Plus, or iPhone SE brings their smartphone to T-Mobile, they’ll be able to keep the device, and have any remaining monthly payments owing towards it paid off in full, whether it’s $1 or $1,000.

The catch is that Verizon customers will be required to pay $15 per month for T-Mobile’s Premium Device Protection Plus insurance program in addition to their new T-Mobile ONE plan. The insurance program protects an iPhone from loss, theft, and accidental damage, and provides AppleCare+ perks.

The offer will be available at T-Mobile stores across the United States next week. T-Mobile says the balance of any remaining device payments will be provided in the form of a digital prepaid MasterCard in approximately 15 to 30 days.

Tags: T-Mobile, Verizon
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