Glenn Close to star as a zombie in an Amazon pilot

Amazon has been hard at work beefing up its TV offerings lately, and there could soon be more reason to pay attention to the tech giant’s original content. According to The Hollywood Reporter, Emmy-winning actress Glenn Close is set to star in Sea Oak, a half-hour comedy-drama pilot about an angry zombie who terrorizes her remaining living relatives. Close will play Aunt Bernie, a formerly meek woman who returns from the grave from “sheer force of dissatisfaction”.

Since her last television series Damages ended in 2012, Close has not appeared on the small screen, instead working on film and theater. Sea Oak would be her first TV project as a series regular in five years, which is a big score for Amazon. So far, the streaming company has only ordered a pilot episode of the show, which was written by novelist George Saunders. An air date has not been announced.

This is the latest in a series of big-name projects that Amazon has developed lately. In April, the company ordered two seasons of The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, a series written and directed by Gilmore Girls creator Amy Sherman-Palladino. It also tapped Oscar-winning writer and Moonlight director Barry Jenkins for an adaptation of The Underground Railroad, and even earned an Emmy nomination for its behind-the-scenes NFL documentary series.

Via: TV Guide

Source: The Hollywood Reporter

Canada expects hacktivists will target its 2019 elections

It’s Canada’s turn to freak out about election hacking. At a news conference held today, the country’s Communications Security Establishment (CSE) said it was likely that hackers would try to interfere with its 2019 elections.

But the problem, as of now, isn’t with Russia — it’s with hacktivists. CSE said they expect some well-planned attacks from hacktivists in the upcoming elections and will offer cyber security advice to both parliamentarians and political parties. But because federal elections in Canada are mostly paper-based, politicians are more at risk than elections themselves.

Election meddling has been a hot issue since the last US presidential election. Russia has been accused of hacking election systems in 39 US states as well as targeting German parliament. While running in the French presidential election, Emmanuel Macron’s campaign was hacked and CSE said the 2015 Canadian federal election was hit with some “low-sophistication cyber threat activity.”

For now CSE’s precautionary measures are limited to providing guidelines to politicians. But we all know that politicians are terrible when it comes to cyber security, so good luck with that.

Source: Reuters

France wants autonomous high-speed trains by 2023

According to reports from FranceInfo, the SNCF, France’s national state-owned railway company, announced on Friday that it is actively working to develop and deploy autonomous trains that will operate along its high-speed TGV lines by 2023. The so-called “drone trains” should begin initial trials some time in 2019.

The autonomous systems will be built into existing TGV trains and consist of external sensors that can initiate automated braking should they detect an obstacle on the tracks. The company is especially hopeful that the system can be used for the more tedious maneuvers, like ordering and hooking up all the various cars before a departure. All in all, the company figures it can run 25 percent more trains on the same lines using this technology, cutting the time between trains by over a minute from 180 seconds to 108 seconds.

The SNCF expects the service to being in 2023, running between Paris and destinations to the southeast. Conductors will continue to ride along for a while after the system is implemented to act as fail safes should something happen to go wrong. This is a marked difference from Paris’ subways which are automated and do not require such safeguards.

Although, “when you automate a subway, you can put grids along the platforms and then you’re in tunnels,” adjoint director of SNCF, Matthieu Chabanel, told FranceInfo. Subways don’t present the same pressing need for human oversight as when “we are in a completely open environment with trees, animals, people, who can enter the right-of-way,” Chabanel continued, “and so we need a driver to handle all the disturbed situations.”

The UK is also working to automate some of the functions of its rail service, though the island nation is at a much earlier stage of that development than its continental neighbor. This is in part because the country’s rail network relies on a number of different lineside signalling and operating systems, all of which demand a human touch — not to mention the same sorts of open-world variables that French train drivers face. “We’re at a very early stage of this technology,” railway industry observer, Rupert Brennan Brown, told Financial Times.

Any efforts to automate the UK’s trains (or even London’s subways) would also likely be met with immediate and severe blowback from the industry’s various trade unions. The Rail, Maritime and Transport (RMT) union in March strongly criticized the government’s plan to invest £9 million in UK companies developing autonomous technology, arguing that it would “compromise and dilute” the existing safety system.

Via: Verge

Source: SNCF (French)

YouTube’s heatmaps show where eyes linger in VR videos

YouTube’s growing library of VR content is a definite asset in Google’s struggle to dominate the virtual reality sphere. The video platform isn’t just improving the consumer experience either, as it did when it added shared virtual viewing rooms and live voice chat back in May. To help content creators figure out which parts of their 360-degree videos are working, YouTube has introduced heatmaps to show where — and when — people are looking in the freeform movie format.

YouTube will dole out a heatmap for any 360-degree video with over 1,000 views. The platform has a few early observations from its nascent catalogue of VR movies. For one, despite the freedom to look anywhere, viewers spend 75 percent of their time watching the front 90 degrees, so keep the action straight ahead. But 20 percent of views focus directly behind, so don’t abandon the format’s freeform possibilities. Lastly, VR platforms are not made equal: Mobile headset users, like those donning Google’s own Cardboard, take a few seconds to get situated in a vehicle (whereas viewers with desktop systems do not).

Knowing where folks choose to look isn’t just useful for content creators. Facebook has developed a few strategies to keep streaming video bitrates low and quality high, one of which includes using AI predictive modeling to intuit the most interesting parts of a video (where viewers will focus their attention) and render that in higher resolution than other parts.

On top of the heatmap announcement, Google is also announcing an upcoming training course for virtual reality content creators called the VR Creator Lab. Applicants chosen will start a three-month intensive course this August and get $30,000 to $40,000 to fund their dream project.

Source: YouTube

Girl Scouts can start earning cybersecurity badges in fall 2018

If your office in the future dodges a spearphishing attempt in the future, you might be thanking a Girl Scout. The organization partnered with Palo Alto Networks to release 18 new cybersecurity badges for members to earn over the next two years, with the first slated to come out in September 2018.

Have you heard the news? GSUSA is working with @PaloAltoNtwks to develop #cybersecurity badges for girls in K-12! https://t.co/d4c58nWREP pic.twitter.com/H6UkHNAyEd

— Girl Scouts (@girlscouts) June 16, 2017

They won’t just be about minimizing hacking vectors: Younger Scouts will also learn about data privacy, cyberbullying and how to protect themselves online. Badges for older ones will focus on developing coding skills, learning about white hat hacking and creating firewalls. While preventative training has been erratically present in Scouting for some time — the Boy Scouts, for example, have had the Cyber Chip youth internet safety certification since 2012 — the Girl Scouts’ new set of badges looks to span a respectable breadth of online issues and opportunities.

If you’re surprised the Girl Scouts have a new badge teaching important tech literacy, you haven’t been paying attention. Back in 2011, the organization added ones for Computer Expert and Digital Movie Maker followed by an attempt in 2013 to introduce one for video games. Following the release of a badge dedicated to nurturing science, technology, engineering and math interests in 2015, the Girl Scouts partnered with Netflix last October to encourage young members to pursue STEM careers.

Via: CNN

Source: Palo Alto Networks, Girl Scouts of the United States of America

App Highlight: YouTubers Life – Gaming

The App

Developed by U-Play Online, YouTubers Life – Gaming is one of the best games on the Google Play Store. It is a relatively new app with only 10,000 installs, but this is already making a big impression.

What it does

Youtubers Life is a life simulation game where you act as a YouTuber and create content to try and become number one in the world with the most subscribers. You’ll need to record and edit your videos, collab with other YouTubers, and expand your empire.

Youtubers Life is the ultimate life simulation/tycoon videogame in which you can effortfully become the world’s greatest gaming video blogger in history by editing videos, expanding the amount of fans and turning yourself into a wealthy fellow. Create your character —customize it as you wish, there are thousands of hillarous combinations— and start making your first broadcasts in the cozy room at your parents’ where you have grown up since you were little. Record gameplay sessions, buy new and classic consoles, keep an eye on daily tasks, and socialize yourself to increase your popularity while you have to deal with fans, friends, family and time management!

Why we like it

I love simulation games and this is one of the best. It is vast, immersive, and keeps you hooked. The goal is clear, to become the number one YouTuber, but you’ll have to work to get there. It’s a little on the pricey side but you’ll certainly get your value out of it.

How to get it

YouTubers Life is available from the Google Play Store. You can download it right here.

App Highlight: OK Golf

The App

Developed by Playdigious, OK Golf a golf game like no other that allows you to play a quick round of golf without the flashy animations. This is a relatively new app with only 10,000 installs and is being regularly updated, with the latest update bringing a new course and a number of fixes.

What it does

OK Golf is a golf game with a minimalist design that focuses on the core elements of the game. Despite the minimal design, it looks fantastic. You can also compete in multiplayer mode against your friends.

OK Golf is the essence of golf, refined to a tee. Play a quick round anywhere, anytime on stylish dioramas inspired by classic golfing destinations. Easy to play, hard to put down, perfect for all ages and handicaps!

SIMPLE
Just aim, drag and release to shoot the ball. No clubs, just you and the ball.

BEAUTIFUL
Inspired by beautiful and iconic locations, each course is a handcrafted miniature diorama.

RELAXING
Enjoy a moment of zen while you play a round of golf immersed in the calming sounds of nature.

REPLAYABLE
Unlock new courses and secret areas and challenge yourself with different game modes.

BUY ONCE
Pay once, get all futures courses free!

MULTIPLAYER
Compete online with golfers all over the world and face your neighborhood friends with the Pass & Play multiplayer feature.

Why we like it

Golf games tend to be filled with unnecessary animations and unrealistic physics. OK Golf looks great and focuses on the golf. Its simple mechanics means it’s a joy to play and will be sure to help you pass time. I would like to see a way to sync progress across multiple devices but otherwise this is definitely worth a download.

How to get it

OK Golf is available from the Google Play Store. You can download it right here.

Withings Steel HR review

As an upgrade to the Withings Activité Steel, the Steel HR is a timepiece that features an analog watch with smart, fitness tracking capabilities. It’s one part “regular” watch, mixed one part “smart, activity tracker”. This goes for its physical look as well as its functions.

The Withings Steel HR is offered in 36mm ($180)  and 40mm ($200) case options with both sold in black; the smaller one is also available in white, too. The watch feels smaller than it sounds, even at the larger size. This was welcome to us, particularly as it’s designed to be worn during physical activities. The last thing you want to wear when out running or doing rigorous activities is a big wonky face or thick strap.

The watch face itself looks entirely analog at first blush. A second look, however, reveals the pair of complications. At the top you’ll find a digital circle sub-dial with an analog one below. The former delivers notifications while the latter represents your progress toward goals. The entire face is a stainless steel case which looks more business than casual.

The Steel HR is a very light watch that is also quite comfortable to wear. Thanks to the silicone straps, it’s something you’ll not mind having on you during a run. It breathes nicely and cleans up easily, too. Should you want to switch up to something more professional looking, the watch allows for that quite easily.

Our first overall impression of the watch was that it looked a little more “basic” or outdated than it appeared in press renders. Moreover, the monochrome complication initially seemed unimpressive and generic. After wearing the Steel HR a couple of days, we had completely warmed to it and didn’t mind at all.

The complications are a nice size and serve their respective purposes quite well. The upper one only displays your information for a few moments, but the 8-bit-like graphics are easy to glance at. You don’t have to worry about a strange font; a quick and simple glance is all it takes to see notifications.

Pressing the button on the side of the face lets you scroll through the various information to track or view, including the date, alarm, battery level, calories burned, steps taken, distance, and heart rate. There’s also a digital version of the clock should you need to check it in the middle of the night.

This was actually a pain point for us as the analog watch is essentially invisible when it gets dark out. Use it in dim environments or at night and you’ll have a hell of a time seeing the time, something we rely on watches for… a lot. We would have loved glowing tips on the hour and minute hands. Nevertheless, we press the button quite often come evenings.

As for dealing with notifications, though, it’s a mixed bag. To see who is calling, or look at a calendar notification requires reading through a scrolling message. Additionally, it’s somewhat of a limited experience in that notifications don’t work for Facebook Messenger, WhastApp, and a number of other apps. We’d like to see that rolled out in a software update, and think it is within the realm of possibility.

The Withings app gives users control over notifications for calls, calendar, and messages. Moreover, you can set up the various types of vibrations to know exactly what sort of notification you are receiving. If you want to track your weight (and you should), you can do that. Set goal, log activities manually, or get tips — whatever you imagine a typical activity tracker to do, this one does it.

Perhaps one of the best features in the Steel HR, and one that should be standard in wearables that run about $180 and above, is a heart rate monitor. This function alone opens up the door to deeper tracking.

The watch is able to discern when you’re out running, sleeping, or doing nearly ten other activities automatically. Among them are swimming, running, basketball, and tennis, however, you can also manually input your own activities.

Speaking of swimming, the Withings Steel HR is water resistant to 50 meters. This is far more than you’ll get in most wearables which tend to tap out around 3 meters. Just know that by swimming you’ll not get the accurate heart rate or calorie burning.

The battery is downright fantastic on the Withings Steel HR. We’re talking weeks off of one single charge. Withings calls for 25 days of usage, which looks to be just about right. We’ve used this one off and on for the last two weeks and aren’t yet ready to charge it up.

If you’re the type of person who doesn’t mind sleeping with a watch on, this one works nicely. It’s thin and light enough to not make you feel constricted; the watch can also help you wake up with a silent vibrating alarm during your lightest sleep.

In terms of accuracy, we noticed that it didn’t match up step for step with any other wearable. Whether it was literal steps or calories, it varied slightly as compared to the Fitbit Charge 2, Wear24, and a couple others. Generally speaking, though, it was nothing that concerned us. To us, variance is expected across the different types and brands in that space. On its own, though, we found it accurate, if not, perhaps more importantly, consistent.

Distance is one area where we think it could do better. Because it does not have a built-in GPS sensor and does not tie into your phone’s GPS, it’s not quite as accurate as it could be. Somehow, the Steel HR infers distance based on a variety of sensors and input. This is not a running watch so much as it is an “every man” activity tracker.

As for charging the Steel HR, it’s fairly easy if not a touch wonky. There’s a charging pad that you place the watch against, which takes some orienteering and playing around. Even though we didn’t need to charge our review unit, we were able to figure out the mechanics in a few tries. It’s a tad cumbersome and clumsy at first, but it’s easy enough to learn.

Now doctors need to be hackers, too

As far as anyone knows, there hasn’t been a real-life hack attack on someone’s pacemaker. Which is surprising. Security researchers have shown us that it’s a very real possibility. Even the FTC has been urging connected medical device makers to adopt security best practices, with multiple 2017 reports stressing the issue.

Since device makers apparently can’t be trusted, medical professionals are taking emergency measures to keep patients alive. At the recent Cyber Med Summit, doctors put together a sort-of hacker boot camp for medical professionals.

The conference combined talks with gritty (and sometimes bloody) live-action simulations where doctors were faced with with a new kind of medical crisis: Figuring out if a patient — or more specifically, the technology that keeps them alive — has been hacked.

Prepping to open chest on dummy to cut/disconnect the leads #CyberMed pic.twitter.com/Ylv72r51IR

— ♘ Josh Corman (@joshcorman) June 8, 2017

During the conference, there were three immersive emergency exercises in which patient insulin pumps and pacemakers had been hacked and doctors needed to act fast to save lives. Josh Corman, founder of I Am The Cavalry and one of the event’s co-founder’s, told Engadget that these crisis simulations were when they realized the urgency of this conference.

“The three simulations involved an insulin pump, a bedside infusion pump, and a pacemaker,” Corman said in a call. “When the doctor found out after the exercise that the pump’s tech failed in a certain way, she said if she’d realized that she’d have just swapped out the pump.” He added, “But we explained to her that it wouldn’t have mattered because the libraries it was pulling from were hacked.”

Some of these riveting scenarios transitioned into surgeries on excruciatingly realistic dummies. Seeing the “patient died a few times” in live tweets from the event is disconcerting, to say the least. Corman told us, “That’s when we realized that physicians explicitly trust the technology they depend on, and it was really disruptive when the technology failed them.”

“We knew that physicians would be able to adapt to certain things,” he explained, “but during the medical simulations we realized they’re not trained for this.”

Making incision. Realistic dummy bleeds. Looking for lead wires. Cut wires. #CyberMed pic.twitter.com/HPAul1G3cv

— ♘ Josh Corman (@joshcorman) June 8, 2017

Over 100 medical professionals, infosec professionals, policymakers, a few medical device manufacturers, and a handful of law enforcement officials attended the first-of-its kind event. (You can watch the keynotes here.) The results? Maybe you should make sure your doctor keeps a hacker on staff. Many at the Summit got a terrifying crash-course and probably realized they need to add “hacking” to their list of possible problems to assess and diagnose.

The time of the doctor that hacks is here, and that’s who brought the event together. Doctors Jeffrey Tully and Christian Dameff are physicians who also happen to be hackers; their first DEF CON presentation was “Hacking Humanity: Human Augmentation and You” in 2013. Tully recently finished a pediatric residency and is about to start another; Dameff completed a residency in emergency medicine and is getting ready for a fellowship.

“Doctors are hackers, they just don’t know it,” Dameff told the University of Arizona newspaper. “They think through the pathology of a disease. They look for weaknesses of the disease, of the system, just like hackers.”

He had no idea it was hacked. Was very surprised the magnet reset didn’t work. Patient died a few times. #CyberMed pic.twitter.com/AuR1tbpgfA

— ♘ Josh Corman (@joshcorman) June 8, 2017

The pair made the Cyber Med Summit happen in partnership with DC policy think tank The Atlantic Council, whose motto is “Working Together To Secure The Future.” The conference idea came at DEF CON in 2014, where they connected with Josh Corman and Beau Woods, both of whom are directors of the Cyber Statecraft Initiative at the Atlantic Council. Corman explained that Dameff and Tully’s talk that year was the hook to make the Cyber Med Summit happen — a cautionary presentation titled “Hacking 911 – Adventures in Disruption Destruction and Death.”

Dameff told press after the event, “When we know of the first patient that dies of a cyberattack … you can’t put the genie back in the bottle.” He added, “It’s going to usher in a new era of healthcare cybersecurity where hospitals are going to be scrambling. That’s not the time to do it — the time to do it is now.”

In talking to those who were there, it’s clear that the Cyber Med Summit was a wake-up call, even for the researchers who put it together. Josh Corman told Engadget that there’s a silver lining on the horizon: The National Governor’s Association is interested in replicating the event. “A huge percentage of modern healthcare is dependent on tech now and they have not integrated security anywhere,” Corman said. “We need to do this in all 50 states.”

‘Skull and Bones’ is about pillaging your friends’ ships

Pirates are back. As the Pirates of the Caribbean movie juggernaut refuses to let Jonny Depp rest for more than a year or two, Ubisoft’s Skull and Bones takes the ship battles of Assassin’s Creed: Black Flag and turns them into grand-scale, five-on-five multiplayer naval warfare. It’ll be a standalone title when it launches in 2018, but ahead of open-beta testing, I got to enjoy some demo time at E3. Caution: slightly shallow gameplay waters ahead.

The demo I saw was entirely multiplayer, but not everyone’s ship was the same: I could choose from a mid-size Brigantine; a ramming vessel; the Sloop-of-War, which is like the sniper of pirate ships with long-range cannons; or the tank ship, the Frigate, which is slow but powerful. Raiding ships is surprisingly well-suited to squad fights, and due to my Black Flag experience, I knew exactly what I was doing. Playing with other E3 attendees offered a glimpse of how everyone could pillage the high seas. I’m still waiting to see how Ubisoft is able to spin this spin-off (it plays almost identically to Black Flag ship battles) into something that can stand alone.

Follow all the latest news from E3 2017 here!