Taylor Swift’s new music video sets first-day record on YouTube

Taylor Swift returned from her self-imposed social media exile with a single that’s already breaking records. Her music video for ‘Look What You Made Me Do’ raked in over 31 million views on YouTube in its first 24 hours, surpassing Adele’s previous high-water mark of 27.7 million views of ‘Hello’ for most-watched video on the platform in a single day.

While the song was released on Friday, the music video landed on YouTube yesterday. Of course, some of those views might be from fans who get a slightly better chance of snagging tickets to her upcoming tour if they watch her video multiple times per day. Or, for a better place in virtual line, if they buy her album, which comes out November 10th.

It took less than seven months for ‘Despacito’ to dethrone ‘Gangnam Style’ for lifetime YouTube views. But with fans shrewdly egged on by Swift’s marketing machine to keep watching day-in and day-out, perhaps ‘Look What You Made Me Do’ will surpass the 3.4 billion-view record held by Luis Fonsi and Daddy Yankee’s dance track in a lot less time.

Source: Pitchfork

DJI pulls drone app plugins that swiped too much user data

DJI’s efforts to improve drone security go well beyond offering bug bounties and requiring updates. The company has rolled out updates to its Go and Go 4 mobile apps in order to pull add-ons that collect too much of your data. The main culprit is JPush, a third-party extension DJI implemented to send notifications when you finish uploading videos to the SkyPixel sharing service. It’s supposed to help you move on to other tasks while your video goes to the cloud, but DJI has learned that it’s collecting unnecessary info without asking, including the list of apps installed on Android devices. The company says it doesn’t approve of this practice any more than you do, and it’s creating its own status system as a replacement.

The company is also pulling two other plugins, jsPatch and Tinker, that let DJI deliver small updates without replacing an entire app. While DJI doesn’t mention any instances of these add-ons swiping more data than necessary, the firm is yanking both to make sure that all app updates get a “thorough screening” before they hit your Android or iOS device. The drone maker is looking at other plugins in its Go apps, too, and promises to be cautious before incorporating more.

It’s unusual for a company to announce that it’s removing features, if temporarily in some cases. However, DJI has a strong incentive to scale things back. Questions over the security of its drones have led to lost business. What good would it do to keep the plugins if DJI didn’t have the trust of its customers? Between this and the other security initiatives announced today, DJI has undoubtedly decided that it’s worth a little short term pain to earn your long term respect.

Via: The Verge

Source: DJI

Patton Oswalt returns to Netflix this October with a new special

Patton Oswalt’s honest, story-based stand-up and everyman persona has brought him quite a bit of success. He’s active and loved on Twitter and won an Emmy for his 2016 Netflix special, Talking for Clapping. His wife Michelle McNamara died last February, and Oswalt is just starting to get back to work with projects like his role on the MST3K reboot with Felicia Day. Now he’s landed another Netflix special, which is set to air October 17th.

Netflix confirmed to Engadget that the one-hour special will focus on Oswalt’s tragic year of coping with the death of his wife and being the single widowed parent of their 7-year-old daughter, Alice. Neflix also says that Patton Oswalt: Annihilation will cover the angst of participating in social media, our current political climate and being tricked by robocalls. Who doesn’t hate robocalls?

Via: Entertainment Weekly

The ghost of annoyance past, Clippy makes a comeback as an extension

Why it matters to you

If you want to see if Clippy annoyed you as much as you remember, open up this new Visual Studio extension, it’s pretty authentic.

Microsoft Office assistant Clippy is making its big resurgence as part of a Visual Studio extension. Named ClippyVS, the extension effectively resuscitates Clippy and makes it as useful as it ever was inside the independent development environment (IDE) of Visual Studio, where it will have some of its classic reactions to some of your actions.

Clippy, as it was colloquially known, was an animated paperclip character which would appear in Microsoft Office documents in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Its purpose was to help you with certain tasks, though it was traditionally disliked by many Office users, many of whom found its tone a little patronizing. Still, that does not mean some don’t hold a special place in their heart for the digital helper.

While Microsoft has gone to great effort to create new and much more helpful digital assistants in recent years, that does not mean some would not like to see its original helper make a comeback. That is why developer Eros Fratini is adding Clippy to our modern computing environments.

Although still in development and with much of its classic features still to add, the open source ClippyVS v0.1 is available as a Visual Studio extension (no word if it will come to Mac OS in the future). When installed, Clippy will have some thoughts on things you are doing within the IDE and you can move it around to customize its location.

Early reviews of the extension are strong, with one requesting the addition of multi-monitor support so that they could move Clippy to a secondary screen of its own. Another expressed sadness at the lack of certain bubble popup messages from Clippy’s historical vocabulary. Fratini quickly replied saying that they were in the works and will be added in the near future.

If you want to download Clippy yourself and have a dose of irritating nostalgia or merely get yourself ready for when it can help you like it once did, you can download it straight from the Visual Studio tools section. If you would like to have a look at the code behind it and provide feedback for the developer, you can find more information on the project’s Github page.

MIT’s RFID drones could solve a multibillion-dollar problem — and find lost keys

Why it matters to you

Misplaced items can waste time and, potentially, billions of dollars for major retailers. MIT’s new drone-based system can help.

When you’re dealing with the kind of giant warehouses required by retail giants and other large organizations, taking inventory of stock by hand can be an enormously time-consuming job that verges on the impossible. For example, even the smallest Walmart warehouse is larger than 17 football fields, making it easy for things to get lost. (This is actually more of a serious problem than you might think: over an eight-year period, the U.S. Army lost track of $5.8 billion of supplies in its warehouses.) As a result, companies have increasingly been looking into using drones to speed up the task. However, most attempts to do this haven’t been as efficient as they could be, primarily because they rely on barcode readers or cameras, which miss any items not visible to a camera through line of sight.

That’s an issue that Massachusetts Institute of Technology researchers have tried to address with a new project called RFly, which uses a combination of drones and RFID (radio frequency identifier) tags to, they hope, revolutionize both inventory management and the “non-line-of-sight” problem.

“We developed RFly, a new technology that allows drones to find missing and hidden objects using wireless signals,” Fadel Adib, whose group at the MIT Media Lab developed the new system, told Digital Trends. “Our technology works by analyzing the wireless signals reflected from battery-free RFID stickers. RFIDs are wireless stickers that are attached to objects similar to barcodes. To locate these RFIDs, our drones transmit wireless signals to power them up, then analyze their responses. As these drones fly, they analyze the physical waves of the RFID responses and use these waves to locate the RFIDs. Our technology allows drones to pin down the location of an RFID to the exact shelf an item is on, and our location-finding algorithm is inspired by how airplane radars map the surface of the Earth.”

According to its creators, the RFly system can read RFID tags from more than 50 feet away and identify objects on shelves within 8 inches of their location. The system could also be used for doing more than just Identifying products.

“The applications are vast, and they range from doing remote inventory control in an entire warehouse to allowing people to find missing items at home,” Adib continued. “Imagine a future where each of us has a small miniature drone, and we dispatch the drone to fetch our keys, wallets, or glasses when we can’t find them.”

Clever illusion helps protect your PIN from ‘shoulder surfers’

Why it matters to you

IllusionPIN could help keep your PIN private by deploying an optical illusion.

A PIN password might seem like a secure way to lock a device but, considering how easy it is for a stranger to peak over your shoulder, it might not be that all that secure. Soon, an app called IllusionPIN might help protect your PIN by muddling the keyboard so the numbers appear normal from a distance but randomized when seen up close.

PIN sign-ins are a popular authentication method for various software and devices, from smartphones to ATMs. These relatively short string of digits are easy to remember but, for much the same reason, they are also easy to crack.

Nasir Memon

“The traditional configuration of numbers on a keypad is so familiar that it’s possible for an observer to discern a PIN or access code after several viewings of surveillance video,” Nasir Memon, a New York University Tandon School of Engineering professor, told Digital Trends. Memon said his team’s aim was to make PIN authentication more secure without requiring much more work from the device or making user experience any less smooth.

The app they developed uses a hybrid-image keyboard that tricks the eye when viewed from a distance of a few feet or more. The specific technology combines an image of a keyboard with a high spatial frequency and a different image of a keyboard with a low spatial frequency. The visibility of each image depends on the distance from which it is seen and results in an illusion that deceives the eye of a “shoulder surfer” so that the keyboard appears to be normal when, in fact, it isn’t.

To test whether IllusionPIN would actually trick an onlooker, the researchers performed 84 shoulder-surfing attacks on 21 participants as they entered their PIN using the app. In a study published online last one in the journal IEEE Xplore, the researchers report that none of the attempted attacks were successful. They also preformed one attack on each participant without using IllusionPIN, each which successfully identified the password.

“We also determined that IllusionPIN makes it nearly impossible to steal PIN or other authentication information using surveillance footage,” Memon said.

Moving forward, the team will explore ideas for deploying their technology on smartphones, ATMs, and computers.

Clever illusion helps protect your PIN from ‘shoulder surfers’

Why it matters to you

IllusionPIN could help keep your PIN private by deploying an optical illusion.

A PIN password might seem like a secure way to lock a device but, considering how easy it is for a stranger to peak over your shoulder, it might not be that all that secure. Soon, an app called IllusionPIN might help protect your PIN by muddling the keyboard so the numbers appear normal from a distance but randomized when seen up close.

PIN sign-ins are a popular authentication method for various software and devices, from smartphones to ATMs. These relatively short string of digits are easy to remember but, for much the same reason, they are also easy to crack.

Nasir Memon

“The traditional configuration of numbers on a keypad is so familiar that it’s possible for an observer to discern a PIN or access code after several viewings of surveillance video,” Nasir Memon, a New York University Tandon School of Engineering professor, told Digital Trends. Memon said his team’s aim was to make PIN authentication more secure without requiring much more work from the device or making user experience any less smooth.

The app they developed uses a hybrid-image keyboard that tricks the eye when viewed from a distance of a few feet or more. The specific technology combines an image of a keyboard with a high spatial frequency and a different image of a keyboard with a low spatial frequency. The visibility of each image depends on the distance from which it is seen and results in an illusion that deceives the eye of a “shoulder surfer” so that the keyboard appears to be normal when, in fact, it isn’t.

To test whether IllusionPIN would actually trick an onlooker, the researchers performed 84 shoulder-surfing attacks on 21 participants as they entered their PIN using the app. In a study published online last one in the journal IEEE Xplore, the researchers report that none of the attempted attacks were successful. They also preformed one attack on each participant without using IllusionPIN, each which successfully identified the password.

“We also determined that IllusionPIN makes it nearly impossible to steal PIN or other authentication information using surveillance footage,” Memon said.

Moving forward, the team will explore ideas for deploying their technology on smartphones, ATMs, and computers.

Samsung Galaxy Note 8 vs. LG G6: Android heavyweights duke it out

The Samsung Galaxy Note 8 is one of the biggest and most powerful smartphones we’ve ever seen. It wraps cutting edge specs in a seductively stylish body, but how does it measure up against one of our favorite phones – the LG G6? Despite good reviews, following the Mobile World Congress unveiling back in February, the G6 has not met sales expectations. Does that mean you should pick the Note 8? We pitted Samsung Galaxy Note 8 vs. LG G6 to find out.

Samsung is looking to get the Note series back on track and wash away the bitter, charred taste of its explosive Note 7 disaster. You can bet the battery in the Note 8 has been well-tested, but what about the rest of the specs? Let’s take a look.

Specs

Samsung Galaxy Note 8

LG G6

Size
6.40 x 2.94 x 0.33 inches (162.5 x 74.8 x 8.6 mm)
5.86 × 2.83 × 0.31 inches (148.9 × 71.9 × 7.9 mm)
Weight
6.87 ounces (195 grams)
5.75 ounces (163 grams)
Screen
6.3-inch Quad HD+ Super AMOLED
5.7-inch IPS LCD touchscreen
Resolution
2,960 × 1,440 pixels
2,880 × 1,440 pixels
OS
Android 7.1.1 Nougat
Android 7.0 Nougat
Storage
64GB (128 and 256GB options in other markets)
32 (64GB in select markets)
MicroSD Card Slot
Yes
Yes
NFC support
Yes
Yes
Processor
Qualcomm Snapdragon 835
Samsung Exynos 9 Series 8895 (International)
Qualcomm Snapdragon 821
RAM
6GB
4GB
Connectivity
4G LTE, GSM, CDMA, HSPA+, 802.11a/b/g/n/ac Wi-Fi
4G LTE, HSPA+, 802.11ac/b/g/n/ac Wi-Fi
Camera
12MP rear dual with OIS on both lens, 8MP front
13MP rear dual with OIS on one les, wide-angle lens, 5MP front
Video
4K
4K
Bluetooth
Yes, version 5
Yes, version 4.2
Fingerprint sensor
Yes
Yes
Other sensors
Accelerometer, barometer, gyro, geomagnetic, heart rate, proximity, iris, pressure
Barometer, gyroscope, accelerometer, proximity sensor
Water Resistant
Yes, IP68
Yes, IP68
Battery
3,300mAh
3,300mAh
Charger
USB Type-C
USB Type-C
Quick Charging
Yes
Yes
Wireless Charging
Yes, Qi and PMA
Yes, Qi and PMA (U.S. only)
Marketplace
Google Play Store
Google Play Store
Color offerings
Black, gold, gray, blue
White, black, platinum
Availability

AT&T, Verizon, Sprint, T-Mobile

AT&T, Verizon, Sprint, T-Mobile

Price
$930
Starting at $650
DT Review
Hands-on review
4.5 out of 5 stars

There are a couple of clear advantages here for the Galaxy Note 8. In the U.S. it will sport the Snapdragon 835 processor, and in some other markets it will be packing Samsung’s Exynos 8895. Both are newer than the Snapdragon 821 found in the LG G6. The Snapdragon 835 is faster and more power efficient than the 821.

The processor is backed up by 6GB of RAM in the Note 8, which should make it a multitasking master. The G6 makes do with 4GB of RAM. There’s still some debate about how much RAM you really need in a smartphone, but, in theory, the Note 8 will be able to keep more apps in memory and switch between them quicker.

A brief look at storage before we move on reveals little difference. The Note 8 starts at 64GB, but there’s a MicroSD card slot in case you need more space. The G6 starts at 32GB, with the same potential MicroSD addition.

Winner: Galaxy Note 8

Design, display, and durability

Julian Chokkattu/Digital Trends

The Samsung Galaxy Note 8 is half an inch taller, slightly wider, and slightly thicker than the LG G6. Whatever way you slice it, the Note 8 is a very big phone. Both devices have dual cameras and fingerprint sensors on the back. They also both look and feel expensive. Samsung has gone with the same design as the S8 and S8 Plus, with curved glass back and front sandwiching a metal frame, though the Note 8 is a little boxier than its smaller siblings. The G6 is pretty similar, minus the curved edges on the screen.

LG started the trend of elongating the display with the G6, packing a 5.7-inch screen into a device that’s comfortable to use one-handed. The IPS LCD in the G6 has a resolution of 2,880 x 1,440 pixels, which gives it a sharp pixel density of 564 ppi. Samsung’s much large 6.3-inch Super AMOLED display has a 2,960 x 1,440-pixel resolution, giving it 522 ppi, but we don’t think you’ll be able to see much of a difference in terms of sharpness.

Both these phones are IP68 certified which means they can handle a dip into water up to 1.5 meters deep for up to 30 minutes without any damage. Drop either onto concrete or another hard surface and you’ll likely be staring down the barrel of an expensive repair bill. There’s nothing to separate them in the durability stakes.

Samsung’s curved display creeps slightly closer to a bezel-less design and looks a touch sexier, and its Super AMOLED technology is the current leader for brightness, contrast, and vivacity.

Winner: Galaxy Note 8

Battery life and charging

The Samsung Galaxy Note 8 and the LG G6 are packing identically rated batteries offering 3,300mAh. That sounds like a lot, but these phones have to power large, pixel-packed screens. The Note 8 has a slightly bigger display, but it also has a more power efficient processor, so that might cancel out the difference. We weren’t wowed by the G6’s battery life, though it should see you through an average day with change. We’ll have to get some time with the Note 8 to see if it can do any better, but we suspect daily charging will still be a necessity.

We’re pleased to see that both these smartphones support wireless charging and they also have fast charging capabilities via their USB Type-C ports.

Winner: Tie

Camera

Julian Chokkattu/Digital Trends

Samsung is really upping its camera game with the Note 8. There are two 12-megapixel cameras on the back, one with an f/1.7 aperture and the other with an f/2.4 aperture. That’s fairly similar to the G6 on paper, which sports two 13-megapixel cameras at f/1.8 and f/2.4. We love the widescreen lens on the G6, so we’re pleased to see it come to the Note 8. The wide-angle lens in the G6 lacks optical image stabilization, whereas the Note 8 has OIS in both cameras.

Samsung has also packed in an 8-megapixel front-facing camera with an f/1.7 aperture, which should be great for low light conditions. That compares favorably with the G6’s 5-megapixel, f/2.2 selfie cam – the lower the f-number, the bigger the aperture, so it can let in more light. We have to try the Note 8 camera out before making a judgement, so we’ll call this a tie for now, but it certainly has the potential to be better than the G6 camera.

Winner: Tie

Software

Julian Chokkattu/Digital Trends

LG’s G6 shipped with Android 7.0 Nougat with a few tweaks on top and a smattering of LG apps, mostly designed to take advantage of the 18:9 aspect ratio, which allows you to divide the screen into two perfect squares for multitasking. The Note 8 runs Samsung’s TouchWiz user interface on top of the very latest Android 7.1.1. Samsung is looking to add a lot of extra value with a range of features and options, including its own voice assistant, Bixby. You also get the S Pen with the Note 8 and a range of functionality and apps to enable you to sketch, annotate, and hand write notes. Whether you’re tempted by Samsung’s extras, or feel they’re superfluous is a matter of personal taste, so we’re calling this one a draw.

Winner: Tie

Price and availability

LG G6

If you’re looking for a catch regarding the Note 8, then here it is. This phone is very expensive at $930 unlocked. It’s one of the most expensive options on the market. It is packed with some excellent hardware and it sports a seriously stylish design, but you are going to pay a premium for it.

By contrast, the LG G6 started from around $700, but because it has been out for a while that price has fallen. Shop around and you’ll find that you can get it for $550, maybe even a bit less. We’ve seen a couple of big promotions that cut the starting price in half for a limited period.

The Note 8 won’t ship until September 15. But after that, both these phones will be widely available from all the major retailers and carriers.

Winner: LG G6

Overall winner: Galaxy Note 8

The design, display, and performance of the Note 8 are going to reel in many buyers. It’s the obvious choice for fans of a big screen and a stylus. But Samsung has also put some effort into the main camera here, upgrading the already decent shooter in the Galaxy S8 to fit in with the growing dual camera trend. The quandary is whether it’s worth several hundred dollars more than the G6. That’s debatable. The G6 is a great phone and an especially enticing bargain if you can get in on a promotion, but the Samsung Galaxy Note 8 is the better phone overall.

Otterbox lets smartphone owners create their own accessories for uniVerse case

Why it matters to you

By releasing the CAD files for the accessory mount of its uniVerse Case System, Otterbox now allows users to design and 3D print their own custom accessories.

When Otterbox first released its modular uniVerse Case System it delivered an intriguing new concept for smartphone owners. The rugged case not only provided protection for mobile devices, it also came equipped with a specially designed accessory mount that in theory could be used to greatly expand the case’s functionality. In the months that followed we’ve seen an array of add-on modules introduced for the case, including extended-life battery packs, improved camera lenses, external speakers, and much more. Now, the company has taken the concept one step further by giving uniVerse case users the ability to design their own custom accessories as well.

Recently Otterbox released the CAD files for the uniVerse Case System’s accessory mount, giving designers and tinkerers the exact specifications they need to create custom add-ons for the very first time. The company also provided a few examples of what could be made using these files by offering downloadable patterns for a phone stand, suction cup holder, money clip, and even a bottle opener. Those patterns can be 3D printed and seamlessly integrate with the uniVerse for free.

In a press release announcing the availability of the CAD files, company CEO Jim Parke said “One of the core values at OtterBox is innovation, which is why we created the uniVerse Case System.” He went on to add, “We’re inviting the community of innovators around the world to customize their mobile experience by designing their own accessories.”

To make that process even easier Otterbox has partnered with 3D Hubs, which offers a network of more than 6,500 3D printers worldwide. This partnership allows uniVerse owners to not only design new accessories, but also locate a convenient place to have them turned into an actual, physical product as well. The uniVerse CAD files integrate directly into 3D Hubs’ own API, which means they can be uploaded to the company’s website and printed at one of its physical locations within a day or two.

Otterbox will further support this new initiative by attending the World Maker Faire in Flushing, New York, on September 23-24. Attendees of that event will actually get to see how easy it is to create their own uniVerse accessories and have them printed on the spot using a LulzBot TAZ 6 3D printer from Aleph Objects. 

Find out more and download the uniVerse CAD files here.

NordVPN’s Android app gets around China’s VPN ban

Why it matters to you

NordVPN’s new Android app makes it easier for Chinese users to circumvent internet restrictions.

Despite its reputation for internet censorship, China has historically turned a blind eye to the tens of millions of people who bypass its internet-filtering Great Firewall. But a recent government crackdown on abusers has made workarounds difficult to find.

Enter NordVPN, a virtual private network (VPN) provider that’s launching a new version of its unblocking software. The client, designed for phones running Google’s Android operating system, encrypts all traffic between websites and a user’s device and prevents the Chinese government’s software from monitoring activity.

NordVPN taps a network of more than 1,000 servers worldwide to route traffic around China’s Great Firewall. Users can hide their IP address — the unique string of numbers that identifies their device’s location — and use a quick selection tool to switch between servers based on their available load, connection speed, and geographic distance.

Of the more than 650 million people in China who use smartphones, almost 80 percent of them have an Android smartphone, according to NordVPN. Without the means to circumvent censorship software, they can’t use Facebook, Twitter, Google, and more than 135 out of 1,000 of the world’s top websites.

“NordVPN believes that online privacy protection, as well as access to the world wide web, should be available to everyone with a computer or smart mobile device,” Marty Kamden, CMO of NordVPN, said in a statement.

NordVPN’s launch comes as the Cyberspace Administration of China, the government body that regulates the country’s communications infrastructure, imposes new restrictions on internet users. In late August, it ruled that users would no longer be able to post discussion forum and social network comments anonymously, and in July blocked users from live-streaming video.

It’s part of President Xi Jinping’s “cyber sovereignty” campaign, a 14-month effort to clamp down on loopholes in the country’s internet restrictions.

“NordVPN stands for borderless and free Internet, and hopes to help Chinese users take advantage of the unrestricted global web with our updated Android app,” Kamden said.

The new NordVPN app is available in Google Play Store for Android. For users who aren’t able to access the Play Store, which is blocked in China, it’s hosted on NordVPN’s website. If you’re interested in more VPNs, check out our guide to the best VPN apps for Android and iOS.