Touchless computing, wireless power, and more trends that will define CES 2018

Once a year, I take a deep breath, open the overflowing CES folder in my inbox, and sort through hundreds of emails to see what’s cooking at the largest gadget show in the world. Sure, I spend all year studying the tech world and looking for Digital Trends (see what I did there?), but it’s the hundreds of products unveiled or announced at the show that really set the agenda for the year ahead in tech.

I don’t always get it right.

“Touchless” interfaces should make voice assistants far more versatile in the year ahead.

In 2016, I said we’d see driving gadgets galore, which promised to refresh that old hoopty. Did you buy one? I doubt it. In 2017, I predicted “4,000 4K announcements,” and declared that content providers were finally catching up. While there were tons of new players offering internet TV streaming packages, some key names were absent. Indeed, you could argue that exactly the opposite has happened. I will, below. Hey, you can’t get ‘em all right.

Of course, I also predicted the boom in truly wireless headphones and last year’s security frenzy, so I’m not totally off my rocker here.

There’s always interesting stuff to watch and envelopes to be on the edge of at CES, from the Halo “5D printer” by Ethereal Machines to Sniffy, a French company selling a screen that somehow conveys smell and taste. Here’s a few trends that you’ll see emerge in Las Vegas and in the year ahead – we’ll see how accurate my predictions are soon.

Alexa (and “touchless computing”) explode

The big story in 2017 was the rise of the smart assistant, with Alexa embedded in everything  from speakers and lights to cars and even furniture. This year promises even more pervasive adoption of voice computing, but the ubiquity of “touchless” interfaces should make voice assistants far more versatile in the year ahead.

Ed Oswald envisioned the near future for us recently: “Imagine picking up your empty bottle of juice and saying ‘Alexa, order this’ and it being ordered for you, without you, since Alexa understands what you’re looking at or holding.” This will require cameras and detailed geolocation abilities like that being shown off at CES by Crea.vision, which uses computer vision sensors to recognize who’s where in your house. And that sounds far more useful than mere weather reports.

Voice assistants will sell you on smart homes

The widespread acceptance of voice assistants will be a huge driver for the smart home in the year ahead, and I expect will be the primary driver of smart home products. You bought a speaker, so why not get lights and locks and thermostats to work with it?

So sure, expect to hear about dozens of new smart speakers, including LG’s newly unveiled ThinQ, but look beyond that and you’ll see the real promise of the Internet of Things taking shape: a smart button for pervasive connectivity. A smart fertility monitor from a new company called Mira. A smart deadbolt you can unlock from your phone. And technology like Qualcomm’s Smart Audio Platform to bring voice control and connectivity to everything that isn’t yet connected.

Chinese companies you’ve never heard of take over

A funny thing happened at CES last year: China quietly took over. From car companies like Faraday Future and LeEco to TV makers like TCL and Hi-Sense, Chinese companies exploded at the 2017 show. Expect even more of a presence from China, as the country moves to rival Asian powerhouses like South Korea and Japan for U.S. dollars.

We expect an enormous showing from Huawei, which plans a keynote address and a massive push into U.S. markets in 2018. The company recently ran a series of ads describing itself as “the biggest phone company you’ve never heard of” – and plans to make sure that in 2018, you hear of them. We picked the new Mate 10 Pro as one of the best smartphones of 2017, after all. Look for big news from Xiaomi, TCL – which says it as “among America’s fast-growing television brand for the past four years” – and others.

Wireless power is here at last

Two years ago I said we’d see wireless power from Cota and others. We haven’t. But they swear up and down that it’s going arrive in 2018, and from the buzz I’m hearing I believe it. Cota is still trying – and at CES Unveiled this past November, it unveiled a product that realizes the hype. The Forever Battery is a wirelessly charged alternative to AA batteries, and it won a CES 2017 Innovation Award. Meanwhile, a company called WiBa will show off a power bank that charges itself wirelessly while simultaneously charging your phones and other gadgets wirelessly. The death of wires is imminent!

The death of cable TV

Any consumer worth their salt knows 4K is the big buzzword in TVs. Shopping for a new flatscreen? You obviously want a 4K TV. And this year at CES, LG plans to show off an 8K TV, which is sure to make you the envy of the neighbors and set off a new round of keeping up with the Jonses. LG’s latest is a huge 88-inch 8K OLED TV that will be the largest OLED display on the planet. The TV’s resolution will be 7,680 x 4,320, which is 16 times more pixels than 1080p and four times that of today’s 4K TVs.

But here’s the thing: TV simply hasn’t kept pace. And consumers know this. Buy a new TV and they don’t turn on CBS, they head straight to Netflix, both for the superior quality of content and for the higher resolutions. As more 4K and ultimately 8K sets are released, and visual quality from Comcast, Charter, Time Warner, Cox, and even FiOS and AT&T continue to lag, the pace of cord cutting is sure to improve. Just watch out.

A use for AR/VR?

I’m not a believer in virtual reality’s power to transform the world. I don’t want to sit on the couch next to my friends and family encased in a headset and in my own world, I want to watch a movie and laugh and cry along with everyone else. But it’s hard to discount the slew of AR announcements we’re seeing around CES.

For example, Lumus makes transparent displays that enable AR headsets, and in December, the company announced a major deal with Quanta, a giant manufacturer with designs on the space. Will we see dozens of new iterations on Google Glass? Meanwhile, Epson is unveiling a new version of its Moverio AR glasses, a company called ThirdEye will show off the X1 glasses … heck, there’s a whole Augmented Reality marketplace in the South Hall of CES.

Autonomous is cool, but electric cars rule

We’ve only begun to scratch the surface of self-driving cars, which remain the most eye-catching and buzzy showpieces of CES. But it’s not only the vehicle manufacturer’s booths you’ll want to check out: Most big tech companies have their eyes on autos. Intel’s many initiatives at CES include the technology featured “under the hood,” graphics giant Nvidia has transformed itself into a leader in the machine-vision that lets cars pilot themselves, speech-recognition pioneer Dragon aims to help you and your car chat, and so on.

Nvidia has transformed itself into a leader in the machine-vision that lets cars pilot themselves.

Meanwhile, the real trend to watch is the explosion of the electric car market. All of the neat new car startups? Electric car makers, including a brand new entry to the space. Called Byton, it promises to be not just  an electric car but “a smart intuitive vehicle,” whatever that nonsense means. Then there’s the Solo, the world’s only one-person, all electric vehicle (made by Electra Meccanica). And Nissan will be showing off the 2018 Leaf, which impressed us by how ordinary it is.

Electric cars are the new internal combustion cars, which spells a huge revolution in U.S. infrastructure, something the U.S. government would be wise to prepare for as we look forward to the billion dollar infrastructure bill. Do we need more gas stations and gas pipelines? Or do we need electric charging stations at every shopping mall from Bangor to Berkeley?

Better laptops than ever before

New Snapdragon chips from Qualcomm enable a new generation of laptops that for the first time ever, really provide a viable alternative to traditional Intel and AMD chips. Snapdragon-powered laptops were unveiled at a splashy event in Hawaii last month; they boast battery life of up to 25 hours if you can believe that. Expect to hear about a dozen or so models from CES 2018. Meanwhile, chips based on Intel’s eighth-generation Core i7 will abound as well, such as the very attractive Samsung Notebook 9.

Editors’ Recommendations

• Amazon’s Alexa assistant looks to smarten up select 2018 Hisense TVs
• What kind of crazy TVs will we see at CES 2018? It starts with LG’s 8K OLED
• 5 tech trends you’ll be talking about in 2018
• LG’s 2018 TV lineup gets smarter and faster, adds Google Assistant
• LG products powered by A.I. will be tied together under the new ThinQ brand

Nintendo’s Miiverse lives on in a giant internet archive

Nintendo’s Miiverse is dead. However, that doesn’t mean that all your message board posts have disappeared into the ether. Drastic Actions and the Archive Team have launched Archiverse, an unofficial but very thorough collection of Miiverse posts. There are roughly 133 million posts, 217 million replies, 76 million screenshots and 72 million drawings — all told, just shy of 17TB of data. It even includes developer-specific communities and the E3 communities that Nintendo delisted.

It sounds daunting, but there are ways to find exactly what you’re looking for. You can search by game title or user, and you can filter posts by their content (such as drawings) or the number of “yeahs.”

Are you going to spend a long time browsing? Probably not. The most obvious use case involves digging up your old posts for nostalgia’s sake, rather than trying to track down references to a specific game. However, this isn’t so much about regular use as it is preserving an important part of gaming history. Miiverse became a significant part of gaming culture for Wii U and 3DS owners after its late 2012 launch, and the Archiverse makes sure that culture won’t disappear forever.

Okay, everyone, I have now launched https://t.co/K3Hy7fLwKp, your guide into the Miiverse Archives!

216,901,986 Replies
133,003,599 Posts
75,955,135 Screenshots
72,135,190 Drawings
8,278,693 User Profiles

That’s nearly 17 terabytes of data saved by @archiveteam! pic.twitter.com/K0oFtuIIKn

— Drastic “MAGfest” Actions (@drasticactionSA) January 3, 2018

Via: Polygon

Source: Archiverse, Drastic Actions (Twitter)

LG’s new CLOi robots want to serve at hotels and supermarkets

LG made quite an impression with a range of robots at last year’s CES, and it’s not stopping there. Following the trial runs of its Airport Guide Robot and the Airport Cleaning Robot at Incheon International Airport, the Korean company is now expanding its family of robots — now branded under “CLOi” — with three new models geared towards commercial use: Serving Robot, Porter Robot and Shopping Cart Robot. These machines appear to be about the same size as the Airport Guide Robot, and you’ll find a familiar pair of jade-colored eyes on a circular plate at the top.

As you can tell from the name, you can expect to see LG’s Serving Robot at the likes of hotels, airport lounges and maybe even restaurants, where it can deliver drinks and meals to customers using its sliding tray. It also appears to have second compartment at the top which can provide other items — like a towel as shown in the above photo.

As for the Porter Robot, it’s designed to handle express check-in and check-out (including payments) to reduce wait time at hotels, as well as to help carry a suitcase around. There’s no word on what the maximum suitcase size is, but based on the above photo, it should at least be a medium-sized suitcase instead of hand-carry size.

Last but not least, the Shopping Cart Robot is exactly what it says it is, and it’ll be showing up at premium supermarkets. It has a built-in barcode scanner that lets customers check prices, as well as a display to show your shopping list. And as you may have guessed, the robot is also able to lead you to your desired products, and you can make such requests through a smartphone app.

Specific details on these new LG CLOi robots are still light at the moment, but we’ll obviously hear more about them at CES next week, so stay tuned.

Click here to catch up on the latest news from CES 2018.

Want to help bail people out of jail with spare change? There’s an app for that

When is the last time you donated money to charity? When is the last time you donated money specifically to help people who are arrested to post bail? For most people, no matter how charitable, the second of these questions is unlikely to yield any reaction other than “never.” But it probably should. Even though the United States justice system states that a person is innocent until proven guilty, a sizable proportion of the 12 million people arrested each year can’t afford to pay bail — with some spending weeks, months, or occasionally even years behind bars before seeing their day in court.

Well, to paraphrase an iconic Apple commercial, there’s now an app for that. Called Appolition, the idea is that it is linked to a user’s bank account. Whenever they make a payment — either via debit or credit card, or even PayPal — the price is rounded up to the nearest dollar. That spare change is then donated to a grassroots organization called National Bail Out, which provides funds to black Americans who are being held on bail that they cannot afford.

“Appolition is the first technology built to crowdfund bail and has been extremely well received by thousands,” Dr. Kortney Ziegler, co-founder of Appolition, told Digital Trends. “Appolitionists range from community activists, elders who have never used an app before, legislators in the field of bail reform to celebrities who publicly evangelize the product. This wide range of early adopters share one common belief: That the money bail system is unjust and unfair.”

Appolition came into being after Ziegler posted the idea on Twitter in July 2017, describing “an app that converts your daily change into bail money to free black people.” After this, Ziegler and co-founder Tiffany Mikell put up a landing page to solicit support from people interested in helping to bring the product to market. “We eventually partnered with two black founders and worked over four months to conceptualize the branding and develop the functionality of Appolition,” she continued.

The app was launched late last year to great success. Within its first 24 hours, 200 users had signed up to the service. “We are now at seven thousand signups and are collecting thousands in spare change daily to support the efforts of National Bail Out campaign,” Ziegler said. If you want to get involved with a worthwhile social cause, you can sign up now to begin your donations.

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Want to help bail people out of jail with spare change? There’s an app for that

When is the last time you donated money to charity? When is the last time you donated money specifically to help people who are arrested to post bail? For most people, no matter how charitable, the second of these questions is unlikely to yield any reaction other than “never.” But it probably should. Even though the United States justice system states that a person is innocent until proven guilty, a sizable proportion of the 12 million people arrested each year can’t afford to pay bail — with some spending weeks, months, or occasionally even years behind bars before seeing their day in court.

Well, to paraphrase an iconic Apple commercial, there’s now an app for that. Called Appolition, the idea is that it is linked to a user’s bank account. Whenever they make a payment — either via debit or credit card, or even PayPal — the price is rounded up to the nearest dollar. That spare change is then donated to a grassroots organization called National Bail Out, which provides funds to black Americans who are being held on bail that they cannot afford.

“Appolition is the first technology built to crowdfund bail and has been extremely well received by thousands,” Dr. Kortney Ziegler, co-founder of Appolition, told Digital Trends. “Appolitionists range from community activists, elders who have never used an app before, legislators in the field of bail reform to celebrities who publicly evangelize the product. This wide range of early adopters share one common belief: That the money bail system is unjust and unfair.”

Appolition came into being after Ziegler posted the idea on Twitter in July 2017, describing “an app that converts your daily change into bail money to free black people.” After this, Ziegler and co-founder Tiffany Mikell put up a landing page to solicit support from people interested in helping to bring the product to market. “We eventually partnered with two black founders and worked over four months to conceptualize the branding and develop the functionality of Appolition,” she continued.

The app was launched late last year to great success. Within its first 24 hours, 200 users had signed up to the service. “We are now at seven thousand signups and are collecting thousands in spare change daily to support the efforts of National Bail Out campaign,” Ziegler said. If you want to get involved with a worthwhile social cause, you can sign up now to begin your donations.

Editors’ Recommendations

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• Spend for both commodities and causes with social impact app Beam

After a quiet year, is Microsoft ready to wake up, or settle down?

Microsoft finished 2016 strong, riding high on the strength of several initiatives that had us convinced that it was maintaining the PC’s place at the top of the technology mountain. By the end of 2017, Microsoft was riding high again — or at least it’s stock price were.

Even so, the company’s perception in the market is decidedly mixed as we enter into 2018. So let’s take a look back at a year that was relatively muted for the PC market’s most dominant force, to answer this question: where will Microsoft go in 2018?

Has Surface matured, or is the best still to come?

In 2015, it was the original Surface Book (along with Windows 10 itself) that mesmerized the market with its screen that rips off of a traditional clamshell notebook base. Microsoft wowed audiences again in 2016 with the stirring introduction of the Surface Studio, the most innovative desktop of the year (and maybe the decade).

Microsoft’s perception in the market is decidedly mixed as we enter into 2018.

In 2017, Microsoft was far more conservative. Its new, major piece of hardware was the Surface Laptop, a well-built clamshell notebook that has some attractive design features — but nothing that stands out as terribly innovative. Unlike the Surface Pro, Surface Book, and Surface Studio, the Surface Laptop didn’t redefine or expand the possibilities of its given form factor. Instead, it fit nicely into an already-crowded segment and included a poorly-explained and execution of Windows 10 S that still doesn’t make much sense.

Everything else we saw from Microsoft in 2017 was a refinement on the products that have become staples in the Surface lineup. The first was the Surface Pro, the evolutionary fifth-generation model of Microsoft’s excellent and mature detachable tablet. While it looked nearly identical to the its predecessor (the Surface Pro 4), it was made even better in terms of performance and battery life. It’s become such a recommendable device that we even named it our computing product of the year for 2017.

And then at the tail end of the year, the Surface Book 2 was introduced, which added a 15-inch model to the lineup and significantly increased its power. Again, the design was nearly identical, but refinements to the basics like performance and battery life were significant.

The amount to which Microsoft was playing it safe caused some people to doubt whether Surface had a future, and was merely retreating due to diminishing sales. The division’s leader Panos Panay quickly shot down the rumors as mere “tabloid” gossip, and that’s not surprising. The fact remains that Surface continues to achieve a very real purpose no matter how many units it sells — to keep pushing the industry forward and making sure Windows 10 has great machines to show off its best capabilities. And so far, the other PC manufacturers are responding with their own highly competitive machines.

There’s likely to be more innovation coming from Surface in 2018, such as the very real potential for a different kind of mobile “phone” device that could even bring Microsoft’s former Courier concept to life. For 2017, Surface may have merely held its own, but it could be that Microsoft is entering into a “tick-tock” release cycle that defines many companies follow.

Microsoft’s consumer strategy is cloudy, at best

Microsoft’s strategy, or at least those aspects that pumped up its stock value throughout 2017, was heavily related to the cloud, the enterprise, and productivity. Whether it’s Azure, LinkedIn, Office, or any of the company’s myriad business-oriented services, the news came hot and heavy throughout the year — and most if it was good.

Consumers are providing lukewarm welcomes to some of the areas where Microsoft continues to push forward.

For example, Microsoft killed off its Groove Music service in 2017, abdicating a service that’s important to mobile users and pushing them over to Spotify instead. Windows Mobile was finally put to bed, raising important questions about the company’s mobile future, and the Microsoft Band fitness-oriented wearable was also discontinued (even earlier, in late 2016). One might think that Microsoft’s consumer focus was becoming hazy at best.

At the same time, consumers are providing lukewarm welcomes to some of the areas where Microsoft continues to push forward. Its first Cortana-powered speaker, the Harman Kardon Invoke, hasn’t fared well against entrenched competitors like Amazon’s Alexa and Echo products and Google Home. Indeed, Microsoft partnered with Amazon to let Alexa respond to Cortana commands, which seems like a capitulation in the home digital assistant market.

Nevertheless, there are signs that consumers remain important. The Xbox One X, for example, gives some hope that Microsoft hasn’t completely left consumers behind. The new ultra-powerful console is a real tip of the hat to hardcore gamers, offering more power to the Xbox platform than ever and proving that Microsoft isn’t yet all business. Toss in the release (finally!) of the Windows Mixed Reality platform and its associated low-cost headsets, along with the continued focus in Windows 10 on creative types with the Creators Update and Fall Creators Update, and it’s obvious that Microsoft isn’t in the retreating position.

Rather than proving that Microsoft is giving up on consumers to focus exclusively on business, it’s more likely that CEO Satya Nadella is refusing fund products that aren’t paying for themselves in either revenue or contributions to pushing other products and technologies forward. In that way, Microsoft’s strategy isn’t unlike Google’s: doubling down on successes, relentlessly cutting failures, and not being afraid to experiment. As far as we can tell, this is the strategy that will continue to be played out in product releases in 2018.

2018 should be clarifying

In short, 2017 wasn’t nearly as exciting for Microsoft as the preceding 12 months. It might even be fair to say that the year was a sort of pause for the company, a chance to take a breather. Heading into 2018, things are likely to heat up a bit as some new initiatives take off and some new directions are pursued.

2018 could mark a return to the excitement we felt following the company’s incredibly innovative 2016.

Perhaps most significant on the third-party hardware side is the official rollout of the “Always Connected PC” that was just barely introduced at the tail end of 2017 by Microsoft and Qualcomm. These new long-lasting notebooks and 2-in-1s — coming first in the HP Envy x2 detachable tablet and Asus NovaGo notebook — represent the most direct response to the battery life and connectivity advantages of ARM-based smartphones and tablets, bringing ARM processors like the Snapdragon 835 to Windows 10 machines. While Microsoft has supported this new line of laptops, it’s the biggest shift in Windows PCs to occur in a while that hasn’t come directly from Microsoft. If these PCs take off, we should expect to see Microsoft respond in some way within its own product lines, most notably the Surface Pro.

We’re also expecting a bigger year for Windows 10 in 2018. In spite of receiving two major updates, Windows 10 arguably went through minimal changes in 2017. But it’s poised for a leap forward in productivity with new features like Timeline and Sets, which both promise to make Windows 10 even more conducive to getting work done in different ways. Microsoft is also expected to release a new version of its productivity suite with Office 2019, which should bring a host of new features and potentially compliance with Windows 10’s new Fluent Design aesthetic.

Finally, Microsoft could take a huge step forward in its vision of ubiquitous Windows 10 computing with the release of a dual-screen, Courier-like Surface “Phone’ device. If so, then 2018 will mark a return to the excitement we felt following the company’s incredibly innovative 2016 — making 2017 something of a gap year. With the amount of coals Microsoft has in the fire, 2018 could very well end up being its biggest year since 2015.

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FCC chairman Ajit Pai cancels planned CES appearance one week before the show

On Wednesday, January 3, Federal Communications Commission chairman Ajit Pai canceled a scheduled appearance at CES one week before the show. During the event, Pai was supposed to be part of a panel alongside Maureen Ohlhausen, the Federal Trade Commission’s acting chairwomen, and moderated by Consumer Technology Association president Gary Shapiro, in a so-called “candid conversation.” The session would have been Pai’s first appearance at CES as FCC chairman and CES 2018 will mark the first time he has missed the show in five years.

Almost no information has been given regarding why Pai canceled his appearance at the show, other than an email from the Consumer Technology Association.

“Unfortunately, Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai is unable to attend CES 2018,” said the email. “We look forward to our next opportunity to host a technology policy discussion with him before a public audience.” Neither Pai’s office nor Shapiro immediately replied to requests for more information about the sudden decision, though we will update this article if they do.

Pai has been no stranger to controversy over the past year or so. His name has become near-synonymous with the rollback of net neutrality protections of the internet, a decision that is unpopular among consumers because of the power it gives internet service providers to create so-called “internet fast lanes,” and paid prioritization among companies that can afford it.

The FCC, in general, is likely gearing up for a tumultuous 2018. After the commission voted in favor of repealing net neutrality, several companies, advocacy groups, and other organizations voiced intent to sue the FCC. The Commission is in the process of editing the final repeal order, and the wording of that repeal order could possibly end up helping Pai and the FCC combat those upcoming lawsuits. It is not unusual for orders such as this to be released weeks after a vote.

It’s unlikely the event was canceled by the CTA. Despite the unpopularity of Pai’s stances, the session would have likely been well-attended. It’s unclear if the session will still go ahead without Pai, or if it will be canceled altogether.

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Intel, ARM and AMD processors all impacted by new Meltdown and Spectre exploits, Google issuing patches

After initial reports suggested a new security flaw was confined to Intel systems, researchers have now disclosed that nearly all modern processors are affected.

Security researchers have disclosed two new exploits that can be executed against modern processors. Dubbed “Meltdown” and “Spectre,” the exploits use similar methods to impact processors from Intel, AMD and ARM across PCs, mobile devices and in the cloud. The researchers explain:

Meltdown and Spectre exploit critical vulnerabilities in modern processors. These hardware bugs allow programs to steal data which is currently processed on the computer. While programs are typically not permitted to read data from other programs, a malicious program can exploit Meltdown and Spectre to get hold of secrets stored in the memory of other running programs. This might include your passwords stored in a password manager or browser, your personal photos, emails, instant messages and even business-critical documents.

Meltdown and Spectre are distinct attacks, but they both allow attackers to break isolation between applications to access information. Perhaps the biggest difference, however, is the specific processors affected by each attack. Meltdown, the researchers say, has only been assessed to impact Intel processors. However, the range of potentially affected processors is vast:

More technically, every Intel processor which implements out-of-order execution is potentially affected, which is effectively every processor since 1995 (except Intel Itanium and Intel Atom before 2013). We successfully tested Meltdown on Intel processor generations released as early as 2011. Currently, we have only verified Meltdown on Intel processors. At the moment, it is unclear whether ARM and AMD processors are also affected by Meltdown.

Spectre, on the other hand, appears to have a much wider reach. According to researchers, nearly every type of device is affected by Spectre; it has been verified to work across Intel, AMD and ARM processors. Spectre is harder to exploit than Meltdown, but researchers caution that it is also harder to guard against. The attacks also work against cloud servers, which could leave customer data vulnerable.

Fortunately, at least some fixes are in the wild or on the way. For Google’s part, it has an FAQ listing the status of its products and how they’re affected:

• Google says it has patched the vulnerabilities in the January security patch to be released to Android devices.
• Chromebooks with an Intel processor and kernel 3.18 or 4.4 are patched with Chrome OS 63. Chromebooks with older kernels will be patched via Kernel Page Table Isolation (KPTI) in a future release. Chromebooks on ARM processors are not known to be vulnerable, but will receive KPTI in a future update regardless.
• Version 64 of the Chrome browser, due to release this month, “will contain mitigations to protect against exploitation.”
• Google Home, Chromecast, Google Wifi and Google OnHub are all listed as “no additional user action needed.”
• G Suite (Google Apps) has been fixed on the back end and requires no user interaction.

Google also claims that it is “unaware of any successful reproduction of this vulnerability that would allow unauthorized information disclosure on ARM-based Android devices.” The question is, of course, how that could change now that more details about the exploits have been revealed and before the myriad Android manufacturers get security patches released to their devices.

For the true nerds among us, ARM has gone into detail about which types of processors using specific ARM designs will be vulnerable to specific types of these attacks.

There are patches against Meltdown for Linux, Windows, and macOS. Spectre is not an easy fix, it seems, and the researchers say that there is ongoing work to “harden software against future exploitation of Spectre, respectively to patch software after exploitation through Spectre.”

You can read more on Spectre and Meltdown, including more technical details, in the researchers’ full report.

Deal: LG V30 on sale for $675 ($150 off)

A $150 discount never hurt anyone.

It was pretty hard to buy a lousy phone last year, and one of the better ones that didn’t receive all that much attention was the LG V30. The V30 is easily one of LG’s best phones to date, but unfortunately, it was overshadowed by the likes of the Note 8, Pixel 2 XL, and iPhone X. However, thanks to a new discount, now might be the best time to pick it up.

If you head to B&H’s website right now, you can purchase the V30 for just $675. That’s a saving of $150 compared to its regular price of $825, and it’s for the 64GB Cloud Silver model.

This is the unlocked V30, and it can be used on AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile, and Verizon. There’s a 5.7-inch OLED display, Snapdragon 835 processor, 4GB RAM, and dual 16MP + 13MP rear cameras.

We aren’t sure how long this deal will last, so be sure to click/tap that button below soon to make sure you don’t miss out.

See at B&H

LG V30

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DHS to release an active shooter training simulator for teachers

Last June, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) released a virtual training program for first responders aimed at preparing them for an active shooter incident. Now, there’s a program specifically for teachers. “With teachers, they did not self-select into a role where they expect to have bullets flying near them. Unfortunately, it’s becoming a reality,” Tamara Griffith, one of the chief engineers of the program, told Gizmodo. “And so we want to give them that chance to understand what options are available to them and what might work well for them.”

The platform, called Enhanced Dynamic Geo-Social Environment, or EDGE, was developed by DHS and the US Army and was built on Epic Games’ Unreal engine. For this particular program, the developers listened to audio taken from the Virginia Tech and Sandy Hook shootings in order to make the simulations as accurate as possible. They also spoke to a mother of one of the Sandy Hook victims, according to the Associated Press, and she gave them details about what happened throughout that day.

In the training program, participants can play the role of teacher, shooter or officer and the program can take into account different safety measures that a particular school might have. For instance, intercom systems or automatic locks can be worked into the simulation. While working through the virtual shooting incident, participants are given tips on effective practices such as locking doors and constructing barricades. “The more experience you have, the better your chances of survival are,” said Griffith. “So this allows you to practice and have multiple experiences [and] know what works and what doesn’t work.”

The EDGE simulator for teachers is scheduled to be released this spring.

Via: Gizmodo