Vtech settles FTC lawsuit over children’s data privacy

Two years ago, kids electronics maker Vtech suffered a data breach that exposed the personal info of five million customers (over half of whom were not adults). Naturally, the DOJ on behalf of the FTC brought a lawsuit against the company for violating online privacy laws for children, becoming the first such case involving Internet-connected toys. Today, Vtech agreed to pay a $650,000 fine as part of a settlement with the FTC.

Back in 2015, a hacker had broken in to Vtech’s systems and taken data from users who had registered accounts on the company’s ‘Learning Lodge’ app store. The DOJ complaint filed on behalf of the FTC that Vtech failed to directly notify product owners (i.e. parents) that they were storing data from users (i.e. children), nor collect the former’s consent to do so. Thus, the company violated the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA). The FTC also accused Vtech of failing to protect the data it acquired.

The settled fine against Vtech is roughly similar to the $700,000 punishment New York and Vermont attorneys general served to the Hilton hotel chain, which experienced a data breach that exposed credit card numbers. Vtech’s poor security didn’t result in the disclosure of financial data, but it did release names, dates of birth and gender of children. Heck, its privacy policy stated that all the information submitted would be encrypted, which was a lie, according to the FTC’s statement announcing the settlement. As part of the deal, Vtech must implement a ‘comprehensive data security program’ that will be audited annually for the next 20 years.

Source: FTC

Whirlpool and Yummly will stop you from wasting food

Back in 2017, appliance giant Whirlpool bought Yummly, the smart recipe network that plays host to over 25 million recipes. Now, the pair is showing off what the future of the partnership will look like by the second half of 2018, as both try to reverse the trend of everyone getting takeout for dinner.

Yummly’s app has been reengineered with computer vision smarts that’ll come in handy when you’ve got a half-stocked refrigerator and no idea what to eat. Use your smartphone’s camera to scan all of the items in the coolbox and its computer vision chops will divine a recipe for you.

Once you’ve decided what you’re going to cook, the information will be pushed to one of a new range of Whirlpool cookers. A small, 5-inch wide touchscreen on the stovetop will then display step-by-step instructions for each phase of the recipe.

So, it’ll tell you when you’ve got to throw your chicken, or asparagus, into the pan, and then when the requisite time has elapsed, tell you to turn it over. And, the hope is, you’ll be able to churn out better-looking, and better-tasting, meals with what would otherwise go to waste.

Unfortunately, the future of cooking is still a few months away, and even when it gets here, it’s going to be at the higher end of the price spectrum. But it’s something to bear in mind when it comes to getting your kitchen replaced in the next couple of years.

Nicole Lee contributed to this report.

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

Wireless Emergency Alerts system needs improvement and the FCC has a plan

The Wireless Emergency Alerts (WEA) system has been helping officials to notify communities of important happenings ever since it was introduced in 2012.

Sent directly to Americans’ smartphones, the alerts can notify people of “imminent threats to safety or life,” including extreme weather, terror attacks or evacuation emergencies, while also putting the word out about wanted suspects or missing children in a specific area.

But the system is far from perfect, and the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) wants to do something about it.

Proposals to be laid out by FCC chairman Ajit Pai on Tuesday are expected to insist telecom companies work more closely with smartphone manufacturers to ensure the alerts are sent to more precise locations accurate to within just a tenth of a mile, Re/code reports. This should ensure that when you do get an alert, you’ll definitely sit up and take notice instead of perhaps quickly dismissing it as irrelevant if you’re outside of the affected area.

It should therefore also reduce instances of smartphone users turning off the noisy alerts because they’re poorly targeted (hence annoying), which of course puts them at risk of missing an important one any time after that.

As Re/code points out, some of the system’s weaknesses were exposed during the recent North Bay wildfires in California. In a strongly worded letter sent to Pai last fall, California Senators Dianne Feinstein and Kamala Harris explained that first responders were unable to send out emergency alerts “because of significant technical deficiencies in the system.”

The technology issues alerts over wide areas for severe weather and missing children, but “because the WEA system does not enable precise geo-targeting — a feature that has been standard in mobile applications for years — emergency services cannot send an evacuation message without reaching a large number of unaffected residents,” the pair said, adding that the authorities are therefore “caught in a bind between notifying individuals in imminent danger and risking mass panic.”

Pai said that safety officials throughout the U.S. “have told the FCC how important it is to better pinpoint these alerts to impacted communities,” adding that improved accuracy “would encourage more local officials to use these alerts during emergencies as well as lead Americans to take more seriously the alerts they receive on their mobile devices.”

The proposals, which will be outlined in full on Tuesday, will be voted on at an FCC meeting in February, though a date for their implementation, if they are voted through, is yet to be set.

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AirSelfie debuts second-gen selfie drone with loads more memory and flight time

A little more than a year after its successful Kickstarter campaign raised more than $600,000 for what’s essentially a selfie drone in a smartphone case, AirSelfie debuted the AirSelfie2 at CES 2018 in Las Vegas on Tuesday. The new drone builds upon the original design, upgrades the camera from five to 12 megapixels, increases the camera’s field of view to 85 degrees, and improves battery life by 50 percent.

If you’re a selfie addict, the AirSelfie2 might be the drone for you.

One of the biggest drawbacks of the original design was the factthat  the AirSelfie could only fly for about three to five minutes, which was on the low end for smaller drones. That’s no longer an issue, and neither is memory capacity, as storage is quadrupled in the AirSelfie2 to 16GB.

Like the original model, you’ll control the drone through an app, which includes various modes, including Selfie and Flight, depending on the type of pictures you’re trying to take. The drone also has the capability to hover in one spot, and be safely retrieved out of the air using just your hand.

As far as we can tell, the new AirSelfie is about the same size and weight as the original drone, coming in at 3.72 x 2.71 x 0.45 inches, with a weight of just over two ounces. The company says the device is able to fly about 60 feet from its base.

Packaging includes the drone, a powerbank for recharging, a USB cable for connecting to a computer, and a protective bumper. It will retail for $300 when it becomes available in March. It will also come in four colors — silver, black, gold or rose gold — versus the silver-only option of the current AirSelfie.

“When you’re looking to capture life’s important moments, dramatic scenery, or large group shots, you want a combination of best-in-class technology and ease of use. The AirSelfie2 delivers precisely that,” CEO Stefano Cabella says.

We’ll take a look at the AirSelfie2 on the show floor this week. If you’re a selfie addict, we think this one might be the drone for you, but it certainly has a lot of competition.

Did SpaceX lose the classified Zuma payload during its latest launch?

SpaceX on Sunday launched a a rocket carrying a classified satellite codenamed Zuma, built by Northrop Grumman for the U.S. government.

While the initial stages of the mission seemed to go plan, it now appears there may have been a serious problem with the deployment of the satellite, with some reports suggesting it fell back to Earth after failing to separate from the spent upper stage of SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket. The first stage landed intact, as planned.

Mystery has always surrounded the mission, with no information ever offered about the role of the Zuma satellite, though it’s been suggested it contained powerful surveillance technology.

SpaceX’s failure to confirm the mission as a success on Sunday left many wondering if everything had gone to plan, and on Monday the Wall Street Journal reported industry and government officials as saying that House and Senate lawmakers have been informed about the “botched mission.”

If SpaceX did lose Zuma — a satellite estimated to be worth more than $1 billion — it’d be a serious blow for the private space company. Headed by billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk, SpaceX had been getting back on track with a string of successful launches and an increasingly busy mission schedule following a disaster in September, 2016, when one of its rockets exploded on a Cape Canaveral launchpad during pre-mission preparations. Social networking giant Facebook lost its Amos-6 satellite in the explosion, which was set to play a role in the company’s internet-serving venture. SpaceX grounded its operations for several months while it worked out what went wrong, before resuming launches at the start of 2017.

Another disaster would tarnish its reputation as a reliable deliverer of satellites to orbit, and may prompt future clients to look to competing companies to take their equipment into space.

In response to inquiries about Sunday’s mission, SpaceX would only say: “We do not comment on missions of this nature, but as of right now reviews of the data indicate Falcon 9 performed nominally,” while Northrop Grumman said, “This is a classified mission. We cannot comment on classified missions.”

If either company offers up any further information about what happened on Sunday evening, we’ll be sure to update.

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SpaceX reportedly lost its mysterious Zuma payload

While SpaceX successfully relanded the most recent Falcon 9 it launched — Elon Musk even tweeted about it — its top secret payload apparently met a different fate. According to The Wall Street Journal, Zuma failed to make it to orbit, and authorities believe it has plummeted back into the atmosphere. No government agency stepped forward to claim the satellite, but industry experts estimate its cost to be billions of dollars. WSJ says the satellite didn’t separate from Falcon 9’s upper stage as it should have, but Bloomberg reports that it was the rocket’s second stage itself that had failed.

Harvard-Smithsonian astronomer Jonathan McDowell noted that space situational awareness service Space-Track catalogued Zuma. Space-Track adding something to its catalog means that object made it to orbit. However, Navy Captain Brook DeWalt told Bloomberg that the military division has “nothing to add to the satellite catalog at this time.” It’s all conflicting reports all around, and unfortunately, both SpaceX and Northrop Grumman, which built the satellite, refuse to talk. “We do not comment on missions of this nature; but as of right now reviews of the data indicate Falcon 9 performed nominally,” the space corporation told Engadget.

If the payload truly crashed or disappeared, then this incident came at a bad time for SpaceX. The company is hoping to start ferrying astronauts to the ISS this year and to win more contracts from the Pentagon. Although what happened to Zuma remains shrouded in mystery, McDowell said Northrop Grumman provided its own adapter used to attach the payload to the rocket’s final stage. If the adapter was the one that failed to pop off when it was time for Zuma to detach itself, then the incident might not be SpaceX’s fault at all.

To recap: Normally when you buy a rocket launch, you’ve paid for “the payload adapter on the rocket final stage pops the satellite off at the end”. But on this mission the customer provided its own payload adapter, so separation may be its problem and not SpaceX’s problem

— Jonathan McDowell (@planet4589) January 9, 2018

Recap 2: Assume satellite catalog entry is not an error. Still doesn’t mean USA 280 is still in orbit, or that it separated from stage 2. Suggests that payload/stage 2 remained attached and completed 1.5 orbits (winning it a catalog entry), then performed deorbit

— Jonathan McDowell (@planet4589) January 9, 2018

Recap 3: Stage 2 was going to deorbit after 1.5 orbits anyway. Probably it had no way of knowing that the payload was still attached!

— Jonathan McDowell (@planet4589) January 9, 2018

Source: The Wall Street Journal

The Little Fish VS1 is a smart speaker powered by China’s Alexa

It might not have the star power of Alexa or Google Assistant, but DuerOS, Chinese web giant Baidu’s AI platform, continues to pick up steam in its native country. It seems like Baidu is trying to curry favor with a more international audience, too — it’s here at CES to show off smart speakers that almost certainly won’t wind up in the United States. The most sensible of the models on display was a cutesy, fabric-covered Echo Show lookalike called the Little Fish VSI, which wins our Best of CES 2018 award for Cutest, Least Descriptive Product Name.

We’re being glib, but the Little Fish VS1 is actually quite a pleasure to play with. Naturally, DuerOS resisted all my attempts to talk to in English, but my colleague was able to check out the (depressing) weather in New York by asking in Mandarin. More importantly, a camera wedged into the bezel above the top of the screen is able to recognize individual users and tailor the way it responds to people. We haven’t used the VS1 long enough to get it to recognize us, but even if it did, most of us wouldn’t be able to understand it anyway. As you’d expect from what amounts to a Chinese Echo Show or Smart Display, though, the VS1 has deep ties to services like Baidu search (duh) and the iQiyi steaming video platform.

Normally, we might not spend so much time playing with a distinctly foreign smart speaker. The thing is, Baidu likes to hint that its AI ambitions won’t be limited to China. Baidu hasn’t cooked up a concrete plan to bring its DuerOS to the US, but when asked, a representative indicated it was a possibility. Comments made to Wired also point to a potential international push (though one that doesn’t involve the US). Localizing a voice assistant with roots in another language is no small feat, but Baidu isn’t necessarily shying away from the work — it just has other priorities right now.

Corsair’s wireless gaming keyboard has a 75-hour battery life

If Logitech’s no-lag wireless gaming keyboard converted you into a fan of no-wires gaming, you’ll love Corsair’s new offerings. The peripheral-maker has launched a handful of devices at CES 2018, including a wireless gaming keyboard of its own, as well as a (huge) mousepad that doubles as a Qi charger. Corsair used CHERRY MX Red mechanical keys for the K63 keyboard and equipped it with a battery that it says can keep it running for 75 hours despite its adjustable blue backlighting. If it truly can last 75 hours, then you don’t have to worry about running out of juice in the middle of a game.

It’s also encrypted to protect you from wireless eavesdropping and can wireless connect to your computer either via Bluetooth or a wireless dongle. But if you can’t entirely trust a wireless keyboard to get you through an important raid or battle, you can also plug it in with a USB cord.

Corsair has also launched the MM1000 Qi wireless charging mousepad, which can charge your mouse while you use it. The pad can charge any other Qi-compatible device, though, even smartphones like the Samsung Galaxy S8 and the iPhones 8 and X. In addition, it comes with a USB Micro-B, Type-C and Lightning Qi charging adapters that you can use to charge other gadgets that don’t come with built-in Qi.

The company’s new wireless gaming keyboard (and its accompanying gaming lapboard) is now available on Corsair’s website and retailers for $130. If you’re more interested in the MM1000, keep an eye out for it: the mousepad-slash-wireless-charger will come out sometime this month and will set you back $108.

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

Source: Corsair (1), (2)

Ashley Chloe wants to build a modular smart speaker in 2019

Headphone company Ashley Chloe is thinking about building a modular smart speaker that will create a whole ecosystem of products around it. The firm turned up to CES with a concept device — little more than an industrial design model — that, if there’s enough interest, may become a real product by the end of 2019.

The Ashley Chloe Ensembl is a series of plastic discs sat atop a rose gold and cream plastic cylinder that could replace the Echo in your home. The idea is that, at its heart, it’s a stylish smart speaker that can work with one or two of the major voice assistant platforms.

But on top of that, users could slap on a number of accessories, including a 360-degree IP camera for home security or a glowing lantern disc for use outside at night. If you’re feeling flusher, you could splash out on a pico projector disc for movie night, a QI charging base or a battery for taking the speaker on the go.

Each of the discs, which are for now just pieces of painted plastic, would retail for between $50 and $100-ish, depending on what item you’re buying. And Ashley Chloe is also hoping that third parties will join the bandwagon and produce other accessories for this ecosystem.

The modules themselves would be connected either by USB-C, pogo pins, or both, depending on, again, what happens in the next two years. And it’s thought that the basic speaker, which would either rival Google Home or an Amazon Echo, would set you back around $199.

You know, if it becomes anything more than a stack of plastic discs.

Nicole Lee contributed to this report.

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

Libratone brings adjustable noise cancellation to wireless earbuds

Libratone’s adjustable noise cancellation has been available for a while if you’ve been willing to plug in or wear over-ear cups, but what if you prefer wireless earbuds for your fitness sessions? You’re set from now on. The Danish outfit has introduced Track+ Wireless In-Ear Earphones that let you dial out external sounds while remaining relatively discreet. As with Libratone’s earlier models, you have four levels of cancellation that dictate how much outside sound gets in: you can let in a lot of it if you’re running outside, or shut it out entirely if you’re commuting on a noisy subway car. You can also use the microphones to amplify external sound if you want to hold a conversation or listen for worrying noises without removing your buds.

The Track+ is water- and sweat-resistant, and comes with a range of ear tips that include sport-oriented models. It won’t be cheap, though — it’ll sell for $199/£169 when they arrive in early 2018. With that in mind, Libratone’s latest offering might be worth considering if you don’t want to completely give up noise cancellation just to be sure you can hear oncoming traffic.

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

Source: Libratone