Google may soon require Android manufacturers to push regular security updates

Google is getting a little more serious about security updates. The company held its annual Google I/O developer conference in Mountain View, California, May 8-10, where it revealed that it would be working on ways to make it easier for manufacturers to bring security updates to their phones.

Perhaps even more important is the fact that Google will be tweaking the agreement it has with manufacturers to include security updates — meaning that contractually, to use the official version of Android, manufacturers may have to stay up-to-date with the latest Android patches.

“We’ve also worked on building security patching into our OEM agreements,” Google revealed at a session at Google I/O, according to XDA-Developers. Now this will really … lead to a massive increase in the number of devices and users receiving regular security patches.”

That’s a pretty big change to how Google has done things in the past. Google releases security updates every month, and normally manufacturers get the patches a month in advance — which is why some manufacturers are able to release the updates on the same day as Google. To date, however, Google hasn’t required companies to push updates to their devices, though larger companies often push the updates to their flagship devices.

There aren’t a ton of details about the program just yet. For example, we don’t yet know if manufacturers will have to release security patches every month, like Google — though if we had to bet, we’d assume that they will. After all, Google doesn’t want Android devices to stay unpatched. As a report from XDA-Developers notes, it’s also currently unclear if Google will put provisions in place to make sure that manufacturers follow through in releasing the security updates. It was recently reported that some manufacturers had been telling customers that their phones were up to date when they weren’t — and that’s something Google probably wants to avoid.

If Google does move ahead in ensuring manufacturers stick to security updates, it could help make all official Android devices around the world a lot more secure — which is a big deal in an era of hacks and data mining.

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Verizon quietly launches startup Visible, which offers unlimited data for $40

There’s a new mobile service provider on the block and as it turns out, it’s being backed by a player with plenty of experience. Visible is a new startup from Verizon that offers super low-cost service that is — get this — unlimited. Folks in the U.S. can get unlimited data, messages, and minutes for just $40 a month, which is almost 50 percent less than the average monthly cellphone bill of $73 in the United States.

Better still, Visible purports not to throttle service for users who truly take advantage of the unlimited offerings. Many of the incumbents in the space (including Verizon) have faced scrutiny for placing a cap on video quality in order to maintain their unlimited offerings. But Visible is promising not to do anything of the sort, which could be a major win among customers.

As it stands, however, Visible isn’t exactly widely available. In fact, the only way to take advantage of the new service is for a current Visible customer to send you an invitation. Only then will you be able to access the Visible app and begin the onboarding process. It’s also limited exclusively to owners of unlocked iPhones. So even if you have an Apple device but are currently linked to, say, T-Mobile, you won’t be eligible for Visible. That said, the startup notes that it’s hoping to extend access to Android users as well, and may ultimately work with phone companies to provide Visible-specific devices.

“We have been really, really happy with the customer interest so far,” Visible CEO Miguel Quiroga told CBS in an interview. He added that phones “can certainly be an opportunity in the future, but it’s still early.” The executive did not provide details on exactly how many users Visible currently has, but seeing as it’s still early days for the startup and access is quite exclusive, it’s unlikely numbers are high.

That said, with help from Verizon, Visible could soon be making a major dent in the market. Currently, Verizon is the most popular wireless service provider, with just over 150 million customers. And as it turns out, the company has been toying with the idea of Visible for quite some time.

“This is something that’s been the seed of an idea for a year or so,” Minjae Ormes, head of marketing at Visible, told TechCrunch. Although Ormes did not reveal how much Verizon ultimately contributed to the business, the executive team is made up largely of ex-Verizon employees, including Quiroga.

“The way I would think about it … we are a phone service in the platform that enables everything that you do. The way we launched and the app messaging piece of it. You do everything else on your phone and a lot of time if you ask people, your phone is your life,” Ormes said. The thinking was, “let’s give you a phone that you can activate right from your phone and get ready to go and see how it resonates.”

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NASA will send a tiny drone helicopter to fly through the Martian skies

After landing several miniature dune buggies on Mars to cruise around the surface of the planet, NASA has decided it wants a birds-eye view next time. The Mars Helicopter, a tiny remote-control dual-rotor drone, will make the trip to the red planet stowed in the belly pan of the Mars 2020 Rover.

Once on the surface, the six-wheeled rover will deploy the small chopper in a suitable location, allowing it to charge its batteries and run through a variety of pre-flight tests before making history in the thin Martin atmosphere.

“The ability to see clearly what lies beyond the next hill is crucial for future explorers. We already have great views of Mars from the surface as well as from orbit,” said Thomas Zurbuchen of NASA in an announcement. “With the added dimension of a bird’s-eye view from a ‘marscopter,’ we can only imagine what future missions will achieve.”

The spindly Mars Helicopter, which has been in development since 2013, has a box-like fuselage about the size of a softball and weighs approximately four pounds. Solar cells will charge the tiny drone during the day, and an internal heater will help it endure the cold Martian nights. Its counter-rotating blades will spin at almost 3,000 rpm, about 10 times faster than a similar craft here on Earth.

“The atmosphere of Mars is only one percent that of Earth, so when our helicopter is on the Martian surface, it’s already at the Earth equivalent of 100,000 feet up,” said Mimi Aung of JPL. “To make it fly at that low atmospheric density, we had to scrutinize everything, make it as light as possible while being as strong and as powerful as it can possibly be.”

Once the copter is ready to go, a 30-day test flight campaign will commence, beginning with a simple hover in place and leading to more extensive reconnaissance missions lasting as long as 90 seconds. “We don’t have a pilot and Earth will be several light minutes away, so there is no way to joystick this mission in real time,” said Aung. “Instead, we have an autonomous capability that will be able to receive and interpret commands from the ground, and then fly the mission on its own.”

The Mars 2020 mission, scheduled for launch aboard an Atlas V rocket from Cape Canaveral in July 2020, is expected to reach the red planet in February 2021. As cool as the mini chopper is, it’s not a crucial component of the mission.

Successful tests would open the door to more aerial observation and exploration during future missions, however. “After the Wright Brothers proved 117 years ago that powered, sustained, and controlled flight was possible here on Earth, another group of American pioneers may prove the same can be done on another world,” said Zurbuchen.

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Ride with confidence on a 3D-printed bicycle tire that will never go flat

For cyclists, there are few things worse than getting a puncture halfway through a ride. OK, getting hit by a truck would obviously be a lot more problematic, but as far as injury-free scenarios go, a sudden puncture is surely one of the most deflating experiences a cyclist can have (apologies, couldn’t resist it).

Raising the hopes of keen cyclists everywhere, Berlin-based BigRep recently put one of its industrial 3D printers to work to create a bicycle tire that lets you dump the pump.

Claiming to have created the world’s first 3D-printed airless bicycle tire, BigRep’s Maik Dobberack told Cnet the design uses a custom-made thermoplastic elastomer capable of incorporating flexibility into 3D-printed objects. Looking at its performance in the video (above), the tire is certainly very springy while at the same time offering extreme-temperature resistance and durability.

Dobberack said his company’s 3D printer could conceivably print different tires according to the kind of ride you wanted to embark on. For example, you could have various pairs for different weather conditions, another for rough terrain, and a set for riding on regular roads.

BigRep

Test cyclist Marco Mattia Cristofori took BigRep’s tires out for a spin in the German capital and afterwards described the ride as “very smooth,” which is precisely what you want when you’re out on your bike.

But if you’re already thinking, “Just tell me how I can get my hands on these groovy tires,” then you’re going to be disappointed. BigRep said the main aim of the project is to highlight the myriad possibilities that can be had with large-scale 3D printing, and for now at least, the tire remains a concept design.

There is some cause for hope, though. Bridgestone — a company that knows a thing or two about tires — has been working on a similar design for the last seven years. It may not be 3D-printed, but like BigRep’s tire, it’s airless and so never needs pumping up.

Bridgestone unveiled the latest design of its funky-looking tire in 2017, and said that if trials proceed smoothly, they could be transporting you about your neighborhood as early as next year. We’ll keep you posted.

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Before Google’s lifelike Duplex A.I., these chatbots paved the way

How sad do you have to be to have a conversation with a computer? Here in 2018, that’s not even a question any more. At Google I/O, the world’s biggest search company debuted its new Google Duplex tool: an A.I. that’s capable of making phone calls and doing things like booking you in for haircuts or securing you a table at the hottest restaurant in town. Best of all? Thanks to its hyper realistic synthetic voice — right down to the realistic, human-like “uh-huhs” and pauses — the person on the other end of the line probably won’t even realize they’re talking to a bot.

It might seem super futuristic, but Duplex is really just the latest development in the history of chatbots: A.I. systems designed to replicate human interactions. These bots have been around for decades — they just haven’t always been as sophisticated as the one Google recently showed off. Here’s a quick recap of the 10 most significant milestones we passed to reach this point:

The Turing Test

Alan M Turing and colleagues working on the Ferranti Mark I Computer, 1951 Science & Society Picture Library/Getty Images

Most people had never seen a computer in 1950. Those who had seen one typically viewed them as gigantic calculating machines that took up entire rooms and weighed more than a fully-stocked light aircraft. Back then, the idea that you might one day interact with a computer like you would a person took a pretty big speculative leap. One person willing to make that leap was the pioneering computer scientist Alan Turing.

In his 1950 paper, “Computing Machinery and Intelligence,” Turing examined the question of whether or not a machine could be capable of thinking. He proposed a hypothesis to test this: an imitation game in which a computer must try and fool a human into thinking that he or she was communicating with another person.

Turing never built an actual chatbot to test his theories, but the Turing Test has inspired many subsequent attempts to build chatbots. Most famously, it’s the basis for the annual Loebner Prize.

ELIZA

In the mid-1960s, an MIT computer scientist named Joseph Weizenbaum created ELIZA, a so-called computer psychotherapist. Conversations with ELIZA were carried out via text, with users typing a sentence and ELIZA then reflecting it back to them in language which either supported or questioned their statement.

Despite the fact that ELIZA didn’t actually “understand” the topics it discussed, Weizenbaum was surprised by how readily his students poured their hearts out to the computer — sharing everything from their own personal heartbreak stories to fears of academic failure.

HAL 9000

HAL remains arguably the world’s referenced chatbot, despite only existing in the realms of science fiction. Memorably stealing the show in Stanley Kubrick’s 1968 movie 2001: A Space Odyssey, HAL is the all-knowing A.I. who controls the operations of the spacecraft Discovery One.

Unlike the text-based ELIZA, HAL is capable of interacting with users via voice recognition and natural language processing. Described as “foolproof and incapable of error,” HAL nonetheless goes wrong and, in the process, spawns one of computing’s most memorable slogans: “I’m sorry, Dave, I’m afraid I can’t do that.”

PARRY

Created in 1972 by psychiatrist Kenneth Colby at Stanford University, PARRY was an attempt to model a person — in this case, a person with paranoid schizophrenia — in machine form. PARRY was a more complex chatbot than the earlier ELIZA, with a more pronounced personality and more complex conversational abilities.

At a conference in 1972, PARRY and ELIZA were connected over ARPANET, an early iteration of the internet, where they carried out the world’s first chatbot-to-chatbot conversation.

Jabberwocky

Rollo Carpenter’s Jabberwocky is an example of a smarter second generation of chatbot. Designed in 1981 with the goal of simulating “natural human chat in an interesting, entertaining and humorous manner,” Jabberwocky didn’t have many practical applications, but was nonetheless a source of great entertainment.

Particularly impressive was its ability to learn new responses and context based on its conversations, rather than relying on a static database of answers.

Knowledge Navigator

A bit like HAL 9000 — minus the whole murderous streak — “Knowledge Navigator” was an influential vision of computing’s future, created by Apple in 1987. Illustrated through a series of slickly-produced video vignettes, Knowledge Navigator was a proposed chatbot-based system in the form of an onscreen butler software agent.

As Apple imagined it, users would interact with the Knowledge Navigator through spoken, real world commands. Despite possessing its own personality, it was primarily intended to be used for information retrieval and executing commands.

Apple eventually delivered a form of Knowledge Navigator with Siri (which we’ll discuss later.) However, this tantalizing glimpse forward has since inspired many people outside of the Cupertino company who are interested in building productivity-focused chatbots.

Clippy

Yes, we hate to include it on this list, but Clippy was likely the first chatbot that many people reading this article ever used. A cheerful dancing paperclip character who appeared in Microsoft Office 1997, Clippy popped up on-screen whenever users set out to carry out a task like writing a letter.

Clippy had the potential to be useful, but rarely managed to be. It was a limited example of the kind of A.I. agent many of us rely on today, but frustratingly poorly executed.

Seattle-based illustrator Kevan J. Atteberry, who designed the character, still has a message on his website crediting him with creating “probably one of the most annoying characters in history!” Clippy died on his way back to his home planet in 2003.

IBM Watson

Watson is a question-answering artificial intelligence-based computer system developed by IBM. Named after IBM’s first CEO, Thomas J. Watson, IBM Watson famously won the game show Jeopardy! against former champions Brad Rutter and Ken Jennings.

After the game, Jennings held up a sign reading: “I for one welcome our new robot overlords.” Today, Watson is used for a variety of non-game show applications, ranging from drug discovery to generating recipes for cooking.

According to IBM, the project’s goal is to make computers “interact in natural human terms across a range of applications and processes, understanding the questions that humans ask and providing answers that humans can understand and justify.”

Siri

Originally started as a five-year, 500-person DARPA project, the more familiar form of Siri eventually landed on Apple’s iPhone 4s, debuting just one day before company co-founder Steve Jobs passed away.As you’re likely aware, Siri can interact using spoken commands, and is able to perform a variety of useful functions — from looking up local weather information to booking a table at a restaurant.

Even if it’s rapidly surpassed by other smarter A.I. assistants, Siri deserves credit for finally bringing the technology into the mainstream.

Smart speakers

Amazon Echo. Google Home. Apple’s HomePod. If you don’t already own one of these talkative smart speakers, you may well soon find yourself in the minority. Aided by breakthroughs in A.I. fields like deep learning, today’s smart speakers finally live up to the promise of functional chatbots.

They can understand what you’re saying, make you laugh with a quick joke, and help you perform a million-and-one other useful functions. And, as the latest Google IO event showed, they’re getting smarter all the time.

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Watch a Lego robot prepare a perfect egg and bacon breakfast

We love Lego. We love robots. And we sure love breakfast. So what could be better than a Lego-based robot ready and willing to whip up a perfectly cooked breakfast? Reminiscent of Caractacus Potts’ breakfast-preparing contraption from Chitty-Chitty-Bang-Bang, the so-called “Breakfast Machine” is a brick creation capable of breaking eggs, disposing of the shells, and then cooking and plating up bacon and eggs. It’s probably not a labor-saving device per se, but it’s definitely a nifty one.

“My son Michael and me are the two people behind The Brick Wall YouTube channel,” Canada-based creator Iouri Petoukhov told Digital Trends. “We have designed and built a Lego machine that can assist in cooking a real egg and bacon breakfast. The idea was to build a remotely controlled machine that will automate breakfast cooking process and pick the egg off the frying pan. We also wanted it to be able to make several different variations, [such as] ‘sunny-side-up’, scrambled, and ‘sunny-side-down.’ We are extremely happy with the result.”

Petoukhov said that the project grew out of his love of cooking breakfast for his family each weekend. His son, however, obviously decided that this was one more job robots could steal from good, hard-working humans since he began work on the Breakfast Machine as a birthday gift for his dad.

“The biggest challenge was to build a mechanism that will be able to pick an egg, move it to the right position, crack it open without losing the shell, and bring the shell back,” Petoukhov continued. “We realized that the heart of the build will be the cracking mechanism. We reviewed several commercial egg crackers to better understand how it is done. However, the challenge was how to do the same with Lego. It [ultimately] took 12 eggs, two weeks, and numerous failures to figure out the right design. [We jumped for joy] when the first egg was successfully cracked and the shell stayed inside the grabber.”

This isn’t the first impressive impressive build the Brick Wall duo have assembled. Previous projects have included a working lawnmower and even a 986-part Lego Roomba, complete with its own pilot.

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Record-breaking solar still purifies water with clever geometry and … paper?

University at Buffalo

There is nothing new about the idea of using the sun’s energy to evaporate and thereby purify water. In fact, the idea was described by the Greek philosopher Aristotle more than 2,000 years ago. But researchers from the University at Buffalo School of Engineering and Applied Sciences have found a way to improve on this concept and sanitize water at what appear to be record-breaking rates. In doing so, they could help solve one of the world’s most important problems: The continued lack of access to clean water for a large number of people around the world.

Led by associate professor of electrical engineering Qiaoqiang Gan, the researchers developed a practical and low-cost device that uses black, carbon-dipped paper to create a solar still. The still works by using a strip of this carbon-dipped paper — shaped like an upside-down V — which hangs into water to soak it up. When it is heated by sunlight, it encourages evaporation, although the specific angle of the strip means that it is not hit directly by the sun’s rays. The paper’s sloped geometry thereby allows it remain below room temperature, which lets it draw in heat from its surroundings. The result is a more efficient evaporation cycle, and more water vapor gathered. With a solar still the size of a mini fridge, the researchers estimate that they can generate 10 to 20 liters of clean water every single day.

“In recent years, significant interest has developed in using sunlight for electricity-free vapor generation due to its potential to address limitations in fresh water availability around the globe,” Gan told Digital Trends. “However, when systems operate at higher temperatures, conduction, convection, and radiation losses are inevitable, and limit the overall attainable efficiency. In this new report, we developed an opposite approach, using solar energy to generate cold vapor below room temperature.”

To bring the product to market, the team has launched a startup called Sunny Clean Water. It hopes to create a sun-powered water purifier based on this new research.

“We are [currently] working with two NGOs to perform field tests in remote areas and areas affected by natural disaster: One in Puerto Rico, another one in Philippines,” Gan said. “Puerto Rico was destroyed because of [a major] storm in 2017. The NGO in [the] Philippines aims to help residents in remote villages with no access to electricity or water-purification utilities. I am on my way to Argentina to discuss their local needs.”

A paper describing the work was recently published in the journal Advanced Science.

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Doctors successfully perform the world’s first robot-assisted spinal surgery

What kind of surgeon do you call in when you’re dealing with an incredibly complex, rare procedure involving a cancerous tumor which affects just one in 1 million people each year? Quite possibly a robot one. At least, that is what neurosurgeons and otolaryngologists at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine did when they performed the world’s first robot-assisted spinal surgery. The complex procedure utilized cutting-edge robotic arms to remove a tumor in 27-year-old patient Noah Pernikoff’s neck — through his mouth.

The groundbreaking surgery took place at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, and required more than 20 hours in the operating theater, carried out over the course of two days. Due to the placement of the tumor in the patient’s neck, doctors were worried he risked permanent paralysis should something go wrong. In addition, if the entire tumor was not removed, it would likely grow back, perhaps even more aggressively than before.

The operation was performed in three phases. Firstly, neurosurgeons entered through Pernikoff’s neck and cut the spine around the tumor. A team of three head and neck surgeons then used the surgical robot to remove the tumor through the patient’s mouth. Finally, Pernikoff’s spinal column was reconstructed using a hip bone and additional rods for stability.

The use of the trans-oral robot (TORS) meant that it was possible to switch from relying on radiation therapy to actively removing the tumor by operating on it. “There are two components that make this work so exciting,” Dr. Neil Malhotra told Digital Trends. “One is that it permits us to switch from palliation for certain types of tumors to, in some cases for the first time, seeking cures. For the second point, this approach is less traumatic for the patient, which means a better recovery.”

Although news of the surgery has only now been made public, it took place in August last year. Nine months later, Pernikoff is now fully recovered and back at work. “We are still trying to determine where and when robotics — or cobotics — can help patients in terms of outcomes and cures,” Malhotra continued. “The case discussed is a new indication.”

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Drone services edge closer with 10 new projects from major tech firms

The use of drones for delivery and other services came a step closer on Wednesday, May 9 with the announcement of 10 major projects across the country.

Announced by the U.S. Transportation Department, major firms including Microsoft, Apple, Qualcomm, FedEx, and Google-parent Alphabet will work with state, local, and tribal governments to proceed with drone development across a range of projects.

Notable by their absence, however, are both Amazon, which arguably launched the whole drone craze with its Prime Air drone delivery project, and Chinese firm DJI, a leading maker of consumer drones. Both companies were linked to proposals among 149 applicants but were not selected.

A myriad of businesses with an interest in drones have been clamoring for looser regulations so they can test how the technology might benefit their various operations, but up to now, regulators with an eye on safety have been moving forward with great caution.

The new government initiative, which was first announced by the Trump administration in October 2017 in a bid to accelerate the use of drones across a range of industries, will bring faster approval for drone trials that would ordinarily raise eyebrows among regulators. That means we’ll likely see for the first time commercial drones flying over crowded areas, out of the line of sight of the operator, and also at night, as part of trials to explore the viability of various sky-based services.

The 10 selected projects were revealed on Wednesday by U.S. Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao. Some will explore different drone services while developing technologies such as ground-based, detect-and-avoid radar systems that integrate infrared imaging and satellite technology. Others will test the effectiveness of systems now under development such as air traffic control for unmanned aircraft.

Apple — a curious entry considering the company has shown little to no interest in drone technology until now — will work with North Carolina authorities to develop a drone system for gathering map data, while Qualcomm will team up with San Diego to develop drone platforms for various public safety, commercial, and emergency response applications.

FedEx will explore the use of drones to inspect aircraft at its hub in Tennessee, and also look into parts deliveries for aircraft, while drone company Flirtey, which has featured on Digital Trends’ pages many times, will embark on four projects around the country. One of these will be in Reno, Nevada, to develop a delivery system for life-saving medical equipment such as medical defibrillators in emergency situations in both urban and rural environments.

“Our country is on the verge of the most significant new development in aviation since the emergence of the jet age,” Chao said on Wednesday, according to Cnet. She added that it was now time to “create a path forward for the safe integration of drones if our country is to remain a global aviation leader and reap the safety and economic benefits drones have to offer.”

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A cure for hangovers? A UCLA professor may have cracked the code

Drop everything and pick up a glass of wine. Science may have finally come through for us. A professor from UCLA has designed “an antidote that could help people enjoy wine or cocktails or beer without a hangover.”

According to Yunfeng Lu, a professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering in the Los Angeles university, there is now a solution to that all-powerful, all-consuming hangover, and it has been tested (successfully) in mice. In tests, Lu and fellow professor Cheng Ji, an expert in liver diseases from Keck School of Medicine at the University of Southern California, and Lu’s graduate student Duo Xu, found that the treatment decreased the blood alcohol level in inebriated mice by 45 percent in four hours.

More impressively, the concentration of acetaldehyde, the carcinogenic compound that is responsible for causing headaches and vomiting during bouts of irresponsible drinking, “remained extremely low” in treated mice. And finally, Lu’s team found that the mice who were treated with the compound awoke from their alcoholic slumber more quickly than mice who did not receive the treatment.

This is key because the ability to break down alcohol more efficiently is linked to earlier wake times, and also prevents alcohol poisoning (which means it’s keeping your liver safe). As it stands, Lu is conducting further tests to ensure that his treatment is safe and does not cause any “unexpected or dangerous side effects.” Should animal tests continue to go well, human clinical trials could begin as early as next year.

Best of all, perhaps, is the fact that this treatment comes in the form of a simple pill, which means that preventing a hangover is in fact easier than grabbing a drink. Lu and his team created capsules filled with natural enzymes found in the liver that help the body process alcohol more efficiently. In total, the team chose three natural enzymes that turn alcohol into “harmless molecules” that are ultimately excreted by the body. To protect the enzymes, the scientists wrapped them each in an FDA-approved shell approved for pills. In their tests, these nanocapsules were injected into drunk mice’s veins, where they made their way through the bloodstream and ultimately to the liver.

“As a chemical engineering professor and wine enthusiast, I felt I needed to find a solution [to hangovers],” Lu noted. “As frivolous as this project may sound, it has serious implications.” For example, he pointed out, “Between 8 and 10 percent of emergency room visits in America are due to acute alcohol poisoning,” and worse still, “alcohol is the leading risk factor for premature deaths and disability among people aged 15 to 49.”

While the hangover treatment is by no means a panacea to alcohol abuse, it may serve as a safety measure that can reduce the adverse side effects of a few too many nights of fun. In the meantime, Lu encourages us to continue to drink safely and responsibly.

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