Is there a single USB-C headphone adapter that works with all phones?

Part of what we do here is to look at all sorts of accessories you might want to use with your phone. Cases, screen protectors, headphones, you name it and we try to look and recommend a product so you know if you’re getting your money’s worth. Since the 3.5mm headphone jack is fading away (yes, Samsung will do it too, once it’s more affordable) that also means we need to look at USB Type C headphones and adapters.

What a mess.

First, the answer to the question in the title: No, there isn’t a single USB-C headphone adapter that will work with every phone. There’s a simple reason why, but it’s just silly that this has to be a thing in the first place.

Passive vs. Active

Cables designed to work with the USB standard can be active or passive. Active cables use copper wires and have a semiconductor of some sort to boost or amplify the signal strength. If you have an outrageously long USB cable for anything, it’s probably an active cable. Low-voltage data signals aren’t designed to cover eight or ten feet (or more) inside a cable, so they need a bit of a boost.

There are two ways audio can be sent out via the USB port. The onboard DAC and amplifier can convert the digital signal to analog (regular headphones only work with an analog signal) and send it out through the USB-C port. The adapter then passively transmits the analog signal from the USB port to the 3.5 mm port on the other end of the cable. This works exactly like your last phone with a 3.5 jack did, except there is now a dongle in the mix.

More: USB-C audio: Everything you need to know

Digital audio signals can also be sent out through the USB-C port. These signals bypass any DAC or amp that’s inside your phone and are a raw digital signal that something needs to convert before it can play through a set of speakers. That means they depend on a DAC and amplifier inline somewhere. That group of components can (and does) live inside an active USB-C to 3.5mm dongle in some most Android phones without a headphone jack.

All devices that can transmit audio and have a USB-C port that sends a signal out must be able to supply the digital signal for an active cable. Unfortunately, the changes that make a passive cable work are optional, and we all know what happens when something is optional — companies don’t like to do it.

Meet Audio Adapter Accessory Mode

Audio Adapter Accessory Mode is the name of the protocol that allows a USB-C port to send analog audio through its connector and into something that’s plugged in — like a 3.5mm adapter. A set of headphones with a USB-C connector will always support Accessory mode, so they can play music that was converted by the phone’s hardware or convert it themselves with circuitry inside them.

Audio Adapter Accessory Mode isn’t complicated. Four connections inside the USB port turn off any digital output and replace it with the four analog connections needed (Left audio, Right audio, Microphone, and Ground). Compliance means that every device that supports Audio Adapter Accessory Mode uses the same four connections in the USB-C plug so it just works if supported by both pieces.

Optionally, (there’s that word again: “optional”) a second set of connectors can be used to allow for charging at up to 500 milliamps.

• If your phone supports Audio Adapter Accessory Mode a cheap $3 USB-C to 3.5mm adapter works perfectly.
• If your phone supports Audio Adapter Accessory Mode and has the optional connectors for charging, a cheap adapter that splits into both a headphone jack and a USB charging port will work perfectly.
• If your phone doesn’t support Audio Adapter Accessory Mode you need a more expensive active adapter that has the circuitry inside to convert the digital signal and the phone will give you an error message that says “Accessory not supported” in some way.

Did I mention that this is a mess?

Phones that support Audio Adapter Accessory Mode

Here are the phones that are built to support Audio Adapter Accessory Mode. The dongle that came in the box is just a simple passthrough with no semiconductor inside, and you can order a cheap replacement adapter (or three) as a spare.

• Motorola Moto Z
• Motorola Moto Z Droid
• Motorola Moto Z Force
• Motorola Moto Z Play
• Motorola Moto Z2 Play
• Motorola Moto Z2 Force

This list probably isn’t complete and Chinese brands like Xiamoi may also support Audio Adapter Accessory Mode in some phones. This is an obsession of mine and I will find any other phones that need to be added to this list. If you know one that’s not there, hit the comments and tell me, please.

What should I buy?

Look at the list above. If your phone is on it, you can save about $10 when buying an adapter. I like this pack of two for $8 from Amazon but almost any type will deliver the same results — it’s just a short length of copper wire that sends the signal out and has little impact.

Motorola makes it easy — it just supports all of the USB-C audio spec so anything will work.

If your phone is not on this list and is not branded by HTC, you need an adapter with some circuitry inside. This means Pixels, Essential phones, Huawei phones, Samsung phones (if you want to use the USB port for audio. It works!) and even old Nokia Lumia phones. I bought this cable as a back up for $15 from Amazon and it sounds as good or better than the one that came in the box with my Pixel 2. Unlike the adapters above, these do have some circuitry inside and can have an impact on how things sound.

If you have an HTC phone, your best option is to use the JBL headphones that were made for it because they sound great and you don’t need a dongle. If you do need a dongle, try the kind made for phones like the Pixel 2 instead of the cheaper type made for Motorola phones. It might work, depending on how the accessory pins are used (preferably not used at all) in the dongle. Most active adapters will be fine.

You can do even more with the connectors inside a USB port, and HTC does.

One last thing — you can use an active dongle (the ones with circuitry made for phones like the Pixel 2) with your Moto Z Force. Your phone will know when it’s plugged in that it shouldn’t switch to Audio Adapter Accessory Mode and will send the digital signal out like a Pixel or OnePlus 6 does.

This mess will sort itself out. USB was also a mess when it first arrived way back in the 1990s and we had the same worries about cables construction (I fried a very expensive set of USB speakers with my Tangerine iMac because I used the cable from a USB Iomega Zip Drive) and compatibility between USB v1.0 and USB v2.0. It happens when something new that has any sort of optional ways to use it arrives. Everything will be fine eventually, and in the meantime, you have resources like this one made by people with an unhealthy obsession with cables and headphones.

See at Amazon

Like a vice principal in the sky, this A.I. spots fights before they happen

We live in a surveillance society: A U.S. citizen is reportedly captured on CCTV around 75 times per day. And that figure is even higher elsewhere in the world. Your average Brit is likely to be caught on surveillance cameras up to 300 times in the same period.

But a lot of existing CCTV networks still rely on people to operate them. Depending on the circumstances, there might be a human being at the other end, watching multiple camera feeds on a bank of monitors. Alternatively, there may be no-one watching at all, with the footage only ever viewed in the event that it needs to be.

Two cutting edge technologies may shake up surveillance as we know it, however. Researchers from the U.K.’s University of Cambridge and India’s National Institute of Technology and Institute of Science, Bangalore have published a new paper describing a drone-based surveillance system that uses UAVs as flying security cameras to keep an eye (or several) on large gatherings of people.

“Our system is able to identify the violent individuals real-time.”

What’s more, these drones are equipped with deep learning artificial intelligence algorithms that allow them to identify troublemakers in crowds and take the proper precautions.

The “Eye in the Sky” real-time drone surveillance system could be deployed at events like music festivals, marathons or other large gatherings, where it would be utilized to identify violent individuals — based on their aggressive posture — using the latest pattern recognition technology. It then promises to alert the authorities. Welcome to the future of surveillance!

Identifying attackers in real time

“Our system is able to identify the violent individuals real-time,” Amarjot Singh, one of the researchers on the project, told Digital Trends. “This was quite challenging, and we had to develop unique ways to achieve [it]. The problem was that the standard deep learning algorithms require tens of thousands of annotated images to train these systems. This would normally be fine, if one was to assign just one label to an image — for example, assign ‘cat’ to an image of a cat. But in order to design a system which can detect the human pose from aerial images, the system needs to be trained with aerial images annotated with 14 key points on the human body. Since there is no dataset available for this type of application, we ourself annotated the points on the human body, which was extremely time-consuming and expensive.”

The ScatterNet Hybrid Deep Learning neural network analyzing body language via a complex motion-tracking algorithm inside a drone. University of Cambridge/National Institute of Technology/Indian Institute of Science

By breaking the human body down into 14 different points, the system is able to work out which violent action — if any — is being performed with an accuracy of around 85 percent (and all the way up to 94.1 percent) depending on how many people are being surveilled.

The algorithm was trained by analyzing 2,000 annotated images gathered from a group of 25 participants, who were asked to act out violent attacks such as punching, kicking, strangling, shooting, and stabbing. Accuracy levels drop the more people are being monitored and the further away the drone is, although this could be improved in the future. The finished algorithm, called the ScatterNet Hybrid Deep Learning neural network, can learn using a relatively small number of training examples, while robustly extracting the body’s posture with consistent accuracy.

“Once, the system can do well in the test runs, we will be bringing it to market.”

Just as important, it can do it very, very quickly — within just a few frames of video. This is especially important for security applications, since any potential system designed for this purpose needs to be able to alert authorities of an escalating situation before it has erupted into violence.

“The system detects the violent individuals by first extracting and sending the aerial frame recorded by the drone to the Amazon cloud,” Singh continued. “The human detection algorithm detects each human in the image frame. Next, the pose is estimated for each individual. The pose of the individuals involved in the violent activity are jointly analyzed to identify the violent individual.”

But all of this is still quite far away, right? Not necessarily. “We will be flying the drone at the technical festival at NIT Warangal in Andra Pradesh in India, in October of this year,” Singh said. “The second author is from NIT Warangal, and I am an alumnus. The festival is attended by around 3,000 – 4,000 people and is extremely packed.” The pair also hoped to use the drone at at another event in India called “spring spree.”

A figure from the research paper showcasing how the A.I.-equipped drone processes body language by looking at visual cues based on specific points around the body. University of Cambridge/National Institute of Technology/Indian Institute of Science

It won’t be used for alerting the police to violent action at these events, but rather to prove that the technology can accurately predict the outbreak of violence. “Once, the system can do well in the test runs, we will be bringing it to market,” Singh said. “We are also planning to extend this system to monitor the borders of India.”

Possible ethical concerns?

Technology like this will, of course, prompt polarizing responses. Police in the U.S. are already using drones on a regular basis — and this will only ramp up in the years to come — although right now that it done primarily for tasks like assessing crime scenes.

Like predictive policing, A.I.-equipped surveillance drones carry the ominous suggestion of possible “pre-crime.”

The idea of using A.I.-equipped drones for long-term surveillance of crowds runs the risk of verging on the Orwellian. Like predictive policing, it additionally carries the ominous suggestion of possible “pre-crime.” While this particular project focuses on actions carried out, there are examples of smart CCTV cameras with the goal of intervening before an act is carried out.

In the U.K., for instance, an A.I. algorithm is used for spotting potential jumpers on the London Underground train service. This system works by analyzing the behavior of people waiting on the platform, and then looking for those who miss several available trains during that time. This is because such actions have been shown to precede suicide attempts, thereby allowing intervention to be made.

Researcher Amarjot Singh

It’s one thing to use A.I. more rapidly to stop a scuffle which has broken out; perhaps another to surveil someone on the basis of body language suggesting that they might do something. Such questions will need to be explored as technology such as this becomes mainstream. If it is able to avoid violent acts on the street, we may well consider the tradeoff to be worth it.

Ultimately, concepts such as this make us recall the dream of philosopher Jeremy Bentham’s Panopticon. This was a proposed prison idea in which the presence of a central guard tower makes the prisoners believe that they are being watched at all times. The result, writers like Michel Foucault have suggested, is that prisoners wind up behaving as though they are being watched at all times.

As drones increasingly take to the skies, the existence of tools like this could prompt us to act in a similar way. Is that a police drone or an Amazon delivery flying overhead? You’d better straighten up your posture and loosen your shoulders just in case!

Editors’ Recommendations

• Meet the man fighting plastic pollution with a fleet of A.I.-powered camera drones
• Machine learning? Neural networks? Here’s your guide to the many flavors of A.I.
• 9 bizarre drones, from web slingers to lake hoppers
• Crime-predicting A.I. isn’t science fiction. It’s about to roll out in India
• Like a vice principal in the sky, this A.I. spots fights before they happen

Like a vice principal in the sky, this A.I. spots fights before they happen

We live in a surveillance society: A U.S. citizen is reportedly captured on CCTV around 75 times per day. And that figure is even higher elsewhere in the world. Your average Brit is likely to be caught on surveillance cameras up to 300 times in the same period.

But a lot of existing CCTV networks still rely on people to operate them. Depending on the circumstances, there might be a human being at the other end, watching multiple camera feeds on a bank of monitors. Alternatively, there may be no-one watching at all, with the footage only ever viewed in the event that it needs to be.

Two cutting edge technologies may shake up surveillance as we know it, however. Researchers from the U.K.’s University of Cambridge and India’s National Institute of Technology and Institute of Science, Bangalore have published a new paper describing a drone-based surveillance system that uses UAVs as flying security cameras to keep an eye (or several) on large gatherings of people.

“Our system is able to identify the violent individuals real-time.”

What’s more, these drones are equipped with deep learning artificial intelligence algorithms that allow them to identify troublemakers in crowds and take the proper precautions.

The “Eye in the Sky” real-time drone surveillance system could be deployed at events like music festivals, marathons or other large gatherings, where it would be utilized to identify violent individuals — based on their aggressive posture — using the latest pattern recognition technology. It then promises to alert the authorities. Welcome to the future of surveillance!

Identifying attackers in real time

“Our system is able to identify the violent individuals real-time,” Amarjot Singh, one of the researchers on the project, told Digital Trends. “This was quite challenging, and we had to develop unique ways to achieve [it]. The problem was that the standard deep learning algorithms require tens of thousands of annotated images to train these systems. This would normally be fine, if one was to assign just one label to an image — for example, assign ‘cat’ to an image of a cat. But in order to design a system which can detect the human pose from aerial images, the system needs to be trained with aerial images annotated with 14 key points on the human body. Since there is no dataset available for this type of application, we ourself annotated the points on the human body, which was extremely time-consuming and expensive.”

The ScatterNet Hybrid Deep Learning neural network analyzing body language via a complex motion-tracking algorithm inside a drone. University of Cambridge/National Institute of Technology/Indian Institute of Science

By breaking the human body down into 14 different points, the system is able to work out which violent action — if any — is being performed with an accuracy of around 85 percent (and all the way up to 94.1 percent) depending on how many people are being surveilled.

The algorithm was trained by analyzing 2,000 annotated images gathered from a group of 25 participants, who were asked to act out violent attacks such as punching, kicking, strangling, shooting, and stabbing. Accuracy levels drop the more people are being monitored and the further away the drone is, although this could be improved in the future. The finished algorithm, called the ScatterNet Hybrid Deep Learning neural network, can learn using a relatively small number of training examples, while robustly extracting the body’s posture with consistent accuracy.

“Once, the system can do well in the test runs, we will be bringing it to market.”

Just as important, it can do it very, very quickly — within just a few frames of video. This is especially important for security applications, since any potential system designed for this purpose needs to be able to alert authorities of an escalating situation before it has erupted into violence.

“The system detects the violent individuals by first extracting and sending the aerial frame recorded by the drone to the Amazon cloud,” Singh continued. “The human detection algorithm detects each human in the image frame. Next, the pose is estimated for each individual. The pose of the individuals involved in the violent activity are jointly analyzed to identify the violent individual.”

But all of this is still quite far away, right? Not necessarily. “We will be flying the drone at the technical festival at NIT Warangal in Andra Pradesh in India, in October of this year,” Singh said. “The second author is from NIT Warangal, and I am an alumnus. The festival is attended by around 3,000 – 4,000 people and is extremely packed.” The pair also hoped to use the drone at at another event in India called “spring spree.”

A figure from the research paper showcasing how the A.I.-equipped drone processes body language by looking at visual cues based on specific points around the body. University of Cambridge/National Institute of Technology/Indian Institute of Science

It won’t be used for alerting the police to violent action at these events, but rather to prove that the technology can accurately predict the outbreak of violence. “Once, the system can do well in the test runs, we will be bringing it to market,” Singh said. “We are also planning to extend this system to monitor the borders of India.”

Possible ethical concerns?

Technology like this will, of course, prompt polarizing responses. Police in the U.S. are already using drones on a regular basis — and this will only ramp up in the years to come — although right now that it done primarily for tasks like assessing crime scenes.

Like predictive policing, A.I.-equipped surveillance drones carry the ominous suggestion of possible “pre-crime.”

The idea of using A.I.-equipped drones for long-term surveillance of crowds runs the risk of verging on the Orwellian. Like predictive policing, it additionally carries the ominous suggestion of possible “pre-crime.” While this particular project focuses on actions carried out, there are examples of smart CCTV cameras with the goal of intervening before an act is carried out.

In the U.K., for instance, an A.I. algorithm is used for spotting potential jumpers on the London Underground train service. This system works by analyzing the behavior of people waiting on the platform, and then looking for those who miss several available trains during that time. This is because such actions have been shown to precede suicide attempts, thereby allowing intervention to be made.

Researcher Amarjot Singh

It’s one thing to use A.I. more rapidly to stop a scuffle which has broken out; perhaps another to surveil someone on the basis of body language suggesting that they might do something. Such questions will need to be explored as technology such as this becomes mainstream. If it is able to avoid violent acts on the street, we may well consider the tradeoff to be worth it.

Ultimately, concepts such as this make us recall the dream of philosopher Jeremy Bentham’s Panopticon. This was a proposed prison idea in which the presence of a central guard tower makes the prisoners believe that they are being watched at all times. The result, writers like Michel Foucault have suggested, is that prisoners wind up behaving as though they are being watched at all times.

As drones increasingly take to the skies, the existence of tools like this could prompt us to act in a similar way. Is that a police drone or an Amazon delivery flying overhead? You’d better straighten up your posture and loosen your shoulders just in case!

Editors’ Recommendations

• Meet the man fighting plastic pollution with a fleet of A.I.-powered camera drones
• Machine learning? Neural networks? Here’s your guide to the many flavors of A.I.
• 9 bizarre drones, from web slingers to lake hoppers
• Crime-predicting A.I. isn’t science fiction. It’s about to roll out in India
• Like a vice principal in the sky, this A.I. spots fights before they happen

10 awesome movies that are leaving Netflix in July 2018

Get ’em before they’re gone.

July is nearly upon us, and that means a new round of movies is about to depart that big free-movie-plane-in-the-cloud we call Netflix. Some are gone come July 1, so you’ve got a week to go. Others will take a little longer.

In any event, here’s your last chance to catch these 10 awesome flicks before you’ll have to use someone else’s login on some other service instead.

• Alive: If you’ve never seen (or read) the story of the soccer team that crashed in the Andes and survived on little more than each other …
• Cocktail: Tom Cruise is eager and charming and good-looking and probably not into Scientology just yet. Also, he’s a bartender.
• Lethal Weapon 1-4: Mel Gibson is crazy. And a cop. And also acting in these movies. (Still gotta love Danny “Dad” Glover, too.)
• Breakfast at Tiffany’s: I recall we both kind of liked it.
• Michael Clayton: George Clooney is a fixer with a heart of gold.
• Scary Movie: The spoof that launched a thousand sequels.
• Scream 3: Scary movie.
• Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines: This is a movie that happened.
• Tropic Thunder: Welcome to the jungle.
• V for Vendetta: We’re basically one bad glass of water from this happening anyway.

See the full list at CordCutters.com

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Here’s what we’re reading, watching, playing, and listening to this week

How we’re spending our leisure time.

Everyone has a bit of quiet downtime once in a while. Whether you’re sitting quietly at home or trying to relax on a plane or just giving your busy mind and hands a break, it’s important to relax.

A good way to do that is to read a book, listen to some music or watch a movie or show. See what’s caught our attention for the week of June 23rd.

Ara Wagoner

Still on the YouTube Music train — whoop whoop — so I’ve been rediscovering more and more music from my past, present and future. Whenever the nonsense in politics reaches new heights of absurdity, I always seem to come back to a gem from Best Little Whorehouse in Texas called Sidestep. The only thing better than Charles Durning’s slippery charm as the Governor of Texas may be him soft shoe tapping through the actual Texas State Capitol building. It suits this month very well.

As a reminder to any YouTube Music newcomers: if you see an album missing in YouTube Music, use the Send Feedback tool to say what it is, if it’s available on Google Play Music (or if the video versions are available but not the actual organized album version), and that you want it. I’ve gotten 5-10 albums to appear in the catalog doing this — though no matter how I beg, I can’t get them to add the 2017 Beauty and the Beast score…

Marc Lagace

Is it just me, or is the Netflix catalog feeling a bit stale these days. It seems that every week there’s new content added, but all too often it’s another “gritty mini-series about gruesome murders” or an old show or movie that I’ve already seen. It’s gotten to the point where I’ve debated canceling my Netflix subscription outright.

But then they go and release an incredible comedy special like Hannah Gadsby: Nanette and I’m smitten all over again. To my mind comedy is Netflix’s greatest strength and I love how it offers its platform to unparalleled exposure for up-and-coming comedians. Hannah is a celebrated LGBTQ* comedian from Australia who grew up in Tasmania which only decriminalized homosexuality in 1997. In this hour-long special, Hannah explains why she plans to “quit comedy” as she breaks down the trappings of her brand of self-deprecating stand-up, and opens up about her life experiences. Often transcending comedy itself with tense, and emotionally-charged moments, this feels very important to watch in 2018 and especially as the world celebrated Pride Month.

Just when I was thinking Netflix couldn’t offer me anything I haven’t seen before, this comedy special came along to prove me dead wrong. I highly recommend checking it out.

Tom Westrick

I’m back onto Netflix for my primary media consumption. I blew through the latest season — or half season, rather — of Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt. It’s… interesting. It’s odd that they ended it for now on a half season, with a few unresolved plot lines. I also think the concept has run as long as it can at this point. I hope the current plot lines get finished, but wouldn’t be sad if the show ended after that.

I’ve also started watching Cheers, and flew through the first two seasons so I could get to Frasier’s introduction. Seeing a young Ted Danson and Kelsey Grammer after watching them in newer shows is a bit strange, but I’m adjusting. It’s been funny and emotional so far, so I’m looking forward to the rest of the series.

Andrew Martonik

I’m watching the World Cup, obviously. Absolutely as much World Cup as possible. You don’t even have to like soccer in order to enjoy the spectacle of some of these huge matches between accomplished countries with superstar players.

I’ve been watching via YouTube TV, which has been really great for reminding me of when matches start and providing live streams with recording. DirecTV Now also has the proper Fox Sports deal to stream all of the games. Fox Sports GO is the place to stream it if you have a cable subscription to authenticate, though.

It’s really worth watching, especially now that the group stages are getting to the point of eliminating teams and we start to see seeding for the knockout rounds coming into view.

Your turn

What are YOU reading, watching, or listening to this week? Let us know in the comments!

Update, June 23, 2018: This is a weekly series where we tell you what we’re into, so check back every weekend!

Reddit Rolls Out Customizable News Tab to Most Users of its Official iOS App

Reddit has announced the rollout of its customizable News tab feature to most users of its iOS app. After limited alpha testing of the tab over the last few weeks, Reddit says it has acted on feedback and introduced enough improvements for the next beta phase of testing to reach a wider audience.

The News tab appears to the left of the Home and Popular tabs, and brings together content from community subreddits that frequently share and engage with news. Content is divided into topics like Politics, Sports, and Technology, and users can further customize them to show only the subtopics they’re most interested in.

You told us you wanted more granular news topics (not just Sports but Baseball specifically), so we’ve introduced subtopics for you to personalize your News tab and notifications. You all told us you want to be able to see how different communities are talking about the same story. So, we are developing a community pivot feature that will show you multiple threads from different communities on the same article.

Reddit says it has set guidelines for the communities that filter into the experience, as well as the post type (posts titles must reflect the article title, for example). The News tab is also coming to desktop later this summer, and Reddit plans to continue to expand the communities that appear in the News tab in the third quarter of this year.

The Reddit app is a free download available on the App Store for iPhone and iPad. [Direct Link]

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BlackBerry inks deal with Bullitt to provide security tech to phones

BlackBerry is expanding its presence in the smartphone security business. While the company is known for its high level of security on its phones, BlackBerry has announced a new partnership with Bullitt Group to provide security for its phones, too.

You may not be familiar with Bullitt Group by name, but it is the company behind some of the more rugged phones on the market, including the Cat and Land Rover-branded phones. We’ve found that these phones are perhaps the strongest and most durable out there, despite the fact that they may not offer all the same features and power found on other flagship phones.

“With the rising threat of hacks and security breaches in mobile and connected IoT devices, it was important for us to find a partner that can help us keep pace with, and protect against, the fast-changing security challenges that concern our customers,” James Shannon, chief product officer of Bullitt Group, said in a statement.“By partnering with BlackBerry, we’re able to provide a level of security that will give our customers peace of mind when communicating and using their devices for business, or in their everyday lives.” 

For BlackBerry, making a phone more secure isn’t just about loading a few apps on the phone. BlackBerry Secure gets involved in the manufacturing process of the phone, injecting security keys used by the hardware and software to verify that it hasn’t been tampered with. On top of that, BlackBerry Secure, the security platform BlackBerry provides, fully encrypts the phone’s storage, and even provides monthly security updates — something that many other smartphone manufacturers can’t seem to handle. Last but not least, BlackBerry does provide a few pre-installed apps that are aimed at monitoring a phone’s security.

It’s likely that BlackBerry will be pursuing other relationships for BlackBerry Secure, too. Earlier in 2018, the company announced a partnership with Swiss company Punkt, before which it announced a similar partnership with Chinese company NTD. We don’t expect that BlackBerry will team up with any Samsung or LG-size companies anytime soon, but as the company expands its portfolio, it may well prove that its security techniques are worth adopting.

We’re not sure exactly when BlackBerry security tech will show up on Cat or Land Rover phones, but it will probably feature on whatever phones the companies release next.

Editors’ Recommendations

• Swapping an iPhone for a BlackBerry made me appreciate the physical keyboard
• BlackBerry Key2: Everything you need to know
• BlackBerry Key2 hands-on review
• Why BlackBerry dusted off a 7-year-old phone to inspire the new Key2

U.S. Customs says biometric entry and exit is coming first to this airport

Entering and exiting an international airport through customs powered by biometrics is becoming closer to reality than science fiction. The Orlando International Airport, the busiest airport in Florida, is slated to be the first U.S. airport using biometrics at both the entry and exit for travelers crossing borders. The airport’s commitment, which doesn’t yet appear to have a completion date, was announced on Thursday, June 21 by the U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and Greater Orlando Aviation Authority (GOAA).

CBP is already testing a facial-recognition exit in 13 airports and arrival at 10 airports, but Orlando International is the first in the country that has made the commitment to implementing both for international travel. The biometric entry and exit uses facial recognition because implementing the cameras has a minimal impact (read: cost) on the airline infrastructure already in place, the CBP suggests. The system verifies the identity of passengers boarding and leaving international flights at the gates, in addition to passing through traditional security when arriving at the airport.

Comparison data for photographs is also already on hand through data from the Department of Homeland Security, another reason the facial recognition was selected out of the biometrics programs researched. The lack of a photograph also alerts airport security, as CBP shared in an early look at the technology. Scanning faces and matching with a photo takes less than two seconds, CBP says, with a 99 percent accuracy rate.

The government mandated research into biometric airport security in 2002, and two years later, required biometric data, when leaving the country, from travelers that aren’t U.S. citizens.

“We are at a critical turning point in the implementation of a biometric entry-exit system, and we’ve found a path forward that transforms travel for all travelers,” CBP Commissioner Kevin McAleenan said in a press release. “The valuable collaboration with stakeholder partners like GOAA has resulted in real momentum and it has brought us to where we are today, the first fully biometric entry-exit deployment at an airport.”

The move comes as airports are seeing an increasing number of travelers and, in turn, increasing wait times through security. While Orlando is the first committing to both biometric entry and exit, the program isn’t the first to implement facial-recognition security. Earlier this year, an airline at Los Angeles International Airport passed testing for a similar system.

Editors’ Recommendations

• Apple stops making AirPort base stations, exits Wi-Fi router business
• More people are flying than ever, and here’s how the TSA is dealing with surges at airports
• A.I. border agents could use machine smarts to tell if travelers are lying
• Louis Vuitton’s luggage tracker tells you if it’s landed in a different country
• The ForwardX Ovis is the first smart suitcase custom-built to follow you

Security Researcher Discovers Method for Brute Forcing iPhone Passcode in iOS 11

A USB-based vulnerability that allows for the brute forcing of a passcode on an iOS device has been discovered by security researcher Matthew Hickey, reports ZDNet.

The method, which bypasses the 10-entry attempt that erases an iOS device when the setting is enabled, allows a hacker to plug an iPhone or iPad into a computer and send all passcodes, from 0000 to 9999, all at once, triggering an input routine that takes priority over anything else on the device. Hickey demos the hack in the video below.

“Instead of sending passcodes one at a time and waiting, send them all in one go,” he said.

“If you send your brute-force attack in one long string of inputs, it’ll process all of them, and bypass the erase data feature,” he explained.

All that’s required to use this brute force password cracking method is an iPhone or iPad that’s turned on and locked and a Lightning cable, according to Hickey. It works on iOS devices up to iOS 11.3.

Hickey’s iPhone cracking method takes between three and five seconds for each four-digit passcode, which means it’s slow and not as advanced as other passcode cracking methods employed by companies like Grayshift, which makes the GrayKey box. For this method to guess a six-digit passcode, Hickey says it would take weeks.

Apple in iOS 12 is introducing a new USB Restricted Mode that may put a stop to the vulnerability that Hickey has discovered, as well as vulnerabilities exploited by tools like the GrayKey Box.

With USB Restricted Mode, enabled by default on iOS devices running iOS 12, USB access to an iPhone or iPad is cut off if it’s been more than an hour since the device was last unlocked.

That means computers and other accessories can’t be used to access a locked iPhone if it’s been locked for over an hour, disabling access via a USB to Lightning cable.
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Astronomers make huge exoplanet discovery haul in record time

If we ever discover life in outer space, it may be found on an Earth-like planet orbiting a nearby star. Exoplanets have become a focus for many astronomers since they were first discovered three decades ago. But these distant planets aren’t just studied as potential alien home planets — they also help astronomers better understand the features of the universe. To date, some 3,796 have been identified after a recent haul added 80 planetary candidates to the list.

In a paper published online this week in The Astronomical Journal, an international group of scientists reported that dozens of planetary candidates have been identified by measuring light fluctuations using K2, the mission that followed up NASA’s Kepler Space Telescope.

Among the nearly 80 candidates is a planet that orbits the star HD 73344, which qualifies as the brightest host star ever identified by K2. According to data analyzed by the astronomers, the planetary candidate orbits HD 73344 every 15 days. By measuring the amount of light the planet blocks while passing in front of the star, astronomers estimate that the planet is two and a half times the size of Earth, with 10 times more mass. Temperature on the planet hovers around 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit, comparable to lava erupting from a volcano.

At about 114 light years from us, the planet is relatively close in cosmic terms. And though life as we know it couldn’t exist on its boiling surface, scientists believe the planet could be a good candidate to study exoplanet characteristics, such as atmospheric composition.

“We think it would probably be more like a smaller, hotter version of Uranus or Neptune,” said Ian Crossfield, an assistant professor of physics at  Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who co-led the study.

Eighty planetary candidates is an impressive haul in its own right, but the study is additionally notable for the speed it took to identify the candidates. By running raw data from the K2 mission through existing tools developed by researchers at MIT, the astronomers were able to sift through “lightcurves,” graphs that depict light intensity, from 50,000 stars. Where a typical analysis like this could take months or a year, the recent report was completed in a matter of weeks.

Crossfield referred to the recent study as a “dress rehearsal” for astronomers set to receive data from NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS).

“When the TESS data come down, there’ll be a few months before all of the stars that TESS looked at for that month ‘set’ for the year,” Crossfield said. “If we get candidates out quickly to the community, everyone can start immediately observing systems discovered by TESS, and doing a lot of great planetary science. So this [analysis] was really a dress rehearsal for TESS.”

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