Google offers even more money for Android bugs
Since launching its Android Security Rewards program last year, Google has paid out more than $550,000 to 82 people for their discoveries of security flaws in the company’s mobile operating system. Now, the tech giant is offering between 33 percent and 50 percent more money for reports filed after June 1st, 2016.
The top bug hunter in the past year received $75,750 for 26 vulnerability reports and 15 individuals received $10,000 or more. The average was $2,200 per reward and $6,700 per researcher. “High-quality” reports — that is, those that show a proof of concept and come with a proposed patch — will earn 50 percent more than regular bug submissions.
Finding and squashing these bugs could greatly improve Android’s security, but participants are also encouraged to report problems outside the OS. Google said that more than a quarter of the issues were reported in code developed and used outside of the Android Open Source Project (AOSP). “Fixing these kernel and device driver bugs helps improve security of the broader mobile industry,” the company said in a blog post.
Offering more money is a great way to get enterprising hackers and developers to report the vulnerabilities instead of exploiting them for malicious uses. Google also has similar programs for Chrome and other Google services, and has shelled out more than a million dollars in rewards. If you think you’ve found an Android vulnerability and want a cut of that sweet payout, you can read all the details on how to join here.
Source: Google
Paramount and CBS are still suing the ‘Star Trek’ fan film
Although J.J. Abrams and Star Trek: Beyond director Justin Lin lobbied hard for the movie studio to drop their lawsuit against the crowdfunded Star Trek fan flick Axanar, Paramount is apparently ready to engage their lawyers once again. As the Hollywood Reporter notes, Paramount and CBS have told a California federal judge that their legal action against the makers of Axanar is still pending despite earlier statements indicating the two groups were close to reaching a settlement and guidelines for future fan films.
“Within the next few weeks it will be announced this is going away and fans will be able to work on their projects,” J.J. Abrams announced during a promotional event in May for the latest, official film in the franchise. Nearly a month later and both sides appear to still be locked in a legal standoff. According to the Hollywood Reporter, Axanar Productions filed paperwork seeking relief from the lawsuit just days after Abrams made his announcement, going so far as to include Abrams’ statements in their motion to dismiss. However, instead of filing an extension while they worked out the details, Paramount and CBS have filed a response to the production team’s counterclaim indicating the lawsuit is still moving forward and included a full accounting of every single one of the fan film’s individual copyright infringements.
Those lawsuits and countersuits might simply turn out to be legal maneuvering, but Paramount and CBS have been open about squeezing fans for money in the past. In an extensive longread about Star Trek’s complicated relationship with its fanbase Buzzfeed reporter Adam B. Vary notes that CBS head Les Moonves was upfront about why he was putting the forthcoming TV series on the network’s own $5.99-per-month streaming service. “[We] know there are so many millions of Star Trek fans that will pay for this,” Moonves told a media conference in February.
In the same piece, Vary also points out that the guidelines for fan-produced films that Paramount and CBS had promised are still “unclear” and the future of Axanar seems uncertain. On the other hand, Axanar Productions seems content to keep boldly going forward. Yesterday, the team dropped a new exclusive teaser on Facebook featuring some impressive special effects built before Paramount’s legal team hit them with the cease-and-desist. While a voiceover in the teaser promises to fight on against the “scourge of Klingon aggression,” the teaser itself ends with a disclaimer that the production is “not endorsed, or sponsored by, or affiliated with CBS/Paramount Pictures or the STAR TREK franchise.”
‘World Rally Championship 6’ in VR is full of off-road rage
Virtual reality makes everything better, right? Not so fast. I got a chance to play World Rally Championship 6 with an Oculus Rift and a bucking, hydraulic-powered racing rig with a steering wheel and pedals. As you’ll see in the video above, I spun out a ton and caught the VR sickness that’s been going around. That’s because with all the spinning I was doing, my eyes saw it, but my body didn’t feel like it was doing 360s. The result was me feeling sweaty and queasy after pulling the headset off. Oh, and I swore an awful lot too. Sorry Mom and Dad.
Follow all the news from E3 2016 here!
Mini’s latest concept is the mood ring of cars
Mini has produced tight, efficient economy vehicles since its first car was introduced in 1959. But its parent company BMW has been exploring how differently cars will be used in the future with its concept cars. Unlike the luxury emphasis of its self-driving Rolls Royce and BMW models, the Mini entry in the Vision Next 100 line expands customization for multiple users, a clear benefit for a car-sharing ecosystem.
BMW/Mini is already testing car-sharing in London with its DriveNow program. Its ReachNow pilot program in Seattle is a slightly different, more exclusive Zipcar-style exchange for select drivers, but both pose the same challenge for the Mini concept car: creating a vehicle that appeals to all drivers but can feel customized for each.
Its translucent look is actually an unmodified neutral mode: for car-sharing borrowers or different drivers in the same household, the vehicle can change its exterior to give it a personal touch. As Autoblog points out, this is the same thing Mini’s parent company BMW showed off for its Next Vision 100 line at the NY Auto Show, and BMW has the tech for its external sensors to automatically ID drivers and re-skin as they approach. That kind of automatic sensing could extend to sensing the environment and changing suspension accordingly when driving on rougher roads.
The Mini Vision Next 100’s design brings other advances, like reducing interior clutter by doing away with instruments entirely, instead projecting that information on the windshield. But in the battle for future vehicles, it’s clear that BMW is investing in the Mini’s economy and customization while leaving the truly advanced self-driving innovations for its more expensive brands.
Source: Autoblog
Lexus software update gives new meaning to ‘car crash’
Last year, headlines made everyone fearful of hackers taking over cars on the freeway. Turns out the real menace to owners of connected cars are the loopy manufacturers themselves.
Toyota had to suck it up this week and admit to Lexus owners, who were going nuts on Facebook and Twitter on Tuesday, about why the climate control, radio, GPS, USB, Bluetooth, and other features suddenly stopped working for a range of 2014-2016 Lexus models. Or, their dashboard console would reset itself repeatedly.
The Lexus brand posted an oblique apology on Facebook and Twitter late Tuesday. But, like many big companies that can’t get their cyber-act together, it provided few details to furious customers.
@Lexus Also having intermittent problem with the center console USB outlet. Phone charges, stops, charges, stops.
— Duke of Cucamonga (@CucamongaDuke) June 8, 2016
The scant information, of course, had some people convinced it was the work of the government, jamming communications and sabotaging luxury car owners in dark deeds for the NSA. It didn’t help that Toyota spokesperson Cindy Knight told Bloomberg that satellite communications to Lexus GPS systems “had been disrupted.” One outlet even suggested it was a cyberattack on Lexus itself. (CrowdStrike: It was Russia!)
Others were sure it was hackers in balaclavas getting ready for their cameos on CNN at that conference in Las Vegas. Or, some sort of hideous tentacle porn malware, which would surely take over their cars and strangle and violate them with their seat belts like a terrible cyberpunk Cthulu come to life.
#Lexus #RX450h bad navigation system update, radio & nav system useless. Nice match for defective fuel tank sensor! pic.twitter.com/XFAR5orY5v
— Albert Koval (@kilauea88) June 8, 2016
No one knew what to do. On Twitter, some Lexus owners said that disconnecting the battery for a minute forced a system reboot, and that seemed to work.
@Lexus when can I expect a fix for the nav reset loop issue?! It’s a driving hazard with the screen constantly resetting in my line of sight
— Joshua Burda (@JoshuaBurda) June 8, 2016
Lexus said little more than it was “fully engaged and investigating this issue as a top priority.” Hey, at least they didn’t say it was a “sophisticated” attack.
According to reports, drivers affected spanned from California to Massachusetts. Among other things, these customers “complained of being stuck hundreds of miles from home without the benefit of GPS, or of being stuck in Southern California freeway traffic without air conditioning.”
The afternoon statement by Lexus on Twitter was light on details. But Lexus Communications Specialist Laura Conrad told Security Ledger that customers need to bring their cars to a Toyota or Lexus dealership so the service department could do a “forced reset and clearing of the errant data from the system.” Basically, the equivalent of turning it off and on again.
This doesn’t bode well for what could happen with driverless cars. Who do you call when it’s jamming an intersection, endlessly rebooting? Or things like Tesla’s Autopilot, which drives the car for you. At least if that particular luxury car drove itself into a fire hydrant because an update gave your car the automotive equivalent of Heartbleed, you could give Elon Musk a hard time about it on Twitter.
The good news? This week’s borked Lexus update wasn’t critical to immediate vehicle safety because it was for the specific systems related to climate, GPS, and entertainment. But Tesla is one automaker who has moved to software updates that control the whole vehicle, which introduces a whole host of concerns.
Lexus emailed a statement to Security Ledger which reported:
“Errant data” sent by a third party that provides traffic and weather data service was “not handled as expected” by the Enform software that runs the center display on 2014-2016 model year Lexus and 2016 model year Toyota Land Cruiser vehicles, the company said in an emailed statement.
So thanks to something sketchy with a third party in Enform’s app suite, which includes everything from Yelp to Facebook and I Heart Radio, one update crashed the entire center console for all drivers who paid for the privilege of Enform.
In addition to the constant resets, drivers also lost roadside assistance, emergency assistance, stolen vehicle location and Enform’s vehicle and service alerts “delivered on demand.” Its mobile app lets you lock and unlock doors, and start the car, so we can suppose those “features” may have been “down” too.
Great, so now we have to worry about buggy, unvetted third party updates in our cars. Next they’re going to tell us to carry a paperclip in case our car stalls. That is, until someone realizes that cars are now going to have to come equipped with CTRL-ALT-DELETE buttons.
And won’t that be fun.
Blue Origin will livestream its next launch on June 19th
Jeff Bezos’ spaceflight outfit Blue Origin has kept their first three New Shepherd rocket launches under wraps in the past, only posting videos and announcements after the the booster safely returned to Earth. But for its fourth test flight, the company will be streaming the whole thing live from its West Texas launch facility.
New Shepard launch set for Sunday at 10:15 am ET. Live webcast starts at 9:45 am ET at https://t.co/WTXblOKlvk #GradatimFerociter
— Jeff Bezos (@JeffBezos) June 17, 2016
The unmanned test launch happens Sunday, June 19th at 10:15 AM ET, and the livestream starts half an hour earlier at 9:45 a.m. Expect this latest launch to include even more drama that the last three, as the team plans to intentionally crash land the crew capsule in order to observe how things might unfold under catastrophic conditions. In this case, that means a faulty parachute and, probably, a crew capsule smashing into the Texas desert.
“On this upcoming mission we also plan to stress the crew capsule by landing with an intentionally failed parachute, demonstrating our ability to safely handle that failure scenario,” Bezos wrote in an email announcement last month. “It promises to be an exciting demonstration.”
The livestream will be available on BlueOrigin.com
These were our favorite games, hardware and toys from E3 2016
Another year, another massive, exciting E3 showcase. The biggest names in the video game industry brought out their newest games and hardware, including two console announcements (and controllers) from Xbox and a ton of fresh games from PlayStation with an emphasis on VR experiences. There was no sign of Sony’s new PlayStation 4, but that was just fine.
Engadget’s E3 crew spent the week running around the show floor and convention halls, collecting all of the most important news and interviews. And playing some games, of course. OK, playing a lot of games. Don’t hate — check out the above video for our our favorites from E3 2016.
Follow all the news from E3 2016 here!
Razer’s OSVR headset is still a work in progress
When Razer announced the latest version of its HDK (“Hacker Development Kit”) virtual reality headset, it positioned it as a competitor to premium devices like the Oculus Rift and HTC Vive. On paper, that’s very much true: the HDK 2.0 has a 2,160 x 1,200 low-persistence OLED panel, a 110-degree field of view and a 90Hz refresh rate. It also has a low price of $399, which is way less than the Rift’s $599 and Vive’s $799 (both headsets come with accessories that go a way to explaining the price difference).
We tried on the HDK 2.0 for a quick game, and weren’t completely sold own the experience. Despite those lofty specs — numerically on par with both the Rift and Vive — the display didn’t match the quality of those in either of the more established sets. That said, it did offer a clear advantage over PSVR, which is to be expected given the improved resolution it offers.
Our social media editor Mallory Johns donned the HDK 2.0 for a play season of Redout, an F-Zero-esque space racer. Mallory’s been around the VR block, with hours of playtime logged on the Vive, Oculus, PSVR and Gear VR, but despite the 90-frames-per-second refresh rate, she found the experience nauseating, thanks in part to the lenses not playing well with her short-sightedness.
In terms of build quality, the HDK 2.0 feels very much a generation behind. It’s comfortable to wear, thanks to its lightness, but it’s more comparable to Oculus’ Crystal Cove headset rather than the finished article. There’s also the issue of compatibility. Valve supports the HDK (and OSVR in general) through Steam, so technically anything the Vive can run HDK can as well. But with only a tiny infrared tracker, and no dedicated motion controls. This is a problem that can be solved in the future, or with third-party add-ons, though.
Being a little rough around the edges is to be expected — OSVR is an ongoing project, and this is a development kit — but if you were looking for something comparable to the Vive or Rift in terms of quality on a budget, don’t expect the HDK 2.0 to be without compromise.
Mallory Johns contributed to this report.
Follow all the news from E3 2016 here!
Apple and Microsoft reportedly vetoed a rifle emoji
Like it or not, emojis are permeating our vocabulary and fast becoming one of the primary ways people communicate. But if you were looking to convey your thoughts on rifles or hunting, you’re out of luck.
Unicode, the organization that oversees and selects emojis across platforms, has removed the rifle from a list of potential additions to the emoji library. According to Buzzfeed, that decision “was led and championed” by Apple, a member of the Unicode Consortium with voting rights.
Buzzfeed’s sources said Apple told the consortium it would not support a rifle on its platforms and asked that it not be made into an emoji. Other tech titans like Microsoft and Google are also voting members of the consortium, and none of them appeared to have any objections to removing the glyph. Microsoft was even said to have spoken up against the additon as well.
The rifle appeared to be part of a proposed Olympic-themed set of emojis that included medals, boxing gloves, goal nets and drums. Most of these other items have been approved and added to the most recent version of the Unicode standard, which now includes different skin tones and professional women.
Source: Buzzfeed
Apple’s ‘Apps for Earth’ Campaign Raises More Than $8M for World Wildlife Fund
Apple and the World Wildlife Fund this week announced that the recent “Apps for Earth” promotion has raised more than $8 million in proceeds to support the WWF’s conservation work.
The Apps for Earth promotion, timed to take place to celebrate Earth Day, ran from April 14 to April 24 and saw dozens of apps offering special in-app purchases with 100 percent of the proceeds going directly to the World Wildlife Fund.
Many of the participating apps, which included titles like VSCO, Trivia Crack, Hearthstone, and Angry Birds 2, heavily promoted the fundraiser, even going so far as to change app icons and graphics during the time that it ran. Apple itself updated the theme of the App Store’s front page to highlight the promotion, displaying environmentally conscious messages and themed categories.
THANK YOU! $8 million raised through @AppStore’s #AppsforEarth will advance conservation! https://t.co/zEqygxYJUx
— World Wildlife Fund (@World_Wildlife) June 15, 2016
Apple has twice partnered with the World Wildlife Fund, and in addition to the app fundraiser, Apple in 2015 began a multi-year project with the WWF designed to protect up to 1 million acres of responsibility managed working forests in China.
Tags: App Store, World Wildlife Fund
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