Hyperloop One shows how its first routes could work

Hyperloop One’s plans for super-fast tube transportation are shaping up. The company, partnering with the city of Dubai, has introduced a concept that illustrates how an autonomous Hyperloop system would work in the United Arab Emirates alongside existing infrastructure. There would be several Portals (read: stations) strung across Dubai proper (including at the Burj Khalifa), as well as a connection between Dubai and Abu Dhabi that would drastically reduce the time it takes to travel between cities — you’d get from one to the other in 12 minutes instead of the usual 2 hours by car.

The concept also includes preliminary designs for Pods (aka vehicles), and it’s clear that Hyperloop One would be catering to the UAE’s wealthy crowd. There would be posh interiors and optional seating arrangements that would accommodate groups (for those on-the-go meetings, naturally) as well as solo luxury travelers.

It’s important to remember that this is a concept, not a firm production plan. Hyperloop One is working with partners on a “detailed feasibility study” to see how well it can implement this system in real life. You may not see this version in practice, and any finished Hyperloop system (assuming there are no obstacles) is years off. Still, between this and manufacturing getting underway, it’s evident that the company has an idea of how to make its vision become reality — the big challenge is following through.

Source: PR Newswire, Hyperloop One

GoPro recalls all Karma drones over safety concerns

If you recently picked up one of GoPro’s long-in-the-works Karma drones, you should probably return it. The company has issued a recall for all devices (around 2,500 according to internal estimates) because “in a very small number of cases” the Karmas lost power while in use. Exchanges won’t be offered, and GoPro says to take your device back to the point of purchase for a full refund. Once the issue has been worked out, shipment and sales of the drone will resume.

GoPro’s FAQ page for the recall offers a few more details. No, you don’t need the original receipt. Yes, every part of the drone needs to be returned (including the Hero5 Black and Karma Grip, which aren’t affected) for the refund. You can get your money back on a GoPro Care purchase in addition to any Karma accessories. Even if yours is acting normally, GoPro still wants it back.

“Safety is our top priority,” CEO Nicholas Woodman said in a statement. “A very small number of Karma owners have reported incidents of power failure during operation. We have moved quickly to recall all units of Karma and provide a full refund while we investigate the issue. We are working in close coordination with both the U.S. Consumer Products Safety Commission and Federal Aviation Administration. We are very sorry to have inconvenienced our customers and we are taking every step to make the return and refund process as easy as possible.”

This comes at a particularly unfortunate time for GoPro. The company was banking hard on the Karma and Hero 5 cameras bringing it back in the black following a drop off in its stock prices. “Looking forward to 2017, we expect a return to profitability, driven by the strength of our new products,” Woodman said on an investor’s call last month. Production issues and an almost $160 million drop in year-over-year sales caused the stock to trade below $10 per-share (it topped out around $80 per-share two years ago).

The market already seems to be reacting. At 4pm Eastern, it was trading for $10.86 per share, but it’s dropped over six percent already, down to $10.13 per-share.

Source: GoPro

Vespa is making an electric version of its iconic scooter

Electric scooters aren’t hard to find, but you haven’t had any luck if you wanted the most recognizable scooter of them all, a Vespa — the Italian machine has run on fossil fuels since its inception. At last, though, the brand is catching up with the times. It recently unveiled a Vespa Elettrica project that, to no one’s surprise, runs on an electric motor. You’d still have the style and maneuverability of a classic Vespa, the company claims, but you’d get a cheaper-to-run, eco-friendly powerplant. There will also be “innovative connectivity solutions.” It’s not certain what those are, but it’s easy to envision checking on your scooter with your smartphone.

The Elettrica should be ready sometime in the second half of 2017. Vespa hasn’t divulged pricing. As Gizmodo comments, though, there’s a good chance that this could sit on the higher end of Vespa’s price spectrum at several thousand dollars or more. Electric vehicles are costlier as a rule, and Vespa might have little trouble charging premium prices for the combination of cutting-edge tech with its famous badge.

Via: Gizmodo, Hypebeast

Source: Piaggio Group

Apple Pay in Australia Expanding to 31 Small Banks and Credit Unions

Apple recently inked a deal with Cuscal Payments Group, which will see Apple Pay expand to more than 30 small banks and credit unions in Australia in the near future. Apple Pay is expected to be available for up to four million Australian customers through the partnership.

Some of the banks and credit unions that will accept Apple Pay include Credit Union Australia, Bank Australia, Beyond Bank Australia, QT Mutual Bank, and Central West Credit Union, with a full list available on the Cuscal website. In a statement, Apple Pay vice president Jennifer Bailey said Apple is eager to expand the payments service in Australia.

“We want as many Australians as possible to be able to use Apple Pay,” she said.

“Today more than 3500 banks across 12 countries already support Apple Pay and we think Cuscal’s customers will really love using Apple Pay for everyday purchases in stores, apps and on the web.”

While Apple Pay has been available in Australia since November of 2015 through partnerships with American Express and ANZ, other major banks in Australia have not signed on to accept Apple Pay and are embroiled in a dispute with Apple.

Three of Australia’s largest banks, including Commonwealth Bank, National Australia Bank, and Westpac, have filed an application with the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) to collectively negotiate with Apple to gain access to the NFC hardware in iPhones.

The banks want customers to be able to use already-established bank-run digital wallets rather than being limited to Apple Pay, but Apple does not allow third-party services to access the NFC chip built into the iPhone.

The banks have argued that Apple’s refusal to allow access to the iPhone’s hardware is an anti-competitive restriction, while Apple has told the ACCC that allowing the banks to “form a cartel” to dictate the terms of new business models would “set a troubling precedent,” delay the introduction of “potentially disruptive technologies,” and compromise security.

Related Roundup: Apple Pay
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NASA plans to launch swarms of small satellites to study Earth

NASA announced its plans to deploy multiple swarms of tiny weather-sensing, climate change-observing satellites over the next few months during a teleconference held on Monday. The satellites will not only help advance climate science but also enable them to build the next generation of “small-satellites” for far less than they do today.

The space agency plans to launch three such missions, two by the end of the year: The Cyclone Global Navigation Satellite System (CYGNSS) mission, which is slated for December 12th, will put eight identical “cube satellites” into orbit where they will monitor tropical storms and improve weather forecasting efforts.

The Radiometer Assessment using Vertically Aligned Nanotubes (RAVAN) project, on the other hand will launch in late November, launching three satellites which will monitor greenhouse gasses. NASA hopes to eventually launch an Earth-covering array of RAVAN satellites to assist in climate change research.

A third program, for which a launch date has not yet been set, is Time-Resolved Observations of Precipitation structure and storm Intensity with a Constellation of Smallsats or, if you squint real hard, TROPICS. These satellites will measure the temperature and water vapor concentration of storms.

NASA hopes that these missions are just the start. The space agency inaugurated the CubeSat Launch Initiative last year. Eventually, these miniaturized satellites could be deployed to the moon, Mars and beyond.

Source: Space.com

Walgreens sues Theranos for a reported $140 million

Walgreens is taking Theranos to court for $140 million, according to Wall Street Journal investigative reporter John Carreyrou and a motion filed today in Delaware district court. The details of the case are secret, as the companies both signed non-disclosure agreements that could be violated if Walgreens’ actual complaint were made public.

The public motion outlines the non-disclosure and confidentiality agreements that Walgreens and Theranos entered into beginning in April 2010. “If confidential information subject to the NDA and/or the Confidentiality provision of the Agreement were publicly disseminated, Theranos might claim that Walgreens potentially could be in breach of the NDA and/or the Agreement,” the motion reads.

Walgreens just filed a $140 million lawsuit against @theranos in Delaware.

— John Carreyrou (@JohnCarreyrou) November 8, 2016

While there’s no word on the focus of the lawsuit, there’s plenty of turbulent history for Walgreens to choose from. Theranos was once a blood-testing start-up poised to reach the stars, but in 2015 the safety and accuracy of its methods came under fire. The Food and Drug Administration shut down all Theranos testing aside from Herpes in October 2015, and in July this year US regulators banned CEO Elizabeth Holmes from running a lab for two years.

Walgreens ended its relationship with Theranos after months of warnings that the start-up had to clean up its act.

In October 2016, an investor who poured $100 million into Theranos sued the company, alleging it had fed financiers a “series of lies.”

Via: The Verge

Source: @JohnCarreyrou

The importance of selecting a secure phone for business

There are plenty of great Android phones with the consumer in mind, but Android can make a great choice for a corporate environment or small business, too.

We assume that phones are secure. That might be the case when they are first released, but not all manufacturers provide users with the latest security patches. When deploying phones for a large scale organization, selecting a secure phone is paramount. We’ll highlight phones that provide the highest levels of security and discuss how and why they are doing it.

More: The most secure Android phones

Buying a phone for corporate use is different that it is for a consumer. While many of us are looking for phones with the best cameras or waterproof cases, the IT department in any corporate environment is concerned about two things: can they effectively administer the device and is it secured against remote data theft. All smartphones can get your email and they all make calls or send texts. But not very many are built for business use.

Whether you’re buying a phone for your own small business or in the process of buying hundreds for a company-wide deployment it’s important to make the right choice when you buy an Android phone. There are several that fit the bill, and none of them is a chore to use.

Google Pixel

Android is an open source application platform that makes it easy to build a complete operating system around. Google is the maintainer of the code and they do the majority of the work writing it. It’s only natural that their Pixel and Pixel XL phones would be at the top of the list.

Google has control of Android and the new Pixel brand will carry every security-focused feature for two full years.

Android, as shipped, is very secure, but it’s easy to change settings and break the security. Google knows this — and does everything to encourage it for Android developers and enthusiasts — so they make sure an account manager in a business can administer the phone and set up stringent device policies. While they work best with Google Apps offices, they also play very nicely with exchange admins. The Android for Work features also do a great job separating your business applications, accounts and data from the personal side if you or your employees want to bring their own device. All Android for Work features are available for both the Google Pixel and the Google Pixel XL.

The Pixel phones are also kept up to date for their entire lifetime. New operating system features — including security enhancements — are promised for a two-year period, and the shipped software is guaranteed to receive security updates for three years. It’s important to build software with strict security and tools to manage it in place, and it’s just as important to make sure it gets distributed to your products. Because of Google’s open-source nature, the Pixel phones are they only models under Google’s direct control, and the only phones they can make any guarantees when it comes to security patch updates.

See at Google
See at Verizon

Of course, the same security features on the software front apply to the Nexus 6P and Nexus 5X, too. While no longer available through consumer sources, direct channels with Huawei or LG may be able to purchase last year’s phones from Google. We are hesitant to recommend them for one reason — half of their supported lifespan is over.

BlackBerry DTEK60 and DTEK50

The name BlackBerry is synonymous with mobile security. The BlackBerry DTEK60 and DTEK50 carry on this tradition while using Google’s Android to power their software.

BlackBerry has a reputation to uphold when it comes to mobile security, and their DTEK line keeps this focus.

BlackBerry hardens and patches Android at all levels. The Linux kernel that controls everything is hardened by BlackBerry and third party specialists to prevent and mitigate direct exploits that could gain admin access. The boot procedure is independently hardened, with full verification of the system software partition at every restart. Special procedures prevent the running operating system from installing an app that tries to elevate permissions that sit atop of Google’s security measures to do the same. And we can’t forget BlackBerry’s reputation for MDM software. With Android as their way forward, we expect strong focus on software for the account administrator.

When it comes to security patches and fixes, BlackBerry’s Android phones are always among the first (if not the first) to announce their availability and send them to users. While BlackBerry may not control the platform and have the opportunity to decide how security is handled the way Google does, they back their phones with their reputation as a leader in both device management and remote security.

The DTEK50 also has a very tempting price tag if you plan on a wider deployment.

While the BlackBerry Priv also provides the same level of security and support as the DTEK line, it’s over a year old and won’t have the lifespan.

See DTEK50 at Amazon
See DTEK60 at ShopBlackBerry

The rest of the landscape gets a little muddy

Unfortunately, the majority of Android-powered phones aren’t such a great choice when it comes to security.

Some models, like the Nextbit Robin — have a great track record when it comes to keeping up to date with Google’s monthly security bulletins but the software isn’t conducive for a corporate setting. Others, like the Motorola brand, can boast that they use the standard security measures put in place by Google, but fall behind when it comes to getting patched. And Samsung phones are a hit or miss when it comes to updates, with a reasonable schedule for the high-end models and little to no support for the more inexpensive ones, so you’re likely going to end up waiting for critical patches when a newer model is released.

There are plenty of good choices right now, but what happens next month or the month after? We’re waiting for another company to step forward and follow Google’s example the way BlackBerry has. There are plenty of reasons for a consumer to buy any of the great Android phones from these companies.That’s because they were tailored for the consumer and don’t have a security-first focus.

Our conclusion

Android phones are a mixed landscape when it comes to corporate security. Most aren’t designed to put IT needs ahead of consumer features and make a great phone for the weekends where they excel. The good news is that your available choices will meet both IT needs and allow your users full access to the business tools they need, and it’s up to your IT department to decide whether they can do frivolous things like install Pokémon Go — or not.

This is your Samsung Gear VR Ultimate Guide!

Whatever you want to do with your Gear VR, we’ve got the details for you here!

Samsung’s Gear VR is easily one of the most accessible VR systems that is available today. Running off of a Samsung phone, this headset has benefited from lots of small but important improvements. The end result is a portable entertainment center, offering up games and movies and a huge selection of new ways to completely immerse yourself in new worlds.

Here’s everything you need to get the most out of your Samsung Gear VR!

Read more on VR Heads!