Losing a laptop full of personal files like family photos is upsetting, but losing a laptop full of private corporate info and trade secrets is instead downright terrifying. So when you absolutely can't risk misplaced data falling into the wrong hands, a GSM-equipped SSD drive that can remotely physically self-destruct guarantees the utmost of security and privacy.
As soon as you realize a laptop or other hardware with the SecureDrives SSD installed has gone missing, all you need to do is send a pre-defined text message to its unique cellular number and the drive will be immediately destroyed. And we're not talking a quick format to erase its contents either. The SSD's enclosure features built-in mechanisms that will physically destroy the flash memory chips inside, making the data completely unrecoverable.
But the drives include other failsafes for protecting your data if you're not able to send the self-destruct text, or don't realize the drive has gone missing. The SecureDrives SSDs can also be programmed to automatically self-destruct when disconnected from a SATAII connector, when the battery is low and someone is trying to circumvent the fail-safe mechanisms, when it's been shielded from a GSM signal for a set period of time, and even after a pre-determined series of finger taps detected through a motion sensor. And all of that works on top of 256-bit AES CBC hardware encryption protecting the actual data.
It goes without saying these drives will certainly cost far more than your standard SSD, including having to pay for the monthly worldwide GSM service. But if security is your number one priority, it sounds like they all but guarantee your precious data will be protected at all costs.
iHealth was the first company to sell a medical device through Apple, so it's only natural it's also the first to fully integrate its products with Apple's HealthKit. That means all the data iHealth's connected monitors and trackers collect not only gets sent straight to the app, it's also automagically logged in your electronic health record.
This is really exciting news. When Apple initially announced the Health app and HealthKit platform, it sounded like the holistic approach to health data we'd been waiting for. The app looked like an ever-evolving, personal electronic health record. Even hospitals were helping design the thing! Of course, anybody who got a sneak peek at the app wondered where exactly the health data was going to come from and how it would get to doctors. Obviously, Apple was thinking about this, too.
So a couple of months ago, Apple approached iHealth to help fully integrate the company's popular suite of connected medical devices into the Health app. In developing the new workflow, iHealth maintained its tradition of making the device experience as simple as possible. That also means that it also needed to be easy to transfer the data between devices and to allow it to be shared. You can manually input data, as well, and which data gets shared is up to you. Indeed, the finished product is downright elegant.
Now, if you've upgraded to iOS 8, you can seamlessly send data from your iHealth devices to the Health app, where you can look at and compare trends over time. If your health care provider uses Epic to manage electronic health records, that data can then go straight to your chart, so your doctors has it at his fingertips next time you go in for a visit. The Health app and HealthKit integration works across all nine of iHealth's medical devices and can collect up to 15 different vital signs.
"Doctors have a more informed view," iHealth CMO Jim Taschetta told us in an interview. "They can literally look at data you collected and adjust medication based on that." He added, "I think this is a really important turning point in how digital health monitoring can make a difference. This is an exciting time."
Of course, if your doctor doesn't use Epic for electronic health records, this innovation is probably slightly less exciting. There are other ways to share the data with your doctor, and over time, the HealthKit platform will surely support more hospitals, doctors, and electronic health records systems. Just as iHealth's first connected devices opened up a new category of medical devices so many years ago, this new, deep integration with iOS is only the beginning.
And advertisers question why people use programs like adblock and similar... could it be because you give **** all about security or the invasion of privacy to countless millions of people who would otherwise have to endure your godawful advertisements?Turn Off Flash to Avoid 'Malvertising' Attacks
https://blog.malwarebytes.org/malve...ign-under-way-involving-doubleclick-and-zedo/
Good to know
The irony is they are violating copyright laws to do so. Those photos are the property of whoever took them, not of whoever happens to have their name or logo on someone's shirt. They should be asking permission instead of stealing. This is something most of those companies would be against if situations were reversed and people were using their name and logos to promote themselves.Your Instagram Selfies Are Being Scraped and Sold to Brands
http://online.wsj.com/articles/smile-marketing-firms-are-mining-your-selfies-1412882222
Good to know all these companies are profiting from the use of our photos
This may be a major step in that direction. There are already alternatives that exist with better if still flawed metrics but none stand up against Nielsen, yet.Nielsen: We've Been Getting TV Ratings Wrong Since March
http://deadline.com/2014/10/nielsen-software-glitch-subtly-skewed-tv-ratings-since-march-849264/
The Nielsen system just needs to go bye bye. The vast majority of folks have boxes that are capable of tracking everything now anyway so why don't we just use that?
If it were Instagram, Twitter, Tumblr, etc themselves doing the promotion/reselling that would be one thing but I got the impression this was some wholly unrelated company just prowling the images looking for brands they are hired to represent and not under any legal umbrella to be doing so.
When the microwave was first introduced it seemed like it would be the perfect all-in-one kitchen appliance that made cooking as easy as setting a timer. But rubbery meats, scalding hot beverages, and soggy pizza slices proved otherwise. The Cinder Sensing Cooker, however, could very well be the perfect kitchen appliance for aspiring chefs who love cooking but don't always have the time to dabble in the kitchen.
It might look like a grill, but the Cinder's creators actually refer to their device as a "sensing cooker." And to compare the appliance to the kinds of devices that George Foreman puts his name on is kind of an insult. We've tested similar grills in the past that claim to be smart, but disappointingly found that they would consistently undercook half the food we put inside them. Grilled cheese sandwiches were easy, but sausages and steaks were apparently well beyond the supposed intelligence of these smart appliances. The Cinder promises to do better.
It features a pair of dishwasher-safe aluminum non-stick cooking platesthere are no ridges herewhose temperatures are continuously monitored and maintained by intelligent sensors accurate to within a quarter of a degree Fahrenheit. Food is placed in-between these two cook surfaces which end up completely enclosing it when the appliance is closed, and users then set a specific cooking temperature using either a knob on the Cinder or a wirelessly connected app. Everything else happens automatically.
The cooking surfaces can range in temperature from the ambient warmth of a room, to a blistering 550-degrees Fahrenheit to create that perfect sear on a steak once it's done cooking. And the advanced software behind the Cinder uses the constant info from the cooking plates' sensors, along with a predictive control algorithm, to ensure that the specified target temperature is always perfectly maintained to properly cook your food.
But it's the free accompanying Cinder app that might actually be the best reason to upgrade your George Foreman grill. Instead of just specifying a cooking temperature using the grill's knob, users can choose a specific level of done-ness for meats and vegetables right within the app.
And thanks to a gallery of mouth-watering imagery, you don't have to be an experienced chef to know the difference between rare, medium, or well-done. You just need to choose which steak looks most delicious to youand that's probably the most difficult part of using the appliance. And it works just as well with vegetables. Need caramelized onions for a burger? Just toss them on the Cinder and select that cooking setting from the app's gallery of images.
The Cinder's advanced sensors and software are not only able to automatically maintain the perfect cooking temperature, they also provide information that the app can use to generate a fairly accurate ETA and countdown timer for when dinner will be ready. But don't worry if an alarm goes off on your smartphone or tablet and you're not quite ready to eat. Instead of having to dash to the appliance to take the food off the heat, the Cinder will automatically keep it at the perfect temperature for up to two full hours after cooking is complete. Your parents wouldn't even do that for you when you lived at home.
The only catch, and it's a big one, is that you can't actually buy one just yet. The Cinder Sensing Cooker is currently only available for pre-order on the company's website for $500, and delivery isn't expected until early 2016almost a full year away if production goes smoothly. However, anyone who pre-orders before March 20 will actually be able to apply to be part of the Cinder's beta-testing program. You're not guaranteed a spot, but it means you might have a chance to get your hands on the cooker before everyone else, meaning you may never have to eat another microwave dinner ever again.
I just survived a shark attack. I just stole a priceless diamond in an upscale London heist. I did it with Sony's new Project Morpheus headset. It's the best I've ever tried.
I've used a lot of VR headsets. Each one's a tiny bit better than the last. The picture's always a little clearer, the experience a little less likely to make me violently sick. Sony's new Morpheus prototype is no exception. But in one key way, it stands head and shoulders above the rest.
There are many fancy technological ways Morpheus leapfrogs the competition. The new OLED screen can update at 120 frames per second, making for images that are smoother than anything we've seen so far. (The one thing I'll say is while the OLED's pixels are a nice inky black when totally off, they shimmer with a weird iridescent effect in scenes that aren't well-lit.) Thanks to a expanded 100-degree field of view, I didn't have to worry about much tunnel vision keeping me from fending off British thugs and deep-sea sharks. Nine blue LEDs dotting the frame ensured that when I turned 360 degrees to check out the undersea life behind me, I didn't get dizzy from the effort.
But I'd be lying if I said they were the reason why Sony's headset is so excellent. The new Sony Morpheus prototype is the only one that's completely comfortable to wear.
I don't think it's actually as light as the flimsy-feeling Oculus Rift Crescent Bay prototype that blew me away last September. And awkwardly, it doesn't have headphones built in. But unlike Crescent Bay and every other VR headset that uses elastic bands to oh-so-gently vice grip your head, the Morpheus just rests there. You can cinch up the rear band by rotating a dial, and press a button to release its grip, but honestly the Morpheus is balanced so well you don't need to tighten extensively.
Silky soft black rubber cushions your nose and blocks out light around your eyes, but again, you don't need to squish them into your face to get the effect: the entire display just floats in the air right in front of your eyes.
Which also allows the headset to perform a truly awesome trick: you can press a button to pull the display away from your face for a sec so you can see your surroundings, without ever removing the Morpheus from your head.
So what about the games? They didn't disappoint. The Deep starts as a ho-hum "I'm in a shark cage watching marine life fly by" experience where you just look around a lot, taking in the sights, but soon there's a deadly shark ripping apart the cage. I flinched. A lot. The demo still didn't give me any arms and feet, which made for a couple awkward moments when the shark cage shook yet I remained perfectly standing still.
But the piece de resistance, The London HeistI'd pay $60 for this to be a full game right now. At first, it too seemed like nothing special, another one of the familiar stationary Oculus-type experiences where I sat tied to a chair as a muscular thug towered over me, threatening torture via third-degree burns from his propane torch.
His smartphone rang, interjecting some welcome comic relief, and I was impressed when I found I could reach out, pick it up out of his hand, hold it up to my ear, and hear the sound follow my hand. (Sony's been working on positional audio for a while, after all.)
But what got really got my blood flowing was the heist itself. It's a simple scene, rooting through some desk drawers for a key to a safeand then a handgun and some ammo clips when you set off the alarmbut the fact that I could just reach out with the PlayStation Move and open those drawers, shove clips into the pistol, and cower behind the desk while taking out guards... it made all the difference in the world.
To feel like you're actually doing something, instead of just pressing buttons I want more.
Sadly, we'll have to wait an entire year for Project Morpheus to become a consumer reality. Save your money, folks.
I saw the future today. I mean that. I got the chance here at MWC to try the new VR headset that Valve and HTC are developing. Is it good? It's absolutely incredible. This thing is just...my god you guys I can't even.
What this headset nailsand I mean ****ing nailsis a sense of presence. A sense that you're not just seeing a different world, but that your actual body is being transported there. Strap on the Vive and you are somewhere else. I slapped at fish in a shipwreck, walked like a giant through a battlefield, cooked in a virtual kitchen, and it felt so unbelievably real.
With the original Oculus Rift and things like Samsung Gear VR, that sensation of really being somewhere else is present, but fleeting. Those can't track your body, so as soon as you lean just slightly, the illusion is shattered. The Oculus Rift DK2 did it better, with a motion tracking camera that at least let you lean, but you were still a sort of an armless half-body. Sony's Project Morpheus improved it further by using controllers keep track of your hands.
But the Vive? It's like nothing that's ever come before.
HTC and Valve pulled this sensory illusion off in two ways. First, there's positional tracking. The HTC Vive uses two sensors you need to hang on the wall at a 90 degree angle. These track you pretty much wherever you are or whatever you do. Crouch, jump, lean, turn your head, tilt, look up, down, left, right, and the system will be able to keep tabs on exactly where you are based on the position of your head.
That's only solves half of the problem though. The tracking system still can't see your arms or hands, which is where controller comes in. There are two of them, one for each hand. We weren't allowed to take pictures of them, but they look a lot like the nunchuk controllers for the Nintendo Wii, but instead of a joystick on top, each one has a touchpad like the ones on the original Steam controller. On the back, there's a trigger on the back for your pointer finger. These very simple controllers are your two "virtual" hands.
It's the combination of these two things that make the whole experience click into something mind-blowing and incredibly immersive. The most immersive thing I've ever tried, bar none.
See, the controllers have trackers just like the little squares you see on the headset, which lets the Vive know exactly where they are (and by extension your hands and arms) too. In fact, the Vive actually shows them to you when you have the helmet on. And let me tell you: It is ****ing awesome. You see them in real life, put the headset on, and continue to see them in the virtual world. They act as an anchor point as you travel from real reality to a virtual one; it's still your body and your arms, just somewhere else. It's a small detail but it makes all the difference in the world.
After you set up the sensors on the wall, but before you get down to business, you have to set the size of the room you're in. That becomes your virtual space. Your god damn holodeck. Once you do that (and once that you've cleared all the objects in the way, duh), you are ready to go. And should you approach to the limit of your little corner of cyberspace, a translucent grid appears, a virtual fence that loudly implies "if you keep walking you're gonna hit a real wall and it will suck."
HTC and Valve had a variety of demos to show off what this puppy can do. In the first one I was sent undersea to a ship wreck to just sit and think and grab at things. The shipwhich I was free to explorewas littered with fish, fish I could actually poke and prod and try to catch with my real/virtual/really virtual arms. Then, there's this moment when a huge whale appears, stops, and just stares you down with its huge eye. These are the moments that are the hardest to explain when you're writing about virtual reality, but in that precise moment I felt so, so tiny. And it's that, so much more than screen resolution or refresh rate, that matters most.
For the next demo, I was a giant, standing in a battle between warring armies of tiny soldiers. I could kneel and watch them closer or I could jump over the walls of a castle to see what was behind. I wanted to squish them like ants but that wasn't possible, yet. And this is something that's only possible thanks to those wall-mounted holodeck sensors. You can move your head and your body any way you like, and the Vive can see what you're doing and adapt the point of view accordingly.
My personal favorite was one where I was transported to a kitchen. Graphic quality was not perfect, but I could see all kind of cooking ingredients around me: Tomatoes, mushrooms, eggs, meat. Then, a chalkboard appeared with a recipe and I walked around the kitchen to grab all those ingredients, open the microwave, turn it on, turn it off, open some drawers, the fridge, blah blah blah. Completely mundane, yes, but everything felt so, so natural. I was actually moving around a virtual kitchen, walking real steps, throwing eggs at the wall with natural throw arm movement (don't judge) and making tomato soup like a boss.
The final one was the best. Since Valve is behind the whole thing, I was suddenly placed in an Aperture Lab, from the Portal universe. Oh boy. GLaDOS' robotic voice starts to talk and tells me to close and open some drawers. On one of those drawers there is cake, so it looks that it wasn't a lie this whole time. After that, you need to open a giant door with a big, red lever. A trembling, malfunctioning, Atlas robot appears and you are commanded to repair it with a cool 3D-laser floating interface. It's rad as hell.
There are going to be two substantial differences from the early version of the tech I tried today and the final version, which arrives at the end of this year. First, the hanging sensors in the wall are going to be smaller. Right now they look like two big ol' boxes. Not great for decor. Second, the controllers are going to be completely wireless, for now they are wired to the PC that's running the simulation, like the headset is.
And that's probably the main weak point with HTC Vive. It's like The Matrix in that feels real but also in that you are wired into a PC with a cable that comes out of the back of your head. That will occasionally limit your free movement and is sometimes (but not often, in my experience) a tripping hazard. It is not a very big problem but noticeable anyways.
Even with that drawback, HTC and Valve have created the best virtual reality experience so far, though I wouldn't go so far as to say say the HTC Vive it's going to be the absolute winner of the VR war. Yes HTC and Valve's approach is the best I've ever seen for gaming, but Samsung's Gear VR is great for things like watching a movie on the go. And no wires! The Oculus Rift and Project Morpheus (especially the new, awesome one that I haven't had the chance to try yet!) will doubtlessly be good for gaming too, and better for situations where you don't have that much space to move around. The Vive's use of a whole room is both one of its greatest strengths, and biggest liabilities.
Virtual Reality is coming in many ways, shapes and flavors, and it's coming right now. And that, my friends, is that awesome scifi future I've always dreamed of. Let it roll.
