Formerly a separate Gadget/Tech blog, now all the old posts are integrated into Pattern Recognition.
David Pogue REALLY likes the DJI Mavic. This might go a long way to explain why 3DR has stopped making drones…
I cannot tell you how radical a leap forward this drone is. Seeing it is like seeing the MacBook Air when laptops were thick and heavy, or seeing a Tesla drive up when “electric car” meant golf carts.
Source: DJI Mavic Pro: a folding drone that redefines the category
Black Mirror meets Real Life.
It had been three months since Roman Mazurenko, Kuyda’s closest friend, had died. Kuyda had spent that time gathering up his old text messages, setting aside the ones that felt too personal, and feeding the rest into a neural network built by developers at her artificial intelligence startup. She had struggled with whether she was doing the right thing by bringing him back this way. At times it had even given her nightmares. But ever since Mazurenko’s death, Kuyda had wanted one more chance to speak with him.
Source: Speak, Memory
Security is hard, and the bad guys are clever.
Security researcher and former NSA staffer Patrick Wardle is this afternoon demonstrating a way for Mac malware to tap into live feeds from the built-in webcam and microphone. His presentation is being delivered at the Virus Bulletin conference in Denver later today.
Although any unauthorized access to the webcam will light the green LED – a firmware-level protection that is exceedingly difficult to bypass – Wardle’s presentation shows how a malicious app can tap into the outgoing feed of an existing webca
Source: Former NSA staffer demonstrates Mac malware that can tap into live webcam and mic feeds | 9to5Mac
3DR has seen better days. Sad to see them pivot, I really wanted a US-based drone company to do well.
While it may prove fruitful, 3D Robotics’ pivot puts it in direct competition with a host of Silicon Valley startups, including Kespry, DroneDeploy and others that have raised millions of dollars on the original intent of developing software solutions for companies. 3D Robotics must play catch up and it may not have the resources to do so. In June, a document filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission showed that the company raised $26.7 million in debt and warrants.
“We’re not making anymore Solos and we’re not going to make another drone,” said Anderson, who suggested that 3D Robotics would start developing software for other drone makers. “I love the idea of other companies making hardware so we don’t have to and we can focus on the software and services side. We’re a Silicon Valley company and we’re supposed to be doing software and there are Chinese companies that are supposed to be doing hardware.”
Source: Behind The Crash Of 3D Robotics, North America’s Most Promising Drone Company
The source code that powers the “Internet of Things” (IoT) botnet responsible for launching the historically large distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack against KrebsOnSecurity last month has been publicly released, virtually guaranteeing that the Internet will soon be flooded with attacks from many new botnets powered by insecure routers, IP cameras, digital video recorders and other easily hackable devices.
Source: Source Code for IoT Botnet ‘Mirai’ Released — Krebs on Security
I cannot fully express how this video makes me feel. I want this to happen so, so badly.
This is a fantastic article that illustrates one reason I’ve been so fascinated by hardware over the last few years.
The cheap and easy gains of the last fifty years of Moore’s Law gave birth to a global technology industry. The next little while – somewhere between twenty and fifty years out – will be dominated by a transition from software into hardware, a confusion of the two so complete it will literally become impossible to know where the boundary between the two lies.
Source: Zombie Moore’s Law shows hardware is eating software • The Register
Get used to this, because here’s the future of computer security….
A giant botnet made up of hijacked internet-connected things like cameras, lightbulbs, and thermostats has launched the largest DDoS attack ever against a top security blogger, an attack so big Akamai had to cancel his account because defending it ate up too many resources.
Source: Largest DDoS attack ever delivered by botnet of hijacked IoT devices | Network World
Prediction: This won’t end well.
What initially appears to be a normal pair of sunglasses turns out to be Spectacles, the first hardware product from Snap Inc., as the firm has been newly christened (Spiegel is refreshing the company name because its offerings now go beyond the Snapchat app). When you slip Spectacles on and tap a button near the hinge, it records up to 10 seconds of video from your first-person vantage. Each new tap records another clip.
Source: Snapchat Releases First Hardware Product, Spectacles – WSJ
Tiny computers in everything…
Vietnamese website Tinhte has shared a teardown of Apple’s new Lightning EarPods and Lightning-to-3.5mm headphone jack adapter included in the box with iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus. The video confirms that, as expected, each accessory is equipped with a small digital-to-analog converter.
Source: Teardown Confirms Digital-to-Analog Converter in Lightning EarPods and 3.5mm Adapter – Mac Rumors
