Month: January 2016

BMW's Holger Hampf explains the thinking behind the i Vision Future Interaction concept car at CES. Video shot/edited by Jennifer Hahn. (video link)

LAS VEGAS—As auto engineers are hard at work on the technology behind self-driving cars, their colleagues in the design studios are also tackling the problem. One thing is becoming increasingly clear—the idea of a pod where the seat swivels 180 degrees when the car is in autonomous mode just isn't realistic in the near- or even mid-term future. What's also becoming clear is that each car company has different ideas for autonomous vehicles—they're all going to be quite different, reflecting each marque's values and DNA. At CES last week we got a chance to talk to Holger Hampf, head of user experience at BMW, about his company's i Vision Future Interaction concept.

Antivirus provider TrendMicro has released an emergency product update that fixes critical defects that allow attackers to execute malicious code and to view contents of a password manager built in to the malware protection program. The release came after a Google security researcher publicly castigated a TrendMicro official for the threat.

Details of the flaws became public last week after Tavis Ormandy, a researcher with Google's Project Zero vulnerability research team, published a scathing critique disclosing the shortcomings. While the code execution vulnerabilities were contained in the password manager included with the antivirus package, they could be maliciously exploited even if end users never make use of the password feature. Those who did use it were also susceptible to hacks that allowed attackers to view hashed passwords and the plaintext Internet domains they belonged to.

"I don't even know what to say—how could you enable this thing *by default* on all your customer machines without getting an audit from a competent security consultant?" Ormandy wrote in an exchange with a TrendMicro official. "You need to come up with a plan for fixing this right now. Frankly, it also looks like you're exposing all the stored passwords to the internet, but let's worry about that screw up after you get the remote code execution under control."

Wayne Williams from Ford shows us one of the company's fully autonomous Fusion research vehicles. Video shot/edited by Nathan Fitch. (video link)

LAS VEGAS—As we've noted elsewhere, CES has now evolved to be part car show. But not just any car show—the focus is on how technology is transforming the car, and nowhere is that more evident than in autonomous driving. The goal is to get to "level four"—the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration's highest level of self-driving vehicle, capable of getting from point A to point B without any human driver intervention. We're not there yet—no one in the industry Ars has spoken to recently thinks the tech challenges are quite solved yet—but research vehicles from companies like Google, Delphi, Audi, and Ford are testing out the hardware and software necessary to get us to that point. With that in mind, we spoke to Wayne Williams, who gave us a quick tour of one of Ford's fully autonomous hybrid Fusions.

Surveillance video shows two suspects during bank robberies across the US Southeast. (credit: FBI)

A woman charged in connection to a string of armed jewelry store heists was arrested after the authorities analyzed cell-site data of telephone calls made during the nine-month robbery spree across the US Southeast, the Federal Bureau of Investigation said.

The bureau said in court documents that the 24-year-old suspect, Abigail Kemp, wore an earpiece and was talking into it during several of the robberies. Store employees were tied up and shoppers were held at gunpoint during the robberies. At one incident in Florida in August, in which the Georgia woman allegedly netted $400,000 in jewelry, the FBI said (PDF) that the suspect "was observed with a cellular telephone and wearing a cellular telephone earpiece during the robbery and was heard speaking to someone. At one point during the robbery, the earpiece fell out of the white female's ear and she promptly put it back in."

"Based on an analysis of cellular tower information obtained by law enforcement, telephone number (404) 630-2685 appeared at or near all of the robbery locations in Panama City Beach, Florida, Woodstock, Georgia, and Blufton, South Carolina, during the time that the robberies discussed above were being committed," according to an FBI arrest warrant. "A check of law enforcement databases revealed telephone number (404) 630-2685 is associated with an individual named Abigail Kemp." Ars called that number and left a voice message.

Ryan drowns in the game, surrounded by the black, cancerous bulbs that frequently appear throughout That Dragon, Cancer.

7 more images in gallery

Death happens a lot in video games, but how often do games stop to reflect upon it, or upon grief? Most games cloak death in hit points, energy bars, and infinite respawns—death is reduced to a gameplay mechanic, a thing that can, with skill, be avoided or defeated. Even when games permanently remove warriors from a quest's adventuring party or force troubled virtual soldiers to question their motivations and press "X" to pay respects, death is not an end. So long as we hold a controller, the bodies are buried, the emotions are overcome, and the battle rages on.

That Dragon, Cancer is the form's rare exception: a game that follows a family's suffering through cancer therapy for their year-old son. The game dares to attach grief and tragedy to its core interactivity, and as such, it has grabbed a lot of pre-release attention. While it's not new for indie and experimental games take on ambitious, emotional concepts and existential crises, never has one come along that has been so frank, so nakedly autobiographical, and so imbued with its creators' spiritual identities.

The game is difficult, but not because of hard-to-solve puzzles or combat. Its most touching moments made me pause to reflect, to collect myself, and, quite frankly, to sob uncontrollably. But this is a video game, not a book or film or TV series, and that means That Dragon, Cancer is difficult for reasons beyond empathy and triggered memories. Video games have the unique power to put players in control of a narrative and then steal that control away, and That Dragon, Cancer employs that power to incredible emotional effect—after all, what can render a parent as powerless as facing an unkillable cancer in your infant child?