Month: January 2016

Brian Ratliff from Nuance gives us a demo of Dragon Drive, the voice activation system in the new BMW 7 Series. Video shot/edited by Jennifer Hahn (video link)

LAS VEGAS—Distracted driving is a real problem. Even though most of us intrinsically know that playing with our phones isn't compatible with piloting a vehicle surrounded by other vehicles and pedestrians, it's a common enough problem that more than a quarter of all crashes involve cell phone use. Not using a phone at all in the car is obviously the ideal solution, but like teenagers and sex, hoping for abstinence is a high-minded but ultimately ineffective approach. If people are going to text and drive—which they are—then systems that make that a safer activity are probably a good thing. At CES last week, Nuance (the company behind Dragon Dictation) gave us a demo of its solution to the problem.

(credit: Dan Klar)

The Supreme Court is setting aside a petition from the Electronic Privacy Information Center that demanded the Department of Homeland Security release the US government's secret plan to shutter mobile phone service during disasters.

The top court, without comment, refused Monday to review a federal appeals court's May ruling that the DHS did not have to divulge the full contents of Standard Operating Procedure 303. That court held that the government could withhold the plan's contents under the Freedom of Information Act if its disclosure would "endanger" public safety.

The privacy group had demanded the document in 2011 following the shuttering of cell service in the San Francisco Bay Area subway system to quell a protest. The DHS refused to divulge the SOP 303 documents, which the appeals court described as a "unified voluntary process for the orderly shut-down and restoration of wireless services during critical emergencies such as the threat of radio-activated improvised explosive devices." (Here is a copy of a heavily redacted version (PDF) of the protocol that EPIC's lawsuit produced.)

(credit: frankieleon)

A new bill pending in the Kentucky state legislature would impose a ban of "at least one hour" on the online publication of "any information identifying the potential victims" of serious physical injury.

The legislation, which was proposed by State Rep. John "Bam" Carney (R) earlier this month, would impose a fine of $20 to $100 for such publication. The text of the bill includes exemptions for "the injured individual," journalists, and emergency responders.

"It’s purely my intent to get a discussion going out there, asking people to be more respectful about what they put on social media," Carney told the Lexington Herald-Leader. "We’ve had some incidents, including one in my community, and I’d hate for anyone to learn about the loss of a loved one through social media."

For most of the mainstream market, the entry-level cost to get into PC-based virtual reality goes well beyond the $599 Oculus is charging for its first consumer Rift headset. Factor in the cost of a high-end gaming PC needed to power the Rift, and the "all-in" price for most consumers soars to at least $1,500.

But Oculus founder Palmer Luckey says he sees VR headsets like the Rift driving demand for that kind of high-end PC hardware, driving down overall costs in the process. "Most people have not had a reason to own a high-end PC for a long time," Luckey said in a wide-ranging AMA" conversation with the "Glorious PC Master Race" subreddit yesterday. "Your crappy PC is the biggest barrier to adoption [for high-end VR]..."

That won't be true for long, according to Luckey, as demand for VR drives adoption of high-end graphics hardware "much like video-related stuff drove high-end CPU adoption." In the near future, that demand will push PC technology to the point where even that "crappy PC" that most people have will be able to power a convincing virtual reality experience, Luckey said. "If 'normal' PCs get good enough to run VR, then the majority of people will be able to buy a relatively cheap headset and just use whatever computer they already own to drive it."

(credit: Getty Images)

To bail himself out of the slammer after being arrested on charges of securities fraud on December 17, Martin Shkreli put up an E-Trade brokerage account to secure his $5 million bond, court documents revealed. As of January 6, that account had $45 million in assets. Under terms of his current bond, Shkreli cannot sell or trade any of the assets in his E-trade brokerage account.

The revelation is the first glimpse of how much wealth the beleaguered former-CEO has amassed in his short-but-infamous career.

Shkreli, 32, first gained notoriety last fall for ruthlessly hiking the price of a life-saving drug—often used to treat AIDS patients and babies—by more than 5,000 percent. Interest in his assets spiked last month after he was arrested on charges alleging that he orchestrated a Ponzi-like scheme, defrauding hedge fund investors and swindling his former pharmaceutical company, Retrophin, out of millions.