Month: September 2017

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The Google and HTC deal is official, it's just not quite what we were expecting. Google isn't buying HTC outright, à la Motorola, but is instead Google and HTC have "signed an agreement" to send some of HTC's employees over to Google, while HTC gets a $1.1 billion dollar cash infusion. The deal also includes a "non-exclusive license" for HTC's IP.

HTC is still an independent company, and will still manufacture smartphones. Google is just acquiring some of HTC's employees for its hardware team, but it won't be getting any factories.

On Google's side, the deal was announced by SVP of Hardware and former Motorola CEO Rick Osterloh. In a blog post, Osterloh says, "With this agreement, a team of HTC talent will join Google as part of the hardware organization. These future fellow Googlers are amazing folks we’ve already been working with closely on the Pixel smartphone line, and we're excited to see what we can do together as one team."

Enlarge / The control center has a new interface for adjusting brightness.

Apple's new iOS 11 software for iPhones and iPads rolled out yesterday, but its adoption is slightly slower than that of its predecessor, and as is often the case, various issues have been reported by early adopters.

iOS 11 had been installed on just over 10 percent of supported devices in the 24 hours after it went live, according to data from Mixpanel. That's slightly slower than adoption of iOS 10 at launch (which was just over 14 percent after 24 hours). Tech wisdom has long held that people are generally wise to hold off installing major new OS releases until a couple of iterations in. However, Apple has always prided itself on its users' rapid adoption rate of new software releases, citing it as a metric in past conference keynotes and reports. This is still a good pace of adoption for the industry, but a handful of issues could explain the slower movement.

In fact there may be one big issue, and a few smaller ones. Most of the issues are likely to be resolved in a short time, but there are a few that we'll have to get used to. You've probably already read about the Apple Watch Series 3's LTE connectivity problems—that's an example of something that will get fixed for later adopters. What follows are some of the iOS 11 problems on iPhones and iPads.

Enlarge / With Windows breaking less often, scenes like this should become a thing of the past. (credit: Lee Adlaf)

Windows 10 is getting better and better, Microsoft insists, as it works to build confidence in the operating system in the run up to the next major update. The company says that the Creators Update (version 1703) has seen a 39 percent drop in driver and operating system stability issues relative to the Anniversary Update (version 1607).

Performance is better too; according to Microsoft's telemetry, boot time is 13 percent faster, logging in 18 percent faster, and facial recognition 30 percent faster. There are incremental improvements in battery life, too, from 2.5 to 5 percent longer life watching videos in the Movies & TV app, and a 17 percent improvement in the Edge browser.

The subtext to these numbers is that Microsoft is still working to convince customers, especially corporate customers, that the new Windows development model is working, and that the company is hearing the feedback. The Anniversary Update was rapidly deployed, and it hit a number of issues soon after launch, causing problems for both consumers and enterprise users alike.

Enlarge / A monitor displays Equifax Inc. signage on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) in New York, US, on Friday, Sept. 15, 2017. (credit: Michael Nagle/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

Hackers behind the massive Equifax data breach began their attack no later than early March, more than four months before company officials discovered the intrusion, according to a report published Wednesday by the Wall Street Journal.

The first evidence of the hackers' "interaction" with the Equifax network occurred on March 10, according to the report, which cited a confidential note that security firm FireEye sent to some Equifax customers. By then, a critical vulnerability in the Apache Struts Web application framework was already under active exploit on the Internet. Equifax officials have said the Struts flaw was the opening that gave attackers an initial hold in the targeted network.

Equifax has said that the breach that exposed sensitive data for as many as 143 million US consumers started on May 13 and lasted until July 30. The company didn't disclose the breach until September 7.

Enlarge / Employees inspect an Uber self-driving car in Pittsburgh last year. (credit: Getty Images)

Waymo will be seeking at least $2.6 billion in damages against Uber in an upcoming trade secret trial, which could start next month.

The figure was revealed by an attorney for Uber during a court hearing today, according to Reuters. The massive damage payout was apparently what Waymo was demanding for just one of the trade secrets it will be taking to trial. At present, the company is planning to present nine different trade secrets that Uber allegedly stole and used to the jury.

Waymo sued Uber in February, accusing Uber of using its trade secrets in its self-driving car technology. Lawyers for Waymo say that Anthony Levandowski, who was head of Uber's self-driving car project, illegally downloaded more than 14,000 files just before he left his job at Google. After leaving Google, Levandowski founded his own startup, Otto. He sold that company to Uber in mid-2016 for $680 million.

Enlarge / Ellen Ochoa, left, with Fred Haise, center, and David Alexander at Rice University's Apollo 13 event in September. (credit: Eric Berger)

Ellen Ochoa is a four-time astronaut who has served as director of NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston since 2013. As part of that job, Ochoa oversees a space center that trains astronauts for spaceflight missions, houses Mission Control, and manages the International Space Station and Orion spacecraft programs.

In recent years, the space center has also played a central role in preparing for and publicizing NASA's "Journey to Mars," the poorly funded effort by the agency to send humans to the red planet in the 2030s. Orion has been touted as a centerpiece of this strategy, and astronauts have talked about using what they've learned on the station and applying it toward going to Mars.

Now, however, key Trump appointees are beginning to talk about sending humans to the Moon before Mars. The administration's choice to serve as executive secretary of the National Space Council, Scott Pace, favors a return to the Moon. So does Trump's choice to lead NASA, Jim Bridenstine. It seems likely that, at some point, NASA's human destination will switch from "Mars" to the "Moon, then Mars," echoing the space policy first established during the administration of George W. Bush.

Enlarge (credit: Getty Images | Olena_T)

SpaceX has filed trademark applications for the word "Starlink" to describe its planned satellite broadband network.

SpaceX filed applications with the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) on August 21 to have Starlink trademarked for "wireless broadband communication services," "high-speed wireless Internet access," and other services related to its upcoming satellite network.

The trademark applications were surfaced by a user on Reddit and then made the rounds in news articles. SpaceX is also seeking an additional trademark on "SpaceX" specifically for the satellite network, in addition to the SpaceX trademarks it already owns for aerospace launch vehicles, rockets, and services for launching payloads into space.

Enlarge (credit: Nest)

Alphabet-owned Nest announced several new products today, all of them focused on home security. Two new cameras have been introduced—the Nest Cam IQ Outdoor and Nest Hello—along with Nest Secure, a multi-device home alarm system powered by motion sensors.

Both cameras are intended for outdoor installation, and they add facial-recognition capabilities via Google’s FaceNet technology. Nest’s cameras could already alert you if a human figure came into view, but FaceNet adds the ability to exempt trusted people, along with some other new functionality. Nest Secure is similar in basic concept to most home alarm systems you may have seen; while armed, it sounds an alarm if someone enters the home without disabling it. But it offers a couple of alarm-disabling alternatives to entering a passcode when you enter.

The key barrier to entry for Nest products remains: a full suite of them can be expensive to operate. It’s not because of the products’ purchase prices, but rather because most of the best features are only available with a subscription to the Nest Aware service. Let’s say you install a handful of Nest Cam IQ devices throughout your home and live video isn’t enough for you. You want to be able to look at video from last night to see if there was an intruder present. You can do that, but the video is stored in the cloud through Nest Aware.

Enlarge / Zika, the virus that started it all. (credit: Getty | BSIP)

Following recent news that Zika virus can lurk in semen for months, a pair of infectious-disease researchers got to wondering: how many other viruses can hang out down there?

With the intriguing question dangling, the ballsy researchers decided to do a study to figure it out—because, you know, why not?

The answer: 26.