Month: October 2017

Enlarge / Only two base stations? P'shaw. Next year, SteamVR will let developers do way more with four. (credit: Valve)

Every major virtual reality platform has its pros and cons at this point, but one of SteamVR's clear leads is space. Right now, owners of the HTC Vive can set up two of its infrared-powered "base stations" and move, dance, shoot, sculpt, and adventure around a maximum of 132 square feet—assuming you have that much to spare in your den or basement, anyway.

But as more commercial groups (from arcades to industrial design firms) bite on VR's most extreme use possibilities, Steam's VR design side has clearly been working to give them more extreme floor space to work with. On Tuesday, the company hinted at an eventual SteamVR 2.0 product by announcing quite a leap in scope: nearly 10 times the square footage.

The catch is that the entire SteamVR pipeline must be upgraded to take advantage of this jump, including new "SteamVR Tracking 2.0" base stations that will begin rolling out to developers at the start of 2018. Developers will need to test these tracking boxes with head-mounted displays (HMDs) that are compatible with the new trackers' standard, dubbed TS4321—meaning, not the HTC Vive currently on store shelves. These tracking boxes work the same as the original infrared-crazy base stations, and they add support for "modulated light carrier input."

The Google Home Mini. It's listening, even sometimes when it's not supposed to. (credit: Google)

Update: Welp, this is officially a full-blown disaster. In response to reports of constantly-recording Google Home Minis, Google is permanently removing the Google Home Mini's center touch point functionality. The company released a statement tonight, saying:

We take user privacy and product quality concerns very seriously. Although we only received a few reports of this issue, we want people to have complete peace of mind while using Google Home Mini.

We have made the decision to permanently remove all top touch functionality on the Google Home Mini. As before, the best way to control and activate Google Home Mini is through voice, by saying “Ok Google” or “Hey Google,” which is already how most people engage with our Google Home products. You can still adjust the volume by using the touch control on the side of the device.

The total, permanent removal of the top center touch point means you won't be able to long press on it to begin voice recognition, and you won't be able to tap on it to pause or resume music, or stop an alarm from beeping. While the Mini still isn't released yet, apparently the false-positive touch issue is not fixable through software, the Mini's are too far along to fix the hardware, and Google doesn't want to rip apart the units that have already been manufactured. Someone messed up big time.

Our original post is below.

Enlarge (credit: Mikhail Deynekin)

Last week, The Wall Street Journal dropped a bombshell when it reported that Russian government hackers located confidential National Security Agency material improperly stored on an employee's home computer with help from Kaspersky antivirus, which happened to be installed. On Tuesday, The New York Times and The Washington Post provided another shocker: the Russian hackers were caught in the act by spies from Israel, who were burrowed deep inside Kaspersky's corporate network around the time of the theft.

Moscow-based Kaspersky Lab disclosed the intrusion into its network in mid-2015. Kaspersky released a detailed report that said some of the attack code shared digital fingerprints first found in the Stuxnet worm that sabotaged Iran's nuclear program. When combined with other clues—including the attackers' targeting of entities located in the US, which is off limits to the NSA—most analysts concluded that the 2014 hack was carried out by Israel. At the time, Kaspersky Lab researchers said that the hackers appeared most interested in data the company had amassed on nation-sponsored hackers.

The NYT, citing unnamed people, said on Tuesday that Israeli spies indeed carried out the attack. More revealing still, the report said, that during the course of the hack, the spies watched in real time as Russian government hackers turned Kaspersky antivirus software used by 400 million people worldwide into an improvised search tool that scoured computers for code names of US intelligence programs. The NYT likened to a "sort of Google search for sensitive information." The Israeli spies, in turn, reported their findings to their counterparts in the US.

Enlarge / Front row from left, U.S. Supreme Court Associate Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Associate Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, Chief Justice John G. Roberts, Associate Justice Clarence Thomas, and Associate Justice Stephen Breyer, back row from left, Associate Justice Elena Kagan, Associate Justice Samuel Alito Jr., Associate Justice Sonia Sotomayor, and Associate Justice Neil Gorsuch. (credit: Alex Wong/Getty Images)

On Tuesday, the Supreme Court let stand the novel hacking conviction of a man who did not hack a computer to gain unauthorized access.

The justices, without comment, turned away the the appeal of David Nosal, who was convicted of three counts under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA) hacking statute.

Nosal's conviction was based on a hacking conspiracy of sorts.

Jaguar Land Rover

Like it or not, the SUV has become the dominant automotive species in the early 21st century. The combination of station wagon cargo capacity and umpire's chair driving position are what the public wants and what the public buys. And we have the Range Rover to thank for all of this—it was the first in class.

Last month, Jaguar Land Rover—which counts the Range Rover among its models—announced that it would be adding an electric option for every new vehicle in its line up. As of today, at least two have broken cover. Last week, the Range Rover Sport P400e ran into the open. Today, the car maker revealed the Range Rover P400e.