Month: November 2017

Enlarge / A lot of tech packed into this svelte box.

When the Xbox One launched in 2013, Microsoft had to try to convince gamers that extra features and hardware like the Kinect made its console worth $100 more than Sony’s PlayStation 4. Today, Microsoft is trying to convince many of those same gamers that the extra horsepower in the Xbox One X makes it worth $100 more than the PS4 Pro for the definitive living room 4K gaming experience.

When it comes to hard numbers, the Xbox One X definitely merits Microsoft’s marketing hype as “the most powerful console ever.” Microsoft has pulled out the stops in squeezing stronger components into the same basic architecture of the four-year-old Xbox One. In games like Gears of War 4 and Super Lucky’s Tale, the system generates performance that’s equivalent to modern PC hardware that costs hundreds of dollars more.

When it comes to seeing the value of that hardware on the screen, though, the promise of the Xbox One X is currently unfulfilled—at the very least, it's incomplete. We’ve only been able to test a relative handful of games that have gotten a downloadable patch providing the full “Xbox One X enhanced” treatment as of press time. That list excludes high-profile exclusives like Forza Motorsport 7 and Halo 5, as well as major cross-console comparisons like Rise of the Tomb Raider or Middle-Earth: Shadow of War.

Enlarge / The Twitter timeline of US president Donald Trump is seen on 29 June, 2017, in Bydgoszcz, Poland after he insulted TV show host Mika Brzezinski on the platform claiming he was bullied by Mrs. Brzezinski and her co-hosts on their show Morning Joe on MSNBC. (credit: Jaap Arriens/NurPhoto via Getty Images)

Twitter announced Thursday evening that an employee, on his or her last day of work at the company, deactivated President Donald Trump’s notorious Twitter account. The president's account was only absent for 11 minutes before it was restored.

In a series of its own tweets, the company said: "We are conducting a full internal review."

Through our investigation we have learned that this was done by a Twitter customer support employee who did this on the employee’s last day. We are conducting a full internal review. https://t.co/mlarOgiaRF

— Twitter Government (@TwitterGov) November 3, 2017

The company did not elaborate as to what steps had or would be taken.

Enlarge / CBD All-Natural Hemp Oil by That's Natural! is sold as a supplement but should be regulated as a drug, the FDA says. (credit: That’s Natural! Marketing & Consulting)

The Food and Drug Administration on Wednesday publicly scolded and threatened companies claiming that marijuana-based products could treat or cure cancer.

In the harshly worded announcement, the agency suggested that the “deceptive marketing” was tantamount to “health fraud” and that the agency was “increasingly concerned at the proliferation of products claiming to treat or cure serious diseases like cancer.”

The FDA called out four companies in particular during the tongue-lashing. The agency alleges that they were making illegal and unproven health claims about products containing the marijuana component cannabidiol (CBD). The companies—Greenroads Health, Natural Alchemist, That’s Natural! Marketing and Consulting, and Stanley Brothers Social Enterprises LLC—collectively marketed more than 25 CBD-containing products as being able to reverse, prevent, and/or cure various types of cancers, according to the agency.

Enlarge / Golden era imagery like this takes up a lot of download space relative to the Switch's internal storage.

If you're hoping to download Rockstar's L.A. Noire to your Switch later this month, you'd better be ready to invest in a microSD card for extra storage space (if you haven't already). Rockstar has announced that the Switch port will be a 29GB download from Nintendo's eShop, which exceeds the system's built-in storage capacity of about 26GB (that's 32GB minus about 6GB of reserved space for system software).

Buying the physical cartridge version of the game only ameliorates the storage situation a bit; Rockstar says that "the game will require a 14GB digital download containing required gameplay data as well as general bug fixes and improvements." That also means you'd better have a decent Wi-Fi connection and some time available before you plan to start playing even the cartridge version of the game.

Don't count on buying a cheap, low-speed microSD card for your Switch sleuthing, either; Rockstar says the game requires that any Switch SD storage "must have a read speed of at least 60 MB/sec."

Enlarge / IoT products like Amazon Key come with a whole set of risks that consumers aren't equipped to assess themselves. (credit: Amazon)

Every time a major Internet-connected-product is released, we keep coming back to the debate over security vs. convenience. The progression of arguments goes something like this:

• One group expresses outrage/skepticism/ridicule of how this product doesn't need to be connected to the Internet;
• Another group argues how the benefits outweigh the risks and/or how the risks are overblown;
• There will be news stories on both sides of the issue, and the debate soon dies down as people move on to the next thing; and
• Most users are left wondering what to believe.

As a security researcher, I often wonder whether the conveniences offered by these Internet-connected-devices are worth the potential security risks. To meaningfully understand the nuances of this ecosystem, I consciously made these devices a part of my daily life over the past year. One thing immediately stood out to me: there seems to be no proper mechanism to help users understand the ramifications of the risk/reward tradeoffs around these commonly used “personal” Internet-connected-devices, which makes it difficult for users to have any sort of effective understanding of their risks. I pointed out the same in a recent CNN Tech article about Amazon Key, where I also said:

A simple rule of thumb here could be to visualize the best case, average case, and worst case scenarios, see how each of those affect you, and take a call on whether you are equipped to deal with the fall out, and whether the tradeoffs are worth the convenience.

Without knowing a user’s specific needs, this is probably as close as it gets to any sort of “useful advice” any security professional could give. But this is still only a semi-useful platitude, because it doesn’t answer a very important question:

Enlarge / A protester at Science March Austin shares his frustration with Lamar Smith. (credit: Nathan Mattise)

Lamar Smith (R-Texas) today acknowledged he is retiring at the end of his current term. Smith was one of the key sponsors of the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), which attracted widespread criticism for the powers it would grant companies going after copyright infringement. For the past five years, he has been chair of the House Science Committee, where he has intruded on peer review at the National Science Foundation and gotten into fights with NOAA because he refuses to accept the evidence for climate change.

Smith represents Texas' 21st district, which includes huge tracts of rural Texas, along with small slices of both Austin and San Antonio. He was first elected in 1987, which means he will have served for more than three decades by the time he retires. His retirement was announced in an e-mail to his staff that was obtained by the Texas Tribune. His staff later confirmed to reporters that the e-mail was genuine.

Smith vs. the Internet

Smith's seniority allowed him to assume chairmanship of various Congressional committees, and he used that platform in a way that has attracted extensive criticism. While chair of the Judiciary committee, Smith introduced SOPA. The bill would have also given rights holders the power to get court orders barring ad services and credit card companies from doing business with infringing websites, and it required Domain Name Server providers to blacklist sites that hosted infringing content. It would have also allowed the government to obtain court orders to require search services to stop displaying links to websites that host infringing content. As such, it was opposed by many technology companies and ultimately failed after a huge public outcry.