Month: September 2019

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  Camera 7.0 looks to have a much-improved and more accessible way to manage shot settings. Camera 6.x obscured these settings in several separate menus behind a bunch of tiny, unintuitive icons at the top of the viewfinder. [credit: xda-developers.com ]

Android developer site xda-developers got its hands on a pre-release copy of the Camera app designed for Google's upcoming Pixel 4—so naturally, the site then sideloaded it on a Pixel 2XL.

The majority of the settings exposed in the screenshots already existed in Camera 6.x, but even long-time Pixel users could be forgiven for not knowing they existed. Where Camera 6.x hid them in five separate menus—each squirreled away behind a tiny, unintuitive icon at the top of the viewfinder—Camera 7.0 combines them into a single, much easier-to-read menu. This one context-sensitive settings menu (its options differ between, for example, Night Sight mode and regular Camera mode) can be accessed either by tapping a drop-down arrow or by swiping down on the viewfinder itself.

Behind the scenes, xda-developers reports finding new scene-detection code that integrates with an extended "Camera coaching" feature that offers tips for taking better pictures. If you're sick and tired of seeing "try Night Sight mode" or "try Portrait mode" popping helpfully up while taking pictures, you'll also be able to disable the feature entirely—whereas, at least so far as we can tell, in Camera 6.x you're stuck with them.

Enlarge / Hacking for their home country, we guess.

The Trump administration is sanctioning three North Korean hacking groups widely accused of carrying out attacks that targeted critical infrastructure and stole millions of dollars from banks in cryptocurrency exchanges, in part so the country could finance its weapons and missiles programs.

All three of the groups are controlled by North Korea’s primary intelligence agency, the Reconnaissance General Bureau, or RGB, officials with the US Department of Treasury said in a statement published on Friday. Collectively, the groups are behind a host of cyber attacks designed to spy on adversaries and generate revenue for nuclear weapons and ballistic missile programs.

“Treasury is taking action against North Korean hacking groups that have been perpetrating cyber attacks to support illicit weapon and missile programs,” Sigal Mandelker, Treasury under-secretary for terrorism and financial intelligence, said in Friday’s statement. “We will continue to enforce existing US and UN sanctions against North Korea and work with the international community to improve cybersecurity of financial networks.”

Enlarge / A man smokes an e-cigarette. (credit: Getty | Picture alliance)

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has updated and revised the national tally of illnesses linked to the use of e-cigarettes, aka vaping, dropping the count from 450 possible cases to 380 confirmed and probable cases, the agency announced late Thursday.

The new figure follows a clearer clinical definition for the illness as well as further investigation into individual cases. The 380 confirmed and probable cases now span 36 states and still include six deaths, as reported earlier. The CDC added that the current number of cases “is expected to increase as additional cases are classified.”

While health investigators are clearing the air around the clinical aspect of the cases, the cause is still foggy. Though all the cases are associated with vaping, investigators have struggled to identify specific vape products or ingredients that tie all the cases and symptoms together.

Enlarge / A Verizon ad for its 5G Home service. (credit: Verizon)

Verizon says it will bring its "5G Home" Internet service to every market where it deploys 5G mobile service.

That might not be saying much, given how limited Verizon's early 5G deployments are. But it would mean that at least some people in each 5G mobile market would be able to buy the 5G fixed Internet service, which offers an alternative to wired Internet.

"You should expect that every market that opens a 5G mobility market will in due course be a 5G fixed wireless [market] because it is one network," Verizon Consumer Group CEO Ronan Dunne said Wednesday at an investor conference (link to webcast and transcript).

Enlarge (credit: Aurich Lawson)

FRANKFURT, GERMANY—The cars we drive are increasingly defined as much by the software they run as their engines or chassis. It started slowly. Discrete electronic control units started to appear under the hood, controlling fuel management or anti-lock brakes. New functions required new code, run on new little black boxes, metastasizing to the point where today, a new car might have up to 70 different modules, with software from as many as 200 different vendors. If that sounds like a recipe for disaster, it can be. Which is why Volkswagen Group—parent company to brands like VW, Audi, and Porsche—is saying "enough!"

Internal competition versus economies of scale

"Software is extremely complex nowadays. Each function is connected with everything—in the car, in the cloud, with the dealers—and we see that too many projects are in too much trouble. The process chain is not stable anymore; there's so much inefficiency to this process," explained Christian Senger, who is responsible for VW Group's Digital Car and Services division. The problem is partly one by design; Ferdinand Piech specifically wanted Audi, Porsche, and Volkswagen to each develop software independently, the idea being that internal competition could improve the breed.

But it has led to balkanization. "Today, we build more than 10 million cars a year. But they are running on roughly eight different electronic architectures. In mechanical engineering, I would call us a platform champion," Senger said, referring to VW Group's strength in using a small number of common architectures—MQB for transverse-engined vehicles, MLB Evo for premium models, and now MEB for smaller electric vehicles—across multiple brands. "We defined how global industrialization of brands and markets really works. In software, there is no reason for having eight different architectures," he said, contrasting VW Group's current situation with the Android OS, where the same software runs on $60 smartphones as well as $1,000 smartphones.

Hot on the heels of this summer's adaptation of Scary Stories To Tell in the Dark, Nickelodeon has dropped the first trailer for its reboot of the popular 1990s series, Are You Afraid of the Dark?, featuring a group of teens telling each other scary campfire stories that then come to life.

The original Are You Afraid of the Dark? was a Canadian "dark fantasy" (aka YA horror) anthology series that aired on Nickelodeon in the US from 1990 to 1996, followed by a second run from 1999 to 2000. At the start of each episode, the members of the Midnight Society would gather around a campfire in the woods, and one member would be chosen tell a story—typically an urban legend or something involving ghosts, werewolves, vampires, witches, and the like. The storyteller would announce the title and toss a handful of "midnight dust" into the campfire—producing white smoke for extra ambience—before launching into the tale.

The rest of the episode would dramatize the story for the viewers. There was a fair share of humor mixed in with the jump scares and creepy moments, often courtesy of several colorful recurring characters like mad scientist/sorcerer Dr. Vink ("Vink. With a va-va-va!"), and magic shop owner Sardo ("No mister; accent on the doh!"). And few fans of the original series will soon forget terrifying monsters like the Ghastly Grinner.

Enlarge / The dome of the United State Capitol Building in Washington, DC. (credit: Getty Images | Phil Roeder)

The long summer recess for Congress is at last well and truly over. The House Judiciary Committee has ramped up for the fall season, issuing demands for huge piles of documentation from Apple, Amazon, Facebook, and Google as its antitrust probe into Big Tech grows.

The committee launched the bipartisan inquiry in June, seeking in part to determine "whether existing laws are adequate" to the task of regulating the sprawling tech titans that power the 21st century economy. As part of that probe, the committee has now issued lengthy requests for information to the four companies digging deeply into the question of competition.

The tech sector is facing scrutiny from all sides at the moment. The House investigation is separate and distinct from the various antitrust probes against the same four companies the Federal Trade Commission, the Department of Justice, and nearly all the states currently have in progress.