Month: November 2019

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  Exploded view of a HoloLens 2 headset. This is not an iFixit teardown, and we do not recommend attempting to reduce your $3,500 AR headset to its component parts. [credit: Microsoft ]

On Tuesday, Ars had the opportunity to sit down with Microsoft's Director of Communications, Greg Sullivan, to walk through a quick demonstration of the company's new mixed reality headset, the HoloLens 2. HoloLens 2 isn't a full-immersion virtual reality device like Oculus Quest; it's an augmented reality device—think Pokémon Go on steroids. Sullivan never used the word "augmented" at all, preferring instead to talk about "mixed reality."

When I asked the difference, he explained that the majority of the content and techniques a user experiences with HoloLens2 would translate directly to a hypothetical full-immersion VR headset with the same sensors. "Mixed reality" is a blanket term that encompasses both augmented reality—which specifically mixes elements of virtual and real world—and virtual reality, which at least in theory immerses you entirely in the virtual. Sullivan went on to point out that even what we usually think of as fully virtual reality can't avoid the real world entirely—the six degrees of freedom (6DOF) a VR user experiences end abruptly if the user bonks into a real-world wall.

Ergonomics and eye tracking

My earlier experiences with Google Daydream and Oculus Quest led me to expect VR headsets to feel like this Soviet-era diving helmet. (credit: Wikipedia Commons)

If you're accustomed to VR headsets, one of the first striking things about HoloLens 2 is its weight—or lack thereof. Most VR headsets feel something like a diving helmet—they're heavy and oddly balanced, turning every VR session into a neck workout. HoloLens 2 is considerably lighter, easier to adjust, and pretty much perfectly balanced. It has a single adjustment knob in the back, like a hard-hat or welder's mask, and it slides on and off easily. Adjusted properly, it "floats" across the bridge of the nose, resting a little but not all of its weight there.

Enlarge / The Pixel 4's Soli sensor allows you to wave hello to Pikachu.

Google's flagship Pixel 4 smartphone is just two weeks old, and we're already getting word of substantial discounts. Black Friday deals on the brand-new phone are starting to come in, and so far the high mark is $400 off the device.

The biggest deal comes from Best Buy, which has already posted its Black Friday deals. The store is offering $400 off a Pixel 4 or Pixel 4 XL, provided you activate it (presumably on a contract) with Sprint, Verizon, or AT&T. That's half off the Pixel 4's $799 price tag. If you'd rather go the unlocked route, Best Buy is offering $200 off an unlocked Pixel 4 or 4XL. Both of these deals have "terms and conditions" that apply, but it doesn't look like Best Buy has posted the details yet.

It sounds like the Pixel 4 will be discounted everywhere for the holiday season. Target is offering a $300 gift card with the "qualified activation" of a Pixel 4 or Pixel 4 XL. According to a post on Reddit, Google itself is running ads promising $200 off the Pixel 4 and Pixel 4 XL, too, presumably without any kind of carrier commitment.

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  The 2020 Porsche 911 Carerra S is the eighth-generation 911. [credit: Jonathan Gitlin ]

Porsche has been making the idiosyncratic, rear-engined 911 sports car since 1963. Every few years, it gets an update—often just incremental improvements and styling tweaks, occasionally radical clean-sheet redesigns. The newest 911, known to Porsche people by the internal designation "992," is the eighth generation to wear those three digits, and it's new for model year 2020. It's more evolution than revolution this time; a new eight-speed PDK transmission, a more connected cockpit, and a sharper take on that classic silhouette are the highlights.

It's wider at both axles than the car it replaces, growing 1.8 inches (45mm) at the front and 1.7 inches (45mm) at the rear. And there's no longer a mix of narrowbodies and widebodies—all 911s will be the full-fat size for this generation. New LED lights at the front and back give the car a distinctive look after dark, but otherwise there's nothing about the styling that will offend the more sensitive 911 devotee. A tip for the trainspotters—you can tell a rear-wheel drive 992 from an all-wheel drive 992 because the former has a black grille over the engine and the latter has chrome bits in the grille.

Our test car has a black grille because it's a $113,300 911 Carrera S, which means rear-wheel drive with the more powerful 3.0L flat-six engine. You can also get an AWD Carrera 4S that has the same engine, or RWD and AWD versions of the cheaper, less powerful 911 Carrera, and all either as coupés or convertibles.

Enlarge / A DNA sequence analysis (genetic fingerprint) seen on a monitor in the Bavarian State Criminal Police Office in Munich, Germany. (credit: Sven Hoppe | picture alliance | Getty Images)

Law enforcement agencies around the country have for the past few years eagerly latched onto consumer-facing DNA sites as a rich repository of information to help them close cases. Many of those sites have been allowing users to adopt privacy settings and restricting what data they allow police to access, but a first-of-its-kind search warrant may blow those users' data banks wide open.

Police in Orlando, Florida, obtained a warrant this summer to search DNA site GEDmatch and review data on all of its users—about a million people, The New York Times reports. Privacy advocates are now concerned that police will continue to get broad warrants for DNA sites, including larger peers such as 23andme or Ancestry that have much larger pools of user data.

GEDmatch? Sounds familiar...

GEDmatch hit the spotlight in 2018, when DNA data from its site led to the eventual arrest of a man suspected to be the "Golden State Killer," responsible for dozens of rapes and murders in California between 1976 and 1986.

Enlarge / Ring's configuration app sent Wi-Fi setup information unencrypted to some doorbell devices, exposing customers' home networks. (credit: Smith Collection/Gado / Getty Images)

Ring has pushed out a fix to a security issue in the configuration code for its Internet-connected home security products. Researchers from Bitdefender notified Ring in June of a flaw in Ring Video Doorbell Pro cameras' software that made it possible for wireless eavesdroppers to grab the Wi-Fi credentials of customers during the device's setup—because those credentials were sent over an unsecured Wi-Fi connection to the device using unencrypted HTTP.

In a report on the bug issued yesterday as part of a coordinated disclosure with Ring, Bitdefender researchers explained that when customers configured a Ring Video Doorbell Pro out of the box:

…the smartphone app [for Ring] must send the wireless network credentials. When entering configuration mode, the device creates an access point without a password (the SSID contains the last three bytes from the MAC address). Once this network is up, the app connects to it automatically, queries the device, then sends the credentials to the local network. All these exchanges are performed through plain HTTP. This means the credentials are exposed to any nearby eavesdroppers.

An attacker could take advantage of this bug by forcing a victim to reconfigure the doorbell. The attacker could use a Wi-Fi deauthorization ("deauth") attack against the device to make it re-enter configuration mode and could use a malicious Wi-Fi device to make the Ring doorbell drop off its network.