Month: January 2020

Enlarge (credit: Valentina Palladino)

The Dealmaster today includes a number of great sales on accessories, and of note is a cable deal from Anker. Now you can get the Anker Powerline II USB-C to Lightning cable for $11.99 at Amazon.

Anker's mobile accessories have a solid track record, and we particularly like this cable because it's MFi-certified. That means the cable has passed Apple's compliance rules and certification tests and is officially "approved" for Apple product use. Now, you could use any Lightning cable to charge your iPhone or iPad, but accessories that are not MFi-certified could overheat more easily while in use. Some non-MFi cables also don't have the strongest connector, so the end may not be as securely connected to your device's Lightning cable while plugged in.

Overall, devices with MFi certification are generally more reliable and safer to use with Apple products. They can also be more expensive than non-certified accessories, so getting Anker's Powerline II 6-foot cable for $11.99 is a great deal. You can also get a pack of two cables for $19.99, which is $12 off the pack's original price of $31.99.

Enlarge / Ring video doorbell. (credit: Ring)

Amazon's Ring line of consumer home surveillance products has drawn quite a bit of attention in recent weeks for how easily bad actors outside the company have been able to access users' accounts. But for Ring, as with many other firms, some of the greatest security risks may come from inside the company

In response to Congressional questioning, Amazon this week admitted to four incidents in the past four years where employees accessed video data they were not supposed to. "Each of these individuals involved in these incidents was authorized to view video data," Amazon said in a letter (PDF), but in all cases, "the attempted access to that data exceeded what was necessary for their job functions."

Ring fired all those employees following "swift action to investigate" and told Congress that following each incident, the company "has taken multiple actions to limit such data access to a smaller number of team members." Additionally, the company said, it "periodically reviews" employees' access to data "to verify they have a continuing need for access" in order to do their jobs.

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  This is fine.

Paul Krugman, the Nobel Prize-winning economist, professor at the City University of New York, and New York Times columnist, experienced a chain of what appear to be Internet scam mishaps based on posts to Twitter that he later deleted. Initially, Krugman claimed to be "on the phone with my computer security service, and as I understand it someone compromised my IP address and is using it to download child pornography."

This is a common phone scam trope, and it appears that Krugman finally realized it was a scam—with the New York Times security team responding to assist him. But that wasn't until he tweeted again in confusion about another scam in the form of a spam email regarding a deposit to a nonexistent Bitcoin wallet.

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  All other things being equal, this looks a lot more appealing to wear than a "standard" VR headset

At this point, it's clear there are a number of persistent issues holding virtual reality back from the world-changing potential many industry watchers saw just a few years ago. VR technology as a whole is still plagued by problems like relatively high costs, limited resolutions/field of view, awkward natural motion controls, and a general lack of "killer app" software.

But despite slow progress on many of the remaining problems with VR, one area of the technology hasn't seen much significant progress: comfort and form factor. Nearly four years after the launch of the Oculus Rift, the market is still married to that unit's same bulky, ski-goggle-style headset design, which blocks almost the entire top half of your face with a large display rectangle held in place via headstraps or over-the-skull supports.

At CES this week, Panasonic seems set to become the first company making a serious effort at progress on this important VR front. The company's new virtual reality concept product isn't a "headset" in the standard VR mold but instead "boasts a comfortable fit that makes users feel as if they were wearing eyeglasses."