Month: July 2021

Enlarge / Apple's and Roku's new remotes are a welcome upgrade to their respective streaming experiences, and they're compatible with older models. (credit: Corey Gaskin)

Apple and Roku know that remotes for streaming devices are important. It’s why they recently inked a deal to put an Apple TV+ button on Roku remotes going forward. It’s also why they’ve made some thoughtful upgrades to their respective streaming devices in the form of redesigned remotes. Both companies are focused on improving usability and adding features via the remote, rather than retooling the streamers themselves.

Apple's new Siri Remote and Roku's Voice Remote Pro are new devices that existing users can buy to make their streaming experiences much less frustrating (in Apple's case) or easier and more feature-rich (in Roku's). For Apple, a redesign was long overdue. Apple TV remotes have been the stuff of nightmares since the first and only redesign over half a decade ago. Roku’s remotes never had that sort of over-engineering problem—instead, they've suffered from the opposite issue, often feeling hollow and cheap while missing some useful functions on all but the highest-end Roku players.

Now, these remotes aren’t in direct competition with one another. And in some key areas like price and wide-ranging support, the streamers they control both fall behind the latest Google Chromecast—a device we found preferable not just to those, but to Amazon's Fire TV platform as well. But for anyone who’s already using a streaming option from Apple or Roku, scrapping those devices entirely could be a significant waste of money and a general pain depending on their setup. Adding one of these new remotes, though, will improve the experience appreciably.

Enlarge / Flag bearers Yui Susaki and Rui Hachimura of Team Japan lead their team out during the Opening Ceremony of the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games at Olympic Stadium on July 23, 2021 in Tokyo, Japan. (credit: Matthias Hangst | Getty Images)

Ten days before the opening ceremony of the Tokyo Olympics, Kara Lawson, the coach of the United States women’s 3x3 basketball team, gave a press conference. The sport is new to the Olympics this year, and Lawson, a former WNBA player and coach at Duke University, told the dozen or so reporters participating online what she liked about it—the game is faster-paced, Lawson said, and more unpredictable than the five-on-five version. But during a global pandemic, Lawson added, the health of her players was her number one priority. “We’re obviously tested daily. I’m actually quarantined in my room right now,” Lawson said. “We’re masked all the time … a positive test at this juncture is hard for any team getting ready to go to Tokyo. We’re focused on doing our part, not just so we can have a good competition, but we definitely feel a responsibility to fellow human beings to be smart about eliminating transmission of the disease worldwide.”

Less than a week later, one of Lawson’s players—Katie Lou Samuelson, a power forward for the Seattle Storm—announced on Instagram that she had tested positive for Covid-19 and wouldn’t be able to go to Tokyo. Fast-paced, maybe, but not exactly unpredictable. As the 2020 Tokyo Games get underway, Samuelson is one of 91 people either in Tokyo for the Olympics or who were hoping to go who’ve tested positive for the disease, including US tennis player Coco Gauf, a Czech beach volleyball player, two South African soccer players, and so on.

Enlarge / A report this week indicates that the problem of high-caliber spyware is far more widespread than previously feared. (credit: Pau Barrena | Getty Images)

The shadowy world of private spyware has long caused alarm in cybersecurity circles, as authoritarian governments have repeatedly been caught targeting the smartphones of activists, journalists, and political rivals with malware purchased from unscrupulous brokers. The surveillance tools these companies provide frequently target iOS and Android, which have seemingly been unable to keep up with the threat. But a new report suggests the scale of the problem is far greater than feared—and has placed added pressure on mobile tech makers, particularly Apple, from security researchers seeking remedies.

This week, an international group of researchers and journalists from Amnesty International, Forbidden Stories, and more than a dozen other organizations published forensic evidence that a number of governments worldwide—including Hungary, India, Mexico, Morocco, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates—may be customers of the notorious Israeli spyware vendor NSO Group. The researchers studied a leaked list of 50,000 phone numbers associated with activists, journalists, executives, and politicians who were all potential surveillance targets. They also looked specifically at 37 devices infected with, or targeted by, NSO's invasive Pegasus spyware. They even created a tool so you can check whether your iPhone has been compromised.