Month: November 2021

Amazon Fire TV devices will get at least four years of security updates

As more of the devices we use every day are connected to the internet, the more important it becomes to ensure they’re running up-to-date software that patches any known security vulnerabilities. Phone makers have gotten better over the past few years at letting you know how long the smartphone you purchase today will continue to […]

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As more of the devices we use every day are connected to the internet, the more important it becomes to ensure they’re running up-to-date software that patches any known security vulnerabilities.

Phone makers have gotten better over the past few years at letting you know how long the smartphone you purchase today will continue to receive updates. And now Amazon is providing similar guidance for its Fire TV media streaming devices.

The company says all Fire TV devices will receive security updates for at least four years from the time it first goes on sale. But if you check out the Amazon Fire TV Software Security Updates web page, you’ll find that every current-gen devices Fire TV device that Amazon sells will be supported at least until 2025, even if they were released a few years ago.

For example, the 2016 Fire TV Stick Basic Edition (International), 2018 Fire TV Stick 4K, and 2018 Fire TV Recast will all be supported at least through 2025. Amazon’s guarantee also extends to Fire TV Edition television sets including models from Insignia, Pioneer, and Toshiba as well as Fire TV Edition Sound Bars from Anker and TCL.

Unfortunately Amazon doesn’t list dates for models it no longer sells. But for that we can turn to AFTVnews, which notes that some of the oldest models, including the 1st-gen Fire TV and Fire TV Stick, both of which were released in 2014, are no longer guaranteed to continue receiving updates and a couple of other models will lose their guarantees within the next few years.

Theoretically you can continue using an older Fire TV device even after it stops receiving updates, as long as it continues to support the apps you want to run. But as time goes by, the chances that you’ll be putting your personal data at risk by running a no-longer-supported device will increase. So it’s good to have some official guidance on when that will happen.

Other media streaming platforms don’t seem to offer any guidance at all – have an older Roku, Apple TV, Google Chromecast, or Android TV device? Then it may still be getting updates years after launch, or it may not. But the decisions seem to be made on a case-by-case basis rather than as part of any official policy (or if there are official policies, they’re not available to the public).

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More than 20,000 people died on US roads in the first half of 2021

Vehicle miles traveled increased, but not enough to offset the rise in deaths.

Anecdotally, I have never seen as much lawless driving as I have in the past year.

Enlarge / Anecdotally, I have never seen as much lawless driving as I have in the past year. (credit: Getty Images)

The United States registered its greatest-ever six-month rise in traffic deaths for the first half of 2021. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has just published its early estimate for the months of January-June for this year, and the numbers are grim reading. During the first half of the year, 20,160 people died on US roads, an increase of 18.4 percent compared to the same six months of (an already very deadly) 2020.

As we've noted previously, Americans started driving more riskily during 2020 than ever. Although the pandemic resulted in a decrease in the total number of vehicle miles traveled in 2020, the total number of deaths actually increased.

The mass availability of highly effective vaccines and nationwide loosening of public health restrictions saw a big rise in vehicle miles traveled for the first half of 2021—an increase of 173.1 billion miles (278.6 billion km) versus the same six months of 2020.

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Our fave bounty hunter takes on Tatooine’s underworld in Book of Boba Fett trailer

“Jabba ruled with fear. I intend to rule with respect.”

Temuera Morrison and Ming-Na Wen star in a new original Star Wars series, The Book of Boba Fett, coming next month to Disney+.

The S2 finale of The Mandalorian included a tantalizing post-credits scene that served as an announcement for a spinoff series, The Book of Boba Fett. The series stars Temuera Morrison (Attack of the Clones, Aquaman) as the titular bounty hunter, and Ming-Na Wen (Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.) as the mercenary and assassin who works for him. Disney just dropped the official trailer, giving us our first look at what we can expect from this latest project from showrunner Jon Favreau.

(Spoilers for the S2 finale of The Mandalorian below.)

A spinoff film featuring Boba Fett had been in development at Disney as far back as 2013, but then 2018's Solo: A Star Wars Story proved to be a box office disappointment for the studio. Disney's strategy shifted to spinoff series for its streaming platform, Disney+, beginning with The Mandalorian. That series was a commercial and critical success, winning over audiences with the relationship between Pedro Pascal's Mandalorian and the Child (aka Grogu, although some still think of him as Baby Yoda).

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Pixel 6 teardown shows lots of heat dissipation, questionable mmWave layout

The Pixel 6 has a lot of thermal tape and only one mmWave antenna?

Pixel 6 teardown shows lots of heat dissipation, questionable mmWave layout

Enlarge

The Pixel 6 and 6 Pro are out, and that means it's teardown time. PBK Reviews has videos on the Pixel 6 Pro and Pixel 6 for us to pick apart.

Crack open either phone and you'll find a ton of heat dissipation. The back of the screen is covered in copper, so it's a big heat sink. Under the display, the interior is covered in sticky, heat-dissipating graphite film, making the phone look strikingly messier than the carefully curated insides of the iPhone 13. Below that is more heat dissipation: an aluminum mid-plate that connects to the major chips with thermal tape.

The back of the screen is also interesting. On the left is the under-display fingerprint reader, and you can see why companies are such fans of these components over capacitive rear fingerprint readers. An optical reader is a super-thin sticker on the back of the display—it looks like it's only a millimeter or so thick. You can also spot the cutout for the under-display brightness and proximity sensors, which, like the fingerprint reader, invisibly live under the display.

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5D storage can pack 500TB of data onto a CD-sized glass disc

CDs can hold 640 MB of data. A standard DVD tops out at 4.7 GB. And Blu-ray discs hold up to 50 GB. But a team of researchers have found a way to pack 500 terabytes onto a glass disc that’s the same physical size. That’s 10,000 more data than you can fit on a […]

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CDs can hold 640 MB of data. A standard DVD tops out at 4.7 GB. And Blu-ray discs hold up to 50 GB.

But a team of researchers have found a way to pack 500 terabytes onto a glass disc that’s the same physical size. That’s 10,000 more data than you can fit on a Blu-ray disc.

Researchers from the University of Southampton in the UK say they’ve developed a system that uses “fast and energy-efficient laser-writing” to etch “high-density nanostructures in silica glass” for long-term storage.

The team says the high information density is made possible thanks to a 5D (five-dimension) storage technique that uses two optical dimensions and three spatial dimensions. While this isn’t the first time someone has tried that approach, the researchers say previous attempts have been too slow at writing data for practical use.

The new method is faster… but that’s still a relative term. It would theoretically take about 60 days to write 500TB of data to a single glass disk using this method, and so far it’s only been demonstrated with about 5GB of data.

In other words, the goal isn’t necessarily to replace CD, DVD, or Blu-Ray drives and media for home use – the internet has largely replaced removable media for software installers and music and movies anyway. Instead, the team says their 5D storage solution could be used by libraries, museums, national archives, or other organizations looking for long-term solutions for storing massive amounts of data.

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Landgericht Köln: Urteil gegen 70jährige ohne PC wegen Filesharing bestätigt

Die Mutter eines Freifunkers muss 2.000 Euro Strafe zahlen, obwohl sie keinen Computer hat. Der Betrieb eines Freifunkknotens an ihrem Anschluss war dem Richter nicht Begründung genug. (Filesharing, Tauschbörse)

Die Mutter eines Freifunkers muss 2.000 Euro Strafe zahlen, obwohl sie keinen Computer hat. Der Betrieb eines Freifunkknotens an ihrem Anschluss war dem Richter nicht Begründung genug. (Filesharing, Tauschbörse)

As teens left Facebook, company planned to lure 6-year-olds, documents show

Internal posts and job listings show plans were moving forward.

Facebook's Messenger for Kids app is available to children as young as six.

Enlarge / Facebook's Messenger for Kids app is available to children as young as six. (credit: Hakan Nural / Anadolu Agency)

Facebook has a demographic problem. Even before investigations revealed that the company’s products were destroying teens’ mental health, interest in its flagship product was dropping off a cliff. Since 2019, teen usage of the app has declined by 13 percent, and over the next two years, it’s expected to drop another 45 percent.

“Aging up is a real issue” a researcher wrote in an internal memo revealed last week. Perhaps that’s why Facebook was considering new products targeted at children as young as six years old, according to a new document handed over to Congress by whistleblower Frances Haugen.

“Our company is making a major investment in youth and has spun up a cross-company virtual team to make safer, more private, experiences for youth that improve their and their household’s well-being,” the internal post from April 9 said. “For many of our products, we historically haven’t designed for under 13 (with the exception of Messenger Kids) and the experiences built for those over 13 didn’t recognize distinctive maturity levels across the age spectrum.”

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Starlink exits beta, but SpaceX says orders are delayed due to chip shortage

“Silicon shortages have delayed production,” Starlink website tells users.

A large circuit board that has been removed from a Starlink satellite dish.

Enlarge / A Starlink satellite dish's printed circuit board. (credit: Ken Keiter)

If you ordered Starlink broadband service and don't receive your "Dishy McFlatface" satellite dish any time soon, the global chip shortage may be one reason why.

"Silicon shortages have delayed production which has impacted our ability to fulfill orders. Please visit your Account page for the most recent estimate on when you can expect your order to be fulfilled," SpaceX said in an FAQ on the Starlink support website. The language was added to the Starlink website on Thursday night, according to a PCMag article.

Starlink has apparently just exited its beta status. SpaceX CEO Elon Musk said in September that it would emerge from beta in October, and the word "beta" was deleted from descriptions on the Starlink homepage late last week. The website was also updated to advertise "download speeds between 100Mbps and 200Mbps and latency as low as 20ms in most locations," an improvement over the previously stated "50Mbps to 150Mbps and latency from 20ms to 40ms in most locations."

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