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Tuesday, 30 September 2014
Pavlok needs your money to shock more people into breaking bad habits
There’s no way you’d use a shock collar to train your beloved dog, but you wouldn’t mind using one on yourself if it means breaking your nastiest habits, eh? If that’s the case, then your day has come: Pavlok (a wearable band that can zap you with electricity) is now up on Indiegogo, with its designer hoping to raise $50,000 to develop more features and to begin mass production. In order to train yourself to stay away from bad habits or continue doing good ones, you’ll need to program the Pavlok app — for instance, you can instruct it to zap you awake if you hit snooze twice on your alarm. The good news is that you can set the electricity the wristband zaps you with from 17 to 340 volts, so you can adjust it accordingly and make sure each it’s not strong enough to actually hurt.
According to the device’s Indiegogo page, its creator (Maneesh Sethi, a Stanford alumnus) is working on IFTTT integration and also opening up the Pavlok platform so anyone can make an app to go along with it. It even listed some possible software tie-ups, such as instructing the wristband via IFTTT to zap you if you send a message to an ex, to beep loudly and embarrass you whenever you step into a McD’s with the help of a navigation app, or to remind you to walk more when paired up with an exercise app.
When we saw Pavlok earlier this year, the prototypes cost $250 each, but now you have the opportunity to grab one for $125 via Indiegogo if you can wait until it ships out by April 2015 at the earliest. By the way, Sethi’s no stranger to the idea of receiving pain to break bad habits. Back in 2012, he hired a girl off Craigslist to, erm, slap him every time he went on Facebook — something he claims quadrupled his productivity.
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Pavlok needs your money to shock more people into breaking bad habits
MSN homepage reborn as a blend of news portal and online desktop
Visit the MSN portal right now and you’ll get a straightforward news site. It’s informative, but it’s busy, inflexible and doesn’t give you easy access to Microsoft services — a bit odd when it’s frequently your initial homepage on a shiny new Windows PC. Thankfully, Microsoft is aware that it needs to shake things up a bit if it wants to keep you coming back. It just launched a preview of a redesigned MSN that it hopes will not only be easier to browse, but should serve as a kind of web-based desktop that lets you accomplish many of your daily tasks. Read on to see what I mean.
Let’s start with the obvious: the new MSN looks a lot like Windows, and that’s not just because Microsoft is fond of brand synergy. The layout is both less cluttered and lets you personalize what you see; if you’re fond of cars but not entertainment gossip, you can easily add, remove and shuffle the appropriate sections. The company has teamed up with a whole host of content providers for different categories, including the New York Times, Conde Nast and, yes, our parent company AOL.
However, the real centerpiece is the much stronger emphasis on services that turns MSN into more of a hub than a starting point. The top of the site centers on a “Services Stripe” that lets you hover over icons to check your Outlook email, check Bing Maps or even take a quick glimpse at OneNote projects, if you use it. If you thrive in Microsoft’s cloud, you may stick around for quite a while. You’ll also find utilities like shopping lists, a symptom checker and a 3D body explorer. Moreover, a lot of your personalized content will sync across platforms. Microsoft plans to launch Android and iOS versions of previously Windows-only apps like Food & Drink and Sports — if you add a recipe or a favorite football team on the MSN website, you’ll also see it on your phone or tablet no matter what OS you’re using.
You can check out the preview today, although the old site will hang around for an unspecified amount of time. Microsoft hasn’t said when it hopes to roll out the site to the public at large, but the Android and iOS apps should arrive with the next few months.
Dana Wollman contributed to this report.
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MSN homepage reborn as a blend of news portal and online desktop
MSN's simpler, mobile-savvy homepage is rolling out to everyone
Well, that was quick — after just a few weeks in preview mode, the revamped MSN homepage is rolling out to everyone. You should see Microsoft’s simple, desktop-like web portal in your browser sometime within the next three days. If you’re using Windows devices, you’ll also see updated Bing and MSN apps that draw on the site’s many services; the Food & Drink app will keep track of your recipes, for instance. Windows Phone users get a few perks on their lock screens in the process. The Health and Fitness app will show pedometer stats if you’re using a Lumia 630, 635 or 1520, while Weather will show your local forecast. You’ll still have to wait for MSN apps on Android and iOS, but all the other pieces of Microsoft’s grand vision are otherwise in place.
Microsoft Windows 8.1
- Key specs
Reviews • 9
- Prices
- Discussions
- Type Computer OS
- Source model Closed
- Architecture 64-bit, 32-bit
- Released 2014-04-08
Engadget Daily: Windows 10, the $200 laptop you've been waiting for, and more!
It looks like Microsoft’s new OS will be called Windows 10. Who’d have thunk it? Read on for Engadget’s news highlights from the last 24 hours — we go hands-on with Here maps for Android, break down Facebook’s battle with drag queens and more.
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Engadget Daily: Windows 10, the $200 laptop you’ve been waiting for, and more!
HP Stream 14
- Key specs
Reviews • 1
- Prices
- Discussions
- Type Midsize
- Screen size 14 inches
- Screen resolution 1366 x 768
- Bundled OS Windows
- CPU family Other
- System RAM 2 GB
- Hard drive(s) 32 GB (total)
- Released 2014-09-24
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Engadget Daily: Windows 10, the $200 laptop you've been waiting for, and more!
Powerful spyware apps let the government control everything on your phone
There’s been a lot written over the past year about government spying, but not so much about how governments spy. It’s easy to forget that there’s an industry thriving underneath that controversy. In 2011 WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange released a series of documents it called the Spy Files — a comprehensive database of surveillance products and companies who market their services specifically to government agencies. Companies like Hacking Team specialize in advanced spyware, gifting their customers with the ability to exercise total control over a target’s device while remaining completely invisible. A group of researchers recently tracked down and reverse engineered Hacking Team’s RCS (Remote Control System) tool to see just what these corporate spyware firms are capable of. The answer, is quite a lot.
Over the last year or so, SecureList has been looking into Hacking Team’s products to suss out their capabilities. Recently, it’s been focusing on the tool’s mobile modules — malware designed to monitor and log data from Android, iOS, Windows Mobile and BlackBerry devices. Since one of those platforms is a struggling brand and the other has already been replaced, the team focused on modules designed specifically for iOS and Android — the analysis revealed a shockingly powerful surveillance system. Hacking Team’s iOS product can take control of a handsets Wi-Fi and GPS units, record voice, log E-mail, SMS and MMS data, track web usage and call history, read data from the devices clipboard and notes, peek at calendar appointments, log keystrokes and even control and activate the microphone for covert eavesdropping.
These tools seem terrifyingly powerful, but don’t panic just yet — installing them on a device is no laughing matter. According to SecureList’s investigation, the iOS modules will only function on jailbroken iPhones, and even then an attacker needs to have physical access to the device or remote administrator access to install the malware. Both iPhones and Android devices can be infected by connecting to a computer with Hacking Team’s desktop software, but only if the device has been unlocked with a password. You aren’t going to implant your device with tracking tools by simply browsing the web. Still, it’s good to be aware that spying products like this exist.
Perhaps the strangest thing about Hacking Team is how it presents itself. The italian company insists that its products are intended for legal surveillance only, such as police officers who have a warrant for a suspect in custody. The company’s website is clean and unsettlingly open about its product’s capabilities. “Total control over your targets,” it says. “Log everything you need.” It’s not hiding itself, and it openly admits that its products are intended for governmental bodies. Proving that your government is one of its customers is another matter, but SecureList’s ping of countries using RCS servers fingers the United States as the firm’s biggest customer. It’s impossible to say for sure what the US-located RCS severs are being used for, but SecureList says that “several IPs were identified as ‘government’ related based on their WHOIS information and they provide a good indication of who owns them.”
Is the government listening in on your water cooler talk? Probably not, but the tools for them to do so exist, and it’s actively marketed to law enforcement. Regardless of how you feel about Edward Snowden, PRISM and government surveillance, it’s clear that law agencies can do a lot more than simply collect call metadata. Hungry for more details? Check out the source links below for an in-depth look at the researchers adventure into fingerprinting methods, servers and RCS configuration file code.
[Image Credit: Shutterstock / arbalet]
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Powerful spyware apps let the government control everything on your phone
Crackdown on spying apps leads to StealthGenie CEO's arrest
Apparently, the US government is now on a mission to bring down mobile applications offering spyware services — which, for a variety of well-documented reasons, simply seems kind of ironic. Controversy aside though, the Department of Justice revealed today that Hammad Akbar, CEO of StealthGenie, had been arrested in Los Angeles and charged with conspiracy, advertisement of a known interception device, advertising a device as a surreptitious interception device and sale of such a device. StealthGenie, which had been available on iOS, Android and BlackBerry, was known for providing an app capable of monitoring someone’s calls, texts and photos, as well as tracking their location and more. StealthGenie wasn’t shy about doing that either; a quick glance at a StealthGenie promotional video, found after the break, sums up the ideals behind the application and the consumers it targeted.
“So you want to keep an eye on your loved one or your employees, because you suspect they’re hiding something and it might get too late?” the video asks. “How do you know where they are or what they’re doing right now? Maybe they’re not really telling you the truth about their activities or whereabouts.” Eventually, after a few seconds, StealthGenie claims to be the solution for those needs: “You are worried, so you wonder if the only way to find out is to know what they do on their cellphones right away,” says the message. “You know that’s the only way to give you all the answers. What you need right now is a solution that lets you uncover the truth by secretly monitoring all the activities of your loved one or employee, and let you know their location at all times.”
As the DOJ points out in its briefing of the situation, the app was undetectable by users who were likely being spied on, which made it rather easy for StealthGenie’s creepy magic to go untraced. Interestingly enough, Akbar’s criminal case is the first one ever having to do with the advertisement and sale of a mobile spyware app — and something tells us we’re going to see more of this type as people adopt new technologies like smartphones and tablets.
“People ought to be able to control who can access their sensitive information, and stalking apps on cellphones directly violate that principle,” outspoken Sen. Al Franken said regarding StealthGenie and the arrest of its CEO. “Currently, there is no federal law banning the secret collection of location data. That’s why we need to pass my legislation to ban stalking apps once and for all.”
“My commonsense bill will help a whole range of people — including victims of domestic violence,” he said. “My bill would finally put an end to GPS stalking apps that allow abusers to secretly track their victims, and it would also give consumers more control over their very sensitive location data.”
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Crackdown on spying apps leads to StealthGenie CEO's arrest
Playdate: We're livestreaming 'Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor' on PS4!
Welcome, ladygeeks and gentlenerds, to the new era of gaming. The one where you get to watch, and comment, as other people livestream gameplay from next-gen consoles. Because games! They’re fun!
Emerging like a Nazgûl in the night this fall is Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor. You could easily dismiss the game as a licensed cash-in on the likes of the Assassin’s Creed or Batman: Arkham franchises, but the truth of the matter is that Shadow of Mordor is better than the most recent entries in either of those series. Sure, there’s clambering up walls in very assassin-like fashion and rhythmic combat that’d make The World’s Greatest Detective blush, but the team at Monolith (perhaps best known for the F.E.A.R. and Condemned series of first-person horror games) outclasses the competition in nearly every aspect with this incredibly violent take on J.R.R. Tolkien’s classic source material. Until recently, it was fairly underhyped and that seems to have been its best asset; allowing the game’s quality, not its PR machine, to do the heavy lifting. Still on the fence about picking it up today, though? Well, we’re going to be streaming it on PlayStation 4, right here starting at 7 p.m. Eastern / 4 p.m. Pacific.
Sony PlayStation 4
- Key specs
Reviews • 61
- Prices
- Discussions
- Game format Optical disc, Downloadable
- Online features Multiplayer, Voice chat, Video chat, Store, Browser
- Drive capacity 500 GB
- Controller type Wired, Wireless
- Motion controls Accelerometer, Gyroscopic, Camera / optical
- Video outputs HDMI
- Weight 6.17 lb
- Released 2013-11-15
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