Touchscreens Away!

From DCTVpedia
Jump to navigation Jump to search
Touchscreens Away!
Number 3593
Broadcast Date AUGUST 12, 2019
Episode Length 31:57
Hosts Tom Merritt, Sarah Lane, Roger Chang

Samsung unveils a new smartphone camera sensor that offers up to 108 megapixels of resolution. The US Navy announced it will revert destroyers from touchscreens to mechanical throttle and helm control system over the next 18-24 months, DARPA showed off an open-source secure voting machine with chips designed as open hardware with no proprietary components.

Quick Hits

India's Reliance Industries announced a partnership with Microsoft Azure. Reliance's Jio will build data centers using Azure to provide things like natural language understanding for all Indian languages and dialects. Jio will also provide free connectivity and cloud infrastructure to startups as well as plans for small and medium businesses for as little as 1,500 rupees ($21.05) a month.
Researchers at Check Point Software demonstrated using the Picture Transfer Protocol over Wi-Fi or USB to install ransomware on a Canon 80D DSLR and encrypt images on the SD card to prevent access. Counter Point and Canon have been working on a patch since May. The researchers said that any camera using the Picture Transfer Protocol may be vulnerable with a similar attack.
After Tyler Blevins aka Ninja left Twitch to move to Mixer, Twitch was using his old Twitch channel to promote other Fortnite players on Twitch. This weekend, a porn channel managed to get itself at the top of Twitch's Fortnite recommendations and thus get promoted on Ninja's old channel, causing drama. Twitch reverted the page to a standard archival mode. Twitch CEO Emmett Shear said the offending channel had been suspended and apologized directly to Ninja.
Samsung's share of the European smartphone market rose from 33.9% last year to 40.6 percent mostly on increased sales of midrange phones, like the Galaxy A50. Xiaomi also grew in Europe by 50% to 9.6 percent of the market.
As promised, Huawei launched a device running its new Hongmeng or HarmonyOS. The Honor Vision smart TV. The 55-inch TV starts at 3,799 yuan (US$538).

Top Stories

Samsung unveiled the ISOCELL Bright HMX smartphone camera sensor, which offers up to 108 megapixels of resolution. The sensor was developed with Xiaomi and is one of the largest smartphone camera sensors at about 3/4 inch. By default the sensor will use pixel binning, combining 4 pixels into one to capture high-quality 27 megapixel images. That helps with low-light performance. The sensor also has Smart-ISO which adjusts ISO levels to compensate for bright or dim environments. The sensor is also capable of capturing 6k video at 30fps. Production of the new sensor is expected to begin this month.
The US Navy announced it will revert destroyers from touchscreens to mechanical throttle and helm control systems over the next 18-24 months. A crash off the coast of Singapore between a Liberian oil tanker and the USS John S McCain on August 21, 2017, killed 10 sailors and injured 48. A Comprehensive Review by the Navy found the crew had placed the screens in backup manual mode, removing computer-assisted help, because it gave a “more direct form of communication between steering and the SSC.” It also meant any crew member at another station could take over steering causing control to shift "from the lee helm, to aft steering, to the helm, and back to aft steering.” The NTSB found crews preferred mechanical controls because “they provide both immediate and tactile feedback to the operator.” Following safety testing, the first new throttles are scheduled to be installed by summer 2020.
At the DEFCON voting village, DARPA showed off an open-source secure voting machine being designed by Oregon-based verifiable systems firm Galois. The chips are being designed as open hardware with no proprietary components, in order to make them the basis for a secure hardware platform, which would be useful for IoT. The DARPA machines ran on virtualized hardware this year with a basic interface provided by secure voting firm VotingWorks. The machine prints out selections with a QR code for a cryptographic validity check. DARPA plans to complete systems access at DefCon 2020. The system offers a code repository at securehardware.org and plans a small test board as well.
In Chrome 76, Google fixed Chrome's incognito mode. Previously, the Chrome FileSystem API was disabled in Incognito mode and sites could check that. To get around this, Chrome 76 leaves the Chrome FileSystem API enabled, but to preserve privacy it uses a transient memory filesystem that's cleared when the session is closed. If you know what a RAMDisk is it's kind of like that. Well this leads to two new ways to detect incognito users. Security researcher Vikas Mishra found that Incognito allocates a maximum of 120MB of memory to the transient filesystem, something that would normally only happen if the device storage was less than 2.4 GB. Another method discovered by researcher Jesse Li measures the speed of writing to the file system, since writing to the transient system is much faster than writing to a hard drive. Microsoft Edge developer Eric Lawrence notes the New York Times seems to already be using Mishra's code to detect incognito. Google told BleepingComputer it will "work to remedy any other current or future means of Incognito Mode detection."
Sony announced an updated version of its XAV-AX5000 in-car receiver that lets drivers add a 9.95-inch floating touchscreen display that needs a single DIN to install. (DIN refers to size 2″ x 8″ opening that a radio fits into.) The display can tilt and adjust its height and depth. It features support for CarPlay and Android Auto through USB, hands-free voice control, Bluetooth connectivity, and in a future update will support Abalta's WebLink platform. The display will be available in the US in December for $600. On the car front, Bosch is developing 3D imaging to future versions of its in-car digital displays, using passive 3D tech that doesn't require glasses or require the driver to look from one specific spot. Alerts, navigation, and parking cameras could all make use of this technology, though no word on consumer availability yet.
Engadget has an article on using bacteria to generate electricity. Microorganisms called geobacter purify water by consuming waste then excrete electrons which can be harvested as energy. Geobacter grow in mud and biologist designer and artist Teresa van Dongen found a very well-thriving ecosystem of geobacter in a water-filled bomb crater in the Dutch countryside and created an installation called Mud Well. Van Dongen has placed a telescope-like device with one end in the water. A viewer can look in the other end and see a light display oscillate, powered by the geobacter. Van Dongen has worked with geobacter before and needed vinegar as fuel. The Mud Well is self-sustaining.

Thing of the Day

Chris Christensen has some big news for those who fly Southwest... and also love a deal.

Mailbag

Mick in Australia weighed in on our Friday discussion with Raj Deut on satellite internet in Australia and says for him it's not a speed issue as much as data caps and restricted timing.

Mick says - Satellite broadband prices are high in comparison to fixed wired/wireless NBN. A Small amount of monthly data is allocated that is then further split into peak and off-peak. Off-Peak gets the lions share of the allotted data - but that is from 1am in the morning to 7am in the morning. $135/month for 150GB - 135GB at off peak and 15GB peak. Yes 15GB for kids to do homework, people to use social media and Netflix and other streaming is just not possible.

Prior to Skymuster being launched, we had NBN satellite on even worse plans. 80GB/month for $90 is what I paid - with peak and off peak times. It was stressful having to watch the data limits every day to make sure the kids could do their homework.

Prior to that Australia had what was called the ABG - Australian Broadband Guarantee - again satellite based and at only about 30GB/month for $80.

Mick says there are only two options even though he lives 5km outside the center of town - satellite or faking our address so we can get a 4G modem that we HAVE to use external antennas (only available in certain locations). We finally feel like we can use the internet for fun now with 500Gb/month of data (recent upgrade).

YouTube

Links



Preceded by:
"Broadtale of Two Countries"
Touchscreens Away!
Followed by:
"A Mos Def Con"