Hanging out at a museum is a great way to spend an afternoon. It can also be a frugal way to spend an afternoon, as many museum admission prices are cheap—or better yet, free. Cheapism offers a list of cheap or free museums in every U.S. state. Read more…
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The Best Cheap (or Free) Museums in All 50 States
By Cat DiStasio The dream of flight has entranced humans for centuries, and modern innovators won’t quit until the flying cars of sci-fi movies are realized. Although today’s traffic jams still happen on the ground level, plenty of engineers have their eyes and minds on the sky. It’s fascinating, if not intoxicating, to dream of the day when we might one day be able to take to the skies in a vehicle of our own, but until then, we can revel in prototypes built by dreamers with the capital to turn their high-flying ideas into a reality. Where we’re going, we don’t need roads.Slideshow-329306
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6 flying cars that let you soar over traffic
The study’s estimate of the proportion of known “insecure,” “maybe secure” and “secure” devices over time. (credit: androidvulnerabilities.org ) It’s easy to see that the Android ecosystem currently has a rather lax policy toward security, but a recent study from the University of Cambridge put some hard numbers to Android’s security failings. The conclusion finds that “on average 87.7% of Android devices are exposed to at least one of 11 known critical vulnerabilities.” Data for the study was collected through the group’s ” Device Analyzer ” app, which has been available for free on the Play Store since May 2011. After the participants opted into the survey, the University says it collected daily Android version and build number information from over 20,400 devices. The study then compared this version information against 13 critical vulnerabilities (including the Stagefright vulnerabilities ) dating back to 2010. Each individual device was then labeled “secure” or “insecure” based on whether or not its OS version was patched against these vulnerabilities, or placed in a special “maybe secure” category if it could have gotten a specialized, backported fix. As for why so many Android devices are insecure, the study found that most of the blame sits with OEMs. The group states that “the bottleneck for the delivery of updates in the Android ecosystem rests with the manufacturers, who fail to provide updates to fix critical vulnerabilities.” Along with the study, the University of Cambridge is launching ” AndroidVulnerabilities.org ,” a site that houses this data and grades OEMs based on their security record. The group came up with a 1-10 security rating for OEMs that it calls the “FUM” score. This algorithm takes into account the number of days a proportion of running devices has no known vulnerabilities ( F ree), the proportion of devices that run the latest version of Android ( U pdate), and the mean number of vulnerabilities not fixed on any device the company sells ( M ean). The study found that Google’s Nexus devices were the most secure out there, with a FUM score of 5.2 out of 10. Surprisingly, LG was next with 4.0, followed by Motorola, Samsung, Sony, and HTC, respectively. Read 3 remaining paragraphs | Comments
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University of Cambridge study finds 87% of Android devices are insecure
The prevailing form factor for consumer-level 3D printers and CNC mills is a box, dictated by the axial/gantry-style mechanisms of these machines. But entrepreneur Zaib Husain and engineer Azam Shahani were thinking outside of the box, literally, when they devised their Makerarm prototype. An articulated arm is cantilevered off of a column mounted to a worksurface; the arm has a 180-degree sweep, ten inches of Z-travel and a maximum reach of nearly 16 inches. So what does this arm do? Well, everything. The creators have designed a series of interchangeable tool heads that can hold an almost absurd variety of: Cutting heads for milling and engraving, nozzles for 3D printing either FDM-style or resin-based, a laser cutter, a soldering iron, a pen plotter, and even a series of pick-and-place tools like a claw gripper, an electromagnet and a suction cup. Check out its range of operations: I found the auto-leveling feature shown in the video the most fascinating, where the head tracks the slanted surface of the workpiece. The sensors that must be contained within to perform such a feat make me wonder if the arm can also automatically index off the corner of the workpiece. Holddown–not to mention bolting the arm’s base to your worksurface–is presumably still the user’s domain. Unsurprisingly, the $999 early bird special is already sold out on Kickstarter . That was for just the Makerarm and a single head pack including the electromagnet and pen plotter. The fully-loaded version that ships with all of the heads (see below) is going for $2, 199. Though they’ve still got a long way to go, it seems certain the project will be funded. Though the campaign is only in their first few days, they’ve already raised $145, 653 of a $349, 750 goal, and there are still 28 days left to pledge. And assuming they do make it, they’re planning on shipping by October 2016.
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A Desktop Robotic Arm That Can 3D Print, Mill, Plot, Carve, Etch, Assemble and More
We’re encumbered with more connected silicon than ever before, and having to juggling multiple phone numbers for a phone, a smartwatch and a tablet, well, really sucks. To that end, AT&T just announced NumberSync, a free service that links all your other connected AT&T gizmos (think 3G smartwatch or tablets) to your main phone number. Better yet, incoming calls and text messages will get routed to all those devices at once — none of this hokey call-forwarding nonsense. When you add a NumberSync-enabled device to one of AT&T’s Mobile Share plan buckets, you’ll get the option to turn on NumberSync totally free of charge . AT&T SVP Jeff Bradley says the feature will launch later this month with one supported device from a hush-hush phone maker (our money’s on Samsung), with a few more to follow by the time the holidays roll around. Ultimately, the carrier would like to see its full line of connected devices play nice with NumberSync’s sharing tendencies, but that’s a little easier said than done. And for folks like me, who have no less than five phone numbers running at the same time because of review phones, NumberSync doesn’t really help. It’s all about those other, non-phone connected gadgets AT&T wants to sell you. What AT&T’s basically doing here is taking advantage of the network upgrades it developed while rolling out Voice over LTE to kill a growing consumer headache and give their hardware partners a better shot at selling stuff at the same time. Clever clever. But why the slow rollout, especially if most of the heavy lifting is handled on AT&T’s end? Can’t they just flip the switch for everyone at one? I asked Bradley what the deal was, and it’s because NumberSync isn’t a completely one-sided affair — phone makers have to modify software like the dialer and messaging apps to play nice with AT&T’s network modifications. Thankfully, most of this technical legwork *should* be invisible to you and me — enabling NumberSync on a secondary device like a tablet would require one final new step at the end of the normal setup process. “The good part, ” Bradley pointed out, “is they get better [at integration] once they get the first one under their belt.” One of the few good things about the way our domestic wireless carriers work is that they’re totally fine stealing good ideas — it might give the originator ammunition to fire back, but whatever. In the end, it means benefits eventually flow to all consumers instead of just one subset of customers, and AT&T isn’t the only carrier that’s working on a network infrastructure that makes NumberSync possible. AT&T might have the head start on this, but seriously, the rest of you carriers had better get cracking too.
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AT&T NumberSync lets one phone number rule all your connected gadgets
August Home Inc, makers of the August Smart Lock , announced the forthcoming release of three new products as well as a new service at a press event in San Francisco today. The new product lineup includes a second-generation Smart Lock, a Smart Keypad and a Smart Doorbell Camera. The lock itself offers a number of design improvements over its predecessor including a magnetic faceplate that won’t pop off every time you manually engage the lock as well as a stainless steel indicator on the lock sleeve. Plus, being Homekit-enabled, the new Smart Lock will allow users to issue voice commands through Siri rather than opening the app itself. It’s available for order today and will retail for $230. The older generation locks will be discounted to an even $200. The weather-proofed keypad will make granting temporary access to service providers (say, the delivery guy or your dog walker) much easier. Instead of forcing folks to download the August app just to use a one-time Bluetooth code, users will be able to program a 4 – 6 digit PIN into the keypad themselves and then share the code via text message or what-have-you. And, like the older shared BT codes, these PINs can be set to last for as many hours, days or uses as you’d like. The keypad will retail for $80 when it becomes available in the next few weeks. The Doorbell Cam is also weather-proofed, Wi-Fi enabled and pretty darn clever. It’s equipped with a standard motion detector but will also turn on the camera when it detects movement near the door. So instead of issuing a push notification every time a car drives past your house, the motion detector will also turn on the Wi-Fi camera (which is equipped with human-detection software) to ensure that the movement is actually a person standing on your stoop, not just parking at the curb. The camera will retail for $200. What’s more, the camera integrates with the rest of the August devices allowing you to remotely unlock your door for the delivery guy and record both him entering and exiting the residence. This ensures that he doesn’t swiped stuff from your house while dropping a package in the foyer. Plus, this way, you’ll never miss a delivery. The only drawback is that the camera is powered by your existing doorbell wiring so if you don’t have a doorbell already installed on your door (like me) you are SOL. Finally, August is expanding the scope of its temporary access system to allow services, not just individuals access to your door. “We’re announcing a new service that we call Access, ” August co-founder Jason Johnson told Engadget . “Probably the best way to describe it is, much like, new transportation apps like Uber helps consumers find service providers [in this case, drivers for hire – ed.] are in third party transportation logistics, we’re in third party service logistics. We help consumers find services that have integrated with our platform and we help them connect in a trusted and secure way.” The company announced 12 initial launch partners today including Sears, Postmates, Pro.com, Handy, Fetch, Shyp, BloomNation, Envoy, Rinse, HelloAlfred, Wag!, Pillow, and Doorman. Instead of having to give partial access to a delivery person every single time you order from Postmates, users will be able to grant access to Postmates the company. This may seem like a security issue however it’s not that far off from what many August users already do with trusted service partners like these. Plus, the lock maintains copious logs about who opened which August-locked door with which access code so tracking down the responsible party should your valuable go missing during a delivery will be a piece of cake.
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August unveils a Homekit-enabled lock, keypad and doorbell camera
the_newsbeagle writes: Parsing the first human genome took a decade, but times have changed. Now, within 26 hours, doctors can scan a sick baby’s entire genome and analyze the resulting list of mutations to produce a diagnosis. Since genetic diseases are the top cause of death for infants (abstract), rapidly diagnosing a rare genetic disease can be life-saving. The 26-hour pipeline results from automated technologies that handle everything from the genome sequencing to the diagnosis, says the doctor involved: “We want to take humans out of the equation, because we’re the bottleneck.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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In 26 Hours, Sick Newborns Go From Genome Scan To Diagnosis
Upgrading to Windows 10 is easy if you’re already on Windows 7 or 8 . However, if you want a clean install , you have to install an older version first. Next month, the first big update to Windows 10 will fix this. Read more…
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Next Month You Can Use Windows 7, 8 Product Keys to Activate Windows 10
The iOS 9 jailbreak was just released from the same team who brought us the iOS 8 jailbreak . Like last time, it’s also Windows-only for the time being. Read more…
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The iOS 9 Jailbreak Is Now Available
Want a Wii U but don’t want to own Nintendo’s latest console ? That’s sort of possible now. I emphasize the “sort of” because the recently released Cemu emulator is almost entirely broken at this point. There isn’t proper gamepad support, there’s absolutely no audio and the game video stutters and glitches pretty badly in most cases if the titles launch at all. For example, in Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker HD ‘s attract mode (the opening menu screen), little Toon Link looks he has some seriously Donnie Darko -esque energy tubes coming out of his chest, stretching far out from his cliffside overlook on Outset Island. Peep it in the video embedded below. “Contains basically no optimizations, ” the download page reads. “Expect slow frame rates and long load times.” It’s still very early days for the program, but the developers are planning on sending updates every two weeks. You’ll need a 64-bit Windows 7 (or higher) machine with an NVIDIA card and the most recent driver set to get started. Oh, and some patience. But who knows, with some time, this could turn into something as cool as the vaunted Dolphin emulator that runs Gamecube games in pretty stunning high def. For now though, you’re better off with a Wii U if you want to play Super Mario Maker . [Image credit: Bloomberg via Getty Images] Source: Gbatemp
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Wii U emulator (almost) runs ‘Mario Kart 8’ on your PC