gadgets – Page 5 – Tech Today w/ Ken May

US Customs seize 16,000 counterfeit ‘hoverboards’

The US Customs and Border Protection has prevented 16, 000 counterfeit “hoverboards” from making it to people’s homes. Authorities have seized a warehouse full of the controversial two-wheeled scooters stamped with fake trademark logos and equipped with unauthorized batteries in Chicago. They believe the goods they collected amount to $6 million overall, at least for now. That figure will grow even bigger, since the warehouse is expecting a “massive amount of shipments” to arrive in the next few weeks. These self-balancing scooters became a huge hit last year, so numerous questionable manufacturers took advantage of the craze and released subpar, non-quality controlled versions to stores. They’ve been all over the news in the past few months for spontaneously catching fire and burning people’s houses down. At least one incident took place in Illinois. Due to the hazard inferior-quality hoverboards pose, the scooters had been banned from many airplanes , universities and even from NYC’s trains and buses . Last year, UK authorities also seized 15, 000 units after inspecting shipments at seaports and airports. [Image credit: US Customs/Flickr ] Via: Mashable Source: US Customs and Border Protection

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US Customs seize 16,000 counterfeit ‘hoverboards’

Large Hadron Collider crew has to pull 9,000 old cables

Even particle physics researchers have messes to clean up now and then. CERN has revealed to Motherboard that it’s pulling 9, 000 obsolete cables in three of the Large Hadron Collider’s injectors in order to make way for newer cabling. That’s a lot of work by itself (many of the cables are dozens of feet long), but it’s made all the more daunting by the consequences of yanking the wrong line. Since the cables are largely for control and safety systems, one wrong move could prevent the entire particle accelerator from working — try explaining that slip-up to your supervisors. The crew has already disconnected 2, 700 of the cables, and expects to remove all of them in 2017. CERN shouldn’t have any problems with the LHC shutdown scheduled for 2019, in other words. And hopefully, this won’t be necessary again. The gigantic amount of clutter stems from a “not-so-good habit” of leaving old cables around, which suggests that engineers will be much smarter about cleaning up in the future. [Image credit: CERN] Source: Motherboard

Griefer hacks baby monitor, terrifies toddler with spooky voices

Remember how, back in September 2015, researchers revealed that virtually every “smart” baby-monitor they tested was riddled with security vulnerabilities that let strangers seize control over it, spying on you and your family? (more…)

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Griefer hacks baby monitor, terrifies toddler with spooky voices

How an obsessive jailhouse lawyer revealed the existence of Stingray surveillance devices

Daniel Rigmaiden was a prolific and talented fraudster who made more than a million dollars filing tax-returns for dead people, using ninja forgery skills and super-tight operational security to avoid arrest for years. (more…)

Finally, over-the-air software updates for your car are becoming a reality

Harman’s Yoram Berholtz explains how Harman is helping the car industry stay current with over-the-air software updates. Video shot/edited by Nathan Fitch. (video link) LAS VEGAS—A constant bugbear in automotive tech is how inconvenient it is to have to take one’s car to the dealership to get a software update—something Tesla owners often gloat about since their cars don’t suffer that problem. Well, have faith, non-Tesla owners, because it looks like the auto industry is moving in the right direction. To find out more, we spoke to Harman’s Yoram Berholtz at CES. Read 5 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Finally, over-the-air software updates for your car are becoming a reality

Watch An Apple IIgs Boot Over 20 Years After It Was Last Turned Off

Digital archeology is one of my favorite blog post forms. An avid X user from 198X resurrects an old system that he or she had used to create something amazing/build a business/write a game/or generally hack around. The resulting material – photos, video, and commentary – are priceless. Today we bring you Quinn Dunki has post a truly amazing look inside her Apple IIgs and a passel… Read More

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Watch An Apple IIgs Boot Over 20 Years After It Was Last Turned Off

Intel’s next NUC will be a quad-core mini PC with Iris Pro and Thunderbolt 3

Andrew Cunningham The Broadwell NUC (left) and the new Skylake NUC (right). 4 more images in gallery Last night, Intel’s opening-day CES keynote focused mostly on wearables and Internet of Things things, the sort of forward-facing, maybe-useful, possibly-vaporware technology that characterizes CES. But in a small meeting this morning, we were able to get more information on less zeitgeist-y but more practical gadgets like the Compute Stick and the NUC mini desktops. The basic NUC boxes have been around for four generations now, so their Skylake refresh is predictable. They still use low-voltage U-series dual-core Core i3-6100U and i5-6260U CPUs like the ones you’d find in Ultrabooks. The i3 versions come with Intel HD 520 graphics, while the i5 boxes have Iris graphics—non-Pro Iris GPUs in the Skylake generation get 64MB of eDRAM cache to help add memory bandwidth, so graphics performance should be quite a bit better than the HD 6000 GPU in the equivalent Broadwell NUC. Intel has dropped the mini HDMI port on the back of the PC in favor of a full-size HDMI port, and it’s added an SD card reader on all models. Otherwise input and output is the same: four USB 3.0 ports (two on front, two on back, one yellow one that can charge devices when the NUC is powered off), a mini DisplayPort 1.2 port, gigabit Ethernet, and an IR receiver and a headphone jack on the front. The lids are still interchangeable, and they can connect to a USB header on the motherboard to extend the capabilities of the box. Read 5 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Intel’s next NUC will be a quad-core mini PC with Iris Pro and Thunderbolt 3

Intel’s new Atom and Core M Compute Sticks get faster and look better

Andrew Cunningham Intel’s new Compute Stick has a better-looking design. 7 more images in gallery Intel’s original Compute Stick was an neat idea that ultimately wasn’t executed very well. Any system based on one of Intel’s Atom processors is going to be a little slow, but flaky wireless, inconsistent performance, and a clunky setup process all made it less appealing than it could have been. It had all of the hallmarks and rough edges of a first-generation product. Today Intel showed us its next-generation Compute Sticks, and it’s clear that the company is taking seriously the criticism of the first model. There are three new versions to talk about: the lowest end stick uses a Cherry Trail Atom CPU and is the closest relative to the first-generation Compute Stick. The other two use more powerful Skylake Core M processors—one has a Core m3-6Y30 processor, and another has a Core m5-6Y57 CPU with Intel’s vPro management features enabled. All three sticks share the same basic design. The first-generation stick used a bulky, glossy plastic housing that made it look and feel more like a reference design than an actual shipping product, but all three new models switch to a softer, curvier case that looks more refined. Read 6 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Intel’s new Atom and Core M Compute Sticks get faster and look better

MSI’s flagship gaming laptop gets an eye-tracking upgrade

If you’re looking for a big, powerful gaming laptop, the MSI’s GT72 Dominator has always been a solid choice — but it’s never been really interesting . The Dominator is known for a strong build, powerful internals, good speakers and a superb keyboard, but it never offered anything unexpected. Now it does. Later this month, MSI will be updating the Dominator with a fancy new gimmick: an integrated eye-tracking camera. Technically, we’ve seen this machine before: MSI showed off a prototype eye-tracking Dominator in Taiwan last year . It… sort of worked. Eye-controlled gaming can be finicky if not implemented correctly. At the time, we had trouble controlling the Assassin’s Creed in-game camera by just looking at the screen, but logging into Windows with the camera was relatively easy. The technology has potential, even if it only has limited support at the moment. Now that it’s officially available, that support could be on its way. MSI says the GT72S Tobii will be available for purchase later this month, and will ship with a Tobii-enabled copy of Tom Clancy’s The Division.

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MSI’s flagship gaming laptop gets an eye-tracking upgrade

See how much fat you’re burning just by breathing out

Using a weighing scale to keep track of your weight is tricky. Your body can lose water, muscle or fat but the scale simply picks up your overall weight. It doesn’t reflect your gym obsession or fat loss with any accuracy. LEVL is a new portable device that analyses your breath to tell you if your body is in fat-burning mode. A white box holds a proprietary nano sensor that checks your breath for the level of acetone, a molecule that your body releases when it goes into fat burning mode or ketosis. This isn’t the first time we’ve seen tech like this: in 2013, NTT DoCoMo demonstrated something remarkably similar. The process is simple: breathe in, breathe out into the inhaler and place it in a white device for an instant reading of the acetone concentration. There is an accompanying app that tracks your analysis to help you maintain a record of your readings over time. The app provides analysis of the amount of calories (and, by extension, pounds) burned off during the day. In many ways, the only thing that LEVL provides is a vague indication that your weight-loss regime is working, or not. But is that really something you would, or need to monitor to such an obsessive level? We’re not entirely sure. Daniel Cooper contributed to this report.

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See how much fat you’re burning just by breathing out