Tuesday, 30 July 2019

FBI arrests woman for massive Capital One hack

Engadget Email Newsletter

It's Tuesday, July 30, 2019.

Hey, good morning! You look fabulous.

We’re barely clear of the big Equifax settlement, and Capital One has suffered a hack that exposed information for more than 100 million Americans. In other news, Google posted more details about its Pixel 4, and you need to check on your digital movie locker account.

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The FBI tracked and arrested a suspect based partially on her GitHub posts.

Capital One coughs up credit application info for 100 million people

According to the company, someone exploited a "configuration vulnerability" that allowed them to access and decrypt customer data affecting more than 100 million people in the US and about six million in Canada. The FBI has already arrested the person they believe is responsible, identified in court documents as Paige Thompson, a software engineer from Seattle who went by the handle "erratic."

While they believe the data was not distributed, it included all the personal information you’d find on a credit card application, about 80,000 linked bank account numbers and 140,000 social security numbers, and about one million social insurance numbers for Canadians. Capital One said it will notify those who had their data stolen (mostly cardholders and people who had applied for cards between 2005 and early 2019), as well as provide free credit monitoring and identity theft protection.

The Pixel 4 is coming later this year.

Google confirms Pixel 4 will support face unlock, touch-free gestures

The company has confirmed its next flagship phones will include motion-sensing Soli radar that lets you skip tracks, silence phone calls and otherwise control key phone tasks by waving your hand. Consider it a potentially more sophisticated take on the LG G8's gestures.

It also uses the radar to detect when you're reaching for your phone and activate the IR sensors ahead of time. How did Google make sure this would work on many different kinds of faces and in “almost any orientation”? It paid pedestrians $5 to scan their faces.

PG&E will use Megapacks for a project in California.

Tesla's Megapack is a battery built for the electrical grid

The tech company has introduced the Megapack, a container-sized battery meant for "large-scale" storage, which could help quickly deploy renewable energy and even replace conventional "peaker" power plants that come online when there's high demand. A single Megapack has up to 3MWh of storage, or roughly 14 times the 210kWh of a Powerpack.

How Eko is helping companies beat employee turnover

Make sure your accounts are linked now.

UltraViolet's digital movie locker closes Wednesday

The cloud-based digital rights locker that lets users watch content across a variety of services will shut down on Wednesday. Customers will still be able to access any purchased movies and TV shows through retailers with accounts previously linked to its libraries, like FandangoNow or Vudu. Hit up the website and double check your account status now, while you still can.

Watch the drip.

Oppo eliminates side bezels with its 'waterfall screen'

Oppo showed off a prototype device packing a "waterfall screen," which features an aggressive 88-degree fold on both the left and right sides. When viewed directly from the front, the bezels are practically invisible.

A $3,700 price is its biggest drawback.

Panasonic S1R review: Big, powerful and too expensive

Panasonic’s S1R is a good high-resolution, full-frame mirrorless camera, but it can’t hold up to the competition. The contrast-detect autofocus is good, but inferior to Sony’s faster, more accurate hybrid system. Images are sharp and color-accurate, but again can’t hold up to the Sony A7R III in terms of low-light noise and dynamic range. However, video features and quality are very respectable.

But wait, there's more...

1. What's on TV this week: 'Avengers: Endgame,' 'Madden NFL 20' and 'Four Weddings and a Funeral'

2. Scientists create contact lenses that zoom on command

3. Sony has sold 100 million PlayStation 4 consoles

4. Tool finally makes its music available for streaming ahead of a new album

5. Inside the virtual production of 'The Lion King'

6. YouTubers are unionizing, and the site has 24 days to respond

7. Inside the virtual production of 'The Lion King'

8. Summer boondocking gear: car camping done right

9. YouTubers are unionizing, and the site has 24 days to respond

10. NVIDIA's GeForce RTX GPUs are now even better for creative types

11. 'Quantum microphone' detects sound at the atomic level

12. What we're buying: Elf Audio's Koala Sampler

13. Back to School 2019: The tech you need to declutter your academic life

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Monday, 29 July 2019

Editor's Pick: Tesla's Failings Overshadow Its Impressive Successes

Tesla's Failings Overshadow Its Impressive Successes

Rob Enderle Jul 29, 2019 10:26 AM PT
	Launching a new car company and getting it to global scale doesn't happen often, and it has been a long time since there has been a successful launch of one in the United States. Tesla really stands alone as the only new U.S. car company of scale since American Motors and Studebaker failed decades ago, when three auto companies then dominated the U.S. industry. [More...]

More Picks:

What the CBS Blackout Means for the Future of Streaming
CBS went dark across AT&T's U-verse and DirecTV services, days after the seven-year contract between the two companies expired. As the two couldn't come to new terms, CBS and its related channels -- including CBSN, CBS Sports and The Smithsonian Channel -- were blacked out. This latest disruption in service affected viewers in major markets across the United States. [More...]

Emmabuntüs Is a Hidden Linux Gem
Emmabuntüs is a great find if you are looking for an all-around Linux operating system that keeps legacy computers out of the trash heap and is easy to use with no setup or regular Internet access required. This distro is not one whose name is readily recognizable. Hidden from popular view, it's seldom spotted by product reviewers. Yet it has fulfilled a range of user needs for years. [More...]

Automation: Helping SMBs Cut the Gordian Knot of Transaction Tax
Finance and accounting technology became the No. 1 software budgeting priority for small and mid-sized businesses, according to a survey conducted last year. Almost 54 percent of respondents were budgeting to invest in accounting tools in the next 12 to 24 months, with those in the retail industry specifically forecasting to spend between $30,000 and $40,000. [More...]

Timely Antitrust Investigation
The Justice Department is opening antitrust investigations into some of the biggest tech companies around, including Facebook, Google, Amazon and others. This is nothing that either the public or the companies involved should fret about. This is part of the evolution of the tech sector. We've been through this kind of thing before. Each economic era follows a similar trajectory. [More...]

Understanding the IP Policy Changes Coming to Amazon Sellers
Amazon is keenly interested in protecting the IP rights of its third-party sellers because the company depends upon them for their long-term success. In a recent newsletter to shareholders, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos explained that third-party sellers currently make up a majority of the site's gross merchandise sales, with the share of revenue from third-party sellers having grown to 58 percent. [More...]

Square Opens Robotic Photo Studio for SMB Etailers
The newly launched Square Photo Studio leverages state-of-the-art robotics to offer etailers professional-grade product photography. For $10, clients can get three high-resolution, multi-angle digital photos of a product. A spinning, interactive animation of the product -- which site visitors can click and drag or zoom -- will cost $30. Clients can highlight what they want the photographs to show. [More...]

Boost Your CRM With IaaS
CRM systems are the lifeblood of many businesses, and the volume of customer data within them keeps growing as companies digitize more processes. That data often is not being used to its full potential, beyond basic reporting on sales metrics and marketing campaigns. With the advent of mainstream machine learning and artificial intelligence technologies, this is all changing, and quickly. [More...]

AI in Healthcare: Independent Living for Consumers
AI applied to healthcare includes a collection of technologies that enable machines to sense, interpret, act and learn. AI implementations for digital health can be relatively simple when they are focused largely on personal patient engagement, or vastly complex when working with big data sets, highly specialized diagnostics, and the workflows of multiple highly complicated organizations. [More...]

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Sony's crowdfunding plans for a wearable 'air conditioner'

Engadget Email Newsletter

It's Monday, July 29, 2019.

Hey, good morning!

With something close to seasonally timed perfection, Sony is offering a wearable ‘air conditioner’ unit on its crowdfunding platform. Meanwhile, Fortnite gets a premier esports circuit (with even more millions of dollars up for grabs), and we lay out the best streaming services for cord-cutters on a budget.

You wouldn't have to be too picky about where you use 5G, either.

All of Apple's 2020 iPhones may offer 5G

Sure, Apple isn’t the first major vendor out of the gate with a 5G smartphone, but it may have a comprehensive lineup when it's ready. Historically accurate analyst Ming-Chi Kuo now expects all three 2020 iPhones to support 5G, not just the highest-end models.

Apple will be helped by falling 5G hardware costs (you could see limited 5G support on $250 Android phones, Kuo said), as well as more resources thanks to the Intel modem acquisition. At that stage, 5G may be treated as a given in the iPhone's price class.

The best streaming services for cord-cutters on a budget

How to watch what you want without breaking the bank.

While offerings like YouTube TV and PlayStation Vue mimic traditional cable packages, providing more than 50 channels each through their basic plans, they cost more than $45 per month. If you're trying to save money, that's simply not going to work. Your best bet is to be mindful of what, exactly, you want to watch and when, and then pick and choose from a variety of services based on that.

The Reon Pocket helps you stealthily cope with heatwaves and cold winters.

Sony is crowdfunding a wearable 'air conditioner'

Struggling to cope with the heat and all that pesky global warming? Sony might have a solution, if not as soon as you might like. The company's First Flight crowdfunding platform has launched a wearable 'air conditioner,' the Reon Pocket. It slips into a pouch on custom-made clothes like tees and sits at the base of your neck, using the Peltier effect (where heat is absorbed or emitted when you pass an electrical current across a junction) to either lower your temperature by 23F or raise it by 14F, all without bulk or noise.

You can get a lifetime of VPN Unlimited for only $40

It won't just be organized around the 'Fortnite' World Cup.

'Fortnite' gets a premier esports circuit in the Championship Series

The end to the Fortnite World Cup won't mark the end to Epic's esports plans for the year -- not by a long shot. The developer has announced a Fortnite Championship Series that will have gamers playing across whole seasons. "Every single result matters," Epic said, and there will be a leaderboard to keep tabs on results across the season. There will be "millions of dollars" on the line, too. It’s another big move to keep Fortnite at the forefront of esports.