Neurable aims to allow people to perform many tasks, including typing, using only their thoughts.
Clicking, typing, and swiping are the norm in 2017. But to streamline the way we use virtual and augmented reality systems, a startup called Neurable wants to replace all of that with simply thinking.
“Every major computational technology has needed an evolution in interaction,†Ramses Alcaide, co-founder and CEO of the firm, explained at MIT Technology Review’s EmTech conference in Cambridge, Massachusetts, on Wednesday. “When it came to the computer, we had the graphical user interface and the mouse. With smartphones, we went to capacitive touchscreens. And now that we’re entering augmented reality, we need to start thinking about more natural ways of interacting—your hand, your eye, and even your brain.â€
That, says Alcaide, could make the vision of augmented reality headsets genuinely useful, allowing wearers to influence what they see without fumbling for a keypad or controller. That’s why Neurable has been working on developing brain-control systems for VR for over a year now. It uses a headset loaded with dry electrodes that sit on the scalp and track brain activity. The firm’s software analyzes the brain’s activity to work out what its wearer wants to do. A couple of months ago, the company showed off a snazzy VR game that uses the technology to allow a player to move objects with their mind.
But the firm actually has less exciting interactions in its sights. “The killer interaction is not something exciting, it’s something boring,†Alcaide said at the conference. “It’s something as simple as typing, sweeping, pinch-and-zoom, and clicking.â€
To that point, he showed off of an alpha version of his firm’s first typing tool, which you can see in use in the video above. The current record for brain-computer interface typing is eight words per minute, but that uses an invasive implant to read signals from a person’s brain. “We’re working to beat that record, even though we’re using a non-invasive technology,†explains Alcaide. “We’re getting about one letter per second which is still fairly slow, because it’s an early build. We think that in the next year we can further push that forward.â€
He says that by introducing AI into the system, Neurable should be able to reduce the delay between letters and also predict what a user is trying to type to make interactions even faster. And that might make our interactions with technology smoother than ever.
from Technology Review Feed – Tech Review Top Stories http://ift.tt/2ztdRGs
via IFTTT
You are probably surrounded by more computers than you know what to do with, whether it’s the phone in your pocket, the old clunker at home, or the sleek little ultraportable you got from work. And while they are more than enough for everyday tasks, when it comes to real graphics prowess, I’m talking about serious gaming, 3D design, or photo/video editing, most systems don’t have the guts—or the space to accommodate the kind of silicon you’d need to push pixels around.
So as a workaround, some companies resorted to putting graphics cards in their own little boxes and then tethering them to computer using a number of different cords. Unfortunately, those solutions are usually complicated and often quite pricey. However, with the increasing availability of Thunderbolt 3, that idea of adding graphics power via an external housing got a lot less daunting.
That’s because Thunderbolt 3 is a multi-purpose transfer standard that can send up to 40 gigabits per second of data and 100 watts of power through a single USB Type-C port. That’s more than enough bandwidth to push video to multiple 4K displays while still carrying enough juice to keep your notebook brimming with power. Now this doesn’t do much for phones, but almost every single flagship ultraportable laptop has at least one Thunderbolt 3 port, while Apple’s new 13- and 15-inch MacBook Pros have no fewer than two.
But back to the topic at hand: external GPU enslcosures or eGPUs. Right now, mainstream choices include products like the Alienware Graphics Amplifier, Razer Core V2, or Asus ROG XG Station 2. But Alienware’s graphic amp uses a proprietary cable that only works with other Alienware notebooks, while the Razer Core and Asus XG Station 2 cost $500 or more just for the box, which means you’re going to have to shell out at least another $150 or so for a GPU worth putting inside.
But if you dig a little deeper, there are smaller manufacturers like Sonnet that have been crafting eGPUs for years, but without the hype you get from bigger computer brands. And just last week, Sonnet released a more affordable external graphics box starting at $450 with an AMD RX 560 GPU or $600 with a RX 570. Now I know what you’re thinking: These things still aren’t that cheap, and you’re not wrong. But for a single package that can completely change the performance of your system, at least we’re moving in the right direction.
Setup is relatively simple too. All you have to is plug in the eGPU using the included short, but still serviceable 1-foot USB-C cord. From there, PCs running Windows 10 should automatically detect Sonnet’s Breakaway Puck so just select the option enabling the device, while also choosing the “always connect†setting to ensure your system won’t revert to onboard graphics in case you turn off your machine or it goes to sleep.
Finally, download the graphics drivers for the eGPU you are using (which in our case was the AMD RX 560 model), and then restart your computer when it’s done installing. You can then either choose to hook up an external monitor using one of the three DisplayPorts or the lone HDMI connection on the back of the puck, or stick with the display built-into your laptop or all-in-one. As a bonus, Sonnet even includes a standard VESA mounting bracket, so people can hide the Puck behind a freestanding display.
Once you got your battle station setup just the way you want, go ahead and fire up your games. In our tests, the numbers speak for themselves. On a brand new Dell XPS 13 with an 8th-gen Intel Core i7 CPU and 8GB of RAM (but weak integrated graphics), Sonnet’s graphics puck boosted frame rates in both Rise of the Tomb Raider and Civilization 6 from unplayable slideshow territory and transformed it into a legit gaming machine. And it was the same story for a ThinkPad T470. Even though it had an Nvidia 940m GPU and 16GB of RAM, it still couldn’t get anywhere close to 30 fps without help.
The only real hassle I ran into was that Civ 6 didn’t automatically detect the eGPU, which meant I had to fiddle with the graphics settings and relaunch the game several times until it did. Rise on the Tomb Raider, on the other hand, had no trouble recognizing the eGPU, so it seems like ease of use will vary from game to game. I should also mention that while setting up the XPS 13, I got several system alerts saying that the eGPU might not work properly, but aside from one crash while installing the AMD graphics drivers, I didn’t run into any more complications.
That said, there are still some things I wish Sonnet’s eGPU did a bit better. Since you already have to plug the Puck into your computer, it would be nice if Sonnet had included some additional USB ports. The eGPU already sends up to 60 watts of power via Thunderbolt 3, which is enough to power most small and mid-sized laptops, and it would be nice if you could connect a mouse and keyboard too and use the Puck as a dock too. I also found the the Puck’s fan noise a bit distracting at times. When it spins up, you’re definitely going to notice (unless you’re wearing headphones), and because the included USB-C cord is so short, it’s not like you can stash the Puck somewhere more out of the way.
But perhaps the real takeaway is that despite being generally easy to use and offering a significant boost in graphics performance, even Sonnet’s most affordable eGPUs still doesn’t feel that cheap. You can buy a regular AMD RX 560 GPU with 4GB of vRAM for around $130 or less, which means that the box the puck comes is costs about $300, twice the price of the GPU that’s inside. Still, the kind of bump in performance Sonnet’s Puck provides is sweet, if a bit niche. It could revive an aging all-in-one or turn your boring work computer into something that can play real games on nights and weekends too. And based on the numbers we got, it seems like those CPUs still had even more to give, which might work better with one Sonnet’s more capable GPU enclosures. But like products from Razer, Asus, and others, that extra performance doesn’t come cheap.
README
Requires a Windows 10 PC with a Thunderbolt 3 port.
Mac support requires High Sierra and is still a work in progress. Not all Macs with Thunderbolt work with AMD’s beta drivers yet either.
The GPU enclosure features three DisplayPorts and one HDMI connection, but no additional USB ports.
You must connect the eGPU and install graphics drivers before you can connect external displays. Games may require some tweaking too before recognizing the eGPU.
Comes with either an AMD RX 560 for $450 or RX 570 GPU for $600.
Last week, Amazon announced a new voluntary service that allows its own contracted delivery personnel to temporarily access customers’ homes through a new service dubbed “Amazon Key” which begins Wednesday, November 8.
Privacy experts wonder what kind of avenue putting such a camera in the home could mean for law enforcement, particularly given last year’s episode when Amazon refused to help law enforcement in a murder case in Arkansas. There, investigators attempted to get the company to hand over data collected by a nearby Alexa. If that instance is any indication, Amazon may resist a legal demand to open up an Amazon Key lock.
Beyond concerns about the police, many on Twitter are fundamentally uncomfortable with Amazon Key.
I’m excited to watch the 2030 Netflix docudrama about the Amazon Key murders
Several lawyers have also wondered what kind of legal questions Amazon Key now poses.
“Would it be possible for a person unknowingly to authorize a law enforcement agency or a criminal to access Amazon Key?” Elizabeth Joh, a law professor at the University of California, Davis, e-mailed Ars. “If a criminal gains access and some harm occurs, who is responsible? And what criminal law would apply? Also, does Amazon have in its disclaimers that law enforcement might ask for access through Amazon Key? Does Amazon plan on being transparent about this?”
Ars put these questions to Amazon, which declined to answer them on the record.
“Why would anyone want to give Amazon access to their home?” Brian Owsley, a law professor at the University of North Texas and a former federal magistrate judge, told Ars. “This is like giving Apple your fingerprints or facial features. Have packages sent to your office or buy small post office box for much less than the cost of this service, and have packages sent there. This is just a very bad idea. How long before hackers can gain access to your home just like they gained access to vehicles with computer systems?”
Plus, it’s not clear what legal standard would apply if law enforcement wanted to get at the footage. Would such a recording require a warrant? Or, perhaps, would it be subject to the third-party doctrine? That’s the legal notion that data handed over to a third-party (here, Amazon) cannot be considered private and so the government can access it without a warrant.
“It is doubtful that law enforcement could obtain video footage, especially if it contains audio without a warrant,” Christopher Slobogin, a law professor at Vanderbilt University, e-mailed Ars.
“However, law enforcement would likely argue that the homeowner has no reasonable expectation of privacy in that video based on the third-party doctrine. For example, the Supreme Court in Smith v. Maryland determined that the third-party doctrine barred the telephone subscriber from claiming a reasonable expectation in privacy of the numbers that he dialed. Similarly, courts have concluded the same thing about a customer’s electricity usage that the electric company maintains in its records.”
Happiness is a warm lock?
The $250 setup includes a Bluetooth-enabled smart lock and a new Cloud Cam security setup. According to an Amazon spokesperson, contracted drivers will be granted “one-time access” following the verification process through a handheld mobile device. Such access can be blocked or revoked at any time.
“[This procedure ensures] the right driver and package is at the correct address and that the driver is near the door,” the spokesperson told Ars. “Second, we use Amazon Cloud Cam to record deliveries so customers can review a video clip of the delivery. Third, drivers will not move onto their next delivery until the door has been securely locked.”
Like all of its other products, Amazon Key has its own “Terms of Use,” which provide a guide for the company’s thinking. If you use the service, you automatically agree to these terms, which can change at any time. (At present, these terms make no reference to law enforcement.)
Amazon says it will correct any errors or damage through its “Happiness Guarantee.” If that’s not enough and you want to sue, Amazon says you can’t sue in regular court: you have to take the case to private arbitration, a process that generally favors companies over individuals.
As the Terms state:
If you place an order with in-home delivery, you are authorizing Amazon and its delivery providers to access the home (or other location) that you designate as the order shipping address, for the purpose of delivering your order. By placing an order with in-home delivery, you are confirming that you have the right to authorize Amazon and its delivery providers to access the designated home.
…
Amazon has no responsibility or liability for the following: third party accounts or services; Compatible Products that Amazon does not manufacture or develop; any guests or service providers to whom you provide authorization to operate your lock.
According to law professor Ryan Calo of the University of Washington, Amazon is carving out what it is and isn’t responsible for.
“Amazon and its delivery providers get access to your home,” he told Ars. “So, if Amazon or its delivery providers leave your door open, Amazon can be liable. But if you use Amazon’s app to open the door for other providers, that’s on you (and them).”
Put another way, in a purely analog world, it’s your own fault if you leave a key under the mat and the person you trust with it abuses that trust. With new tech entering the picture, Amazon is seemingly only responsible for package delivery.
For what it’s worth, neither FedEx nor UPS indicated that they would be offering a similar service any time soon.
“As policy, we do not comment on competitors’ business plans,” FedEx spokeswoman Gretchen Mathis told Ars in a statement. “FedEx is committed to offering our customers secure and convenient delivery options.”
Similarly, UPS spokeswoman Dawn Wotapka told Ars that UPS drivers “do not enter or otherwise leave packages inside homes.”
“We do evaluate new technologies and opportunities to meet our customers’ needs,” she said. “Our employees have a time-tested method of delivering packages that has proven for more than a century to work. However, we’re always willing to listen to new ideas. While there’s nothing that precludes us from doing this, one of the biggest questions about this service will be user acceptance. We’re watching to see if consumer demand grows to a point where it makes sense.”
A researcher has documented almost 2,500 sites that are actively running cryptocurrency mining code in the browsers of unsuspecting visitors, a finding that suggests the unethical and possibly illegal practice has only picked up steam since it came to light a few weeks ago.
Willem de Groot, an independent security researcher who reported the findings Tuesday, told Ars that he believes all of the 2,496 sites he tracked are running out-of-date software with known security vulnerabilities that have been exploited to give attackers control. Attackers, he said, then used their access to add code that surreptitiously harnesses the CPUs and electricity of visitors to generate the digital currency known as Monero. About 80 percent of those sites, he added, also contain other types of malware that can steal visitors’ payment card details.
“Apparently, cyberthieves are squeezing every penny out of their confiscated assets,” he said.
One of the affected sites is shop.subaru.com.au. When I visited the site on Tuesday, the fan on my MacBook Pro, which I hadn’t heard in months, soon started whirring. The activity monitor showed that about 95 percent of the CPU load was being consumed. As soon as I closed the site, the load dropped to about 9 percent. Besides putting a noticeable strain on my computer, the site also draws additional electricity from my office. The arrangement allows the attackers to reap the benefit of my hardware and electricity without providing anything to me in return. A recent report from security firm Trustwave’s SpiderLabs estimated that the electricity cost for a single computer could range from about $2.90 to $5 per month, presumably if the cryptomining page was left open and running continuously over that time. The figure doesn’t include the wear and tear on hardware as it performs complex mathematical problems required to generate the digital coins.
Thanks, Coinhive
The site that makes all of this possible is Coinhive.com, which Ars covered last week. It offers an easy-to-use programming interface that any website can use to turn visitors’ computers into vehicles for generating—or in the parlance of cryptocurrency people, mining—Monero. Coinhive gives participating sites a tiny cut of the proceeds and pockets the rest. Coinhive doesn’t require that sites provide any notice to users.
de Groot said that about 85 percent of the 2,496 sites he tracked are generating currency on behalf of just two Coinhive accounts. Depending on the total number of visitors, the amount of time they stay on an affected site, and the power of their computers, the revenue collected by those accounts could be considerable, as would be the total amount of additional charges those accounts made to visitors’ electric bills. The remaining 15 percent were spread over additional Coinhive accounts, but de Groot has evidence suggesting those accounts are controlled by a single individual or group. Most of the affected sites concealed the connection to Coinhive by adding a link to the domain siteverification.online or one masquerading as a Sucuri firewall. Those disguised sites, in turn, hosted the crypto-mining JavaScript that interacted with Coinhive.
de Groot’s findings suggest that drive-by cryptomining has grown more widespread in the week since Ars first covered it or at least that the phenomenon shows no signs of abating. The earlier Ars article cited research from security firm Sucuri that found 500 sites running hacked versions of the WordPress content management system that were participating in the Coinhive mining. Ars also reported that two Android apps with as many as 50,000 downloads from Google Play had recently been caught putting cryptominers inside hidden browser windows. On Wednesday, researchers from Ixia reported finding two additional such apps with as many as 15 million downloads combined. (In fairness, one of the apps informed users it would use their phone’s idle time to generate coins and provided a way for that default setting to be turned off. The apps have since been modified to curtail the practice.)
There are other indications that the in-browser cryptomining racket is getting worse. In a report published Tuesday, endpoint security provider Malwarebytes said that on average it performs about 8 million blocks per day to unauthorized mining pages.
People who want to avoid these cryptojacking scams can use Malwarebytes or another antivirus program that blocks abusive pages, install this Chrome extension, or update their computer host file to block coinhive.com and other sites known to facilitate unauthorized mining. As the phenomenon continues to grow and attract copycat services, blocklists will likely have to be updated, requiring regular updates to blocklists as well.
The tech company has partnered with NASA to help it develop air traffic management systems for its flying taxi initiatives, chief product officer Jeff Holden said on Wednesday. Holden made the announcement atWeb Summit, a technology conference in Lisbon.
Uber previously unveiled its plans to introduce flying taxi fleets, known as uberAIR, in April.
The four-person ridesharing flights won’t become a reality anytime soon but Holden said there are plans for demonstrations of the flying car network in Los Angeles, in addition to previously announced cities, Dallas and Dubai, in 2020.
The tech firm has agreements to work with other aviation companies, but this is the first time it has formally partnered with a federal agency. Uber’s partnership is part of NASA’s Space Act Agreement, a consortium of industry players working to ensure “safe and efficient operations” of its taxis and other small unmanned aerial systems flying at low altitudes.
NASA did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the project.
Known for its unmanageable traffic, Los Angeles will make for an interesting test bed for the flying vehicles.
To get a sense, Uber projects that trips from the Los Angeles airport to the Staples Center during rush hour will take less than 30 minutes — down from 1 hour 20 minutes by car. It expects to offer rides in the flying taxis for comparable to its UberX pricing.
The goal is to make transportation fast, and inexpensive — and it hopes the service will be ready for commercial operations “several years ahead” of the 2028 Olympics in Los Angeles.
CNNMoney (New York) First published November 8, 2017: 5:52 AM ET
from Business and financial news – CNNMoney.com http://ift.tt/2hSDitp
via IFTTT