Month: February 2018

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A potent botnet is exploiting a critical router bug that may never be fixed

A potent botnet is exploiting a critical router bug that may never be fixed

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A Dasan Networks router similar to this one is under active exploit by the potent Satori botnet.

A fast-moving botnet that turns routers, cameras, and other types of Internet-connected devices into potent tools for theft and destruction has resurfaced again, this time by exploiting a critical vulnerability that gives attackers control over as many as 40,000 routers. Despite the high stakes, there’s no indication that the bug will be fixed anytime soon, if at all.

Satori, as the botnet has been dubbed, quickly made a name for itself in December, when it infected more than 100,000 routers in just 12 hours by exploiting critical vulnerabilities in two models, one made by Huawei and the other by RealTek. Last month, Satori operators released a new version that infected devices used to mine digital coins, a feat that allowed the attackers to mine as much as $3,000 worth of Etherium, based on prices the digital coin was commanding at the time.

In recent days, Satori has started infecting routers manufactured by Dasan Networks of South Korea. The number of daily infected routers is about 13,700, with about 82 percent of them located in Vietnam, a researcher from China-based Netlab 360 told Ars. Queries on the Shodan search index of Internet-connected devices show there are a total of more than 40,000 routers made by Dasan. The company has yet to respond to an advisory published in December that documented the code-execution vulnerability Satori is exploiting, making it possible that most or all of the devices will eventually become part of the botnet.

“We tried to contact Dasan since October 8, 2017,” researchers from vulnerability disclosure service SecuriTeam wrote in the December 6 advisory. “Repeated attempts to establish contact went unanswered. At this time, there is no solution or workaround for this vulnerability.” In an email sent Wednesday, Noam Rathaus, CTO of SecuriTeam’s parent company Beyond Security, wrote:

We tried to contact Dasan several times since October. By “several times” I mean probably over 10 emails, several phone calls, and requests to both their support and their sales departments.

Since we were aware that there may be a possible language barrier, we went as far as having the head of our Korean office send them the full explanation in Korean with an invitation to communicate directly with us to coordinate the disclosure; our Korean office tried to contact them via email and over the phone but, except for a short confirmation that they have received our communication, we never got any updates.

Attempts by Ars to contact Dasan representatives weren’t immediately successful.

Nearly endless supply of vulnerabilities

Satori is based on Mirai, the open-source Internet-of-Things malware that powered a series of botnets that delivered record-breaking distributed denial of service attacks in 2016 and debilitated core parts of the Internet for days. Unlike thousands of other Mirai variants, Satori featured a key improvement. Whereas Mirai and its imitators could infect only devices that were secured with easily guessed default passwords, Satori exploited firmware bugs, which often go unpatched, either because of manufacturer negligence or the difficultly device owners face in patching their devices.

“The Satori developer is actively updating the malware,” Netlab 360 researcher Li Fengpei wrote in an email. “In the future, if Satori makes more headlines, we will not be surprised.”

Like most IoT malware, Satori infections don’t survive a device reboot. That means the December infections of the Huawei and RealTek devices—which Netlab 360 estimates totaled 260,000—are largely gone. The botnet, however, has managed to persist thanks to a nearly endless supply of vulnerabilities in other IoT devices. Besides the infection methods already mentioned, Satori has also managed to spread by exploiting flaws in the GoAhead Web server that’s embedded in wireless cameras and other types of IoT devices, researchers from security firm Fortinet reported two weeks ago.

Pascal Geenens, a researcher at security firm Radware who reported the new Satori variant on Monday, told Ars it’s not entirely clear what the purpose of the botnet is. Last month’s variant, mentioned earlier, that infected the Claymore Miner software for generating cryptocurrency may provide a key clue. The variant, Geenens said, is a strong indication that Satori operators want to steal digital coins or computing resources used to generate them. He said both the Claymore and Dasan variants rely on the same command-and-control infrastructure and that the word Satori is included in the binary files of both versions.

Piotr Bazyd?o, a researcher at the NASK Research and Academic Computer Network, told Ars that he believes the new variant may have infected as many as 30,000 routers so far and that Satori developers likely have plans for new attacks in the near future.

“I guess they are trying to follow the trend and provide a botnet for cryptocurrency mining/stealing,” he wrote in an email. “People should be aware that there may be more variants of Satori in the future, [and] thus other IoT devices may be targeted.”

Tech

via Ars Technica https://arstechnica.com

February 14, 2018 at 04:17PM

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Ajit Pai faces investigation into moves that benefit Sinclair Broadcasting

Ajit Pai faces investigation into moves that benefit Sinclair Broadcasting

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Enlarge /

FCC Chairman Ajit Pai with his oversized coffee mug in November 2017.

Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai is under investigation by the agency’s independent watchdog over decisions that benefit Sinclair Broadcasting. FCC Inspector General (IG) David Hunt agreed to conduct the investigation after it was requested in November 2017 by two Democratic lawmakers.

“For months I have been trying to get to the bottom of the allegations about Chairman Pai’s relationship with Sinclair Broadcasting,” Rep. Frank Pallone, Jr. (D-N.J.), said in a statement today. “I am grateful to the FCC’s inspector general that he has decided to take up this important investigation.”

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via Ars Technica https://arstechnica.com

February 15, 2018 at 11:32AM

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Bloomberg creates a Tesla Model 3 production tracker

Bloomberg creates a Tesla Model 3 production tracker

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One day, when Netflix produces the five-season series “

Tesla

,” we expect subscribers will binge on it as greedily as the automotive media feasts on the feints and fruitions of the actual automaker. To help us make more sense of what’s happening at the

Elon Musk

car company,

Bloomberg

chose Valentine’s Day to unveil its

Tesla Model 3 Tracker

. Using two data-gathering methods,

Bloomberg

‘s tool aims to figure out how many Model 3s reach the end of the Fremont, California, production line every week.

As of February 14, the tracker estimated 7,341 units produced, with 1,025 currently reaching the finish line per week. Anywhere close to that would represent a healthy ramp-up from the 2,686 total vehicles it took

Tesla

about six months to make last year.

The first data point comes from searching batch VIN allotments that Tesla registers with the

National Highway Traffic and Safety Administration

.

Bloomberg

divides the batch amounts by the days between registrations to get an idea of average production numbers. The outlet admits the flaws in that system, like non-sequential VIN registrations,

Model 3

VINs registered before the vehicle’s been built, and the fact that Tesla could theoretically register VINs for all of the nearly half-million reservation holders at once.

For redress,

Bloomberg

‘s second data point hits the virtual bricks, scanning for VINs in social media postings and forums, and asking Model 3 owners to self-report their VINs. The site doesn’t hold onto, nor publish, complete VINs.

The Model 3 Tracker is just as much a work in progress as the factory that makes the Model 3, and the Model 3 itself.

Bloomberg

will update the tracker regularly, and makes tweaks as it gathers better data. After the site overseers have “aligned the two data sets with Tesla’s [last] reported production and averaged the results from the two methods,” voila, a running tally appears from within the smoke. Tesla only reports production numbers at the end of a quarter, so the tracker’s numbers will be adjusted to fit the declared tally.

Tesla’s most recent goals were to be making 2,500 Model 3s per week by the end of March, and 5,000 per week by the end of June. Now you can watch the company succeed in real time. Or not. If you want to turn your lens to other territories in the Musk empire, try

Bloomberg

‘s

Elon Musk Goal Watcher

.

Related Video:

Cars

via Autoblog http://www.autoblog.com

February 15, 2018 at 10:42AM

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The company that made smartphones smart now wants to give them built-in AI

The company that made smartphones smart now wants to give them built-in AI

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The British chip design firm ARM came up with the processors  used in virtually all the world’s smartphones. Now it plans to add the hardware that will let them run artificial-intelligence algorithms, too.

ARM announced today that it has created its first dedicated machine-learning chips, which are meant for use in mobile and smart-home devices. The company says it’s sharing the plans with its hardware partners, including smartphone chipmaker Qualcomm, and expects to see devices packing the hardware by early 2019.

Currently, most small or portable devices that use machine learning lack the horsepower to run AI algorithms, so they enlist the help of  big servers in the cloud. But enabling mobile devices to run their own AI software is attractive. It can speed things up, cutting the lag inherent in sending information back and forth. It will allow hardware to run offline. And it pleases privacy advocates, who are comforted by the idea of data remaining on the device.

Jim Davies, who leads the machine-learning group at ARM, says the company spent a long time getting the chips to run AI software efficiently. “We analyze compute workloads, work out which bits are taking the time and the power, and look to see if we can improve on our existing processors,” he explains. The new chips use less power than the company’s other designs to perform the kinds of linear-algebra calculations that underpin modern artificial intelligence. They’re also better at moving data in and out of memory.

Of course, ARM isn’t alone in building mobile AI chips. The iPhone X, for example, contains a “neural engine” as part of its main chipset, which Apple created to run artificial neural networks for things like images and speech processing. Huawei’s Mate 10 smartphone contains a similar, homegrown chip that it calls a neural processing unit. The Pixel 2 handset has a chipset designed by Google to help it crunch imaging and machine-learning problems.

But ARM has an impressive track record of designing energy-efficient processors for mobile applications, and manufacturers are used to using its chips in their devices. Despite the competition, its new AI brains are likely to appear in plenty of devices next year.

Tech

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February 13, 2018 at 08:04AM

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NASA Budget Proposal Defunds Space Station, Space Telescopes and More

NASA Budget Proposal Defunds Space Station, Space Telescopes and More

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The Trump administration is proposing a budget of $19.9 billion for NASA in its request for fiscal year 2019—slightly more than its request for fiscal year 2018. The additional funds would support the administration’s directive to reinvigorate human and robotic exploration of Earth’s moon and other planets in the solar system but would also come at the expense of several other big-ticket items in NASA’s portfolio—namely the International Space Station (ISS) as well as the Wide Field Infrared Space Telescope (WFIRST), a “flagship”-class mission next in line for launch after the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). The budget also recommends canceling five NASA Earth science missions as well as the space agency’s Office of Education.


Under the proposal U.S. funding for the ISS would cease in 2025, a year after the station’s current retirement date. That’s years ahead of 2028, however, which many public and private ISS stakeholders have been counting on as the most likely target for an extension of the ISS’s mission that has cost U.S. taxpayers some $100 billion since the 1990s. The station would potentially live on, however, sustained by still-nascent public-private partnerships that could in theory shift the bulk of upkeep costs to private businesses. To that end, the budget also calls for $150 million in 2019 and more in future years to help commercial companies expand their activities in low Earth orbit, although it does not specify the ISS as an explicit part of that spending. In recent years the ISS has become a vital destination for U.S. launch providers such as SpaceX and Boeing, which are competing for NASA contracts to ferry astronauts to and from the orbital outpost. Rockets from SpaceX and other providers already make regular supply runs to the ISS.


Despite the budget’s supposed support for more commercial activity in low Earth orbit, industry representatives view its defunding of the ISS as shortsighted. “Only now are we finally reaching the full operational level for which ISS had been designed,” Commercial Spaceflight Federation president Eric Stallmer said in a statement. “An early retirement of the station prior to 2028 would not allow sufficient time to leverage the asset appropriately…, the ISS should fly throughout a transition period until such time as we have a sustainable orbital economy, more likely to be in place by 2028.”


Within NASA the official view is decidedly rosier. “The commercial cargo and crew work continues through the life of the International Space Station in the budget,” NASA Acting Administrator Robert Lightfoot said in a statement. “Further, this budget proposes for NASA to ramp up efforts to transition low Earth [orbital] activities to the commercial sector, and end direct federal government support of the ISS in 2025 and begin relying on commercial partners for our low Earth orbit research and technology demonstration requirements.” Some of the savings from defunding the ISS would feed into NASA’s return to the moon, chiefly a new lunar robotic exploration program as well as a “Deep Space Gateway” in lunar orbit that would serve as a staging ground for operations on the surface. Some of those payloads, presumably, would launch on NASA’s in-development mega-rocket, the Space Launch System (SLS), which is slated for its first test flight in 2019 or 2020 and has to date consumed more than $18 billion of taxpayer funds. In the White House proposal, the SLS and its associated Orion spacecraft would receive $3.7 billion in fiscal year 2019.


The White House has bleaker plans for WFIRST, which the U.S. space science community ranked as the highest priority for NASA’s astrophysics program in the 2010 Decadal Survey. Offering a field of view 100 times larger than that of the iconic Hubble Space Telescope, WFIRST is meant to study dark energy—the mysterious force driving the universe’s accelerating expansion—as well as large numbers of planets orbiting other stars, among many other scientific objectives. The telescope is currently being developed for launch in the mid-2020s. According to language in the new budget proposal, however, WFIRST should instead be canceled because it “was not executable within its previous budget and would have required a significant funding increase in 2019 and future years.” WFIRST’s funds, the budget indicates, would instead be given to smaller, competitively selected astrophysics missions akin to those led by outside researchers as part of NASA’s New Frontiers program. Meanwhile the budget still includes necessary funds for WFIRST’s predecessor, JWST, which is undergoing final testing in California and is slated for launch as early as next year at a total estimated cost of $8.8 billion.


WFIRST’s estimated price tag has indeed grown in recent years, up to $3.9 billion in latest estimates, but NASA is in the midst of replanning the telescope to bring it back within its previously approved budget of $3.2 billion. Much of the project’s past cost growth ironically stems from a “free” upgrade that came in 2012, when the National Reconnaissance Office gifted NASA with a spare Hubble-size mirror larger than the one the space agency planned to build for WFIRST. The mirror’s larger size would boost WFIRST’s scientific capabilities but also necessitated expensive redesigns and a pricier launch on a heftier rocket.


The budget also resurrects cuts proposed earlier by the White House for fiscal year 2018, namely the cancellation of NASA’s Office of Education as well as five Earth science missions: the Radiation Budget Instrument (RBI); the Plankton, Aerosol, Cloud, ocean Ecosystem (PACE) satellite; the Orbiting Carbon Observatory 3 (OCO 3); Earth-observing instruments aboard the Deep Space Climate Observatory (DSCOVR); and the Climate Absolute Radiance and Refractivity Observatory (CLARREO) Pathfinder. These previously proposed cuts have largely floundered in Congress, which has yet to pass them into law. They, along with the rest of the Trump administration’s latest budget request, may face a similar fate this year, perhaps even being dead on arrival in Congress given legislators’ recent passage of a two-year budget deal funding the government through September 2019. Already, one staunch advocate of human spaceflight, Sen. Bill Nelson (D–Fla.) is calling the budget a “nonstarter” due to its defunding of the ISS. In the House, Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson (D–Texas) issued a statement saying “the only good thing about this budget is that it’s so extreme, I have no doubt that it will be summarily rejected by both sides of the aisle.”


CLARREO, much like WFIRST, was also a high-priority recommendation from the U.S. scientific community, codified in a 2007 decadal report. Of CLARREO’s proposed cancellation, Lightfoot said nothing, and only noted WFIRST’s potential axing as a “hard decision.” Most scientists outside NASA, however, appear to be greeting the news with more opprobrium. On Twitter, Caleb Scharf, an astrophysicist at Columbia University, called the budget “a hostile bill” that burdens NASA with “a set of priorities that veer away from science.” Speaking to reporters from Nature, David Spergel, an astrophysicist at Princeton University and co-chair of the WFIRST science team expressed shock: “If a few people in the White House can override these decisions, why do a decadal survey at all?” In tweets, Spergel offered a blunter assessment, writing that the “U.S. is abandoning its leadership in space astronomy,” and that the proposed cuts “imperil not only WFIRST but any future major mission.”


There is, perhaps, some silver lining for space science advocates in the White House’s budget proposal: It aims to boost NASA’s planetary science budget to $2.235 billion, an increase of 22 percent. Of that increase, $50 million supports the continued development of collecting and returning samples from Mars, which was a top decadal priority. But much of the rest goes toward goals largely absent from the planetary science community’s consensus planning, namely the new push for lunar exploration. And in contrast to those hopeful goals, there remains one harsh reality: Beyond the early 2020s the proposal forecasts a flat budget for NASA that would not increase with inflation—effectively acting as a reduction in purchasing power and thus a budget cut each year.


To Casey Dreier, director of space policy at The Planetary Society, supporting such ambitious yet unsanctioned missions while acting to undermine ones like WFIRST makes little sense, particularly because Congress has proactively provided hundreds of millions of dollars for that mission already on a bipartisan basis. “There is a lot of support out there for [WFIRST], and the potential science return is very high,” he says. “More to the point, with Congressional activity that increased the size of the budgetary pie there is no reason that NASA’s science program can’t see a bigger slice. This allows NASA to maintain critical momentum in rebuilding its planetary exploration program, preserve its Earth science missions, and to begin work on the next generation of space telescopes. We should use this rare moment of bipartisan support in spending and invest in the United States’ scientific industry and workforce.”

Tech

via Scientific American http://ift.tt/n8vNiX

February 12, 2018 at 04:09PM

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Climate change revealed this U.S. military secret

Climate change revealed this U.S. military secret

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At the height of the Cold War in the 1950s, the Greenland ice sheet hosted a number of clandestine U.S. Army bases whose job it was to get an estimated 600 medium-range ballistic missiles with nuclear warheads ready for deployment. The largest of these sites was Camp Century, which had the public facade of a science station.

The Army never finished what it started at Camp Century. It abandoned the base in 1967, scrapping Project Iceworm, as its secret mission was called. But the Army left behind a nasty legacy buried under all that ice and snow?—?tons of toxic waste that military officials assumed would stay frozen forever.

Guess they didn’t count on climate change.

Fifty years ago, the Army probably didn’t know about climate change. But now, thanks to global warming, the ice has begun to melt, leaking chemicals the Army thought would stay frozen in perpetuity. This poses a danger to the marine ecosystem, not to mention the potential diplomatic nightmare that could result between the United States and the host country.

“The whole thing seems like a crazy project that a James Bond villain would dream up,” said Jeff D. Colgan, an associate professor of political science and international studies at Brown University. “Sometimes we forget the crazy things the U.S. government is capable of doing. It’s not just other countries that take on risky and ill-advised projects in the name of geopolitical competition.”

The ice at Camp Century hid tens of thousands of liters of diesel fuel, large amounts of polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), and what is believed to be a small amount of low-level radioactive material, according to a recent study Colgan authored, which appears in the journal Global Environmental Politics. PCBs, in particular, are quite dangerous. They are believed to cause cancer and have been linked to a wide a range of other health hazards.

The paper is meant to be a case study for understanding the political, diplomatic and financial ramifications of environmental problems at American military bases, and it underscores the impact of so-called “knock-on” effects, that is, secondary environmental impacts, of climate change. It also raises the disturbing possibility that rising sea levels could wash toxic materials from other coastal military sites into the ocean.

The Pacific Islands are especially vulnerable, the study said, citing U.S. military radioactive waste left during the Cold War at Johnston Atoll and the Marshall Islands. Other toxic materials can be found at additional sites, including Orote Point on Guam, Ulithi Atoll on the Caroline Islands, the Solomon Islands and Midway Island, according to the study. The U.S. Geological Survey currently is studying these potential risks, but their full extent isn’t yet known.

“Those knock-on effects are secondary environmental problems?—?like damage to infrastructure or the release of chemicals or waste housed on site?—?that can manifest when temperatures and sea levels rise,” Colgan said. “They matter a lot because they are an increasingly common feature of our world, and the politics of knock-on effects are different from climate change itself. Climate change is a global problem, and therefore hard to pin on any one government or political actor. Knock-on effects are territorially specific, so local people can demand somebody be responsible.”

Knock-on effects must be treated as seriously as direct ones, Colgan stressed. “Knock-on effects are increasingly common,” he said. “Hurricane Harvey illustrates the problem. Climate change exacerbated a hurricane, making it bigger and nastier than it otherwise would have been, which damaged chemical plants and refineries, which in turn released toxic pollutants. Knock-on effects are also releasing nasty stuff from anthrax to viruses to mercury. As the effects of climate change move increasingly from peripheral places like Greenland to our own homes, we will need to worry more about knock-on effects.”

In November, the General Accounting Office released a report urging the military to do more to anticipate problems from climate change at its installations overseas.

“The United States alone has hundreds of overseas bases that require continuous political coordination with host governments,” Colgan said. “Climate-related environmental hazards could represent a new kind of tension within international political alliances. The U.S. Department of Defense would be wise to get out ahead of this issue.”

Trying to find a solution for the Project Iceworm mess likely will ensnare the United States and Denmark?—?the two countries that signed the original treaty establishing the base?—?Greenland, now a semi-sovereign territory of Denmark, and Canada, whose waters could become contaminated. Ultimately, there will be cleanup costs to pay, and possibly compensation for locals affected by the pollution.

There already have been reverberations in Greenland and Denmark over this. When Greenland’s former foreign minister took an aggressive stance on the issue, demanding that either Denmark or the United States pay to clean it up, he lost his job, Colgan said.

“He actually accused the Danish foreign minister of lying over the issue, a pretty bold move, considering that Denmark still heavily subsidizes the Greenlandic government,” Colgan said. “That seems to be the reason that Greenland’s Prime Minister fired him?—?though in politics you never know what else was going on behind the scenes.”

In 1951, at the time the countries signed the Defense of Greenland Agreement, which established the bases, Denmark “had a nominally nuclear-free foreign policy,” the study said. This is important because the treaty allowed the United States to remove property from the bases or dispose of it in Greenland after consultation with Danish authorities.

Denmark could argue that it wasn’t fully consulted regarding the decommissioning of certain abandoned military sites, thus any abandoned waste there remains a U.S. responsibility. Moreover, Denmark never was approached officially with a plan to deploy nuclear missiles to Greenland, according to the study. In the absence of climate change, ice almost certainly would have preserved this secret for all time.

“When Camp Century and the other bases associated with Project Iceworm were built in the 1950s and abandoned in the 1960s, no one was even thinking seriously about global climate change,” Colgan said. “The idea that the Army could just leave the abandoned waste in Greenland, to be buried in snow forever, didn’t seem crazy. No one at the time anticipated the enormous experiment we are now running on our planet.”

Marlene Cimons writes for Nexus Media, a syndicated newswire covering climate, energy, policy, art and culture.

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February 14, 2018 at 11:43AM

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Every DIYer should know about these apps

Every DIYer should know about these apps

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When you start thinking about your next DIY project, preparation is key: You need good tools, the right quantity of the right materials, and enough know-how to not make a complete mess. Oh, and as you gather your tools, don’t forget your smartphone.

Thanks to a variety of DIY applications for both Android and iOS, your phone makes a valuable ally when you tackle any task. We picked seven of our favorite apps for turning any DIY project into a success.

1. YouTube

This well-known video app is a great pick—just try to find a DIY project that doesn’t have multiple tutorials on YouTube (for Android and iOS). It’s not easy—amateurs and professionals alike have uploaded hours of useful footage that covers every kind of DIY challenge you can imagine, from faucet repairs to fence painting.

To tap into that knowledge, use the search box at the top of the app interface to look for videos related to the DIY task at hand. With so much content on YouTube, you should make your search terms as precise as possible to weed out the irrelevant clips. Then narrow down the results even further with filters like rating, number of views, or how recently the videos were uploaded. The clips you choose will also come with more recommended videos, which you might find helpful as well.

One final piece of advice: Don’t automatically head towards the most polished videos, the ones whose hosts do a perfect job. You might be able to learn just as much from videos that show mistakes—so you can make sure you don’t repeat them.

2. TapMeasure

A tape measure is an essential part of any DIY toolkit. But why settle for a physical instrument when your phone offers an augmented-reality version? TapMeasure (for iOS only) runs on ARKit, the new augmented reality (AR) platform that Apple has opened up to developers. Essentially, it lets apps layer digital graphics over the real world when users look through the camera of an iPhone or an iPad.

You can bring up an AR tape measure to check the distance between two points, but TapMeasure also does much more. Need to hang paintings or photos nice and straight? Use the app to check their orientation on the wall. Want to see how your project will look before you take your tools out? TapMeasure lets you build a virtual world that you can explore in 3D space.

The app will even export your files to more advanced 3D-modeling programs like SketchUp, so you can continue tinkering with your designs on your computer. And if you want to get input from friends, you can share your virtual models through a simple web link.

3. Paint Tester

When you tackle the classic home improvement project of painting your walls, you don’t want to get the colors wrong. Paint Tester (for Android and iOS) will use augmented reality to help you pick a palette.

While it won’t perfectly reflect reality, the app gives you a general idea of what your walls might look like in various colors. Point your phone’s camera at your walls, and Paint Tester shows you various color combinations, helping you pick the right shades for your space. Then you can pick up your favorite hues at the hardware store.

In addition to AR, the app can also detect the walls in photographs—as long as they’re lit well—and then give you simple sliders and color mixers to test out different shades. If you have a physical color sample, tape it to the wall, and Paint Tester will expand it to fill the surface from top to bottom. Thinking about accents? The app can apply more than one color at the same time.

4. The Home Depot

Unless you’ve stockpiled a huge volume of materials and tools, your DIY endeavors will likely require a trip or two to the hardware store. To make this process significantly less tedious, let The Home Depot app (for Android and iOS) help you out.

Use the app’s simple interface to browse for the supplies you need among the million-plus products The Home Depot sells. You can also search with voice commands or even photos of the items you want. When you’ve picked out your supplies, you can order them delivered straight to your home, or look up the exact aisle where you’ll be able to find them at your local store.

If you’re not a huge Home Depot fan, then check whether your hardware store of choice has developed its own app. For example, you can find solid apps from the retailers Lowe’s (for Android and iOS) and Ace Hardware (for Android and iOS).

5. Smart Tools

A fantastic all-in-one app for DIY enthusiasts, Smart Tools (for Android only) provides digital versions of six different instruments: a ruler for measuring lengths and angles, a measure for calculating distances and areas, a GPS-enabled compass, a sound meter, a flashlight, and a unit converter.

All of the tools let you use your phone for any quick measurements and calculations your project requires.The app won’t beat the accuracy of an actual tape measure, but it gives you a great way to estimate, say, how much material you might need to cover a wall.

On the down side, you do need to pay for this app (the total cost is $3), and it’s currently only available on Android. However, you can find other iOS apps that duplicate the different features of Smart Tools. For example, AR MeasureKit (for iOS) lets you hold a floating virtual ruler against any surface in augmented reality.

6. DIY On A Budget

DIY On A Budget is a fledgling social network centered around helping other people with their DIY projects and getting feedback on your own work. This makes the app (for Android only) valuable for any type of project.

Browse through a gallery of other members’ ongoing DIY work, read tips and tricks submitted by the community, and run polls—any questions like what color to paint something or how to approach a particular task—to get feedback on your current project.

Although DIY On A Budget is a much smaller network than Facebook, it does let you like and comment on others’ posts. As the community grows, keep an eye on this space.

7. Houzz Interior Design Ideas

Stuck for inspiration? Houzz Interior Design Ideas (for Android and iOS) will toss you useful suggestions for improving your home, whether it’s redesigning the living room or setting up an outdoor patio area. Although it leans more toward interior design than actual DIY, the app can spark your creativity and help you visualize how your redecoration attempts will eventually look.

Browse through some of the app’s more than 14 million high-resolution photos, which can give you ideas for what to do with every room inside and space outside your home. Houzz also sells furniture and other accessories if you’d like to go shopping—and for some of its 9 million or so home products, you can drop an augmented reality version of the item into your room, checking out how it might fit into your decor before you spend any money.

Tech

via Popular Science – New Technology, Science News, The Future Now http://ift.tt/2k2uJQn

February 13, 2018 at 08:54AM