3 SciFi Technologies That Are About to Get Amazingly Real

Lisa Su, the talented new CEO for AMD, last week gave a pitch on the future to get people excited about where AMD is going. Based on the stock performance after her talk, she and her team knocked it out of the park. However, they also got me thinking about some technological advancements that have been quietly percolating, which likely will form the basis for a revolutionary announcement in the next few years. Three technologies that are tied to other efforts, are getting close to breaking free.

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Gadget Ogling: Virtual Sensations, Radio-Wave Charges and a Bitcoin Keeper

We're edging ever closer toward a virtual reality boom, with Oculus finally promising its Rift headset will arrive in 2016. Yet what if there were a way to make VR even more immersive? Feelreal has come up with two devices -- a virtual reality mask and a helmet -- that aim to draw users almost entirely into a fictional world. The mask is an add-on, compatible with major VR headsets. The company is seeking Kickstarter funding to develop a commercial model based on demonstrated prototypes. The helmet is designed to work with a smartphone. A prototype is under development.

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Cyanogen Taps Truecaller in Effort to Build a Better Mobile OS

Cyanogen, best known for its FOSS Android-based OS, CyanogenMod, soon will provide caller ID screening and spam blocking directly from the native dialer on Cyanogen OS, the commercial version of its operating system. These capabilities will be provided through the company's global partnership with Truecaller. They will be baked into future smartphone devices preloaded with Cyanogen OS. "I'm wondering whether Truecaller is addressing an actual need of smartphone users," mused Werner Goertz, a research director with Gartner.

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The Last Apple Watch Review You'll Ever Need to Read

If you're thinking about getting an Apple Watch and have been on the fence, this review is for you. Why? The Apple Watch, it turns out, is less about being the perfect smartwatch than it is about being a watch. For the fence sitters out there, these two questions are really where you should start: First, do you want a watch? Second, do you want a digital wearable device you can use to transform your life, pay for coffee, live healthier, and make the rest of the world think you're actually paying more attention than you really are?

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Voyager-X Will Take You on a New Xfce Journey

Voyager-X 10.14.4, released in March, is based on Xubuntu/Ubuntu 12.04 LTS. This new Voyager-X is one of the first distros to use the new Xfce 4.12 desktop. Ubuntu has yet to implement it, and few other Linux distros have put the new update into play. Thus, the latest Xfce desktop is considered "experimental." However, it is a fully functional upgrade. Voyager-X adds to this the Linux kernel 3.16, for a faster and more responsive OS that is optimized for better performance and offers much improved hardware support.

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Splatoon: Nintendo Hits You With Its Best Shot

Nintendo has invited players to paint the town red -- and green and blue and a palette of other colors -- in Global Testfire events over the weekend for Splatoon, a new game launching May 29 exclusively on the Wii U. The Testfire events will provide three hour-long windows to try out Splatoon and provide Nintendo with the server stress-testing the game will need for a successful launch. The first Testfire event takes place from 8 p.m. to 9 p.m. PT on May 8. Two more tests -- 4 a.m. to 5 a.m. PT, and 12 p.m. to 1 p.m. PT -- are set for May 9.

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Xiaomi's Mi 4i Spreads in Asia

Chinese wunderkind smartphone manufacturer Xiaomi is taking its flagship Mi 4i smartphone to Hong Kong and Singapore, with availability slated for next Tuesday. Designed especially for emerging markets, the Mi 4i has been wildly successful in India, where it launched two weeks ago and reportedly sold 40,000 units in less than 15 seconds. The Mi 4i is the first Xiaomi phone to run Android 5.0, aka "Lollipop," albeit with MIUI 6, Xiaomi's custom skin for the OS.

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Twitter's Timid Anti-Trolling Tweaks

Twitter recently amended its rules in yet another attempt to crack down on the abuses perpetuated by online trolls, but the changes may do little to protect victims. Its latest move was an extension of its ban on threats of violence against others or the promotion of violence against others. The company decided to let its support team lock down abusive accounts for specific periods of time. Further, it began testing a new, unspecified feature that helps it identify suspected abusive tweets in an effort to limit their reach.

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Oculus VR Promises a Rift for All in 2016

An exact date hasn't been set, but Facebook's Oculus VR on Wednesday announced that the highly anticipated consumer version of its virtual reality headset will launch in the first quarter of 2016. Preordering will begin later this year. More details will emerge about the consumer version of the Rift in the coming weeks, the company said, including information about its hardware specifications, software and unannounced made-for-VR games and experiences. When Oculus VR talks Rift, it talks VR games.

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EM Drive Stirs Blood of Hopeful Space Explorers

It may not be warp drive, but electro-magnetic drive, aka "EM drive," is perhaps even more exciting, because it has a better chance of being science fact than fiction. EM drive technology theoretically could allow a trip to the moon in four hours, to Mars in 70 days, and to Alpha Centaurii, the star system nearest to our own, in roughly 130 years. If that sounds like a long time to be hurtling through space, compare it to the thousands of years it would take to make a similar mission using current space travel technologies.

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'Night Terrors' Could Turn Your Home Into a Hellscape

Gamers could get the chance to count themselves among the things that go bump in the night, if Novum Analytics' Night Terrors, an augmented reality game for mobile devices, meets its Indiegogo funding target. The story itself is rudimentary, but the gameplay takes place in relatively uncharted territory. The player is alone in the dark with a smartphone. The phone's LED lights the way through the player's pitch-black house, while the game mixes photorealistic frights into a real-time stream of the player's augmented home.

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Mumblehard Malware Mugs Linux Servers

A family of Linux malware targeting Linux and BSD servers has been lurking around for five years, Eset has reported. Dubbed "Linux/Mumblehard," the malware contains a backdoor and a spamming daemon, both written in Perl. The components are mainly Perl scripts encrypted and packed inside an executable and linkable format, or ELF, said Eset. In some cases, one ELF executable with a packer nests inside another. An Eset sinkhole saw more than 8,800 unique IP addresses over seven months. Web servers are the most susceptible to the attack.

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Report: Top Endpoint Security Packages Perfectly Foil Drive-By Attacks

Drive-by attacks on the Internet are a particularly pernicious form of online threat, especially for individual Web surfers. On the corporate level, though, a company with good endpoint protection software can foil the malicious practice. A drive-by occurs when an infected website automatically downloads malware onto a Net traveler's computer. Several companies make endpoint solutions to -- among other things -- thwart those kinds of attacks. NSS Labs recently tested 10 of them.

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Facebook Responds to Critics by Unlocking Internet.org

Facebook on Monday announced that it will expand Internet.org to ensure that it doesn't conflict with the principles of a free and open Internet. CEO Mark Zuckerberg responded to criticisms of Internet.org and outlined plans to make the free service even more open. "Soon, we're going share an open technical spec, and any compatible service will be available through Internet.org across the whole world," he said. "This will give people even more choice and more free services, while still creating a sustainable economic model."

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FOSSers Puzzle Over Significance of Open Source .Net Core

Microsoft last week released a preview of the next version of its .Net Core runtime distribution, fulfilling last fall's pledge to open source .Net and take it cross-platform for Mac and Linux. "Windows 10 is and will be a standard .Net platform, and improving the interoperability of .Net builds bridges from those platforms to Windows 10, effectively augmenting the developer community available to Microsoft and exposing the portfolio of apps they create to Microsoft platforms," said Black Duck Software's Bill Weinberg.

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Adobe Adds Dazzle to Lightroom

Adobe's recently launched new version of Lightroom for its Creative Cloud Photography platform improves performance of the photo manager and adds new HDR, panorama and facial recognition features. Lightroom's mobile support also is bolstered in the latest version of the program. Further, it has new capabilities for creating slideshows from stills and video. "The more Adobe can offer within [Lightroom], the less photographers will need to find elsewhere," noted photographer David Guenther.

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Holy Crap: Microsoft Is Building Tomorrowland!

One of the movies I'm really looking forward to this month is Disney's Tomorrowland. My first real job was at Disneyland, and I was so in love with the place I often would come back and work a second shift for free. Epcot, the city of tomorrow, was supposed to be Walt's final legacy but his untimely death ended that vision. That city of tomorrow never came to be, except finally -- at least in concept -- in the Tomorrowland movie. Imaginary Tomorrowland is an amazing place, where people go to create amazing things.

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Gadget Ogling: Wine in a Dash, Connected Bicycles, and a Wearable for Behinds

I'll admit I'm not the planet's most refined wine connoisseur, but I do enjoy a glass or two of red with my dinner. Right now, I have a few bottles that are vacuuming up space in my kitchen, so I could use a wall-mounted wine rack -- but what's the use of having an empty rack once they're gone? Poppy Reserve -- just a concept at present -- could solve the problem of a barren wine rack by tapping into Amazon's Dash technology. It would track the level of wine in a given bottle and then ask Amazon to ship more when the supply's running low.

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Elon Musk Unveils Tesla's World-Changing Powerwall

Tesla Motors CEO Elon Musk on Thursday announced the company's plan to develop residential and business battery systems, including the Powerwall Home Battery and business-oriented Powerpack. These systems are being developed to work in conjunction with solar panels to store energy for use at a later time. They also can draw power from the grid when demand for electricity is low and discharge it during the more expensive rate periods, when demand is higher. Musk suggested it could substantially reduce energy dependence on fossil fuels.

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Steer Clear of iOS 8's Infinite Loop

A flaw in iOS 8 allows hackers essentially to crash apps that perform SSL communications whenever they like. Skycure reported the bug at the RSA security conference held last week, advising owners of iOS devices to upgrade to iOS 8.3. Apple this week confirmed that iOS 8.3 addresses the vulnerability, according to Skycure. An attack would involve specially crafting an SSL certificate to regenerate a bug. SSL is used in almost all apps in the iTunes App Store, which means pretty much every device user running iOS 8 could be at risk.

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Microsoft Offers Devs an Edge

Microsoft on Wednesday made its new Edge browser available to participants in the Windows Insider Program. Joe Belfiore, corporate vice president, operating systems group, made the announcement at the company's Build developers' conference, being held in San Francisco through Friday. Edge is available through the Windows 10 Preview, accessible to Windows Insiders. It incorporates Cortana, Microsoft's personal assistant. That lets it "learn what you care about and helps you get things done," Belfiore said.

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Apple Watch Could Be a Password Alternative

With password tolerance levels at all time low, alternatives to the pesky and insecure authenticators are beginning to abound. One of those alternatives could be the Apple Watch. Even before Apple's latest gadget began shipping last week, MicroStrategy announced it was extending its Usher enterprise security solution to the Apple Watch. Usher, launched earlier this year, lets an enterprise use smartphones to authenticate its users and eschew user names, passwords and tokens.

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Vivid Vervet Doesn't Have Much Meat on Its Bones

You will not see much new in Ubuntu 15.04, aka "Vivid Vervet" -- as in East African monkey -- unless you peer under the hood. The release of Ubuntu 15.04 for the desktop includes mostly maintenance and bug fixes, along with new integrated menus and dashboard usability improvements. Perhaps the most significant technical change in this desktop release is the adoption of Systemd to replace the default init manager system. A significant number of continuing Linux distros are joining the SystemD party line.

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Can LG's Hot G4 Smoke the Competition?

LG on Tuesday unveiled its latest flagship smartphone, the G4. The official launch followed weeks of leaks about the device's design and features. The G4 has an f1.8 aperture lens; a new IPS Quantum display, which is generally seen in the latest TVs; a body curved in LG's "Slim Arc" design; and six genuine leather color options. Its rear 16-MP camera has a manual mode and comes with a color spectrum sensor -- a smartphone technology first, said LG. It has an 8-MP front camera. The G4 has a new, human-centric user interface, UX 4.0.

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IoT: Why Security Pros Need to Prepare Now

Have you ever heard of the Cullinan diamond? If you haven't, it was the largest diamond ever discovered: a 3106 carat diamond found in 1905 in South Africa. What's interesting about the Cullinan diamond isn't so much the discovery of the stone itself but what happened afterward: specifically, the cutting of the diamond. The Cullinan diamond was split into a number of smaller pieces -- nine large pieces and dozens of smaller ones -- by Joseph Asscher, a noted diamond cutter of the time.

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Other Shoe Drops in White House Security Breach

Last year's breach of unclassified White House computer systems reportedly was far more intrusive than initially thought and included the theft of some presidential correspondence. No classified systems were compromised, including the servers that control the message traffic from President Obama's BlackBerry mobile device. However, much of the information the unclassified servers handle -- such as schedules, email exchanges with State Department officials, and discussions of personnel moves, legislation and policy -- is considered sensitive.

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Gadget Ogling: Pretty 3D Printing, an Eye-Catching Engagement Ring Box and a Sturdy Smartphone

3D printing is fascinating. It still seems wild to me that you can download schematics for anything and have a plastic version of a physical object in your home a short while later. However, not many printers can switch up the color or the types of filaments you use in your creation. The Pallette could change that, with a peripheral to pump in more vibrant hues and brighten up that mono-colored trinket you're ready to print. What's especially interesting is the possibility of adding different elements to the object, like carbon fiber or wood.

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Treyarch: Black Ops III More Ambitious Than World at War

Activision on Monday announced the launch date for Call of Duty: Black Ops III -- Friday, Nov. 6. The company is departing from its tradition of Tuesday releases. Instead of conflicting with school and work schedules, the Friday release will give players the weekend to dive into the sci-fi shooter and get a feel for the new gameplay mechanics. Some may groan at Black Ops III's futuristic story arriving just a year after Advanced Warfare. However, Treyarch's Black Ops III works a slightly different angle.

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Can Microsoft Take Back Momentum From Google and Apple?

Microsoft is holding its Build event this week, marking the beginning of its major push to launch Windows 10. Build is in San Francisco this year, which effectively puts it right in the back yard of both Apple and Google -- a nice "in your face" move. I was the featured launch analyst for Windows 95 two decades ago and there, even though the post launch was hardly flawless, Microsoft ripped Apple a new rear orifice, wounding the company so badly that one of the founders eventually had to return to save it.

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Dev Aims to Light the Way for Apple Watch Gaming

Coinciding with the official Apple Watch launch on Friday, a slew of apps and games are making their debuts. One of the early hopefuls is WayForward, which last week unveiled its Watch Quest, hoping to get a jump on the competition. Some developers have been awaiting the opening of the WatchKit APIs in full before they put the might of their software engineering ability into the Apple Watch. The WatchKit API limits developers to creating widget-like glances, Watch notifications, and side-loaded apps powered by the might of a paired iPhone.

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Take Your Apple Watch Face and Love It!

Apple is known for fantastic product design, but it's not known for customization. The first iPhone hit the world nearly eight years ago, and yet our "customizable" home screen options are limited to the organization of app icons and some wallpaper choices that can produce color tints through translucent layers. So all of us future Apple Watch owners likely will have to settle for a handful of Apple-developed watch faces. I've been hoping for months that Apple would let third-party designers rethink how to show time through watch faces.

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YouTube Marks 10 Years of Nondisruptive Revolution

YouTube on Thursday celebrated its first full decade. It was 10 years ago to the day that cofounder Jawed Karim uploaded the site's first video. It was a humble beginning: a 19-second clip of elephants, with Karim declaring that the pachyderms have "really, really long trunks." In fairness, it may have been in keeping with other notable firsts. In speaking for the first time on a telephone, Alexander Graham Bell said, "Mr. Watson -- come here -- I want to see you." Thomas Edison's first phonographic recording was "Mary had a little lamb."

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Google's Low-Fee Fi: Ho-Hum

Google on Wednesday announced Fi, a program that combines the wireless networks of carrier partners Sprint and T-Mobile with more than 1 million free, open WiFi hotspots Google has verified as fast and reliable. Users' devices will move automatically to the fastest connection -- 4G LTE being the standard in the United States, accessing 3G or 2G if only those speeds are available. The program will work in more than 120 countries. The $20-a-month Fi Basics plan gives users unlimited domestic talk and text in the U.S. Data is another $10 per GB.

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Breach Outbreaks Fuel Encryption Adoption

As data breaches make headlines around the world, more companies are turning to encryption to protect their information jewels. That is one of the findings in a study released Monday, conducted by the Ponemon Institute and sponsored by Thales E-Security. "Mega breaches and cyber attacks have increased companies' urgency to improve their security posture," says the report, which is based on a survey of more than 4,000 IT and security professionals in 10 countries.

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Ubuntu's Vivid Vervet Makes Snappy Entrance

Canonical on Tuesday announced the release of Ubuntu 15.04, aka "Vivid Vervet," as in East African monkey. It will be available for download on Thursday. The new OS offers tools for cloud, device, client and Internet of Things development. The Ubuntu desktop release includes mostly maintenance and bug fixes, along with new integrated menus and dashboard usability improvements. Ubuntu 15.04 for cloud and servers comes at a critical time to attract companies adopting cloud technologies.

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Government Surveillance: What to Do, What to Do?

The CIA has been trying to hack into iOS for years. British and American agencies reportedly have collaborated to create a map of the Internet and Web users. The United States National Security Agency has, together with the UK's GCHQ, reportedly stolen SIM card encryption keys from Gemalto. The FBI is frothing at the mouth over Google's and Apple's encryption of their mobile OSes. Vulnerabilities in Signaling System 7 telephony protocols let third parties eavesdrop on cellphone calls and intercept text messages, despite encryption.

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Google Dresses Up Android Wear

Google on Monday released an update to Android Wear -- the first significant feature refresh for its wearable device software since its introduction more than a year ago. "This update is overdue," said Ian Fogg, senior director and head of the mobile and telecoms team at IHS Technology. "With other products, Google adds features fairly continuously," he noted. "Android Wear hasn't had as much focus from Google over the last year as some of its other products."

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US Navy Gears Up for Cyberwarfare

The U.S. Fleet Cyber Command, part of the U.S. 10th Fleet, reportedly is developing a strategy for modernizing its cyberoperations and transforming the Navy's network into a cyberwarfare platform. The strategy will seek to advance five key goals: operating the Navy network as a warfighting platform; conducting tailored signals intelligence; conducting offensive operations in cyberspace; expanding cybersituational awareness; and launching Navy cyberforces -- essentially teams of cyberexperts who will conduct cyberwarfare.

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We'll Soon Live in an Imaginary World

Virtual and augmented reality and holographic image technologies are coming at us with the speed of a freight train, and it won't be long until we'll no longer be able to distinguish between what is real and what isn't. How we are getting there is kind of interesting. There are some initiatives going on behind the scenes, as well as some breakthroughs, that shortly will make our experience of the world we are living in very different from what it is now. It's not just for gaming, but for a variety of efforts.

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Gadget Ogling: A Juicy Wristband, a Gamy Wearable and a Dorky Dongle

Asus is taking a common-sense approach to the fitness tracker game by debuting a new watch with a 10-day battery life. Thanks to its square screen, the soon-to-be-released VivoWatch resembles a smartwatch more than, say, a Fitbit. Although details are scant, it appears to have a monochrome screen, which must help extend that all-important battery life. It has a stainless-steel build, and dust and water protection. Its features include a heart rate monitor and sleep tracker.



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Riding in Driverless Cars Could Be Sickening

Self-driving vehicles could increase the likelihood of motion sickness in some riders, suggests a UMTRI study released last week. Motion sickness, also known as "kinetosis," is a condition marked by symptoms of nausea, dizziness and other physical discomfort. Three factors that contribute to motion sickness -- conflict between vestibular and visual inputs, inability to anticipate the direction of motion, and the lack of control over the direction of motion -- could be elevated in self-driving vehicles, the researchers noted.



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China's Great Cannon Could Point Anywhere When Next Fuse Is Lit

China has a new censorship tool that is causing alarm. It's known as the "Great Cannon." The University of Toronto's Citizen Lab identified the tool in a report released last week. The Great Cannon was first used in March, to launch a large-scale DDoS attack on GitHub and GreatFire.org, Citizen Lab said. The attack apparently was designed to thwart efforts to circumvent Chinese censorship. However, the Great Cannon could "be used to attack any target anywhere in the world," said Tomer Weingarten, CEO of SentinelOne.



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LG Lends Substance to G4 Rumors

LG on Thursday confirmed rumors about the basic look of its upcoming G4 flagship smartphone with a post on its Facebook page. Details about LG's forthcoming G4 flagship smartphone recently were leaked on a Korean microwebsite, generating considerable buzz on the Internet. Photos and other information were published by a number of outlets before the microsite disappeared. Almost everything revealed about the G4, other than its appearance, still falls in the category of rumor, although it's possible the leak was intentional on LG's part.



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Opening Windows Source Code Could Improve Security

Microsoft Technical Fellow Mark Russinovich raised a few eyebrows at ChefCon earlier this month, when he aired the possibility of Windows becoming an open source program. Sure, Microsoft's attitude toward the open source movement has mellowed over the years, but the prospect of the company rubbing elbows with the likes of Linux overloads the imagination. Still, there could be real benefits to making Windows an open source operating system -- among them, better security.



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Guitar Hero Strikes Back

Activision on Tuesday took the wraps off Guitar Hero Live, setting the video gaming stage for a battle of the bands. Though Guitar Hero's original developer left the group years ago to work on Rock Band, the series is in capable hands. DJ Hero developer FreeStyle Games has been prepping Guitar Hero Live for its fall release, which may be right around the time Rock Band 4 appears. The philosophies of the two music games always have been different, and these latest versions are no exception.



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SuperX OS Greases the Classic Linux Wheel

SuperX OS is a solid Linux distribution that dispels all of the criticisms about using free open source operating systems. SuperX is a relatively new distro developed by Libresoft. Based on Ubuntu and Debian, it adds a highly customized KDE desktop environment. Version 3.0 -- dubbed "Grace" after computing pioneer Grace Hopper -- was released March 23. The maturity and impressive performance of this latest release makes the SuperX OS a prime replacement choice for whatever distro you now use -- it is that good.



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Apple Devs Play WWDC Lottery

Apple on Tuesday announced that its 26th annual Worldwide Developers Conference will take place in San Francisco June 8-12. The event will include more than 100 technical sessions on developing, deploying and integrating the latest iOS and OS X technologies. Attendees will get access to the latest innovations, features and capabilities of the OSes, as well as best practices for enhancing an app's functionality, performance, quality and design. As in the past, Apple will issue the $1,600 tickets to the event through random selection.



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New Smart Drone Breaks $1K Barrier

A new aerial drone from 3D Robotics packs two computers and an array of powerful features for $999. The computers -- one on the craft and one in the controller -- have enabled it to make some radical breakthroughs in autonomous flight and camera control, according to 3DR. Built on 1-GHz Cortex A9 ARM chips running Linux, the computers allow operators to preprogram the drone's flight path so they can concentrate on shooting video or stills from the unmanned aircraft system and not be distracted by piloting tasks.



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Reactions to New MacBook Run From Tepid to Cold

Early reviewers last week weighed in on Apple's new MacBook, and for the most part, they were underwhelmed. The new MacBook is 13.1mm thick, weighs 2 pounds, and has a 12-inch Retina display. Apple has touted it as the future of the notebook, pointing out that it had to reimagine every element to make the device lighter, thinner and better. Reviewers praised the device's light weight, its sharp screen, the full-sized keypad, the new Force Touch feature and even the solitary USB-C port, although it is not backward-compatible.



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Apple's Storm Clouds

An Apple shop recently dumped Apple for Dell following a surprising revelation. Over most of the last two decades, the only time I've seen a move like this was when some change in IT forced it, and a lot of staffers subsequently would quit. This move was largely user-driven. Then, last week, one of Apple's biggest fans actually panned an Apple product, effectively calling it pretty but stupid. Finally, the reviews on the new Apple Watch were decidedly mixed, even though the product was wrapped with one of the better marketing campaigns I've seen of late.



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