[Fast Company]
New Yorker Carlos de Santiago already has a plan to prevent food from going to waste. It doesn’t require a law, and it could even save you money. De Santiago and four colleagues are developing an online service, called BuyMeBy, which allows stores to publish discounts on items that are approaching their expiration date.
Read the full BuyMeBy article.
While writing a story for Fast Company about the hacking of a spyware company called HackingTeam, I sent them an inquiry asking if the hundreds of gigabytes of data being shared on the Web are accurate. I just got a reply this morning that doesn’t fully answer the question, but it seems to hint that the docs may be legitimate.
Here’s the letter, emphasis added.
——————————-
Hi Sean,
We have released this statement:
Revised July 7, 2015
Statement from HackingTeam regarding reported online attack.
HackingTeam has been the victim of an online attack, and documents have been stolen from the company. We are investigating to determine the extent of this attack and specifically what has been taken. We are working with several appropriate law enforcement to determine who is responsible.
Various documents attributed to our company and employees are being provided to the news media and may be published on line.
We do not disclose the names or locations of our clients and will continue to abide by this policy and our contracts which include a confidentiality clause
We cannot comment on the validity of documents purportedly from our company. However, interpreting even valid documents without complete picture of why they were created or how they were used can easily lead to misunderstandings and even false conclusions.
We are continuing our investigation.
I hope that helps,
Eric
Eric Rabe
Chief Marketing & Communications Officer
[Fast Company]
How did things go so wrong for a company that had the trust, and money, of some of the most powerful players in the world? The answer, in part, is that nothing is really untraceable on the web, if you look hard enough for it. That’s what the Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto’s Munk School of Global Affairs did.
Read the full Hacking Team article.
Add Handl, short for “hand liberation,” to the list of accessories you never knew you needed. Attached to the back of this $40 smartphone case is an elastic band that slips between your ring and middle fingers and pulls a small rectangular plate against the top of your fingers, holding the smartphone securely to your palm.
The first models, due in July, cover the iPhone 6 Plus and Samsung Galaxy Note 4. Versions for the iPhone 6, Galaxy S 6 and other popular phones are coming soon after, the inventor, Allen Hirsch, told me when we met today at CE Week in New York City.
Painter and inventor Allen Hirsch
Beyond his device, what kept me talking to Hirsch was his day job as an accomplished painter, creating the Time Magazine portraits of Gaddafi, Khomeini, Gandhi and others that I grew up with. He also painted Bill Clinton for the National Portrait Gallery.
I don’t see myself buying a Handl soon (besides, I have an iPhone 5). But it’s another example, alongside the famous/infamous selfie stick phenomenon, of accessories that try to make our constant tech companion more…handy.
Seemingly everyone walks around with a smartphone in their palm. Why not use a piece of elastic to prevent them from dropping it (like I always do), especially when they are texting (like I always do)? Handl is also useful for selfies, the company told me, as you can hold your arm out far without dropping the phone — and because venues are starting to ban selfie sticks.
The plate on the back of Handl can also be positioned to serve as a kickstand. Those are common in a lot of smartphone and tablet cases, and even integrated into some gadgets, such as the Microsoft Surface.
And why not? People read a tremendous amount on their smartphones, and smartphones and tablets are becoming the top devices for watching video. Why not free up your hands so you can do other things — like fiddle with your smart watch?
With cars going high-tech, there’s nothing more analog left than the rear-view mirror. At CE Week in New York City, car software maker QNX showed off a modified Maserati smart car with no mirrors. Instead it has a rear-mounted camera that feeds live video to four screens – three in the place of the left, right and center mirrors, and one right in front of the driver. Fourth screen, in place of the traditional instrument cluster, lets you toggle through traditional instruments like speedometer and tachometer, GPS navigation and the rear camera.
QNX’s LCD “mirrors” on this Maserati were a bit unsettling to me in that they clearly are not as sharp, bright and colorful as even the mirrors on a budget Ford Fiesta. It reminds me of the electronic viewfinders in early mirrorless cameras, which delivered a murky preview noting like that you get from a DSLR.
Mirrorless cameras have come a long way, though, with Fujifilm, Samsung and Sony OLED EVFs looking as clear and sharp as a regular optical viewfinder. So there’s reason to think that electronic mirrors can do the same. In fact, they can do better. The placement of the camera on this Maserati eliminates blind spots, and it can provide a detailed infrared view at night when mirrors show very little beyond headlight glare.
We’ll see the potential benefits soon. Cadillac has announced plans to replace the center rear-view mirror with a screen in the 2016 CT6.
With such a powerful camera system, four screens is clearly overkill. Tesla is planning to eliminate the two side mirrors, which QNX software engineer Alexandre James told me can reduce draft to fuel consumption by 6 percent.
James is a software guy, though, and he acknowledges that he’s not a hardware expert. “It would be difficult from a hardware perspective to get the right screens that are weather-resistant and such,” he said. “But we’ll leave that to the hardware guys.”
The DxO One, a $599 palm-sized camera that plugs into an iPhone via its Lightning port, illustrates just how far smartphones have gone in taking over photography.
Many cameras now connect to smartphones over Wi-Fi to transfer photos for online posting. But in that case, the camera is still the main gadget, with the phone playing a supporting role. The 20-megapixel DxO One (available for pre-order) starts from the premise that the smartphone is the central device, and the camera is just an add-on – albeit one that costs about as much as the phone.
[Tom’s Guide]
The camera is the pilot. Lily’s real innovation — if it works — is a set of computer-vision algorithms. After it’s tossed in the air, Lily spends about 30 to 60 seconds studying you to memorize what you look like. Afterwards, Lily literally watches you in order to keep up.
[Read the rest of Lily Drone Is a Flying Action Camera That Follows You]
[Tom’s Guide]
The video streaming-happy data binging we do at home is on a crash course with our budgets once we take it mobile. Verizon’s data plans start at 1GB per month for $60. According to a calculator on rival carrier AT&T’s website, that’s enough for just under 5 hours of streaming video in standard definition or one hour in HD (each consuming 1.08GB).
[Read the rest of Verizon-AOL Deal Designed to Raise Your Wireless Bill]
[Tom’s Guide]
Introduced in January and due to go on sale next year, at $400,000, the GT both borrows engine tech from Ford’s mainstream cars and debuts lightweight materials. These, the company expects to trickle down to future economy cars and pickup trucks — possibly indicating that even a carbon-fiber F-150 is a future possibility.
[Read the rest of Ford’s New GT Supercar Has (Some) Eco Cred]
[Tom’s Guide]
I had Cablevison’s new Optimum ‘Cord Cutter’ broadband package before it was called that. Even the New York area-based company puts quotation marks around the name of the service. n truth, it’s just a buzzword-bedecked rebrand.
[Read the rest of Cablevision ‘Cord Cutter’ Internet Offer Is Mostly Hype]
