Ars Technica - Gear & Gadgets

Chromecast, Fire TV Stick, or Roku: What’s the best streaming stick for ~$50?

Wed, 27 Jan 2021 13:00:51 GMT

It's a good time to be in the market for an affordable streaming stick, like Amazon's Fire TV Stick 4K media streamer. [credit: Jeff Dunn ]

In 2021, as we all continue to spend more time in front of screens than anyone anticipated, most of us have a short list of requirements for a modern streaming stick. We just want a device that's compatible with our favorite content and all the other devices in our living rooms.

One of the earlier entrants into this space, Google’s Chromecast streaming device underwent a significant transformation this generation with the addition of a remote control and a proper user interface. Previously, Chromecast relied entirely on streaming content from a separate device (phone, computer, tablet) to play content on your TV. But with the new features, Google’s latest Chromecast with Google TV finally competes with other popular, sub-$50 4K streaming sticks like the Amazon Fire TV Stick 4K and Roku Streaming Stick+. It might even be an attractive alternative to the $179 Apple TV 4K.

So the 2020 Chromecast seems like it could be the perfect low-cost yet highly compatible cross between a streaming stick (to watch content from your phone) and a remote-controlled set-top box (to control apps like Netflix, Prime Video, and HBO Max via remote).The only way to know for sure, however, was to put in a little more screen time. Recently, we placed the latest Chromecast up against Amazon’s Fire TV Stick 4K and Roku’s Streaming Stick+ in some Orbital HQ testing to see which $50 streaming stick gives you the most value for your money—and which delivers the fewest headaches when you just want to kick back and watch something, maybe even something in 4K.

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Sony adds HDMI to last year’s Android phone, charges $2,500

Tue, 26 Jan 2021 22:14:32 GMT

The Sony Xperia Pro. Why is this $2,500? [credit: Sony ]

We've seen smartphones with stratospheric price tags before, but usually, something is special about them. Phones like the Samsung Galaxy Fold and the Huawei Mate X are anywhere from $2,000-$2,600, but those were first-gen foldable smartphones with brand-new display technology. Sony's latest entry into the smartphone market, the Sony Xperia Pro, is a boring old slab phone that seems utterly forgettable until you look at the price: an astounding $2,500, or the price of three brand-new, $800 Samsung Galaxy S21s. Sony has really outdone itself.

Mostly the Xperia Pro seems a lot like the Xperia 1 II, Sony's already-overpriced $1,300 flagship smartphone from 2020. Both have 6.5-inch, almost-4K, 3840×1644, 60Hz OLED displays, the Snapdragon 865 SoC, three rear cameras, an IP65 rating, and a 4000mAh battery. This year's Xperia Pro gets a tier bump to 12GB of RAM and 512GB of storage, but that's only usually worth $100 extra. There's also mmWave 5G this year, two "app shortcut" buttons on the side, and a shutter button. Fancy.

None of that explains why this phone is at least $1,000 more than it should be. Sony's justification for the outrageous price is (drumroll please) an HDMI port. Yes, in addition to the USB-C port on the bottom, there is also a Micro HDMI port that can be used as a video input. Sony suggests either hooking the phone up to a Sony Alpha camera and using it as a live video monitor or pushing an external video source out to the internet for live streaming. Just this one feature and the camera-adjacentness is worth $1,000 extra by Sony's logic.

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iOS 14.4 and iPadOS 14.4 hit supported devices today

Tue, 26 Jan 2021 20:03:54 GMT

Enlarge / The 2020 iPad Air—one of several devices supported by today's new software releases. (credit: Samuel Axon)

Today, Apple began rolling out iOS 14.4 and iPadOS 14.4 to supported iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch devices. The company also pushed watchOS 7.3 to Apple Watches and tvOS 14.4 to Apple TVs.

iOS 14.4/iPadOS 14.4 is a somewhat small feature update. New additions in the release notes include the ability to read smaller QR codes with the iPhone cameras, notifications to tell users "when the camera of your iPhone is unable to be verified as a new, genuine Apple camera," and a number of bug fixes.

Here are Apple's full iOS 14.4 release notes:

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Sony’s best noise-cancelling headphones are down to their lowest price today

Tue, 26 Jan 2021 18:46:34 GMT

Enlarge (credit: Ars Technica)

Today's Dealmaster is headlined by nice discount on Sony's WH-1000XM4, as the high-end wireless noise-cancelling headphones are currently down to $278 at various retailers. That's more than $70 off Sony's MSRP, about $50 off its typical street price online, and tied for the largest discount we've tracked to date, which we also saw on Black Friday.

At the moment, the WH-1000XM4 are our top pick among noise-cancelling headphones. There are certainly better-sounding headphones for the price, but the XM4's bass-forward sound is still enjoyable for those who like a boosted low-end, and it's possible to customize the audio profile through Sony's companion app. Either way, the XM4s are very comfortable to wear for hours at a time, get an excellent 30 or so hours of battery life, and have several useful features, such as USB-C charging, a "speak to chat" function that automatically mutes music when you speak to someone else, and a great "ambient sound" mode that blends external noise with your music while you're outdoors. More than anything else, their noise-cancelling quality is excellent, muting lower-frequency rumbles and, to a lesser-but-still-impressive extent, higher-pitched tones alike.

A pair like Bose's Noise Cancelling Headphones 700 has better call quality, a more neutral sound, and the ability to customize noise-cancelling strength, but overall, we think Sony's pair is the better deal, particular at this price. Elsewhere, our deals roundup also includes discounts on Apple's M1 Mac Mini and Magic Keyboard, a budget pair of noise-cancelling headphones from Anker that we like, LG's latest OLED TVs, and more. You can check out our full roundup below.

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Google Play bans video app for standard ".ass” subtitle support

Tue, 26 Jan 2021 17:59:14 GMT

Enlarge / Google's app review robots can't be reasoned with, they don't feel pity... (credit: Carolco Pictures)

Google Play's crazy automated app review process strikes again.

This time, the puritan robot overlords that run the Play Store briefly decided that listing support for common subtitle files is enough to get your app banned. The developer for Just (Video) Player posted their story to Hacker News, writing in the app's bug tracker, "After a tiny unrelated description update, Just Player got suspended from the Google Play Store for "Sexual Content and Profanity policy". Google finds issues with following: Full description (en_US): “* Subtitles: SRT, SSA, ASS, TTML, VTT.”"

Yes, just listing standard video player features like support for the "ASS" subtitle format was apparently enough to temporarily earn a suspension. The developer says they "immediately filed an appeal" and today, the app is back up with the ASS subtitle listing still in the description.

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Apple’s long-time hardware lead steps down to work on mysterious "new project”

Tue, 26 Jan 2021 17:49:21 GMT

Former Apple hardware engineering leader Dan Riccio. [credit: Apple ]

Apple announced Tuesday that its longtime SVP of hardware engineering, Dan Riccio, will depart his current role and assume a new one focused entirely on a "new project." Riccio had led hardware engineering since 2012. Prior to that role, he led iPad hardware engineering. He will report directly to CEO Tim Cook in his new role.

John Ternus, who has held the title of vice president of hardware engineering since 2001, will step into Riccio's prior role leading the hardware engineering team. Ternus has appeared in recent Apple product announcements, and he was the lead for the iPhone 12, as well as a key team leader on AirPods, every iPad, and the M1 transition.

As is common with announcements like this, there are statements from key figures at Apple about it. Starting with Cook:

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Why Red Hat killed CentOS—a CentOS board member speaks

Tue, 26 Jan 2021 15:39:29 GMT

Enlarge / CentOS Linux will be sleeping with the fishes in 2022. (credit: Aurich Lawson / Getty Images)

This morning, The Register's Tim Anderson published excerpts of an interview with the CentOS project's Brian Exelbierd. Exelbierd is a member of the CentOS board and its official liaison with Red Hat.

Exelbierd spoke to Anderson to give an insider's perspective on Red Hat's effective termination of CentOS Linux in December, in which the open source giant announced CentOS Linux was to be deprecated immediately—with security upgrades to CentOS Linux 8 ending later in 2021 rather than the 2029 end of support date CentOS users expected.

The tail mustn’t wag the dog

"CentOS is a [Red Hat] sponsored project," Exelbierd told the Register. "We are the funding agent (the entity which receives and disburses grants), and we also happen to be a heavy contributor. We have learned that open source communities do well with independence. We let those governing bodies govern."

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New RISC-V hardware designs from 5G startup EdgeQ

Tue, 26 Jan 2021 13:00:35 GMT

This is a diagram of an entire host board. EdgeQ's extended RISC-V CPU is on the upper right; "Host Processor" on the left is the CPU the Linux OS would actually run on. [credit: EdgeQ ]

Today, 5G cellular startup EdgeQ is announcing the addition of two new members to its advisory board—former Qualcomm CEO Paul Jacobs, and former Qualcomm CTO Matt Grob. Their mission is to cut the Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) of 5G cellular base stations in half by leveraging and extending open hardware RISC-V designs.

Traditionally, Radio Access Network (RAN) devices have tended to be closed design and deeply proprietary—much like consumer Wi-Fi and network hardware, they depend on closed-design ASICs with vendor-provided drivers and firmware. Such closed stacks generally cannot be upgraded to accommodate new protocols and use cases—for example, a Radio Unit or Distributed Unit designed for 4G networks must typically be replaced in its entirety in order to service 5G devices.

By contrast, vendors can implement their own OpenRAN solutions, which generally implement fewer functions in hardware, and more in software running on traditional operating systems such as Linux. But implementing such an O-RAN properly requires very deep protocol expertise to get right, and it tends to be extremely power-hungry and expensive to maintain once finished.

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Not just MagSafe: Apple reminds users not to hold iPhones near pacemakers

Mon, 25 Jan 2021 23:09:44 GMT

This is the MagSafe charger, which is sold separately from the iPhone 12. [credit: Samuel Axon ]

This week, Apple published clarifications to its support documents to address consumer concern that, because of the presence of the MagSafe magnet system in new iPhones, the iPhone 12 and its 2020 peers are particularly unsafe to hold in close proximity to an Implantable Cardioverter Defibrillator (ICD) or pacemaker.

The updated warning from Apple to customers repeats previous statements that keeping any iPhone within six inches of an ICD or pacemaker (or within 15 inches, while charging wirelessly) is unsafe. The warning also claims the iPhone 12 is not specifically more dangerous than other models.

Several weeks back, Heart Rhythm Journal published results of a test wherein it repeatedly found that moving an iPhone 12 with MagSafe close to a patient's ICD interfered with the functioning of that lifesaving device. After that report, tech enthusiasts visited forums, Twitter, and Reddit to spread speculation that the iPhone 12 was particularly dangerous to people with pacemakers because of the introduction of MagSafe.

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Apple doubles down on Fitness+ with new "Time to Walk” Apple Watch content

Mon, 25 Jan 2021 18:12:55 GMT

Time to Walk will display photos to match speakers' stories and talks while you walk. [credit: Apple ]

Today, Apple launched a new component of its Fitness+ personal health subscription service: "Time to Walk." With it, users who own an Apple Watch can take a tracked walk exercise while listening to stories or inspiring talks from "influential and interesting people."

These talks will be automatically downloaded to users' Apple Watch, provided those users subscribe to Fitness+. When users start listening to one of the 25-40 minute episodes, the Watch will begin tracking a Walk workout. For users in wheelchairs, Time to Walk is instead called "Time to Push" and offers up an Outdoor Weelchair Walk Pace workout instead.

The announcement states that "each Time to Walk episode is shaped by the guest’s personal, life-shaping moments and includes lessons learned, meaningful memories, thoughts on purpose and gratitude, moments of levity, and other thought-provoking topics, recorded while walking outside or in locations that are meaningful to them."

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Google Maps will soon show COVID vaccine locations

Mon, 25 Jan 2021 16:25:40 GMT

Enlarge / Vaccine info in Google search. (credit: Google)

The rollout of the COVID-19 vaccine means a ton of people are soon going to be looking for vaccination sites. As usual, Google wants to be at the center of getting people where they're going, and in a new blog post Google says it will start loading Search and Maps with information on vaccination sites. "In the coming weeks," the company writes, "COVID-19 vaccination locations will be available in Google Search and Maps, starting with Arizona, Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas, with more states and countries to come."

Soon you'll be able to search "COVID vaccine" and get location results showing access requirements, appointment information, and if a site has a drive-through. Google says it is partnering with the Boston Children's Hospital's VaccineFinder.org, government agencies, and retail pharmacies for the data.

Elsewhere in the Google Empire, the company says it will open up various Google facilities as vaccine sites.

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DDoSers are abusing Microsoft RDP to make attacks more powerful

Sat, 23 Jan 2021 16:23:04 GMT

Enlarge / Hacker attacking server or database. Network security, Database secure and personal data protection (credit: Getty Images)

DDoS-for-hire services are abusing the Microsoft Remote Desktop Protocol to increase the firepower of distributed denial-of-service attacks that paralyze websites and other online services, a security firm said this week.

Typically abbreviated as RDP, Remote Desktop Protocol is the underpinning for a Microsoft Windows feature that allows one device to log into another device over the Internet. RDP is mostly used by businesses to save employees the cost or hassle of having to be physically present when accessing a computer.

As is typical with many authenticated systems, RDP responds to login requests with a much longer sequence of bits that establish a connection between the two parties. So-called booter/stresser services, which for a fee will bombard Internet addresses with enough data to take them offline, have recently embraced RDP as a means to amplify their attacks, security firm Netscout said.

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Home alarm tech backdoored security cameras to spy on customers having sex

Fri, 22 Jan 2021 20:54:42 GMT

Enlarge (credit: Getty Images / Aurich Lawson)

A home security technician has admitted he repeatedly broke into cameras he installed and viewed customers engaging in sex and other intimate acts.

Telesforo Aviles, a 35-year-old former employee of home and small office security company ADT, said that over a five-year period, he accessed the cameras of roughly 200 customer accounts on more than 9,600 occasions—all without the permission or knowledge of customers. He said he took note of homes with women he found attractive and then viewed their cameras for sexual gratification. He said he watched nude women and couples as they had sex.

Aviles made the admissions Thursday in US District Court for the District of Northern Texas, where he pleaded guilty to one count of computer fraud and one count of invasive visual recording. He faces a maximum of five years in prison.

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How desperate are you for GPUs, CPUs, consoles? Newegg tests with new lottery

Fri, 22 Jan 2021 20:33:22 GMT

Enlarge (credit: Aurich Lawson / Getty Images)

Over the past 12 months, electronics retailers have been under increased fire and scrutiny for mishandling how they sell brand-new consoles and high-end PC components. This week, online retailer Newegg has moved forward with a peculiar new system for selling high-demand, low-supply electronics: the Newegg Shuffle. (Or, as the site's metadata calls it, the Newegg Popular Product Lottery Queue.)

If you catch this article early enough on Friday, January 22, consider this a drop-everything suggestion to rush to the site by 5 pm ET and place a product-purchase request. Really: Do that right now if you're interested in recent AMD CPUs, Nvidia GPUs, or the all-digital PlayStation 5. It's free to try. We'll wait.

OK, so that process might have been a bit confusing. What's going on with the Newegg Shuffle?

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Report: The MacBook Air is getting a major redesign, too

Fri, 22 Jan 2021 18:54:42 GMT

Enlarge

There's been on onslaught of Apple leaks out of business publication Bloomberg over the past week, and the latest goes into a little more detail about an upcoming MacBook Air redesign.

Like the others, the report cites anonymous people familiar with Apple's plans. It claims a newly redesigned MacBook Air (presumably with either Apple's M1 chip for Macs or a successor to that chip) will "be released during the second half of this year at the earliest or in 2022."

But buried in this MacBook Air report is perhaps equally big news for a certain set of Mac users: it claims that Apple plans to reintroduce the SD card slot in new MacBook Pros—a detail that was left out of a story on those computers earlier this week.

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Loon’s bubble bursts—Alphabet shuts down Internet balloon company

Fri, 22 Jan 2021 17:19:21 GMT

A Loon balloon. [credit: Loon ]

When Google announced "Project Loon" in 2013, a running joke behind the project was that no one thought a network of flying Internet balloons was a feasible idea. Eight years later, Google has decided that a network of flying Internet balloons is indeed not a feasible idea. Loon announced it is shutting down, citing the lack of a "long-term, sustainable business."

Loon CEO (Loon was eventually spun out into an Alphabet company) Alastair Westgarth writes:

We talk a lot about connecting the next billion users, but the reality is Loon has been chasing the hardest problem of all in connectivity—the last billion users: The communities in areas too difficult or remote to reach, or the areas where delivering service with existing technologies is just too expensive for everyday people. While we’ve found a number of willing partners along the way, we haven’t found a way to get the costs low enough to build a long-term, sustainable business. Developing radical new technology is inherently risky, but that doesn’t make breaking this news any easier. Today, I’m sad to share that Loon will be winding down.

Google also cited economic problems when it shut down Titan Aerospace in 2017, a plan to deliver the Internet via drone.

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Chrome and Edge want to help with that password problem of yours

Fri, 22 Jan 2021 12:45:07 GMT

Enlarge / Please don't do this. (credit: Getty Images)

If you’re like lots of people, someone has probably nagged you to use a password manager and you still haven’t heeded the advice. Now, Chrome and Edge are coming to the rescue with beefed-up password management built directly into the browsers.

Microsoft on Thursday announced a new password generator for the recently released Edge 88. People can use the generator when signing up for a new account or when changing an existing password. The generator provides a drop-down in the password field. Clicking on the candidate selects it as a password and saves it to a password manager built into the browser. People can then have the password pushed to their other devices using the Edge password sync feature.

As I’ve explained for years, the same things that make passwords memorable and easy to use are the same things that make them easy for others to guess. Password generators are among the safest sources of strong passwords. Rather than having to think up a password that’s truly unique and hard to guess, users can instead have a generator do it properly.

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Ubuntu Linux is now running on M1 Macs

Thu, 21 Jan 2021 18:07:42 GMT

The 2020, M1-equipped Mac mini. [credit: Samuel Axon ]

For the first time, users of Apple Silicon Macs using Apple's M1 chip—such as the entry-level 13-inch MacBook Pro, Mac mini, and MacBook Air—can now boot in to and natively run Linux.

The vintage at play here is Ubuntu, and the port was developed by Corellium, which otherwise virtualizes iOS and other ARM-based OSes to enable easier security testing. It's worth noting as well that Apple has previously sued the company over said iOS security testing tool. The lawsuit didn't go Apple's way.

Corellium Chief Technology Office Chris Wade announced the culmination of the team's work on Twitter yesterday. And in a blog post on Corellium's website, the team behind the port writes that it was developed in parallel with the group's efforts at "creating a model of the [M1] for our security research part."

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Samsung is making "very large quantities” of 90Hz OLED displays for laptops

Thu, 21 Jan 2021 17:25:51 GMT

Enlarge / The 2020 Samsung Galaxy Chromebook, which had a 4K OLED display. (credit: Samsung)

The world's biggest OLED manufacturer is making a push for more OLED laptop screens. A press release from Samsung Display says the company is making "very large quantities of 14-inch, 90Hz OLED displays destined for laptops and notebooks, beginning in March." Apparently, Samsung has a lot of orders coming in, and the company says that "several global IT companies are expected to release new laptops or notebooks with 90Hz OLED screens this year."

Usually, faster-refresh-rate displays are the realm of gaming laptops, where you can get anywhere from 90Hz to a blazing-fast 300Hz (that sounds like overkill) but those are all LCDs. Thanks almost entirely to Samsung, OLEDs have completely taken over smartphones, with the company supplying panels to Apple, Google, its own Galaxy line, OnePlus, and pretty much everyone else. On many Android phones, these are 90Hz or 120Hz displays, and now it sounds like Samsung is ready to scale up to laptops.

OLED displays are a grid of organic, light-emitting material (this electrified pickle video is a great explainer) and are usually thinner and less complicated than LCDs. LCDs need a ton of layers—a backlight to light up the display, various layers of polarizers and diffusers, the namesake liquid crystal layer to turn pixels on and off, and a color filter. An LCD's single source of light for the entire display (sometimes "zones" of light with local dimming) means LCDs can't match the high contrast of OLED, where every pixel is also its own light source. OLEDs can turn off pixel light sources individually, so "black" can be truly black, with the display producing no light.

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Security firm Malwarebytes was infected by same hackers who hit SolarWinds

Wed, 20 Jan 2021 20:14:12 GMT

Enlarge (credit: Getty Images)

Security firm Malwarebytes said it was breached by the same nation-state-sponsored hackers who compromised a dozen or more US government agencies and private companies.

The attackers are best known for first hacking into Austin, Texas-based SolarWinds, compromising its software-distribution system and using it to infect the networks of customers who used SolarWinds’ network management software. In an online notice, however, Malwarebytes said the attackers used a different vector.

“While Malwarebytes does not use SolarWinds, we, like many other companies were recently targeted by the same threat actor,” the notice stated. “We can confirm the existence of another intrusion vector that works by abusing applications with privileged access to Microsoft Office 365 and Azure environments.”

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