Tag Archives: Wireless

Revolutionary New iPhone Set to Debut Someday

Mother Jones

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Steve Jobs may be dead, but his reality distortion field lives on:

The speculative frenzy that always precedes a new iPhone has been supercharged in anticipation of the 10th-anniversary release expected later this year. Analysts in research reports have predicted the phone will be one of Apple’s most revolutionary, with some suggesting it will come in three sizes instead of the usual two, with a case made almost entirely of glass and possibly wireless-charging capability.

At least one of the anniversary phones is expected to have an OLED screen, technology that would make the device thinner and lighter. The display, on top of its being an anniversary edition, has led to speculation that Apple could charge record prices for it, said Steven Milunovich, an analyst with UBS.

Three sizes! Wireless charging! An OLED screen! All for a mere thousand dollars.

The sleazy marketing part of me admires the hell out of Apple. They have somehow built up a customer base so loyal that they can explicitly follow a strategy of staying two years behind everyone else and then incorporating whatever features turn out to be popular. Their loyal customers are, apparently, OK with paying astronomical prices for the privilege of always lacking the latest and greatest features. Because it’s Apple.

When I switched from an iPhone to an Android phone several years ago, it took me literally no more than a day to get accustomed to the new UI. Phone interfaces, after all, are designed to be super simple, and the iPhone and Android UIs aren’t really all that different to begin with. But iPhone users remain fanatically loyal for reasons that escape me. I wonder if this bubble is ever going to burst?

Original article: 

Revolutionary New iPhone Set to Debut Someday

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Tired of Remembering Passwords? Try Swallowing Them Instead.

Mother Jones

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Chances are you’re bad at passwords. Most of us are. A recent statistic offered up by Jonathan LeBlanc, the global head of developer advocacy at PayPal, suggests that nearly 10 percent of people have a password consisting of 123456, 12345678, or, simply, “password.”

LeBlanc has some bold thoughts on improving this state of affairs. As he told the Wall Street Journal last week, “embeddable, injectable, and ingestible devices” are the next step companies will use to identify consumers for “mobile payments and other sensitive online interactions.”

From the Journal:

While there are more advanced methods to increase login security, like location verification, identifying people by their habits like the way they type in their passwords, fingerprints and other biometric identifiers, these can lead to false negative results, where valid users can’t log in to their online services, and false positives, where invalid users can log in.

Mr. Leblanc pointed to more accurate methods of identity verification, like thin silicon chips which can be embedded into the skin. The wireless chips can contain ECG sensors that monitor the heart’s unique electrical activity, and communicate the data via wireless antennae to “wearable computer tattoos.”

Ingestible capsules that can detect glucose levels and other unique internal features can use a person’s body as a way to identify them and beam that data out.

To be fair, LeBlanc told the paper that these specific technologies aren’t necessarily things that PayPal is planning, but he’s been raising the possibility in a presentation he’s been giving, and has said the online dealbroker is “definitely looking at the identity field” as a means of allowing users a more secure way to identify themselves.

You don’t have to be a “mark of the beast” person or a conspiracy theorist to have concerns. Indeed, what could possibly go wrong with a little implanted device that reads your vein patterns or your heart’s unique activity or blood glucose levels just so you can seamlessly buy that cup of Starbucks? Wouldn’t an insurance company love to use that information to decide that you had one too many donuts—so it won’t be covering that bypass surgery after all?

As the Wall Street Journal cautiously notes, “Mr. Leblanc admits that there’s still a ways to go before cultural norms catch up with ingestible and injectable ID devices.”

Read this article:

Tired of Remembering Passwords? Try Swallowing Them Instead.

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Cell Phone Carriers Are Fighting a Plan to Make It Easier to Locate 911 Callers

Mother Jones

The nation’s biggest cell phone carriers, including Verizon, AT&T, and Sprint, are opposing a government proposal that aims to save lives by making it easier for emergency responders to locate 911 callers. The companies say they lack the technology to implement the plan—which would require them to quickly find a way to deliver more accurate location information—and they’re working on a better, long-term solution. Emergency responders and activists say that the cell carriers are trying to stymie the proposal because they don’t want to pony up the money for the improvements.

Under current Federal Communications Commission (FCC) rules, carriers must provide a 911 caller’s latitude and longitude within 164 to 984 feet. But these rules, last revised in 2010, were never designed to apply to cellular calls placed inside buildings, where cell phone technologies, like GPS, are less likely to work. Now that many Americans don’t own landlines, emergency responders are finding that it’s increasingly difficult to track down 911 callers inside apartment and office buildings. “This spells a real potential disaster for the delivery of emergency services,” says Paul Linnee, who has over 40 years of experience designing and managing 911 systems, and now works as a consultant.

The FCC proposal, released in February, would mandate that, for 67 percent of 911 calls in the first few years, cell phone carriers provide the horizontal location of an indoor caller within 164 feet and the vertical location (i.e., the floor in an apartment building) within about 10 feet. The proposal would also require providers to demonstrate compliance and establish a channel for 911 administrators to raise complaints.

Last year, Steve Souder, the director of the department of public safety communications in Fairfax County, Virginia, demonstrated to a former FCC head that when he called 911 from his dispatch center, the location that came back was the meat department in a nearby Costco. In California, an organization that advocates on behalf of dispatchers looked at millions of wireless calls placed across the state, and found that more than half failed to transmit precise location data. In San Francisco, the failure rate was over 80 percent.

Cell phone carriers contend that recent studies give a misleading picture of their accuracy rates, because they don’t take into account cases in which 911 call centers don’t retrieve the data provided by the carriers, for any number of reasons. And in numerous comments submitted to the FCC—which the commission is currently reviewing—the companies argue that the plan is simply not feasible.

On July 14, Sprint wrote to the FCC that its proposal is “not achievable using current technology” and that there is little evidence “that the technology will be available in the near future.” AT&T called the FCC’s proposed timeline for improving location-finding technology “unrealistic” and wrote that forcing providers to “incrementally” improve their systems will “waste scarce resources (i.e., time, talent, and money),”

Don Brittingham, the vice president of national security and public safety policy at Verizon, tells Mother Jones that Verizon and other carriers are already implementing new technologies that will significantly improve accuracy. He says that even if the FCC’s requirements could be met at some point in time, the proposal would risk directing valuable resources away from the long-term goal—delivering a specific, accurate address to emergency dispatchers. “Instead of putting a lot of money and time and effort into a set of solutions that may not actually help, we would like to see more focus on things that provide some long-term benefits,” he says.

Jamie Barnett, former head of the FCC’s public safety and homeland security bureau, is directing a large coalition of emergency responders and activists—initially funded by True Position, a company that makes GPS technology—to rally support for the FCC proposal. He says that multiple technologies are currently available that fit the FCC’s criteria, but cell companies just don’t want to pay for them. “Carriers are currently negotiating to delay and weaken the implementation of this lifesaving rule. While it would save the carriers money, it could cost tens of thousands of additional lives,” he says.

Linnee recalls that in the late 1990s, cell phone carriers fought the FCC on providing any 911 location information at all. “The wireless carriers were kicking and screaming and squawking that this can’t be done,” He adds, “This is standard industry behavior. They fight you every inch of the way.”

Originally posted here – 

Cell Phone Carriers Are Fighting a Plan to Make It Easier to Locate 911 Callers

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Logitech Wireless Solar Keyboard K750

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Frostfire 16 Bright LED Wireless Solar Powered Motion Sensor Light (Weatherproof, no batteries required)

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Hipe 16 Bright LED Wireless Solar Powered Motion Sensor Outdoor Light – Weatherproof, No Batteries Required

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Mr Beams MB360 Wireless LED Spotlight with Motion Sensor and Photocell – Weatherproof – Battery Operated – 140 Lumens

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Hipe 16 Bright LED Wireless Solar Powered Motion Sensor Outdoor Light – Weatherproof, No Batteries Required

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Frostfire 16 Bright LED Wireless Solar Powered Motion Sensor Light (Weatherproof, no batteries required)

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Dorcy 41-1071 LED Wireless Motion Sensor Flood Lite

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