A teenager not even old enough to drive a car was able to wirelessly connect to a vehicle's internal computer network and control various functions. The 14-year-old built an electronic remote auto communications device with $15 worth of Radio Shack parts that were assembled in less than a night. Auto executives at a conference this week sponsored by the Center for Automotive Research revealed how stunned they were by the feat, which actually happened last summer, noting it shed light on the need for greater security as vehicles gain more wireless capabilities. The boy, whose name is not being released, was among 30 other students ranging in age from high school to college undergraduates to PhD students who participated in the third annual
Lenovo’s been caught going a bit too far in its quest for bloatware money, and the results have put its users at risk. The company has been preloading Superfish, a "visual search" tool that includes adware that fakes the encryption certificates for every HTTPS-protected site you visit, on its PCs since at least the middle of 2014. Essentially, the software conducts a man-in-the-middle attack to fill the websites you visit with ads, and leaves you vulnerable to hackers in its wake. You can read all the sordid details
There's lots of video this week: Some dumb (a guy electrocuting himself with a shock collar), some not-so-dumb (resurrecting the educational game Activision/Steam are giving free access to
A look at the new and updated Android apps you need to check out this week.
What can you do with your voice on your Android phone? More than you know!
Google’s mobile search app now makes perusing through articles and videos more inviting. With the Get curated news and articles to scroll through with Google’s newest search app updates. For example, if you search for a specific publication like NPR you’ll see a list of categories along with the news carousel. Scroll through articles and videos thanks to updates in Google’s mobile search.
The Nvidia Shield Tablet is getting some stability fixes for a smoother gaming experience.
New Pebble hardware and software are reportedly on the agenda for next week as the company teases a big announcement on its website. Citing multiple unnamed sources, The new watch may be wider than the existing Pebble and Pebble Steel, 9to5Mac reports, but will be thinner, while maintaining similar battery life of up to a week on a charge. The charging pins have reportedly moved from the side to the bottom of the device—hopefully indicating a sturdier docking mechanism—and the chassis could be plastic with aluminum sides.
Nvidia likes to say its GeForce GTX 900M series GPU is the most advanced graphics card for notebooks, but the company's still not sure about Earlier in February, Nvidia removed the ability to overclock the mobile GPU in a driver update—a move that upset hardcore gamers. Now, it has reversed the decision. On Thursday, Nvidia said the ability to overclock would come back to the GTX 900M series via a driver update in March.
YouTube is about to release a childproofed version of its mobile app, with built-in parental controls, a simpler interface, and no comments. The new app, dubbed YouTube Kids, will launch on February 23, but only for Android devices in the United States at first, A screenshot
Evernote is a great tool for taking notes, clipping web pages, and saving other scraps of data you need to keep tabs on. But some people may not like its linear nature, where everything is clipped into notes contained in notebooks. A web app called CardDesk (currently in beta) aims to change that. CardDesk is a digital corkboard that lets you organize your Evernote content as old-school index cards. CardDesk allows you to organize Evernote data as index cards on a corkboard.
I didn't play the first If it's anywhere near the quality of Made by King ART (the same studio that developed the charming-albeit-technically-flawed
Google isn't the only company
All that and more, below.
