Minecraft movie in the works at Warner Bros.

Markus "Notch" Persson, creator of the beloved indie sandbox sensation, reveals on Twitter that Warner Bros. and his studio Mojang are bringing Minecraft to the big screen.

(Credit: Mojang)

Following the massive success of "The Lego Movie," it sounds like block-based blockbusters -- a pun no one could possibly refrain from using -- are a sure-fire recipe for Hollywood success. Up next: the Minecraft movie.

Dropping a bombshell on Twitter in the form of a sneaky 128-character admission, Minecraft creator Markus "Notch" Persson revealed that he and Mojang, the studio the 34-year-old Swedish developer formed to manage the title and its expansion, are working with Warner Bros. Pictures to develop a film around the game.

Persson has already confirmed that the tweet is no joke. "It's for real. I think every part of that tweet was real, including me wanting to be the one to spill the news about a potential movie," he told Polygon via e-mail. "It would be nice to tell people when it's 100 percent solid rather than to leak it before it's completely final, but our hands were a bit tied and rushed here."

Persson has already confirmed that the tweet is no joke. "It's for real. I think every part of that tweet was real, including me wanting to be the one to spill the news about a potential movie," he told Polygon via e-mail. "It would be nice to tell people when it's 100 percent solid rather than to leak it before it's completely final, but our hands were a bit tied and rushed here." 

The studio acquired the rights from Mojang, Deadline reported Thursday, and the project is already garnering huge interest from writers and directors. Warner Bros. intends on making a live-action film, and has already signed up Roy Lee, the mastermind producer behind "The Lego Movie," to tackle the project through his production company Vertigo Entertainment.

Since its release in 2011, Minecraft has become one of the most astonishing success stories in gaming history. Just yesterday, Persson announced on Twitter that the original PC version of Minecraft has reached 100 million users, with 14.3 million of them being paid accounts. Not too shabby, especially when you consider that Minecraft for the Xbox 360 and Minecraft: Pocket Edition for iOS and Android have each sold more than 10 million copies, while more than 1 million copies have been downloaded on the PlayStation 3 since that version's December 2013 release.
And the Minecraft train is not slowing down. Beyond the prospective live-action film, Mojang hopes to put out Minecraft for the Xbox One, PlayStation 4, and PlayStation Vita, with titles currently in development.

Bitcoin losses spur Mt. Gox to bankruptcy filing

Bad day for the big Bitcoin exchange: CEO Mark Karpeles says Mt. Gox lost some 750,000 customer bitcoins, plus 100,000 of its own.

 Mt. Gox chief Mark Karpeles (second from right) speaks at a press conference in Tokyo on February 28, 2014.

(Credit: Jiji Press/AFP/Getty Images)
Mt. Gox, the embattled Bitcoin exchange, has filed for bankruptcy protection after falling into a state of disarray earlier this month in the wake of a security lapse that led to fraudulent withdrawals.
The exchange's CEO, Mark Karpeles, announced the news in Tokyo on Friday, saying that Mt. Gox lost nearly 750,000 customer bitcoins, as well as 100,000 of the exchange's own bitcoins. The total number of lost bitcoins translates to nearly $500 million at the current exchange rate, the Wall Street Journal reported Friday.

At the Tokyo press conference, Karpeles expressed contrition about Mt. Gox's crash, and sought to separate that development from the larger Bitcoin movement. "First of all, I'm very sorry," he said, according to Reuters. "The bitcoin industry is healthy and it is growing. It will continue, and reducing the impact is the most important point."

The massive loss of bitcoins had been rumored all week. Due to the currency's encryption technology, it might be difficult, if not impossible, for the stolen bitcoins to be restored to their owners' accounts, leaving people across the globe with significant losses.
At its height, Mt. Gox was one of the most popular Bitcoin exchanges. It was often cited in news stories discussing the startling rise of the Bitcoin phenomenon, which at one time, flirted with a bitcoin value of $1,000.

Mt. Gox's Karpeles acknowledged that the bitcoins were stolen through a weakness in his company's system that allowed hackers to slowly withdraw the currency.
According to Karpeles' lawyer, Mt. Gox has $63.6 million in debt, and about half that in assets. Even with the filing for bankruptcy protection, Karpeles would like to see Mt. Gox live on and come back, though it's not clear whether that will happen or whether customers would come back and use the exchange. In the meantime, Mt. Gox has been shuttered.

Really Francis? Here's where 'House of Cards' could use IT help

Crave's Eric Mack has been binging on season 2 of the Netflix series for two weeks now, long enough to notice some of the hackiness of the hacker subplot. He's talking to you, USB dongle of destiny.

Vice President Underwood might know how to manipulate everyone from the president on down, but he doesn't seem to know that deleting a text message doesn't guarantee that it's gone forever.

(Credit: Netflix)
The second season of "House of Cards" starring Kevin Spacey as ruthless politician Francis Underwood arrived in one big batch of 13 episodes exactly two weeks ago, and we've all been binge-watching since. By the way, if you haven't yet made it all the way through season 2, this is about as far as you should read without risking spoilers. I'll say that again in all caps for you skim-readers out there -- SPOILER ALERT!!! That's better.
The web of intertwined intrigue and drama this season also introduced a new plotline in which fictional Washington Herald deputy editor Lucas Goodwin becomes ensnared in a plot to gain access to an AT&T server farm with the assistance of shadowy hacker Gavin Orsay. Goodwin believes Orsay is assisting him in tracking down evidence of Underwood's murderous habits. Unbeknownst to Goodwin, however, Orsay is a grudging informant for the FBI, which is entrapping Goodwin to send him off to prison and out of Underwood's hair.

With so much tech and hacker content in the storyline, and "House of Cards" more or less a production of the Hollywood establishment (albeit Spacey and the awesome wing of said establishment), there were inevitably going to be some howlingly hilarious loopholes in how both are portrayed in the show. I've now completed my second viewing of season 2, and tracked down almost a dozen such faults that you can relive and cringe at again in the gallery below, including an IT pro's fatefully password-unprotected iPhone, the amazing iPad fingerprint cam, and the USB dongle of destiny.

On my first viewing, a lot of these problems jumped right out at me, but upon going through the episodes again, I gained more respect for the effort "House of Cards" puts forth in balancing realism with the visual appeal that seems to be a prerequisite for Hollywood hacker subplots.
Much of this was apparently thanks to Gregg Housh, a hacker of note in the 1990s who spent a little time in prison for those activities, and last year advised the show's producers on this season's hacker narrative.
"There are some concessions that had to be made for keeping things visually interesting, and some things where the story had to take precedence over what was most realistic from a tech standpoint, but nowhere near as many as I was fearing," Housh wrote in a Guardian piece about his feelings on the final product.

After reading about Housh's involvement in the show, other real-life parallels started to jump out at me. The fate of journalist Lucas Goodwin nearly mirrors that of real-life former Reuters social-media editor Matthew Keys. He was indicted last year on charges that he conspired with Anonymous hackers to break into the Web site of the Los Angeles Times.

Others, like Vice, have suggested that Orsay's character is similar to that of LulzSec hacker-turned-informant Hector Xavier Monsegur, aka "Sabu," whom I had a prolonged tweet war with back in 2011 when he was still believed to be an active hacktivist. However, while Sabu has come to be roundly detested among hackers for his role in assisting law enforcement, the Orsay character is clearly unhappy about being forced to inform, even going so far as to demand freedom for real-world friend-of-hackers Barrett Brown, who currently faces up to a century in prison.
All in all, I have to concur with Housh, and might go a bit further to declare that "House of Cards" has pulled off one of the better portrayals of tech in modern media. However, that's a really low bar, and I'm left with bated breath to see what will come out first: a third season of the show that does an even better job getting it right, or that awesome iPad camera that's also a fingerprint scanner.

You'll find the code on the iPhone of your head of IT, who fortunately doesn't password-protect the device.

(Credit: Video Screenshot by Leslie Katz/CNET)

Who needs 100-foot scuba limits with this 1,000-foot exosuit?

Recreational divers must not go deeper than 100 feet, but this special suit, on display at the American Museum of Natural History, allows safe diving for hours.

Diver Michael Lombardi tests out the "exosuit," which allows going to depths of 1,000 feet.

(Credit: American Museum of Natural History)
As anyone who's ever been a recreational scuba diver knows, diving beyond a depth of 100 feet requires special training. So imagine being able to go down to 1,000 feet and stay there for hours.
That's the goal of the deep-diving "exosuit," a "next-generation atmospheric diving system" that will be on display at the American Museum of Natural History through March 5.

The 6.5-foot-tall, 530-pound, hard-metal suit is designed to let a diver reach depths of 1,000 feet, where water pressure is 30 times that of the surface, and to conduct special scientific work there. Among those tasks, for which the suit will be used during the Stephen J. Barlow Bluewater Expedition this July, are things like imaging deep-water marine life with high-resolution underwater cameras, and sampling.

The exosuit is owned by the J.F. White Contracting Company, and the July expedition is meant to explore an area known as "The Canyons" off the coast of New England. There, depths drop to 10,000 feet. With the exosuit, scientists can study the so-called mesopelagic, or midwater, zone. According to a release about the museum exhibit, this zone is ideal because many different marine animals, including some that bioluminesce (using chemical reactions to generate visible light) pass vertically through it.

The suit will be used in conjunction with a special remotely operated vehicle known as the DeepReef-ROV, which can study bioluminescent and biofluorescent animal life in the deep.
To be sure, atmospheric suits like the exosuit have been in use for decades. But the hope is that the exosuit, which features four 1.6-horsepower thrusters and 18 rotary joints in the legs and arms, will allow scientists to broaden their ability to study the deep.

Tim Cook: Apple TV did over $1B in 2013 revenue

At Apple's annual gathering of shareholders, CEO Tim Cook said the product is more than a "hobby."

(Credit: Apple) CUPERTINO, Calif. -- While the iPhone and iPad have come to dominate Apple's business, the television has often been relegated to an afterthought for the company. So much for Apple TV being just a hobby, said Chief Executive Tim Cook.
"That hobby was over a billion dollars of revenue last year," Cook said during the company's annual meeting with shareholders here. "It's a little hard to call it a hobby anymore."
The billion-dollar figure includes content sales conducted by Apple on the platform -- like movies and TV shows -- and not just hardware sales of its set-top box. At Friday's meeting, Cook did not specify the breakdown between the two revenue streams.

Still, the milestone means the product is getting attention from consumers. A little over a year ago, Cook announced that in the first quarter of the 2013 fiscal year, the company sold more than 2 million Apple TVs, up from 1.4 million a year before. (Although it's worth noting that Apple's first quarter includes results from the holiday shopping season.)
The company also is said to be refreshing the product during the first half of this year, but the update is reportedly to enhance its content experience -- possibly adding a game center and a version of the App Store.

Still, a billion dollars is less than one percent of the company's total net sales last year. And the set-top box is far from what many fans have wanted for a long time -- a full-fledged Apple TV set. Cook has said that the company will be entering new product categories this year. And on Friday, he had a little fun with all the anticipation. "I'd like to unveil some new products today," he said, as an overflow room full of reporters gasped. "I was just kidding about that last part," he added, grinning.
But on the topic of innovation and research and development, Cook did say that the company has acquired 23 companies in the last 16 months. Thus far, the company's recent playbook has been to buy out smaller companies for technological gains, and Cook reiterated the point on Friday. "We're not in a race to pay the most. Not in a race to get the headline," he said, likely a veiled reference to Facebook's blockbuster acquisition of messaging service WhatsApp for as much as $19 billion. But he didn't rule out a splashy buy. "That doesn't mean we won't buy a big company tomorrow afternoon."

At the meeting, all of the motions proposed by Apple to shareholders were approved, while the motions proposed by individual investors were denied.
The gathering was originally billed in the press as a showdown between activist investor Carl Icahn and Apple over the company's buyback program. Icahn has been vocal about Apple repurchasing more of its stock. In December, he announced a nonbinding proposal for Apple shareholders to vote on a buyback at Friday's meeting.

But Icahn then announced earlier this month that he would pull the proposal, mainly because the Institutional Shareholder Services, a trade organization, urged shareholders to vote against it, and because Apple had increased the volume of its stock repurchasing. After investor disappointment over first-quarter results, Cook announced that the company had bought back $14 billion worth of shares in two weeks. The company is said to be on course to repurchase $32 billion by year's end, just $18 billion off Icahn's $50 billion sum.
Still, Cook said on Friday that the company is deliberating its buyback decisions, and will issue an update of its plans in the next 60 days.

But even without the Icahn drama, the meeting was not without its excitement. A group of Silicon Valley security guards -- including Apple's own -- held a protest outside the building demanding more secure contracts for the guards. The demonstration was just another example of the culture clash engulfing the tech industry in Silicon Valley and the Bay Area.

$7,000-per-month tech interns are making bank, says report

Glassdoor releases a list of the highest-paying companies for interns and (surprise, surprise) most of them are tech companies.

An Intel intern from 2012 from the group's "Call Me Maybe" video.

(Credit: Video screenshot by Amanda Kooser/CNET)
If you had to hazard a guess as to which company pays its interns the most, which would you pick? Google perhaps? Close. Maybe Twitter? Very close.
Twitter is in the Top 3, but the No. 1 company is probably not one you'll guess. It's Palantir Technologies, a Palo Alto, Calif.-based software and services company that largely works on government contracts.

According to a report released Friday by Glassdoor, an online jobs and career company, Palantir's average monthly base pay for an intern is $7,012. It's enough to make you think you've gone into the wrong field of work. Glassdoor's report was gathered from anonymous information provided by the site's users and is based on companies with at least 20 intern salary reports shared over the last two years.

Hot on the heels of Palantir comes VMware with an average salary of $6,966, followed by Twitter at $6,791, LinkedIn with $6,230, and Facebook at $6,213. Microsoft, Ebay, Google, Apple, Amazon, and Nvidia aren't too far behind. Intel might sound relatively stingy at $4,648 down in the 23rd spot -- until you compare it to Glassdoor's average pay calculation for all interns on its site, which lands between $2,400 and $3,100 per month.

Glassdoor also collected comments from interns about their jobs and working environments. A support engineer intern at Palantir had this to say: "Work is motivated by a real mission. Very few people are there just for money." A Microsoft Research intern lauded the housing, car rental, and relocation subsidies.
Perhaps the most interesting comment comes from a Yahoo Tech intern, who mentions "free lunch and snakes." That came from a former employee at Yahoo's Champaign, Ill., office. It's probably just an unfortunate typo -- snacks, perhaps? -- but some reptile fans may consider it a significant perk. Check out the full top-25 list below.

(Credit: Glassdoor)

Yahoo, ICQ chats still vulnerable to government snoops

Spy agencies and hackers at your local Starbucks can vacuum up Yahoo and ICQ chats and metadata about AOL's AIM users. These services are over a decade old -- why are they not fully encrypted?

In a test, CNET was able to intercept and read Yahoo instant messages because the company has still not turned on encryption. It's been at least 10 years since the security vulnerability became public.

(Credit: Declan McCullagh/CNET)
Nine months after Edward Snowden revealed extreme Internet surveillance by US and British intelligence agencies, some major technology companies have yet to take rudimentary steps to shield their users' instant messages from eavesdropping.

A CNET analysis shows that Yahoo and ICQ transmit the content of supposedly private instant messages in unencrypted form, exposing them to both government spies and malicious snoops on the same Wi-Fi network. AOL's AIM service encrypts content -- but leaks metadata about who's talking to whom.

These privacy problems were highlighted by a Guardian article Thursday, which revealed that spy agencies were eavesdropping on Yahoo's unencrypted video chats. A surveillance system code-named Optic Nerve "intercepted and stored the webcam images of millions of Internet users not suspected of wrongdoing," the paper said, citing documents provided by Snowden.
That was possible because Yahoo has lagged far behind rivals Google and Microsoft in adopting a standard technique known as SSL that scrambles information before it's transmitted. SSL and similar technologies, if implemented properly, are designed to be proof against even the NSA's aggressive attempts to vacuum up petabytes of Internet traffic.

"We have ample evidence now that Yahoo doesn't really care about security or the confidentiality of its customers' communications," said Chris Soghoian, principal technologist at the ACLU's Speech, Privacy and Technology Project. "Whether it's the lack of encryption in Webmail, or the video issue, Yahoo has ignored repeated warnings from researchers, from human rights activists."

Yahoo users' vulnerability to snoops has been public knowledge for at least a decade. A 2004 article (PDF) in Hakin9 magazine described how to intercept Yahoo messages using the tcpdump utility. "There is no encryption, not even scrambling of the packets content," Hakin9 concluded.
Four years later, CNET contacted Yahoo as part of a privacy survey we conducted of companies providing instant messaging services. Yahoo told us that it uses SSL only to scramble the user's password during the initial authentication, and acknowledged that "Yahoo Messenger does not use encryption for message delivery."

It took Snowden's revelations to spur the company's chief executive, Marissa Mayer, into sealing this gaping security hole. In a blog post last November, nearly half a year after the spy agency files began to leak, Mayer said that Yahoo will "offer users an option to encrypt all data flow to/from Yahoo by the end of Q1 2014." She stopped short of pledging that encryption would be turned on by default, however, a practice that Google's chat system and Skype have followed for over half a decade.
Yahoo has been equally sluggish in adopting encryption for Web e-mail: It finally activated HTTPS encryption for Yahoo Mail by default last month. By contrast, Google enabled HTTPS by default for Gmail in 2010, followed soon after by Hotmail. Facebook enabled encryption by default in 2012.
A Yahoo spokesman yesterday provided CNET with a statement saying: "We are committed to preserving our users' trust and security and continue our efforts to expand encryption across all of our services."

"The only reason they're encrypting e-mail with Webmail now was a front-page story in The Washington Post," said the ACLU's Soghoian. "It was only then, in response to that coverage, that Yahoo turned on SSL by default." That October 2013 article revealed the NSA's Special Source Operations branch collected more e-mail address books from Yahoo than from all other e-mail providers combined. (Gmail addresses were exposed because of Apple's lack of encryption in its Address Book app, a security oversight that Cupertino subsequently fixed.)
Even today, after Yahoo turned on encryption by default for Web-based e-mail (but not instant messaging), it's using older protocols with some known security vulnerabilities. Yahoo's servers also don't support forward secrecy, which would offer an extra layer of protection against government eavesdropping. Google and Twitter do.

ICQ messages were also unencrypted, as you can see in the above screen capture from the Wireshark packet analyzer. AOL's AIM client leaked metadata about who's talking to whom.

(Credit: Declan McCullagh/CNET)

 
How we conducted the tests
We tested whether encryption was used in five messaging clients: AOL's AIM, Apple's Messages app connecting to AIM, Google Hangouts, Mail.ru's ICQ, Microsoft's Skype, and Yahoo Messenger. Mail.ru, an Internet company in Russia, where ICQ remains quite popular, bought the service from AOL in 2010.

To perform the test, we used the Wireshark packet analyzer to intercept the communications flowing between a MacBook with OS X 10.9.1 and the remote servers that each service used.
Neither ICQ nor the Yahoo Messenger Protocol encrypted the content of the communications. That meant that when we sent a message, it was transmitted across the Internet in the clear.
AOL's AIM desktop app made unencrypted connections to api.aim.net that transmitted unique "to" and "from" identifiers. Even if the NSA and GCHQ can't decrypt the content, the unencrypted unique identifiers could add to the agencies' vast trove of metadata charting the social connections of US and other citizens.

AOL and Mail.ru did not respond to requests for comment.
Google Hangouts, Skype, and Messages, on the other hand, used SSL encryption consistently. This is what we expected -- it's been reported previously, and Skype encryption has been studied in some detail -- and our tests confirmed it.

We acknowledge limitations to this test. We didn't evaluate the quality of the SSL cipher suite or its implementation. Nor did we test for certificate exploits. And we didn't test all clients; it's possible that the Windows client for AIM, for instance, behaves differently. (The protocol used by AIM supports unencrypted chats, so if you use a third-party client like Adium, be sure your privacy preferences under user accounts are set to enable encryption.)

We also didn't test mobile apps, though previous reports have pointed to some problems. A 2012 paper (PDF) presented at the Network and Distributed System Security Symposium said that Voypi, an iPhone messaging app, fails to use encryption.
Thijs Alkemade, a computer science student and lead developer for the Adium instant messaging application, posted a Python script last fall to intercept WhatsApp messages. He warned users of WhatsApp, which Facebook subsequently bought for $16 billion:

You should assume that anyone who is able to eavesdrop on your WhatsApp connection is capable of decrypting your messages, given enough effort. You should consider all your previous WhatsApp conversations compromised. There is nothing a WhatsApp user can do about this but except to stop using it until the developers can update it.

An analysis of WhatsApp last week by information security firm Praetorian found encryption flaws, the company said, that "the NSA would love." WhatsApp has said it's fixing them.

Windows 8.1 update said to arrive when XP ends

Mark your calendars. Early April promises Windows updates as well as the end of support for Windows XP.

Windows 8.1 update will be more mouse friendly, among other tweaks.

(Credit: Dell)
April 8 is the day support for XP ends. Though it may be cold comfort for XP users, it may also be the day that Microsoft updates Windows 8.1.
Early April is shaping up to be a watershed of sorts for Windows users. At the same time that support for Windows XP is ending, the Windows 8.1 update is arriving to the general public, according to Neowin, citing a tweet from Supersite for Windows.
That date was also suggested earlier this month.
And April 8 is also the day for Microsoft's "Patch Tuesday," when it releases updates and fixes for a variety of Windows products.

But getting back to the Windows 8.1 update. A week before April 8, on April 2, MSDN users may be able to get the update, according to the same report.
Microsoft Vice President Joe Belfiore said at Mobile World Congress this week that the company wants to "make things better" for users without touchscreens.
Those changes may include new right-clickable context-sensitive menus, the ability to pin Metro apps to the Desktop task bar, and adding dedicated search and power buttons to the Start screen, as described earlier this month by ZDNet.

Meanwhile, the countdown for the end of support for XP continues. "There will be no more security updates or technical support for the Windows XP operating system," as Microsoft has made amply clear.

'Talking Angela' programmer talks hoaxes, AI mastery (Q&A)

Bruce Wilcox is a top chatbot programmer, and his Talking Angela app has been downloaded 57 million times, yet he's had to fight rumors that it's a front for pedophiles. He talked to CNET about fooling humans with AI.

Talking Angela

(Credit: Screenshot by CNET)
If you're not a parent or teenager, it's possible you first heard of Talking Angela because of a meme spreading virally on Facebook that it was a front for a pedophilia ring.
In fact, Talking Angela is a hugely popular artificial intelligence chatbot, a talking cat, aimed at teenagers, and the hoax has been fully repudiated. Available for iOS and Android, Talking Angela has been downloaded more than 57 million times. But thanks to word going around about the pedophilia hoax, the app jumped to No. 3 on the iTunes iPhone charts.

On the one hand, it's scandalous that someone was able to create a viral meme that claimed such a popular (and technologically impressive) project had such dark motives. But on the other, it's been somewhat of a boon for Out Fit7, Talking Angela's publisher. Perhaps more importantly, it's brought a lot of attention to the idea that it is really, really hard to create an intelligent chatbot, one that can conceivably fool a human being into thinking they're talking to another person.
But for Bruce and Sue Wilcox, the programmers behind Talking Angela, that's just another day on the job. The two, who run a small company called Brillig Understanding, are among the most accomplished chatbot programmers in the world.

They are two-time winners of the prestigious Loebner Prize (otherwise known as the World Turing Test competition), and their bots are the only ones to have qualified for the competition's finals each of the last four years.
This week, Bruce Wilcox sat down for an interview with CNET, the first time either of the pair has spoken up in the wake of the hoax. He talked over instant message, raising the obvious question: Was he real, or AI?
 
Q: Let's get that hard stuff out of the way first. What's the truth about whether Talking Angela is a front for pedophilia?
Bruce Wilcox: It's not hardly true. Angela has millions of people chatting with her every day. They couldn't hire enough pedophiles to do that chatting. She's strictly a conversation agent, residing locally on the phone.
 
Why do you think that hoax had legs? What is it about an AI chatbot that would lead some people to believe such a thing could be true?
Wilcox: Angela asks questions like what is your name (to address you) and what is your age (to keep children away from certain topics). Parents get nervous these days whenever any question is asked of their kids.

Brillig Understanding CEO Bruce Wilcox

(Credit: Brillig Understanding)  
So that's why you think some people were willing to believe that there was a dark motive behind Angela?
Wilcox: The more realistic an AI is, the more people will see their own fears and fantasies in what it says. Parents are hypersensitive these days. But there were obvious lies being said, so it was more than mere hypersensitivity. They made claims of things Angela said that we know she couldn't have said.
 
Such as? And why wouldn't she have been able to say them?
Wilcox: Angela asks about your family, but she doesn't memorize that you have a brother, so she wouldn't inquire about your brother later. And some things that have been attributed to her saying about tongues (in the sexual sense), she does not have in her repertoire.
What makes our technology so convincing is that, unlike most chatbots out there, which can make single quibbling responses to inputs, ours can lead conversations and find appropriate prescripting things to say much of the time. We care about backstory and personality and emotion, and strive to create true characters with a life of their own whose aim is to draw the user into their world. The characters are convincing because they are convinced of their own reality...Angela successfully captures the teen personality. For Angela it is all about her feelings. And Angela is selfish at times. And not only can she be rude but she can detect you being rude and react appropriately. This user is deeply involved in emotional reactions to Angela. That's what we strive for.
We won the 2010 Loebner Prize by fooling a human judge into thinking our chatbot was a human. It was accomplished in part via our attention to creating synthetic emotion.
 
What are the biggest challenges in creating the AI behind this project?
Wilcox: The vagaries of English language. We strive to recognize meaning, not just words. Plus, the depth of material you need to handle the long tail of all possible conversations that the user could initiate. We obviously can't handle everything, but we handle an awful lot. Here's an example of a prize-winning 15-minute conversation Angela had with a judge during the 2012 ChatbotBattles. It's an example of something which is "close" to great, with only minor flaws to reveal it's a chatbot.
We use ChatScript, an open-source natural-language engine I wrote. It's the most powerful tool out there for creating conversational agents.
 
What are the cues that I can use to know for sure that this conversation, which we're doing over instant-message, is with a human, and not with a chatbot?
Wilcox: You'd best ask things that computers are lousy at, like physical world inferencing. For example, "If I keep pouring coffee into my cup, what will happen to the book on the table near it?" Long sentences with complexity are also hard for determining meaning by computers.
At the World Turing Test competition, a judge asked, "If I stab you with a towel, will it hurt?"
 
And what was the answer?
Wilcox: We weren't ready for it. You never can be. So we did something useless like quibbling.
 
Are there specific challenges to creating AI aimed at children?
Wilcox: Absolutely. First, voice-to-text is really hard with kids' voices. Second, childrens' vocabularies are limited and limiting. And third, as an adult you can't just write what you would easily write and say. You have to scale it to a child's cognitive abilities. Angela wasn't so bad because she was an 18-year old voice, whereas, we're working with Geppetto Avatars on a children's health management app that's targeted for 6-year-olds, and it's been a real problem for us to think like a child and write for the child. The child's sense of humor is different from ours, and they love repetition.
 
What is the World Turing Test competition like?
Wilcox: It's a random mess. The qualifiers ask human knowledge questions like "which is bigger, a pine nut or a pine tree." And if Tom is taller than John who is taller than Sue, who is the shortest. The top four scores then get the human judges in competition, where they can do anything. Maybe conversation, maybe trying typos, trick questions, etc. And lots of random failures of hardware and protocol. Angela only came in second last year because a judge kept trying to use carriage returns to separate out the paragraphs, but because of our setting for mobile, she responded to empty lines with more chat. It was overwhelming the poor guy.
Suzette, Rozette, Angela, and Rose -- our bots -- are the only ones to have qualified every year for the last four years.
 
What's a favorite moment from one of those competitions?
Wilcox: Fooling the human judge in 2010. He was a computer professor, and was being very lazy. He started by asking who the bot was voting for in the election. Implied, but not stated was that he meant the upcoming California gubernatorial election. Suzette kept trying to avoid and dodge, but he kept repeating ad nauseum, often by cut and paste. She detected his repeats and got madder and madder, then bored. He got confused and voted for her. He could have merely asked tough questions like we discussed above, but he never did.
 
How do you think your bots have changed the way people interact with AI?
Wilcox: The more our bots are out there, the more people are willing to suspend disbelief and believe they are talking to a person. Even when they know they're not, they enjoy the conversation. Now we're working to bring them into the real world by working with robotics companies to give the bots personality and voice control.
 
How has spending so much time over the last few years working with AI and chatbots affected the way you interact with people in the real world?
Wilcox: There are people out there? Nowadays we constantly notice conversation, and conversational conventions and dynamics. And we strive mightily to share and go back and forth instead of just doing monologues. We are very aware that a conversation is a shared construct.

The P-8A Poseidon adventure begins for the Navy

There's a new sub-hunter in town: the US Navy's P-8A Poseidon, just now taking to the air to replace the venerable P-3C Orion. And soon it'll have a drone deputy.

Torpedo away! A P-8A Poseidon tests out its armaments systems in a February 2012 evaluation flight.

(Credit: US Navy photo by Greg L. Davis)
The US Navy likes to dip into Greek and Roman mythology to name the aircraft it puts on the front lines of maritime patrol missions and antisubmarine warfare.
Once there was the P-2 Neptune, which went into service not long after World War II and has long since been retired. The early 1960s brought the P-3 Orion, the scions of which are still on active duty today. Now, to replace the venerable Orion, comes the P-8A Poseidon.
At the beginning of December 2013, a half-dozen Poseidons arrived at Kadena Air Base on the island of Okinawa for the aircraft's first operational deployment, on duty with the Navy's Patrol Squadron 16 (VP 16) in support of the 7th Fleet. To date, Boeing has delivered 13 of the aircraft, which are based on its commercial 737-800 design. (Similarly, the new KC-46A Tanker aerial-refueling aircraft, which is to replace the older KC-135 Stratotankers and KC-10 Extenders, is based on the commercial Boeing 767 design.)

And more are on the way: a few days ago, Boeing said that it had received a $2.4 billion contract from the Navy to build an additional 16, and to move to full production from the earlier status of preliminary low-rate production. That puts the big defense contractor under contract so far to deliver 53 of the P-8A Poseidons. Eventually, the Navy aims to acquire a grand total of 117.
The role of the P-8A is long-range antisubmarine and antisurface warfare, and for good measure it can also do more general intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) missions. The Navy says that the jet-powered P-8A is significantly quieter than the propeller-driven P-3C (the most modern version of the P-3), requires less maintenance, and provides more on-station time (meaning, essentially, that it can hang out longer in a given patrol area).

It's the rare new piece of military technology that comes on the scene without some controversy. (F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, we're looking at you.) In the case of the P-8A Poseidon, the head of the Pentagon's testing office has pointed to a number of "deficiencies" in the P-8A that would make the aircraft, at least early on, "not effective for the intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance mission and...not effective for wide area anti-submarine search," according to a prepublication version of an annual report on weapons systems seen by Bloomberg News.
A Navy spokeswoman cited by Bloomberg sought to lay those concerns to rest: "Most issues cited have been collectively identified," she said, and the Navy has developed "software upgrades to correct deficiencies."

For the foreseeable future, the Navy won't be relying on the P-8A Poseidon alone for sub-hunting and other patrol missions. The P-3C Orion will remain deployed for a transition phase while the Poseidon squadrons get up to full strength.

And soon enough, too, the Poseidon, which has a crew of nine, will have a new partner in the air -- an unmanned one. It'll be Northrop Grumman's MQ-4C Triton, a drone aircraft adapted from the established Global Hawk, intended to share the work load the Poseidon. Eventually, there will be 68 of the Triton aircraft -- and there's that Greek mythology thing again -- but for now, that's still a long way off. As of the start of this year, Northrop Grumman and the Navy had conducted nine test flights of the Triton.

Colbert turns his funny gun on Snowden in RSA keynote

No joke: Stephen Colbert's not a fan of Edward Snowden's whistleblowing, the political satirist tells a packed house at the closing RSA Conference keynote speech.

Stephen Colbert kept San Francisco's Moscone Center audience of around 6,000 laughing as he mocked the state of computer security and expressed a vote of no-confidence in Edward Snowden on Feb. 28, 2014.

(Credit: Seth Rosenblatt/CNET)
SAN FRANCISCO -- Don't mistake this for something out of the mouth of Stephen Colbert's ultra-conservative, Bill O'Reilly-modeled TV persona: The popular funnyman actually believes that former NSA contractor and domestic spying whistleblower Edward Snowden should come back to the US and face trial.
In front of more than 6,000 people at the RSA Conference's closing keynote at the Moscone Center here, Colbert had the audience roaring within minutes over his jokes about computer security and encryption.

Colbert described the conference jokingly as a place where the best security experts "gather, talk shop, and breed with each other. That's called exchanging private keys."
He quickly changed the subject to address the petition that demanded that he join the RSA Conference boycott over the conference's parent company colluding with the National Security Agency.

Colbert said he had signed a contract with RSA that he wasn't going to break, in part because, he was "paid in Bitcoin, from Mt.Gox" -- a company that has now filed for bankruptcy protection.
Then he got serious. There was "no evidence in Reuters' story," he said of the original report that broke the news about RSA's ties to the NSA.
"Documents leaked by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden show that the NSA created and promulgated a flawed formula for generating random numbers to create a 'back door' in encryption products," wrote reporter Joseph Menn in the story.

Menn then cited two anonymous sources who said they were familiar with an alleged $10 million contract between the NSA and the RSA division that promoted the flawed encryption as the default encryption to use in RSA's BSafe encryption tool.
While RSA told Menn and later CNET in a statement that it "does not design or enable any back doors" in its products, that word choice leaves wiggle room for a weaker or flawed encryption algorithm to be left in place over better encryption choices.

"We the people voted for the Patriot Act. We voted for the people who reauthorized it, and re-reauthorized it. The American people have spoken," he said. "You don't change horses in mid-wiretap."
--Stephen Colbert

Colbert interwove jokes about the situation with seriousness. "I hope RSA took the money. If they didn't, they should have. We all have Uncle Sam's cameras up our junk. Shouldn't someone be getting paid for it?" he quipped.
But he also said over the course of the 45-minute keynote that Americans have proven "time and time again" that they support the policies in the Patriot Act that allowed expanded surveillance of American citizens.
"We the people voted for the Patriot Act. We voted for the people who reauthorized it, and re-reauthorized it. The American people have spoken," he said. "You don't change horses in mid-wiretap."

Colbert joked that the Patriot Act-authorized policies as "enhanced liberty," similar to how "enhanced interrogation" lets you "drink all the water you want."
He didn't have much love for the NSA either, pointing out the ridiculousness that a "sophisticated agency" like the NSA "can get pwned by a 29-year-old with a thumb drive."

Stephen Colbert listened intently to a woman in the audience and projected on-screen behind him ask about his dislike of whistleblower Edward Snowden, in San Francisco on Feb. 28, 2014.

(Credit: Seth Rosenblatt/CNET)

He explained the NSA's tortured logic: "We have solid proof that this program saved zero lives. It was designed to root out terrorists. It shouldn't bother you if you're not hiding anything, and since you can't hide anything from the NSA, nothing is bothering you."
He closed his monologue by saying that he was going to turn his back on the audience for 30 seconds while they cheered. The crowd obliged.

At the following question-and-answer session, Colbert interacted more playfully and more forthrightly than might have been expected for such a popular TV personality.
One woman asked him what the meaning of life was. He replied, "42!" to the delight of Douglas Adams fans in the audience. Another fan set him up by saying that Jon Stewart has had Neil deGrasse Tyson on 10 times, while Colbert has only hosted the popular astronomer 9 times.
"Why do you hate space?" came the fan's punchline.
"I had [Tyson] on first," said Colbert, "but he demoted Pluto, so he's not getting a 10th."

"I hope RSA took the money. If they didn't, they should have. We all have Uncle Sam's cameras up our junk. Shouldn't someone be getting paid for it?"
--Stephen Colbert

Some audience members were surprised by Colbert's take on the Snowden situation and asked more serious questions.
When asked whether it was what Snowden did, or how he did it, that had turned Colbert against him, Colbert was silent for a minute.

When he spoke, he said that his problem was that Snowden released too much top secret information to the world about how the US conducts its spying practices.
"Why, if Snowden was concerned with letting us know how we are spied on, why did he let us know how we spy on other countries? I think we should spy on other countries," Colbert said. Snowden, he said, should be taken to court over the espionage charges.
This wasn't the first time that Colbert has expressed a lack of support for Snowden, but it was his most vocal expression of anti-Snowden sentiment to date.

At the end, Colbert said that the "greatest threat to our security" was not knowing where political money came from, and not voting. But when it comes to doing the right thing for your country, as Snowden has stated was his reason for leaking the NSA documents, Colbert said that you must face the consequences of the law.
It's not often that Colbert stops being satirical, but when he does, he does it to express a closely held value. Unfortunately for his fans, this is one value that they all might not agree with.

Google Glass updates slow down ahead of KitKat upgrade

The electronic eyewear will be "smoother" and "better" after moving to the latest Android operating system version, Google says.

(Credit: Google)

Google took a break from its monthly update cycle for the Google Glass Explorer Edition, saying it's working on a bigger change to the Android 4.4 KitKat version of Android.
Google's Teresa Zazenski announced the change on the private forum for owners of the electronic eyewear, according to Glass Almanac. Google didn't want to publish an update that "isn't ready for prime time," she said Friday, but what's coming next will make Glass smoother and give it a better foundation for other changes:

The pace isn't changing and we're still committed to regular updates for Glass -- even if they're not monthly anymore, because bigger updates just take more time. In fact, we're working to move Glass from Ice Cream Sandwich to Kit Kat to make the Glass experience smoother and just plain better. This change will make it easier for us to bring you more useful updates and it's something we're really excited about. Developers, we know you're gonna be excited, too. But it's also something that we don't want to send to you all until it's just right.

Google introduced KitKat with its Nexus 5 in 2013. Many of its features are specific to mobile phones and tablets, but underneath, the operating system update also brings under-the-covers improvements to multitasking and user-interface responsiveness.

Apple announces CarPlay to bring the iPhone experience to your next car's dashboard

What once was iOS in the Car is now CarPlay. It's being exhibited at the Geneva International Auto Show where Ferrari, Mercedes-Benz and Volvo will all have models on display.

(Credit: Apple)

We've been covering Apple's plans for iOS in the Car quite closely, and now the final product is being shown to the world -- and given a new name. Gone with that mouthful, in with the new moniker: CarPlay. (Not to be confused with a Monster product by the same name.) The concept stays the same: replication of a simplified iOS interface into a touchscreen display in the car, plus extensive voice command. As we saw in earlier videos, the focus here is simplicity and safety, with no complex interface elements and, seemingly, no virtual keyboards.

 

  (Credit: Apple)

Instead, many actions will be made easier thanks to some intelligent coding. For example, CarPlay can look at your calendar and emails to anticipate upcoming meetings and appointments, suggesting directions to the appropriate destinations. Similarly, Siri can read any incoming text messages and let you dictate a response. Calling, of course, is possible as well, through voice command.

And, it wouldn't be an iPhone experience without music, and you'll be able to listen to music and podcasts plus Spotify and iHeartRadio. However, those appear to be the only non-Apple apps that will be available through CarPlay, at least for now. It remains to be seen whether there will be an API exposed that will allow other third-party developers to get in on the fun. But, we expect to learn quite a bit more between now and when the first cars hit dealers later this year from manufacturers like Ferrari, Honda, Hyundai, Jaguar, Mercedes-Benz, and Volvo. (Just about every other marque will follow suit next year.)

 

(Credit: Apple)

And, to be clear, this experience is completely driven by the phone, more specifically an iPhone 5, 5s, or 5c. The cars themselves won't be running iOS, just feeding the signal provided by the phones, which will be connected to the car via Lightning cable.

Google denies bidding on WhatsApp

Android and Chrome chief Sundar Pichai refutes reports that Google competed with Facebook to buy WhatsApp.

Sundar Pichai, Google's VP in charge of Android and Chrome.

(Credit: James Martin/CNET) Google's Sundar Pichai has denied at Mobile World Congress that his company bid on WhatsApp, the popular mobile instant messaging and SMS app.
Pichai, senior vice president in charge of Chrome, Android, and apps, said in Barcelona this week that it was "simply untrue" that Google had offered to buy WhatsApp, reported the Telegraph.

An earlier report indicated that Google was outbid by Facebook for WhatsApp, which Mark Zuckerberg permanently friended for $19 billion. Google had reportedly offered $10 billion, according to Fortune.

Though there may not have been a formal bid from Google for WhatsApp to compete with the Facebook offer, that doesn't mean Google wasn't interested in WhatsApp. AppleInsider reported in 2013 that WhatsApp was asking Google for $1 billion, although WhatsApp denied this. If those negotiations in fact did take place, they obviously fell through.
Another report indicated that Google CEO Larry Page met with WhatsApp co-founder and CEO Jan Koum in an attempt to convince him not to hook up with Zuckerberg.
Google declined to comment on the situation.

First Ubuntu phones go on sale in fall, Mark Shuttleworth reveals

We caught up with Ubuntu founder Mark Shuttleworth to find out why he chose to partner with lesser-known manufacturers Meizu and BQ.

 

Canonical and Ubuntu founder Mark Shuttleworth.

(Credit: Stephen Shankland/CNET) BARCELONA, Spain -- The first Ubuntu phones will launch in the autumn, and will be "astonishingly great in some areas" and "weak in others" -- but the software "outperforms" Microsoft, according to Ubuntu founder Mark Shuttleworth.
Ubuntu-powered versions of the Meixu MX3 and BQ Aquaris smartphones will debut in the third quarter of this year. I sat down with Shuttleworth, the face of British company Canonical, the people behind Ubuntu, at phone and tablet extravaganza Mobile World Congress, where he revealed why Ubuntu is launching with partners Meizu and BQ.
"Our first generation of phones will be astonishingly great in some areas," Shuttleworth explained, "but will come across as weak in others. So if we get them into the right hands, people can celebrate the things we're really great at while we buff up the app catalogue and improve in other areas.
"We won't have 650,000 apps in the app store, so we'll get the phone in the hands of people who don't care about that first."

So why Meizu and BQ, names which may be unfamiliar to many phone fans? "We are at board level with quite a few household names," said Shuttleworth, "but with much larger institutions we're going to be a smaller part of the strategic picture when we launch. So we wanted to go out with two companies that are the right size to make a material commitment, and also are two companies that are very passionate about placing the right device in the right hands...companies that are established at getting into difficult, entrenched, or congested markets with something that feels fresh for the right people at the right time -- and both of them have that.
"BQ in Europe has taken good share by concentrating on design, by knowing very clearly who they're designing for, and then thinking very carefully about the retail strategy.

"And Meizu in China, again, they've really cracked into the market by building loyalty, they've identified a particular segment, and they've been really great at working to do something those guys are passionate about. They call that segment 'digital lifestyle': typically younger, typically edgier, typically more conscious of what's new and cool -- and less likely to buy from a bulk manufacturer."
The two phones will be available to order from anywhere in the world, but they're built by local, rather than global, brands. "China is super-important," Shuttleworth said. "Europe is interesting as well. We have carriers in the US, but we'll focus on these two markets, these two manufacturers for this year and this launch."

What do the phones offer? "The hardware is pretty standout," he said. "Both companies have access to pretty top-notch design and manufacturing -- and they care about it. What you care about goes into the product, and both of them really care about the feel of the device. I think we'll be outstanding in several areas of the UX: A lot of people say compared to Android it feels really beautiful, compared to Firefox it feels really fluid and fast. So I think we'll stand out."

Appsolutely fabulous

And how is Ubuntu encouraging the app situation in the meantime? "We make it easy for app developers to care about Ubuntu," Shuttleworth said. "If you care about something but it's hard, you can't do anything; if it's easy, you can do something about it. We've refined it so that any app developer team can have one or two people who really care about Ubuntu, and we've done that by looking at the toolsets people use to develop for Android and iOS and made sure we're well lined-up to make it easy to use those toolsets...We're perfectly aligned with Google and Apple so if you've got an HTML5 app that works with Android or iOS, it will work with Ubuntu, with only a tiny amount of friction that just one person can take care of.
"In the native applications, we've got pretty good traction in gaming because lots of games companies are targeting Ubuntu. In productivity apps, we're looking at ways to make it easy for Android apps to come to Ubuntu. And we've got a nice big catalogue of apps that are Java apps and Linux apps."

Livin' on the Edge

One phone we won't see become a reality anytime soon is the Ubuntu Edge, which Canonical attempted to crowdfund last year -- to the tune of an eye-watering $32 million. Said Shuttleworth: "Our story is of convergence, and manufacturers said, 'There's no market for that.' We said, 'You can test that.' They said, 'You test it.' So we did! They were completely surprised by the amount of attention we received."

So the campaign may have sent a message to manufacturers, but Shuttleworth doesn't consider it a success. "I didn't set out to miss the target...We missed by a record. We set a record with what we raised, but we missed by a record too! It's clear that Kickstarter for hardware is very challenging."

Catching Firefox

This time last year, we voted the then-named Ubuntu Touch as our best product of MWC 2013, narrowly squeezing out Firefox OS. Since then, Firefox has popped up on an assortment of phones, while actual Ubuntu hardware is conspicuous by its absence. But Shuttleworth doesn't want to rush into anything: "Sometimes it's worth getting in fast, and sometimes it's worth getting it right. I think the most fatal thing for a manufacturer, early on in the adoption of a new product, is high return rates at low margins. Word on the street (about Firefox) is high return rates, low margins."

"It would be lovely to have a carrier come to us and say, "OK, we're just going to swamp the market with your phones," but the blowback, if 40 percent of those devices come back, would be catastrophic. Catastrophic. If you have a manufacturer on a 5 percent margin, and half the devices come back, you've got a massive loss. You can try and refurbish them, recycle, but it's a real mess.
"That's led us to be very careful about our launch partners, perhaps taking a little longer to refine the design, and the feedback that we get is that it's worth doing that. I don't think we'll regret that thoughtfulness."

Ultimately, Ubuntu is about convergence: the same operating system seamlessly working across devices, from PC to tablet to smartphone and beyond. "There are lots of bright people who have built good mobile experiences," said Shuttleworth. "I think what's profoundly different about ours is it's part of this convergence family. We've significantly raised the bar for people who have that vision.
"Microsoft has that vision: that you can have a family of interfaces that give you the ability to use different devices with a common theme and common values...Of all people I can appreciate how difficult it must have been for Microsoft, but I still think we've outperformed them in terms of bringing that convergence story to be a reality.

"This is not the end of the disruptions: As we move into a wearable era, the story that we've been telling -- of personal computing co-opting all of the glass around you in appropriate ways -- becomes the interesting story. At its heart you've got to have a platform that appropriates whatever's around it. That's the story we've been consistently building towards."

Google Glass blamed for melee in SF bar

Questions of privacy arise after a woman says she was "verbally and physically assaulted" for wearing the device in a San Francisco bar.

 Google co-founder Sergey Brin wearing Google Glass.

(Credit: James Martin/CNET)
It's likely this story is one of the first of many similar incidents to come: a person walks into a bar wearing Google Glass and gets booted by annoyed patrons.

Such is the case of tech writer Sarah Slocum, who also alleges she was robbed and assaulted.
Slocum was hanging out at the gritty rock bar Molotov's in San Francisco's Lower Haight neighborhood last Friday night showing her friends the $1,500 Google Glass she had been loaned, according to CBS San Francisco. When she demonstrated the video function, two women apparently accosted her and a man tore the wearables from her face -- hence, mayhem ensued.

"OMG so you'll never believe this but...I got verbally and physically asaulted[sic] and robbed last night in the city, had things thrown at me because of some wanker Google Glass haters, then some *bleeeeeeeeeep* tore them off my face and ran out with them then and when I ran out after him his *bleeeeeeep* friends stole my purse, cellphone walet[sic] and everything," Slocum posted on her Facebook page.
Slocum got her Glass back but wasn't able to recover her purse and phone, according to CBS San Francisco.
The point of tension at Molotov's was the fact that Slocum was possibly recording people with Glass without their permission -- an issue that has come up repeatedly since the Web giant unveiled the device.

Google Glass is the company's foray into a wearable computer. The device comes in the form of eyeglasses that can record videos, take photos, chat, get directions, look up facts on the Web, and more. Last year, a few thousand people were able to get their hands on Glass, but it hasn't yet been mass distributed. Even with a small amount of users, drivers have already been arrested for wearing Glass and casinos and some bars have banned the device.

While many people are wowed by the technology behind Glass, opposition against the device appears to be growing. One Web site called "Stop The Cyborgs" was founded in response to Glass, and other wearables, and the issues they present when it comes to privacy.
"Wearable devices socially normalise ubiquitous surveillance," the site writes. "That is they create a society where we expect to be recorded, where every moment to is shared, documented and data-mined."

For its part, Google is trying to train Glassers on best practices when it comes to public use of the device. Last week, the company released a dos and don'ts guide for Glass use. Some of the guidelines include asking for permission to use the device in public, don't expect to wear Glass and be ignored, and don't be "creepy or rude (aka, a 'Glasshole')."

Get smart looks with the Weon Glasses (hands-on)

 

The Weon Glasses feature an LED light for discrete notifications.

(Credit: Brian Bennett/CNET) BARCELONA, Spain--Want eye wear that connect to your smartphone but don't relish the prospect of looking like a glasshole? Perhaps the Weon glasses from Ion Eyewear are more your speed. Essentially a standard eyeglass frame with one arm hollowed out to hide an electronics module, the Weon blinks a color LED light when notifications hit your phone.

The company behind the device, Ion Eyewear envisions the Weon as the perfect solution for discrete mobile notifications. I got a chance to see a prototype of the Weon Glasses, made by a 3D printer no less, at MWC 2014. Though the gadget I handled was clearly roughly crafted, Ion Eyewear told me the final product will be manufactured by a professional Italian eyeglass maker.

Smart looks with smartphone alerts.

(Credit: Brian Bennett/CNET)

Indeed the focus of the Weon are the normal eyeglass-wearing public, not technology evangelists or early adapters--the sort who drop $1,500 on Google Glass. That's why Ion thinks it has a winner with the Weon, which at first glance appear conventional but provide a conduit to smartphone alerts. Connecting to iOS devices via wireless Bluetooth, you can set the Weon's LED light to glow in a rainbow of colors through its companion app. Users also have the ability to set color-coded alerts

Use the app to set color-coded alerts.

(Credit: Brian Bennett/CNET)

Another slick feature is the app's radar mode which pings the Weon Glasses to locate it. Hopefully that'll help you find your frames when they disappear behind the couch or under the bed mysteriously. Interested in owning a set of Weon Glasses? Ion Eyewear expects its product to hit American and European markets in May 2015 for 129 euro ($129).

New 'Godzilla' already gets my roar of approval

The first full-length trailer for the new "Godzilla" is out, and Crave writer Amanda Kooser, a longtime admirer of the beast, hopes it lives up to its monstrous legacy.

Looks like a big monster is in town.

(Credit: Video screenshot by Amanda Kooser/CNET)
You've probably heard there's a new "Godzilla" coming, and the pointy fella's not looking to give humanity a hug. The last time this happened on a large scale, with the 1998 "Godzilla" remake, I yawned, dragged my butt over to the theater to watch Matthew Broderick go to battle, and left feeling thoroughly unimpressed.

I have memories of weekend mornings as a child, hiding behind a pillow as my brother and I watched old black-and-white monster movies on television. "The Deadly Mantis" was particularly terrifying, but I always got a thrill when spiny-backed Godzilla showed up, rising out of the waves, hauling a desperate nuclear legacy behind him. It didn't matter if he was stomping on cities or going at it with Mothra. Godzilla was a star of my childhood movie memories.

The poster for the 2014 "Godzilla." (Click to enlarge.)

(Credit: Warner Bros.)
It's hard for slick modern films with overloaded GGI graphics to rekindle the visceral sensations of watching these movies as a kid. But the trailer for the new "Godzilla" is as close as I've come since I reached adulthood.

There are some interesting choices going on in the trailer, not the least of which is Bryan Cranston's hirsute head. As a resident of Albuquerque and a "Breaking Bad" fan, I have an immediate fondness for any production Cranston is in. I have a sort of blind faith that he'll pick a solid script and that "Godzilla" will be good based solely on his decision to show up for filming.

Cranston is all over the trailer. He's growling, "You're not fooling anybody when you say what happened was a natural disaster. You're lying!" Shivers. There's something rising up out the water. The torch arm has been ripped from the Statue of Liberty. There's a big fat reference to the original 1954 film. There's a nuclear explosion, so we know it's not going to leave that crucial part of the legend out of the mix. These are all promising signs.

It doesn't look like there will be any scrimping on the special effects. We see CGI all over the place in the ruined cityscapes and airplane crashes, but I'm fostering a belief that it will all be in the service of a strong core story with a human connection I'll actually care about. Because, Bryan Cranston.

The trailer could have played coy with us. It could have gone all "Cloverfield," but instead we get a pretty good glimpse at Godzilla's screaming maw. This is totally the right call, because everybody knows what Godzilla looks like. There's no use in trying to hide it.
My "Godzilla" optimism could turn out to be misplaced, but my hopes for this movie are running strong. We could just look at this as another dark reboot in the ongoing trend of dark reboots, a la "Batman Begins." But the thing is, it's hard to get much darker than the original 1954 Japanese "Godzilla." I'm not talking about the re-cut 1956 Americanized version with Raymond Burr, which was released as "Godzilla, King of the Monsters!"

Before the new film comes out on May 16, it's worth going back to the beginning, which I plan to do. It's worth revisiting the fear, the sense of uncontrolled power, and the aftermath of nuclear scars left on Japan, all expressed by a beast that rose out of the sea and broke through the fragile constructs of mankind. These thematic goals may be too lofty for a Hollywood blockbuster, but I hope the new "Godzilla" at least strives to touch that primal part of us that still wonders what lurks deep beneath the waves.

Apple finally fixes 'gotofail' OS X security hole

After a multiday delay that irked users, Apple has released a system software update for OS X Mavericks that fixes what's become known as the "gotofail" security vulnerability.

An excerpt from Apple's published source code. Note the repeated "goto fail" lines.

Apple has finally fixed a serious OS X security vulnerability that had left millions of users exposed to potential eavesdropping or account hijacking.

In a terse note this morning accompanying a system software update, the company acknowledged that "an attacker" could "capture or modify data" transferred with Safari, Mail, iCloud and other Apple-created applications even though the communication streams were supposed to be securely encrypted.
The security vulnerability quickly became known as the "gotofail" bug after a review of Apple's publicly posted code showed an errant duplicate statement created the glitch. Apple previously released a fix for iOS devices Friday.

By not releasing the iOS and OS X fixes simultaneously, Apple left laptop and desktop users vulnerable during that time -- and security experts aghast at the company's delays. Ryan Lackey, a longtime Apple user who founded CryptoSeal, said on Twitter yesterday that: "Whoever at Apple decided to wait 4+ days for 10.9.2 to patch the OSX vulnerability needs to no longer be in that position."

The security vulnerability arose out of Apple's custom implementation of a security standard known as SSL/TLS. By including the "goto fail" line twice in a row, the normal error check for some types of encryption signatures fails.

It did not, however, affect software that does not rely on Apple's custom implementation of SSL/TLS. Google's Chrome and Mozilla's Firefox browser, for instance, do not have this vulnerability.
This is not merely a hypothetical security hole. Aldo Cortesi, a New Zealand security consultant, posted a version of the mitmproxy utility that gives access to encrypted traffic when, he said, the computer is using "Apple's broken implementation" of SSL/TLS. Cortesi added: "It's difficult to over-state the seriousness of this issue. With a tool like mitmproxy in the right position, an attacker can intercept, view and modify nearly all sensitive traffic."

Adam Langley, a Google software engineer who has worked on Chrome's network stack, wrote in a blog post that: "Since this is in SecureTransport, it affects iOS from some point prior to 7.0.6 (I confirmed on 7.0.4) and also OS X prior to 10.9.2 (confirmed on 10.9.1)."

See the Samsung Galaxy S5's heart rate monitor in action

Here's how to put your finger on the pulse of your own pulse, right from Samsung's next superphone.

Survey your health on using the Samsung Galaxy S5's built-in heart-rate monitor.

(Credit: Sarah Tew/CNET) 

BARCELONA, Spain -- Exercise aficionados who want to log their heart-rate after a workout and even in between have a new tool in the Samsung Galaxy S5.

Using it is as simple as selecting the heart-rate monitor icon from within Samsung's newly-updated S Health 3.0 app, which comes preloaded in the Galaxy S5. Then, you place your index finger on the center of the flash module, just to the right of the flash.

The app wants you to hold your finger in place for several seconds, while holding still and shutting your yap as the monitor calculates. Your results don't mean a lot on their own, but when you track your heart rate over time, you can watch your progress as your blood pressure rises and drops.