Posts Tagged ‘point’
Worried Who’s Watching Your Web Browsing? Adafruit’s Onion Pi Tor Proxy Project Creates A Private, Portable Wi-Fi Access Point
Author: Rod Sutherland
Adafruit Industries has put together a weekend project for people worried the NSA is watching how many reruns of Seinfeld they watch on their tablet. The Onion Pi Tor Proxy is a weekend project that uses the Raspberry Pi microcomputer, along with a USB WiFi adapter and Ethernet cable to create “a small, low-power and portable privacy Pi” for using with portable or other computing devices (e.g. your work laptop) that can’t otherwise run the anonymising Tor network.
In the Onion Pi configuration, the Pi creates a secure access point which automatically routes any web browsing through Tor’s distributed network of relays. The Tor network is designed to disrupt web surveillance by preventing web snoopers from learning which sites you visit, and also the sites you visit from learning your physical location. It does this by ensuring every Internet packet goes through three layers of relays before going on to its intended destination. Hence Tor’s many layered onion motif.
Adafruit says the Onion Pi is good for those who…
…want to browse anonymously on a netbook, tablet, phone, or other mobile or console device that cannot run Tor and does not have an Ethernet connection. If you do not want to or cannot install Tor on your work laptop or loan computer. If you have a guest or friend who wants to use Tor but doesn’t have the ability or time to run Tor on their computer, this gift will make the first step much easier.
Getting the Onion Pi access point up and running means plugging the Ethernet cable into any Internet access point and powering up the Pi via its micro USB cable plugged into your laptop/the wall adapter. The Pi will then create the Onion Pi access point. Connect to that for a less NSA-friendly browsing session.
That said, Adafruit’s Onion Pi page does contain caveats regarding exactly how anonymous this set-up is — noting: “We can’t guarantee that it is 100% anonymous and secure! Be smart & paranoid about your TOR usage.”
Other Adafruit tips for keeping your web browsing on the down-low include:
- deleting and blocking your browser cache, history & cookies — and/or using a browser that offers anonymous sessions
- avoiding logging into existing accounts with personally identifying information
- using SSL to end-to-end encrypt communications — NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden has also said encryption works
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PQI Power Drive merges power bank, card reader and wireless access point into one
Author: Matthew Baker
After showing off its USB OTG accessories and NFC flash drive, PQI decided to tease us with its unannounced Power Drive that was sat quietly in a corner at Computex. Much like the Air Pen launched last November, this upcoming device acts as a portable wireless access point with storage expansion, meaning you can share an RJ45 network connection and your files over WiFi. But what’s new is that not only is the RJ45 port collapsible to reduce device thickness, there’s now also a standard SD card slot in addition to the old microSD slot. Better yet, as the name suggests, the Power Drive can also be used as a USB power bank to charge up other devices, making this PQI’s most versatile WiFi product yet. Alas, details are light on the specs, so stay tuned for its announcement at some point in Q4 this year.
Filed under: Peripherals, Wireless, Storage
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Google Glass From A Child’s Point Of View
Author: Tiffany Shoman
Kudos to this guy for putting his $ 1500 glasses on a tiny clumsy human.
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Insane Syrofoam Cup Art Drawn With Ball Point Pen
Author: Christen Arquette
This is the styrofoam cup some guy drew on while waiting for his car to be repaired at the dealership. Me? I generally see exactly what they have in the snack equipment, make a cup of bad coffee, then sit and think about all the different means I ‘d rather die rather of sitting there waiting. You ‘d be amazed how lots of I can come up with.
I entered to the car dealership for my free of cost oil modification and saw this cup sitting there. The cashier stated that a boy had can be found in to have actually some work done and it was visiting take about 3 hours. “I’ll just doodle” he said, and got a ball point and a mug.
Man, I want I could captivate myself just doodling for 3 hours directly. Regretfully, I’m simply a sad bastard slave to modern technology. If I don’t have my phone with me I generally panic and start breaking things like a pet whose owner simply left them home alone for the first time.
Hit the jump for shots of the whole interior and outdoor.
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Falling iPad Mini Demand Claims Show Why Watching Suppliers For Apple Success Misses The Point
Author: James Cliff
This week, Bloomberg sparked a number of headlines with reports that iPad mini demand was failing based on supplier Pegatron’s earnings numbers as revealed at an investor conference. Those claims were later refuted by Pegatron CEO Jason Cheng, who argued that Bloomberg’s Tim Culpan had misquoted him to reach his conclusion about iPad mini numbers.
The problem here is one that comes up repeatedly for Apple watchers, namely that of trying to divine from scattered sources what the future holds for the iPhone maker. Reports of slowdowns, layoffs or weak fiscal results from any number of supplier companies, including Pegatron, Foxconn and Sharp have bloggers feverishly pounding keys, predicting dire straits for Apple to come. The problem is, these have never been a very strong indicator of what’s actually going on with Cupertino and its products, and for good reason.
As Fortune’s Phillip Elmer-DeWitt learned from Cheng via email, Pegatron has a wide customer base and never breaks out how each of those are affecting its bottom line or its quarterly financial outlook. Pegatron has its fingers in all kinds of pies, including home video game consoles and e-readers, both of which are currently suffering badly in terms of consumer sales.
Here’s a look back at some equally dire reports from recent memory that also turned out not to have any relation whatsoever to anything Apple was doing, performance-wise.
- Apple’s Q2 Earnings Foreshadowed by Weak Foxconn Results – Disappointing results at Foxconn for its most recent quarterly results were seen as a bad sign for Apple’s progress, but it still filed extremely impressive results, despite a rare year-over-year earnings decline.
- Apple’s Suppliers Experienced A Very Weak February – Supplier reports indicated that Apple was having weak iPad sales, which obviously wasn’t correct as it blew expectations away in terms of sales of its iOS tablet devices.
- Apple iPhone 5 Sales Showing Weakness – Apple was seen as dramatically underperforming relative to Wall Street’s consensus estimates on iPhone sales for Q1 2013, and in fact they exceeded consensus by a fair number (selling 47.8 million iPhones).
- Exclusive: Japan’s Sharp cuts iPad screen output – Sharp shipping woes on iPad panels were seen as an indicator that Apple was having difficulty moving iPads, prompting one analyst firm to predict that Apple would ship only around 8 million iPads in Q1 2013, when in fact they shipped 22.9 million.
In the best of cases, supply chain reports offers some vague insight into the larger picture of Apple’s inventory channels, but when looked to for solid indicators of performance, they’re about as dependable as using a magic 8 ball. The iPad mini, by all reasonable accounts, looks to be a very strong performer for Apple, and it’s very likely we’ll see that trend continue.
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As Smartphones Reach A Global Tipping Point, Leader Samsung Shipped 71M Devices In Q1, Nearly 2X As Many As Apple
Author: Tiffany Shoman
IDC is the first of the big analyst companies to come out with quarterly mobile device shipment numbers that indicate Q1 as the first quarter where smartphones have outnumbered more basic feature phones in worldwide shipments: in a total market of 418.6 million devices, 216.2 (51.6%) were smartphones. But it is was a kind of tipping point of another sort, too: it is a sign of how Apple is not the juggernaut that it once was.
(BTW… for those of you keeping track, this is not the first quarter where Android has all but dominated the top-five rankings, save Apple’s presence. That happened in Q4 2012, according to IDC’s figures.)
Samsung shipped nearly 71 million smartphones in the quarter, giving it a market share of almost one-third of the whole of the smartphone sector (32.7%). Apple, meanwhile, shipped 37 million devices — just over half as many as Samsung, for a market share of 17.3%. With all others in the top-five — LG, Huawei and ZTE — still with less than 5% market share apiece, Samsung and Apple remain a strong top-two.
But looking at the pattern of growth something else comes out: Apple only grew its volumes by 6.6% over the same quarter a year ago. In fact, in that regard, that growth puts it far behind not only Samsung (at 60.7% volume growth), but also behind LG (110.2% growth); Huawei (94.1%); and ZTE (49.2%). As a point of comparison, Samsung and Apple were more nearly level a year ago, in Q1 2012, (44 million versus 35.1 million in Q1 2012), and respectively saw growth of 267% and 89% in shipment volumes — the only two that increased:
Today:
A year ago:
As we’ve pointed out before, shipments to those who sell devices are not the same thing as sales to users, but it is an important barometer for where the wider market is going. (The most recent figures from Kantar Worldpanel, which track sales, spell out how the difference between Android-based and Apple sales is not as wide as 2:1 in every market, but is in fact significantly wider in some.)
It’s notable that Nokia, BlackBerry, and HTC whose shipments were on the decline last year but still enough to keep them in the top-five, are now out of the picture altogether. It also shows that Nokia’s sub-10 million sales of smartphones, with 5.6 million Lumias, are not big enough figures to break out of the sizeable ‘others’ category.
With Apple still shipping more than three times as many devices as its next-closest competitor, LG, even if things continue as they are today, it will likely still be some time before it gets overtaken by the others in the list. Its performance also was enough to keep it in place as the world’s third-largest mobile handset maker overall, in a list otherwise dominated by companies that make both smartphones and feature phones:
IDC notes that LG, which shipped 10.3 million smartphones in the quarter, a rise of over 110% over the year before, was helped by three factors in the last quarter. The first of these was the popularity of the Nexus 4 device it created with Google; the second was the success of its lower-priced L Series (15 million sold in this category alone since launched); and the third was its LTE line. These three point to how those Android handset makers that can create strong enough and distinctive handsets that are set apart from the rest of the Android crowd can continue to pull away from the crowd.
Apple’s iPhone brand has never been seen as anything other than premium, and true to type, it is still not playing at the same level as others smartphone industry in creating new models that aim at the “cheap smartphone” market.
CEO Tim Cook did not discuss the prospect of a new, low-cost device, on Apple’s earnings call this week — the focus remains on selling older models, namely the iPhone 4, in markets like China as a route to bringing new smartphone users on to the platform. Other handset makers like Samsung, Nokia and many “others” are building out portfolios that hit not only at high-end users but those looking for entry devices priced at closer to $ 100 or even less. Some handset makers, specifically in emerging markets, are targeting only this market.
On the other hand Cook also left open the possibility that whatever comes next may be something different altogether: the “really great stuff” coming out in the autumn and in 2014 could be another iPhone. Equally, it could be something else altogether, and not a handset at all.
Image: Flickr
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Team Titanium 1986 – A Robot’s Point of View
Author: Jon Mitchell
Team Titanium’s 2013 robot, The Kraken, shares it’s view of the field.
Video Rating: 5 / 5
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New Google/Motorola X Phone Rumors Point To Multiple Models And Aggressive Price Tags
Author: Matthew Baker
Now that Sony, LG, HTC, and Samsung have all pulled back the curtains on their flagship Android smartphones, the rumor mill can churn with renewed focus on yet another nebulous device — Motorola’s secretive X Phone.
Or rather, X Phones. According to Android And Me’s Taylor Wimberly, X Phone isn’t going to be a product name so much as it is a banner that multiple phones will fly under, and his sources assert that we’ve already seen the first of those devices in wild.
(I think it goes without saying that you should take all this information with a hefty grain of salt.)
The supposed culprit was captured on film earlier this week by the noted team at Tinhte, the Vietnamese site that thrives on getting their hands on unreleased gadgets well before the rest of us do. It was a fairly unassuming device — it bears a mild resemblance to the Galaxy Nexus when viewed dead-on, and sports a cleaner, rounded design that doesn’t quite jibe with many of Motorola’s recent angular design efforts.
What’s more, its modest spec sheet prompted many (myself included) to dismiss its odds of being the fabled X Phone. To wit: it sports one of Qualcomm’s Snapdragon S4 Pro systems-on-a-chip, 2GB of RAM, a 4.65-inch display, and a 2,200 mAh battery. In fairness, that’s not a shabby device at all. That’s essentially what the Nexus 4 is working with, but it just didn’t seem flashy enough to be what Motorola and Google have been working on all this time.
But if this new report holds true, that lack of next-gen horsepower could be because Google intends to sell this particular X Phone dirt cheap sans contract — $ 199 or so.
Curiously, the original video of the device was yanked from YouTube, and the original post on Tinhte seems to have disappeared as well. That’s far from a confirmation that Tinhte has ruffled some major feathers, but it’s something to consider.
Now to call this whole thing a little kooky would be putting it very mildly, but such an approach wouldn’t exactly come out of left field. One could look at the Nexus 4′s launch as a grand experiment of sorts, meant to see if the consuming public would be open to purchasing unsubsidized hardware directly from the people making it. The answer, clearly, is yes. The Nexus 4 isn’t exactly a mass-market success but demand for the device and its reasonably low price tag led to some notable woes for people trying to purchase the thing early on.
Moreover, the more limited launch of a high-end device like the Nexus 4 could help Google gauge their ability to fulfill device demand in markets across the globe. Now that Google has more or less figured out what needs to happen to keep a global device rollout from going immediately south, it’s arguably better prepared to push out a solid phone at a crazy low price point. Only time will tell whether or not Google and Motorola truly plan to inundate the world with a horde of cheap X Phones, but with I/O on the horizon I imagine it won’t be long before the next chapter of the X Phone saga begins to unfold.
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Tags: aggressive, Google/Motorola, models, multiple, Phone, point, price, Rumors, tags | 
No Comments »What’s The Point?: Ferrari Is Making A 863HP Hybrid
Author: Markus Smith
Because I don’t know why, Ferrari is going to manufacturer a million-dollar, 863-horsepower gas/electric hybrid supercar called the *drumroll please* LaFerrari. *womp womp* Wow, and I was this close to putting my name on the waiting list.
The LaFerrari has more power than the McLaren P1, it’s also a hybrid made entirely of carbon fibre, it will do 62 mph under 3 seconds, and they will only make 499 while already having about 700 orders.
Who cares about how fast it can do 62MPH, how quickly can I get it to 88MPH? I’m asking for a friend and not me who totally doesn’t have a flux capacitor and no this isn’t a picnic basket full of dinosaur-sized condoms behind my back. They’re, uh, weather balloons.
Hit the jump for more pictures and and a video of the thing zoom around that gave me a boner even though I tried to fight it.
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Project Cars Build 397 In DIY Racing Rig (Point of View) 2560×1440
Author: Christen Arquette
This is a quick video to show my friend the level of information in PCars. As registrations are closed due to a FSA examination he could not sign up with up himself. I was utilizing my Motorola Xoom tablet to tape-record this, so its all over the place, the objective wasnt to race, just visual details and the noise i7 2600K @ 4.5 Ghz GTX580 1.5 GB 16GB Corsair RAM Intel 510 Series 120GB SSD Dell U2711 Monitor F4t4lity Sound card Logitech G27 Wheel Custom-made Do It Yourself racing rig Logitech Z-5500 THX border sound.
Video Score: 0 / 5
