Hasta La Gadget!

You know that tiny little security snafu that allowed over a hundred thousand iPad users’ email addresses out? The one that the FBI felt compelled to investigate? Well, Goatse Security — the group that discovered that particular hole (stop laughing) — isn’t best pleased to be described as malicious by AT&T’s response to the matter, and has requited with its own missive to the world. Letting us know that the breach in question took “a single hour of labor,” the GS crew argues that AT&T is glossing over the fact it neglected to address the threat promptly and is using the hackers’ (supposedly altruistic) efforts at identifying bugs as a scapegoat.

As illustration, they remind us that the iPad is still wide open to hijacking thanks to a bug in the mobile version of Safari. Identified back in March, this exploit allows hackers to jack in via unprotected ports, and although it was fixed on the desktop that same month, the mobile browser remains delicately poised for a backdoor entry — should malevolent forces decide to utilize it. This casts quite the unfavorable light on Apple as well, with both corporations seemingly failing to communicate problematic news with their users in a timely manner.

iPad still has a major browser vulnerability, says group behind AT&T security breach originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 15 Jun 2010 05:43:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Maybe we came into it as pre-judgers, but there’s nothing about Kinect Adventures that really redeems the experience in our biased, fun-hating eyes. We’re not really sure if our bigger problem is with the loose controls or the actual gameplay concepts, but it’s certainly a mix of both. We started out with the mining cart obstacle course, which has a certain charm in its simplicity: side step, jump, duck, and the occasional arm spread to gather tokens. These grander gestures seemed pretty easy to handle, and while we’d certainly grow bored of the game after 30 minutes or so, it would at least be a good 30 minutes of cardio.

Things went downhill from those middling heights, however, with the very vague and unsatisfying block-busting ball game, that seemed hardly responsive to our quick, desperate motions (or maybe we just weren’t very good at it), and the frenetic but ultra-loose controls of the river rafting. At least the teamwork aspect of the rafting game is interesting, and we’d love to see how good we could get with a dedicated partner, but there’s just something about hopping and side-stepping that just can’t feel as complex and comprehensive as “real” controls. In all we recognize these experiences as stuff that could only be done with Kinect… we’re just not sure yet if they needed to be done. You can check out video of our miserable performance after the break.

Continue reading Kinect Adventures preview unearths our frightening lack of coordination

Kinect Adventures preview unearths our frightening lack of coordination originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 15 Jun 2010 05:04:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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The Mac Mini desktop computer gains an HDMI video port, faster processors, and better graphics. pOriginally posted at a href=”http://news.cnet.com/8301-13579_3-20007717-37.html” class=”origPostedBlog”News – Apple/a/p

The online Apple Store has finally allowed folks to pre-order the new iPhone 4, but only the black version for now. pOriginally posted at a href=”http://reviews.cnet.com/8301-19512_7-20007718-233.html” class=”origPostedBlog”iPhone Atlas/a/p

Would you look at that, some love for the seemingly abandoned desktop crowd. Apple has today unveiled a freshly redesigned Mac mini, which benefits from a unibody aluminum exterior and more grunt under the hood. Prices start rolling at $699, where you’ll get a 2.4GHz Core 2 Duo CPU, 2GB of RAM, and a 320GB hard drive. HDMI-out is finally included, along with an SD card reader, 802.11n wireless, a Mini DisplayPort jack, and what Apple claims is a doubling of graphics performance thanks to an NVIDIA GeForce 320M chip inside. Then again, when you double a little, you still end up with not much. The newly polished nettop is a minimalist 1.4 inches tall, but manages to fit all the power circuitry inside, which means (yay!) there’ll be no power brick to spoil your hipster desk space.

Don’t fret if you were looking to drop the optical drive, Apple retains the config option that allows you to add in a second HDD in lieu of its DVD burner. You can grab two 500GB plate spinners, Snow Leopard Server (we thought Apple only had one OS version?), 4GB of RAM, and a 2.66GHz Intel chip for $999. Finally, the new enclosures will come with user-accessible memory slots courtesy of a removable panel at the bottom of the case. Neat that the designers didn’t take the unibody idea too literally.

Continue reading Mac mini updated with HDMI, aluminum unibody, and SD card reader

Mac mini updated with HDMI, aluminum unibody, and SD card reader originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 15 Jun 2010 04:01:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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