Hasta La Gadget!

It might have taken some extra time, but Samsung quickly adopted biometric security on their new S5 flagship Android phone. However, it didn’t take hackers long to figure out a way to defeat it.

Apparently, the fingerprint scanner of the S5 isn’t hard to spoof. SRLabs have been able to spoof it using a lifted print. It took them only a few minutes to create a dummy finger to allow them access to the phone. This is also true of the scanner on the iPhone 5s, however the iPhone 5s has got a password to allow access to the scanner, which the Galaxy S5 doesn’t have yet.

Hopefully, a quick software update will patch this vulnerability. PayPal has already reacted with a statement, saying that there are plenty of additional safeguards that will allow users peace of mind when using biometric security. With any luck, your money is still safe.

[via BGR]

It’s been a while since we last heard of a software update for Glass and now I guess we know why. The team over at Mountain View has been busy updating the face-computer to run on the latest version of Android (4.4.2 a.k.a. KitKat).

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The differences between the HTC One M7 (the model you bought in 2013) and the HTC One (M8) (this year’s model) are small. We did a specifications battle back near … Continue reading

Modern stealth action video games like the Metal Gear Solid series and the new Deus Ex often have a radar feature that lets you see enemies and cameras, among other things. New media artist Sander Veenhof made a similar app for Google Glass. He calls it Watch Your Privacy, and it uses open data to locate nearby surveillance cameras. That includes the mobile kind, i.e. other Glass users.

Watch Your Privacy uses a database of surveillance cameras called OSMcamera. Sander didn’t elaborate how his app spots other Glass users, just that it maps “the latitute/longitude coordinates of each Google Glass user.”

The app marks both cameras and users with a triangular warning sign along with a number, their distance from you and their coordinates. In addition, it marks the approximate coverage area of surveillance cameras. You can either have the area appear mark them as non-safe (red) or safe zones (green). If you want to stay hidden like Solid Snake, you’ll want to mark those areas red. If you feel more comfortable in a place with security cameras then you’ll mark their coverage areas green.

Glass users, crawl to your browser and head to Sander’s website to download his app.

[via Prosthetic Knowledge]

Just because virtual reality displays let us interact with 3D interfaces doesn’t mean there isn’t room for the ol’ two-dimensional view inside of them. Oliver Kreylos, a developer who’s been working with 3D software for nearly 30 years, recently demonstrated a Virtual Network Computing (VNC) client that sends a 2D feed of a desktop computer to a 3D virtual reality environment.

Oliver’s VNC client allows him to open and interact with any number of 2D desktops on a virtual reality environment. Why would you want to do this? Well for one, you can reverse telecommute: imagine working in an island paradise environment while you’re actually in the office. Because you can (theoretically) open multiple desktops at once, the setup also supercharges multitasking and group meetings. You can watch a video walkthrough while playing a 3D game, look at a hundred fullscreen documents at once, have multiple large video chat screens like they do in science fiction flicks and more.

As you’ll see in Oliver’s demo video, developers can also make 2D applications that interact with the 3D environment. In his demo he measured a table that was in his virtual space and then used a Razer Hydra to send those measurements to Microsoft Excel on his 2D desktop.

We really don’t know how far the rabbit hole goes with this one. Note that the video below may cause dizziness because of the constant change in perspective. It almost made me throw up to be honest. I’m ill-equipped for the future.

Head to Oliver’s blog for more on his custom program. I wonder if you can emulate this feature on the same computer that’s running the VR environment. That would be more useful, although it would probably take a beefy computer to pull it off. Also, watching Oliver’s demo, I can almost – almost! – visualize a four-dimensional space, where you can fit infinite 3D environments. Now I’m really dizzy.

[via Fast Co. Design]