HTC 10: Nothing has Changed, Sorta

           The cat is out of the bag, and the secrets are secrets no more. Once again, a new phone has been released. This time, its from the aging and slowly fading company, HTC. Dubbed the HTC One M10, it is the continuation of HTC's main flagship cell phone, the One series. Offering typically everything HTC has to offer, the One series has made its comeback for the 4th year now, and brings many new features to the table. First of all, HTC has listened to its customers and revamped its exterior, not in the sense of LG's complete re-haul, but of the subtle, but noticeable, variety. They changed the smooth, curvy edges of the back metal with highly chamfered ones, that look irresistibly sexy to me, after owning a highly-chamfered Nexus 6P for several months now. They also have removed the dual camera system that LG has now become king of, returning to a solid single-camera mechanism. According to Marques Brownlee, the camera may not be the best, but it is still one of the best on the market, and a definite comeback from HTC's previous failures in this department. The front facing camera is also a toutable feature, with a large 8MP camera out front with a nice wide-angle lense for wide selfies.

          Aside from the camera swaps, something typical of most phone companies, they have also switched out the RAM for 4GB of DDR4 and a Snapdragon 820, the fastest chip currently available for Android-powered handsets. However, this is where HTC has ended the competition, and, sadly, falls flat. HTC has been mistaken in believing that by packing all of the latest specifications into a phone, and cramming it into a metal body, they will do well, because that's what companies like Samsung do. However, the difference between HTC and Samsung is that Samsung truly delivers the fastest performance of any Android phone, and has THE BEST camera with its Galaxy S7. Samsung also has a large following in the tech world, with many people with Galaxy phones willing to update to a newer Galaxy. HTC does not have such a following. Therefore, it takes more work for people to switch to HTC. This means that for HTC to sell more phones, it cannot just release the latest hardware like all other phones; it has to release something DIFFERENT, something NEW the market hasn't seen. LG released its "Friend" removable battery modules, and that is what has attracted LG much new attention that it hadn't seen before. HTC cannot keep believing in releasing the "latest" that already exists, it needs to find differentiation, and that is why, sadly, I believe the HTC One M10 will be just another failure of HTC, bringing it closer to its bankruptcy.

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New Bill, New Restrictions

A week after it was first reported that Senators Dianne Feinstein and Richard Burr were prepping a bill that would force tech companies to build their devices and software with weakened encryption or built-in backdoors for law enforcement, the actual bill has been introduced. Here’s what you need to know about why consumer and privacy advocates are concerned.
The Compliance with Court Orders Act of 2016 states that “to uphold both the rule of law and protect the interests and security of the United States, all persons receiving an authorized judicial order for information or data must provide, in a timely manner, responsive, intelligible information or data, or appropriate technical assistance to obtain such information or data.”

1. It’s An Attempt To Update & Strengthen A 227-Year-Old Law

Way back in 1789, Congress passed the All Writs Act, which allows a judge to force a person or group to assist in the enforcement of a court order — but only if that assistance is both necessary and “agreeable to the usages and principles of law.”

Law enforcement has long used the All Writs Act to nudge private businesses to aid in an investigation. In fact, the government has used this law more than 60 times in recent years to compel Apple and Google to help with unlocking smartphones and other tasks.
And since the companies had easy ways to comply with these court orders, they did.
But in 2014, both Apple and Google updated their mobile device operating systems so that not even the makers of the software had a way around the encryption. Thus, when a newer iPhone or Android device is locked, only the user can unlock it without having to reset it and lose the stored data.
This is what caused the recent very public fight between Apple and the FBI, which was trying to unlock an iPhone that had belonged to one of the terrorists of Bernardino, CA's bombing.
Apple has no built-in work-around for its own encryption, but the FBI used the All Writs Act to try to compel them to figure out a way to do so. Apple argued that the relatively ancient law doesn’t require companies to go to such lengths and that this would just be the thin edge of the wedge, setting a precedent whereby Apple would — as additional court-ordered demands for assistance pile up — either need to permanently weaken its encryption or constantly be trying to poke holes in the walls its own employees built.
The new bill would leave Apple no choice but to comply with the court order in a timely manner or violate the law.

2. Unbreakable Encryption Could Be Against The Law

The language of the proposed makes it clear that if the company’s encryption is the reason that the sought-after data is unintelligible, then it’s the company’s responsibility to make it intelligible.
Thus, if a company were to make an unbreakable form of encryption — or one that it lacks the ability to break — they would not be able to comply with the law.

3. Tech Companies Would Be Forced To Release Poorly Secured Products

While the proposed legislation says that it is not forcing companies to adopt “any specific design or operating system,” it ultimately has the effect of requiring that tech companies include a backdoor to their encryption so it can be decrypted whenever a court order pops up.
Sens. Burr and Feinstein say the believe that data encryption is important, but critics of the bill point out that encryption with a backdoor is like a submarine with a leaky window.
“Data is either encrypted or it is not, and the technical assistance that this legislation mandates is not feasible nor is it in the country’s best interest,” says Jake Ward, CEO of the Application Developers Alliance. Thus, I am against the idea of introducing a backdoor, as the government might as well be asking us to leave the back door of our houses unlocked to "protect us".

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The FBI Can Access Not Many iPhones

In a speech Wednesday at Kenyon College in Ohio, FBI director James Comey acknowledged that the agency bought an unspecified "tool" from an outside private party after Apple refused to create new software to allow access to Syed Farook's iPhone 5C, CNN Money reported Thursday.
Apple had argued that a special-purpose version of iOS would not only offer access to the one device but could threaten the security of millions of iPhones.
That doesn't seem to be the case with the encryption-buster the FBI ended up with. That tool supports only a "narrow slice" of iPhones, Comey said.
In other words, it won't work on the iPhone 5S and the entire iPhone 6 series.
The effort to crack the security of the iPhone 5C tied to Farook, one of the shooters in the San Bernardino, California, terrorist attack in December, led to a dramatic clash between the FBI and Apple. That legal battle ended when the agency turned to a third party to crack the phone. Comey didn't name the third party, but some believe it was an Israeli company called Cellebrite, which specializes in extracting data from phones.Still unresolved are the broader issues: the line between personal privacy and national security, and the merits of encryption, which scrambles data so it can be read only by people with the right access.
Could the unlock method used by the third-party company get released into the wild? Comey said he doesn't believe that would happen, stating that he has a "high degree of confidence that they are very good at protecting it."
The government has not disclosed the method to Apple. It's worried that spilling the beans to the iPhone maker would come back to bite it."We tell Apple, then they're going to fix it, then we're back where we started from," Comey said. So it seems like, without laws passed by Congress to force mandatory backdoors, the FBI and Apple will just continue grinding their gears against each other.

Sources:
http://www.cnet.com/news/fbi-says-third-party-unlock-scheme-works-only-on-iphone-5c/

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Cars: Technology That Is Too Complex-Part 2

...part 2 of 2

However, before we could replace the boot, during this 15 mile drive to test it, I rolled my passenger window down to listen for if the engine was misfiring. I was so glad that I heard no misfires, but as I rolled my window up...well, that's the thing. My window didn't roll back up. -_- After much more Googling, we found out that it was most likely the window regulator. After driving to two different auto stores to find the BMW passenger regulator, we spent 2 hours taking the door apart, unplugging the window motor, the speakers, and the airbag. More on that in a second. We plug back in everything as it was, and after much grease and stress of breaking the window in the process, the door is reinstalled, and the window works perfectly! However....on the dash, the airbag light came on. After more Googling, and calling to auto stores, we learned that, because we unplugged the airbag WHILE the car had its battery connected, the possible failed airbag light came on, and the only ones who can turn it off is the dealership for $60 for 2 minutes of labor (which they bill as 30 minutes). So we had to pay for them to click a reset button. Amazing.
We then proceeded to replace the brakes, as they squeaked quite loudly when braking. However, squeaking should have been the least of our problems. The car still gave us 20 error codes through the OBDII port that connects to the computer. 6 of them said the engine was misfiring, and another 14 said that the transmission was pretty much failing. After some Googling, we cleared 6 of the codes by swapping the camshaft position sensor, which helps regulate when fuel injectors fire fuel into the engine. That still left 14 more codes for transmission...which, as we narrowed it down, could be a few things:
1) Failed/shorted wiring harness
2) Failed TCM (Transmission Control Module, is the computer behind the transmission)
3) Bad transmission coils (help change gears by letting in or closing off the transmission fluid)
4) Needs new replacement transmission fluid

Unfortunately, all of these things require money to replace, and can only be tested by replacing them. However, while we will figure this out in the coming weeks, there is an important lesson to be learned from this: Cars are similar to computers, with many sensors and computers. However, they are difficult to diagnose even with these systems that seem to complicate repairs.

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The Worlds Newest, Thinnest Laptop

On Tuesday, HP unveiled a big-well, actually small- surprise. It showed off its latest challenger to Apple's laptops at the International Luxury Conference in Versailles, touting it as the thinnest laptop in the world.

At 10.4 mm, the HP Spectre's chassis is as thin as a triple-A battery, the company noted, and defininitely beats Apple's current thinnest laptop, the Macbook, by several mm, which is rated at 13.1mm thick.

The Spectre is powered by Intel Core i5 and i7 processors and weighs in at 2.45 pounds. It has a 13.3-inch Gorilla glass display, and stereo speakers from Bang & Olufsen.
It provides up to 9 1/2 hours of battery life, according to HP. The new line carries some of the thin design and high-end finishing touches that HP introduced in its EliteBook Folio earlier this year. HP "is hoping that surpassing Apple in terms of thinness will spark notebook sales," an HP rep told TechNewsWorld.

That said, thinness "is simply one aspect driving product innovation and user satisfaction," King pointed out.
HP "also needs to develop an Apple-like cachet around its products as being must-haves for consumers," he said. Competitors, including Dell with the XPS 13 and Lenovo with its Yoga line, "have succeeded in such efforts over the past couple of years, which is to say that Apple isn't the only vendor HP needs to worry about."
Dell's XPS 13 "has been particularly effective in matching or surpassing features in the 12-inch MacBook," observed King. Dell "understands that thinness is just one aspect of laptop innovation and value, and has consistently delivered XPS 13 solutions with excellent or superior compute performance, energy efficiency and graphics."
Add in touchscreen capabilities -- "something Apple has resolutely avoided, though current rumors suggest a touch-enabled MacBook may be coming later this year- and Dell's SPS 13 is arguably equal or superior to a similarly sized MacBook," he said.
Outstanding features may not be enough to knock Apple off its notebook throne, however. "Apple's greatest advantage is their vertical integration," noted Linn Huang, a research director at IDC. Competitors increasingly are copying Apple's design, and consumers "are thinking less about design today than they did two to three years ago, because the usage model has moved to the browser. The more our consumer services transition to the cloud, the more the usage model gets stuck in the browser," Huang said, so "I'd expect that there'd be more homogeneity among products. Ultimately, if you're only using the browser at home, it doesn't really make too much of a difference whether you're using OS X or Chrome or Windows."
That being the case, Apple "has the lead, because OS X plays very nicely with iOS -- much better than iOS does with Windows or Chrome," he added. Apple also offers a multiplicity of devices in the ultralight notebook class. "We classify all Apple's MacBooks, including MacBook Pros, as ultraslim devices," Huang said. "While XPS and HP's product will gain a lot of ground, Apple will still be king in the thin and light segment, at least in the United States." Regarding that last statement, I happen to disagree, as almost all laptops are within range of the Macbook Pro's thickness (or should I say, thinness), which lies at 18mm, so in that regard, Apple certainly isn't raking in all the lottery chips quite yet.

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Tesla Model 3 Preorders

On Thursday, Tesla finally announced its new Model 3 affordable electric car starting at $35,000. However, while Tesla anticipated the demand to be great, CEO Elon Musk and his team greatly underestimated the demand for the car. The company has received 276,000 preorders in the first three days.
In a number of tweets this afternoon, Musk both expressed his appreciation to current and future Tesla owners for their faith in the company, and revealed that Tesla expected one-quarter to one-half as much preorder interest as they have received.
"No one at Tesla thought it would be this high before part 2 of the unveil," Musk said in a tweet.
The company was especially surprised by the number of people who lined up at Tesla stores to place their orders-while online preorders opened at 7:30PM on Thursday, customers who went to a Tesla retail location were able to deposit $1,000 and place a preorder Thursday morning.
"We thought maybe 20-30 people per store would line up, not 800," said Musk. The company was ordering "tokens of appreciation" for customers who preordered in store, noting that sufficient supplies were on order. The gifts may include a scale Model 3 and "a few other things."
Musk said that all who preorder a Model 3 will receive a gift, but "those who stood in some crazy long lines" will receive something extra. Musk also praised owners of the Tesla Roadster, Model S, and Model X, saying they are "the ones who got us here" and have paid for the development of the Model 3. "They deserve a lot of credit," he said.
Overall. the idea of a pure electric car for the masses seems to be slowly coming true, one car at a time.

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Cars: Technology That Is Too Complex- Part 1

I'll admit it, I'm a computer guy. I grew up learning computers, and I love them dearly. They are my life passion. I can repair them, build them from scratch, and make them do whatever I want. However, recently, I have dove into the task of repairing my friends 1999 BMW 323i with him. Behold, I have come to realize that I have hated cars and the technology that has been baked into them.
To start off with, the car is from 1999, so the technology, one would suspect, wouldn't be very advanced. At least, in terms of digital computers, etc. However, that doesn't mean it is simple in any means, and technology does advance to mechanical functions as well. This will be a journey of our frustrations with technology.
To start off with, the car had sat for several months untouched. This meant that the battery was unfortunately dead. Alright, so we pop the hood, and...no battery. The battery was in the trunk. Which, of course, can only be opened via power. Of course, German engineering planned for this, and put two battery terminals inside the engine compartment that ran to the trunk, but COME ON. 20 minutes of jumper cables later, and the car finally turned over and started. We took it for a ride around the block, and it was....well, awful. Smoke came out of the engine from leaking, burning oil, and it make the car smell like ass. A few days later, my friend replaced a head gasket, and the smell/leak problem was fixed. However, I still hate seals to this day, always drying out and whatnot.
The car had other problems as well. The headlights were partially cracked out, and thus, fell out unless they were taped in. $45 later, and new headlights were in, which stopped the annoying clicking noise that would turn on when trying to turn and one of the headlights had unplugged. We needed to mount the license plate, but of course, to our convenience, there was no mounting plate on the rear of the car. We picked up a mounting plate at Advanced Auto Parts, and to our surprise, the included screws were too long. Yay for us! So we had to drive to Lowes to buy new screws that (luckily) fit our bracket.
Since we were no longer driving without plates, and the oil wasn't leaking, and the battery held a charge, things seemed nice. However, a week later, and our luck came to an end...
The radiator was leaking. This meant that we had to keep adding fluid after every drive, and it meant that stinky, burning radiator fluid make the car stink again. Great. After a lot of research, buying O-ring gaskets, and more research, we finally found out that one of the clips for the "super amazing German quick-connect radiator system" were not sealing, and 10 minutes of wrestling with a hose with a lot of elbow grease fixed our problem by forcing the hoses to connect.
The other, larger problem, was that the car kept stalling randomly, and misfiring repetitively. Hours and over $100 was poured into switching spark plugs and exchanging spark plug coils, but alas, the engine was still misfiring. During this time, we had to continuously remove a BMW piece of plastic that covered the engine to protect it from rain. Unfortunately, one of the bolts stripped, and we ended up having to dremel off the rest of the cover to get the thing off. We had to order a new cover and replacement bolt, but otherwise, the car continued to survive, and we were able to refocus on the issue at hand: the misfiring.We didn't know why, and we were running out of options, until my friend, Cameron, unplugged the MAF (Mass Airflow Sensor), and it hummed with no hiccups. Why was this happening? Well, the MAF is in charge of detecting the amount of air entering the engine. If little air enters the engine, the MAF senses this and lowers the fuel ratio to the engine. If more air is detected, it increases fuel to the engine. However, it turned out that an air intake boot(hose) right after the MAF had two large cracks in its plastic, and thus, was sucking air in AFTER the MAF sensor, causing the MAF to see little to no airflow, even though the engine was receiving air. This caused the engine to misfire like a woman yelling at her husband furiously. We went to Advanced Auto Parts again, bought sealing putty, and sealed the pipe. It was a temporary fix, and, with the 42nd street bumps, it only lasted about 15 miles before cracking and stalling the engine, but it showed that we could fix the problem, and a few days later, Amazon to the rescue with a new air intake boot!
....Part 1 of 2

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