Throughout his entire campaign, new President-elect Donald Trump talked repeatedly about the need to defend America's infrastructure against cyber warfare. He insisted that America was being hacked constantly, that we were weak and being exploited by foreign governments, and he would =spend a lot of money to reduce the risk of that continuing to happen.
But what is the real risk of cyber warfare? The truth is that the fear of cyber threats isn't nearly as large for the government and their secured compounds and infrastructure as it should be for normal, everyday Americans.
2016 saw the number of connected devices increase to 6.8 billion, a 30% increase over 2016. This is a massive, exponentially growing number of ways to make our private information and subsequently our entire lives vulnerable. Millions of cyber attacks are launched daily by criminals and hackers attempting to get into your Facebook account, your bank account, or, even worse, your phone.
What's truly terrifying about the everyday risk of these attacks is that they're so preventable, yet so many do nothing to fight against them. Not to victim blame, but a little bit of security against a common criminal and you're a lot better off to not get hugely inconvenienced.
First, make sure you have two-factor authentication running on every website that allows you to have it. This means that when you try to log onto a site with your username and password, it will also do something like shoot you a text with a code to enter. This means that even the craftiest of hackers cannot get into your account, because they'd have to get access to your phone first.
Second, ensure that you aren't using the same password on different websites. Many websites are compromised by criminals that sell the username and password combinations on the black market to the highest bidder. You want to make sure that you're changing your passwords somewhat regularly, but also that they are unique to that particular site.
These tips should help you guard against the real threats that are out there on the internet. We should be focused less on terrorists hitting our power plants and more on giving ourselves a little personal peace of mind.
Tuesday, November 22, 2016
Monday, November 21, 2016
Virtual Reality and the Chase
2016 has been the year of virtual reality, and as the holiday season approaches and we begin to look back and reflect on the year, it's a good time to evaluate the promise of VR and whether we've anywhere near approached it.
The year saw the release of three major headsets in the VR market: the Oculus Rift, the HTC Vive and the brand new PlayStation VR.
While the first two are headsets specifically made for beefy, gamer-ready desktop PCs, the PlayStation VR is a headset made exclusively to connect to Sony's PlayStation 4. This means it specifically is skewed towards gamers and games, and less towards the social experiments, video watching experiences and early access playgrounds of the more expensive headsets.
This is a double-edged sword, as while games are great, focusing towards them exclusively keeps you limited in scope. Every game developer seems to be making a VR demo for the PS VR, but not too many are actually making full game experiences. Many people seem excited to play a Final Fantasy XV demo on the PlayStation, but how many are going to play a brand new, original title made for such a headset?
While the PS VR specializes, the Rift and the Vive are, even months after their release, blank slates. Tiltbrush VR allows creative and non-creative users alike to paint the skies around them with color and grace. Rec Room allows VR owners to come together and play games in a social environment like darts and ping pong. Adrift is a beautiful, incredible space adventure about the fearfulness of actually floating along in zero gravity amidst a station that is collapsing quickly.
At the end of the day, all these headsets are chasing something. They're looking for new kinds of experiences that people haven't had yet, that will make people crave more. The sort of blockbuster hit like Super Mario Bros. or Microsoft Word that opens eyes to the prospect of the platform and creates a need that sells more headsets and inspires more of those same experiences.
Whether this will happen remains to be seen. But in the meantime, the chase is fun to follow.
The year saw the release of three major headsets in the VR market: the Oculus Rift, the HTC Vive and the brand new PlayStation VR.
While the first two are headsets specifically made for beefy, gamer-ready desktop PCs, the PlayStation VR is a headset made exclusively to connect to Sony's PlayStation 4. This means it specifically is skewed towards gamers and games, and less towards the social experiments, video watching experiences and early access playgrounds of the more expensive headsets.
This is a double-edged sword, as while games are great, focusing towards them exclusively keeps you limited in scope. Every game developer seems to be making a VR demo for the PS VR, but not too many are actually making full game experiences. Many people seem excited to play a Final Fantasy XV demo on the PlayStation, but how many are going to play a brand new, original title made for such a headset?
While the PS VR specializes, the Rift and the Vive are, even months after their release, blank slates. Tiltbrush VR allows creative and non-creative users alike to paint the skies around them with color and grace. Rec Room allows VR owners to come together and play games in a social environment like darts and ping pong. Adrift is a beautiful, incredible space adventure about the fearfulness of actually floating along in zero gravity amidst a station that is collapsing quickly.
At the end of the day, all these headsets are chasing something. They're looking for new kinds of experiences that people haven't had yet, that will make people crave more. The sort of blockbuster hit like Super Mario Bros. or Microsoft Word that opens eyes to the prospect of the platform and creates a need that sells more headsets and inspires more of those same experiences.
Whether this will happen remains to be seen. But in the meantime, the chase is fun to follow.
The Microsoft Surface Studio
At the October 26th Surface event, Microsoft announced quite a few new products and accessories from their first-party line of elite computing devices. While Microsoft has always been in the software market with Windows, it wasn't until the past few years that they've become a behemoth in the hardware market as well.
One of the biggest announcements at this particular press conference, though, was the Microsoft Surface Studio PC, an all-in-one computer, the first one ever released by the company.
The heart of the Surface Studio is a vision: get a beautiful, colorful 28" display in front of you and make the rest of it as minimal as possible. Two simple metal spokes that allow you to pivot the screen at any angle and a stylus pen to draw on it like a canvas. A wireless keyboard and mouse with the same color scheme as the computer itself. A powerful computer that you won't want to walk away from.
The Surface Studio is yet another example of the flexibility of the PC market. A machine made for creative professionals, it really shows you the extreme ideal of what a computer could be for an architect or an artist.
Microsoft is showing up to do what Apple won't. The most beautiful screen on the market. A gigantic touchscreen with a bundled pen. A device to compete with an illustrator's Wacom Cintiq in the exact same price range. In terms of progress, I'd say Microsoft is showing quite a bit of competence.
One of the biggest announcements at this particular press conference, though, was the Microsoft Surface Studio PC, an all-in-one computer, the first one ever released by the company.
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| The Surface Studio / Courtesy of Microsoft |
The Surface Studio is yet another example of the flexibility of the PC market. A machine made for creative professionals, it really shows you the extreme ideal of what a computer could be for an architect or an artist.
Microsoft is showing up to do what Apple won't. The most beautiful screen on the market. A gigantic touchscreen with a bundled pen. A device to compete with an illustrator's Wacom Cintiq in the exact same price range. In terms of progress, I'd say Microsoft is showing quite a bit of competence.
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