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I remotely patrolled a house with a $10,000 security drone

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The system starts with ‘Sunflowers,’ a collection of motion and vibration sensors that double as color-changing garden lights. Each flower has a 20-foot detection radius and can accurately differentiate between people, cars and animals. Which is good, because you don’t want to be woken up every time a fox trots across your lawn. (Unless, of course, you love animals and want to capture them on film.) If you’re not expecting any visitors, you can deploy the lightweight ‘Bee’ drone and sit back as it investigates further. The quadcopter will use GPS and “ultrasonic collision-avoidance sensors” to stay airborne and livestream everything it encounters to your phone.

At CES 2020, Sunflower Labs offered me an iPad Pro running its security software. A few miles away, the company had set up all of the necessary hardware — a Hive, Bee, and half a dozen Sunflowers — around a suburban Airbnb rental. I could bring up a basic plan of the house (the company had defined the outer perimeter beforehand) and see a heat map of detected movement. There were also some preset locations that I could ask the drone to “inspect” for demonstration purposes. I asked the quadcopter to visit the swimming pool and a live video feed immediately appeared on screen, showing a Sunflower employee strolling near the water’s edge.

Sunflower Labs

But was it really live? I asked if the company could somehow prove that I wasn’t just watching a pre-recorded ‘stream.’ A spokesperson then took out his phone and asked the pool-side employee to switch on some of the lights in the backyard. Sure enough, the porch lit up a few moments later. Just to be sure, I asked if I could control the drone again. I swiped left and right on the screen, panned the quadcopter’s camera left and right on command. There was no denying it: the show floor demo was authentic.

Sunflower Labs

It’s the first and probably last time I will use a Sunflower Labs system. In the past, the company has hinted that a subscription option will be available. That no longer seems to be the case, though. The Sunflower security package starts at $9,950 (yes, that’s the starting price) and can be pre-ordered today for $990. That’s, well, many thousands of dollars outside of my price range. Never mind! For a few brief moments, I pretended that I was Bruce Wayne or a real-life celebrity with a manor house and an ostentatious security system. That’s something, at least.

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Canon’s ultimate photo camera is also a video powerhouse

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Canon 1DX MIII

The bulk isn’t without purpose, though. The 1DX series is built with durability, reliability, accuracy and speed in mind. The 20.1-megapixel sensor isn’t winning any resolution contests, but this modest number helps it deliver a blistering 16fps shooting speed through the viewfinder. The experience of actually using that fast of a burst though is a little unsettling — the camera sounds like a jackhammer and shook in my hands while I rattled through a hundred or more images. But, the speed is astounding. If you lock the mirror up and frame through the rear LCD instead, you can get a totally silent 20fps. This feels unnatural for entirely the opposite reason: the camera stays dead quiet, the only indication it’s actually working the ballooning on-screen capture count.

With the mirror up or down, even at these speeds the 1DX MIII is still capable of autofocus tracking. In my brief time with the camera, the focus system was seriously impressive, locking on to faces or objects and following them through the scene, even when they were briefly obscured by foreground objects or people walking through my shot. This mode works equally well in video, letting you follow a subject or even circle them while maintaining perfect focus.Canon 1DX MIII

The system is also intuitive to control. The camera’s “Autofocus on” button, which engages the focus, is also a touch pad, and can be used to shift the focal point around the screen. This is similar to the touch bar on Canon’s EOS R camera, with the main difference being that I didn’t immediately hate it and the camera the first time I tried to use it. As opposed to that cursed bit of UI, the touch surface here felt intuitive: a small thumb slide moved the focal point where I wanted it, and a click engaged the focus motor.

The autofocus system is also endlessly customizable, with almost every feature able to be tweaked, from how quickly the camera moves focus, to how likely it is to switch subjects. There’s also an “auto” mode that lets the camera pick the behavior it thinks is best. My only complaint is that, while single-point focus worked and tracked like magic, when I enabled whole-scene autofocus, a few times it tried to track the wrong thing, or at least, not the thing I wanted to focus on.

Canon 1DX MIII

Canon may have helped pioneer DSLR video with the 5D series, but its last few models have delivered lackluster video features. This may have been to avoid competition with its C line of cinema cameras, but whatever the reason, when it comes to options for high resolution, frame rate, or video quality, Canon’s recent cameras have disappointed. Its solution? To give the 1DX every video option imaginable. Internally, this camera can capture 12-bit 5.5K raw at 2,600Mbit/sec, or much more reasonable editing-friendly 10-bit 4k intra-frame video at up to 60FPS and 1,000Mbit/sec. The one potential downside is you need to use their low-contrast CLog picture profile for these shooting modes, if you want something that’ll look good straight out of the camera you need to drop down to 8-bit video, though that’s still on par with what something like the Sony A7R IV shoots.

Canon 1DX MIII

In terms of competition, there’s nothing else quite like the 1DX MIII. As long as you don’t need high-res images, Canon has created what, on paper at least, is arguably the best photo camera around, and then bolted on a raft of cinema-worthy features for good measure. Sony’s A9 II shoots as fast at 20 FPS and also has fantastic autofocus, but it’s stuck with 8 bit video and lacks log profiles. The Sony A7R IV is higher res for photos, but much slower at 9 FPS. The Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera 6K can nearly match the 1DX MIII for video specs, but is a lousy photo camera with barely functional autofocus. Similar is the Panasonic S1H, which comes close with video capabilities, including a much-coveted Netflix certification (which I expect the 1DX MIII will also receive) but lacks raw video options and is a perfectly fine but less than top-tier photo camera, especially when it comes to autofocus.

Nikon’s Z6 and Z7 are highly capable cameras that can be upgraded to record raw video, but only via HDMI and an external recorder. Still, they may be the closest competition, and we still don’t know the capabilities of Nikon’s upcoming D6, which is rumored to have it’s own raw video capabilities plus the in-body stabilization, the one feature the 1DX MIII lacks.

There is currently no single device that can do what the 1DX MIII can do, but you’ll have to pay a price for all these features, $6,500 to be specific. For that money you could get a Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera and a decent photo camera, and still have money left over for a lens or two. Still, if you want one camera that can handle almost any situation, there’s nothing else quite like the 1DX MIII

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TikTok fixed a flaw that could have exposed user accounts

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The vulnerability could have resulted in TikTok users being sent messages containing malicious links. If clicked, attackers could take control of user accounts. Check Point also discovered a separate flaw, which allowed researchers to obtain personal information via TikTok’s website.

Check Point made TikTok aware of these vulnerabilities on November 20th last year, and by December 15th they had been fixed. TikTok said in a statement that it didn’t appear that the flaws were exploited in any way:

“TikTok is committed to protecting user data. Like many organizations, we encourage responsible security researchers to privately disclose zero day vulnerabilities to us. Before public disclosure, Check Point agreed that all reported issues were patched in the latest version of our app. We hope that this successful resolution will encourage future collaboration with security researchers,” said Luke Deshotels, PhD, TikTok Security Team. “Following a review of customer support records, we can confirm that we have not seen any patterns that would indicate an attack or breach occurred.”

As TikTok’s popularity has exploded — the app has been downloaded some 1.5 billion times worldwide — so has scrutiny over its parent company, ByteDance. A start-up success story, the Chinese company has links to the Chinese government that have led to concerns over global national security. ByteDance was at the center of a major security review back in November (ironically, just as these flaws were being discovered), while last week the US military opted to ban the app altogether.

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Mercedes and China’s Geely team up to take electric Smart cars global

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The venture, called “smart Automobile Co., Ltd.” will see Mercedes and Geely contribute a total of 5.4 billion Chinese Yuan (roughly $780 million) to the initiative, which aims to expand Smart’s EV-only portfolio with a new range of global products, slated for launch in 2022.

Given Mercedes’ brand and heritage, it’s unlikely that its own-brand lineup will become 100 percent electric any time soon, but the company’s continued investment in electrification in other areas of its business, such as Smart, shows it’s still going to great lengths to succeed in this area.

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Internet pioneers join forces to block the sale of .org domain

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The cooperative has seven directors leading the charge, including ICANN founding chairman Esther Dyson and Wikimedia Foundation CEO Katherine Maher. It’s also supported by the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which finds the domain’s turnover to a commercial venture “highly inappropriate.”

Together, the directors are hoping they can convince ICANN to block the deal and to hand them control of the .org domain. They’re looking to make sure that the domain is managed securely and that it does not become a tool for censorship. “This (the cooperative) is a better alternative,” Dyson said in a statement. “If you’re owned by private equity, your incentive is to make a profit. Our incentive is to serve and protect nonprofits and the public.”

The deal’s critics are worried that Ethos Capital, a newly formed company, would raise prices, skimp on services and sell users’ data in order to recover the $1 billion it’s paying for .org’s control — especially since the domain is mostly used by nonprofits.

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Crock-Pot’s latest slow cooker comes with Alexa voice control

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According to Belkin, it’s easy to set up, as you just need to plug it in and your Alexa-enabled Echo or other device will detect it. You can then control it using the Alexa app on your mobile device. At that point, you can program cook-times anywhere from 30 minutes to 20 hours on high or low heat settings, and it’ll automatically shift to “warm” once the cook-time is complete. You can also toggle through the heat settings directly by asking for low, high or warm.

There’s not a lot of other info on Belkin’s site like the price or availability. However, at launch, the Crock-Pot 6 WeMo slow cooker cost $130, and the Alexa-powered cooker is likely even more advanced, technology-wise.

Thanks, Germaine!

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Google Assistant will serve as translator for American Airlines lounge guests

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Google Assistant’s interpreter mode is helping travelers feel more at home in select American Airlines lounges. The airline has started testing the feature, which we first saw at CES 2019, running on Google Nest Hubs at Los Angeles International Airport’s Admirals Club lounges in Terminals 4 and 5. Assistant’s interpreter mode can translate 29 languages, including Arabic, French, German, Japanese, Russian, Spanish and Vietnamese, in real time. We found it slow and stilted when we took it for a spin last year, but it’s been updated since then and even made its way to phones — it launched for smart displays and speakers — in December.

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Korg made a feature-rich set of DJ headphones that block out the club

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Thanks to a combination of feed-forward and feedback tech, the NC-Q1 can monitor both your surroundings and what gets through into the headphones. With microphones on both the inside and the outside of the earcups, Korg says this model is able to automatically adjust according to the environment while suppressing a wide frequency range. And thanks to an attenuation function, the NC-Q1 is able to handle the aforementioned extreme noise better than most headphones, according to the company.

There are also DJ-friendly features like Smart Monitoring and Sound Enhancing functions. These allow you to adjust how much external sound you let in by picking an EQ preset and tweaking the volume balance. You can also choose which ear you want the monitoring audio in. Basically, you can hear what’s going on in the room without taking off the headphones, which should help save your hearing. You can also quickly turn the monitoring function on/off with the on-board controls directly on the headphones.

Speaking of controls, the NC-Q1 has everything you need for everyday use offstage. There’s a multi-function switch that handles play/pause and skipping tracks. And when you take the headphones off, they’ll automatically pause, and will resume the audio when you put them back on. There’s also easy access to Google Assistant and Siri.

Vox

If you prefer guitars to synths and mixers, there’s a version of these headphones with the branding of Korg-owned Vox. Aside from aesthetic touches that resemble the iconic amplifiers, Korg says the Vox model leverages the monitoring tech to pick up and isolate the frequencies of your voice and acoustic guitars. The company explains that the headphones will allow you to hear yourself free of unwanted noise. What’s more, you can pipe in audio from an external source while you sing/play — like a music-streaming app on your phone. You can adjust the levels as well, to find “the perfect balance” of your vocals, acoustic and a song. This all looks good on paper, but we’re curious to see how well it works in reality.

The Korg NC-Q1 will go on sale in February for $350 and the Vox VH-Q1 will be available in “early spring” for $400. Both last for 36 hours on a charge, so that should be enough to get you through a marathon set of gig.

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‘Bayonetta’ developer is the latest to throw itself at Tencent’s feet

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The cash influx won’t just improve Platinum’s financial position. Sato said this would help his firm move beyond development to possible self-publishing. He also hoped this would give the team a “wider global perspective” than it had in the past.

This isn’t Tencent’s biggest investment. It has full control of League of Legends creator Riot Games and 40 percent of Fortnite‘s Epic Games, not to mention smaller stakes in PUBG creator Bluehole (11.5 percent), Activision Blizzard (5 percent) and Ubisoft (5 percent). It was also crucial to the Nintendo Switch’s Chinese debut. However, it’s still likely to raise eyebrows. There are concerns that Tencent as a Chinese company may feel pressure to stifle anything that might upset the Chinese government, such as support for Hong Kong protesters. There’s no direct evidence that Tencent has pushed for that kind of policy outside of China, but there’s little doubt that these companies want to stay on Tencent’s good side.

It’s an appropriately timed investment for Platinum, at least. The studio has a string of well-received games under its belt, most notably the Bayonetta series as well as Astral Chain and NieR:Automata. This not only gives it the money to keep that hot streak going, but could help it expand into unfamiliar territory.

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iRobot’s IFTTT support lets smart home devices talk to your Roomba

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All of the initial recipes focus on scheduling clean-ups when you’re away. Your bot will swing into action when your Ecobee thermostat is set to “away,” or when your August Smart Lock kicks in. You’ll also find integrations for MyQ’s Smart Garage, WeMo light switches and the Life360 app. iRobot didn’t provide examples of what could happen in the future, but it’s easy to see this working with air quality monitors and other hardware that keeps your home clean.

That still leaves many devices unaccounted for, but it illustrates the importance of the IFTTT team-up. A smart home only works well if devices act in relative harmony, and this could make iRobot’s gear as much a part of a connected household as the latest light bulbs or security system. For that matter, it’s also a way for iRobot to claim an advantage (or at least stay competitive) over increasingly sophisticated rivals.

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