James's Tech Blog

Aibo, the robotic dog sold thousands online at its first inception back in 1999. Aibo sold out quickly, but as production continued, the consumers’ interest waned because of such a hefty price tag. The new and improved Aibo is said to come with artificial intelligence and can learn new tricks just like a real dog. The robotic dog is cute, adorable even, but the price tag is still bigger than the dog is. Aibo has downloadable extensions to its personality from an online store, but the owner must sign off on the downloads first. The robotic dog is said to be eager to learn what makes the owner happiest and to continue performing these functions on a daily basis. Aibo could be a great new addition to anyone’s home if he/she likes small dogs and wanted one but certain restrictions such as terms of lease and other situations prevent one from owning a living dog of their own.

Aibo is set at a whopping $1,740 price tag, but with the newest upgrades, it is expected to make bank this year. Aibo can take pictures when asked by the owner and can video record everything it experiences in unknown terrain for later browsing by the owner. It can create a database of living memories with the owner. Sony is attempting to compete with Google and Amazon with their smart devices. They hope that the robotic dog will be capable of doing everything that the Echo and Alexa can do now in the future, but for now they are settling for a robot dog to make people happy. The robotic dog is set to sell in Japan in January. Sony is mostly known for their TV’s DVD players, Blu-ray, other devices such as these, they are hardly remembered for their tinkering in the world of robotics, but now they are trying to reach more avenues with electronics. It is a good thing to see, a company doing this for robotics in general. It would be nice to see more things like this down the road, I will keep track of this project as well. I will also leave random, short updates here and there of the progress as I come across something interesting.

ORIGINAL ARTICLE:http://money.cnn.com/2017/11/01/technology/sony-robot-dog-aibo/index.html

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Vivaldi Technologies, a company based in Norway, is the company behind the Vivaldi browser. The Vivaldi browser was built with Power users, or technology enthusiasts in mind. It has all the features of Chrome, Firefox, and others with a little something extra. The browser is best suited for people who know what they want, how they want it. Vivaldi started out with a Tech Preview and since its beginning has ran more like a stable release. The browser was meant to replace Opera legacy. It was built in the wake of changes in Opera Software, the changes that Jon Von Tetzchner, didn’t agree with. He was mad after Opera shut down their old community website and he felt that Opera the browser was no more, he felt that the company sold out and so he left Opera and reopened the community site and started to form Vivaldi.

Vivaldi has more built in features than you might really think is necessary, however, where they are heading, these features will come in handy. Vivaldi is an unfinished product, but a very sturdy one. Vivaldi uses Blink, the latest Chromium engine and many of its libraries. Say what you might about Google, but next to Firefox, they have done the most to advance the web. Vivaldi uses a closed source UI which has some people questioning its loyalty to its users, however, Most of what Vivaldi have advanced since releasing the browser has been Merely to the UI and not the inner workings of the browser. Changes made to the UI were adding of tab stacking and audio control in active and inactive tabs, Vivaldi’s own theme support, the ability to switch the placement of the bookmarks bar, the side bar, etc. and more control over browser history. They also added possible hotkeys and mouse gestures.

Vivaldi browser stays up to date with the latest Chrome updates. They do not lag behind like with browsers such as Srware Iron and they do not add hidden proprietary software like with Comodo’s browsers and even Chromium itself. Chromium is the open source project behind Google-Chrome, this means that Vivaldi is largely open sourced, the company just likes to keep a lock on their interface. The browser looks reminiscent of Opera in its earlier days, back when the company was loyal to the community it started with. Vivaldi does listen to its users, it may take time to implement much wanted features, but they do try to make good on their word.

Vivaldi has recently started a personal blogging site on its community page for its users much like blogger for google. They have also released an online email client, but I have yet to verify how well it works. They are also currently working on a sync feature, this will put it at a tipping point agains Chrome, many users who feel stuck on Chrome will now have two browser options to move away from Chrome to. As for privacy, the browser does allow some data collection to Google, but this is just standard for features such as safe browsing and these can be turned on and off in the browser’s UI easily. Vivaldi is quick to render pages, feels even quicker than Chromium, however, that could be placebo. Vivaldi supports nearly all of the Chromium extensions now.

One issue I have with Vivaldi, it takes longer to fire up than even Google-Chrome does. Loading the browser requires a bit more CPU cycles and time than with other browsers, however, if it remains constant and stable, that might not really matter to new users. It looks and feels amazing as a browser. The browser’s slogan is “It’s your web. Surf it the way you want” as printed on their site: https://vivaldi.com.

As you can see, I have their homepage opened now which displays many of their unique features over other browsers right on the front page. It also gives links to the Community page, the news, the forum and the webmail. Here is to Another great year with Vivaldi, let’s hope the next year finds even more improvements.

For more stories: https://techiegeek123.blogspot.com

What is a keylogger? A keylogger is any software that actively monitors keystrokes on a device, a keyboard. A keylogger then has the potential to send that information back to a server somewhere. Recently a seemingly inactive keylogger was found inside of most recent models of HP devices. If you recall, back in May, there was a keylogger found in audio drivers as well, but this time it was found more directly in keyboard drivers. An update was issued to try to remove the keylogging code, but this could tarnish HP’s credibility. HP has been around since before the beginning of the Internet, a company so old and so trusted at making computers could do no wrong right? Wrong!

If we turn our eyes from HP alone, back in 2014, Lenovo was accused of bundling Superfish software with its PCs and laptops. The Superfish company was originally a software development company founded in Israel, but residing in Palo Alto, California. In 2015 the company further included a signed certificate with Superfish, but then Antivirus companies started to catch on to the issue and started devising definition packages to remove the offending software.

Toshiba, also a well known computer company, was found to harbor UEFI rootkits in its BIOS software. This was a lojack service for your computer, it was basically meant to be used as an anti-theft piece of software, however, it was vulnerable to outside attack. When users caught wind of this, Toshiba finally removed the rootkit from their future devices, but that damage to their name had already been done. Many people from that day continued to boycott such products.

In the case of the HP keylogger found recently, it was found in the keyboard driver and was assumed to be inactive by a researcher. The researcher was studying how the keyboard features worked when stumbling upon the string in the driver code. As with all of these mentioned bugs above, an update was issued for the keyboard driver and HP notebook owners have been urged to search the company’s website to see if there is an update available to them, but many are outraged, so we shall see how this plays out in favor of HP.

THE ORIGINAL ARTICLE: https://www.ghacks.net/2017/12/10/hp-releases-synaptics-driver-update-that-removes-disabled-keylogger/

https://thehackernews.com/2017/12/hp-laptop-keylogger.html

UNRELATED SHAMELESS PLUG:https://github.com/thedummy06/Helpful-Linux-Shell-Scripts

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