WeWalk introduced a new version of its smart cane for people with visual impairments at CES 2025, bringing a redesign that addresses many of the first model’s shortcomings and adds AI features and more advanced sensors from TDK. It’s positioned as an alternative to the traditional foldable white cane. Co-founder Kursat Ceylan, who has been blind since birth, says Smart Cane 2 can make mobility easier and safer, offering features like turn-by-turn navigation and obstacle detection, along with a ChatGPT-powered voice assistant that puts on-demand information in users’ hands without the need for them to also juggle a smartphone.

The WeWalk Smart Cane 2 has a slimmer handle than its predecessor, which should make for a more comfortable grip, and the company says it’s now about as lightweight as a standard white cane. It has tactile buttons to be more user-friendly, doing away with the touchpad of the previous model that some people found to be difficult to use. Ceylan says it can be used in different weather conditions, not just when it’s warm and dry (WeWalk describes the new cane as “rainwater-resistant”).

“You can fold and unfold it when you need it. There's a speaker, a microphone, obstacle detection technology and a flashlight to make visually impaired people more visible at night. And also it has motion sensors in itself to provide a more accurate navigation experience,” Ceylan explained.

Under the hood, the WeWalk Smart Cane 2 has an ultrasonic time-of-flight sensor, an inertial measurement unit with six-axis motion tracking, a pulse density modulated microphone and a barometric pressure sensor from electronics company TDK. When it detects something ahead, it alerts the user with both haptic and audio feedback, according to Ceylan.

He demonstrated this in the very cramped, noisy environment of the Las Vegas Convention Center, and I was able to hear over the crowd when the cane told him he was approaching an obstacle — in this case, a carpeted step marked with yellow and black tape that I saw multiple CES attendees stumble over during our conversation. It also can connect to headphones via Bluetooth.

Cheyenne MacDonald for Engadget

Paired with your smartphone, it can give navigation instructions and information about your surroundings, as well as public transportation options. “You can hear the names of stores and restaurants you are passing by,” he says. In Starbucks, where he isn’t able to read the menu, he says he might ask the assistant if they sell chocolate croissants.

“You don't need to hold your smartphone anymore while you are going somewhere,” Ceylan said. “You can put it into your pocket and then you can get all the information through your WeWalk smart cane.” There is a smartphone interface for those who want to use it, though, which he held up through the demo so I could see what was going on on the other end. Unlike the vast majority of products I’ve encountered at CES this year that seem to include AI or ChatGPT for no real reason other than the fact that they can, this actually felt like a situation where it makes sense and could even be pretty beneficial.

Since it’s brand new, we don’t yet know how all of this will translate to real-world use. Pre-orders are now open for the WeWalk Smart Cane 2, and the first wave is expected to start shipping before the end of this month. There are two price models: $850 for the smart cane plus a subscription for the voice assistant that costs $4.99 per month, or $1150 altogether with no additional subscription fee for full use of the AI. WeWalk Smart Cane 2 is available internationally.

The London-based startup also has a partnership with the Canadian National Institute for the Blind (CNIB) that kicks off in February, when the organization will start using the WeWalk Smart Cane 2 for its cane training program. The goal is to gather meaningful data for instructors so they can really understand how people are using mobility canes (AI-enabled or otherwise), and help them get the most out of the tools. That, Ceylan says, “is so important, because the better you get around, the better you engage in life.”

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/home/the-wewalk-smart-cane-2-could-be-one-of-ais-few-good-use-cases-at-ces-2025-182020074.html?src=rss

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© Cheyenne MacDonald for Engadget

A spinning VR gaming chair sounds like it would be an at-home vomitron. The virtual reality environment tends to make some people (like me) queasy as it is, so adding synchronized full-body rotation seems like a recipe for disaster. I was kind of prepared for the worst when I decided to try out the $800 Roto VR Explorer at CES 2025, which uses a head-tracker that attaches to the top of Meta Quest devices and other headsets to make a swivel chair turn in whatever direction you’re looking. But against all odds, I ended up having a pretty good time.

In addition to enhancing the experience of seated VR gaming, the chair is actually supposed to help with issues like motion sickness, because, according to the press materials, “the signals from your inner ear will match what your brain is expecting from the visual cues.” Still, I was a little nervous, and it didn’t help that as we approached the booth, the first thing we saw was an empty chair spinning on its own in the corner like an omen.

The Roto VR Explorer is a Made for Meta product, meaning it’s optimized for Quest, but it’ll work with standalone headsets like those in the HTC Vive family and “soon” the Apple Vision Pro. The chair itself weighs 66 pounds, so it felt really sturdy to sit in, and it has a rumble pack under the seat to bring haptic feedback to the rest of your body instead of just in your hands from the controllers. The head tracker, which looks like a flattened Poké Ball, clips onto the top strap of the headset.

After the Roto team gave me the rundown and got me set up in the chair with a Quest 3, I selected my VR experience — the 2018 interactive documentary about the universe, Spheres — and got going. It was, without a doubt, a little weird at first when I turned my head to follow the path of rippling auroras and felt my body rotate as if I were a spice jar on a lazy Susan. But for the most part, it didn’t have that disorienting feeling of the ground shifting underneath you. (It was definitely lagging a bit on the congested show floor, which did lead to some out-of-sync, jerky movements). It only took a minute or so for me to stop focusing on the fact that I was in motion and just go with it.

Jessica Conditt for Engadget

For something like Spheres, where you’re just sort of moseying through beautiful visuals and curiously interacting with the virtual environment, the Roto VR Explorer is actually really nice. If you’re in a faster-paced setting, like a first-person shooter, it’s only going to ramp up the tension. I tried turning my head quickly to the side back and forth a few times to see how it would work with that sort of movement, and it really goes when it’s running smoothly. The chair moves at max speed of 21 revolutions per minute, but you can reduce this with the controllers if that gets to be too much.

I fully expected to be doing a lot of deep breathing to get through the demo, but there actually never was a point that I felt nauseated. And when I got up out of it and reentered real life, I didn’t feel any more wobbly-legged and confused than I usually do after spending time behind a headset (though I’m sure using it for a few hours straight would change that). I'm mostly just relieved I didn't throw up in front of a bunch of strangers. 

There are plenty of situations in which a person might want or need to do their VR gaming sitting down, and the Roto VR Explorer chair offers a pretty fun way to bring the immersion to another level. It’s available for purchase now, with upgrade packages — including Pro Flying and Pro Racing — expected to follow in August 2025.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/this-spinning-vr-chair-at-ces-2025-somehow-didnt-make-me-feel-like-throwing-up-133040191.html?src=rss

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© Jessica Conditt for Engadget

Wellness brand Moonbird launched a kids’ version of its stress-relief breathwork device at CES 2025 and it is so cute. Moonbuddy is like a little calming companion — the roughly egg-shaped device is outfitted in a silicone animal costume and offers tactile guidance for breathing exercises. It’s designed to help kids slow things down for a few minutes so they can feel grounded and ultimately more relaxed.

Unlike the adult version, there’s no accompanying app, so the activity is entirely screen-free. Moonbuddy is activated by a button on the back, and there are four different breathing modes that range from 6 breaths per minute to 10.5 breaths per minute. Once you’ve selected an exercise, the device’s squishy belly will begin to expand and contract slowly to match the desired breathing rhythm.

Moonbuddy looks and feels like a toy that’s meant to be cradled in your hands. The company showed it off with bird and bear versions of the removable sleeve, and it’s hard to choose which is the cuter between the two. But you’ll have to, because only one sleeve comes with the $89 device and they aren’t currently sold as separate accessories. I’d love to see that option down the line, especially since the team says it’s working on other animal designs that could someday join the mix.

Cheyenne MacDonald for Engadget

That aside, adults aren’t the only ones who experience stress and anxiety — kids go through it too, and breathwork can be really helpful for easing those feelings and their potential consequences, like troubled sleep. But getting a kid to sit down and focus on slow, controlled breathing isn’t always an easy thing to do. Moonbuddy could be a great, albeit pricey, tool to have on hand in that regard, making the exercises much more approachable. I may or may not be seriously considering buying one for myself.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/home/moonbuddy-is-an-adorable-guided-breathing-device-thatll-help-your-kid-wind-down-153038369.html?src=rss

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The Pinwheel Watch doesn’t scream “this is a kids’ device.” The new smartwatch, unveiled at Pepcom during CES 2025, doesn’t have a chunky, brightly colored casing or super-thick bezels. It’s actually pretty sleek, with a build like a slightly larger Apple Watch — plus a little camera bump — and swappable straps of different styles. To tech-aware kids who have begun bugging their parents for a smartwatch just like they have, it would easily pass as an analogue for an adult wearable. But it’s also packed with safety features meant to offer only the amount of connectedness that parents feel comfortable with. And an AI chatbot, because, of course.

Pinwheel already has a smartphone platform that allows for parent-approved communications, but the watch is a standalone 4G LTE cellular device with its own mobile plan (about $15 according to the company) and the ability to make calls, send texts and, down the line, do video chats. Parents can determine the level of intervention they think is appropriate for their kids, and change these settings in the Pinwheel app as they see fit. 

Cheyenne MacDonald for Engadget

For a younger kid, they might set it so all contacts need to be approved, while a 14-year-old can be granted the freedom to add whatever friends they want without approval. Parents can remotely monitor text and call history, and turn off certain features — like image sending — individually for contacts. It also offers GPS location tracking so parents can keep tabs on their kids’ whereabouts.

Beyond basic communication, there are a bunch of features that are just meant for fun. There are built-in games, like a helicopter game I really enjoyed playing that involves tapping the screen at the right time to collect gems and keep it in the air, and a kid-friendly version of ChatGPT called PinwheelGPT. The company says the chatbot has been tested for all the common workarounds used to trick these things into doing what they shouldn’t, so it won’t produce inappropriate responses when prompted to. And parents can see these chats, including deleted ones. “You can certainly ask it whatever, but it won't answer,” said Pinwheel co-founder Dane Witbeck. “It quickly backs out and says, ‘hey, that's something you should talk to a trusted adult about.’” The abysmal hotel-casino Wi-Fi at the crowded event prevented me from actually putting that to the test, though.

The Pinwheel Watch will go on sale later this year for $160 (plus the monthly cellular subscription). It’s rated IP67, so it should be pretty durable against spills, dirt and other kid messes. For parents interested in a safer way to let their children start using smart devices to talk to their friends and family, Pinwheel's watch could be a pretty decent option, especially for kids in tween territory that may not want an extremely limited, immature-looking wearable.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/wearables/the-pinwheel-watch-is-a-kid-safe-apple-watch-ultra-lookalike-to-placate-your-tween-123005235.html?src=rss

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© Cheyenne MacDonald for Engadget

The makers of the camera-equipped bird feeder, Bird Buddy, introduced two new products at CES 2025 under a new brand called Wonder that let you spy on nature and help pollinators thrive. 

Petal, a solar-powered camera with changeable lenses and Nature Intelligence (aka AI), can be mounted with a clip, a flexible arm or a stem, so it can be set up pretty much wherever you want outdoors. It’ll analyze everything it sees to let you know what birds, insects and other critters stopped by. The second product, Wonder Blocks, is a modular system that’s kind of like an apartment building for bugs and birds. It’s all very cute.

Wonder

The Petal camera comes in soft, bright colors like orange, blue and yellow, so it would look right at home in a flower pot or wrapped around the thin branch of a tree. It can record and livestream footage to your phone, and send commentary about “the sights and sounds of nature, from birds hatching to the flapping of butterfly’s wings, a flower blooming and bees pollinating it,” according to the company. If you also have the Wonder Blocks, you can use Petal to keep an eye on the little community that forms there.

There are several options when it comes to the components you can add to the Wonder Blocks; the full system includes a pedestal at the bottom, a bug hotel, a large base for plants, a seed tray, a bee hotel and a butterfly feeder on top. Both Petal and the Wonder Blocks will launch on Kickstarter this spring.

Wonder

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/home/smart-home/new-bird-buddy-smart-garden-products-let-you-peek-into-the-secret-lives-of-pollinators-201510777.html?src=rss

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I tried to go into meeting Mirumi with a heart of steel. There are a lot of cute robots at CES every year, that is a given, and you can’t just let yourself get wooed by every puppy-eyed bot that looks your way. But boy did I melt immediately when that silly little thing locked its gaze on me, then bashfully tucked its head away.

Mirumi is the latest bizarre-but-endearing robot from Japanese startup Yukai Engineering, the company responsible for the Qoobo cat-tailed pillow and the finger-nibbling kitty plush, Amagami Ham Ham. All it does is stare at you and move its head around a little until you’ve successfully been tricked into a few moments of happiness. The idea is to emulate that distinctly joyful experience of meeting eyes with a baby in public — a quick, random interaction that can turn your mood around. Mirumi looks like the combination of a fledgling bird and a shrunken-down yeti, and its long arms let it cling to objects like a purse handle so it can come along wherever you go, and stare down strangers.

Inside Mirumi is a distance sensor and an inertial measurement unit, which tell it when there are people nearby and when it’s on the move or being touched. It has different responses for each of these scenarios. When a person first comes into its line of vision, for example, it will get shy and briefly hide its face, like it did for me. Then, it cautiously peeks out again. Jostle it around and it might shake its head, “No.” It doesn’t make any sounds.

Playing with Mirumi at CES Unveiled, I found myself delighted at absolutely everything it did. It has a nice bit of weight to it when you pick it up, sort of like a tiny kitten. And on that same note, its little movements make it give off a subtle vibration, almost as if it were purring. I hooked its bendable arms around my wrist, which also had a bulky watch on it and a camera dangling by the strap, and Mirumi felt pretty secure on top of all that as I gently waved it around. On a thinner perch, like a bag strap, its arms wrap fully for a better hold. (I probably wouldn’t trust it to stay on if I was in a packed subway car or similarly crowded environment, though). 

Mirumi is rechargeable and should last about eight hours before it needs to be plugged in again. We don’t know yet what the final color options will be, but Yukai had white, black and peach Mirumis on display. The company is planning to launch a crowd-funding campaign later this year before releasing the robot, and it hasn’t yet been determined if it will be sold internationally.

Cheyenne MacDonald for Engadget

Is it kind of ridiculous? Yes, absolutely. Especially when you consider the price: around $70, according to a Yukai rep. But kind of ridiculous is Yukai’s whole thing, and at least for me (and just about every person who stopped by during the demo), Mirumi elicited the exact emotional response it was made for. “This is all about making people around you happier,” Yukai’s Hiroko Sato said during our chat at CES Unveiled. I can’t really hate on that.

Speaking of ridiculous, Yukai is also showing off a small cat-shaped device called Nékojita FuFu that will blow on food or a hot drink to cool it off for you. Its curved arms hook onto the side of a mug or bowl, or it can be set down on a flat surface to blow on a plate. 

Cheyenne MacDonald for Engadget

The company says it can bring down the temperature of hot water by 30 degrees Fahrenheit in three to five minutes. We didn’t have any scalding liquids on hand to test that out on the show floor, but it’s basically just a small fan with different blowing modes packaged in a cute silicone body, and the fan did indeed blow air.

As a person who waits an annoyingly long time to take the first sip of coffee or soup because I’m really sensitive to temperatures, I can appreciate an option that doesn’t involve me doing all that work. I can’t see myself going out and buying this, but it strikes me as the sort of product that makes for a fun gift — the kind that’s partially a joke, but also functional. Nékojita FuFu is expected to be released later this year for $25 following a crowd-funding campaign.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/home/this-fluffball-robot-stole-my-heart-at-ces-2025-173009630.html?src=rss

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© Cheyenne MacDonald for Engadget

Resideo, the company behind Honeywell Home smart devices, announced a new Matter-enabled thermostat at CES 2025 that’ll work with your Amazon, Google or Apple smart home setup. It’s also Energy Star certified, meaning it’s met EPA-set levels of efficiency and could save you some money on heating and cooling your home. The Honeywell Home X2S thermostat is positioned as a no-fuss smart home device that may appeal to those who aren’t necessarily all-in on the latest technology but still want the energy and convenience perks.

The Matter smart home standard is meant to make for a smoother process setting up and controlling your IoT devices, allowing you to keep using your preferred assistants rather than stressing over compatibility issues. Matter 1.4, the latest version, was released in November. The X2S will work with most routers — both 2.4GHz and 5GHz — according to Resideo, as well as most HVAC systems. It’s “ideal for those who are looking to upgrade their thermostat but may be intimidated by installing smart home technology,” said Pat Tessier, VP of Product Development for Resideo’s First Alert and Honeywell Home.

The X2S is also compatible with Resideo’s First Alert app, which you can use for thermostat controls, schedules and automatic energy optimization when no one’s home. It’ll also provide readings on humidity levels inside the home, and offer reminders for when you need to change air filters. The Honeywell Home X2S Smart Thermostat will be released this spring in the US and Canada for $80, and you’ll be able to find it at retail stores like Lowes, Home Depot, Target and Walmart.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/home/smart-home/honeywell-homes-new-matter-device-is-an-energy-efficient-smart-thermostat-150044882.html?src=rss

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© Cheyenne MacDonald for Engadget

Stress can really take a toll on your body and mind, often in ways you may not immediately realize. Swiss startup Nutrix AG is hoping a quick, at-home spit test can help by giving users a better idea of how stressed out they really are — and tools to manage it.

At CES 2025, Nutrix showed off its cortiSense device that’s designed to measure levels of cortisol in saliva and can be used to track changes over time. The startup aims to launch it by the end of this year, and it’ll work with the gSense app and digital platform to offer things like personalized wellness coaching from a medical team.

It’s meant to be an easy and noninvasive way to identify and combat burnout. The part that’s a little sus, though? In a press release, Nutrix CEO Maria Hahn said the company is focusing on “empowering enterprises," noting that employee burnout can present “a significant challenge with a huge human and financial cost.” So, get your stress under control to better perform labor, I guess.

I wasn’t able to pop one in my mouth and try it out (I did ask), but the Nutrix team says a reading should take about 3-5 minutes to complete. The device, which looks like a vape, uses disposable tabs that have a cortisol measuring sensor. “You get the quantitative information of the cortisol in saliva,” which is then “transmitted over to the digital health platform to combine with other data, like activity monitoring, glucose [and] weight,” said Nutrix co-founder and CTO Dr. Jemish Parmar at CES’s Unveiled event. You’re supposed to take four measurements a day.

Cheyenne MacDonald for Engadget

The company didn’t share pricing information, but the team says it will be offered as part of a subscription program that would include the cortiSense device, the single-use sensors and the digital health platform. The gSense platform so far offers guidance around weight loss, but it will soon offer mental health services too, according to Dr. Dominika Sulot, the Data and Software Lead. “Once you have all the data, you’re scheduling an appointment with [the medical team] and then they’re providing you the personalized plan,” Sulot says.

For personal use, this kind of thing could be great if it works as stated, especially if it would connect users with physical and mental health support. But I'm not loving the emphasis on enterprise applications to, per the press release, “foster a healthier, more productive workforce.” Actually, I might have just vomited in my mouth a little writing that. I wonder what cortiSense would detect in that. 

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/home/spit-on-this-stick-to-see-how-burned-out-you-are-024531311.html?src=rss

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© Photo by Cheyenne MacDonald/Engadget

If you’ve been waiting for the right moment to upgrade your Kindle Scribe, now wouldn’t be a bad time — Amazon is running its first sale on the new model, which has only been out for a month. Normally $450, the 2024 Kindle Scribe is 19 percent off, bringing the 64GB model down to $365. With the latest generation, Amazon tweaked the appearance of the tablet and added some AI features, along with some new note-taking options.

The second-gen Kindle Scribe has white bezels around the screen and either a green (Metallic Jade) or gray (Tungsten) border, in contrast to the previous model’s thick black border. The discount applies to both colors and, for the gray version, all storage options (16GB, 32GB and 64GB). When we tried out the new Kindle Scribe, we liked the new design and found the reading and writing experiences to be smooth.

The new Kindle Scribe uses AI to help you clean up and summarize your notes, with the Summarize and Refine tools — and you can apply these to individual pages or the entire Notebook. These features worked out pretty well for us. In her review, Engadget’s Deputy Editor of Reviews Cherlynn Low found the Scribe was able to “make sense of a disorganized plan” she’d written out by properly putting list items in sequential order, and she saw “largely accurate results” when it summarized her notes. “Any mistake the system made felt reasonable, since I have horrible handwriting,” she wrote.

There’s also now a better way to write directly on ebooks. With the 2024 Kindle Scribe, Amazon introduced Active Canvas — a little box that will pop up when you put your pen to whatever you’re reading. The box can be resized and won’t disappear when you leave the page. You’ll also soon be able to write in collapsible margins, a feature expected to arrive early this year. One of our biggest gripes about the new Kindle Scribe was the relatively high cost, so if it appeals to you, don’t miss your chance to get it at a discount.

Follow @EngadgetDeals on Twitter and subscribe to the Engadget Deals newsletter for the latest tech deals and buying advice.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/deals/the-second-gen-kindle-scribe-is-on-sale-for-the-first-time-184403045.html?src=rss

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© Cherlynn Low for Engadget

These are the new releases that caught our attention this week: a (surprisingly refreshing) post-apocalyptic tale, and an exorcism thriller.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/entertainment/what-to-read-this-weekend-the-friends-you-make-in-the-apocalypse-150002035.html?src=rss

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Owning a Playdate comes with the perk of already having access to 24 games at no additional cost from the bundled-in Season One — and some pretty good ones to boot. But there are a ton of great games outside the Season One offerings too, for when you’ve finished the whole batch or, for newer players, while you’re waiting for new games between the weekly drops. Here, I’ll highlight some of the best games I’ve played so far from the Playdate Catalog. It’ll mainly be split two ways: games that use the crank and games that don’t. There are also a couple of titles that aren’t quite games, but are worth checking out all the same.

Games that use the crank

Games that don’t use the crank

Comics, visual novels and more

Check out our entire Best Games series including the best Nintendo Switch games, the best PS5 games, the best Xbox games, the best PC games and the best free games you can play today.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/best-playdate-games-190049201.html?src=rss

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© Panic / Engadget

Hackers were reportedly able to modify several Chrome extensions with malicious code this month after gaining access to admin accounts through a phishing campaign. The cybersecurity company Cyberhaven shared in a blog post this weekend that its Chrome extension was compromised on December 24 in an attack that appeared to be “targeting logins to specific social media advertising and AI platforms.” A few other extensions were hit as well, going back to mid-December, Reuters reported. According to Nudge Security’s Jaime Blasco, that includes ParrotTalks, Uvoice and VPNCity.

Cyberhaven notified its customers on December 26 in an email seen by TechCrunch, which advised them to revoke and rotate their passwords and other credentials. The company’s initial investigation of the incident found that the malicious extension targeted Facebook Ads users, with a goal of stealing data such as access tokens, user IDs and other account information, along with cookies. The code also added a mouse click listener. “After successfully sending all the data to the [Command & Control] server, the Facebook user ID is saved to browser storage,” Cyberhaven said in its analysis. “That user ID is then used in mouse click events to help attackers with 2FA on their side if that was needed.”

Cyberhaven said it first detected the breach on December 25 and was able to remove the malicious version of the extension within an hour. It’s since pushed out a clean version.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/cybersecurity/hackers-injected-malicious-code-into-several-chrome-extensions-in-recent-attack-220648155.html?src=rss

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© NurPhoto via Getty Images

Marvel just dropped the first trailer for its upcoming animated series, Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man, which will bring us back to Peter Parker’s early days as a high school superhero. The art leans into a classic comic book style, and it looks like the story itself will be a departure from the MCU version of things, in contrast to how the show was initially described back in 2021 when it was first announced. Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man will have 10 episodes, and debuts on Disney+ on January 29.

Peter Parker is voiced by Hudson Thames. The cast also includes Colman Domingo as Norman Osborn, who we see in the trailer stepping in as Spider-Man’s mentor, along with Zeno Robinson (Harry Osborn), Grace Song (Nico Minoru) and Charlie Cox (Daredevil). Hugh Dancy voices Otto Octavius aka Doctor Octopus. The animated series was first teased at Disney+ Day three years ago under a different name, Spider-Man: Freshman Year.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/entertainment/streaming/check-out-the-first-full-trailer-for-your-friendly-neighborhood-spider-man-190300960.html?src=rss

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A set of new requirements proposed by the US Department of Health and Human Services’ (HHS) Office for Civil Rights could bring healthcare organizations up to par with modern cybersecurity practices. The proposal, posted to the Federal Register on Friday, includes requirements for multifactor authentication, data encryption and routine scans for vulnerabilities and breaches. It would also make the use of anti-malware protection mandatory for systems handling sensitive information, along with network segmentation, the implementation of separate controls for data backup and recovery, and yearly audits to check for compliance.

HHS also shared a fact sheet outlining the proposal, which would update the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA) Security Rule. A 60-day public comment period is expected to open soon. In a press briefing, US deputy national security advisor for cyber and emerging technology Anne Neuberger said the plan would cost $9 billion in the first year to execute, and $6 billion over the subsequent four years, Reuters reports. The proposal comes in light of a marked increase in large-scale breaches over the past few years. Just this year, the healthcare industry was hit by multiple major cyberattacks, including hacks into Ascension and UnitedHealth systems that caused disruptions at hospitals, doctors’ offices and pharmacies.

“From 2018-2023, reports of large breaches increased by 102 percent, and the number of individuals affected by such breaches increased by 1002 percent, primarily because of increases in hacking and ransomware attacks,” according to the Office for Civil Rights. “In 2023, over 167 million individuals were affected by large breaches — a new record.”

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/cybersecurity/healthcare-organizations-in-the-us-may-soon-get-a-cybersecurity-overhaul-220933165.html?src=rss

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NASA said on Friday that it received a signal from the Parker Solar Probe confirming that the spacecraft had survived its closest ever flyby of the sun. The approach took it just 3.8 million miles from the surface, passing within the sun’s corona and allowing for unprecedented data collection in the vicinity of a star. A few million miles might seem like a pretty great distance, but to put things in perspective, NASA explains, “If the solar system was scaled down with the distance between the sun and Earth the length of a football field, Parker Solar Probe would be just four yards from the end zone.”

The probe’s current orbit takes it closest to the sun about every three months. It’ll swing back around for two more close flybys in 2025, on March 22 and June 19. The probe is expected to transmit the data from its latest close approach soon, once it’s in a better location to do so. “The data that will come down from the spacecraft will be fresh information about a place that we, as humanity, have never been,” said Joe Westlake, the director of the Heliophysics Division at NASA Headquarters. “It’s an amazing accomplishment.”

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/science/space/parker-solar-probe-survived-its-close-approach-to-the-sun-and-will-make-two-more-in-2025-180350510.html?src=rss

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© NASA/Johns Hopkins APL/Ben Smith

It’s never been more exhausting to be online than in 2024. While it’s been clear for some time that monetization has shifted social media into a different beast, this year in particular felt like a tipping point. Faced with the endless streams of content that’s formulated to trap viewers’ gazes, shoppable ads at every turn, AI and the unrelenting opinions of strangers, it struck me recently that despite my habitual use of these apps, I’m not actually having fun on any of them anymore.

Take Instagram. I open the app and I’m greeted by an ad for bidets. I start scrolling. Between each of the first three posts at the top of my feed is a different ad: lingerie, squat-friendly jorts, shoes from a brand selling items that appear to be dropshipped from AliExpress at a markup. Then, thankfully, two memes back to back. I fire off the funny one to five of my friends in a way that feels obligatory. After that, another ad, then a bunch of seemingly off-target Reels from accounts I don’t even follow. Minutes pass before I encounter a post by someone I know in real life. Oh yeah, it’s time to turn off suggested posts again, something I have to do every 30 days or my feed will be filled with random crap.

But before I get a chance to do that, I’m distracted by a Reel of a cat watching The Grinch. Then by a Reel of a guy with a tiny chihuahua in his coat pocket. Curiosity gets the better of me and I open the comments, where people are angrily writing that the dog must be suffocating. Oh no. I scroll to the next Reel, a video I’ve seen several times before of a rooster marching around in a pair of pants. Below, everyone’s fighting about whether it’s cruel to put pants on a chicken. Is it? Next, a video of a girl doing her makeup, where men are commenting that this should be considered catfishing. Deep sigh. I realize 30 minutes have somehow passed and I close Instagram, now in a worse mood than when I opened it. I’ll compulsively return in an hour or so, rinse and repeat.

It’s not just an Instagram problem. On TikTok (which may or may not get shut down in the US very soon), the For You page has me figured out pretty well contentwise and the presence of toxic commenters is minimal, but every other post is either sponsored or hawking a product from the TikTok Shop. And it’s too easy to get sucked into the perpetual scroll. I often avoid opening the app at all just because I know I’ll end up getting trapped there for longer than I want to, watching videos about nothing made by people I don’t know and never will. But it still happens more frequently than I’d like to admit.

These days, it feels like every gathering place on the internet is so crowded with content that’s competing for — and successfully grabbing — our attention or trying to sell us something that there’s barely any room for the “social” element of social media. Instead, we’re pushed into separate corners to stare at the glowing boxes in our hands alone.

Fittingly, Oxford announced at the end of November that its Word of the Year for 2024 is “brain rot,” a term that expresses the supposed consequence of countless hours spent on the internet consuming stupid stuff. Just as fitting, Australia’s Macquarie Dictionary chose “enshittification,” which describes how the platforms and products we love get ruined over time as the companies behind them chase profits. (It was also The American Dialect Society’s 2023 Word of the Year). Social media platforms were in theory designed around ideas of friendship and connection, but what’s playing out on them today couldn’t feel further from genuine human interaction.

Facebook — if you even have an account still — might be where you’d go if you really wanted to see updates from family and other people you know IRL, but its UI has become so cluttered with recommended Reels and products that it feels unusable. Twitter, where it was once fun to keep up with live discourse around major events or fandom happenings, no longer exists, and X, its new form under Elon Musk, is filled with bots and political propaganda.

On the other hand, Threads, an offshoot of Instagram and Meta’s answer to Twitter/X, took off this year and it quickly became a hotspot for copy-paste engagement bait, a problem so bad that Adam Mosseri has publicly acknowledged it. The Threads team has apparently been “working to get it under control,” but I still can’t scroll through my For You feed without seeing a dozen posts that are either just regurgitated memes being passed off as original thoughts, or questions to the masses that are crafted with the intention of stirring the pot. The same feed is otherwise dominated by viral videos that are ripped off from other creators without credit and pop culture commentary that almost always devolves into sex- and genderism. I often step away from Threads feeling the need to go scream in a field.

Threads doesn’t have DMs, meaning all conversations take place in public. It finally gave users the ability to create custom feeds around searchable topics in November, but those topic pages are generally still riddled with bait-style posts, just more subject-specific versions. That’s meant so far that it’s been pretty hard to find communities to authentically connect with. It all feels so impersonal.

It doesn’t help that Threads’ Following feed currently isn’t the default view and there’s no way to change that (though Threads recently began testing the option). And at the end of the day, its 275 million or so monthly active users doesn’t include all that many people I actually know, especially outside of the media industry. The same goes for fediverse social networks like Mastodon and Bluesky, which are far less populated but have a cliquier feel. Visiting those platforms feels like walking into a room full of people who all know each other really well, and realizing you’re the odd one out. But at least Bluesky nor Mastodon aren’t poorly veiled shopping experiences. (Threads isn’t at the moment, either, but ads are reportedly coming).

Maybe it all comes down to burnout in the era of excessive consumption, but lately I’ve found myself wishing for a place on the internet that feels both inviting and human. I’m sure I’m not alone. In recent years, we’ve seen alternative social apps pop up like BeReal, Hive and the Myspace-reminiscent entrants SpaceHey and noplace, all aiming to bring character and interpersonal connection back into social media. But none have quite cracked the code for lasting mainstream adoption. Discord and even Reddit to some extent address the same person-to-person need, yet they share more in common with proto social media chatrooms and forums than with the sites that sprung up during the social heyday.

Meanwhile, Meta is increasingly pushing AI across its apps. Just this summer we got the chatbot-maker, AI Studio, which Meta touted not only as a way for users to create AI characters, but for “creators to build an AI as an extension of themselves to reach more fans.” Rather than talk to your real friends or make new ones around a common interest, you can deepen your parasocial relationship with celebrities, influencers and fictional characters by chatting with the AI versions of them. Or, pick from several AI girlfriends you can now find in the menu of your DMs. We’ve completely lost the plot, I fear.

I’ve started dipping back into Tumblr here and there, if only to see a less chaotic, more curated feed and relish in the reminder of how fun customization can be. A few friends have mentioned that they’ve been doing the same. But given the platform’s past policy upheavals and its current AI partnerships, it’s not exactly an online oasis either. As if on cue, I was recently served a mock Tumblr poster during my evening scroll that felt uncannily apt: “we didn’t get better. the rest of the internet just got worse.”

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/social-media/in-2024-using-social-media-felt-worse-than-ever-170047895.html?src=rss

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© Pexels/Photo by cottonbro studio

NASA’s Parker Solar Probe is still zipping around the sun making history, and it’s gearing up for another record-setting approach this week. On December 24 at 6:53AM ET, the spacecraft’s orbit will take it just 3.8 million miles from the solar surface, according to the space agency. That’ll be the closest it — or any other probe — has ever come to the sun. The milestone will mark the completion of the Parker Solar Probe’s 22nd orbit around our star, and the first of the three final closest flybys planned for its mission. The craft, which launched in 2018, is expected to complete a total of 24 orbits.

“No human-made object has ever passed this close to a star, so Parker will truly be returning data from uncharted territory,” Nick Pinkine, Parker Solar Probe mission operations manager at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory, said in a statement on NASA’s blog. “We’re excited to hear back from the spacecraft when it swings back around the Sun.”

The Parker Solar Probe will be traveling at about 430,000 miles per hour at the time of its closest-ever pass. It’ll ping the team to confirm its health on December 27, when it’ll be far enough from the sun to resume communications.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/science/space/nasas-parker-solar-probe-will-fly-closer-to-the-sun-than-ever-on-christmas-eve-225338918.html?src=rss

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© NASA

A new report published by the child safety groups Heat Initiative and ParentsTogether Action details the alarming presence of inappropriate apps that are rated as suitable for children as young as four years old on Apple’s App Store. The groups worked with a researcher to review as many apps as possible in the span of 24 hours, and say they ultimately identified over 200 apps that contained “concerning content or features” given the ages they were rated for — including stranger chat and AI girlfriend apps, gaming apps with sexual or violent prompts and imagery, and AI-powered appearance rating apps. 

The research focused on apps with assigned age ratings of 4+, 9+ and 12+ in categories considered to be “risky”: chat (including AI and stranger chat apps), beauty, diet and weight loss, unfiltered internet access (apps for accessing schools’ banned sites) and gaming. Among the findings, the report says at least 24 sexual games and 9 stranger chat apps were marked as appropriate for kids in these age groups. The research also identified 40 apps for unfiltered internet access and 75 apps relating to beauty, body image and weight loss carrying these age ratings, along with 28 shooter and crime games. Collectively, the roughly 200 offending apps spotted during the 24-hour investigation have been downloaded over 550 million times, according to Heat Initiative. 

About 800 apps were reviewed in all, and the research found that some categories were more likely than others to carry apps with inappropriately low age ratings. For stranger chat apps and games, “fewer were rated as appropriate for children,” the report says. In most cases, they were 17+. But in the categories of weight loss and unfiltered internet access, “nearly all apps reviewed were approved for kids 4+.” The report calls on Apple to do better when it comes to child safety measures on the App Store, urging the company to use third-party reviewers to verify apps’ age ratings before they become available to download, and to make its age rating process transparent to consumers. 

In a statement to Engadget, a spokesperson for Apple said, “At Apple, we work hard to protect user privacy and security and provide a safe experience for children. We do that by giving parents a wide range of capabilities they can enable on their children’s devices to restrict purchases, web searches and access to apps; prevent explicit content; flag problematic content through Report a Problem; and more. Developers are required to provide clear age ratings consistent with App Store policies, and apps designed for kids are designated in a unique category and undergo a stricter App Review process. In instances where an app’s age rating does not match its content, we take immediate action to ensure the issue is corrected.”

You can read the full report, Rotten Ratings: 24 Hours in Apple’s App Store, here. 

Update, December 26 2024, 10:34AM ET: This story has been updated to include a statement from Apple. 

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/big-tech/inappropriate-apps-rated-as-safe-for-young-children-are-prevalent-in-the-app-store-report-warns-213727965.html?src=rss

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© NurPhoto via Getty Images

Apple is working on the next generation of AirPods Pro, and they may come packing some new health features, according to Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman. In the Power On newsletter this weekend, Gurman reports that Apple has been testing features including temperature sensing and heart rate monitoring for the earbuds. So far, Apple has found that the Apple Watch still does the latter better, but the AirPods “aren’t terribly far off” in their readings, he writes.

The company has also reportedly revived its idea of putting cameras into AirPods, a rumor we’ve heard a few times over the last year. According to Gurman, Apple now considers it “a priority” as it works to bolster its AI services. But, it’d likely be years before any camera-equipped AirPods make their debut. As for heart rate monitoring, that may appear much sooner. Gurman writes, “The capability could be ready for the next-generation AirPods Pro, which are in early development.”

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/audio/headphones/apples-next-airpods-pro-could-offer-heart-rate-and-temperature-monitoring-175757188.html?src=rss

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© Billy Steele/Engadget

Apple is developing a smart doorbell and lock system that would use Face ID to unlock the door for known residents, Mark Gurman reports in the Power On newsletter. The face-scanning doorbell would connect to a smart deadbolt, which could include existing HomeKit-compatible third-party locks, according to Gurman. Or, Apple may “[team] up with a specific lock maker to offer a complete system on day one.” 

It’ll likely still be a while before we see the doorbell-lock system hit the market, though, if we see it at all. Gurman reports that it’s in the early stages of development and wouldn’t be ready until at least the end of next year. The doorbell would help Apple compete with the likes of Amazon's Ring and Google Nest, and it's just one of several smart home products Apple is working on, according to Gurman. The company is reportedly also developing a security camera for inside the home, which would work with its rumored smart home hub that’s expected to make its debut as soon as next year.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/home/smart-home/apple-is-reportedly-working-on-a-smart-doorbell-system-that-could-unlock-your-door-with-face-id-161504513.html?src=rss

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