<hr/><h4>iOS will soon disable USB connection if left locked for a week</h4><div>
<p>In a move seemingly designed specifically to frustrate law enforcement, <a class="crunchbase-link" href="https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/apple/" target="_blank" data-type="organization" data-entity="apple">Apple <span class="crunchbase-tooltip-indicator"></span></a> is adding a security feature to iOS that totally disables data being sent over USB if the device isn’t unlocked for a period of 7 days. This spoils many methods for exploiting that connection to coax information out of the device without the user’s consent.</p>
<p>The feature, called USB Restricted Mode, was <a href="https://blog.elcomsoft.com/2018/05/ios-11-4-to-disable-usb-port-after-7-days-what-it-means-for-mobile-forensics/">first noticed by Elcomsoft researchers</a> looking through the iOS 11.4 code. It disables USB data (it will still charge) if the phone is left locked for a week, re-enabling it if it’s unlocked normally.</p>
<p>Normally when an iPhone is plugged into another device, whether it’s the owner’s computer or another, there is an interchange of data where the phone and computer figure out if they recognize each other, if they’re authorized to send or back up data, and so on. This connection can be taken advantage of if the computer being connected to is attempting to break into the phone.</p>
<p>USB Restricted Mode is likely a response to the fact that iPhones seized by law enforcement or by malicious actors like thieves essentially will sit and wait patiently for this kind of software exploit to be applied to them. If an officer collects a phone during a case, but there are no known ways to force open the version of iOS it’s running, no problem: just stick it in evidence and wait until some security contractor sells the department a 0-day.</p>
<p>But what if, a week after that phone was taken, it shut down its own Lightning port’s ability to send or receive data or even recognize it’s connected to a computer? That would prevent the law from ever having the opportunity to attempt to break into the device unless they move with a quickness.</p>
<p>On the other hand, had its owner simply left the phone at home while on vacation, they could pick it up, put in their PIN and it’s like nothing ever happened. Like the very best security measures, adversaries will curse its name while users may not even know it exists. Really, this is one of those security features that seems obvious in retrospect and I would not be surprised if other phone makers copy it in short order.</p>
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<blockquote class="wp-embedded-content" data-secret="VFiFwVYxVs"><p><a href="https://techcrunch.com/2018/03/27/inquiry-finds-fbi-sued-apple-to-unlock-phone-without-considering-all-options/">Inquiry finds FBI sued Apple to unlock phone without considering all options</a></p></blockquote>
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<p>Had this feature been in place a couple of years ago, it would have prevented <a href="https://techcrunch.com/2018/03/27/inquiry-finds-fbi-sued-apple-to-unlock-phone-without-considering-all-options/">that entire drama with the FBI</a>. It milked its ongoing inability to access a target phone for months, reportedly concealing its own capabilities all the while, likely to make it a political issue and manipulate lawmakers into compelling Apple to help. That kind of grandstanding doesn’t work so well on a seven-day deadline.</p>
<p>It’s not a perfect solution, of course, but there are no perfect solutions in security. This may simply force all iPhone-related investigations to get high priority in courts, so that existing exploits can be applied legally within the seven-day limit (and, presumably, every few days thereafter). All the same, it should be a powerful barrier against the kind of eventual, <em>potential</em> access through undocumented exploits from third parties that seems to threaten even the latest models and OS versions.</p>
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</div><br/><div>Source: https://techcrunch.com/2018/05/08/ios-will-soon-disable-usb-connection-if-left-locked-for-a-week/</div><br/><hr/><h4>Watch Google I/O keynote live right here</h4><div>
<p>How did you find <a href="https://techcrunch.com/tag/ms-build-2018/">Microsoft Build</a> yesterday? We don’t really have time for your answer because Google I/O is already here! <a class="crunchbase-link" href="https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/google/" target="_blank" data-type="organization" data-entity="google">Google <span class="crunchbase-tooltip-indicator"></span></a> is kicking off its annual developer conference today. As usual, there will be a consumer keynote with major new products in the morning, and a developer-centric keynote in the afternoon.</p>
<p>The conference starts at <b>10 AM Pacific Time</b> (1 PM on the East Cost, 6 PM in London, 7 PM in Paris) and you can watch the live stream right here on this page. The developer keynote will be at 12:45 PM Pacific Time.</p>
<p>Rumor has it that Google is about to share more details about <a class="crunchbase-link" href="https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/android/" target="_blank" data-type="organization" data-entity="android">Android <span class="crunchbase-tooltip-indicator"></span></a> P, the next major release of its Android platform. But you can <a href="https://techcrunch.com/2018/05/07/google-i-o-kicks-off-tomorrow-heres-what-to-expect/">also expect</a> some Google Assistant and Google Home news, some virtual reality news and maybe even some Wear OS news. We have a team on the ground ready to cover the event, so don’t forget to <a href="https://techcrunch.com/tag/google-i-o-2018/">read TechCrunch</a> to get our take on today’s news.</p>
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<p><a href="https://techcrunch.com/tag/google-i-o-2018"><img src="https://techcrunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/google-io-2018-banner.png"></a></p>
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</div><br/><div>Source: https://techcrunch.com/2018/05/08/google-io-2018-live-stream-livestream-android-chrome-home-assistant/</div><br/><hr/><h4>Netgear put a cable modem in latest Orbi wifi router</h4><div>
<p>Generations ago, the internet spoke of an old saying that involved a man exhibiting excitement about hearing of a person’s love of an object, so he did favor, and put that something inside of something else. That’s what <a class="crunchbase-link" href="https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/netgear-inc/" target="_blank" data-type="organization" data-entity="netgear-inc">Netgear <span class="crunchbase-tooltip-indicator"></span></a> did here. Netgear heard people like the internet so much that the company put an internet modem inside a WiFi router.</p>
<p>The Orbi WiFi System with Built-in Cable Modem is just that. It’s an Orbi WiFi router with a DOCSIS® 3.0 cable modem built in. In theory this setup would make for easier setup and troubleshooting of internet issues while providing the home with great WiFi.</p>
<p>I have an Orbi system in my house and it’s wonderful. The system does a far better job at covering my home with WiFi than my previous single router setup. Including the cable modem in the setup, though, just makes sense and other networking companies would be smart to follow Netgear’s lead. Naturally, there’s a danger in including a cable modem in a router as one piece could become obsolete before the other but I would argue that most consumers upgrade their equipment every few years anyway.</p>
<p>This convenience comes at a cost. The router with built-in Orbi networking costs $299 and a system with an Orbi extender costs $399.</p>
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</div><br/><div>Source: https://techcrunch.com/2018/05/08/netgear-put-a-cable-modem-in-latest-orbi-wifi-router/</div><br/><hr/><h4>Nintendo Switch Online costs $20 per year and comes with 20 online-playable NES games</h4><div>
<p><a class="crunchbase-link" href="https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/nintendo/" target="_blank" data-type="organization" data-entity="nintendo">Nintendo <span class="crunchbase-tooltip-indicator"></span></a> has <a href="https://www.nintendo.com/switch/online-service/nes/">finally revealed the details</a> of its paid online service after months of speculation by fans. The pricing is pretty much as expected ($20 per year), but the additions of online save game backups and NES games with added online multiplayer sweeten the deal.</p>
<p>We first heard the pricing last June, including the $3.99 monthly and $7.99 3-month options, but the announcement then left much to the imagination. This one makes things much clearer, but there are still a few mysteries it will perhaps clear up at E3 or closer to the September launch.</p>
<p>Save data being backed up online is perhaps the most asked-for feature on the Switch, and one other platforms have provided for years. So its official announcement will surely be greeted with cries of joy. The exact details are coming soon.</p>
<p>But it’s the online play for NES games that really caught my eye. Officially called “NES – Nintendo Switch Online,” it will be a collection of 10 games to start and 10 more to come, all of which can be played in both single- and multi-player modes online. How that looks exactly isn’t quite clear; the Nintendo release says “Depending on the game, players can engage in online competitive or co-op multiplayer, or take turns controlling the action.”</p>
<p><img class="breakout aligncenter size-full wp-image-1635225" src="https://techcrunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/nintendo-online.png" alt="" width="1024" height="502">Does that mean we’ll have leaderboards? Ghost runs in <em>Super Mario Bros 3</em>? Low-latency battles in <em>Balloon Fight</em>? No clue.</p>
<p>At least the first 10 games are confirmed: <i>Balloon Fight</i>, <i>Dr. Mario</i> and <i>Super Mario Bros. 3, </i><i>Donkey Kong</i>, <i>Ice Climber</i>, <i>The Legend of Zelda</i>, <i>Mario Bros.</i>, <i>Soccer</i>, <i>Super Mario Bros.</i> and <i>Tennis. </i>The other 10 will supposedly be announced soon, with more added “on a regular basis.”</p>
<p>Those are of course all Nintendo-made games, suggesting licensing negotiations are still underway for classics like <em>Final Fantasy</em> and<em> Double Dragon</em>. For now it’s a package deal, you can’t just buy <em>Soccer</em> and play it unless you go for the full online experience.</p>
<p>The $20 per year subscription will also be necessary starting in September for online play. It might be a bit much to ask if you don’t play a lot of <em>Splatoon</em> or <em>Mario Kart 8 </em>or aren’t so into retro NES games, but it’s sure cheaper than the competition.</p>
<p>If you want to talk with your friends while trading off Zelda dungeons, you’ll still need the smartphone app, though. Perhaps a chat service will be announced another time.</p>
<p>A couple technical notes: the subscription is tied to an account, not the hardware, so if you and I shared a Switch and only I paid for the online aspect, you don’t get it when you log in. On the other hand, when I go to a friend’s house, I can log in to their device and use online services there. There is a $35 yearly option that lets you authorize up to 8 accounts though, for families with multiple users.</p>
<p>The Switch Online service isn’t needed for system updates or buying games online or anything — just online play, the NES games, and save game backups.</p>
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</div><br/><div>Source: https://techcrunch.com/2018/05/07/nintendo-switch-online-costs-20-per-year-and-comes-with-20-online-playable-nes-games/</div><br/><hr/><h4>Kaptivo looks to digitally transform the lowly whiteboard</h4><div>
<p>At <a href="https://kaptivo.com/">Kaptivo</a>, a company that’s bringing high-tech image recognition, motion capture and natural language processing technologies to the lowly whiteboard, executives are hoping that the second time is the charm.</p>
<p>The Cambridge, U.K. and San Mateo, Calif.-based company began life as a company called Light Blue Optics, and had raised $50 million in financing since its launch in 2004. Light Blue Optics was working on products like Kaptivo’s white board technology and an interactive touch and pen technology, which was sold earlier in the year to Promethean, a global education technology solutions company.</p>
<p>With a leaner product line and a more focused approach to the market, Kaptivo emerged in 2016 from Light Blue Optics’ shadow and began selling its products in earnest.</p>
<p>Founding chief executive Nic Lawrence (the previous head of Light Blue Optics) even managed to bring in investors from his old startup to Kaptivo, raising $6 million in fresh capital from Draper Esprit (a previous backer), Benhamou Global Ventures and Generation Ventures.</p>
<p>“The common theme has been user interfaces,” Lawrence said. “We saw the need for a new product category. We sold off parts of our business and pushed all our money into Kaptivo.”</p>
<p>What initially began as a business licensing technology, Lawrence saw a massive market opening up in technologies that could transform the humble whiteboard into a powerful tool for digital business intelligence with the application of some off the shelf technology and Kaptivo’s proprietary software.</p>
<p>Kaptivo’s technology does more than just create a video of a conference room, Lawrence says.</p>
<p>“In real time we’re removing the people from the scene and enhancing the content written on the board,”  he said.”</p>
<p>Optical character recognition allows users to scribble on a white board and Kaptivo’s software will differentiate between text and images. The company’s subscription service even will convert text to other languages.</p>
<p>The company has a basic product and a three-year cloud subscription that it sells for $999. That’s much lower than the thousands of dollars a high-end smart conferencing system would cost, according to Lawrence. The hardware alone is $699, and a one-year subscription to its cloud services sells for $120, Lawrence said.</p>
<p>Kaptivo has sold more than 2,000 devices globally already and has secured major OEM partners like HP, according to a statement. Kaptivo customers include BlueJeans, <a class="crunchbase-link" href="https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/atlassian/" target="_blank" data-type="organization" data-entity="atlassian">Atlassian <span class="crunchbase-tooltip-indicator"></span></a> and Deloitte, as well as educational institutions including George Washington University, Stanford University and Florida Institute of Technology.</p>
<p>The product is integrated with Slack and <a class="crunchbase-link" href="https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/trello/" target="_blank" data-type="organization" data-entity="trello">Trello <span class="crunchbase-tooltip-indicator"></span></a> and BlueJeans video conferencing, Lawrence said. In the first quarter of 2018 alone, the company has sold about 5,000 units.</p>
<p>The vision is “to augment every existing whiteboard,” Lawrence said. “You can bring [the whiteboard] into the 21st century with one of these. Workers can us their full visual creativity as part of a remote meeting.”</p>
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</div><br/><div>Source: https://techcrunch.com/2018/05/07/kaptivo-looks-to-digitally-transform-the-lowly-whiteboard/</div><br/><hr/><h4>The Velop AC3900 mesh router offers cheaper whole-home Internet</h4><div>
<p>The whole-home wireless craze peaked and waned last year with the rise of <a href="http://techcrunch.com/tag/Orbi">Orbi</a>, <a href="https://techcrunch.com/2018/01/03/wi-fi-startup-eero-lays-off-30-employees/">Eero</a>, <a href="https://techcrunch.com/2016/11/15/google-wifi/">Google WiFi</a>, and Linksys’ Velop. These routers use mesh technology to blanket your home in soft, velvety Wi-Fi, ensuring that everything from the front camera/lamp to the Wi-Fi-connected grill in the back yard are connected to the Internet. I’ve tested a number of these so far and have settled on Orbi as the best of the bunch but the original tri-band Velop was excellent and this dual-band model – a cheaper but still speedy whole home solution – has maintained quality and value and holds the crown for the cheapest – and best – mesh network you can buy.</p>
<p>This new mesh kit, the <a href="https://www.linksys.com/us/p/P-WHW0103/">Velop AC3900</a>, costs $299 and is slightly smaller than the original AC4400, a tri-band solution that started at $349 for three units. Considering most routers hover around the $100 mark with some falling as low as $20, it was a hard sell and the story manufacturers told – your Wi-Fi was insufficient for your home and you needed multiple little routers instead of one in the living room – didn’t quite resonate. Linksys reacted to this by releasing this smaller, cheaper model onto a single-router world.</p>
<p>The result is the AC3900, a shorter, smaller device that can hide in your home (as long as it’s near an electrical outlet) or sit out as a high-design techno-tchotchke. The Velop can blanket up to 4,500 square feet and even act as a wired router for standalone devices. Setup is as easy as pulling a single unit out of the box and connecting to it while running the Linksys app. You can then add more units throughout the home.</p>
<p>The AC3900 devices are a few inches shorter than the AC4400 and they are missing a few of the high-end bells and whistles of the original models. First, these routers have less memory, with system memory halving from the original 512MB down to 256MB and internal Flash memory falling from 4GB to 256MB. The router also supports only two simultaneous bands while the original model supported three. In practice I saw solid performance out of both models with the AC3900 maxing out at about 900Mbps internal network speeds which equates to some excellent Internet speeds when the entire system is working. Interestingly, you can also ask your voice assistants to turn on or off Velop’s guest network, a cute feature for when visitors come over.</p>
<p>The real question most people have regarding these whole home solutions is whether they work and whether they’re worth it. Most of them, except for a few exceptions I discovered in my trials, work very, very well. Velop is easy to set up – you just place it in a room and press a button – and once it’s installed you’ll throw away all of your other routers. For years I placed a single router in my living room and used some <a class="crunchbase-link" href="https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/apple/" target="_blank" data-type="organization" data-entity="apple">Apple <span class="crunchbase-tooltip-indicator"></span></a> Airports and wireline networking to connect things up to my attic. Now with mesh networking I get a solid signal throughout the house and even in the back yard.</p>
<p>The AC3900 comes with three units and costs the same as Linksys’ dual-unit AC4400. While the AC4400 are ostensibly better I would argue that the AC3900 is about the same and the added benefit of an extra unit makes the whole-home Internet even more widespread. Mesh routers are the way to go and this is a great way to try them out.</p>
<p>The only thing you really need to know about these units is that they work. Whether you’re dropping a bunch of Netgear Orbis around your house or starting up a <a class="crunchbase-link" href="https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/google/" target="_blank" data-type="organization" data-entity="google">Google <span class="crunchbase-tooltip-indicator"></span></a> WiFi unit, mesh networks make your wireless experience much better. Linksys, to their credit, just made that experience a little cheaper.</p>
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</div><br/><div>Source: https://techcrunch.com/2018/05/07/the-velop-ac3900-mesh-router-offers-cheaper-whole-home-internet/</div><br/><hr/>Source: https://techcrunch.com/