As protests surge in the wake of George Floyd's murder by a Minneapolis police officer, powerful photographs and videos from the demonstrations have gripped the world, putting our nation's very real and very justifiable widespread civil unrest out into the digital world. Unfortunately, these pictures could put you or others in danger if precautions aren't taken before uploading them online.
Every single photo you take carries with it a considerable amount of seemingly "invisible" yet important information known as metadata. Although metadata is usually helpful to sort your photographs by location and date, that same information could potentially be used against you, especially if the pictures are taken during a precarious situation.
With protests springing up across America, there's a chance you may have your first interaction with law enforcement. Many demonstrators will have their phones in-hand to film the action, which, sadly, could prompt an officer to demand the device and any self-incriminating data it may contain. Before this happens, you should know there are tools at your disposal to protect your data in such situations.
No doubt, you've heard a lot about 5G lately. This might have you looking at your current 4G phone and lamenting your inability to connect to the faster network. But is 5G worth buying a new phone over, and should you buy one right now?
It's open season on Zoom, the video conferencing platform that has grown in popularity during the COVID-19 pandemic but has come under fire due to privacy issues.
Choosing which programming language to learn next can be a truly daunting task. That's the case regardless of whether you're a Null Byter just beginning a career in development and cybersecurity or you're a seasoned ethical hacking and penetration tester with years of extensive coding experience under your belt. On that note, we recommend Python for anyone who hasn't mastered it yet.
A modern iPhone is capable of running sophisticated, exquisitely-rendered games that rival titles on current-generation consoles. However, there is some value in classic video game titles, whether you grew up playing games on the Atari 2600, Nintendo Entertainment System, and Sega Genesis or not.
The COVID-19 pandemic has practically shut down all sports except for World Wrestling Entertainment, which has continued staging matches without an audience, leaving us sports fans with nothing much to cheer for. While they can't replace live games, smartphone games provide an alternate reality to live out our competitive entertainment in the absence of the real thing.
Staying inside during the coronavirus pandemic isn't easy for most of us. As important as it is to keep away from others, it can be challenging to keep to ourselves day after day. That's why mobile game developers are stepping in to help; many are making their games free for a limited time, to provide some much-needed fun during scary times.
Apple released iOS 13.4 to public beta testers on March 18. The update comes the same day we learned that iOS 13.4 would be made available March 24. The sixth beta is iOS 13.4's GM (golden master), even though Apple refers to it as "beta 6."
Apple released iOS 13.4 to registered developers on March 18. The update comes just hours after news broke that iOS 13.4 would hit all compatible devices on March 24. The update is the GM (golden master), which makes it the same build as the official release we expect to see on March 24, although Apple does refer to it as "beta 6" on the dev site.
With the whirlwind of noise surrounding the COVID-19 virus sweeping the nation, it's not hard to default to panic mode. One of the best ways to avoid panicking, however, is to follow trusted sources of information and avoid all of the opinions and trolls that don't reflect reality.
A virtual private network is a necessary part of your arsenal if you're insistent on surfing the web privately and securely on your iPhone. The App Store is littered with hundreds of different VPN services that encrypt traffic and mask your IP address, but what they all have in common are connectivity issues.
We've been so worried about volumetric scans possibly robbing celebrities and performers of their agency and right to control their image that, somewhere along the way, we forgot that scans may not always be necessary to produce passable holographic performances.
It's pretty much a given at this point that Facebook has a lot of data on us. While you might be conscious of the data you share with Facebook when you post, upload photos, or chat with friends on Messenger, you might not be thinking about all the data it receives from websites and apps you use outside the social media giant. Now, you can actually do something about it.
As fun as Twitter is, it can also quickly turn scary. Anonymous, aggressive, and troll accounts can attack you for your tweets and stalk your every move. While you could make your profile private and block users, there are lesser-known privacy and security features that you can switch to improve your safety online.
The top five apps of the 2010s were all social media apps of some kind, and the fact that's not surprising to you says a lot. We may use them for other reasons here and there, but our phones are social media machines at their cores. The thing is, some make better machines than others.
As long as you're on the internet, you can be hacked. With an estimated 2.65 billion social media users, these apps are prime targets for hackers.
There's a new trend on Instagram Stories: People are making viral AR filters where images of popular characters from TV shows, movies, and other mediums shuffle above your head until one sticks. The filters range from Disney and Pokémon characters to Harry Potter and Friends, but you're not limited to just that because you can create your own "which are you?" filter.
Sending Christmas cards via snail mail is so passé. Why spend the time and money for a bougie photoshoot, saccharine card design, and postage when you can use augmented reality to instantly dress up photos and videos to send to friends and family instead?
Hashes are commonly used to store sensitive information like credentials to avoid storing them in plaintext. With tools like Hashcat, it's possible to crack these hashes, but only if we know the algorithm used to generate the hash. Using a tool called hash-identifier, we can easily fingerprint any hashes to discover the right Hashcat mode to use to retrieve a password.
Who here binges TV on a regular basis? I know I do. Never before have we had so many options for watching our favorite shows, especially when you consider how easy it is to stream from anywhere on a mobile device. But sometimes, all that choice gets a little overwhelming. What services are really worth the money? Where should you be investing your Friday-night binges?
Indian startup Dimension NXG is launching augmented reality headsets into India's consumer market with a bold idea: focusing on immersive computing in education on the high-end. The plan is to give a new kind of AR headset to schoolchildren in remote Indian villages, starting from class 5 (age 10) until graduation.
Mobile gaming has exploded in recent years, with experts predicting 2.4 billion global mobile players by the end of 2019. It already accounts for 47% of the worldwide gaming market, besting console and PC. No wonder we've seen the rise of gaming smartphones, a class of phones that specialize in mobile gaming.
Google Docs is made for teamwork and collaboration, but Apple's iWork suite also comes with the same functionality. If you're working on a Pages document on your iPhone, and you want input from other members of your team, you can easily invite them to view, comment, edit, and more right alongside you.
The idea of a world without passwords used to be a pipe dream. But as we inch closer to making that a reality, we have services now that securely store all of our passwords under a single master password. It's a convenient way to keep our accounts safe and sound without having to remember all of their credentials. And there's no reason to be afraid — I'll explain why.
Phone specs get better and better each year, and multiplayer mobile games are right there with them. Instead of playing solo, jump into some real-time gameplay with co-op and player vs. player modes, and battle friends, family, and strangers from around the world. But which multiplayer games are worth your time on Android or iOS?
When it comes to platform games on mobile, endless runners are some of the hardest to play since they can go on seemingly forever. There's always room for improvement since your goal is to beat your previous score (or someone else's high score). But which endless running games are worth your time?
When you're gaming on your Android phone, does it sometimes feel "slow" and you can't figure out why? That means a drop in performance, which is when the frame rate dips, causing some noticeable stutters and lag. There's not really a way to know what's wrong unless you made the game yourself. But on the bright side, you can check any game's FPS with a simple tool.
There's something extremely satisfying about hunting down your online adversaries and knocking them out with a well-placed shot, which probably explains why shooting games are still one some of the most popular time killers for iOS and Android.
Nintendo may be developing cases that'll turn your iPhone into a gaming device like the Game Boy, but until something materializes there, you're stuck with cheap knockoffs on Amazon or a real Game Boy or Game Boy Color. But there's something else you can do to play eight-bit Nintendo games on your iPhone right now.
Here at Next Reality, our typical approach to all things augmented reality involves vision combined with remote control, either via a handheld device, gaze control, or hand/finger tracking.
For those with small hands, smartphones have gotten out of control as of late. Nearly every flagship phone is over six inches in length, so many are forced to use phones that are too big for them and hope they don't fall. Well, thanks to one developer, using these phones can be a lot easier.
Google has recently been pushing to replace the decades-old messaging technology we've been stuck with. SMS was never meant to handle the high-quality multimedia content we consume with our smartphones today, so in comes RCS, which is a universal platform that aims to change our messaging game forever.
Remember trying to express yourself over the 160-character limit on SMS texts? We've come a long way since then, and messaging services have nearly taken over with emoji, chat effects, custom interface colors, and other personalizations. Necessities for messages these days include GIFs and stickers, and Telegram makes it easy to find those perfect reactions for any moment.
An incredible amount of devices use Bluetooth or Bluetooth Low Energy to communicate. These devices rarely have their radios switched off, and in some cases, are deliberately used as trackers for lost items. While Bluetooth devices support MAC address randomization, many manufacturers do not use it, allowing us to use tools like Bettercap to scan for and track Bluetooth devices.
When you can't think of a way to respond in Messenger with words, emojis and stickers will do the trick. Since Facebook is all about the "likes," which use a thumbs-up icon, there's a shortcut to the symbol just to the right of the chat field. It's always there to send a quick like in response to something. But it doesn't have to be the standard Facebook thumbs-up sign — it can be any emoji you want.
Next to Apple, Snap is currently one of the most important companies on the planet in terms of delivering products that are moving augmented reality into the mainstream. That's why it's no surprise that Facebook, which is also focused on AR and tried to acquire the company for $3 billion several years ago, duplicates many of the smaller company's features.
Gathering information on an online target can be a time-consuming activity, especially if you only need specific pieces of information about a target with a lot of subdomains. We can use a web crawler designed for OSINT called Photon to do the heavy lifting, sifting through URLs on our behalf to retrieve information of value to a hacker.
The days of bad smartphone videos are long gone. Your iPhone or Android phone is a capable video recorder, even offering different frame rate options in the native camera settings. Filmic Pro makes things a little simpler, however, and adds additional controls you wouldn't find on your device alone.
