Last week, Snap powered through a mountain of important software and (shock!) hardware updates, as well as a few very big business partnerships.
The surging activity in augmented reality in both the business and consumer sectors is being matched with a wealth of updates and partnerships from Snap Inc.
Android's open source nature means it gets modified quite a bit. First, the phone manufacturer will add their customizations, then your carrier will add even more on top of that. Between the two, someone almost always adds a startup sound so that you and everyone around you will hear their jingle every time your phone reboots.
For most mainstream users, LiDAR sensors for precision depth sensing remain the exclusive domain of Apple iPhones and iPads, but Google is helping Android device makers close the depth gap on the software side via its ARCore toolkit.
Snapchat's first foray into augmented reality started with the selfie camera and face-tracking technology, with the app's AR capabilities expanding from there.
During the Tuesday launch of Google I/O, the company's CEO, Sundar Pichai, pulled off a Steve Jobsian "one more thing" move near the end of his keynote address that was simply stunning.
Ever since the debut of the LiDAR Scanner in the latest batch of Apple's iPhones and iPads, the questions have swirled as to how this would benefit augmented reality interactions.
Who had Lil Nas X, blood-drop Nikes, and satan worship on your 2021 bingo card? In a story that's stranger than fiction, the "Old Town Road" rapper has ruffled some feathers with the video for his new single, "MONTERO (Call Me By Your Name)" filled with demonic imagery usually reserved for death metal bands.
The AR walking navigation feature in Google Maps, which is arguably one of the most useful mobile augmented reality to available to consumers, is about to get even more indispensable for travelers.
Even as the world continues to grapple with the pandemic, the tech industry continues to chug along, with some looking for ways to present new products, and in some cases continue major conferences that reveal the latest in augmented reality developments.
The process of trying out new augmented reality and virtual reality hardware is as personal as it gets. Bottom line, if you can't directly try these immersive devices on, it's difficult to really understand the benefits they can bring to your life and work.
Two years ago, the 50th anniversary of the moon landing gave flight to a handful of Apollo 11 augmented reality apps and experiences, including one from the Smithsonian Channel.
Since launching its web-based AR platform in 2018, 8th Wall has continued to push the boundaries of what brands can do with AR experiences outside of native apps.
Your sensitive personal data should be strongly protected, and it's never more vulnerable than when you are online. The internet connection is a prime avenue of exposure, and email is one of the least secure forms of communication. Fortunately, there is an easy solution to both of those problems.
The team over at Spatial isn't done innovating its way through augmented reality in 2020. Just days after adding a mobile option to its groundbreaking Spatial virtual collaboration product, the company is releasing Tele, a new app geared toward more casual, AR-powered video chats.
The movie theater business is hurting due to the pandemic, but that hurdle is actually the perfect set of circumstances for movie studios to lean hard into augmented reality marketing.
With the new season of The Mandalorian underway, Google has launched a new AR app that enables some Star Wars fans to connect with virtual characters in between new episodes.
If you're a man and subscribe to podcasts or YouTube channels that cater to masculine interests, then you've almost certainly encountered sponsorships from Manscaped. And that means I don't have to explain what the company is selling you (for the uninitiated, it's a company dedicated to helping you trim your body hair—most notably, your nether regions, in addition to other areas).
The true crime genre has long been popular on television and more recently on podcasts with shows like Serial.
Now that more people are working from home on unsecured networks and personal devices, hackers are having a field day accessing everything from private browsing histories to personal banking information. A virtual private network (VPN) is the first and most important line of defense when it comes to protecting all of your devices from digital intrusions, but not all VPNs are created equal.
With millions of people working from home as a result of the coronavirus outbreak, hacking is on the rise. Nefarious black hats are taking advantage of the fact that workers have been forced to abandon their secure office networks in favor of home wireless connections. And white hats are spending even more time at home trying to be the next great ethical hacker.
It's a myth that regular users only need the protection of a virtual private network when on a public Wi-Fi connection. First, almost all network connections can be accessed without the proper permissions. Second, ethical hackers also need to think about using a VPN as one step to encrypting and protecting their activity and identity during pentests, phishing, and other actions.
Post-exploitation is often not quite as exciting as popping the initial shell, but it's a crucial phase for gathering data and further privilege escalation. Once a target is compromised, there's a lot of information to find and sift through. Luckily, there are tools available that can make the process easy. One such tool is Postenum.
It is well documented that what you say and do online is tracked. Yes, private organizations do their best to protect your data from hackers, but those protections don't extend to themselves, advertisers, and law enforcement.
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.
File permissions can get tricky on Linux and can be a valuable avenue of attack during privilege escalation if things aren't configured correctly. SUID binaries can often be an easy path to root, but sifting through all of the defaults can be a massive waste of time. Luckily, there's a simple script that can sort things out for us.
While we haven't covered Amazon Web Services, or AWS, on Null Byte before, Amazon's cloud computing platform is ripe for attack by hackers, pentesters, and cybersecurity researchers. It's also an excellent cloud hosting service to build or use vulnerable-by-design AWS setups and frameworks.
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.
When filtered through the prism of the top stories of the year, the business of augmented reality 2019 was defined as much by epic failures of AR startups as it was by the promising developments that propelled the industry forward into 2020.
By now, you've probably been inundated with enough Baby Yoda memes to last you a lifetime. But if you don't have the new Disney Plus streaming service on your TV, you're probably wondering where all this is coming from. Well, lucky for you, just in time for the holiday season, we're here to guide you to the best ways to take part in all the streaming fun when you're not glued to your mobile devices.
If we were to assign a theme for the 2019 edition of the Next Reality 30 (NR30), it might be something along the lines of, "What have you done for me lately?"
They're finally here. Apple revealed the brand new iPhone 11, 11 Pro, and 11 Pro Max on Sept. 10, and despite the questionable names, these are the best iPhone models money can buy. If you're looking to get your hands on one of these devices as soon as possible, there are few important dates you need to know.
When researching a person using open source intelligence, the goal is to find clues that tie information about a target into a bigger picture. Screen names are perfect for this because they are unique and link data together, as people often reuse them in accounts across the internet. With Sherlock, we can instantly hunt down social media accounts created with a unique screen name on many online platforms simultaneously.
You may soon add feigning eye contact to the list of ways that augmented reality is improving our lives.
Comparing the present-day states of the consumer and enterprise sectors of augmented reality is like evaluating the merits of sports car versus work trucks. Like consumer AR, sports cars are sexy and exciting, but perhaps a bit impractical at times. On the other hand, enterprise AR is utilitarian, but it gets the job done and, in the long run, pays for itself.
KeePassX, 1Password, and LastPass are effective against keyloggers, phishing, and database breaches, but passwords managers rely on the operating system's clipboard to securely move credentials from the password vault to the web browser. It's within these few seconds that an attacker can dump the clipboard contents and exfiltrate passwords.
Phone numbers often contain clues to the owner's identity and can bring up a lot of data during an OSINT investigation. Starting with a phone number, we can search through a large number of online databases with only a few clicks to discover information about a phone number. It can include the carrier, the owner's name and address, and even connected online accounts.
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.
Whether it's a short road trip or an 18-hour flight, our phones are now essential travel companions. No longer do we need a GPS unit, maps, cameras, camcorders, or even boarding passes. However, not all phones are created equal in this regard. Some are more suited for traveling, no matter the duration.
