Technology

The Xbox Adaptive Controller What is it? The Xbox Adaptive Controller is a video game controller designed by Microsoft for Windows PCs and the Xbox One video game console. The controller was designed for people with disabilities to help make user input for video games more accessible. Cool isn't it? What Does it do? Designed primarily to meet the needs of gamers with limited mobility, the  Xbox Adaptive Controller is  a unified hub for devices that help make gaming more accessible. Connect external devices such as switches, buttons, mounts, and joysticks to create a custom  controller  experience that  is  uniquely yours. Compatibility You can play it on Xbox consoles and Windows 10 PCs with familiar features such as Xbox Wireless, Bluetooth, USB connectivity, Copilot, and a 3.5mm stereo headset jack. Click here to watch the trailer

Hackers Can Shine Lasers at Your Alexa Device and Do Bad, Bad Things to It Move the Echo away from the window. Now. By  Courtney Linder Nov 6, 2019 A  new paper  funded by DARPA and a Japanese organization for the promotion of science and technology find that simple lasers can basically hack into voice-controlled assistants. Researchers are able to use lasers to inject malicious commands into smart devices, even remotely starting a victim's car if it's connected through a Google account. To be safe, keep your voice devices away from windows in your home. Keep Alexa away from all windows: Turns out hackers can shine lasers at your Google Assistant or Amazon Alexa-enabled devices and gain control of them, sending commands to the smart assistants or obtaining your valuable account information. Researchers proved this by using lasers to inject malicious commands into voice-controlled devices like smart speakers, tablets, and phones ...

Huge DNA Database Just Waiting for Big Ol' Hack It's the one police used to catch the Golden State Killer. By  Caroline Delbert Nov 6, 2019 THE-LIGHTWRITER GETTY IMAGES Researchers have  breached a crowdsourced DNA database  by reverse engineering a user profile. DNA testing and database sites are vulnerable to many kinds of attacks and data sales. Users must ask themselves if  the potential benefits of DNA testing  outweigh privacy concerns. Genealogy and security are clashing yet again, this time over the massively crowdsourced DNA database GEDmatch.  MIT Technology Review   reports  that computer science researchers designed targeted attacks that breached the GEDmatch database by making complex search strings that let them guess much of users’ DNA. The founder of GEDmatch, Curtis Rogers, told  Tech Review  he’s not that surprised, because genealogy has always involved sharing information and c...

This Dinosaur Contraption Is Proof Engineers Make the Best Costumes A Dutch engineering student constructed a dinosaur costume with life-like movements. By Jennifer Leman In her free time, Esmée Kramer, a network and engineering systems student at The Hague University of Applied Sciences, constructed a fully mobile raptor costume. The body works like a seesaw—both the neck and tail are roughly the same weight—and she acts as the fulcrum. The most challenging part to build, she noted in a  LinkedIn post , was the head. The costume looks like something out of Leonardo Da Vinci’s notebooks. A network and engineering systems student at The Hague University of Applied Sciences named Esmée Kramer crafted a giant, mobile raptor costume made from PVC pipe and foam. She posted a YouTube video titled “Project Raptor: My mechanical dinosaur costume” about the design. The skeleton of the dinosaur is made from a combination ⅝ and ¾ inch PVC pipes,...

It’s that time of year again — fall is here and packs of robot dogs are frolicking in the leaves Just listen to the scuttle of those tiny metal legs By   James Vincent   Share this story re this on Twitter (opens in new window) All sharing options There’s nothing I like more on bright and cold autumnal days than heading down to the park and watching the robot dogs playing in piles of leaves. To hear the scuttle of their little metal legs! To imagine the joy in their tiny silicon brains! Ah, what bliss. If you’ve not experienced these delights before, then the video above from MIT’s biomimetics lab will give you the basic idea. The bots you can see are the university’s Mini Cheetah: a lightweight and modular quadruped that’s been under development for years. We saw the Mini Cheetah earlier in 2019 when it  learned to backflip , but the biomimetics lab has obviously cranked up production and now has at least nine of these littl...