Facebook’s first set of smart glasses may arrive this year and, despite the company’s investments in virtual reality (Facebook owns Oculus) and augmented reality, they’re not expected to be AR glasses. Honestly, so far they sound more like Snap spectacles than anything else… but maybe that’s just because Bloomberg’s article on the upcoming wearables is […]
Tag: security
Lilbits: Getting what you pay for with enthusiast-grade hardware
Pine64 has produced some of the most interesting hardware aimed at open source enthusiasts over the past few years. They’re not exactly high-performance machines, but what they are is cheap – among other things, Pine64 sells Linux smartphones for as little as $150 and Linux laptops for as little as $100. Those low prices, combined with […]
Lilbits: High-res, high-refresh laptop displays, GIMP turns 25, and a 3D printed smartphone keyboard
Laptops with 4K displays have been around for a few years at this point, and notebooks with screen refresh rates up to 300 Hz are a thing now too. But you know what we haven’t seen much of yet? Laptops with high-res displays and high-refresh rates. Enter a new line of laptops from Eluktronics, which […]
Lilbits: Porting apps to ARM
The list of companies jumping on the Apple Silicon bandwagon is growing. Google just released a version of Chrome for Apple’s new computers with M1 processors, and Mozilla is developing a version of Firefox that will support the new chips as well. Meanwhile, Adobe’s recent move to release a beta version of Photoshop for both […]
Lilbits: Windows XP source code leaked
Sometimes companies release the source code for their software on purpose. Sometimes… they don’t. While Microsoft has embraced open source in a big way in recent years, the company generally holds on tight to the proprietary code that powers its operating systems. But now what appears to be a legit leak of the source code […]
Lilbits: Amazon’s flying camera
As expected, Amazon introduced a new cheaper Fire TV Stick today, along with new Echo smart speakers, a new Echo Show 10 smart display, and a new cloud game streaming service. There’s also a new eero mesh WiFi system with support for WiFi 6 and a starting price of $129 for a single router. But […]
Firefox sends Firefox Send and Notes to the graveyard (in response to abuse)
About 18 months after launching Firefox Send as a free service for sending large, encrypted files over the internet, Mozilla has announced it’s shutting down the service. The move comes after Mozilla discovered that some people were using Firefox Send for phishing and distributing malware. The company took Firefox Send offline this summer in response, and […]
Lilbits: IFTTT goes Pro, and Eero goes WiFi 6, and Bluetooth goes… vulnerable
For the past 10 years, IFTTT (If This, Then That) has been offering a free service that lets you connect cloud services using recipes. For example, I used it to dump my daily Fitbit stats into a Google Spreadsheet for a few years. But now IFTTT is going Pro, which means that after October 7th, […]
Lilbits: Apple “Prime,” Intel Alder Lake-S, and an Epic game of chicken
When Epic first brought its incredibly popular video game Fortnite to smartphones two years ago, the company sidestepped the App Store and Google Play by offering its own Android app launcher. Eventually Epic made its game available in the official Android and iOS app stores, but company officials were never happy about having to split […]
Lilbits: Toshiba ends notebook business, Snapdragon chip vulnerability, and jailbreaker infighting
Toshiba was one of the first companies to release a portable computer that could reasonably be called a laptop. But that was 35 years ago. The company formally exited the personal computer space a few years ago when Toshiba sold its laptop business to Sharp, which formed a new subsidiary called Dynabook. But Toshiba still […]
Have I Been Pwned code base is going open source
Since 2013, developer Troy Hunt has been offering an invaluable online security tool called Have I Been Pwned. Enter your email address, and the site will let you know if it’s been found in any known security breaches… giving you a pretty good idea of whether it’s time to change your password. Now Hunt says […]
Lilbits 7-07-2020: Xiaomi Mi TV Stick gets FCC certification, Google Loon goes live in Kenya
The Xiaomi Mi TV Stick is expected to be one of the smallest Android TV devices to date, packing the guts of a powerful media streamer into a small stick that plugs into the HDMI port of your television. In May Xiaomi confirmed it was planning to bring the Mi TV Stick to market this […]