firehose

Why wear one smartwatch when there's room for two?

Andrew Cunningham

We've reviewed most of the major entrants into the smartwatch arena at this point—the Galaxy Gear, the Gear 2 and Gear Fit, and the Qualcomm Toq—but aside from demos at shows, I've stayed away from all of them. I've even skipped the Pebble Steel, which is generally well-regarded compared to the rest of that list.

Because, let's face it: it's pretty clear that none of those wearables are destined for large-scale, mass-market success. They're the MP3 players before the iPod. They're the smartphones before the iPhone. They're niche gadgets for early adopters who are intrigued by their dim glimmer of conceptual promise and can ignore or work around their obvious shortcomings.

Android Wear was the first smartwatch operating system that made me really want to try living with one. Yes, it's another take on the phone-notifications-on-your-wrist thing that smartwatches can't seem to move away from, but as we explore in our software review, it's a version of that idea that will actually work with many existing Android phones and apps. The OS is certainly in a better starting position than it was for any of the others listed above.

Google wearables: take two.

Believe it or not, Google has been a leader in the wearables space for some time with Google Glass. Glass gives users fast access to information and an easy way to see and deal with (certain) incoming notifications, but the form factor is physically and socially awkward. Wear seems like an evolution of the quick information access that Glass pioneered, all in a more comfortable, less invasive device.

I've used quite a few gadgets in my time, and I've never seen anything become as instantly useful as Android Wear has. It's not just me, either. At Google I/O, every attendee got an Android Wear watch, and after a single day, it seemed like everyone's behavior had changed. A notification sound would go off, which would normally send everyone within earshot rummaging through bags and pockets, but by the second day of I/O, we all just learned to check our watches. Strapping on a Wear watch for a few days changes your mobile workflow. It's an extremely useful device that I plan on wearing from now on for the simple reason that it makes me more productive.

As everyone who wasn’t too busy today buying scrapbooking supplies or whatever already knows, the Supreme Court decided that the government can’t force some “family-owned” companies—specifically Hobby Lobby and Conestoga Wood Specialties—to pay for their employees’ contraceptives if they don’t fall under the company’s “religious beliefs.” We’re not going to get into it here, because that’s what Facebook and Twitter are for, but it’s a whole big thing. 

Anyway, according to The Hollywood Reporter, someone is already making a documentary about the Supreme Court’s decision and how it’s a victory for certain religious people. That someone is former Presidential candidate Rick Santorum, who now runs a faith-based movie studio called EchoLight in a desperate attempt to become famous for something other than the two things he’s already famous for (losing to Mitt Romney and that other thing). 

The ...

Microsoft

Millions of legitimate servers that rely on dynamic domain name services from No-IP.com suffered outages on Monday after Microsoft seized 22 domain names it said were being abused in malware-related crimes against Windows users.

Microsoft enforced a federal court order making the company the domain IP resolver for the No-IP domains. Microsoft said the objective of the seizure was to identify and reroute traffic associated with two malware families that abused No-IP services. Almost immediately, end users, some of which were actively involved in Internet security, castigated the move as heavy handed, since there was no evidence No-IP officially sanctioned or actively facilitated the malware campaign, which went by the names Bladabindi (aka NJrat) and Jenxcus (aka NJw0rm).

"By becoming the DNS authority for those free dynamic DNS domains, Microsoft is now effectively in a position of complete control and is now able to dictate their configuration," Claudio Guarnieri, co-founder of Radically Open Security, wrote in an e-mail to Ars Technica. "Microsoft fundamentally swept away No-IP, which has seen parts of its own DNS infrastructure legally taken away."

Death metal band Unfathomable Ruination are to perform in an airtight, soundproofed box outside the Gherkin in London this week.

In one of the more precious nods to a series about the nature of identity and corporate control over one’s body, a young actress from Orphan Black has reenacted the clone dance party from the second season finale. Cynthia Galant, the self-described “mini-clone” who portrayed a young version of Rachel and a younger clone named Charlotte in season two, recreated the climactic slumber party playing four different characters in a Maslany-ian tour de force performance. Inspired by the cathartic scene and its subsequent “Making Of” video, Galant perfectly captures the signature dance moves of each of the various clones—from the spastic flailing of Helena to Alison’s reserved dips. Sadly, there’s no juvenile Felix in the mix, but perhaps Galant is just waiting until the next season.

Source

Treviño/Flickr

The Supreme Court declined Google's invitation to review a lower court's conclusion that the media giant could be held liable for hijacking data on unencrypted Wi-Fi routers via its Street View cars.

The legal flap the justices refused (PDF) to weigh into Monday should concern anybody who uses open Wi-Fi connections in public places like coffee houses and restaurants. That’s because Google claims (PDF) it is legal to intercept data from Wi-Fi signals that are not password protected.

Google’s Street View vehicles, which are mapping the globe, were housing Wi-Fi sniffing hardware that was gathering data on the MAC addresses of routers in neighborhoods to better Google's location services. But Google was also pulling snippets of data from unprotected Wi-Fi networks, and it claimed it did not know it was sniffing packets.