Kiran Upadhyay

As of late, a lot of smart TVs come with a bunch of apps (like the Vizio E3201-A0 which we reviewed) that allow you to use services such as Netflix, Hulu, YouTube, and more. If you don’t have one of those TVs, you can also resort to other devices in order to provide the same (or better) functionality, such as with the Chromecast (read our review), Apple TV (our review), or any Roku device (we reviewed that too). But none of these devices do is let you play games and they’re also restricted to apps designed specifically for the particular platform. The BiggiFi, which retails for around $60 on Amazon, tries to solve those two problems. Keep reading this review to find out whether the BiggiFi is a good addition for your home. And at the end of this article, you’ll be able to enter our giveaway for a chance to win one! About the BiggiFi The BiggiFi advertises itself as a “family smart stick”, but in reality, it’s simply just a mini-computer crammed into a dongle form-factor that ca...

When Japanese police arrested Yoshitomo Imura for printing his own revolvers, 3D printing advocates in some circles were up in arms. The guns, which only fired blanks, were simple test models called the Zig-Zag. Now, in honor of Imura’s work in 3D printing, a CAD designer has created a newer, better gun that could be used to fire real bullets. The designer, who calls himself WarFairy, is part of a team of creators called Free Open Source Software & Computer Aided Design. He has begun Tweeting images of the gun, adding it to an already impressive arsenal of models. Keep in mind that this gun hasn’t been fired yet but it is designed to withstand normal use. WarFairy, who lives outside the US and preferred to remain anonymous, said that the model is quite difficult to design and print. The finished kit will include metal parts to comply with ATF regulations and to strengthen the firing chamber. WarFairy said that the design wasn’t a political statement. “We called it Imura beca...

Google has a new Nexus 6 in the works, also potentially dubbed the “Nexus X,” and rumors abound about its potential specs. But 9to5Google has what might be the clearest look yet at this next iteration of Google’s Android reference smartphone, and the good news is that it’s basically a new Moto X. There’s bad news, too, however, depending on your opinion regarding phablets. The new report says that rumors of a 5.92-inch screen are in fact true, meaning it’s the new Moto X, but scaled up. For me, that’s sad, because after playing with the new Moto X for a short time, the only thing I really felt it could use was the display size from the original. This 5.92-inch diagonal monster display will have 2560×1440 resolution, which would make for a chart-busting 498 ppi pixel density. It’ll be powered by a 3,200 mAh battery pack, which should provide decent device life, even with a good portion of that power being used to make sure the huge screen delivers eye-pleasing imagery. 9to5’s spe...

GoPro has a new lineup of Hero cameras, including the next-gen Hero4 with fancy 4K video features and touchscreen back displays, but the introduction of a new entry-level Hero today could be what brings the action camera category to the next level. The Hero is similar to the “White” tier of devices GoPro has sold until now, but it’s especially cut-rate at just $130, and packs features the competition just can’t match, like integration into a waterproof housing and automatic low-light shooting mode optimizations. The basic Hero definitely gives up some ground to drop that extra $60 vs. the White: GoPro has removed its Wi-Fi connection capabilities, meaning you’ll have to control it from the camera itself, and use the included USB cable to connect it to your computer. But the concession might be less onerous than you might imagine, especially if you’ve never used a GoPro before – I actually rarely find myself using the Wi-Fi features for my prosumer applications of the gadget, which ...

Gird thyself, a new Windows approaches. Tomorrow morning in San Francisco, Microsoft will show off some part of its next operating system in a long-awaited event whose existence leaked before it was formally announced. The market is expectant, and the technology and business media will have its eyes trained on what Redmond has on offer. In the past few days, odd rumors have cropped up: Will the technical preview be ready to go, or released several weeks after the event? Does the code even have a formal name? We’ll find out soon enough. Given that the market is only expecting a preview, whatever Microsoft shows off will be feature incomplete by definition. I missed it, but apparently there was some sort of recent rumor saying that Windows 9 — provided that that actually is its name — was set to touch down, outside of preview in October. No. That’s not happening. The Windows community is, unsurprisingly, most excited about the consumer-facing bits that the operating system is li...

Hardware is the new hotness. This has been true for some years now: but today, the acorns planted by Arduino, TechShop, Kickstarter, lean prototyping, etc., are finally beginning to sprout into oaks. The best thing about this year’s Disrupt SF conference was that its Startup Alley boasted far fewer sugar-water SoLoMo apps…and many more nifty hardware start-ups. On stage, PCH’s Liam Casey described ‘a “renaissance in prototyping” that makes creating hardware prototypes almost as easy as sewing fabric into garments.’ The results were readily apparent: Read More

Remember the sci-fi thriller GATTACA? For those who never saw the film and/or eschewed all pop culture in the late 90’s for some reason, it was a popular movie that came out in 1997 about genetically modified human beings. Now some literally genetically modified human babies born that same year are entering their senior year of high school. The first successful transfer of genetic material for this purpose was published in a U.S. medical journal in 1997 and then later cited in a Human Reproduction publication in 2001. Scientists injected 30 embryos in all with a third person’s genetic material. The children who have been produced by this method actually have extra snippets of mitochondrial DNA, or mtDNA, from two mothers – meaning these babies technically have three parents. It’s still unclear whether all 30 babies turned out healthy.  The Institute for Reproductive Medicine and Science (IRMS) at St Barnabas, participants of the experiment, finally began following up with at...

“Oh man, this would make a great picture. I wish there was someone else here to take our picture for us so we didn’t have to take a selfie!” Has this ever happened to you? Of course it has. You’re a human being in the 21st century who reads tech blogs. The Nixie aims to solve that. It’s, as crazy as it feels to type this, a wearable selfie drone. A flying wristband, with a camera built in. When you’re ready for your close-up, it launches off your wrist, reorients to frame you in the shot, and then hovers back over for you to catch it. The bad news? It’s… still pretty conceptual. It looks like they’ve got a prototype that can launch off your wrist and float away — but it’s still early days. They have a long way to go (this thing looks about as fragile as can be right now) — but even as a concept, it’s damned cool. The good news? It’s a finalist in Intel’s Make It Wearable competition — meaning they’ve just scored themselves $50,000 and all of the mentorship, design help, an...

The Bash vulnerability, now dubbed by some as "Shellshock," has been reportedly found in use by an active exploit against Web servers. Additionally, the initial patch for the vulnerability was incomplete and still allows for attacks to succeed, according to a new CERT alert. See Ars' latest report for further details, our initial report is below. A security vulnerability in the GNU Bourne Again Shell (Bash), the command-line shell used in many Linux and Unix operating systems, could leave systems running those operating systems open to exploitation by specially crafted attacks. “This issue is especially dangerous as there are many possible ways Bash can be called by an application,” a Red Hat security advisory warned. The bug, discovered by Stephane Schazelas, is related to how Bash processes environmental variables passed by the operating system or by a program calling a Bash-based script. If Bash has been configured as the default system shell, it can be used by n...

Here is a true story about how copyright infringement costs my small photography business thousands of dollars every year. Or, maybe it isn’t. It could also be a true story of how copyright infringement earns me thousands of dollars every year. I can’t be sure. Either way, this is definitely the story of how copyright infringement takes up more of my time than I wish to devote to it. Copyright infringement drains my productivity to the point where I create hundreds fewer images each year. And it's why, in part, I am leaving professional photography for an academic position less prone to the frustrations of a floundering copyright system. I have an unusual, and an unusually fun, job: I photograph insects for a living. I love what I do in no small part because the difference between my profession and getting paid to be an overgrown kid, is… not that much, really. I collect ants and beetles, I play with camera gadgets, I run around in the woods. Meanwhile, publishers, museums, an...

Samsung loves "big." Its phones are big, its advertising budget is big, and as you'll see below, its employee headcount is really big, too. Samsung has more employees than Apple, Google, and Microsoft combined. We dug through everyone's 10-K (or equivalent) SEC filings and came up with this: At 275,000 employees, Samsung (just Samsung Electronics) is the size of five Googles! This explains Samsung's machine-gun-style device output; the company has released around 46 smartphones and 27 tablets just in 2014. If we wanted to, we could cut these numbers down some more. Google is going to shed 3,894 employees once it finally gets rid of Motorola. Over half of Apple's headcount—42,800 employees—is from the retail division, putting the non-retail part of the company at only 37,500 employees. The "Sony" on this chart only means "Sony Electronics," the part of the company that is most comparable to Samsung Electronics. Sony Group has a ma...

SAN FRANCISCO—Last week, Ars met up with several representatives of the non-profit USB Implementer's Forum (USB-IF) to check out some of the first USB Type-C connectors off the assembly lines. The Type-C specification was announced in December and finalized in August, and it's set to bring a number of improvements to its predecessors, in addition to being smaller than the Type-A USB plugs we're familiar with today. Considering how many USB Type-A devices are still being actively built out there (over 4 billion USB-compatible products are made each year), this smaller, reversible connector represents a significant jump. Jeff Ravencraft, president and COO of USB-IF, told Ars that USB-IF wanted a connector that worked equally well for large and small devices. “We also understand that yeah the consumer maybe has some trouble with putting in that cable connector,” he added of the Type-C's new-found ability to be plugged in right-side up or upside down, like Apple's ...

Bitcoin’s momentum among key merchants and platforms on the web keeps accelerating. After hinting at it a few weeks ago when Braintree enabled Bitcoin-based transactions for PayPal developers, the company is now enabling Bitcoin across the PayPal network for merchants of digital goods. The company has expressed interest in bitcoin for a while, with eBay CEO John Donahoe saying in the past that it would play an “important role” in the company’s future. Now that large players from Overstock to Wikipedia are now relying on the cryptocurrency for a part of their transactions or donations, PayPal is stepping in. Through partnerships with BitPay, Coinbase and GoCoin, PayPal will let its merchants accept bitcoin for digital goods transactions. They decided to go with a handful of launch partners instead of a single one, as PayPal’s Braintree did with Coinbase earlier this month. To be clear, this isn’t about adding Bitcoin to PayPal’s digital wallet and it’s only in North America for...

Being easily excited by newfangled gadetry, I waited with glee for Apple to announce the iPhone 6. However, it was not without trepidation. In spite of my eagerness for a new device, I feared the new iPhone would be significantly larger than the previous iterations and for good reason: I’m a delicate 5’2″. Electronics are greatly exaggerated against my slight frame. Upon receiving the package, my excitement tempered when the iPhone 6 turned out to be larger than my hand. Cue the sad trombone. Immediately, basic maneuvering between applications became yoga for my thumbs as they stretched as far as possible to reach once-accessible buttons. Texting, previously effortless, became arduous, requiring more concentration and balancing skills than I care to admit. Pinky fingers turned into stabilizers with not-so-deft precision in order to mitigate the unwieldy phone body in my small hands. Panic ensues when it slips from my grasp after trying to lock it with upstretched fingers. Even...

In March a new social network launched promising the opposite business model to Facebook, i.e. not selling ads based on user data and instead relying on, perhaps, paid premium features to keep going. Ello then sunk without a trace until, in the last 24-48 hours or so, activity on the site completely blew up. And this is a pretty basic social network with the bare minimum of features. Why? A combination of factors. Perhaps it was Facebook’s trenchant stance against LGBT users having both a real name and ‘persona’ name. Ello got traction with the LGBT community after Facebook disabled the accounts of some drag artists who used their performance names instead of their “real” names. Musicians with stage names have also complained. Or perhaps it was famous drag queen Ru Paul tweeting about it? No one quite knows. But as of today, most of your friends will be asking their other friends how to get an invite to the invite-only network to secure their coveted user name. On Ello, as o...

This is where technology shines — RogerVoice is not yet another Uber for X. It will potentially help millions of hard-of-hearing people by letting them make phone calls. Some of them might even make their first phone call through the app. To do this, RogerVoice subtitles phone conversations in real time, so that you can read what the other person is saying. The French startup has been working on the technology behind RogerVoice for around a year. Now, it is raising a bit of money through a Kickstarter campaign to build the final Android app (and later iOS). At heart, RogerVoice is a VoIP app that intercepts your recipient’s voice to transcribe it. A third-party real time transcription service pushes the result to your phone. It works in a dozen of languages already. On the other end of the call, your recipient can hear you like a normal phone call. This is key to using a service like this one. The people you call don’t have to install an app and there is no third-party human inv...

Post-it Notes may be a product of the analog era, but they continue to stick around – literally, that is – covering walls, windows, monitor screens and more, remaining an office worker’s go-to-tool for small scribbles, quick thoughts, and ideas. Now the company behind Post-it, 3M, is hoping to port Post-it notes to the small screen, with a new mobile app that lets you capture, organize and share your notes from your iPhone or iPad. The new app will be especially helpful for documenting collaboration sessions at work – the kind that leave the walls covered in colorful little stickies. 3M should be applauded for doing more than throwing out some lame alternative to using your phone’s camera to snap photos of Post-it’s, slapping the brand name on it and calling it a day. Instead, the Post-it Plus app, as it’s called, is surprisingly clever. You can use the app to capture a photo of up to 50 square Post-it Notes at one time. These are then identified with little checkmarks on top ...

Kano Computing, a startup that plays in the learn to code space by adding a step-by-step hand-holding layer atop the Raspberry Pi single-board microcomputer to make hacking around with code and learning about computational thinking child’s play, has shipped all the hardware kits in its first batch of crowdfunded orders and pre-orders. That’s around 18,000 kits in all, co-founder Alex Klein confirmed to TechCrunch. “They are all in the wild, they are out of our hands. About 1,000 have arrived already — the early bird kits. And the rest, the general release, will be arriving [shortly],” he said late last week. The company revealed it has also taken on a new senior hire, bringing in Thomas Enraght-Moony, former CEO of Match.com, as COO. Enraght-Moony will be managing sales and marketing as Kano seeks to scale globally. “He has a deep understanding of how, not only to make physical products but also to finance it — which it quick tricky for any new business, especially a business th...

Stella, the first ever family sized road vehicle that runs on the sun has made its U.S. debut. The car took first place in the World Solar Challenge and won the Michelin Cruiser Class for completing a 3,000 kilometer journey from Darwin to Adelaide in Australia last fall. While other solar-powered vehicles have been made for racing, the solar-powered Stella is the first vehicle made for road travel. A large solar panel sits atop the roof to power the car up to 500 miles on a single charge. Compare that to a Tesla Roadster, which can run on an electric charge for 245-300 miles. The Netherlands team that designed the vehicle took Stella for a U.S. tour to help kick off National Drive Electric Week. They recently traveled up Highway 1 from L.A. to San Francisco, and I met up with them in SF to check out Stella.

“So what are you doing this weekend, Markus?” “Oh, you know. Heading out to the desert and harnessing the power of the sun to make a 3D printer that can print objects out of sand. You?” “… catching up on Breaking Bad.” You know the kid in your old neighborhood that spent his spare time frying ants with a magnifying glass? This is like that — except instead of a magnifying glass, he’s using an big ol’ fresnel lens. And instead of roasting insects, he’s melting freaking sand into stuff. Built by artist Markus Kayser, the “SolarSinter” concept isn’t too disimmilar from laser sintering printers used by operations like SpaceX to print otherwise impossible objects out of metal. A focused sun beam is a whole lot less precise than a finely-honed laser, of course — but the core concepts are the same. I bet this guy could make a mean sand castle.

Apple has moved quickly to release iOS 8.0.2, the update that fixes iOS 8.0.1’s problem of zapping cellular reception on iPhone 6 and 6 Plus devices. It also includes all the fixes listed in iOS 8.0.1 originally, including a fix for the HealthKit bug that held up release of compatible Health apps in iOS 8. It also addresses a problem whereby third-party keyboards wouldn’t stick when activated in apps, meaning it would default back to Apple’s stock keyboard. Apple released the following statement alongside the update: iOS 8.0.2 is now available for users, it fixes an issue that affected iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus users who downloaded iOS 8.0.1, and includes improvements and bug fixes originally in iOS 8.0.1. We apologize for inconveniencing the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus users who were impacted by the bug in iOS 8.0.1. Apple says that less than 40,000 iPhone and iPhone 6 Plus devices were affected by the bad release, which was up for just over an hour until the company pulled i...

If you feel like you’re losing your hearing, it’s because you quite possibly are. In fact, more than six million people in the United States between the ages of 18 to 44 suffer from hearing loss. To tackle the problem, Fritz Lanman’s new company Doppler Labs is announcing Dubs Acoustic filters, otherwise known as extra fancy ear plugs. From the website : We wanted plugs that didn’t protrude out of your ears – making it embarrassing to wear at a club or a sports event – and didn’t get in the way of your listening experience, but we couldn’t find anything like that. So we decided to invent it. Dubs is the brain child of Lanman and co-founder and Doppler Labs CEO Noah Kraft. The idea here is that a totally mechanical device can be attractive, immersive, and improve the audio experience without sacrificing sound. The Dubs are built of 17 individual mechanical pieces (made from materials like steel, polymer foams and silicone) that reduce general volume by an average of 12 deci...

Since the launch of iOS 8 last week, there’s been a huge run on custom keyboards in the App Store. That includes the likes of Swype, Fleksy and SwiftKey, all of which have been designed to help users more quickly type and share what they are thinking. But what if they want to share what they are feeling? For that, there’s no better tool than the animated GIF. And now, thanks to a company called Riffsy, you can quickly and easily search for, discover and share a wide variety of animated GIFs directly from your keyboard. Arriving today on iOS, Riffsy GIF Keyboard can be installed alongside all your other keyboards to send out funny animated GIFs via SMS, Twitter, Facebook Messenger or WhatsApp in the same way you would send a text. The app leverages a collection of millions of GIFs that the company’s users have created or shared with the Riffsy Creator app over the past year. And because those GIFs are usually tagged and identified with specific hashtags like #HAPPY, #EXCITE...

Every year, Apple announces a new iPhone. And every year, we go through a very similar cycle. First it’s rumors and leaks, and then spy shots from factory lines, and then the announcement comes! And then it’s reviews, and long lines, and pre-order figures, and first weekend sales figures… which brings us to today. Welcome to the “-gate” portion of our event, wherein some critical flaw is exposed a few days after millions of people just bought the new, potentially flawed device. Unfortunately, this year we haven’t been able to come up with something entirely new. With the iPhone 6 and, more pointedly, the iPhone 6 Plus, reports suggest that the phone will bend when left in a pocket, seated, for a prolonged period of time. There are a number of photos in the MacRumors forums, and a French blog, MacBidouille, has also put up a photo of a bent iPhone, as well as the German blog Stadt Bremerhaven. Here they are: First off, let’s get something straight. The iPhon...

his morning, PayPal rolled out broader support for bitcoin, allowing merchants to accept the cryptocurrency as payment for digital goods. The reaction to bitcoin itself has been immediate and positive. The PayPal integration is minor — users won’t be able to start stashing their bitcoin in their PayPal accounts, but merchants that use certain PayPal services, and are located in North America, will be able to accept bitcoin. PayPal is relying on several bitcoin payment providers to manage the transactions. The implication there is that PayPal, and its parent company eBay, will never hold bitcoin themselves. The news had an immediate impact: Hello bitcoin, and welcome back to form. The other side of the above is that PayPal is willing into existence a host of new exit points for current bitcoin holders. The argument is simple: The easier it is for current bitcoin holders to cash out their holdings for IRL, or meatspace, goods, the more they will. If it was hard to do so, th...

It’s easy to say that the iPhone’s camera has gotten better over time — that’s pretty much a given. But how much better? Lisa Bettany, co-founder of Camera+, decided to put it to the test. Eight generations of iPhone, lined up in a row… all taking the same photo. The results are pretty damn neat. The differences start to get a bit less massive as you reach the last generation or two — but they’re definitely still noticeable. I’d forgotten how bad the first two iPhones were at Macro photos. It’s also a great way to highlight the quirks of each generation’s sensor. Take a look at the crazy color processing/flaring of the iPhone 4 photo up top, for example. If you said #nofilter on that, no one would’ve believed you. These screenshots don’t quite do the shoot-out justice. Check out Lisa’s fully interactive side-by-side comparisons here. (Note: that link seems to be having intermittent issues under increased traffic. If the photos are full size by default rather than a fancy e...

Before the launch of the iPhone 6 Plus, the idea of people being concerned about how “bendy” their phone is would’ve seemed laughable. A week later, I’m hearing random people in my just-outside-of-the-echo-chamber coffee spot talk about it like they’d talk about the weather. Strange. Yesterday afternoon, following complaints of new iPhones coming out of their owners’ pockets bent, YouTuber Lewis Hilsenteger posted a video of himself managing to bend the iPhone 6 Plus without much effort. Today, he’s back with more phones. Does the iPhone 6 bend the way the 6 Plus does? What about other aluminum-backed phones, like the HTC One M8? It’s about as unscientific as it gets, but if we’re considering “however hard this guy can push with his bare hands” as a standardized unit of measure, the iPhone 6 seems to fare considerably better than the 6 Plus did. The One M8 groans a little and the screen temporarily jumps out of place, but there was no permanent damage. The 2014 Moto X, meanwhi...

Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt today said it was a “mistake” to support the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), a group that has said human-created climate change could be “beneficial” and opposes environmental regulations. Schmidt said groups trying to cast doubt on climate change science are "just literally lying." Google’s membership in ALEC has been criticized because of the group’s stance on climate change and its opposition to network neutrality rules and municipal broadband. Earlier this month, Google refused to comment after 50 advocacy groups called on the company to end its affiliation with ALEC. That changed today when Schmidt appeared on The Diane Rehm Show and was asked by a listener whether Google is still supporting ALEC. The listener described ALEC as “lobbyists in DC that are funding climate change deniers.” Schmidt responded, “we funded them as part of a political campaign for something unrelated. I think the consensus within the co...

HTC is gearing up production of a Nexus 9 tablet device to showcase the Android operating system, a report from the Wall Street Journal claims. The report follows earlier rumors that this would be the case, and suggests a Nexus 9 from the Taiwanese device maker is almost a lock. But HTC is a strange bedfellow for Google in this case – the OEM swore off tablets altogether back in 2011. A Nexus 9 from HTC would make a lot of sense from Google’s perspective: Partnering with the company would give kudos to the work it has done progressing Android device design with its HTC One range of smartphones, which remain among the best Android hardware available in terms of the quality of their build. And it would mean avoiding leaning too heavily on existing Nexus partners like Samsung and LG. It would also mean a return to the source – HTC crafted the first consumer Android device, after all. HTC hasn’t made a tablet since its failed Flyer, however, and that means it’s been out of the game ...

Five-year old startup Duo Security has emerged as a leader in providing secure but easy-to-use two-factor authentication technology to a fast-growing number of enterprise customers. To bolster its growth, the company has raised $12 million in Series B financing from Benchmark, and has added general partner Matt Cohler to its board. Two-factor authentication is nothing new. Security-focused enterprises have required their employees to deploy the technology when logging in to applications and services containing sensitive information for the last several decades. But the world is changing, as organizations are looking to embrace more cloud services and employees are demanding enterprise solutions that look more like the consumer applications they use in their everyday lives. For a while, enabling two-factor authentication meant using clunky, hardware-based token authentication to ensure that a user was who they said they were. Over time, more and more two-factor authentication sol...

Apple will discontinue the streaming music service Beats Music it acquired in May, according to five sources, including several prominent employees at Apple and Beats. Many engineers from Beats Music have already been moved off the product and onto other projects at Apple, including iTunes. It’s not clear when exactly Jimmy Iovine and Dr Dre’s music service will be shut down or what Apple will do with streaming, but every source with knowledge of the situation that we talked to agreed Apple plans to sunset the Beats Music brand. [Update: Apple has told TechCrunch that our report of Beats being shut down “is not true”, but sources familiar with the situation tell Re/code that Apple “may, however, modify [Beats Music] over time, and one of those changes could involved changing the Beats Music brand.” This aligns with what my sources said, which is that the Beats Music brand will be shut down, but that it’s unclear what Apple wants to do in streaming music. It seems quite possible th...

This time last year, I walked into a Toronto store called Moog Audio and walked out with a Teenage Engineering OP-1—a curious little portable digital synthesizer that looks, at first glance, like a child’s toy. It has a row of just four candy-colored knobs as primary input controls, and there are only enough keys for an octave-and-a-half's worth of range. But damn does it ever sound cool. Its tiny OLED screen uses all sorts of clever visual conceits to convey otherwise complex audio transformations. Colors and animations explain the differences between synthesizer engines, changes to modulation and frequency, and attack and decay. And it's done in a way that’s easy for anyone with little synthesizer knowledge to understand while still being powerful in more experienced hands. This is a synthesizer, drum machine, and four-track recorder all-in-one—all in a device that fits inside a purse or messenger bag with ease. It wasn’t always like this. In fact, it was 50 years ago th...