Brian Heater
Brian Heater is the Hardware Editor at TechCrunch. He worked for a number of leading tech publications, including Engadget, PCMag, Laptop, and Tech Times, where he served as the Managing Editor. His writing has appeared in Spin, Wired, Playboy, Entertainment Weekly, The Onion, Boing Boing, Publishers Weekly, The Daily Beast and various other publications. He hosts the weekly Boing Boing interview podcast RiYL, has appeared as a regular NPR contributor and shares his Queens apartment with a rabbit named Lucy.
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Apple issues fix for HomeKit vulnerability impacting smart locks and other devices
Apple says it has issued a fix for an iOS security flaw that left key connected home hardware open to unauthorized third-party access. The bug, which was initially spotted by 9to5Mac, reportedly made it possible for an outside party to access things like smart locks and garage doors. The company has since confirmed the existence of the bug. Read More
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San Francisco made things much tougher for robotic delivery startups this week
San Francisco’s Board of Supervisors made it a lot tougher to test delivery robots this week. In a five to one vote, the committee handed down some strict regulations on on the cargo bots, which have been piloted on city sidewalks over the past several months. Supervisor Norman Yee, who initially proposed the regulation cited concerns around the ‘bots essentially taking over… Read More
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New airline rules are leaving smart luggage makers in a tough spot
America’s top airlines are taking a stand against smart luggage. In a rare bit of solidarity, a number of the country’s top carriers have announced rules that would limit the use of high-tech bags, over fear of potential battery combustion. American Airlines led the charge on the ban. On Friday of last week, the carrier noted a policy change set to go into effect just after the… Read More
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Drake, ‘Game of Thrones’ and ‘Moana’ top Apple’s 2017 most downloaded list
Over the past several years, tech year-end lists have become as much of an annual tradition as Twilight Zone marathons and going to a bar to get away from the family on Christmas Eve. Apple dropped its big list today and surprise, there aren’t really too many surprises here — though it’s a useful reminder that, at least so far as entertainment is concerned, 2017 wasn’t… Read More
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Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 845 focuses on AI, VR and battery life
Qualcomm teased its new flagship smartphone chip at day one of its Summit in Maui, and, as expected, the company’s got a lot more to offer us on day two. The Snapdragon 845 is the latest premium processor, due out next year. And like its predecessor, the 835, you can expect the thing to be nearly ubiquitous on 2018’s flagship handsets — not to mention a few Windows PCs. Read More
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Oath and Mozilla are suing each other after Firefox switches back to Google search
Firefox’s default search engine has become the subject of a hotly contested legal battle, a few weeks after Mozilla announced it would be moving from Yahoo to Google. Yahoo’s new parent Oath filed a complaint against Mozilla in a California court on December 1, alleging a breach of contract. Now Mozilla has filed a counter complaint, stating that the switch back was in line with a… Read More
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PerceptIn has raised $11 million to help robotic vacuums and self-driving cars see
PerceptIn’s been operating mostly behind the scenes since launching in March of last year. Even so, the company has managed to raise a decent chunk of change in its mission of helping improve robotic vision. The startup’s raised a total of $11 million in all, including a seed round of ~$2 million last year and an $8 million Series A in 2017. Read More
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The Snapdragon 845 is Qualcomm’s next flagship processor
It was a busy day in Maui as Qualcomm kicked off this year’s Snapdragon Tech Summit. The San Diego chipmaker announced a two-in-one PC form factor powered by the Snapdragon 835 that has some big name hardware partners like Asus and HP behind it. The company also used the opportunity to tease its latest flagship processor, the Snapdragon 845. Read More
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Microsoft’s collaborative Whiteboard app is now available for Windows 10 users
When it announced the new Surface Pro a few months back, Microsoft also used the opportunity to preview Whiteboard, a Windows 10 app designed to offer creative and business collaboration across devices. Since then, the app’s only been available as a private beta, but starting today, Microsoft’s offering it up as a public beta for anyone with a Windows 10 device. Whiteboard is… Read More
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‘Wolverine: The Long Night’ is Marvel’s first scripted podcast
Having conquered just about every other form of media, Marvel’s getting into the scripted podcasting game. Launching in Spring of next year, ’Wolverine: The Long Night’ marks the comics-turned-multimedia company’s first foray into the space. The series kicks off with a 10-episode season, premiering on Stitcher’s premium service, where it will be an exclusive until… Read More
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Apple buys podcast search startup Pop Up Archive
Apple’s played a central role in podcast since its earliest days — heck, even the term was borrowed from its big hardware product at the time. But the company’s marketshare appears to have eroded somewhat as players like Google and Spotify have entered the market, reportedly down from 70-percent of podcast downloads in 2015 to 55-percent in 2017. That’s still not a… Read More
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Danny Masterson is out at Netflix’s ‘The Ranch’ following rape allegations
A day after Netflix announced that it will resume production on House of Cards without star Kevin Spacey, the streaming service has dropped another cast member from an original series amid sexual misconduct accusations. A spokesperson for the streaming service confirmed today that Danny Masterson has been dropped from its comedy series, The Ranch, after four women have accused the actor of… Read More
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Fitbit’s Ionic smartwatch is getting 60 new apps including Yelp, Uber and Deezer
A lack of apps wasn’t my biggest issue with the Fitbit Ionic — but it was up there. The inclusion of a third-party app store was one of the ways the company was looking to set the device apart from the rest of its products, and aside from a couple of high profile partners, there really wasn’t much worth mentioning. Things are looking a bit better as of this morning. The… Read More
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Assa Abloy finalizes purchase of smart lock maker August Home
Swedish lock maker Assa Abloy completed its acquisition of August Home this week. The deal, first announced back in October, has the U.S.-based smart lock startup rolling into the world’s largest lock maker, though the company says it will continue to operate as a somewhat independent entity under the much bigger brand. Read More
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XPrize’s $5 million AI competition is down to 59 teams
A year after launching, the IBM Watson-sponsored AI XPrize has been whittled down to 59 teams. That number’s down from 147 in May, which, in turn, was pulled from a list of 10,000 signups. The goal was to halve the number this time out, but a handful of teams have fallen out of the running of their own volition. Read More
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Google’s lightweight OS Android Go launches as Android Oreo (Go Edition)
Google’s made a number of tweaks since announcing Android Go back at I/O in May. The lightweight version is finally ready to launch, albeit with a slightly altered name. The OS is launching with the release of Android 8.1, now carrying the decidedly less catchy Android Oreo (Go edition) title. Read More
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Apple Pay Cash starts rolling out to iPhone users in the US
Apple Pay Cash is finally starting to roll out to users in the States, bringing the ability to send other iOS users payments directly through iMessage. The update is arriving piece by piece to those who’ve downloaded iOS 11.2, which launched two days back with a not-yet-live version of the feature. Apple Pay Cash was announced back in June at WWDC. However, the company added ahead of… Read More
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House of Cards will resume production on final season early next year without Kevin Spacey
Popular Netflix political drama House of Cards is set to return to production early next year — but it will do so without its embattled star, Kevin Spacey. The news was confirmed by the company’s Chief Content Officer Ted Sarandos on stage at UBS’s Global Media and Communications Conference this morning in New York City. This morning’s announcement follows news that… Read More
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OnePlus celebrates ‘The Last Jedi’ with a limited edition Star Wars 5T
Star Wars has had a strange smartphone history. The franchise was a no brainer for the Motorola Droid — Verizon actually had to license the name from Lucasfilm, so it follows that a few R2-D2 handsets followed over the years. More recently, Sharp, of all companies, scored the rights in time for Rogue One. With The Last Jedi a mere weeks away, it’s OnePlus’s time to shine, with… Read More
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Google is working on a fix for a bug that’s causing Home Minis to crash at high volume
It’s been a bugged-filled couple of months for Google’s hardware team. The list of issues hitting devices announced at the company’s Pixel 2 event in October just grew by another, as users have begun reporting Home Mini crashes when the smart speaker is played at maximum volume. Slashgear spotted a growing chorus of complaints on Google’s message board this week… Read More
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