The South American country is dealing with very high inflation ahead of its latest general election. Read...

MiQ has partnered with Lifesight to integrate location data into its Sigma platform, enhancing audience targeting and measurement across multiple advertising channels in JAPAC. Read...

Is the EU`s Freedom Law simply just another move to silence the real news and replace it with toady MSM publications that spew the government line? Read...

Qualys` Threat Research Unit won two Pwnie Awards for uncovering critical OpenSSH vulnerabilities, including the first pre-authentication RCE flaw in nearly 20 years. Read...

Steve Cooke celebrates 20 years at Gallagher Security, marking 40 years in security with a strong impact across New Zealand and the Pacific. Read...

Opinion: Theatrical testing scenarios explain why AI models produce alarming outputs—and why we fall for it. Read...

I recently described how a recent flurry of smart home failures made me turn to Home Assistant, the increasingly polished DIY smart home platform that you can host yourself without relying on the cloud. Starting today, Home Assistant users have an awesome new toy to play with.  The Home Assistant Connect ZQA-2 ($69) is a new smart home adapter with a very tall antenna. And before you ask, it’s not for Matter, the latest and hottest new thing in smart home. Instead, the Connect ZQA-2 is all about Z-Wave, an older but widely used smart home technology that’s getting renewed attention thanks to its new “Long Range” capability, which allows for connectivity with Z-Wave LR (Long Range) client devices up to a mile—yes, a mile—away.  Home Assistant has long supported Z-Wave, in addition to Zigbee (the smart home standard favored by Phillips Hue) and the aforementioned Matter. (I just added the Matter integration to my own Home Assistant instance.)   But the Connect ZQA-2, which is based on the latest Z-Wave 800-series chipset, is the first Z-Wave adapter built by and for the Home Assistant platform, with the group behind Home Assistant noting that the hardware has been “precisely tuned to Z-Wave’s ideal wavelength.”  For those not familiar with Z-Wave, it’s a radio technology that operates in the sub-1GHz frequency band. This low frequency is ideal for penetrating solid barriers, such as walls, but it also avoids interference from Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, and Zigbee devices that all operate in the 2.4GHz frequency spectrum. More than 4,500 smart devices from the likes of Ring, Leviton, Shelly, Yale, and Vivint offer Z-Wave devices, making Z-Wave a key ingredient in any Home Assistant installation.  Earlier generations of Z-Wave devices utilize a mesh network protocol that can support a maximum of 232 nodes. The newer Z-Wave 800-powered components are backward-compatible, but they can also use the Z-Wave Long Range protocol to operate on a star network that can support up to 4,000 (!) nodes. Nabu Casa, the commercial arm of the Open Home Foundation under which Home Assistant operates, offered me a sample Connect ZQA-2 for evaluation. While I haven’t had time to give it a formal review (I’ve been playing with the unit for a little less than a week), I can attest that it was easy to install and has—thus far, anyway—worked like a charm.  The Connect ZQA-2 comes in two parts: a 5 x 5-inch plastic base, and a 12-inch antenna with a 1.5-inch LED segment at the top that serves as a status indicator. Assembly is easy: Screw the antenna into the base, use the provided USB-C cable to connect the base to your Home Assistant server (a Raspberry Pi 5 in my case), and that’s pretty much it.  Assembling the Home Assistant Connect ZQA-2 is a simple matter of screwing the foot-long antenna into the 5-by-5-inch base.Ben Patterson/Foundry Deciding where to locate the Connect ZQA-2 is a potential issue. Home Assistant advises keeping it away from objects that could cause interference, such as thick brick walls, bodies of water (like fish tanks), other wireless transmitters, and wire mesh or metal fixtures (such as server racks).   I admit, I broke the rule and place the ZQA-2 on top of the wire mesh cabinet that houses my collection of Raspberry Pi boards, but a quick diagnostics check showed that the radio’s performance wasn’t unduly hampered. The antenna’s LED tip will blink yellow to warn you of a “sub-optimal” connection.  The Home Assistant folks also packed in a few Z-Wave devices for me to connect to the ZQA-2, all of which support both the standard Z-Wave protocol as well as Z-Wave LR: a smart plug, a water leak detector, and a smart water valve actuator, all built by Z-Wave device manufacturer Zooz.  Being that I’m an apartment dweller, I wasn’t able to install the smart water valve device, but I did try the smart plug and the water leak detector, which I configured via the Z-Wave JS control panel. (I run Home Assistant in a Docker container, so as a new Z-Wave user, I first had to spin up the Z-Wave integration in a separate container, a process that took all of 20 minutes.)  I didn’t perform formal testing on the connectivity between the two Zooz devices and the ZQA-2, but they worked flawlessly on an anecdotal level. I first connected the water leak sensor via Z-Wave LR and the smart plug with standard Z-Wave, and then swapped the protocols.    Ideally, I’d have done some true long-range testing with the new antenna—a great example might be placing the water leak sensor in a detached shed that’s, say, 100 yards away from the main building. The Z-Wave Long Range protocol supports a theoretical range of one mile, line of sight, so one could certainly dream up some inventive use cases.  The Home Assistant Connect ZQA-2 is available now on the Home Assistant website. I’ll update my findings as I continue testing. Read...

Huckleberry, an AI voice platform, revolutionises workplace feedback by enabling quick, accessible 360-degree reviews without HR involvement. Read...

Nobody really expects Windows on Arm PCs to keep up with their cousins running games locally on AMD or Intel CPUs — but until now, they had trouble simply being allowed to do so. Now, Microsoft is testing a way to enable local gaming via the Xbox app on Windows on Arm PCs. You’ve always been able to game on a PC running with Windows on Arm, with a Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite processor inside. But if you loaded up the Xbox app on a Windows PC, the only way to do so was via cloud gaming, not locally. That changes with Microsoft’s new test build. Microsoft now has a new update (version 2508.1001.27.0 and higher) for those who are both Windows Insiders and Xbox Insiders enrolled in the PC Gaming Preview on their Arm-based Windows 11 PCs, via the Xbox Insider Hub. (That’s probably not a lot of users.) If you and your PC meet those requirements, you should be able to download an updated version of the Xbox app allowing you to try out games via the Windows Store and Xbox Game Pass for PC. The latter is what makes this update important. Game Pass allows those who pay a monthly fee to take advantage of an ever-changing pantheon of games, both top-tier and independent offerings. To date, Windows on Arm “gamers” have had to use Valve’s Steam instead. The problem is that the Adreno GPU inside the Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite just doesn’t have the horsepower to run top-tier titles. Qualcomm showed off games like Control running at about 40fps on Low settings, and that’s fine. Our deep dive into Snapdragon X Elite gaming, however, showed most games still chugging away at single-digit frame rates, or at levels that simply weren’t playable. Qualcomm has also been hamstrung by the lack of support for anti-cheat systems that has improved over time. It’s less of an issue with older games or those that use older or even 2D graphics, as our tests showed DOTA 2 ran at an average of 52.8 frames per second on Low settings — but would dip down as low as 9.8fps when taxed to the limit. Still, the Xbox app is now a pretty convenient way to download games via Microsoft’s Game Pass, so the addition is good news. We’ll simply have to wait for what we expect to be a next-gen Snapdragon to be launched at Qualcomm’s Snapdragon Technology Summit at the end of September for even better gaming on Windows on Arm. Read...

Google Gemini continues to push the limits of what it knows about you. On Wednesday, Google’s big initiative was a way to stop Gemini from learning more about you, while notifying users that content you share with it may be used as a foundation for chats with other users. “In the coming weeks, your ‘Gemini Apps Activity‘ setting will be renamed ‘Keep Activity,`” Google said in a blog post. “When this setting is on, a sample of your future uploads will be used to help improve Google services for everyone.” Today, Google is allowing Gemini to remember what it knows about you, and this behavior is on by default. “When this setting is on, Gemini remembers key details and preferences you’ve shared, leading to more natural and relevant conversations, as if you’re collaborating with a partner who’s already up to speed,” Google said. The idea is all about context: The more Google knows about you, the better Gemini can be in making recommendations. Google — and frankly, most internet services — have used this argument for years, as a way of pulling more data from you and the services you use, and building an online profile that can be used to serve ads. In an example, Google said Gemini could be used to brainstorm ideas for a YouTube channel based on Japanese culture, suggesting new ideas based on what it knows about your preferences and what you’ve previously asked Google about. For now, this “personal context” will only be available in the “2.5 Pro” model, with it being added to the default “2.5 Flash” model in the coming weeks, Google said. Incognito Mode for Gemini = ‘Temporary Chats’ So what happens if you don’t want Gemini to store your weird fondness for Labubus? You can turn off this feature by going to Settings in the Gemini app and selecting “Personal context,” then ”Your past chats with Gemini,” and turning the feature off. Google If you want Google to be able to “know” you, however — but have an embarassing or otherwise personal conversation you’d rather Gemini forget about — Google has also launched what’s known as “Temporary Chat.” It’s pretty easy to equate a “Temporary Chat” with the current Incognito Mode in Google Chrome. The chat won’t appear in your list of recent chats or Google Apps activity, and won’t be used to “personalize your Gemini experience or train Google’s AI models.” Google does retain a “temporary chat,” but only for 72 hours so that you can exhaust all of your questions. Your uploads may be mined to help Google Google’s declaration that it will use your uploads to improve Google services for other users is more concerning. Specifically, files and photos uploaded to Gemini will be used to help improve Google services, and it’s not clear what this means. Again, the setting is on by default, meaning that you’ll have to turn the setting off by going to the “Settings & help” gear icon, then Activity, and then either turning off the feature or turning it off and deleting it. Google doesn’t have any problem taking photos and files you upload to enhance Google services, but won’t use any audio (speech) that you provide to do so. That setting is off by default. But Google is also rolling out an update that will save Gemini Live recordings, plus video and/or screenshots, in your history. Google now calls this “Gemini Apps Activity,” but it’s renaming it to “Keep Activity” instead. (This has nothing to do with Google Keep, presumably.) Google may see this transparency as a way to assist consumers who want to manage this privacy, but the renaming and default behavior isn’t exactly straightforward. Perhaps the biggest takeaway is the simplest: The easiest way not to risk Google inadvertently sharing or learning things about you — your insurance plan, your retirement options, your will — is not to share it with Gemini in the first place. Google may have founded its business on the slogan “Don’t be evil,” but Gemini is getting a little sinister, regardless. Read...