Samsung Places Fridge at Center of Smart Home

Samsung on Wednesday unveiled the Family Hub Refrigerator at CES, ongoing in Las Vegas through Saturday. The new refrigerator sports a 21.5-inch full HD LCD screen on the upper right outside door, which doubles as a communications center. The screen lets users post, share and update calendars, as well as pin digital photos, share images and leave notes. The Family Hub Refrigerator supports WiFi. It has built-in speakers for music streaming, and it can connect to Bluetooth wireless speakers.

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Hack Lets PS4 Run Linux

Hacking team fail0verflow last week demonstrated a hack of Sony's PlayStation 4 game console that allows anyone running the modification to run the Linux OS on the appliance. The demo was part of a lightning talk session at the 32nd Chaos Communication Congress. The hackers used exploits in FreeBSD, PS4's operating system and WebKit, which powers the game console's browser. Both the OS and browser are open source and vulnerable to security exploits, according to a member of failOverflow. The PlayStation 4 is based on the x86 architecture.

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Major Security Flaw Found in Silent Circle's Blackphone

Security researchers at SentinelOne on Wednesday revealed a vulnerability they discovered in the Blackphone. The flaw -- an obscure socket -- lets an attacker take over and control communications on the Blackphone, a highly secure Android smartphone Silent Circle developed and marketed in reaction to news of government surveillance of people's communications. Silent Circle began taking preorders for the device in 2014, and "despite [its] best attempts, a severe zero day remained undetected for nearly a year," said Tim Strazzere of SentinelOne.

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Insider Threats Give Security Execs Sweats

Insider threats are becoming increasingly worrisome to corporate security executives. That is one of the findings in a survey of C-level businesspeople Nuix released last week. "The insider threat seems to be a bigger concern this year than it was in previous years," said Nuix's Keith Lowry. "People are recognizing that it is a significant weakness that has yet to be fully addressed by most organizations." Insider threat programs are widespread across the broad set of industries represented by 28 high-level execs participating in the study.

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New Smart Cam Can Distinguish Between Cats, Cat Burglars and Cars

Netatmo on Monday announced a smart security camera and floodlight combo at CES 2016. The Presence camera is designed for outdoor use and can identify objects such as people, animals and vehicles. The camera, which connects to a rectangular floodlight, can be customized to send alerts to a smartphone app or desktop browser based on what it sees and where it sees it. For example, it could be customized to ignore cars that pass by a home but send an alert when a vehicle enters the driveway.

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Elementary OS' Freya Dumbs Down Linux

The release last month of Elementary OS Freya version 0.3.2 showed little has changed in this new-style Linux distro that wraps its own lightweight desktop design around the Ubuntu core. Elementary OS first appeared in 2011. I last looked at its Freya beta release in 2014. I liked its fresh, new look and simplified approach to desktop management. However, my hopes for more features and a faster-evolving desktop environment in the latest release went unfulfilled.

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HTC Shows Off Vive Pre's Room-Sensing Camera

A room-sensing camera planted on the front of the Vive Pre was the reason the release of Valve and HTC's virtual reality headset was delayed, the companies revealed Tuesday at CES 2016. The Vive VR headset was supposed to beat Oculus VR and Sony to the punch, coming out in the last quarter of last year. A last-minute "breakthrough" required more work on the Vive headset, HTC CEO Cher Wang said last month. It wouldn't have been fair to early adopters to release hardware just to meet the December shipping target.

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