Meta Gives Devs a New Dream Machine

Meta on Wednesday began taking preorders for its Meta 2 augmented reality headset, and announced it would begin shipping the US$949 product in the third quarter of this year. Meta has been working on an experience that blends "the art of user interface design with the science of the brain," CEO Meron Gribetz said during a session at last month's TED2016. Starting this fall, developers will finally get an opportunity to "make their augmented reality dreams come true," promised Ryan M. Pamplin, VP of sales and partnerships at Meta.

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Facebook Exec Sprung From Brazilian Jail

A Brazilian judge on Wednesday ordered the release of Facebook Regional Vice President Diego Dzodan, one day after Brazilian police placed him under arrest for WhatsApp's failure to produce messages the government believed relevant to a drug ring investigation. Judge Ruy Pinheiro concluded the exec's detainment amounted to coercion, according to press reports. Judge Marcel Maia ordered the arrest on Tuesday, after WhatsApp failed to comply with requests by police and the court to produce messages created in the app.

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Report: 3.5 Million HTTPS Servers Vulnerable to DROWN

A report released Tuesday on the DROWN vulnerability raises concerns about possible attacks that could expose encrypted communications. DROWN is a serious vulnerability that affects HTTPS and other services using SSL version 2, according to the team of security researchers who compiled the report. The protocols affected are some of the essential cryptographic protocols for Internet security. An attack could decrypt secure HTTPS communications, such as passwords or credit card numbers, within minutes.

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Google Car Stubs Toe

One of Google's self-driving cars kissed a bus on Valentine's day, marking the first accident in which the one of the company's autonomous vehicles was at least partly at fault. Possibly too smart for its own good, the self-driving car was attempting to reenter its previous lane when it contacted a municipal bus. The car had pulled over in preparation for a right turn, but came to a stop when it detected sandbags near a storm drain at the intersection, according to Google.

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Fresh Raspberry Pi Has Better Hardware Baked In

The Raspberry Pi Foundation on Monday announced the availability of the Raspberry Pi 3 Model B for $35, the same price as the previous model. It is the second major upgrade to the board in just over a year. The hardware upgrade boosts the single-core processor of the original Pi to a faster, more capable quad-core chipset in the Pi 3. The current model is based on a 64-bit chipset that runs faster than the Pi 2's 900-MHz quad-core, 32-bit ARM Cortex-A7-based hardware. The credit card-sized computer board adds WiFi and Bluetooth support.

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Fed Judge Rules for Apple in Drug Case Involving Encryption

A federal magistrate judge on Monday ruled that Apple did not have to unlock an encrypted iPhone used in a federal drug case. The ruling gave the company a key victory against the Department of Justice in the midst of a legal struggle over an FBI request that the encrypted phone of a suspected shooter in the San Bernardino, California, massacre also be unlocked. Federal Magistrate Judge James Orenstein ruled that the government failed to prove that it had the power under an 18th century law to force Apple to unlock the phone.

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Gadget Ogling: Playful Projectors, Star Wars Sounds, and Spotify-to-Go

Sony's Xperia Projector Concept turns any surface into an interactive display. One can, for instance, check the latest temperature, play games, edit documents, or make video calls. It is a self-contained system, and it does not need to connect to a smartphone or a computer to operate. It seems that Sony has designs on turning this into a portable device as well. We've for years had tools that project keyboards onto hard surfaces using lasers. I'm not keen on typing for an extended period on a solid surface, but I'm on board with this.

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