It’ll come pick you up – and fly you away
While we’ve all been dreaming of flying cars for decades. Looks like actual airplane maker Airbus has been thinking about it as well, and they’ve got a great idea. Check out the “Pop.Up” concept vehicle they showed off at the Geneva Motor Show last week. Oh it, looks like a little car with a big drone on top? Well, in this form, it pretty much is.
But the key here is the wonky word “multi-modal,” as in the passenger compartment pod integrates into a bunch of mobility forms: it’s a self-driving car, then an autonomous plane-slash-drone thing, and quite possibly, even a Hyperloop cabin. Basically, it can go pretty much anywhere, any how, all on electricity. Very cool.
Airbus says they think they can move the Pop.Up concept to actual production in 7 to 10 years, and hope it will address real transportation and traffic issues. We know we’d line up to take a ride, would you? Let us know in comments and go here for more details on the Pop.Up.
Assange tries to assuage tech firms with private looks at hacking tools
As the whole Wikileaks government technology hacking thing shakes out, tech companies are scrambling to assure consumers that their devices are, well, probably not spying on them. Apple says devices running the latest version of iOS 10 are secure, and now Google says that many of the vulnerabilities outlined in the document dump have already been fixed.
Google’s director of information security told BGR that “we’re confident that security updates and protections in both Chrome and Android already shield users from many of these alleged vulnerabilities.” BGR said existing threats outlined in the “Vault 7” outing are “minimal” to Android users, but keep in mind that many Android devices, and there are billions of them, are not updated to the latest and greatest Android OS. If you have one, update it now.
And finally, Wikileaks mastermind Julian Assange says they actually held back a lot of the specific hacking information, but he is going to let major tech companies check it out in private so they can more securely patch operating systems and vulnerabilities. So, there’s that. For now.
How many people are actually doing this each day?
Snapchat, er, Snap Inc., is still swimming in a pool full of money following their IPO, but it might be time to get back to it now that rival Facebook has launched Messenger Day, a very Snapchat Stories-like app. Like Stories, Messenger Day lets users post photos and videos about their day, only to have all that stuff turn to vapor 24 hours later.
That makes for a growing group of ephemeral post competitors to Snapchat Stories, which includes Instagram Stories, WhatsApp’s Status, and now Messenger Day, all of which operate under Facebook’s umbrella. Messenger Day is a separate app from Facebook and Messenger, and it drops today for iOS and Android systems.
