A new payments terminal, E la Carte's PrestoPrime EMV, could potentially bring Apple Pay and other mobile payment systems to more restaurants, and let people pay for food and drinks without either a card or interacting with a waiter.

The terminal sports dual processors with one dedicated to payments, E la Carte said, and can even temporarily save some data locally in case of a power failure, forwarding it later once an internet connection is back. In addition to Apple Pay, it also supports Android Pay and Samsung Pay, plus less direct mobile payment methods by way of a camera and QR code reader.

For card-based transactions, the device supports both chips and magnetic stripes, with a PIN pad and signatures. Before or during a meal it can provide entertainment like games and video.

The PrestoPrime EMV's predecessor is said to be in use at over 1,800 U.S. restaurants, including chains like Applebee's. While restaurants are unlikely to upgrade en masse, a gradual changeover during the next few years could see mobile payment systems become more prominent.

Traditionally, mobile payment systems were limited to fixed point-of-sale terminals or handheld readers like those from Square. At restaurants, waiters may sometimes have to bring a reader to a table for people to pay.
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Platforms like Apple Pay and PayPal so far appear to be winning out over QR-based options. Recently MCX sold off assets from CurrentC, a failed QR-based challenger, to JPMorgan Chase. The latter company is working on a system called Chase Pay.

The USG is a small, portable hardware USB firewall that isolates a potentially harmful device from your computer. It's designed to prevent malicious USB sticks and devices laden with malware from infecting your computer. 

You might be thinking, "What's the point?" The problem is that most computers automatically trust every USB device that's plugged in, which means malicious code can run without warning. 

It's not just computers: Cars, cash registers, and some ATMs also come with USB ports, all of which can be vulnerable to cyberattacks from a single USB stick. 

Enter the USG, a nifty tool for the privacy-minded and super paranoid that aims to solve that problem. 

Every USB device has its own micro-computer that runs its own firmware. It only takes one malicious USB stick to send a malicious message to your computer to cause damage. 

That's where the USG firewall comes in. You plug in one end to your computer, and you plug in a suspect USB device into the other. A simple hardware serial link that only accepts a very few select number of safe commands, which prevents the device from executing system commands or intercepting network traffic. That means the data can flow from the USB device but effectively blocks other USB exploits. 

These kinds of attacks might be rare, compared to spam, ransomware, and other kinds of malware, but they can still do considerable damage. 

And it's not just flash drives – any kind of USB device, from webcams to keyboards and mice, can lead to a malware infection. 

While the USG will protect against low-level USB attacks, it won't protect against malware stored on the flash drive itself. 

Fisk explained on his Github page, where the code is available, that the project is "particularly useful for individuals and organizations that face advanced threats including corporate espionage or state sponsored attacks." 

Should you trust the USG? There's no reason not to. 

Robert Fisk, creator of the USG, the only developer of the USG firewall, says his "reputation hinges on the integrity of this project." He open-sourced the firmware so anyone can inspect the code, as well as compile it themselves on the device itself, and he has published the specifications of the USG hardware, so anyone can build one. 
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Anyone can order one for $60 plus shipping.

When people speak of IBM Watson, they do so in hushed tones in the corner of rooms, whispering for fear it will jinx it and the promise will not be realized. ‘Did you hear? Watson will cure cancer.’ Watson is, in many ways, the Chuck Norris of cognitive computing. 

Watson’s reputation stems, in no small part, from IBM itself, who are not modest when it comes to blowing their own horn. Dr. John Kelly, who heads up the Watson team at IBM, has claimed that ‘This is brand new technology. It’s going to change the world.’ Not to be outdone, Ann Rubin, IBM's VP of branded content and global creative, said that Watson enables users to ‘outthink cancer, outthink risk, outthink doubt, outthink competitors.’ Big promises. But is this hype warranted, or, as some believe, is the emperor running amok completely naked? 

IBM established itself as a leader in the artificial intelligence field back in 1996 when its Deep Blue chess playing computer defeated Russian chess Grandmaster Garry Kasparov. Then Watson’s Jeopardy victory in 2011 cemented its reputation. Shortly after the Jeopardy victory in 2014, IBM broke down Watson’s capabilities into 40 different components each serving a particular business problem, which is the business model it still uses today. 

IBM pitches Watson as a solution for a variety of industries, from healthcare to financial services. It crunches through vast amounts of data to understand problems and environments in the same way humans do, a process known as cognitive computing. It then uses these insights to provide predictions and make decisions. According to IBM, the business is growing. It is at the center of the company's ‘strategic imperatives’ - which include cloud, mobile and analytics - that contributed $32.8 billion in revenue in 2016. However, further details around the return on investment are scant, as it is lumped in with the other technologies in the company’s financial statements. In February last year, chief executive Ginni Rometty explained that it does not provide much information because Watson is new and growing, telling the annual IBM analyst meeting, ’We are building an era, a platform, an industry, and making a market with it. We have competitors who don’t disclose for a decade, [so] I’m going to protect it and nurture it — we will disclose eventually’. 

Rometty’s position is understandable, but evidence of success may at least help to counter the growing body of criticism. Among these critics is Meg Whitman, CEO of IBM competitor Hewlett-Packard Enterprise. Last year she noted that ‘We're in a lot of customers where actually from a Watson perspective it's not as far along in terms of real-world applications as you might imagine from the advertising.’ This could easily be dismissed as a competitor trying to get one over on a rival, but her’s is not a lone voice. Many others are starting to argue that Watson is just a thinly veiled advertising campaign, exploiting the notoriety achieved from its Jeopardy! win to promote its consultancy services and the technologies it has put under the Watson umbrella that are not especially groundbreaking. 

Also among the dissenters is Roger Schank Ph.D., founder of the Institute for the Learning Sciences at Northwestern University. He accuses Watson of false advertising, writing in an excoriating blog post that Watson is essentially just a ‘word counter’ little different from Google search. He says that it is incapable of any non-trivial reasoning, contrary to how IBM presents it in its advertising, noting specifically an ad campaign IBM ran that showed Watson’s analysis of Bob Dylan songs for key themes, which it identified as ‘love fades’ and ‘time passes’ - themes Schank argued no Dylan fan would ever put down as his most important. Although, Dylan says those themes sound ‘about right’ in the advert, so it could just be that Schank is misremembering. 
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IBM refutes accusations that it is not the high-end proposition it claims. Dr. Kelly says that ‘Everything we brand Watson analytics is very high-end AI,’ and you will find little argument that IBM’s Watson artificial intelligence system is an incredible piece of technology. It’s more than capable of searching across vast repositories of unstructured digital data and returning answers remarkably quickly and has done amazing things, particularly in healthcare and refining diagnoses. The problem is not whether it's a market leader, though, it’s the promises it is making. Watson has suffered from the goals it has set for itself, from curing cancer to being the solution to cybersecurity. These are important things to resolve, and IBM needs to be honest with how much Watson can really do. Overhyping AI is dangerous, as we saw when inflated expectations and subsequent disillusionment in the 1980s led to the so-called AI Winter, bringing investment to a grinding halt and pushing research ‘underground.’ Obviously, IBM wants to sell its product, and because it is such a nascent technology it needs big targets like cancer and cybersecurity to put itself on the map and gain customer support. However, in the long term, it could be shooting itself in the foot. The thaw has been hard earned, and although another setback of the same magnitude is unlikely for AI, expectations should still be managed.

Around 21 million fitness trackers were sold in 2016 and the 2017 forecast by Gartner is 25 million, with the promise of monitoring and improving activity levels.

Devices and health apps that advise people to walk 10,000 steps a day could be doing more harm than good, scientists have warned.

Dr Greg Hager, an expert in computer science at Johns Hopkins University, said many apps and devices had no real evidence base and that a one-size-fits-all approach could be harmful for some people.

Dr Hager told delegates at the American Association for the Advancement of Science annual meeting in Boston that the 10,000 steps doctrine was based on just one study of Japanese men dating back to 1960.

“Some of you might wear Fitbits or something equivalent, and I bet every now and then it gives you that cool little message 'you did 10,000 steps today’,” he said. 

“But why is 10,000 steps important? Is that the right number for any of you in this room? Who knows? It’s just a number that’s now built into the apps.

“I think apps could definitely be doing more harm than good.” 

In 2013, the NHS established a Health Apps Library to provide patients with a choice of health and treatment software and GPs were encouraged to recommend apps to their patients.

Yet the University of Liverpool found that just 15% of those listed for depression were proven to be effective.
Dr. Steve Flatt, of the university’s psychological therapies unit, who co-authored the study published in the BMJ, said: “This field is currently in its infancy and can currently be likened to the snake oil salesmen of the 1860s.

Simon Leigh, a health economist who co-authored the BMJ paper, said: “A GP, endocrinologist or other fitness specialist would unlikely recommend 10,000 steps for most people.” 

Research last year by the University of Pittsburgh concluded that people who used a wearable technology device lost less weight than those undertaking standard weight loss techniques.

Dr. John Jakicic said not everyone was physically capable of doing 10,000 steps. “If you are elderly or infirm then this is not going to be good for you,” he said.
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“We need to be careful about relying solely on these devices. However, there is a place for these, and so we need to be careful not to throw the baby out with the bathwater in my opinion.”