Huge Sony PSVR saving brings you a starter pack for £229.99

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Here’s another fantastic deal for Amazon Prime Day deal hunters today: a PlayStation VR Starter Pack and a pair of Move controllers. 

For only £229.99 you can get your hands on (and head into) a PlayStation VR headset, a PlayStation VR camera, PlayStation VR Worlds gaming bundle and a Move controllers twin pack. 

What makes this deal so great is that it contains everything you need to get up and running with the PSVR without forking out any extra for add-ons, presuming you already have a PS4 or PS4 Pro, that is.

Usually you’d be able to get a PSVR Starter Pack for around this price, but you’d be missing out on the Move controllers and you’d have to buy them separately. 

Sure you can use the PSVR, and have a decent experience, without the Move controllers. But to really make the most of Sony PlayStation’s virtual reality tech you need those Move controllers, which makes this not only a great deal (you save £84.98 in total), but less hassle too, putting everything you really need in one neat package.

If you’re thinking of bagging yourself a discounted PSVR, check out our guide to the best PlayStation VR games around to keep yourself busy.

The PSVR is compatible with both the PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 4 Pro. It’s relatively easy to set-up, but you will need a good 10 feet or so of space in every direction, as well as a few hours spare to get it all up-and-running. 

Once you’re done, you’ll be able to immerse yourself in a range of VR environments, all providing you with 360-degrees of vision thanks to the device’s 5.7 inch OLED screen that offers up smooth visuals and low latency. 

If you’re looking for more games, accessories and add-ons for your PS4 or PS4 Pro, be sure to check out the rest of our Amazon Prime Day coverage for more bargain tip-offs.

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Huge Cortana exploit allowed an attacker to bypass Windows 10’s lock screen

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Windows 10 users will likely be concerned to hear that Cortana had major vulnerabilities, which allowed a malicious party to potentially bypass the lock screen – or easily view sensitive information from it – although the good news is that Microsoft has just patched these issues.

McAfee uncovered and documented the security flaws in a lengthy blog post, with one simple issue being the fact that you could trigger the voice assistant from the lock screen (assuming Cortana is enabled in this respect, on default settings), and bring up a contextual Windows 10 menu simply by typing while Cortana is listening to a query.

And the details of files – and possibly file contents – revealed in that contextual menu could potentially leak sensitive information from the locked laptop.

Beyond that, the security firm found that it was possible to exploit Cortana in order to execute code on the PC from the lock screen, allowing an attacker to trigger a backdoor dropped from, say, a previously successful phishing email attack.

Moreover, McAfee further demonstrated an exploit of the digital assistant that allowed a payload to be locally executed from a USB stick, with the result that the attacker could change the login credentials for the notebook, and get full access to the machine. Highly worrying indeed.

Privilege patch

As mentioned at the outset, Microsoft fixed these issues with its freshly released patch for Windows 10 (out yesterday).

As Windows Latest reports, the company noted: “An Elevation of Privilege vulnerability exists when Cortana retrieves data from user input services without consideration for status. The security update addresses the vulnerability by ensuring Cortana considers status when [retrieving] information from input services.”

So, if you do have Cortana running on the lock screen of your PC, this is a pretty critical security patch to download. And if you haven’t patched yet – as might be the case with business machines, where deployment of patches can be a thornier issue – then obviously it might be a good move to banish Cortana from the lock screen for the time being.

McAfee further observes that it’s just scratching the surface of potential attack vectors that can be leveraged against digital assistants and via vocal commands, and that the firm intends to look much more deeply into finding vulnerabilities along these lines.

It’s obviously an important area to research, as we are inexorably heading towards a world in which AI virtual assistants are increasingly used to help you run many aspects of your devices and operating systems.

• Some of the best laptops out there use Windows 10 and Cortana

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Microsoft sinks huge self-sustaining data center off the Scottish coast

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Microsoft has plunged an enormous data center into the sea off the coast of Scotland’s Orkney Islands. This is the latest phase of Project Natick: an experiment to see if data processing can be greener and more affordable – huge concerns in the age of cloud computing.

Natick’s first stage involved submerging a prototype a kilometer off the Pacific coast of the US, proving that it could work below the surface and be cooled naturally by seawater. It operated underwater for 105 days.

With its experiment at Orkney, Microsoft wants to prove that full-scale underwater modules can be built economically and deployed within three months.

“The most joyful moment of the day was when the datacenter finally slipped beneath the surface on its slow, carefully scripted journey,” said project manager Ben Cutler, who helped supervise the deployment at Orkney.

Dunk your data

Natick is purely a research project at the moment, but Microsoft hopes the lessons it learns could lead to real life benefits for internet users – particularly faster speeds.

“Half the world’s population lives within 200km of the ocean,” Microsoft says. “If the ocean so placing datacenters offshore increases the proximity of the datacenter to the population, dramatically reducing latency and providing better responsiveness.”

The new data center will use 100% renewable energy from on-shore wind turbines and solar panels, plus off-shore tidal and wave turbines. In the future, Microsoft envisions that underwater units could eventually be made entirely from recycled materials.

Microsoft has yet to announce phase three of the project, but the latest unit is scheduled to work beneath the waves for up to five years. The company hopes that eventually the data centers will reliable enough operate for up to 10 years with nobody on site – instead using AI to detect any signs of failure.

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GM Cruise just got a huge investment to accelerate driverless car development

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SoftBank, the company behind Boston Dynamics’ door-opening robots and a real-life Transformer, is investing billions into a more mainstream AI industry: driverless cars. 

Specifically, SoftBank Vision Fund, Softbank’s investment fund group, will bankroll $2.2 billion into GM Cruise, General Motors’ self-driving department, in return for a 20% stake, GM announced today in a statement. 

SoftBank will withhold $1.35 billion of its promised investment until GM’s autonomous vehicles are “ready for commercial deployment.” GM is hoping to launch its fleet of self-driving cars sometime next year. 

GM will also invest $1.1 billion of its own assets into GM Cruise. 

“Our Cruise and GM teams together have made tremendous progress over the last two years,” GM CEO Mary Barra said. “Teaming up with SoftBank adds an additional strong partner as we pursue our vision of zero crashes, zero emissions and zero congestion.”

GM’s Chevy Volt is its first choice for adding self-driving tech | Credit: Chevrolet

SoftBank’s investment will likely help GM in launching a pilot test program of self-driving cars in Manhattan sometime this year. 

Each of GM’s electric, self-driving Chevy Volts will be insured for $5 million for any potential accidents caused by GM’s AI. 

Forbes reports that GM and SoftBank’s partnership will span seven years. Michael Ronen, a managing partner at SoftBank Investment Advisers, told Forbes that seven years, “is a good benchmark for what we think is the runway for this technology to get at least close to maturity.”

SoftBank also spent $7 billion on a 15% stake in Uber, CNN Tech reported last year. Uber has its own self-driving ambitions, but after a high-profile, fatal accident in Arizona earlier this year, the company has suspended most of its self-driving testing on public roads. 

Another major player in the self-driving race

GM has the second-best safety record of self-driving disengagements after Waymo, Google’s self-driving division, and SoftBank’s major investment could help the Detroit-based manufacturer compete with its Silicon Valley rival. 

Just after GM’s announcement, Waymo revealed its plans to buy 62,000 Fiat Chrysler minivans with self-driving tech built-in, as part of the company’s plan to launch its self-driving ride-hailing service in Arizona later this year. 

Coincidentally, Waymo has also entered into discussions with Uber to lease out some of its cars to Uber’s self-driving taxi service. It’s unclear whether SoftBank could look to torpedo these talks, or encourage Uber to try out GM’s cars instead. 

Waymo’s Pacifica Hybrid minivan | Credit: Waymo

What we really want to know is whether GM plans to sell self-driving Chevy Volts from its fleet to consumers directly, or if it will look to start its own driverless ride-sharing or rental service instead. 

Uber released a joint statement with other ride-sharing companies earlier this year stating that consumers shouldn’t be able to buy their own autonomous vehicles. 

If GM chooses to sell self-driving cars and Uber lobbies against it, SoftBank could end up awkwardly backing both sides of the feud. But, until GM announces more concrete plans, much of this is mere speculation. 

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