New Tech at the Consumer Electronics Show

The 2019 Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas is under way.

What's new at the CES?

Journal Sentinel: Five Cool Tech Items.

Air Bags for cyclists: A French company called Helite makes air bags for motorcyclists and horse riders. And now it has produced air bags for those of you on bicycles. This "smart" bag, selling for $650 when it comes out in March, has built-in sensors that promise to detect when to inflate the bag – meaning, not when you ride over over bumps, but rather when you are in an actual accident.

Hit the link for the other four items.

The Walking Car. AutoExpress:

Hyundai has announced its plan for a robotic concept car at this year’s Consumer Electronics Show. Called the “Elevate,” it would be capable of walking over rough terrain, spanning gaps up to five-feet across and scaling obstacles up to five feet tall; all while maintaining a perfectly level passenger compartment.

Hyundai's Walking Car

More on the walking car from Hyundai:

Wheels with robotic legs allow users to drive, walk or even climb over the most treacherous terrain.
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The legs also fold up into a stowed drive-mode, where power to the joints is cut, and the use of an integrated passive suspension system maximizes battery efficiency. This allows Elevate to drive at highway speeds just like any other vehicle. But no other can climb a five foot wall, step over a five foot gap, walk over diverse terrain, and achieve a 15 foot wide track width, all while keeping its body and passengers completely level.

Watch the Elevate here.

More gadgets at IFL Science, including: Intelligent Toilets, the LG ExoSuit, Foldable Smartphones.

A self-driving Tesla ran over and "killed" an autonomous robot. Daily Mail:

In what many are speculating was an over-the-top PR stunt, Promobot revealed one of its model v4 robots was ‘killed’ by a Tesla Model S on a Las Vegas street ahead of CES.

Rosie The Robot; unharmed at CES

Design Boom: LG's rollable OLED TV.

Clean Technia: Harey-Davidson's Electric Motorcycle.

Digital Trends: The latest Mobile Accessories at CES.

PC Mag: Rokit's high-tech cell and smart phones.

Tech News

ArsTechnia - Google isn’t the company that we should have handed the Web over to.

Microsoft adopting Chromium puts the Web in a perilous place.

A must-read. Also: Google evil? You have no idea. - InfoWorld, March 2014

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Peering into 2019 at Beta News - Cyber predictions for 2019:

The end of the password
Increased regulation
IoT risks

And more.
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BGR - Intelligent parrot instructed Alexa to play music and order food from Amazon: 

The African grey parrot, however, is something of an exception to the rule. Interestingly enough, a 2012 study published in The Royal Society found that the grey parrot has cognitive thinking skills in some areas that are on the same level as a three-year old human child.

And then, there's this parrot.
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C|Net: Russian social media actors moved to Instagram after pressure on Facebook and Twitter:

Once the Internet Research Agency got outed on Facebook and Twitter, Instagram became the new haven for Russia's disinformation campaign.

That's the takeaway from two comprehensive reports Monday on Russia's social media manipulation efforts. One is from researchers at New Knowledge, a cybersecurity firm, and the other is from researchers at Oxford University's Computational Propaganda Research Project and Graphika. 

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Brave browser going Chromium - Computer World:

As of last week, however, Brave relies on the Chromium UI. In plainer words, Brave has gone "full-Chromium."

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Tech News World -  Blackberry opens door for offering services to autonomous vehicle sector:

BlackBerry this week introduced its new Security Credential Management System.
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Waterloo, Ontario-based BlackBerry,...undertook development of this technology to provide the critical infrastructure for vehicles and traffic lights to exchange information securely.
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The company likely hopes to gain the trust of automakers, as well as local governments that are involved in the development of smart city infrastructure.

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Fake package covers porch thieves in glitter and fart spray. TechCrunch:

As soon as it’s opened, a custom-built spinning tub flings ridiculously fine glitter in every direction...A few seconds later comes a blast of canned fart spray. Or, I should say, the first blast of canned fart spray[.]

See the video at the link.