Light Start – Beating Samsung’s sensor, military Hololens, Starhopper, and Kollector
Brett Venter
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Samsung’s Galaxy S10 fingerprint sensor beaten by a 3D-printed thumbprint
This has been ripped straight out of a spy movie. We couldn’t be more pleased, actually. Some intrepid bugger decided to lift his own fingerprint from a wine-glass (like you do), spend some time digitising and turning it into a 3D print-ready file and then turned it into a fake thumb. Which, with some tweaking, was able to beat Samsung’s in-display fingerprint scanner. Samsung’s unlikely to be impressed and it does have implications for the handset’s security but we seriously doubt there’s going to be a rash of super-spies lifting your fingerprints off household items. If it’s a significant other going to all that effort, you might have bigger problems than device security. To see the whole process, hit up the original Imgur post detailing how it was done.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]
Meet the version of Hololens that Microsoft has made for the US military
We know that Microsoft has been working on its Hololens augmented reality (AR) headset. Less obvious is that the company is also working on a version for the American military. Called the Integrated Visual Augmentation System (IVAS), it’s a custom headset intended for the US Army. A reporter at CNBC got a chance to fiddle with one and it sounds an awful lot like a device that will give soldiers the sort of viewpoints that gamers take for granted. Picture real-world overlays, area maps with soldier location updated in real-time and a heads-up display that gives viewers objective directions. All it needs to do now is allow us to respawn and it’ll function fine as a piece of entertainment gear but we don’t think that Borderlands-level tech exists yet. In the meantime, check out the link to see how the world of gaming is bleeding into the real world.
SpaceX’s Starhopper had a very, very good day last week
You might remember SpaceX conducting Grasshopper tests, back in the days before the company started routinely landing rocket boosters. Now SpaceX has nailed that portion, it’s on to something bigger. Elon Musk last week posted footage of a successful Starhopper test, which saw the rocket engine lifting off… just a little. The Raptor booster has been fitted to the Starhopper test bed and the recent ignition test lifted the whole assembly off the ground — to the limits of its tether, at least. But, as with Grasshopper, those liftoffs and landings will eventually get longer and more ambitious.
Mortal Kombat 11 will debut Kollector, a creepy dude with far too many arms
In case the header image wasn’t warning enough, and you don’t actually know what Mortal Kombat is about, you might want to beware the character reveal video at the link below. It’s our first look at Kollector, a new character who… collects things. For Outworld monarch Shao Khan, which makes him a bit of a horrible in person. In practice, Kollector has a strange moveset and a whole range of weird attack angles — which could make him a very interesting character to play as (and against) indeed. And, like the rest of the roster, he’s a very, very violent man. We’ll see Kollector and all the rest a little later this month, on 23 April when MK 11 drops.
