Google Assistant Goes to Work for Nvidia's Shield TV

Nvidia on Thursday announced that its Shield TV now includes Google Assistant as part of its Shield Experience Upgrade 6.0 update, which is now available for download. The update also lets the Shield device work as a SmartThings Hub when paired with a SmartThinks Link.

The SmartThings Link, which can be used to connect Shield TV as a SmartThings Hub, will be released in the coming months with a promotional launch price of US$14.99. The regular price will be $39.99.

iOS Users May Regret Going to 11

Blowback over Apple's iOS 11 upgrade has been increasing, despite an update that was supposed to solve battery drainage issues and a large number of other glitches but apparently has not done the job.

Apple officially launched iOS 11 on September 19, but problems quickly became apparent, prompting the company to roll out iOS 11.0.1 just a week later.

iOS 11 provides immersive augmented reality functionality to iPhones and iPads, as well as a redesigned App Store, enhanced Siri, a Do Not Disturb feature for drivers, and the ability to share playlists in Apple Music.

Google Poised to Add New Pixels to Growing Ecosystem

A refresh of Google's critically acclaimed Pixel smartphones is expected Wednesday when the company holds its annual product launch event at the SFJAZZ center in San Francisco.

Although their features won't be known officially until Google raises the curtain on the phones at the event, leaks -- including photos -- have given the public a good idea of what's to come.

RoboCyberWall Aims to Block Linux Server Hacks

on Tuesday launched its proprietary precision firewall solution bearing the same name. RoboCyberWall is designed to protect HTTP and HTTPS (SSL) ports on Linux-based Apache2 and NGINX Web servers.

The patent-pending firewall blocks all known exploits and zero-day attacks on Apache2 and NGINX Web servers, according to the developer. It is the only firewall designed from the ground up to protect the Linux Apache2 or NGINX Web server's root directory, as well as the document root directory.

The product's Modular Security paradigm for Linux server perimeters has been hacker tested for more than a year. It is far more secure than yesterday's all-in-one firewalls, according to the company, which describes them as "Jack of All Trades, Master of None."

AI Ripples Through Google's New Product Lineup

Google on Wednesday launched a bevy of new products into its growing hardware and software ecosystem at its Made by Google event. Many of the new devices are infused with artificial intelligence capabilities.

"Since last year and since Google I/O, we've been working hard, continuing our shift from a mobile-first to an AI-first world," Google CEO Sundar Pichai told the gathering. "We are rethinking all our core products and working hard to solve user problems by applying machine learning and AI."

With the Shell, You Can Go Wild(card) and Follow Your Pipe Dream

There is more to the shell, the terminal's interpreter software, than commands composed of alphanumeric characters. In addition to those familiar programs, there is a whole host of processing tools hiding behind the symbols of a standard keyboard.

To say nothing of their incredible potency in combination, each one is so powerful on its own that it helps to take a methodical approach to get familiar with them. With that in mind, I'll narrow the focus here to two of the more practical symbols: the pipe ("|") and the wildcard ("*").

To illustrate the versatility of these two shell tools, I'll use one in-depth example: locating settings in the configuration directory for a package manager.

Gadget Ogling: Same Old Apple

Welcome to Gadget Dreams and Nightmares, the column that prods and probes at the latest gadget announcements just in case there's literally anything worth writing home about.

In this glorious fall breeze of an edition, we take a look at the latest product suite to drift our way from the Apple hivemind, and one especially intriguing item from Google's latest hardware slate.

As ever, these are not reviews, and the ratings relate only to how much I'd like to try each item.