Lidar is an acronym for light detection and ranging. Lidar is like radar, except that it uses light instead of radio waves. The light source is a laser. A lidar sends out light pulses and measures the time it takes for a reflection bouncing off a remote object to return to the device. As the speed of light is a known constant, the distance to the object can be calculated from the travel time of the light pulse (Figure 1).

Apple will no longer send Siri requests to its servers, the company has announced, in a move to substantially speed up the voice assistant's operation and address privacy concerns. The new feature comes two years after the Guardian revealed that Apple staff regularly heard confidential details while carrying out quality control for the feature. Apple's worldwide developers conference (WWDC) was told on Monday that, from this autumn onwards, when new versions of the company's operating systems are released, Siri will process audio "on device" – meaning that, for the majority of queries, no recording will need to be uploaded to Apple's servers. "With on-device speech recognition, the audio of users' requests is processed right on their iPhone or iPad by default," an Apple spokesperson said. "This addresses one of the biggest privacy concerns for voice assistants, which is unwanted audio recording. For many requests, Siri processing is also moving on device, enabling requests to be processed without an internet connection, such as launching apps, setting timers and alarms, changing settings or controlling music."

MIT researchers have developed a way to produce holograms almost instantly. They say the deep learning-based method is so efficient that it could run on a smartphone. A new method called tensor holography could enable the creation of holograms for virtual reality, 3D printing, medical imaging, and more -- and it can run on a smartphone. Despite years of hype, virtual reality headsets have yet to topple TV or computer screens as the go-to devices for video viewing. One reason: VR can make users feel sick.

Apple is facing our face-masked future. This week, the company started testing some new software for the iPhone that will let device owners unlock the handset while wearing a face covering. There's a catch though, one that lines up with Apple's strategy of locking people in to different Apple products and highlights how challenging it can be to develop accurate facial recognition technology: The new face-unlock feature requires an Apple Watch. The first developer beta of iOS 14.5 includes updates to app tracking controls and Siri alongside the face-mask function. App-makers typically get early access to the newest version of iOS in order to launch or retool their apps well in advance of the formal software release. The fully-baked version of the software is expected to be made available to the general public this spring.

New York (CNN Business)Disinfectant gadgets, next-generation fitness equipment and robots that help you cook dinner. Those are a few of the countless new products expected to be unveiled next week at the Consumer Electronics Show, the annual splashy tech conference that typically sets the tone for the biggest trends of the year. Home automation, health and 5G will once again be buzzy topics, but many companies will also introduce pandemic-specific features to reflect our increased time at home. Each year, reporters, exhibitors and investors typically explore Las Vegas showrooms filled with giant TVs, smart cars and robots fixing martinis, but CES will be online only for the first time in its 54-year history due to Covid-19. The Consumer Electronics Association, the nonprofit behind the four-day event starting Monday, said 1,800 exhibitors from around the world will fill its "digital venue" this year -- a number that's down significantly from 4,000 in-person exhibitors last year.

New York (CNN Business)Longstanding speculation that Apple will release its own electric, self-driving car was reignited last week when Reuters, citing unnamed sources, reported that Apple plans to produce a passenger vehicle by 2024. Talk of the iPhone maker's ambitions to break into the auto industry has been swirling for about five years. Expectations for the effort, named Project Titan, range from the company developing its own Apple-branded car to providing operating system software to existing car manufacturers. In April 2017, Apple received a permit from the California Department of Motor Vehicles to test self-driving vehicles there. An Apple car has the potential to be "a transformative event" for the automobile and mobility industry in the coming decades, Morgan Stanley analysts wrote in a note to investors last week -- much as the iPhone changed the game for mobile phones.

It is an increasingly common modern annoyance: arriving at the front of the queue to pay in a shop, pulling out a smartphone for a hygienic contact-free payment, and staring down at an error message because your phone fails to recognise your masked face. As more and more nations mandate masks to prevent the spread of coronavirus, technology companies are scrambling to keep up with the changing world. But some experts are warning that the change may have to start with users themselves. Apple's Face ID is the most well-known example of a consumer facial verification system. The technology, which uses a grid of infrared dots to measure the physical shape of a user's face, secures access to the company's iPhones and iPads, as well as other features such as Apple Pay.

Apple's latest iPhone software update, iOS 13.5, released Wednesday, is there for you. Your eyes, nose and mouth must be visible for Face ID, Apple's facial recognition software, to recognize you. But with the coronavirus, device owners may be wearing masks when out in public. So Apple is making it easier for you to unlock your phone when you have a mask on. Install the update and you will no longer have to wait for Face ID to fail several times before being prompted to enter your passcode.

In the spring of last year, cybersecurity researcher Takeshi Sugawara walked into the lab of Kevin Fu, a professor he was visiting at the University of Michigan. He wanted to show off a strange trick he'd discovered. Sugawara pointed a high-powered laser at the microphone of his iPad--all inside of a black metal box, to avoid burning or blinding anyone--and had Fu put on a pair of earbuds to listen to the sound the iPad's mic picked up. As Sugawara varied the laser's intensity over time in the shape of a sine wave, fluctuating at about 1,000 times a second, Fu picked up a distinct high-pitched tone. The iPad's microphone had inexplicably converted the laser's light into an electrical signal, just as it would with sound.

The company hopes doing so will let any developer deliver captions for long-form conversations. The source code is available now on GitHub. Google released Live Transcribe in February. The tool uses machine learning algorithms to turn audio into real-time captions. Unlike Android's upcoming Live Caption feature, Live Transcribe is a full-screen experience, uses your smartphone's microphone (or an external microphone), and relies on the Google Cloud Speech API.