Day: December 22, 2018

The Amazon Alexa Eavesdropping Nightmare Came True: Creepy Recordings sent to random stranger

Posted on by Robin Edgar

An Amazon user in Germany recently requested data about his personal activities and inadvertently gained access to 1,700 audio recordings of someone he didn’t know. Germany’s c’t magazine reports that in August the Amazon user—exercising his rights under the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation—requested his own data that Amazon has stored. Two months later, Amazon Read more about The Amazon Alexa Eavesdropping Nightmare Came True: Creepy Recordings sent to random stranger[…]

Breakthrough ultrasound treatment to reverse dementia moves to human trials

Posted on by Robin Edgar

An extraordinarily promising new technique using ultrasound to clear the toxic protein clumps thought to cause dementia and Alzheimer’s disease is moving to the first phase of human trials next year. The innovative treatment has proven successful across several animal tests and presents an exciting, drug-free way to potentially battle dementia. The ultrasound treatment was Read more about Breakthrough ultrasound treatment to reverse dementia moves to human trials[…]

At Blind – a whistleblower site -, a security lapse revealed private complaints from Silicon Valley employees. Turns out it’s not very safe to blow your whistle there after all.

Posted on by Robin Edgar

Thousands of people trusted Blind, an app-based “anonymous social network,” as a safe way to reveal malfeasance, wrongdoing and improper conduct at their companies.But Blind left one of its database servers exposed without a password, making it possible (for anyone who knew where to look) to access each user’s account information and identify would-be whistleblowers. Read more about At Blind – a whistleblower site -, a security lapse revealed private complaints from Silicon Valley employees. Turns out it’s not very safe to blow your whistle there after all.[…]

New Photo Wake-Up System Turns Still Images Into 3D animations

Posted on by Robin Edgar

The system, called Photo Wake-Up, creates a 3D animation from a single photo. In the paper, the researchers compare it to the moving portraits at Hogwarts, a fictitious part of the Harry Potter world that a number of tech companies have tried to recreate. Previous attempts have been mildly successful, but this system is impressive Read more about New Photo Wake-Up System Turns Still Images Into 3D animations[…]

An Amoeba-Based Computer Calculated Approximate Solutions to an 8 city Travelling Salesman Problem

Posted on by Robin Edgar

A team of Japanese researchers from Keio University in Tokyo have demonstrated that an amoeba is capable of generating approximate solutions to a remarkably difficult math problem known as the “traveling salesman problem.” The traveling salesman problem goes like this: Given an arbitrary number of cities and the distances between them, what is the shortest Read more about An Amoeba-Based Computer Calculated Approximate Solutions to an 8 city Travelling Salesman Problem[…]

FCC fines Swarm $900,000 for unauthorized satellite launch

Posted on by Robin Edgar

Swarm Technologies Inc will pay a $900,000 fine for launching and operating four small experimental communications satellites that risked “satellite collisions” and threatened “critical commercial and government satellite operations,” the Federal Communications Commission said on Thursday. The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) logo is seen before the FCC Net Neutrality hearing in Washington February 26, 2015. Read more about FCC fines Swarm $900,000 for unauthorized satellite launch[…]