Month: October 2019
-
Warren runs a false Facebook ad to protest false Facebook ads – Politicians can lie on social media ads
Elizabeth Warren has taken an attention-getting approach to attacking Facebook’s recent announcement that it won’t fact-check politicians’ posts. She’s running an ad on the social network that deliberately contains a falsehood. “Breaking news: Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook just endorsed Donald Trump for re-election,” reads the ad, which Warren also tweeted out Saturday. The ad immediately…
Written by
-
White-hat hacks Muhstik ransomware gang and releases decryption keys
A user got his revenge on the ransomware gang who encrypted his files by hacking their server and releasing the decryption keys for all other victims. This happened earlier today and involved the Muhstik gang. Muhstik is a recent strain of ransomware that has been active since late September, according to reports [1, 2, 3].…
Written by
-
Apple Safari browser sends some user IP addresses to Chinese conglomerate Tencent by default
Apple admits that it sends some user IP addresses to Tencent in the “About Safari & Privacy” section of its Safari settings which can be accessed on an iOS device by opening the Settings app and then selecting “Safari > About Privacy & Security.” Under the title “Fraudulent Website Warning,” Apple says: “Before visiting a…
Written by
-
GitHub is really good at visualizing burnout.…
And it’s something becoming more and more common among open source developers.
Written by
-
An AI Pioneer Wants His Algorithms to Understand the ‘Why’
In March, Yoshua Bengio received a share of the Turing Award, the highest accolade in computer science, for contributions to the development of deep learning—the technique that triggered a renaissance in artificial intelligence, leading to advances in self-driving cars, real-time speech translation, and facial recognition. Now, Bengio says deep learning needs to be fixed. He…
Written by
-
Human Employees Are Viewing Clips from Amazon’s Home Surveillance Service
Citing sources familiar with the program, Bloomberg reported Thursday that “dozens” of workers for the e-commerce giant who are based in Romania and India are tasked with reviewing footage collected by Cloud Cams—Amazon’s app-controlled, Alexa-compatible indoor security devices—to help improve AI functionality and better determine potential threats. Bloomberg reported that at one point, these human…
Written by
-
System76 Will Begin Shipping 2 Linux Laptops With Coreboot-Based Open Source Firmware
System76, the Denver-based Linux PC manufacturer and developer of Pop OS, has some stellar news for those of us who prefer our laptops a little more open. Later this month the company will begin shipping two of their laptop models with its Coreboot-powered open source firmware. The Darter Pro laptop System76 Beginning today, System76 will…
Written by
-
Managed Retreat Buyout Efforts Have Relocated 40,000 Households to avoid rising seawater: Study
The U.S. is slowly being gripped by a flooding crisis as seas rise and waterways overflow with ever more alarming frequency. An idea at the forefront for how to help Americans cope is so-called managed retreat, a process of moving away from affected areas and letting former neighborhoods return to nature. It’s an idea increasingly…
Written by
-
Meet the Money Behind The Climate Denial Movement
Nearly a billion dollars a year is flowing into the organized climate change counter-movement The overwhelming majority of climate scientists, international governmental bodies, relevant research institutes and scientific societies are in unison in saying that climate change is real, that it’s a problem, and that we should probably do something about it now, not later.…
Written by
-
Visualizing The Most Miserable Countries in the World
The annual Misery Index ranks the most and least miserable countries, based on four economic factors—unemployment, inflation, lending rates, and GDP growth. Source: Visualizing The Most Miserable Countries in the World
Written by
-
Twitter: No, really, we’re very sorry we sold your security info for a boatload of cash
Twitter says it was just an accident that caused the microblogging giant to let advertisers use private information to better target their marketing materials at users. The social networking giant on Tuesday admitted to an “error” that let advertisers have access to the private information customers had given Twitter in order to place additional security…
Written by
-
Remember the FBI’s promise it wasn’t abusing the NSA’s data on US citizens? Well, guess what… It was worse than the privacy advocates dreamt
The FBI routinely misused a database, gathered by the NSA with the specific purpose of searching for foreign intelligence threats, by searching it for everything from vetting to spying on relatives. In doing so, it not only violated the law and the US constitution but knowingly lied to the faces of congressmen who were asking…
Written by
-
FBI warns about attacks that bypass multi-factor authentication (MFA)
Basically sim swapping, man in the middle attacks and poor URL protections FBI warns about SIM swapping and tools like Muraen and NecroBrowser. “The FBI has observed cyber actors circumventing multi-factor authentication through common social engineering and technical attacks,” the FBI wrote in a Private Industry Notification (PIN) sent out on September 17. Past incidents…
Written by
-
Saturn surpasses Jupiter after the discovery of 20 new moons and you can help name them!
A team led by Carnegie’s Scott S. Sheppard has found 20 new moons orbiting Saturn. This brings the ringed planet’s total number of moons to 82, surpassing Jupiter, which has 79. The discovery was announced Monday by the International Astronomical Union’s Minor Planet Center. Each of the newly discovered moons is about five kilometers, or…
Written by
-
Rodents With Part-Human Brains Pose a New Challenge for Bioethics
Rapid progress in research involving miniature human brains grown in a dish has led to a host of ethical concerns, particularly when these human brain cells are transplanted into nonhuman animals. A new paper evaluates the potential risks of creating “humanized” animals, while providing a pathway for scientists to move forward in this important area.…
Written by
-
To find the best parking spot, do the math
The next time you’re hunting for a parking spot, mathematics could help you identify the most efficient strategy, according to a recent paper in the Journal of Statistical Mechanics. It’s basically an optimization problem: weighing different variables and crunching the numbers to find the optimal combination of those factors. In the case of where to…
Written by
-
US, UK and Australia want Zuckerberg To Halt Plans For End-To-End Encryption Across Facebook’s Apps – because they want to be able to spy on you. As will other criminals. What happened to the “Free world”?
Attorney General Bill Barr, along with officials from the United Kingdom and Australia, is set to publish an open letter to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg asking the company to delay plans for end-to-end encryption across its messaging services until it can guarantee the added privacy does not reduce public safety. A draft of the letter,…
Written by
-
Bitcoin Isn’t the World’s Most-Used Cryptocurrency – it’s a centralised one run by some private company in Hong Kong
With Tether’s monthly trading volume about 18% higher than that of Bitcoin, it’s arguably the most important coin in the crypto ecosystem. Tether’s also one of the main reasons why regulators regard cryptocurrencies with a wary eye, and have put the breaks on crypto exchange-traded funds amid concern of market manipulation. “If there is no…
Written by
-
Egypt caught spying on journalists and human rights activists through malware and phishing
Back in March 2019, Amnesty International published a report that uncovered a targeted attack against journalists and human rights activists in Egypt. The victims even received an e-mail from Google warning them that government-backed attackers attempted to steal their passwords. According to the report, the attackers did not rely on traditional phishing methods or credential-stealing…
Written by
-
Paralysed man moves in mind-reading exoskeleton
A man has been able to move all four of his paralysed limbs with a mind-controlled exoskeleton suit, French researchers report. Thibault, 30, said taking his first steps in the suit felt like being the “first man on the Moon”. His movements, particularly walking, are far from perfect and the robo-suit is being used only…
Written by
-
Iran tried to hack hundreds of politicians, journalists email accounts last month, warns Microsoft
The Iranian government has attempted to hack into hundreds of Office 365 email accounts belonging to politicians, government officials and journalists last month, Microsoft has warned. “We’ve recently seen significant cyber activity by a threat group we call Phosphorous, which we believe originates from Iran and is linked to the Iranian government,” Microsoft’s vice president…
Written by
-
Attackers exploit 0-day vulnerability that gives full control of Android phones
Attackers are exploiting a zero-day vulnerability in Google’s Android mobile operating system that can give them full control of at least 18 different phone models, including four different Pixel models, a member of Google’s Project Zero research group said on Thursday night. There’s evidence the vulnerability is being actively exploited, either by exploit developer NSO…
Written by
-
TensorFlow 2.0 is now available!
TensorFlow 2.0 is driven by the community telling us they want an easy-to-use platform that is both flexible and powerful, and which supports deployment to any platform. TensorFlow 2.0 provides a comprehensive ecosystem of tools for developers, enterprises, and researchers who want to push the state-of-the-art in machine learning and build scalable ML-powered applications. Coding…
Written by
-
TikTok Kicks Political Ads Off Its Platform Because Screw That Noise
The popular short-form video app will no longer run ads from politicians or candidates at any level of government because “the nature of paid political ads is not something we believe fits the TikTok platform experience,” TikTok’s VP of global business solutions, Blake Chandlee, announced in a blog post Thursday. This ban also covers “election-related…
Written by
-
Someone Created A Funny Guide On How To Recognize Famous Painters And It’s Surprisingly Accurate (19 Pics
If you’re not a big fan of classical art, you’d probably have a hard time pointing out what artist painted a certain painting. Well, your days of guessing are finally over – someone created a handy, albeit pretty hilarious, guide on how to recognize famous painters by their paintings and it’s surprisingly accurate. The helpful…
Written by