The Linkielist

Linking ideas with the world

QuadrigaCX Want to Exhume Body of CEO Gerald Cotten who died in India under suspicious circumstances and locked customers out of $163m of BTC – to see if it is really him

Posted on by Robin Edgar

It’s been about a year since users of Canadian cryptocurrency exchange QuadrigaCX were informed that the company’s CEO unexpectedly died, taking the password that accessed most the money from their accounts with him to the grave. And now, those clients want to know what’s inside that grave. The majority of QuadrigaCX’s holdings were kept offline Read more about QuadrigaCX Want to Exhume Body of CEO Gerald Cotten who died in India under suspicious circumstances and locked customers out of $163m of BTC – to see if it is really him[…]

Amazon slams media for not saying nice things about AWS, denies it strip-mines open-source code for huge profits

Posted on by Robin Edgar

Stung by an article mulling Amazon Web Services’ market dominance on Monday, AWS VP Andi Gutmans fired back, complaining the reporter ignored flattering comments from AWS partners – and that “AWS is ‘strip-mining’ open source is silly and off-base.” “The journalist largely ignores the many positive comments he got from partners because it’s not as Read more about Amazon slams media for not saying nice things about AWS, denies it strip-mines open-source code for huge profits[…]

Ads in Mail and Calendar app for Windows 10 are back and not removable

Posted on by Robin Edgar

Microsoft has once again flipped the switch on small banner ads in the Windows 10 Mail and Calendar UWP app for Windows 10. We last saw these ads in November last year, when Microsoft said they were an experiment. Then the ads only showed for those who were not Office 365 subscribers, but on this Read more about Ads in Mail and Calendar app for Windows 10 are back and not removable[…]

IoT gear is generating easy-to-crack keys because they repeat the key once every 172 times

Posted on by Robin Edgar

A preponderance of weak keys is leaving IoT devices at risk of being hacked, and the problem won’t be an easy one to solve. This was the conclusion reached by the team at security house Keyfactor, which analyzed a collection of 75 million RSA certificates gathered from the open internet and determined that number combinations Read more about IoT gear is generating easy-to-crack keys because they repeat the key once every 172 times[…]

Controversial sale of money grabbing .org domain faces review at ICANN

Posted on by Robin Edgar

ICANN is reviewing the pending sale of the .org domain manager from a nonprofit to a private equity firm and says it could try to block the transfer. The .org domain is managed by the Public Internet Registry (PIR), which is a subsidiary of the Internet Society, a nonprofit. The Internet Society is trying to Read more about Controversial sale of money grabbing .org domain faces review at ICANN[…]

Amazon Blocks Sellers From Using FedEx Ground For Prime Shipments – way to have fun using a monopoly!

Posted on by Robin Edgar

Amazon.com is blocking its third-party sellers from using FedEx’s ground delivery network for Prime shipments, citing a decline in performance heading into the final stretch of the holiday shopping season. The ban on using FedEx’s Ground and Home services starts this week and will last “until the delivery performance of these ship methods improves,” according Read more about Amazon Blocks Sellers From Using FedEx Ground For Prime Shipments – way to have fun using a monopoly![…]

How old ship logs are giving new insights into climate change

Posted on by Robin Edgar

n the 19th and early 20th centuries, millions of weather observations were carefully made in the logbooks of ships sailing through largely uncharted waters. Written in pen and ink, the logs recorded barometric pressure, air temperature, ice conditions and other variables. Today, volunteers from a project called Old Weather are transcribing these observations, which are Read more about How old ship logs are giving new insights into climate change[…]

Getting Drivers for Old Hardware Is Harder Than Ever

Posted on by Robin Edgar

despite the fact that all the drivers generally have to do is simply sit on the internet, available when they’re necessary. Apparently, that isn’t easy enough for Intel. Recently, the chipmaker took BIOS drivers, a boot-level firmware technology used for hardware initialization in earlier generations of PCs, for a number of its unsupported motherboards off Read more about Getting Drivers for Old Hardware Is Harder Than Ever[…]

LEDs in routers, power strips, and more, can ship data to the LightAnchors AR smartphone app

Posted on by Robin Edgar

A pentad of bit boffins have devised a way to integrate electronic objects into augmented reality applications using their existing visible light sources, like power lights and signal strength indicators, to transmit data. In a recent research paper, “LightAnchors: Appropriating Point Lights for Spatially-Anchored Augmented Reality Interfaces,” Carnegie Mellon computer scientists Karan Ahuja, Sujeath Pareddy, Read more about LEDs in routers, power strips, and more, can ship data to the LightAnchors AR smartphone app[…]

Verizon kills email accounts of archivists trying to save Yahoo Groups history

Posted on by Robin Edgar

Verizon, which bought Yahoo In 2017, has suspended email addresses of archivists who are trying to preserve 20 years of content that will be deleted permanently in a few weeks. As Verizon announced in October, the company intends to wipe all content from Yahoo Groups. As of December 14, all previously posted content on the Read more about Verizon kills email accounts of archivists trying to save Yahoo Groups history[…]

Ring’s Neighbors Data Let Us Map Amazon’s Home Surveillance Network

Posted on by Robin Edgar

As reporters raced this summer to bring new details of Ring’s law enforcement contracts to light, the home security company, acquired last year by Amazon for a whopping $1 billion, strove to underscore the privacy it had pledged to provide users. Even as its creeping objective of ensuring an ever-expanding network of home security devices Read more about Ring’s Neighbors Data Let Us Map Amazon’s Home Surveillance Network[…]

NVidia AI auto-generates 3D objects from 2D snaps

Posted on by Robin Edgar

Boring 2D images can be transformed into corresponding 3D models and back into 2D again automatically by machine-learning-based software, boffins have demonstrated. The code is known as a differentiable interpolation-based renderer (DIB-R), and was built by a group of eggheads led by Nvidia. It uses a trained neural network to take a flat image of Read more about NVidia AI auto-generates 3D objects from 2D snaps[…]

New Plundervolt attack impacts Intel CPUs SGX

Posted on by Robin Edgar

Academics from three universities across Europe have disclosed today a new attack that impacts the integrity of data stored inside Intel SGX, a highly-secured area of Intel CPUs. The attack, which researchers have named Plundervolt, exploits the interface through which an operating system can control an Intel processor’s voltage and frequency — the same interface Read more about New Plundervolt attack impacts Intel CPUs SGX[…]

Researchers report breakthrough in ‘distributed deep learning’

Posted on by Robin Edgar

Online shoppers typically string together a few words to search for the product they want, but in a world with millions of products and shoppers, the task of matching those unspecific words to the right product is one of the biggest challenges in information retrieval. Using a divide-and-conquer approach that leverages the power of compressed Read more about Researchers report breakthrough in ‘distributed deep learning’[…]

ICANN demands transparency from others over .org deal. As for itself… well, not so much

Posted on by Robin Edgar

Three weeks after the Internet Society announced the controversial sale of the .org internet registry to an unknown private equity firm, the organization that has to sign off on the deal has finally spoken publicly. In a letter [PDF] titled “Transparency” from the general counsel of domain name system overseer ICANN to the CEOs of Read more about ICANN demands transparency from others over .org deal. As for itself… well, not so much[…]

On-Device, Real-Time Hand Tracking with MediaPipe

Posted on by Robin Edgar

The ability to perceive the shape and motion of hands can be a vital component in improving the user experience across a variety of technological domains and platforms. For example, it can form the basis for sign language understanding and hand gesture control, and can also enable the overlay of digital content and information on Read more about On-Device, Real-Time Hand Tracking with MediaPipe[…]

Uninstall AVAST and AVG free anti-virus: they are massively slurping your data! Mozilla and Opera have removed them from their stores

Posted on by Robin Edgar

Two browsers have yanked Avast and AVG online security extensions from their web stores after a report revealed that they were unnecessarily sucking up a ton of data about users’ browsing history. Wladimir Palant, the creator behind Adblock Plus, initially surfaced the issue—which extends to Avast Online Security and Avast SafePrice as well as Avast-owned Read more about Uninstall AVAST and AVG free anti-virus: they are massively slurping your data! Mozilla and Opera have removed them from their stores[…]

NASA to launch projectile (DART) to see if it can deflect asteroids

Posted on by Robin Edgar

DART is a planetary defense-driven test of technologies for preventing an impact of Earth by a hazardous asteroid.  DART will be the first demonstration of the kinetic impactor technique to change the motion of an asteroid in space.  The DART mission is in Phase C, led by APL and managed under NASA’s Solar System Exploration Program at Marshall Read more about NASA to launch projectile (DART) to see if it can deflect asteroids[…]

Bol.com partner Toppie Speelgoed loses 10000 Belgian and Dutch customer records, now for sale on hacker forum

Posted on by Robin Edgar

Personal information and what they bought, where it was delivered to. De gegevens van vermoedelijk bijna 10.000 Belgische en Nederlandse klanten die een paar jaar geleden online speelgoed kochten, worden door een hacker te koop aangeboden op het internet. Dat blijkt uit onderzoek van VRT NWS. Het gaat om persoonlijke gegevens en bepaalde aankopen van Read more about Bol.com partner Toppie Speelgoed loses 10000 Belgian and Dutch customer records, now for sale on hacker forum[…]

Budget Energy and NLE leak 29000 customer records – names, adresses, possibly phone numbers and bank accounts

Posted on by Robin Edgar

De persoonsgegevens van mogelijk 29.000 klanten van energiebedrijven Budget Energie en NLE liggen op straat. Naast namen en adressen is er kans dat er ook telefoonnummers en bankrekeningnummers zijn gelekt. De data is niet per ongeluk gelekt, het gaat volgens het bedrijf om een moedwillige diefstal. Moederbedrijf Nuts Groep heeft klanten van Budget Energie en NLE Read more about Budget Energy and NLE leak 29000 customer records – names, adresses, possibly phone numbers and bank accounts[…]

Reddit Uncovers Russian Interference Campaign Ahead of Pivotal UK Election

Posted on by Robin Edgar

Fears of Russian interference ahead of a heated U.K. election were all but confirmed this week with a Reddit post. In a post Friday, Reddit announced that its internal investigation found evidence that an account purportedly linked to Russian disinformation campaign was behind last month’s leak of contentious US-UK trade documents on the platform. “We Read more about Reddit Uncovers Russian Interference Campaign Ahead of Pivotal UK Election[…]

Why Are Cops Around the World Using This Outlandish Mind-Reading Tool That Doesn’t Work?

Posted on by Robin Edgar

ProPublica has determined that dozens of state and local agencies have purchased “SCAN” training from a company called LSI for reviewing a suspect’s written statements — even though there’s no scientific evidence that it works. Local, state and federal agencies from the Louisville Metro Police Department to the Michigan State Police to the U.S. State Read more about Why Are Cops Around the World Using This Outlandish Mind-Reading Tool That Doesn’t Work?[…]

Most People Experiencing Homelessness Have Had a Traumatic Brain Injury, Study Finds

Posted on by Robin Edgar

The study, published in Lancet Public Health on Monday, is a review of existing research that looked at how commonly traumatic brain injuries happen among people. It specifically included studies that also took into account people’s housing situation. These studies involved more than 11,000 people who were fully or partially homeless at the time and Read more about Most People Experiencing Homelessness Have Had a Traumatic Brain Injury, Study Finds[…]

Sundar Pichai Becomes Alphabet CEO, Larry Page to Step Back

Posted on by Robin Edgar

Google CEO Sundar Pichai is adding another responsibility to his job: Pichai will also be the CEO of parent holding company Alphabet going forward, taking the helm from co-founder and longtime CEO Larry Page. Additionally, co-founder Sergey Brin will be resigning from his post as the president of Alphabet. Brin and Page jointly announced the Read more about Sundar Pichai Becomes Alphabet CEO, Larry Page to Step Back[…]