Linking ideas with the world
As with browser add-ons, you’re entirely at the mercy of a developer. And should they use their powers for evil, you could be giving up everything you’re saying to your device to some random person. At least, that’s the scenario presented by Germany’s Security Research Labs (SRLabs), who built a number of dummy Skills (Amazon) Read more about Your Smart Speaker’s Skills Might Be a Huge Privacy Problem[…]
For years I’ve gone back and forth over the practice of obscuring license plates on photos on the internet. License plates are already publicly-viewable things, so what’s the point in obscuring them, right? Well, now I think there actually is a good reason to obscure your license plates in photos because it appears that Google Read more about Google And Facebook Are Reading Your License Plates and making them searchable[…]
Forty-seven state attorneys general have now joined a sweeping investigation into Facebook’s business practices aimed at determining whether the company has engaged in anti-competitive behavior, ignored privacy laws, or violated any other laws, according to the New York Attorney General’s office. In a statement on Tuesday, Letitia James, the Democratic attorney general of New York, Read more about Facebook Under Investigation by 47 Attorneys General[…]
Earlier in October, Hyperstealth filed a patent for the material, which doesn’t require a power source and is both paper-thin and inexpensive — all traits that could make it appealing for use on the battlefield. According to a press release, it works by bending the light around a target to make it seemingly disappear. This Read more about Hyperstealth: a Real-Life Invisibility Cloak[…]
As part of the Combat Air Forces Contracted Air Support programme, the companies will fly their own fleets of fighter aircraft against USAF types during Red Flag-series exercises, the USAF says in an online award notice posted on 18 October. Such activities are meant to help the service improve its performance fighting against a growing Read more about USAF awards 7 companies $6.4bn for mock dogfighting services[…]
It was recently discovered that the Samsung Galaxy S10 and S10+ have a major security flaw that makes it easy to bypass their fingerprint locks. On a scale of “one” to “not good,” we are definitely towards the right on this one. To be fair, fingerprint sensors and other biometric security features aren’t ironclad; hackers Read more about The Samsung Galaxy S10’s Fingerprint Lock works for everyone if you put a piece of transparent plastic on the sensor[…]
Firefox is the only browser that received top marks in a recent audit carried out by Germany’s cyber-security agency — the German Federal Office for Information Security (or the Bundesamt für Sicherheit in der Informationstechnik — BSI). The BSI tested Mozilla Firefox 68 (ESR), Google Chrome 76, Microsoft Internet Explorer 11, and Microsoft Edge 44. Read more about Germany’s cyber-security agency recommends Firefox as most secure browser[…]
DoNotPay helps you get out of parking tickets and cancel forgotten subscriptions, and now it can call you when it’s your turn in a customer service phone queue. The app today is launching “Skip Waiting On Hold.” Just type in the company you need to talk to, and DoNotPay calls for you using tricks to Read more about DoNotPay app waits on hold for you, cancels subscriptions, helps you out of parking tickets[…]
Today, when you use Wizards Unite or Pokémon Go or any of Niantic’s other apps, your every move is getting documented and stored—up to 13 times a minute, according to the results of a Kotaku investigation. Even players who know that the apps record their location data are usually astonished once they look at just Read more about The Creators Of Pokémon Go Mapped The World. Now They’re Mapping You – how companies are monetising your location data[…]
“BriansClub,” one of the largest underground stores for buying stolen credit card data, has itself been hacked. The data stolen from BriansClub encompasses more than 26 million credit and debit card records taken from hacked online and brick-and-mortar retailers over the past four years, including almost eight million records uploaded to the shop in 2019 Read more about “BriansClub” Hack finds 26M Stolen Cards[…]
For the first time ever, meat was created in space — but no animals were harmed in the making of this 3D bioprinted “space beef.” Aleph Farms, an Israeli food company, announced today (Oct. 7) that its experiment aboard the International Space Station resulted in the first-ever lab-grown meat in space. The company focuses on Read more about International Space Station Crew 3D-Prints Meat In Space For The First Time![…]
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 Read more about Warren runs a false Facebook ad to protest false Facebook ads – Politicians can lie on social media ads[…]
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]. Read more about White-hat hacks Muhstik ransomware gang and releases decryption keys[…]
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 Read more about Apple Safari browser sends some user IP addresses to Chinese conglomerate Tencent by default[…]
And it’s something becoming more and more common among open source developers.
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 Read more about An AI Pioneer Wants His Algorithms to Understand the ‘Why’[…]
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 Read more about Human Employees Are Viewing Clips from Amazon’s Home Surveillance Service[…]
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 Read more about System76 Will Begin Shipping 2 Linux Laptops With Coreboot-Based Open Source Firmware[…]
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 Read more about Managed Retreat Buyout Efforts Have Relocated 40,000 Households to avoid rising seawater: Study[…]
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. Read more about Meet the Money Behind The Climate Denial Movement[…]
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
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 Read more about Twitter: No, really, we’re very sorry we sold your security info for a boatload of cash[…]
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 Read more about 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[…]
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 Read more about FBI warns about attacks that bypass multi-factor authentication (MFA)[…]
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 Read more about Saturn surpasses Jupiter after the discovery of 20 new moons and you can help name them![…]