The Linkielist

Linking ideas with the world

Boeing falsified records for 787 jet sold to Air Canada. It developed a fuel leak

Posted on by Robin Edgar

Boeing staff falsified records for a 787 jet built for Air Canada which developed a fuel leak ten months into service in 2015. In a statement to CBC News, Boeing said it self-disclosed the problem to the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration after Air Canada notified them of the fuel leak. The records stated that manufacturing Read more about Boeing falsified records for 787 jet sold to Air Canada. It developed a fuel leak[…]

Germany and the Netherlands to build the first ever joint military internet, some contractor wins huge and achieves massive vendor lock in

Posted on by Robin Edgar

Government officials from Germany and the Netherlands have signed an agreement this week to build the first-ever joint military internet. The accord was signed on Wednesday in Brussels, Belgium, where NATO defense ministers met this week. The name of this new Dutch-German military internet is the Tactical Edge Networking, or TEN, for short. This is Read more about Germany and the Netherlands to build the first ever joint military internet, some contractor wins huge and achieves massive vendor lock in[…]

This weekend all Microsoft e-books will stop working. A gentle reminder that through DRM you don’t own what you think you own.

Posted on by Robin Edgar

If you bought an ebook through Microsoft’s online store, now’s the time to give it a read, or reread, because it will stop working early July. That’s right, the books you paid for will be literally removed from your electronic bookshelf because, um, Microsoft decided in April it no longer wanted to sell books. It Read more about This weekend all Microsoft e-books will stop working. A gentle reminder that through DRM you don’t own what you think you own.[…]

New property of light discovered, plus recently discovered properties you probably didn’t know about

Posted on by Robin Edgar

Scientists have long known about such properties of light as wavelength. More recently, researchers have found that light can also be twisted, a property called angular momentum. Beams with highly structured angular momentum are said to have orbital angular momentum (OAM), and are called vortex beams. They appear as a helix surrounding a common center, Read more about New property of light discovered, plus recently discovered properties you probably didn’t know about[…]

Researchers teleport information within a diamond

Posted on by Robin Edgar

Researchers from the Yokohama National University have teleported quantum information securely within the confines of a diamond. The study has big implications for quantum information technology—the future of sharing and storing sensitive information. The researchers published their results on June 28, 2019, in Communications Physics. “Quantum teleportation permits the transfer of quantum information into an Read more about Researchers teleport information within a diamond[…]

That this AI can simulate universes in 30ms is not the scary part. It’s that its creators don’t know why it works so well

Posted on by Robin Edgar

The accuracy of the neural network is judged by how similar its outputs were to the ones created by two more traditional N-body simulation systems, FastPM and 2LPT, when all three are given the same inputs. When D3M was tasked with producing 1,000 simulations from 1,000 sets of input data, it had a relative error Read more about That this AI can simulate universes in 30ms is not the scary part. It’s that its creators don’t know why it works so well[…]

EU should ban AI-powered citizen scoring and mass surveillance, say experts

Posted on by Robin Edgar

A group of policy experts assembled by the EU has recommended that it ban the use of AI for mass surveillance and mass “scoring of individuals”; a practice that potentially involves collecting varied data about citizens — everything from criminal records to their behavior on social media — and then using it to assess their Read more about EU should ban AI-powered citizen scoring and mass surveillance, say experts[…]

Google’s new reCaptcha forces page admins to put it on EVERY page so Google can track you everywhere

Posted on by Robin Edgar

According to tech statistics website Built With, more than 650,000 websites are already using reCaptcha v3; overall, there are at least 4.5 million websites use reCaptcha, including 25% of the top 10,000 sites. Google is also now testing an enterprise version of reCaptcha v3, where Google creates a customized reCaptcha for enterprises that are looking Read more about Google’s new reCaptcha forces page admins to put it on EVERY page so Google can track you everywhere[…]

8 of worlds top tech companies pwned for years by China

Posted on by Robin Edgar

Eight of the world’s biggest technology service providers were hacked by Chinese cyber spies in an elaborate and years-long invasion, Reuters found. The invasion exploited weaknesses in those companies, their customers, and the Western system of technological defense. […] The hacking campaign, known as “Cloud Hopper,” was the subject of a U.S. indictment in December that Read more about 8 of worlds top tech companies pwned for years by China[…]

Dark Patterns at Scale: Findings from a Crawl of 11K Shopping Websites (note, there’s lots of them influencing your unconsious to buy!)

Posted on by Robin Edgar

Dark patterns are user interface design choices that benefit an online service by coercing, steering, or deceivingusers into making unintended and potentially harmful decisions. We present automated techniques that enableexperts to identify dark patterns on a large set of websites. Using these techniques, we study shoppingwebsites, which often use dark patterns these to influence users Read more about Dark Patterns at Scale: Findings from a Crawl of 11K Shopping Websites (note, there’s lots of them influencing your unconsious to buy!)[…]

Mozilla Has a New Tool for Tricking Advertisers Into Believing You’re Filthy Rich

Posted on by Robin Edgar

If you notice the ads being served to you are eerily similar to stuff you were just browsing online, it’s not all in your head, and it’s the insidious truth of existing online without installing a bunch of browser extensions. But there’s now a tool that, while comically absurd in execution, can stick it to Read more about Mozilla Has a New Tool for Tricking Advertisers Into Believing You’re Filthy Rich[…]

SpaceX launches successfully but still can’t land – explody centre stage and only half a fairing caught

Posted on by Robin Edgar

Launch occurred at 0630 UTC on 25 June and the side boosters of the heavy lifter were shut down and separated from the centre core approximately 2 minutes 30 seconds later. The boosters, previously used for the last Falcon Heavy launch, headed back to briefly light up Landing Zones 1 and 2 with a synchronised Read more about SpaceX launches successfully but still can’t land – explody centre stage and only half a fairing caught[…]

Telcos around the world were so severely pwned, they didn’t notice the hackers setting up VPN points

Posted on by Robin Edgar

Hackers infiltrated the networks of at least ten cellular telcos around the world, and remained hidden for years, as part of a long-running tightly targeted surveillance operation, The Register has learned. This espionage campaign is still ongoing, it is claimed. Cyber-spy hunters at US security firm Cybereason told El Reg on Monday the miscreants responsible Read more about Telcos around the world were so severely pwned, they didn’t notice the hackers setting up VPN points[…]

BGP super-blunder: How Verizon today sparked a ‘cascading catastrophic failure’ that knackered Cloudflare, Amazon, etc

Posted on by Robin Edgar

Verizon sent a big chunk of the internet down a black hole this morning – and caused outages at Cloudflare, Facebook, Amazon, and others – after it wrongly accepted a network misconfiguration from a small ISP in Pennsylvania, USA. For nearly three hours, web traffic that was supposed to go to some of the biggest Read more about BGP super-blunder: How Verizon today sparked a ‘cascading catastrophic failure’ that knackered Cloudflare, Amazon, etc[…]

When Myspace Was King, Employees Abused a Tool Called ‘Overlord’ to Spy on Users

Posted on by Robin Edgar

During the social network’s heyday, multiple Myspace employees abused an internal company tool to spy on users, in some cases including ex-partners, Motherboard has learned. Named ‘Overlord,’ the tool allowed employees to see users’ passwords and their messages, according to multiple former employees. While the tool was originally designed to help moderate the platform and Read more about When Myspace Was King, Employees Abused a Tool Called ‘Overlord’ to Spy on Users[…]

U.S. and Iran’s Hackers Are Trading Blows

Posted on by Robin Edgar

Chris Krebs, the director of the Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, issued a statement on June 22 following similar warnings from private American cybersecurity firms. Krebs, whose recently renamed agency is tasked with protecting American critical infrastructure, said CISA is “aware of a recent rise in malicious cyber activity” against American Read more about U.S. and Iran’s Hackers Are Trading Blows[…]

And this is how monopolies take advantage of Open Source: Google’s plan to fork curl for no reason than to have their own version

Posted on by Robin Edgar

Google is planning to reimplement parts of libcurl, a widely used open-source file transfer library, as a wrapper for Chromium’s networking API – but curl’s lead developer does not welcome the “competition”. Issue 973603 in the Chromium bug tracker describes libcrurl,”a wrapper library for the libcurl easy interface implemented via Cronet API”. Cronet is the Read more about And this is how monopolies take advantage of Open Source: Google’s plan to fork curl for no reason than to have their own version[…]

Meds prescriptions for 78,000 patients left in a database with no password

Posted on by Robin Edgar

A MongoDB database was left open on the internet without a password, and by doing so, exposed the personal details and prescription information for more than 78,000 US patients. The leaky database was discovered by the security team at vpnMentor, led by Noam Rotem and Ran Locar, who shared their findings exclusively with ZDNet earlier Read more about Meds prescriptions for 78,000 patients left in a database with no password[…]

Hack of U.S. Border Surveillance Contractor Is Way Bigger Than the Government Lets On

Posted on by Robin Edgar

Even as Homeland Security officials have attempted to downplay the impact of a security intrusion that reached deep into the network of a federal surveillance contractor, secret documents, handbooks, and slides concerning surveillance technology deployed along U.S. borders are being widely and openly shared online. A terabyte of torrents seeded by Distributed Denial of Secrets Read more about Hack of U.S. Border Surveillance Contractor Is Way Bigger Than the Government Lets On[…]

Millions of Dell PCs Vulnerable to Flaw in SupportAssist software

Posted on by Robin Edgar

Millions of PCs made by Dell and other OEMs are vulnerable to a flaw stemming from a component in pre-installed SupportAssist software. The flaw could enable a remote attacker to completely takeover affected devices. The high-severity vulnerability (CVE-2019-12280) stems from a component in SupportAssist, a proactive monitoring software pre-installed on PCs with automatic failure detection and Read more about Millions of Dell PCs Vulnerable to Flaw in SupportAssist software[…]

Chrome is the biggest snoop of all on your computer or cell phone – so switch browser before there is no alternative any more

Posted on by Robin Edgar

You open your browser to look at the Web. Do you know who is looking back at you? Over a recent week of Web surfing, I peered under the hood of Google Chrome and found it brought along a few thousand friends. Shopping, news and even government sites quietly tagged my browser to let ad Read more about Chrome is the biggest snoop of all on your computer or cell phone – so switch browser before there is no alternative any more[…]

FYI: Your Venmo transfers with those edgy emojis aren’t private by default. And someone’s put 7m of them into a public DB

Posted on by Robin Edgar

Graduate student Dan Salmon has released online seven million Venmo transfers, scraped from the social payment biz in recent months, to call attention to the privacy risks of public transaction data. Venmo, for the uninitiated, is an app that allows friends to pay each other money for stuff. El Reg‘s Bay Area vultures primarily use Read more about FYI: Your Venmo transfers with those edgy emojis aren’t private by default. And someone’s put 7m of them into a public DB[…]

Siemens Gamesa Unveils World First Electrothermal Energy Storage System, stores electricity in volcanic rock

Posted on by Robin Edgar

Spanish renewable energy giant and offshore wind energy leader Siemens Gamesa Renewable Energy last week inaugurated operations of its electrothermal energy storage system which can store up to 130 megawatt-hours of electricity for a week in volcanic rock. […] The heat storage facility consists of around 1,000 tonnes of volcanic rock which is used as Read more about Siemens Gamesa Unveils World First Electrothermal Energy Storage System, stores electricity in volcanic rock[…]