Linking ideas with the world
On May 25, 1798, the HMS DeBraak was entering Delaware Bay when a squall struck without warning. The British ship that originally belonged to the Dutch capsized and sank, taking 34 sailors and a dozen Spanish prisoners down with it. Rumored to contain a hoard of gold and jewelry, the DeBraak became a popular target Read more about Here’s What Protects Shipwrecks From Looters and Hacks[…]
Last week, a user found that Facebook had a record of the date, time, duration, and recipient of calls he had made from the past few years. A couple days later, Ars Technica published an account of several others — all Android users — who found similar records. Now, Slate Magazine is reporting that Facebook Read more about Facebook Acknowledges It Has Been Keeping Records of Android Users’ Calls, Texts[…]
According to Slack’s new guidelines, however, Compliance Exports will be replaced by “a self-service export tool” on April 20th. Previously, an employer had to request a data dump of all communications to get access to private channels and direct messages. This new tool should streamline things so they can archive all your shit-talk and time-wasting Read more about New Slack Tool Lets Your Boss Potentially Access Far More of Your Data Than Before, without notification[…]
Nvidia’s flagship Titan V graphics cards may have hardware gremlins causing them to spit out different answers to repeated complex calculations under certain conditions, according to computer scientists. The Titan V is the Silicon Valley giant’s most powerful GPU board available to date, and is built on Nv’s Volta technology. Gamers and casual users will Read more about 2 + 2 = 4, er, 4.1, no, 4.3… Nvidia’s Titan V GPUs spit out ‘wrong answers’ in scientific simulations[…]
With iOS 11, Apple added a new setting that lets you choose whether you want previews of your notifications to appear on your lock screen. By default, iOS shows a preview of your notifications only when your phone is unlocked, via some form of authentication like Face ID. But Siri will read your notifications from Read more about Siri Can Expose Your Hidden Notifications Even When Your Phone Is Locked[…]
Analysis IBM boasts that machine learning is not just quicker on its POWER servers than on TensorFlow in the Google Cloud, it’s 46 times quicker. Back in February Google software engineer Andreas Sterbenz wrote about using Google Cloud Machine Learning and TensorFlow on click prediction for large-scale advertising and recommendation scenarios. He trained a model Read more about IBM claims its machine learning library is 46x faster than TensorFlow • The Register[…]
Preparing for a visit to a foreign country can often be overwhelming, with no shortage of things to learn before you go. Where should you eat? Where should you stay? What do you tip? More so than this service information, though, is a sense of cultural understanding that’s hard to put your finger on. With Read more about 22 Ambassadors Recommend the One Book to Read Before Visiting Their Country[…]
. As research into AI grows ever more ambitious and complex, these robot brains will challenge the fundamental assumptions of how we humans do things. And, as ever, the only true law of robotics is that computers will always do literally, exactly what you tell them to. A paper recently published to ArXiv highlights just Read more about The Hilarious (and Terrifying?) Ways Algorithms Have Outsmarted Their Creators[…]
A pair of computer scientists have created a neural network that can self-replicate. “Self-replication is a key aspect of biological life that has been largely overlooked in Artificial Intelligence systems,” they argue in a paper popped onto arXiv this month. It’s an important process in reproduction for living things, and is an important step for Read more about AI software that can reproduce like a living thing? Yup, boffins have only gone and done it • The Register[…]
A SpaceX rocket ripped a humongous hole in Earth’s ionosphere during a launch in California last year and may have impaired GPS satellites. The Falcon 9 rocket was blasted from Vandenberg Air Force Base on 24 August last year. It was carrying the Formosat-5, an Earth observation satellite, built by the Taiwan’s National Space Organization. Read more about SpaceX blasted massive plasma hole in Earth’s ionosphere[…]
Purdue University researchers reckon they’ve cracked how to protect data against “disk-wipe” malware. Led by Christopher Gutierrez, the team has created a shim of software that analyses write buffers before they reach storage, and if the write is destructive, it steps in to preserve the data targeted for destruction. Dubbed R2D2 – “Reactive Redundancy for Read more about ‘R2D2’ stops disk-wipe malware before it executes evil commands[…]
If you can’t bring yourself to delete your Facebook account entirely, you’re probably thinking about sharing a lot less private information on the site. The company actually makes it pretty easy to find out how much data it’s collected from you, but the results might be a little scary. When software developer Dylan McKay went Read more about How to Find Out Everything Facebook Knows About You[…]
March 19 is the first day of IBM Think 2018, the company’s flagship conference, where the company will unveil what it claims is the world’s smallest computer. They’re not kidding: It’s literally smaller than a grain of salt. But don’t let the size fool you: This sucker has the computing power of the x86 chip Read more about IBM unveils ‘world’s smallest computer’ with blockchain at Think 2018[…]
Efforts to track down criminals in the US state of North Carolina have laid bare a dangerous gap in the law over the use of location data. Raleigh police went to court at least three times last year and got a warrant requiring Google to share the details of any users that were close to Read more about US cops go all Minority Report: Google told to cough up info on anyone near a crime scene[…]
D Doctors have taken a major step towards curing the most common form of blindness in the UK – age-related macular degeneration. Douglas Waters, 86, could not see out of his right eye, but “I can now read the newspaper” with it, he says. He was one of two patients given pioneering stem cell therapy Read more about Stem cell therapy cures most common cause of blindness in UK[…]
Orbitz says one of its older websites may have been hacked, potentially exposing the personal information of people who made purchases online between Jan. 1, 2016 and Dec. 22, 2017. The current Orbitz.com website was not involved in the incident. Orbitz is now owned by Expedia Inc. of Belleview, Washington. Orbitz said Tuesday about 880,000 Read more about Orbitz Says Legacy Travel Site Likely Hacked, Affecting 880K[…]
Telegram, the encrypted messaging app that’s prized by those seeking privacy, lost a bid before Russia’s Supreme Court to block security services from getting access to users’ data, giving President Vladimir Putin a victory in his effort to keep tabs on electronic communications. Supreme Court Judge Alla Nazarova on Tuesday rejected Telegram’s appeal against the Read more about Telegram Loses Bid to Block Russia From Encryption Keys[…]
Windows 10 S, Microsoft’s new locked-down operating system that comes bundled with the Surface Laptop, won’t allow you to change the default Web browser away from Microsoft’s own Edge. Furthermore, Edge’s default search provider can’t be altered: Bing is all you get. Curiously you can download other browsers from the Windows Store, such as Opera Read more about Windows 10 S (for Surface) and Cortana force you to use Edge and Bing, and Windows Mail forces links to open in Edge[…]
Every time you book a flight, you generate personal data that is ripe for harvesting: information like the details on an ID card, your address, your passport information and your travel itinerary, as well as your frequent-flyer number, method of payment and travel preferences (dietary restrictions, mobility restrictions, etc.). All that data becomes part of Read more about Booking Flights: Our Data Flies with Us – the huge dataset described[…]
The program began in 2012 as a partnership between New Orleans Police and Palantir Technologies, a data-mining firm founded with seed money from the CIA’s venture capital firm. According to interviews and documents obtained by The Verge, the initiative was essentially a predictive policing program, similar to the “heat list” in Chicago that purports to Read more about Palantir has secretly been using New Orleans to test its predictive policing technology, was given huge access to lots of private data without oversight due to loophole[…]
That’s when it hit him. Right there, in the numbers on the page, he noticed a flaw—a strange and surprising pattern, like the cereal-box code, written into the fundamental machinery of the game. A loophole that would eventually make Jerry and Marge millionaires, spark an investigation by a Boston Globe Spotlight reporter, unleash a statewide Read more about The Lottery Hackers[…]
Most recent advances in artificial-intelligence systems such as speech- or face-recognition programs have come courtesy of neural networks, densely interconnected meshes of simple information processors that learn to perform tasks by analyzing huge sets of training data. But neural nets are large, and their computations are energy intensive, so they’re not very practical for handheld Read more about MIT builds Neural network chip with 95% reduction in power consumption, allowing it to be used in a mobile[…]
I’m getting sick of Windows 10’s auto-installing apps. Apps like Facebook are now showing up out of nowhere, and even displaying notifications begging for me to use them. I didn’t install the Facebook app, I didn’t give it permission to show notifications, and I’ve never even used it. So why is it bugging me? Windows Read more about Hey Microsoft, Stop Installing Apps On My PC Without Asking[…]
Thousands of FedEx customers were exposed after the company left scanned passports, drivers licenses, and other documentation on a publicly accessible Amazon S3 server. The scanned IDs originated from countries all over the world, including the United States, Mexico, Canada, Australia, Saudi Arabia, Japan, China, and several European countries. The IDs were attached to forms Read more about 119,000 Passports and Photo IDs of FedEx Customers Found on Unsecured Amazon Server[…]
An unidentified hacker or hackers broke into a Tesla-owned Amazon cloud account and used it to “mine” cryptocurrency, security researchers said. The breach also exposed proprietary data for the electric carmaker. The researchers, who worked for RedLock, a 3-year-old cybersecurity startup, said they discovered the intrusion last month while trying to determine which organization left Read more about Tesla’s Amazon Cloud Account Hacked to Mine Cryptocurrency[…]