Group items tagged

""Privacy Not Included" is Mozilla's Christmas shopping (anti)-guide to toys and gadgets that spy on you and/or make stupid security blunders, rated by relative "creepiness," from the Nintendo Switch (a little creepy) to the Fredi Baby monitor (very creepy!). Mozilla's reviews include a detailed rationale for each ranking, including whether the product includes encryption, whether it forces a default password change, how easy to understand the documentation is, whether it shares your data for "unexpected reasons," whether it has known security vulnerabilities, whether it has parental controls and more."

"A spokesman for the department told Stuff, a gadget magazine, that the device could distract drivers while they are behind the wheel, defining Glass as a similar distraction to a mobile phone."

Scientists have developed an app that allows an ordinary smartphone to capture and display three-dimensional models of real-world objects. Instead of taking a normal photograph, a user simply moves the phone around the object of interest and after a few motions, a 3D model appears on the screen.

"His program became the first of a particular type of cyber attack called "distributed denial of service," in which large numbers of internet-connected devices, including computers, webcams and other smart gadgets, are told to send lots of traffic to one particular address, overloading it with so much activity that either the system shuts down or its network connections are completely blocked."

""The person on the other line said, 'unplug your Alexa devices right now,'" Danielle told KIRO. "'You're being hacked.'" The couple had reportedly placed Amazon devices in every room of their house to control the heat, lights, and security system. All of the gadgets were pulled out after their colleague proved they had received the unauthorized recording."

"Interoperability is the technical term for what we've lost as tech has matured. Software can be interoperable, either through common, open file formats, or through different programs speaking directly to one another, and so too can hardware: open standards are what allow you to use any headphones with any music player, for instance, or buy a TV without worrying if it will work with your streaming set-up."

"Those who design this stuff are plainly doing so for people close in age to themselves. But surely no harm would come from them considering whether their parents or grandparents would have any chance of fathoming out whatever new consumer electronics they are working on."

""Think about what information is going to be collected," she said. "And how comfortable you are with that information potentially flowing to just anybody … [Companies] are certainly sharing [user data] and they don't really have to tell you who they're sharing it with or why." Such items might include "smart devices" that track our behavior, such as sleep and fitness trackers, as well as popular self-discovery tools such as DNA testing kits. With the help of experts, we broke down the privacy implications of some of this season's latest offerings - so you can give the gift of privacy."

"For now, however, Hammond tries to reassure journalists that he's not trying to kick them when they're down. He tells a story about a party he attended with his wife, who's the marketing director at Chicago's fabled Second City improv club. He found himself in conversation with a well-known local theater critic, who asked about Hammond's business. As Hammond explained what he did, the critic became agitated. Times are tough enough in journalism, he said, and now you're going to replace writers with robots? "I just looked at him," Hammond recalls, "and asked him: Have you ever seen a reporter at a Little League game? That's the most important thing about us. Nobody has lost a single job because of us.""

"A man appears to have deleted his entire company with one mistaken piece of code. By accidentally telling his computer to delete everything in his servers, hosting provider Marco Marsala has seemingly removed all trace of his company and the websites that he looks after for his customers."

Sony is developing a new smarthand watch for fitness

"About 70% of the world's online traffic is reckoned to pass through Loudoun County. But there is a big problem, centred on a power company called Dominion, which supplies the vast majority of Loudoun County's electricity. According to a 2017 Greenpeace report, only 1% of Dominion's total electricity comes from credibly renewable sources:"

""AI can pick up missed cues and suggest nudges to bridge the gap in emotional intelligence and communication styles. It can identify optimal ways to discuss common problems and alleviate common misunderstandings based on these different priorities and ways of viewing the world. We could be looking at a different gender dynamics in a decade.""

"The organisation is inviting anyone who thinks they've been targeted by a scam email to forward it to Re:scam, which will verify if it is a scam or not. It will then use its own email address to target any scammers it manages to detect.  "