https://pxlnv.com/linklog/problem-with-jon-stewart-ending/
Apple is a big, sprawling conglomerate. If it cannot handle Stewart’s inquiries about China or our machine learning future, I think it should ask itself why that is, and whether those criticisms have merit.
In the wake of the recent Hamas attack in Israel, crypto analytics firm Chainalysis said Wednesday that’s its been receiving lots of questions about how terrorist groups might be using cryptocurrency. But it said some reports about the supposed use might be overstating metrics and using “flawed analyses.”
“Although terrorism financing is a very small portion of the already very small portion of cryptocurrency transaction volume that is illicit, some terrorist organizations raise, store, and transfer funds using cryptocurrency,” it wrote in a blog post. “Terrorist organizations have historically used and will likely continue to use traditional, fiat-based methods such as financial institutions, hawalas, and shell companies as their primary financing vehicles.”
Online voting is insecure, period. This doesn’t stop organizations and governments from using it. (And for low-stakes elections, it’s probably fine.) Switzerland—not low stakes—uses online voting for national elections.
In the face of an escalating military conflict with Hamas and Hezbollah forces, the Israeli government has asked citizens to secure home security cameras or shut them down completely, fearing the devices could be hacked and used for espionage and intelligence collection.
In a memo on Friday, Israel’s National Cyber Directorate has asked camera owners to change their passwords, enable two-factor authentication if present, and enable automatic security updates.
If camera owners can’t change any of their settings, officials have urged owners to either cover camera lenses or shut down devices completely.Israeli officials aren’t taking any chances and have most likely learned a vital lesson from the recent Russo-Ukrainian conflict, where security cameras across Ukraine have been hacked by Russian hackers to track military aid convoys and adjust missile targeting in real-time.
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In addition, there is also a propaganda aspect to take into consideration. Since the initial Hamas attack on October 7, footage taken from hacked security cameras showing Hamas rockets hitting Israeli homes has also been widely shared online.
Risky Biz News: Israel warns citizens of security camera hack risk
https://www.theverge.com/2023/10/10/23911803/utah-tiktok-child-addiction-china-deception-lawsuit
Utah’s consumer protection division alleges that TikTok misrepresents itself as independent of China and is designed to ‘hook users’ into its endless feed.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-66964510
The business model is brutal but simple. There are many apps that promise hassle-free loans in minutes. Not all of them are predatory. But many – once downloaded – harvest your contacts, photos and ID cards, and use that information later to extort you. When customers don’t repay on time – and sometimes even when they do – they share this information with a call centre where young agents of the gig economy, armed with laptops and phones are trained to harass and humiliate people into repayment.
https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-67053171
A man got so fed up with foxes and badgers fouling in his garden that he adapted cameras to help repel them. James Milward linked the Ring cameras at his Surrey home to a device that emits high frequency sounds. He then trained the system using hundreds of images of the nocturnal nuisances so it learned to trigger the noise when it spotted them.
https://www.wired.co.uk/article/slovakia-election-deepfakes
Fact-checkers scrambled to deal with faked audio recordings released days before a tight election, in a warning for other countries with looming votes.
The initial data leak was limited, with the threat actor releasing 1 million lines of data for Ashkenazi people. However, on October 4, the threat actor offered to sell data profiles in bulk for $1-$10 per 23andMe account, depending on how many were purchased.
A 23andMe spokesperson confirmed the data is legitimate and told BleepingComputer that the threat actors used exposed credentials from other breaches to access 23andMe accounts and steal the sensitive data.
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The information that has been exposed from this incident includes full names, usernames, profile photos, sex, date of birth, genetic ancestry results, and geographical location.
While there are benefits to storing genetic information online so people can trace their heritage and track down relatives, there are clear privacy threats. Even if a user chooses a strong password and uses two-factor authentication as 23andMe has long urged, their data can still be swept up in scraping incidents like the one recently confirmed. The only sure way to protect it from online theft is to not store it there in the first place.
A programmer in northern China has been ordered to pay more than 1m yuan to the authorities for using a virtual private network (VPN), in what is thought to be the most severe individual financial penalty ever issued for circumventing China’s “great firewall”.
The programmer, surnamed Ma, was issued with a penalty notice by the public security bureau of Chengde, a city in Hebei province, on 18 August. The notice said Ma had used “unauthorised channels” to connect to international networks to work for a Turkish company.
The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) has, for the first time, published rules of engagement for civilian hackers involved in conflicts.The organisation warns unprecedented numbers of people are joining patriotic cyber-gangs since the Ukraine invasion.The eight rules include bans on attacks on hospitals, hacking tools that spread uncontrollably and threats that engender terror among civilians.
https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-66998064
The case of Jaswant Singh Chail has shone a light on the latest generation of artificial intelligence-powered chatbots.On Thursday, 21-year-old Chail was given a nine-year sentence for breaking into Windsor Castle with a crossbow and declaring he wanted to kill the Queen.
https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-67012224
https://www.roughtype.com/?p=8935
Facebook, it’s now widely accepted, has been a calamity for the world. The obvious solution, most people would agree, is to get rid of Facebook. Mark Zuckerberg has a different idea: Get rid of the world.
https://www.newyorker.com/science/annals-of-artificial-intelligence/how-will-ai-learn-next
As chatbots threaten their own best sources of data, they will have to find new kinds of knowledge.
“The findings revealed subtle but measurable changes in the speech of the overwintering staff during their time in Antarctica,” writes Mental Floss’ Brett Reynolds. “One change was convergence, where individuals in a close-knit group unconsciously begin to adopt similar speech characteristics.
Considering that tech giants make most of their revenue from advertising, it wasn’t surprising to see Microsoft introduce ads into Bing Chat shortly after its release. However, online ads have an inherent risk attached to them. In this blog, we show how users searching for software downloads can be tricked into visiting malicious sites and installing malware directly from a Bing Chat conversation.
https://news.mit.edu/2023/desalination-system-could-produce-freshwater-cheaper-0927
MIT engineers and collaborators developed a solar-powered device that avoids salt-clogging issues of other designs.
https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-66993647
The US government has issued its first ever fine to a company for leaving space junk orbiting the Earth.
The Federal Communications Commission fined Dish Network $150,000 (£125,000) for failing to move an old satellite far enough away from others in use.
The pedestrian was struck in a hit and run collision that threw her into the path of a driverless vehicle that then ran her over, stopping on top of her leg and remaining there until she was rescued by police, a witness told the San Francisco Chronicle.
The woman was admitted to hospital and is in a critical condition after the incident, which required the stationary car to be lifted off the ground, San Francisco’s fire department said.
Turns out pumps at gas stations are controlled via Bluetooth, and that the connections are insecure. No details in the article, but it seems that it’s easy to take control of the pump and have it dispense gas without requiring payment.
https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2023/10/hacking-gas-pumps-via-bluetooth.html