AI is transforming wildlife research by automating some tasks typically done manually by researchers, like identifying individual animals from photos

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/2018/11/artificial-intelligence-counts-wild-animals/

From analyzing animal photos to combing through YouTube, new software is harnessing data never before accessible to scientists.

Rare microbes lead scientists to discover new branch on the tree of life – CBC News

https://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/hemimastigotes-supra-kingdom-1.4715823

Hemimastigotes are more different from all other living things than animals are from fungi

Major SMS security lapse is a reminder to use authenticator apps instead - The Verge

https://www.theverge.com/2018/11/16/18098286/vovox-security-breach-two-factor-authentication-2fa-codes-exposed

anyone could have monitored a near-real-time data stream to find the relevant two-factor authentication code sent after trying to log into someone else’s account.

Facebook bug let websites read ‘likes’ and interests from a user’s profile – TechCrunch

https://techcrunch.com/2018/11/13/facebook-bug-website-leak-likes-interests-profile/

The vulnerability exposed the user and their friends’ interests, even if their privacy settings were set so that interests were only visible to the user’s friends

Interviews with more than 50 people show how Facebook stumbled in dealing with multiple crises, which Zuckerberg and Sandberg initially tried to obscure - The New York Times

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/14/technology/facebook-data-russia-election-racism.html

How AI Agents Cheat

https://kottke.org/18/11/how-ai-agents-cheat

Report: Australian intelligence knows Huawei was used in espionage - Axios

https://www.axios.com/report-australian-intelligence-know-huawei-1541285886-42f1eb64-98de-422f-9686-4174e41ef37e.html

“Chinese espionage services used telecommunications giant Huawei’s staff to get access codes to infiltrate a foreign network.”

The attack took place within the last two years.

Vil la e-tjenesten lagre nordmenns nett-trafikk – NRK

https://www.nrk.no/norge/vil-la-e-tjenesten-lagre-nordmenns-nett-trafikk-1.14291174

Mulighetene for masseovervåking av den norske nettrafikken nærmer seg dermed det Snowden-saken avslørte at amerikanske etterretningstjenester gjør i USA, sier fagdirektør Torgeir Waterhouse i […] IKT Norge.

Amazon asked to share Echo data in US murder case - BBC News

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-46181800

A judge in the US has asked Amazon to hand over audio recordings from an Amazon Echo which was in a house where two women died.

Burned to death because of a rumour on WhatsApp – BBC

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-46145986

Rumours of child abductors spread through WhatsApp in a small town in Mexico. The rumours were fake, but a mob burned two men to death before anyone checked.