Tech News

It resembles a mini-MRI machine, but it's actually a rotating cat poop prison. C|Net:

[It's] a rotating cat toilet/washing machine/kitty litter tray to deal with your animal's mess.

Is it just me, or has too much tech and innovation been devoted to cats? It's only a matter of time until we read where someone tried to see if this device worked on their baby.
- - -
ArsTechnia: [Over] 92 million MyHeritage users were exposed in a cybersecurity breach on October 26, 2017, the popular genealogy company reported Monday, June 4, 2018.

MyHeritage said that it only learned of the breach earlier that day—more than seven months after the fact—when an unidentified “security researcher” sent the company’s chief information security officer a message. The researcher said they had found a file containing users’ data on a private server and passed a copy of the file along.

"We only learned of that Monday." Yeah - who believes this?
- - -
The electric 2020 Porsche Mission E Prototype is just around the corner. C|Net:

"If you're having some fun on the track," said [Detlev von Platen, Porsche board member and former CEO of Porsche Cars North America], "waiting 6 hours to recharge would bother you. That's why we are working so hard on a technology that would charge the battery in 15 minutes."

2020 Porsche Mission E

- - -

IMO, this is not good: MSoft, Guugle and Twatter seem to be acquiring everything. From WIRED:

Microsoft officially announced Monday that it will acquire the code repository site GitHub for $7.5 billion in stock. The platform is an important resource for some 28 million developers and home to billions of lines of open source code.
[.]
Microsoft will soon need to formally decide what will happen to the many GitHub repositories that conflict with its own interests. The tech giant will face similar content moderations challenge that peers like Facebook and Google have, but with code instead of speech.

Yeah, we thought free speech moderation would be problematic, how do you think MS will rule on GitHub? I'm guessing not in the best interests of GitHub.
- - -
FCC email redactions? Why...this can't be. TechCrunch:

You may remember the FCC explaining that in both 2014 and 2017, its comment system was briefly taken down by a denial of service attack. At least, so it says — but newly released emails show that the 2014 case was essentially fabricated, and the agency has so aggressively redacted documents relating to the 2017 incident that one suspects they’re hiding more than ordinary privileged information.

Oh, that FCC - their Sharpie pen budget must a budget-buster.
- - -
The Google Chrome Swamp Monster keeps growing. Computer World:

Mozilla's Firefox landed on a slippery slope last month and may face a slow demise as users desert the browser for Google's Chrome.

According to California-based analytics vendor Net Applications, Firefox lost a quarter of a percentage point of user share in May, ending the month at 9.9%. It was the first time Firefox has fallen below the 10% marker since November 2016.
[.]
Eight years ago, Firefox accounted for more than a quarter of the globe's browser share. That's fallen to less than a tenth.

Apple's Safari, Internet Explorer (IE) and Edge are also in decline. Guugle is going to own the world soon. This is not good.
- - -
Geek.com: Streaming Culture is Diseased. And this is being noticed...just now?

...ordinary folks hooking up their cameras to the Internet and letting the world watch them play video games, take their clothes off, disseminate conspiracy theories or just live their lives. Services like Twitch, YouTube Live and Periscope attract millions of viewers and the most popular users can become self-made millionaires.

It’s also making us into monsters.

First person that popped into my mind is "activist" David Hogg.
- - -

Beta News: Floridians have the worst cybersecurity habits in the U.S.

A study by cybersecurity company Webroot in conjunction with the Ponemon Institute finds Florida to be the worst state in the US for cyber-hygiene.
[.]
72 percent of Floridians report that they share passwords or other access credentials with others. In comparison, over half (53 percent) of survey respondents in New Hampshire claim that they never share passwords with others.

I wonder of if John Podestaphile has changed his password to something other than "password"?
- - -
One step closer to our Orwellian Utopia - Extreme Tech: AI Powered Psychopath named Norman created.

... the team has named “Norman” after movie psychopath Norman Bates.
[.]
The MIT team fed Norman a steady diet of data culled from gruesome subreddits that exist to share photos of death and destruction.
[.]
What Norman does address is the danger that artificial intelligence can become dangerously biased. 

- - -
Technocracy: California Gov. Moonbeam is labeled as a Technocrat.

Gov. Jerry Brown has more in common with a Technocrat than a left-wing Democrat...[.] Whatever the United Nations proposes, Brown puts into practice, which is the unspoken reason NY Times can call him a “pragmatic, results-focused technocrat”.

Brown escaped the cuckoo's nest a long, long time ago. Where is the white van with the guys dressed in white wielding the butterfly nets?
- - -
TechDirt: Australian Cops Caught Faking 258,000 Breathalyzer Tests.

Victorian police faked more than a quarter of a million roadside breath tests in what appears to be a deliberate ruse to dupe the system.
An internal investigation has found 258,000 alcohol breath tests were falsified over 5½ years[.]

- - -
Information Week: In-flight airplanes successfully hacked...from the ground.

Ruben Santamarta rocked the security world with his chilling discovery of major vulnerabilities in satellite equipment that could be abused to hijack and disrupt communications links to airplanes, ships, military operations, and industrial facilities.

Santamarta has now proven out those findings and taken his research to the level of terrifying, by successfully hacking into in-flight airplane WiFi networks and satcom equipment from the ground. "As far as I know I will be the first researcher that will demonstrate that it's possible to hack into communications devices on an in-flight aircraft … from the ground," he says.

He accessed on-board WiFi networks including passengers' Internet activity, and also was able to reach the planes' satcom equipment, he says, all of which in his previous research he had concluded – but not proven - was possible. And there's more: "In this new research, we also managed to get access to important communications devices in the aircraft," Santamarta, principal security consultant with IO/Active, says.

- - -
Ubergizmo: The 6 Gen Lenovo X1 Carbon Thinkpad.

Fixed Typo 6/6/2018