Tech News

ArsTechnia: A history of Japan's car industry.

Hit the link. Check out the image gallery of cars.

Extreme Tech: Best cars of the 2019 Chicago auto show.

Hit the links in the link for more images.

Technocracy: Self-driving cars are INCREASING urban congestion.

Self-driving cars will likely jam up downtown streets by cruising at slow speeds rather than parking, according to a new analysis published in the journal Transport Policy. Using game theory and simulated traffic models, report author Adam Millard-Ball found that the vehicles will be incentivized to circle streets rather than pay for parking.

According to Millard-Ball’s model, even as few as 2,000 self-driving cars in downtown San Francisco could slow traffic to less than 2 miles per hour.

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Tech Dirt: Italy tells EU to drop Articles 11 and 13 in copyright reform.

Italy... has now made a pretty clear statement that if the country is going to support the latest directive, it needs to protect the users of the web, and the only way to do that is to remove Articles 11 and 13.

Good for Italy!
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ZD Net: Will Robot love fulfill emotional needs?

I wonder...how close are we to the era of when our robots will need shrinks?

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Beta News: Spotify to ban ad-blockers.

Under the heading "the following is not permitted for any reason whatsoever" Spotify lists, among other things:

   - circumventing or blocking advertisements in the Spotify Service, or creating or distributing tools designed to block advertisements in the Spotify Service[.]

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TechSpot: Senate investigations into government workers use of VPNs.

Recent months have been filled with news of international cybersecurity concerns and foreign meddling, and now two US Senators are going after a new target – virtual private networks (VPNs) used by governmental employees.

Who are the two senators? Marco Rubio (Republican) and Ron Wyden (Democrat).

10,000 to one odds that, three weeks ago, there might have been two - at most - two senators, who know what a VPN is.  This is similar to when John McCain was convinced the 2016 presidential election was hacked, and he pretended to know about hacking, yet didn't know what an exit node is. Sputnik News:

When questioned by a Sputnik reporter following the hearing about the debunking of the Joint Annual Report by security experts, including the finding that 43 percent of the IP addresses attributed to ‘Russian hackers’ were generic web-browser Tor exit nodes, the Senator responded by saying that he had “no idea” what she was talking about.

Lawmakers getting involved in Tech. Again. You have better odds in uniting the properties of water and electricity.
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Tech News World: Wireless carriers really selling our data.

AT&T, T-Mobile and Sprint have sold access to subscribers' real-time location data to aggregators, which in turn have sold it to about 250 bounty hunters and related businesses, Motherboard reported Wednesday.

In some cases, the data allowed users to track individuals to their specific locations inside a building.

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Gizmodo: Washington state's snow-induced mayhem.

Yeah, and hey, Washington, your snows keep coming our way, hitting the central Midwest. So...stop it!
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Computer World: Apple is disabling Safari's "do not track" feature.

The list of online entities who do not respect DNT requests includes all the usual privacy-eroding suspects, such as Google, Facebook, and Twitter. Medium, Pinterest, and Reddit do honor these requests, which rather suggests you can find alternative ways to make a business.

Tech News

Bright Hub: Insurers Fear Autonomous vehicles.

According to research by Accenture and the Stevens Institute of Technology, as many as 23 million fully automated vehicles will cruise on U.S. streets by 2035. As a result, insurers could see losses as great as $25 billion. Even worse, a report by KPMG puts expected losses by 2050 at $137 billion.
[.]
According to a survey by AAA, 63 percent of U.S. drivers are afraid to ride in a self-driving vehicle. The rate of fearful drivers was 78 percent last year.

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Ars Technia: Internet watchdog group Citizen Lab in a real-life Spy vs Spy.

Researchers at Internet watchdog group Citizen Lab orchestrated the sting after they grew suspicious of a man calling himself Michael Lambert who contacted Citizen Lab researcher John Scott-Railton to request a lunch meeting at a New York hotel. The suspicions were fueled by an earlier meeting in December, in which a man masquerading as a socially conscious investor named Gary Bowman grilled a different Citizen Lab researcher about work the watchdog did exposing NSO Group, the Israeli exploit seller.

The Spy Cam. Image: AntanO / Wikimedia

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BGR: Russian fighter pilots to fly with AI wingmen.

[Russian] military forces have also been testing the feasibility of having AI-powered wingmen fly alongside Russian fighter pilots, executing commands issued by the human pilot an inaugurating a scary new chapter in aerial military combat.

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Computer World: Linux's hyperledger Grid.

The Hyperledger Grid project, as it's called, will initially offer businesses modular software and smart contract components to address problems such as tracking and tracing shipped goods, electronic certifications and bill of lading exchange.

"Supply chain is one of the most promising areas for blockchain use cases, and implementation of many of these use cases can benefit from capabilities which can be provided by a shared platform," the Linux Foundation said earlier this week.

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Extreme Tech: New pics of Ultima Thule.

Object called 2014 MU69 or “Ultima Thule.” Image: NASA

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WIRED: Uber wants self-driving scooters.

Oh, hell yes. Transportation isn't dangerous enough. Keep driving and texting...while on that scooter!
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This deserves a sole post. I'll do that soon. ZD Net: Artificial intelligence will become the next human right.

If the predictions of Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff prove to be true, [AI] will one day become a new human right.
[.]
According to Benioff, AI is going to become a service which everyone will need. Countries and companies alike will be "smarter," "healthier," and "richer" if they have AI, whereas those without will be "weaker and poorer, less educated and sicker," the publication reports.

In addition, those with artificial intelligence capabilities will have the most advanced warfare capabilities, the executive says, and as we know, military power is often linked to resource gain.

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TechCrunch: Is Huawei a national security threat?

Despite the fact that the company’s founder and president is a former officer in China’s People’s Liberation Army and the company remains heavily funded by the Chinese government, there’s also no public, direct evidence that Huawei is using its equipment to spy on network traffic inside the U.S. or any other country. In any case, Huawei can’t prove a negative, so all it can do is allow governments to assess its devices — which has so far found some issues but nothing conclusive to tie it to Chinese espionage actors.

That’s the crux of the argument: nobody thinks Huawei is spying now. To get caught would be too dangerous. But nobody knows that it won’t spy in the future.

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Tech wants to confiscate your car. Technocracy:  Green Tech "Expert": "Car ownership is nonsense."

The UN’s Agenda 21 and 2030 Agenda are personified by this propaganda: “walking comes first, bicycles and scooters second and public transport third. Cars should only come in fourth place.” That’s right, you can walk wherever you need to go. ⁃ TN Editor
[.]
[W]e will see a transition to the shared economy. In the future, we will not own cars. Judged by efficiency, it is nonsense. Up to ten people can share one vehicle.
[.]
Are consumers ready to accept that car ownership doesn’t make sense?
[.]
In the future, car ownership could end up being only reserved for super-luxury vehicles and super-rich people. But considering efficiency, it is definitely not the way to go. Transport networks will be optimised, emissions will be cut down.

Tech News

Beta News: Big data breach.

#1 database leak exposes 773 million email addresses and 21 million passwords[.]

Yep. Everyone should update their current password of 'password' to something like 'qwerty123' or 'aDmin_678'.

ZD Net: Oklahoma govt breached big time.

An Oklahoma Department of Securities server allowed anyone to download government files[.]

"The data was exposed via an unsecured rsync service at an IP address registered to the Oklahoma Office of Management and Enterprise Services (OMES), allowing any user from any IP address to download all the files stored on the server," the researchers say. 

Gizmodo: How to stop worrying about data breaches.

[A] rundown of the three most important pieces of crafting a healthy security routine and never sweating another password leak[.]

Nextgov: ID card manufacturer and service provider used by federal agencies have vulnerabilities.

...the system used by IDenticard, called PremiSys, which if exploited could allow an unauthorized person to gain access to secure buildings and disable locks, as well as exfiltrate user data or otherwise modify accounts using administrator privileges.

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TechCrunch: Coming soon via the govt shutdown - Expiring HTTPS federal web sites.

Depending on the security level, most websites will kick back browser errors. Some won’t let you in at all until the expired certificate is renewed.
[.]
Eric Mill, a security expert [said] that fears over expired certificates have been overblown.

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Fanbyte: Overwatch game charcter Soldier 76 gayness causing controversy.

...with the addition of Soldier: 76, the total number of queer characters is two out of a roster of 29. Making Soldier gay, more so than even Tracer[.]
[.]
But both characters suffer from the aforementioned Blizzard ethos of “experiences” over “story.”

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How to make global warming climate change Alarmist's heads explode (like in "Scanners"). Tell them that Apple may scrap plans for their self-driving cars. Ubergizmo:

Apple is working on developing technology for self-driving cars.
[.]
However it seems like those plans could be scrapped[.]

Did you hear the collective heads pop? Messy! Clean-up crews being dispatched. This may take a while, folks. Your patience is appreciated.
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New Atlas: The 2019 Detroit Auto Show. Lots of images to look at. Some nice, others, well - I guess it's all in the eye of the beholder.
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New Atlas: A DIY Tiny-House for around $10 Grand.
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Tech Dirt: Irish Supermacs bitch-slaps "Big-Mac" in EU.

McDonald's Corp has lost its rights to the trademark "Big Mac" in a landmark European Union (EU) case ruling in favour of Ireland-based fast-food chain Supermac's, according to a decision by European regulators.

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The below video at Digg, so yeah, it's Tech. Go "full screen" or watch at the link. Bet ya watch it more than once. Yep, their Best Friends! So darn cute.

Tech News

Three members of You Tube Channel High on Life die in tragic accident. C|Net:

[Megan Scraper] ...  slipped and fell from the top of the falls into the water below[.]
[.]
[Ryker Gamble and Alexey Lyakh] jumped in after her in an attempt to save her, but no one survived.

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Will your financial institution survive a tech meltdown? BBC Tech:

UK banks have been told to explain how they would cope with a technology failure or cyber-attack.

The Bank of England and the Financial Conduct Authority have given financial firms three months to detail how they would respond if their systems failed.

Does this really matter since...The Illuminati controls everything?!?!?!
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Gadgets Now: Over 50% of smartphones not password protected.

[A Kaspersky Lab survey] showed that less than 48 per cent of people password-protect their mobile devices and just 14 per cent of people encrypt their files and folders to avoid unauthorized access.

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Do we have a say in this? Amazon wants Alexa EVERYWHERE.  PC Mag:

[We caught up with Zain Gulamali who manages the $100 million Alexa Fund] and [posed]  a few questions about the personal digital assistant and its future.

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Extreme Tech: Self-driving Acura steers driver into oncoming traffic:

...the camera that peers ahead through the windshield needs to be re-aligned when the windshield is replaced.

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eWeek: WordPress had some security vulnerabilities:

A new version of open-source content management system WordPress, 4.9.7, was released on July 5 that patches a pair of security vulnerabilities that could expose WordPress sites to risk.

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Mobile Syrup - Canada is having a tough time retaining cyber talent:

...Canadian demand for cyber talent is increasing by seven percent annually.
[.]
Deloitte says addressing cybersecurity risks is critical because they could slow the pace of global technological innovation by as much as $3 trillion USD in lost economic value in 2020.

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Having issues with Win 10? ZD Net: Some free tech and trouble shooting tips:

Windows 10 upgrade: Survey finds half of users experience problems[.] (Win users...experiencing...problems? Really?-DD)

Dump Win; Covert to Linux.
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Beta News: The NSA is deleting millions of files.

The NSA...has announced that it is deleting hundreds of millions of call and text records because of "technical irregularities".
[.] While full details of the reasons for the deletion are not given, the NSA notes that it collected data it was not authorized to collect.

..."because of technical irregularities." Anyone buying this? It's reassuring that the NSA collects info they're not authorized to collect, isn't it?
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Tech Explore - Bandages go high-tech.

[Engineers] led by Tufts University developed a prototype bandage designed to actively monitor the condition of chronic wounds and deliver appropriate drug treatments to improve the chances of healing.

Credit: Tufts University

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Engadget - Pot In a Blender:

The Rosinbomb Rocket is a $600, 13-pound tabletop rosin extractor designed to squeeze and melt the THC crystals present on the surface of the flower into a solventless dabbable hash similar to shatter. Think of it as a panini press for weed.

[.]...tokers can get stonier than a rock garden.

I don't know what any of it means. Is this about rock gardens...comments,  anyone?
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File Hippo - Free data recovery software for Windows that boasts a 96% recovery rate.

Recoverit retrieves your data from all data loss scenarios including emptied recycle bin, accidental deletion, disk formatting, partition loss, external device corruption, virus attack, system crashes...[.]

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Have you ever wondered why cruise ships and yachts are painted white? Technology.Org:

Container ships and all other kinds of cargo and fishing ships are all kinds of colours...[while] cruise ships and luxury yachts are usually white. Why?

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And because I know you've been waiting on this news: Pokémon Quest downloaded 7.5 million times.  Mobile Syrup:

The game launched on May 30th for the Nintendo Switch and was followed on June 27th with a mobile release across iOS and Android. Pokémon Quest has been climbing the charts[.]

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The Rosinbomb Rocket-Image: Marijuana Retail Report.com