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The head of the House subcommittee on intelligence and counterterrorism is on a quest to find out precisely how much money YouTube, Microsoft, Facebook, and Twitter are spending each to combat extremism across their myriad platforms. Since representatives of the companies seemed unequipped to answer that question during a briefing late last month, their CEOs…
Uber, the money-losing ridehailing platform which by its own admission in its S-1 filing claims it has “incurred significant losses since inception” and “may not achieve profitability,” has overcome a lot on the road to today’s initial public offering. It’s entire business model however—which involves cost-cutting by arguably misclassifying the overwhelming majority of its workforce—is…
Over the years, tech companies have found a convenient scapegoat for some of their most egregious mistakes in a voiceless part of their operations—their algorithms. But a bill introduced on Wednesday seeks to effectively prevent these automated systems from being an acceptable excuse for bias, unintended or not. The Algorithmic Accountability Act, introduced by Senators…
The next time you’re peering deep inside one of your camera lenses and discover a tiny speck of dust, don’t complain. After 15 months in rotation, the folks at Lensrentals had a Canon 70-200mm f2.8 IS II lens return from a rental with a full-grown (but dead) fly trapped between a pair of lens elements…
Charges announced by the Justice Department on Thursday against WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange provide fresh insight into why federal prosecutors sought to question whistleblower Chelsea Manning last month before a federal grand jury in the Eastern District of Virginia. Manning, convicted in 2013 of leaking classified U.S. government documents to WikiLeaks, was jailed in early…
Facebook has again taken minimal action to hinder a coordinated inauthentic behavior from deceptive actors targeting a specific demographic of people. In this case, the deceptive actors in question were U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, and the targeted demographic was Indian citizens in the U.S. on student visas. And Facebook only took action once…
When the Wi-Fi Alliance released its next-generation WPA3 wifi security protocol last January, it was touted as being nigh impossible to crack. That made it a serious upgrade over WPA2, the current protocol used by modern wifi networks—including the one you’re probably reading this on. Except, researchers on Wednesday published findings that show WPA3 actually…
Apple is renowned for its ability to amass thousands of talented engineers, millions of users, and billions in cash-on-hand. While nowhere near prolific in this particular growth sector, it’s also gotten pretty good at attracting anti-trust complaints. As Bloomberg reports, Dutch officials opened an investigation into the computing giant’s alleged preferential treatment of its own…
Last night, Bloomberg published an alarming report about the “thousands” of Amazon workers paid to listen to Alexa recordings captured in customers’ homes and offices. But users of the company’s digital assistant shouldn’t be too shocked. After all, CEO Jeff Bezos has been trying to tell us for years. Bloomberg reports that Alexa’s “human helpers”…
In the brave new world of folding touchscreen devices, companies are throwing every random design at the wall, hoping one of them will be the device that consumer’s embrace. Sharp, who started producing flexible OLED screens back in June of 2018, recently showed off a prototype of a smartphone that folds vertically, like the clamshell…
Julian Assange has been formally charged by U.S. prosecutors for a single count of “conspiracy to commit computer intrusion for agreeing to break a password to a classified U.S. government computer,” the Justice Department announced Thursday morning. Assange was dragged from the Ecuadorian embassy in London earlier on Thursday after spending seven years there. He…
CNN reports that Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos is “scheduled to meet with federal prosecutors in New York as soon as this week” regarding allegations that the National Enquirer tabloid and its parent company, American Media Inc., engaged in extortion and blackmail with a stolen nude and other sexts from an adulterous relationship. The Enquirer/AMI obtained…
The most popular thing on the internet on Wednesday was the first-ever image of a black hole. It was everywhere and for good reason: This is a historical moment, it reinforces Einstein’s theories, and it’s something that’s difficult to wrap your head around. Millions of people read articles and watched videos explaining the black hole…
Julian Assange has been arrested by police in London after almost seven years in the Ecuadorian embassy. The WikiLeaks founder was dragged out of the embassy at approximately 10:35 am local time, 5:35 am ET. Assange was formally charged by the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) this morning with, “conspiracy to commit computer intrusion for…
AT&T’s claim that its “5G E” network—which is a regular 4G network boosted with some technical tricks, misleadingly rebranded as next-generation 5G—has helped make it the fastest carrier in the country doesn’t tell the whole story, the Verge reported on Wednesday. Last week, AT&T issued a press release bragging that 5G E had helped it…
There’s been a number of incidents where Amazon’s Alexa digital assistant has done things like misinterpret something it overheard and started sending random people recordings of private conversations, or audio files kept by the company wound up in the wrong hands. But a real-life stranger could potentially be listening to anything you tell Alexa by…
Inside Silicon Valley, the consensus is that artificial intelligence will be the most important technology for the next decade. Okay, but what the hell does that mean for the rest of us? In an attempt to to build in transparency and accountability into the next generation of world-changing technology, American lawmakers introduced a bill on…
The hackers behind the notorious malware known as Trisis, code that targets crucial safety systems at dangerous industrial facilities, are back. Researchers from the cybersecurity firm FireEye tracking the hackers behind Trisis (also known as Triton), which targeted a Saudi petrochemical plant in 2017, found the same group has infected a second unspecified “critical infrastructure”…
Facebook, in an attempt to clean up the mess it’s created, has announced yet another set of changes meant to help it be less awful. Facebook is constantly updating or expanding on its procedures for mitigating the spread of misinformation, fake news, and hate speech on its platform. In a lengthy blog post, Facebook VP…
By now you should know that two-factor authentication is a vital and necessary component of good security hygiene. That said, the most common ways of getting 2FA codes usually involve text messages or authenticator apps, which aren’t always hacker-proof. But today, Google announced at its Cloud Next conference that you can now use any Android…
