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Coinbase, one of the world’s most popular cryptocurrency exchanges, has apparently had a nasty bug lurking in its system that would allow users to collect unlimited ether through a few simple steps. Thanks to a bug report, however, the company avoided disaster. VI Company, a Dutch firm specializing in FinTech, publicly disclosed the vulnerability on…
At some point, you’ve probably found yourself mindlessly scrolling around Google Maps’ satellite view while bored at work. But artist Páraic McGloughlin saw Google Maps as more than just a distraction, and by painstakingly capturing very specific road layouts and agricultural features, he was able to create a series of captivating animations. The animations were…
A Scottish YouTube comedian, Mark Meechan, was found guilty of a hate crime on Tuesday for posting a video of himself training his girlfriend’s pug, Buddha, to mimic a Nazi and respond to commands the court ruled anti-Semitic. In the video from April 2016, Buddha is shown watching Adolph Hitler speaking at a rally at…
Since WhatsApp got bought by Facebook in 2014, its co-founders have taken two very different paths. Jan Koum stayed on to serve as the company’s CEO, while Brian Acton left after a few years to head up the Signal Foundation, an organization that competes with WhatsApp and Facebook thanks to its own encrypted messaging app.…
Frank Alsema describes himself as a “city maker.” The TV producer lives in north Amsterdam, where his house has become a lab for more sustainable urban lifestyle. The community there and throughout the Netherlands aspire to what they call a “circular economy.” That means recycling and reusing everything, including energy. That’s why Frank’s house is…
Google Cloud has a whopping 20 new product announcements out today, most of them aimed at enterprise customers—which means they probably won’t matter much to you unless you’re in the position to make IT decisions for a company. But we lowly consumers sometimes get the trickle-down effect from good privacy decisions at the enterprise Cloud…
The sophistication of the package bombs that keep on detonating throughout the cities of Austin and San Antonio in Texas has authorities and experts concerned that the perpetrator is not an amateur, USA Today reported on Tuesday. But engineer or not, they are leaving a growing trail of evidence like an undetonated bomb left at…
Facebook is taking a huge amount of heat this week amid mounting scandals over its allegedly reckless handling of user data, vulnerability to propaganda and disinformation efforts, and whether or not its internal response to those issues was mostly concerned with shoving those problems under a rug. The company’s stock has taken a double-digit hit—even…
On Tuesday, Amnesty International released its findings from a 16-month investigation into the experiences women face on Twitter—namely, online abuse. The 77-page report, #ToxicTwitter: Violence and abuse against women online, illustrates Twitter’s failures to protect its most vulnerable users and to be transparent about those failures. The report is being released 12 years after the…
Cambridge Analytica, the data-firm that’s wrapped up in a massive scandal with Facebook, is having a very bad week. Following Monday’s reveal of an undercover video showing executives bragging about blackmail and bribery, a new video shows the men bragging about winning the election for Donald Trump and their use of a high-tech email system…
A team of civilian explorers led by Microsoft cofounder Paul Allen has located the wreck of the USS Juneau, an American light-cruiser that went down during the Battle of Guadalcanal in November 1942. Nearly 700 sailors were killed in the incident—including five brothers, in what turned out to be the largest loss incurred by a…
Facebook’s share value has been in a tailspin as the depths of its irresponsible data handling has become known to the world. Salting that wound is a class-action lawsuit, filed today in California’s Northern district, on behalf of the social media giant’s shareholders. Fan Yuan, the shareholder who filed the suit, accuses Facebook of making…
56-year-old Dean Stearns, former principal of Vermont’s South Royalton School, is being charged with promoting sexual recordings, voyeurism, and possession of child pornography. Stearns pled not guilty to all charges on Monday. Vermont State Police say they recovered over 200 pictures and video of underaged girls in Stearns’ home that they believe were filmed using…
Facebook held an open meeting at 10am Tuesday morning in Menlo Park. The whole company was invited to gather and ask questions about the recent—and rather furious—scandal around how Cambridge Analytica, a private data company hired by the Trump campaign that acquired and leverage information on over 50 million Facebook users. Facebook general counsel Paul…
While the practical and financial viability of the Bitcoin blockchain is still an open question, new research shows that the whole thing could already be illegal in most countries. Researchers in Germany discovered that the ledger system that provides the backbone for Bitcoin contains hundreds of links to child pornography and at least one image…
AMD has announced a series of firmware patches set to arrive in the coming weeks to address security issues raised by an Israeli security firm one week ago. In a March 13th white paper, largely devoid of technical specifics, fledgling security firm CTS-Labs revealed numerous vulnerabilities affecting AMD processors. Because the researchers gave AMD less…
The Senate Intelligence Committee on Tuesday released a draft of recommendations to improve the nation’s election infrastructure, outlining the need for IT upgrades, universal adoption of paper ballots, and increased funding to safeguard against future cyberattacks. In preparation for the 2018 midterm elections, primaries for which have already begun, the committee offered a six-point plan…
The board of Cambridge Analytica, a data firm that worked with Republican candidates during the 2016 US presidential election and made conflicting statements about its involvement in a campaign for Brexit, has suspended its CEO Alexander Nix. Nix’s suspension is effective immediately and will last through an independent investigation, according to a statement Cambridge Analytica’s…
A lawsuit, filed today in California’s Northern District, alleges that Uber denied service to a Texas woman with cerebral palsy “on approximately 25 separate occasions” in 2016 and 2017. The source of the cancelled rides appears to be Goodee, a service dog the plaintiff, D’edra Steele, has had since 2009 to assist with mobility and…
Look up to the sky with the unaided eye and you’ll see lots of specks and globs that look mostly like stars. On closer inspection, though, some of those dots refuse to resolve, smeared out on the night sky. Famed astronomer Charles Messier noticed these objects while studying comets—indeed, they looked like comments standing still…
