In a new blog post for the International Monetary Fund, four researchers presented their findings from a working paper that examines the current relationship between finance and tech as well as its potential future. Gazing into their crystal ball, the researchers see the possibility of using the data from your browsing, search, and purchase history Read more about Your Credit Score Should Be Based On Your Web History, IMF Says[…]
We’ve talked a lot on Techdirt about the end of ownership, and how companies have increasingly been reaching deep into products that you thought you bought to modify them… or even destroy them. Much of this originated in the copyright space, in which modern copyright law (somewhat ridiculously) gave the power to copyright holders to Read more about The End Of Ownership: How Big Companies Are Trying To Turn Everyone Into Renters[…]
Google Pay is an online paying system and digital wallet that makes it easy to buy anything on your mobile device or with your mobile device. But if you’re concerned about what Google is doing with all your data (which you probably should be), Google doesn’t make it easy for Google Pay has some secret Read more about Have you made sure you have changed these Google Pay privacy settings?[…]
In what can only be considered a triumph for all robot-kind, this week, a federal court has ruled that an artificially intelligent machine can, in fact, be an inventor—a decision that came after a year’s worth of legal battles across the globe. The ruling came on the heels of a years-long quest by University of Read more about Australian Court Rules That AI Can Be an Inventor, as does South Africa[…]
The revelation that our government might be using spyware called Pegasus to hack into its critics’ phones has started a whole new debate on privacy. The opposition is taking a dig at the ruling party every chance it gets, while the latter is trying to damage control after facing such serious allegations. Amidst the chaos, Read more about How To Check If Your iPhone Is Infected With Pegasus Using MVT[…]
iFixit co-founder and CEO Kyle Wiens has exposed how companies including Apple, Samsung, and Microsoft manipulate the design of their products and the supply chain to prevent consumers and third-party repairers from accessing necessary tools and parts to repair products such as smartphones and laptops. ZDNet Recommends The best old phones to buy Why last Read more about iFixit CEO names and shames tech giants for right to repair obstruction – not sustainable at all[…]
Tech companies have repeatedly reassured the public that trackers used to follow smartphone users through apps are anonymous or at least pseudonymous, not directly identifying the person using the phone. But what they don’t mention is that an entire overlooked industry exists to purposefully and explicitly shatter that anonymity. They do this by linking mobile Read more about Inside the Industry That Unmasks People at Scale: yup your mobile advertising ID isn’t anonymous either[…]
Palo Alto Networks’ global threat intelligence team, Unit 42, has detailed the tactics ransomware group REvil has employed to great impact so far this year – along with an estimation of the multimillion-dollar payouts it’s receiving. […] The group, which provides what security wonks have come to term “Ransomware as a Service” or RAAS, has Read more about Report shines light on REvil’s depressingly simple tactics: Phishing, credential-stuffing RDP servers… the usual[…]
As expected, Google is facing a fresh legal assault regarding its Play Store, the 30 per cent cut it took from developers’ revenues via the software souk, and other rules and restrictions. In an antitrust lawsuit [PDF] filed in a federal district court in San Francisco on Wednesday, 36 US states and commonwealths, plus Washington Read more about Three-dozen US states plus DC sue Google over Play Store’s revenue cut, payment system, and more[…]
A series of Samsung apps that allow customers to control their internet-connected appliances require access to all the phone’s contacts and, in some cases, the phone call app, phone’s location, and camera. Customers have been furious about this for years. On Wednesday, a Reddit user complained that their washing machine app, the Samsung Smart Washer, Read more about Samsung Washing Machine App Requires Access to Your Contacts and Location[…]
iPhone doesn’t even have to connect to the network to mess up. Back in June, security researcher Carl Schou found that when he joined the network “%p%s%s%s%s%n”, his iPhone permanently disabled its wifi functionality. Luckily, this was fixed by resetting all network settings, which erased the villainous wifi name from his phone’s memory. You would Read more about Getting Your iPhone Near This Cursed Network Breaks Its Wifi[…]
A British right to repair law comes into force today, requiring manufacturers to make spares available to both consumers and third-party repair companies. However, despite claiming to cover “televisions and other electronic displays,”‘ the law somehow excludes smartphones and laptops… The European Union introduced a right to repair law back in March, and the Read more about British right to repair law excludes smartphones and computers[…]
[…] The U.S. is dominated by anticompetitive giants in banking, telecom, insurance, health care, air travel, and countless other sectors. And generally, we’ve historically encouraged them by underfunding our regulators, steadily weakening antitrust enforcement, rubber stamping merger after terrible merger, and replacing competent Judges with bobble head dolls. All under the pretense that doing anything Read more about Recent US Antitrust Push Is Weirdly Narrow, Pretends Telecom And Banking Don’t Exist[…]
Ukrainian police have arrested six people, alleged to be members of the notorious Clop* ransomware gang, seizing cash, cars – and a number of Apple Mac laptops and desktops. “It was established that six defendants carried out attacks of malicious software such as ‘ransomware’ on the servers of American and [South] Korean companies,” alleged Ukraine’s Read more about Ukraine police collar six Clop ransomware gang suspects in joint raids with South Korean cops[…]
Techdirt has just written about belated news that the FBI gained access two years ago to the Apple account of Alexandra Elbakyan, the founder of Sci-Hub. This is part of a continuing attempt to stop the widespread sharing of academic papers, mostly paid for by the public, and currently trapped behind expensive paywalls. You might Read more about Redditors Launch A ‘Rescue Mission’ For Embattled Sci-Hub, With The Ultimate Aim Of Building A Decentralized Version[…]
Stock, the Casio W800-H wristwatch ships with dual time modes, multiple alarms, and a stopwatch – useful features for some. However, more is possible if you just know where to look. [Ian] decided to dive under the hood and enable a countdown timer feature hidden from the factory. The hack involves popping open the case Read more about Modding A Casio W800-H With A Countdown Timer – it’s a jumper setting[…]
Well, if you have an iPhone, now you can turn practically anything into a unique, one-of-a-kind digital token. A new app is out that, by its own admission, lets you turn “every idea” into an NFT. It’s called S!NG, and it is the first and only free iOS app designed to let you create as Read more about This New App Lets You Turn Anything and Everything Into an NFT[…]
Amazon reportedly pressured smart-thermostat maker Ecobee to fork over data from its voice-enabled devices even when customers weren’t actively using them. When Ecobee pushed back, the e-commerce giant threatened to box the company out of high-profile selling events like Prime Day or refuse Alexa certification for future devices, according to a Wall Street Journal report Read more about Amazon Strong-arms Small Businesses to Share User Data[…]
[…] WhatsApp representatives told Forbes that the easiest way to protect yourself against this kind of an attack is to make sure you’ve associated an email address with your two-step verification process so the attacker won’t be able to spoof your identity. You can do that right now by pulling up WhatsApp, loading its Settings, Read more about How to Keep Attackers From Locking You Out of WhatsApp[…]
It’s possible for an attacker to completely suspend your WhatsApp account, without any recourse for the individual user, and all they need is your phone number. At the time of writing there’s no solution for this issue. This newly-discovered flaw uses two separate vectors. The attacker installs WhatsApp on a new device and enters your Read more about Your WhatsApp account can be suspended by anyone who has your phone number[…]
Before he lost it all—all $20 billion—Bill Hwang was the greatest trader you’d never heard of. Starting in 2013, he parlayed more than $200 million left over from his shuttered hedge fund into a mind-boggling fortune by betting on stocks. Had he folded his hand in early March and cashed in, Hwang, 57, would have Read more about How Bill Hwang of Archegos Capital Lost $20 Billion in Two Days[…]
Austrian privacy activist Max Schrems has filed a complaint against Google in France alleging that the US tech giant is illegally tracking users on Android phones without their consent. Android phones generate unique advertising codes, similar to Apple’s Identifier for Advertisers (IDFA), that allow Google and third parties to track users’ browsing behavior in order Read more about Google illegally tracking Android users, according to new complaint by Max Schrems[…]
Google will reduce the service fee it charges Android developers from 30 per cent to 15 per cent, though only on the first $1m in Google Play revenue. […] Google’s change of heart follows a similarly structured fee abatement by Apple last year and lawsuits filed recently in the US, the UK, and Australia by Read more about Google halves Android app fee to 15% for lower-earning devs > $1m as monopolist hunters close in[…]
Known as SEER, short for SElf-supERvised, this massive convolutional neural network contains over a billion parameters. If you show it images of things, it will describe in words what it recognizes: a bicycle, a banana, a red-and-blue striped golfing umbrella, and so on. While its capabilities aren’t all that novel, the way it was trained Read more about Facebook uses one billion Instagram photos to build massive object-recognition AI that partly trained itself[…]
After getting $500 per month for two years without rules on how to spend it, 125 people in California paid off debt, got full-time jobs and reported lower rates of anxiety and depression, according to a study released Wednesday. The program in the Northern California city of Stockton was the highest-profile experiment in the U.S. Read more about Results of US ‘Universal Basic Income’ Program? Employment Increased[…]