Category: tech

Security researchers at Kaspersky say they have identified a malicious backdoor planted in the popular and long-running Windows disc imaging software, Daemon Tools. The Russian cybersecurity company said on Tuesday that data collected from computers around the world running the Kaspersky antivirus software shows a “widespread” attack is under way, targeting thousands of Windows computers read more

Meta will start using AI to scan photos and videos for visual clues to see if a user is under 13 and should be removed from Facebook and Instagram, the company announced on Tuesday. These visual clues include a person’s height or bone structure, it said. “We want to be clear: this is not facial read more

Education tech giant Instructure has confirmed a data breach affecting students’ private information. The hacking and extortion gang ShinyHunters claimed responsibility for the breach. The hackers claim to have stolen students’ names, their personal email addresses, and messages sent between teachers and students — the same type of data Instructure admitted was stolen. Instructure is read more

In 1985, the Innovative Design Fund placed anad in Scientific American offering up to $10,000 to support clever prototypes for clothing, home decor, and textiles. William Freeman PhD ’92, then an electrical engineer at Polaroid and now an MIT professor, saw it and submitted a novel idea: a three-sided zipper. Instead of fastening pants, it’d read more

When you think of Star Wars, you think of lightsabers. Right? What could be better, from a movie-making standpoint, than a futuristic sword that lets you create awesome fencing duels like in old-time Errol Flynn swashbucklers. (So much better than watching Stormtroopers fire their blasters into walls and ceilings and anything else except their targets.) read more

In December 2024, at the suggestion of a mutual friend, I met with a professional investigator named Tyler Maroney. He told me he was on a quest to discover the identity of Satoshi Nakamoto, the inventor of Bitcoin, and he felt that he had cracked the case. My first thought was, join the club. Literally read more

While testifying on Thursday in federal court, Elon Musk seemed to indicate that his AI lab may have used OpenAI’s models to train xAI’s own. He touched upon the topic while sitting on the witness stand answering cross-examination questions from an OpenAI attorney amid his ongoing legal battle against the ChatGPT-maker. This is the exchange, read more

For anyone who fears their ChatGPT and Codex accounts might be targeted by attackers, OpenAI announced on Thursday that it is adding an optional new level of account protection that adds an extra layer of security. Dubbed Advanced Account Security, the feature enforces strict access controls that would make account takeover attacks very difficult. Such read more

Earlier this week, 9to5Mac‘s Benjamin Mayo reported on an apparent charging issue affecting at least some of Apple’s latest iPhone models. In short, Mayo said that when he attempted to charge his iPhone Air with a USB-C cable just seconds after the device ran out of battery, it failed to turn on and did not read more

The immune system operates at a scale scientists are only just beginning to be able to see. That new view could change how diseases like cancer are tackled. Speaking at WIRED Health on April 16, Daniel Davis, an immunologist at Imperial College London, detailed how researchers are using advanced microscopes to uncover previously invisible dynamics read more

Apple has reportedly abandoned plans for a foldable “iPad Ultra” following years of disappointing sales performance for the iPad Pro. The claim predominantly comes from the Weibo leaker known as “Instant Digital,” who posted the remark in response to a question about whether the ‌iPad‌ would join a rumored “Ultra” series of Apple devices. Instant read more

Like clockwork, Motorola is back with a new set of Razr folding flip phones. The formula is the same as last year, with three phones differing in specs and price: the Razr Ultra, Razr+, and Razr. But alongside these models, Motorola is finally launching its first-ever book-style folding phone, the Razr Fold, which it first read more

When David Becker applied for his dream job as a lawyer at the Department of Justice’s Voting Section, he never thought he would actually get it—not because he was a bad lawyer, but because it was among the most sought-after jobs in the country. “It was one of the most in-demand jobs,” Becker, now the read more

This post is intended to evolve over time. Status July 27th 2024: Our secondary repos have now been migrated to BookStack on CodeBerg, with the GitHub originals archived with links to the equivalent codeberg project. Motivation As time goes on, and as GitHub develops under Microsoft, it feels increasingly uncomfortable to be on the platform.Here read more

The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday heard arguments in a landmark legal case that could redefine digital privacy rights for people across the United States. The case, Chatrie v. United States, centers on the government’s controversial use of so-called “geofence” search warrants. Law enforcement and federal agents use these warrants to compel tech companies, like read more

When Chris Gray sold his Shark Tank-backed scholarship search startup Scholly to Sallie Mae in 2023, he thought he had it all. Now he’s suing the student loan giant for wrongful termination and alleging that it’s selling the data his app collected, which includes personal info on minors, without properly informing users. Gray co-founded the read more

BCI (brain-computer interface) technology — in which neural signals are routed from a person’s head to a computer — was once the stuff of science fiction, but these days the technology represents a competitive corner of the tech industry. One of the companies racing to commercialize BCI is Neurable, which this week announced that it’s read more

Users often search for recipes and travel plans on YouTube to find videos related to their queries. Now, the video platform will offer a new tool to cater to those users’ needs with its introduction of an AI-powered interactive search feature that presents step-by-step results along with a mix of both text and video. Through read more

Snapchat announced on Tuesday that it’s rolling out “AI Sponsored Snaps,” which will allow users to interact directly with brands’ AI agents. Sponsored Snaps are the ads placed directly into the app’s main Chat tab. Until now, users couldn’t interact with these ads, but with the launch of AI Sponsored Ads, they’ll be able to read more