A Chinese Satellite Seems to Have Collided With a Piece of a Russian Rocket in March — The First Big Space Crash in a Decade
By: Business Insider August 18, 2021 A Chinese satellite mysteriously broke apart in March, scattering into dozens of pieces. Now, a Harvard astronomer has discovered what likely happened: It seems to have collided with a chunk of a Russian rocket. “This looks to be the first major confirmed orbital collision in a decade,” […]
A Company That Designs Jails is Spying On Activists Who Oppose Them
By: Vice August 17, 2021 HDR Inc. is a multi-billion dollar architecture and design firm that has designed over 275 jails and prisons. But designing buildings isn’t the only service the company offers—according to documents obtained through a public records request and provided to Motherboard, the firm has been monitoring activist groups’ social media […]
Millions of Web Camera and Baby Monitor Feeds Are Exposed
By: Wired August 17, 2021 A VULNERABILITY IS lurking in numerous types of smart devices—including security cameras, DVRs, and even baby monitors—that could allow an attacker to access live video and audio streams over the internet and even take full control of the gadgets remotely. What’s worse, it’s not limited to a single manufacturer; it […]
SEC Chief Gary Gensler Details the Risks of US-Listed Chinese Stocks in His Most Direct Warning to Investors Yet
By: Business Insider August 17, 2021 Few US investors know that the Chinese government doesn’t let foreigners own or invest in many of the country’s companies, SEC Chairman Gary Gensler said on Monday in his most direct warning about US-listed Chinese stocks yet. China-based operating companies establish contracts with shell companies in other […]
How Private Is My VPN?
By: The Markup August 16, 2021 For the last seven years, Shannon Morse has been making videos on security and privacy tips on YouTube. That includes reviews of Virtual Private Networks, or VPNs—software that encrypts your network traffic so that internet service providers or people on the same Wi-Fi network as you can’t spy […]
Why No One Really Knows How Bad Facebook’s Vaccine Misinformation Problem Is
By: Vox August 16, 2021 Is Facebook “killing people” by enabling the spread of Covid-19 misinformation, as President Joe Biden said a few weeks ago? Or is the social media company efficiently purging Covid-19 misinformation from its platform and showing millions of people information about where to get vaccinated, as the company argued a day later in […]
Facebook Could Be Forced by UK Watchdog to Sell Gif Creator Giphy
By: The Guardian August 12, 2021 Facebook could be forced to sell gif creation website Giphy after an investigation by the UK competition regulator found its takeover could harm competition among social media companies and the digital advertising market. The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) launched an in-depth investigation earlier this year into Facebook’s acquisition […]
Tencent Curbs on Gaming Time Will Shock Markets But Please Many Parents
By: The Guardian August 10, 2021 China’s regulators are on the march again, pushing one of the country’s most valuable technology companies, Tencent, into announcing fresh curbs designed to limit the time children spend playing its computer games. The announcement may have led to a collapse in Tencent’s shares, but the measures will be eyed […]
White House Science Advisers Call For AI ‘Bill of Rights’
By: The Hill August 10, 2021 Two of the White House’s top science advisers called for an artificial intelligence “bill of rights” in an opinion piece published Friday on Wired. President Biden’s chief science adviser, Eric Lander, and the deputy director for science and society, Alondra Nelson, cautioned of the risks posed by technologies like […]