The Linkielist

Linking ideas with the world

Elon Musk to Resign as Tesla Chairman, Pay 2x $20 Million Fine in SEC Settlement Over Catastrophic ‘420’ Tweet

In August, Tesla CEO Elon Musk set off an entirely preventable and catastrophic chain of events by tweeting that he was “considering taking Tesla private at $420. Funding secured.” Musk provided no financing details, and the Securities and Exchange Commission later determined that he never finalized any kind of deal with the Saudi sovereign wealth Read more about Elon Musk to Resign as Tesla Chairman, Pay 2x $20 Million Fine in SEC Settlement Over Catastrophic ‘420’ Tweet[…]

Facebook Could Face Up to $1.63 Billion Fine for 50m User Hack Under the GDPR

Facebook’s stunning disclosure of a massive hack on Friday in which attackers gained access tokens to at least 50 million accounts—bypassing security measures and potentially giving them full control of both profiles and linked apps—has already stirred the threat of a $1.63 billion dollar fine in the European Union, according to the Wall Street Journal. Read more about Facebook Could Face Up to $1.63 Billion Fine for 50m User Hack Under the GDPR[…]

Resident evil: Inside a UEFI rootkit used to spy on govts, made by you-know-who (hi, Russia)

A rootkit is a piece of software that hides itself on computer systems, and uses its root or administrator-level privileges to steal and alter documents, spy on users, and cause other mischief and headaches. A UEFI rootkit lurks in the motherboard firmware, meaning it starts up before the operating system and antivirus suites run, allowing Read more about Resident evil: Inside a UEFI rootkit used to spy on govts, made by you-know-who (hi, Russia)[…]

DEFCON hackers’ dossier on US voting machine security is just as grim as feared

Hackers probing America’s electronic voting systems have painted an astonishing picture of the state of US election security, less than six weeks before the November midterms. The full 50-page report [PDF], released Thursday during a presentation in Washington DC, was put together by the organizers of the DEF CON hacking conference’s Voting Village. It recaps Read more about DEFCON hackers’ dossier on US voting machine security is just as grim as feared[…]

Facebook Is Giving Advertisers Access to Your Shadow Contact Information – and you can’t find out what that is

Last week, I ran an ad on Facebook that was targeted at a computer science professor named Alan Mislove. Mislove studies how privacy works on social networks and had a theory that Facebook is letting advertisers reach users with contact information collected in surprising ways. I was helping him test the theory by targeting him Read more about Facebook Is Giving Advertisers Access to Your Shadow Contact Information – and you can’t find out what that is[…]

Building your own PC for AI is 10x cheaper than renting out GPUs on cloud, apparently

Jeff Chen, an AI techie and entrepreneur at Stanford University in the US, believes that a suitable machine can be built for about $3,000 (~£2,300) without including tax. At the heart of the beast is an Nvidia GeForce 1080Ti GPU, a 12-core AMD Threadripper processor, 64GB of RAM, and a 1TB SSD card for data. Read more about Building your own PC for AI is 10x cheaper than renting out GPUs on cloud, apparently[…]

Amazon Alexa outage: Voice-activated devices are down in UK and beyond – yay cloud services!

Amazon Alexa devices stopped working in the UK and reportedly in parts of continental Europe this morning, with some users still complaining of intermittent outages at the time of writing. The digital blackout began at around 0800 UK time and though it appeared to be recovering by 09.30, some folk – including Reg staffers – Read more about Amazon Alexa outage: Voice-activated devices are down in UK and beyond – yay cloud services![…]

Google is using AI to predict floods in India and warn users

For years Google has warned users about natural disasters by incorporating alerts from government agencies like FEMA into apps like Maps and Search. Now, the company is making predictions of its own. As part of a partnership with the Central Water Commission of India, Google will now alert users in the country about impending floods. Read more about Google is using AI to predict floods in India and warn users[…]

Hadoop and NoSQL backups timed by AI

Machine learning data management company Imanis Data has introduced an autonomous backup product powered by machine learning. The firm said users can specify a desired RPO (Recovery Point Objective) and its SmartPolicies tech then set up the backup schedules. The tech is delivered as an upgrade to the Imanis Data Management Platform (IDMP) product. SmartPolicies Read more about Hadoop and NoSQL backups timed by AI[…]

Google Chrome Is Now Quietly Forcing You to Log In—Here’s What to Do About It 

Once again, Google has rankled privacy-focused people with a product change that appears to limit users’ options. It’s easy to miss the fact that you’re automatically being logged-in to Chrome if you’re not paying attention. Chrome 69 released to users on September 5, and you likely noticed that it has a different look. But if Read more about Google Chrome Is Now Quietly Forcing You to Log In—Here’s What to Do About It […]

Hey, Microsoft, stop installing third-party apps on clean Windows 10 installs!

Before Windows 10, a clean install of Windows only included the bare essentials a user would need to get started using their PC. That included software built by Microsoft, such as Mail, Paint, and its web browser, and it never included “bloatware” or “trialware” that one might find on hardware purchased from a third-party OEM Read more about Hey, Microsoft, stop installing third-party apps on clean Windows 10 installs![…]

Open-source alt-droid wants to know if it’s still leaking data to Google

/e/, a Google-free fork of Android, reached a milestone this month with its initial ROM release. It’s available for download, so you can kick the tires, with nightly builds delivered via OTA (over the air) updates. El Reg interviewed the project’s leader, Gael Duval, in the summer. Duval launched and led the Linux Mandrake project. Read more about Open-source alt-droid wants to know if it’s still leaking data to Google[…]

Zoho – GSuite competitor – pulled offline after phishing complaints by DNS registrar, millions of people couldn’t work. Love the cloud!

Zoho .com was pulled offline on Monday after the company’s domain registrar received phishing complaints, the company’s chief executive said. The web-based office suite company, which also provides customer relationship and invoicing services to small businesses, tweeted that the site was “blocked” earlier in the day by TierraNet, which administers its domain name. In an email Read more about Zoho – GSuite competitor – pulled offline after phishing complaints by DNS registrar, millions of people couldn’t work. Love the cloud![…]

Cisco Video Surveillance Manager Appliance Default Root Password Vulnerability (again)

A vulnerability in Cisco Video Surveillance Manager (VSM) Software running on certain Cisco Connected Safety and Security Unified Computing System (UCS) platforms could allow an unauthenticated, remote attacker to log in to an affected system by using the root account, which has default, static user credentials. The vulnerability is due to the presence of undocumented, default, static Read more about Cisco Video Surveillance Manager Appliance Default Root Password Vulnerability (again)[…]

2D spray on transparent wireless antennae created

Metals are widely used for antennas; however, their bulkiness limits the fabrication of thin, lightweight, and flexible antennas. Recently, nanomaterials such as graphene, carbon nanotubes, and conductive polymers came into play. However, poor conductivity limits their use. We show RF devices for wireless communication based on metallic two-dimensional (2D) titanium carbide (MXene) prepared by a Read more about 2D spray on transparent wireless antennae created[…]

Windows handwriting recognition on? Then all your typing is stored in plain text on your PC.

If you’re one of the people who own a stylus or touchscreen-capable Windows PC, then there’s a high chance there’s a file on your computer that has slowly collected sensitive data for the past months or even years. This file is named WaitList.dat, and according to Digital Forensics and Incident Response (DFIR) expert Barnaby Skeggs, Read more about Windows handwriting recognition on? Then all your typing is stored in plain text on your PC.[…]

Quantum chicken-or-egg experiment blurs the distinction between before and after

In the everyday world, events occur in a definite order—your alarm clock rings before you wake up, or vice versa. However, a new experiment shows that when fiddling with a photon, it can be impossible to say in which order two events occur, obliterating our common sense notion of before and after and, potentially, muddying Read more about Quantum chicken-or-egg experiment blurs the distinction between before and after[…]

AI’s ‘deep-fake’ vids surge ahead in realism

Researchers from Carnegie Mellon University and Facebook Reality Lab are presenting Recycle-GAN, a generative adversarial system for “unsupervised video retargeting” this week at the European Conference on Computer Vision (ECCV) in Germany. Unlike most methods, Recycle-GAN doesn’t rely on learning an explicit mapping between the images in a source and target video to perform a Read more about AI’s ‘deep-fake’ vids surge ahead in realism[…]

Solid-state battery startup secures backing from several automakers as it claims 2- 3x higher energy capacity, better safety through solid-state

Solid Power is a Colorado-based startup that spun out of a battery research program at the University of Colorado Boulder. The company claims to have achieved a breakthrough by incorporating a high-capacity lithium metal anode in lithium batteries – creating a solid-state cell with an energy capacity “2-3X higher” than conventional lithium-ion. They have already attracted Read more about Solid-state battery startup secures backing from several automakers as it claims 2- 3x higher energy capacity, better safety through solid-state[…]

Article 11, Article 13: EU’s Dangerous Copyright Bill Advances: massive censorship and upload filters (which are impossible) and huge taxes for links.

Members of the European Parliament voted Wednesday to approve a sweeping overhaul of the EU’s copyright laws that includes two controversial articles that threaten to hand more power to the richest tech companies and generally break the internet. Overall, MEPs voted in favor of the EU Copyright Directive with a strong majority of 438 to Read more about Article 11, Article 13: EU’s Dangerous Copyright Bill Advances: massive censorship and upload filters (which are impossible) and huge taxes for links.[…]

You know all those movies you bought from Apple? Um, well, think different: You didn’t. Didn’t you learn that from Amazon in 2009?

Remember when you decided to buy, rather than rent, that movie online? We have some bad news for you – you didn’t. Biologist Anders Gonçalves da Silva was surprised this week to find three movies he had purchased through iTunes simply disappeared one day from his library. So he contacted Apple to find out what Read more about You know all those movies you bought from Apple? Um, well, think different: You didn’t. Didn’t you learn that from Amazon in 2009?[…]

Wow, great invention: Now AI eggheads teach machines how to be sarcastic using Reddit

It’s tricky. Computers have to follow what is being said by whom, the context of the conversation and often some real world facts to understand cultural references. Feeding machines single sentences is often ineffective; it’s a difficult task for humans to detect if individual remarks are cheeky too. The researchers, therefore, built a system designed Read more about Wow, great invention: Now AI eggheads teach machines how to be sarcastic using Reddit[…]