Day: December 29, 2019

Russia Claims New Missile is 27 Times Faster Than Sound

“A new intercontinental weapon that can fly 27 times the speed of sound became operational Friday, Russia’s defense minister reported to President Vladimir Putin,” according to the Associated Press: Putin has described the Avangard hypersonic glide vehicle as a technological breakthrough comparable to the 1957 Soviet launch of the first satellite. The new Russian weapon…


36C3: Open Source is Insufficient to Solve Trust Problems in Hardware

With open source software, we’ve grown accustomed to a certain level of trust that whatever we are running on our computers is what we expect it to actually be. Thanks to hashing and public key signatures in various parts in the development and deployment cycle, it’s hard for a third party to modify source code…


Security Camera Startup Wyze Leaked Data on Millions of Customers

An anonymous reader quotes CNET: Security camera startup Wyze has confirmed it suffered a data leak earlier this month that left the personal information for millions of its customers exposed on the internet. No passwords or financial information was exposed, but email addresses, Wi-Fi network IDs and body metrics for 2.4 million customers were left…


How Tech Companies Could Skirt California’s Strict New Privacy Law

Forty million Californians “will soon have sweeping digital-privacy rights stronger than any seen before in the U.S.,” reports the Associated Press, saying the new law taking effect Wednesday “might end up serving as a de facto national standard.” “Early signs of compliance have already started cropping up in the form of ‘Don’t sell my personal…


Security camera maker Wyze exposed personal data for millions – CNET

Startup blames employee error for weeks-long data leak. …read more Source:: CNet


Why Is ‘Rise of Skywalker’ Dividing Critics and Fans?

“After opening 20 percent behind Star Wars: The Last Jedi last weekend, Skywalker has almost caught up with its predecessor as it heads for the $1 billion mark in a fitting end to Disney’s unprecedented domination at the 2019 box office,” writes the Hollywood Reporter. But Forbes senior contributor Paul Tassi notes that critics seem…


Turning Sounds from a Flute Into Sheet Music

Composing music can be quite difficult – after all, you have to keep in mind all of the elements of musical theory, from time signature and key signature to the correct length for all of the notes. A team of students from Cornell University’s Designing with Microcontrollers class developed a solution for this problem by…


Are Government Shutdowns of the Internet Becoming The World’s New Normal?

An anonymous reader quotes CNN: CNN reports that government shutdowns of the internet are becoming the new normal: An ongoing internet blackout in Indian-controlled Kashmir is now the longest ever in a democracy — at more than 135 days — according to Access Now, an advocacy group that tracks internet freedom. Only the autocratic governments…


Superphones, Hyperloops, and Other Tech Predictions That Haven’t Happened (Yet)

Bloomberg looks back at what tech industry titans predicted would be happening “by 2020.” – Here’s what Huawei Technologies Co. said in 2015 predicting a “superphone” by 2020, according to ZDNet: “Inspired by the biological evolution, the mobile phone we currently know will come to life as the superphone,” said Shao Yang, a strategy marketing…


Google/NASA/Maxar Images Reveal This Decade’s Engineering Accomplishments As Seen From Space

USA Today wondered how this decade’s new construction would look from space. “With the help of Maxar, a provider of advanced, space-based technology solutions, Google and NASA, we’ve taken many more steps back — more than 300 miles above Earth to be exact.” As Apple stormed toward becoming one of the most valuable companies on…