There’s a simple reason why your new smart TV was so affordable: It’s collecting and selling your data
I, For One, Welcome Our New Self-Driving Overlords
Break Them Up
Into a hundred thousand million pieces:
The social-media giant collects intensely personal information from many popular smartphone apps just seconds after users enter it, even if the user has no connection to Facebook, according to testing done by The Wall Street Journal. The apps often send the data without any prominent or specific disclosure, the testing showed.
Social Disease
Via Instapundit;
According to donor records, Facebook contributed $25,000 to Northam’s 2018 Inaugural committee and $5,000 to Herring in 2013.
The company also has been quiet about the $10,000 given to Lt. Gov. Justin Fairfax’s 2018 Inaugural committee. Fairfax has been accused of sexual assault by two women.
They did this while policing your speech.
Related: Biology is banned here.
Break Them Up
Into a hundred thousand million pieces: Google and Apple have allowed for an app that lets Saudi Arabian men track their wives,
Then They Came For The Memes
Joe Rogan with Tim Pool
It’s a long one, so grab a coffee.
Just Brilliant
Your internet-of-shit smart lightbulb is probably storing your wifi password in the clear, ready to be recovered by wily dumpster-divers; Limited Results discovered the security worst-practice during a teardown of a Lifx bulb; and that’s just for starters…
Like The Man Who Killed His Parents
Then begged for mercy on the grounds that he was an orphan.
Learn To Code
"Learn to code" was tweeted at me by a sketchy account. I reported it as abusive behavior as part of targeted harassment. Twitter suspended the account within 20 minutes.
Journalists if they tweet "learn to code" at you don't stay silent, take a moment to report it. https://t.co/RXgqqV2ptw
— Ben Popken (@bpopken) February 1, 2019
His email address is ben.popken@nbcuni.com. Subject line: Learn To Code
It’s Probably Nothing
When biologists synthesize DNA, they take pains not to create or spread a dangerous stretch of genetic code that could be used to create a toxin or, worse, an infectious disease. But one group of biohackers has demonstrated how DNA can carry a less expected threat—one designed to infect not humans nor animals but computers.
In new research they plan to present at the USENIX Security conference on Thursday, a group of researchers from the University of Washington has shown for the first time that it’s possible to encode malicious software into physical strands of DNA, so that when a gene sequencer analyzes it the resulting data becomes a program that corrupts gene-sequencing software and takes control of the underlying computer.
Social Disease
“Cue the death threats and doxxing”
A Facebook video surfaced this week of three members of the Fort McMurray Junior Oil Barons dancing around their dressing room to popular indigenous music. One player was pounding on the lid of a garbage can like a drum.
Covington, Canuck style.
Break Them Up
‘The goal is to automate us’: The combination of state surveillance and its capitalist counterpart means that digital technology is separating the citizens in all societies into two groups: the watchers (invisible, unknown and unaccountable) and the watched.
I, For One, Welcome Our New Self-Driving Overlords
Amazon’s sensor-filled belt solution comes just one month after a robot-involved accident in one of the company’s warehouses resulted in the hospitalization of 24 workers.
Break Them Up
Oh, there’s a reason.
WAR ON MEMES: Everyone's Favorite Pro-Trump Meme Maker Has Been Demonitized By YouTube For Absolutely No Reason https://t.co/89osuiGD69 via @gatewaypundit
— Scott Adams (@ScottAdamsSays) January 18, 2019
The World Is Being Run By Crazy People
And others are finally beginning to notice.
Social Disease
Old tweets reveal hidden secrets
Researchers from the Foundation for Research and Technology in Greece and the University of Illinois found all this out after writing a tool called LPAuditor. The software mines publicly available tweet data that anyone can download from Twitter via its application programming interface (API).
Using the tool, they analyzed the metadata – hidden information about a tweet embedded in the post – to identify users’ homes, workplaces and sensitive places that they visited. In dozens of cases, they were also able to identify the users behind anonymous Twitter accounts.
Break Them Up
Into a hundred thousand million pieces.
We needed to make an example of Damore. Looking for some excuse to fire him, we spied on his phone and computer. We didn’t find anything, although our spying probably made his devices unusably slow, preventing him from organizing support within the company. When we did fire him, our reputation and integrity took a hit, but at least other employees were now afraid to speak up.
(h/t BC)
Social Disease
Dave Rubin and Jordan Peterson leave Patreon over free speech concerns.