Tech Thoughts Net News – Wednesday – October 12, 2016

Spying is the new hacking: Here’s how to fight back;  Crypto Wars: Why the Fight to Encrypt Rages On;  How to Back Up, Restore Your Documents in Windows 10;  Yahoo now accused of locking users into Yahoo Mail ;  Dropbox gets a ton of nifty iOS 10 features;  Five Galaxy Note 7 alternatives;  Baidu Made a Bot to Help You When You’re Sick;  Like it or not, here are ALL your October Microsoft patches – and much more news you need to know.

Spying is the new hacking: Here’s how to fight back – Once upon a time it was much easier to stay safe online; as long as you used an up-to-date antivirus package and were careful how you acted on the internet, you could expect to stay safe. But now things have changed: new forms of malware and viruses appear every single day. Meanwhile the rise of social media means everything from your pet’s name to what you did at the weekend is online and could be exploited by cybercriminals to hack your devices and services. Increasingly cybercriminals are using spying techniques better associated with intelligence agencies to identify relevant information about you and your life and turn that around to attack you.

Crypto Wars: Why the Fight to Encrypt Rages On – Spies use encryption to send secrets, generals use it to coordinate battles, and criminals use it to carry out nefarious activities. Encryption systems are also at work in nearly every facet of modern technology, not just to hide information from criminals, enemies, and spies but also to verify and clarify basic, personal information. The story of encryption spans centuries, and it’s as complicated as the math that makes it work. And new advances and shifting attitudes could alter encryption completely. We talked to several experts in the field to help us understand the many facets of encryption: its history, current state, and what it may become down the road. Here’s what they had to say.

Encrypted communications could have an undetectable backdoor – Researchers warn that many 1024-bit keys used to secure communications on the Internet today might be based on prime numbers that have been intentionally backdoored in an undetectable way.

Five surprises in the latest Windows 10 Insider build and what they mean – Most of the changes in the latest Windows 10 preview release, build 14942, look like minor tweaks. But they point the way to more significant changes to come next year. Here’s what to look out for.

How to Back Up, Restore Your Documents in Windows 10 – Uh, oh. That incredibly critical file you were working on the other day is lost or won’t open. Are you in trouble? Not if you’ve been using Windows 10’s File History. This feature, around since the Windows 8.0 days, automatically saves specific file folders to backup devices, thus allowing you to recover a prior version of a file should it go missing or become corrupted and unusable. Let’s see how it works. First, make sure you have a viable external drive connected to your PC. This could be a USB stick, a full-fledged USB drive, or a network location on a NAS (Network Attached Storage) drive.

Yahoo now accused of locking users into Yahoo Mail – The year is ending terribly for Samsung, but it won’t be alone. Yahoo is on the same boat after it admitted to have “assisted” the US government in spying on its Yahoo Mail users. Matters have gotten so bad that Verizon, who is acquiring Yahoo, is looking into slashing its price by more than half. It isn’t surprising that there would be users eager to jump ship, but reports are coming in claiming that Yahoo is making it nearly impossible to do so. How? By “temporarily” disabling Yahoo Mail’s auto-forwarding feature.

Baidu Made a Bot to Help You When You’re Sick – If you’ve ever tried to diagnose yourself using websites and other online resources, at some point, you’ve probably also fallen into a digital rabbit hole so deep and so terrifying that you might have felt compelled to book the earliest appointment with your doctor. Baidu, the company behind China’s largest search engine, wants to do away with that terror in real-time. Starting today, it’s offering a new, free smartphone app (iOS and Android) that uses artificial intelligence to try and discern whether you’re actually sick or not. If so, it can quickly connect you with a doctor. While it could have a huge impact in China, experts are less certain that the app would catch on in the US, where Baidu eventually plans to launch an English-language version.

Duolingo now has chatbots to help you learn new languages – It’s common advice to new language learners to practice speaking with native speakers of that language. But not everyone might have the luxury of having such people around. In the absence of real humans, popular language learning platform Duolingo is offering the next best thing: chatbots. It is definitely an interesting, and perhaps more useful, twist to an increasingly popular trend that is putting chatty artificial intelligence “persons” inside almost any app that accepts typed or spoken input.

The best Android photo filtering and creative editing apps – Want to go above and beyond simple photo touchup? These apps will put powerful editing tools right on your smartphone or tablet.

Which apps and services work with Google Home? – Google Home is part of a new batch of new hardware that’s all tied together with Google services and the Google Assistant. So while the underlying technology is interesting, it’s how much you can do that will determine how compelling this will be for everyday use. Here’s the current list of supported apps, which Google of course hopes to grow as more third-party developers and services jump on board.

Dropbox gets a ton of nifty iOS 10 features – When Apple formally started rolling out iOS 10 to users, dozens of apps rode the wave to take advantage of the hype and craze. Dropbox, however, bid its time and for good measure. Now it is unleashing a flood of new features taking advantage of the latest iOS version, from being able to share files directly from inside iMessage to, amusingly, being able to watch a video stored on Dropbox while you try to be productive at work.

Amazon Music Unlimited debuts with discounts for Prime members, cheap “Echo-only” plan – Rumors have been swirling around Amazon’s plans to launch its own, standalone music streaming service, and now those reports have been proven out: the company is today announcing the launch of Amazon Music Unlimited. This new, on-demand streaming service offers access to tens of millions of songs, and is available for $7.99 per month for Prime members, or $9.99 per month for non-Prime members. Amazon has also launched a “for Echo” subscription plan that lets you listen only on its connected speakers for just $3.99 per month.

4 little-known streaming music services you should try right now – Believe it or not, Pandora and Spotify aren’t the Internet’s only music sources. Like indie radio stations, these smaller services fly under the radar — but often deliver something truly special.

Netgear Arlo Pro is a smart, wireless and weatherproof HD security camera – Netgear has introduced a new security camera called the Arlo Pro, an offering the company bills as the ‘world’s most advanced” wireless, weatherproof and high-definition smart security camera for homes. That’s a lot of promises to pack into a small device, but Netgear appears to do so gracefully, offering a robust set of features in a relatively small and attractive package. Among its many features is total wireless functionality, as well as two-way audio support, night vision, advanced motion detection, and more.

Samsung sending out fireproof return boxes for the Note 7 – XDA-Developers reports that Samsung has begun sending out the return kits to customers who have gotten in touch about returning their phone. The return kit includes three boxes and a static shielding bag. The Note 7 is supposed to be slipped into the bag and then enclosed in box after box. It’s the outermost box that’s most interesting: it’s lined with ceramic fiber paper, which is capable of handling extreme heat.

Five Galaxy Note 7 alternatives – It would seem that the Galaxy Note 7 just can’t put its problems behind it. With Samsung rumored to be halting production on the handset after reports of a fresh round of battery problems and all of the major US carriers now offering to swap the phone out for something different, Galaxy Note 7 owners are in a tough spot when it comes to selecting a new phone. To help make the transition a little smoother, here are five handsets (in no particular order) you can pick to replace your Galaxy Note 7.

Sprint to Offer 1M Low-Income Students Free Devices, Data – The Internet is a blessing to many a school-aged kid trying to get through the night’s homework assignment, but what if your home has no Internet access? It happens all too often in poorer neighborhoods, but Sprint’s new initiative will provide 1 million high school students with free devices and wireless connections. The 1Million Project is a multi-year plan to connect low-income US high school students lacking a reliable source of Internet access at home. The pilot program is set to launch in January in seven to 10 markets, where students will receive a free smartphone, tablet, laptop, or hotspot device and 3GB of high-speed LTE data per month—for up to four years.

Facebook launches Workplace, targets business users with new look – After an 18-month beta program, Facebook officially launched Workplace, in hopes of changing how professionals collaborate online.

3 ways to dashboard-mount your smartphone – If you’re driving a car, you shouldn’t be using your phone. There, I said it. Unfortunately, almost no one heeds this advice, myself included. Because maps must be viewed, podcasts must be played, text messages must be glanced at (but never responded to, unless it’s by voice) and so on. But let’s face it: that’s insanely dangerous. It’s really hard to not use your phone while driving. But it’s not hard to be a little smarter about it, which starts with mounting your phone on your dashboard or windshield.

Security:

Odinaff Trojan attacks banks and more, monitoring networks and stealing credentials – New Trojan is suspected to be linked to the Carbanak hacking campaign — and is potentially very lucrative for criminals, warn Symantec researchers.

Second group of hackers found also targeting SWIFT users – A second hacking group is also trying to rob banks by exploiting the SWIFT money transfer system, following an $81 million heist in February that used a similar approach.

Internet of Things Malware Has Apparently Reached Almost All Countries on Earth – The malware that powered one of the worst denial of service cyberattacks of the last few years has infected internet-connected devices all over the world, reaching as many as 177 countries, according to security researchers. At the beginning of this month, a cybercriminal released the source code of the malware that powered one of the worst-ever zombie armies, or botnet, made of Internet of Things. The release of the malware, known as Mirai, gave cybercriminals with minimal skills a new tool to launch cyberattacks. It also gave internet defenders and security researchers a way track down the bad guys’ activities and map their armies of hacked devices.

Adobe on patch parade to march out 83 bugs – Adobe has patched 83 vulnerabilities in its Reader, Acrobat, and Flash offerings including remote code execution holes. The former apps soaked up 71 patches centred on use-after-free, memory corruption, and buffer overflow vulnerabilities that lead to code execution. A dozen remote code execution flaws are plugged in Flash. “These updates address critical vulnerabilities that could potentially allow an attacker to take control of the affected system,” Adobe says in its bulletin. Windows and Mac apps are affected by the largest patch run from Adobe since May when it dropped patches for 91 vulnerabilities.

Like it or not, here are ALL your October Microsoft patches – Microsoft is kicking off a controversial new security program this month by packaging all of its security updates into a single payload. The October security release introduces Redmond’s new policy of bundling all security bulletins as one download. While more convenient for end users, who now get just one bundle, the move will irk many administrators, who had preferred to individually test and apply each patch to avoid compatibility problems. In total, ten bulletins have been bundled into the Patch Tuesday payload:

2017 cybercrime trends: Expect a fresh wave of ransomware and IoT hacks – This year companies were rocked by over 90 million cyberattacks. In 2017 the number could double. Cybersecurity expert Sameer Dixit explains how new innovation leads to increased vulnerability.

Cyberattackers hack UN nuclear power plant – The successful hacking attempt was followed by an attempt to steal ingredients for dirty bombs.

Company News:

Amazon is planning to open grocery stores for its Amazon Fresh customers – The grocery stores — which the company has been rumored to be working on for over a year —would be an expansion of Amazon’s existing Fresh grocery delivery service. The stores would be exclusive to Fresh customers, which is available for Prime members in select cities at a monthly fee of $15 on top of the annual $99 Prime cost. In addition the the actual grocery stores, Amazon is also reportedly planning drive-in curbside locations where Amazon Fresh customers can pick up their online deliveries.

Samsung slashes profit forecast by a third following Galaxy Note 7 debacle – Samsung issued earnings guidance last week that suggested the calamitous Galaxy Note 7 recall wouldn’t have a major impact on the company’s bottom line, but the company just released a statement adjusting its forecast significantly. Operating profit for the third quarter of 2016 is now estimated to come in at 5.2 trillion won ($4.6 billion), down 33 percent from the previous figure, while revenue expectations have been slashed by 2 trillion won to 47 trillion ($41.8 billion). Earnings of 5.2 trillion won would represent the first year-on-year profit decline for Samsung in a year.

FCC hits Comcast with record cable company fine over billing practices – Comcast is being fined $2.3 million for billing customers for products that they never ordered. The fine was announced this morning as part of a settlement with the Federal Communications Commission, which says this is “the largest civil penalty” it’s ever issued a cable operator. Most of the issue arose over a practice called “negative option billing,” where Comcast would begin charging customers if they didn’t actively decline or cancel a service. The commission says this occurred with premium cable channels and DVRs, among other products; in some cases, customers said they were billed despite specifically declining the product or service.

Twitter said to still be in buyout talks with Salesforce – The cloud computing company hasn’t bowed out yet, according to the New York Times, despite investors’ apparent disapproval.

Games and Entertainment:

The 20 best free Android games to play right now – It’s increasingly rare to see a new Android game with a price tag, but not all free games are built alike. The Play Store has a ton of great games you can snag without spending a penny, and we’ve collected our 20 current favorites within. Some of these may have ads or limitations, but those small annoyances don’t disguise the immense fun you can have without being forced to pay a thing. Grab a bunch of them!

Gears of War 4 is now out on Xbox One, Windows 10 – It’s not yet be the season for gaming or buying new games, but, for a true-blooded gamer, there really are no seasons. Heralding that season, Microsoft Studios and The Coalition, not Epic Games, have pushed the button to launch Gears of War 4 into the hands of fans. Technically the fifth installment in the acclaimed franchise, Gears of War 4 takes players 25 years past Gears of War 3. And the storyline isn’t the only future thing either, with a gameplay that embraces Microsoft’s shiny new cross-play feature.

Halloween is coming! Stream these gems to get an early start on your monster mash – October has arrived. Monster month is here. And there’s no shortage of horrific movies to stream, to celebrate, and to scare away unwanted spirits. To start, we have one of the scariest vampire movies ever made—despite its being nearly a century old—as well as one of the spookiest and most underrated ghost movies of recent years. We have a monster movie from the early 1980s, a restored, creepy-crawly classic from the mid-1980s, a 1990s effort by an acclaimed horror author, and then a trilogy devoted to horror films watched on videocassettes during that time period. For those looking for lighter-hearted fare, we have a gory, ultra-smart spoof of “dead teenager” movies, as well as a warmhearted romantic comedy with ghosts.

COD: Infinite Warfare, Modern Warfare Remastered need 130GB of free space – Last week, a tidbit of info surfaced suggesting gamers will need 130GB of free hard drive space to install Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare Remastered. Some, understandably, have balked at the figure, hoping it is incorrect. Put simply, it’s not. At least not according to a new FAQ page Activision has published for the two games, which says the 130GB requirement is a high-end estimate, one that covers future map releases and game updates as well as the games themselves.

Skyrim Special Edition PC requirements revealed – We’re just a couple of weeks out from the release of Bethesda‘s Skyrim Special Edition, and like clockwork, the company has released a list of minimum and recommended PC requirements. Obviously, since this version is getting something of a graphics overhaul, it’ll require a fair amount more power than its predecessor, despite the fact that the original version of Skyrim was at least somewhat friendly to those playing with lower-end hardware.

Off Topic (Sort of):

Google is running home page ads pushing people to get registered to vote – Google is upping its efforts at getting its U.S. users registered to vote, via a pop-up ad that now appears directly on the desktop home page. The company has historically made an effort to help web users get registered to vote and find answers to their voting-related questions by placing instant answers in its Search results. That has continued this year, as voter searches were redirected to answers about the registration process, deadlines, poll hours and more. However, adding a pop-up on the home page is a much more forceful effort on the search giant’s part in terms of increasing the number of registered voters.

Behold, the first drone with Intel outside – The Falcon 8+ system is a complete package designed for “industrial inspection, surveying, and mapping,” and is built around an octocopter manufactured by Intel subsidiary Ascending Technologies. The drone’s rotors are arranged in AscTec’s patented V-formation, and the craft can reach speeds of up to 35 miles per hour — faster than most amateur drones. Its makers promise all sorts of features designed to appeal to professional pilots, including back-up batteries and communication systems built into the drone itself. The system also ships with the Intel Cockpit, a weatherproof controller with twin joysticks and an integrated Intel tablet, with the whole system ready to fly right out of the box.

AscTec

Five years of observations from tandem satellites produce 3D world map of unprecedented accuracy – A pair of satellites operating in tandem for five years have produced a depth map of the planet so exact you could theoretically zoom down to street level and tell an adult from a kid, or spot a breaking wave at Malibu. The immense database — some 2.6 petabytes — is available for free to researchers.

2,200 years ago in Turkey, this disturbing rental agreement was inscribed in stone – Carved into a 1.5 meter-long marble stele, the document goes into great detail about the property and its amenities. We learn that it’s a tract of land that was given to the Neos, a group of men aged 20-30 associated with the city’s gymnasium. In ancient Greece, a gymnasium wasn’t just a place for exercise and public games—it was a combination of university and professional training school for well-off citizens. Neos were newbie citizens who often had internship-like jobs in city administration or politics. The land described in the lease was given to the Neos by a wealthy citizen of Teos, in a gift that was likely half-generosity, half-tax writeoff. Because the land contained a shrine, it was classified as a “holy” place that couldn’t be taxed. Along with the land, the donor gave the Neos all the property on it, including several slaves.

Here’s the 58-line rental agreement, written literally in stone.

Nightingale blankets your bedroom in customized white noise – A new product called Nightingale aims to eliminate your nighttime disturbances using a ‘blanket’ of sound that drowns out unwanted ambient noises and things like tinnitus without disturbing your sleep. The company behind the product, Cambridge Sound Management, bills the device as a smart home sleep system — one that involves two components, each that plug into a wall outlet in your bedroom. The devices can produce 15 different sound ‘blankets’ for different scenarios.

The new art of war: How trolls, hackers and spies are rewriting the rules of conflict – Cyberwar isn’t going to be about hacking power stations. It’s going to be far more subtle, and more dangerous.

Something to think about:

“The nice thing about standards is that there are so many of them to choose from.”

–      Andrew S. Tanenbaum

In Pursuit of Freedom – The Pushback Continues:

ACLU exposes Facebook, Twitter for feeding surveillance company user data – The American Civil Liberties Union on Tuesday outed Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram for feeding a Chicago-based company their user streams—a feed that was then sold to police agencies for surveillance purposes.

After the disclosure, the social media companies said they stopped their data firehouse to Chicago-based Geofeedia. In a blog post, the ACLU said it uncovered the data feeds as part of a public records request campaign of California law enforcement agencies. Geofeedia touts how it helped police track unrest during protests.

In one document, Geofeedia hailed its service because it paid for Twitter’s “firehose” and because it is the “only social media monitoring tool to have a partnership with Instagram.”

“Geofeed Streamer is unique to Geofeedia and has numerous uses (Ie: Live Events, Protests—which we covered Ferguson/Mike Brown nationally with great success, Disaster Relief, Etc),” said one document (PDF) that Geofeedia sent to a police agency, which was then forwarded to the ACLU.

Following the ACLU post, Twitter tweeted, “Based on information in the @ACLU’s report, we are immediately suspending @Geofeedia’s commercial access to Twitter data.”

Nicole Ozer, an ACLU civil liberties director in California, said, “The ACLU shouldn’t have to tell Facebook or Twitter what their own developers are doing. The companies need to enact strong public policies and robust auditing procedures to ensure their platforms aren’t being used for discriminatory surveillance.”

The ACLU said that “after we reported our findings to the companies, Instagram cut off Geofeedia’s access to public user posts, and Facebook has cut its access to a topic-based feed of public user posts.”

Geofeedia, which did not respond for comment, says it has more than 500 customers, including the Denver Police Department. That agency recently signed a $30,000 annual deal with the company. The money came from the agency’s “confiscation” fund. The department’s intelligence agency’s top brass wrote that it would allow cops to analyze and respond in real time to “social media content from anywhere in the world.”

Facebook, Instagram, Twitter Block Tool For Cops To Surveil You On Social Media – On Tuesday, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of California announced that, after the organization obtained revealing documents through public records access requests, Facebook and Instagram have cut off data access to a company that sells surveillance products for law enforcement. Twitter has also curbed the surveillance product’s access.

The product, called Geofeedia, is used by law enforcement to monitor social media on a large scale, and relies on social media sites’ APIs or other means of access. According to one internal email between a Geofeedia representative and police, the company claimed their product “covered Ferguson/Mike Brown nationally with great success,” in reference to to the fatal police shooting of a black teenager in Missouri in 2014, and subsequent protests.

“Our location-based intelligence platform enables hundreds of organizations around the world to predict, analyze, and act based on real-time social media signals,” the company’s website reads.

According to the ACLU, Instagram provided Geofeedia access to its API; Facebook gave access to a data feed called the Topic Feed API, which presents users with a ranked list of public posts; and Twitter provided Geofeedia, through an intermediary, with searchable access to its database of public tweets. Instagram and Facebook terminated Geofeedia’s access on September 19, and Twitter announced on Tuesday that it had suspended Geofeedia’s commercial access to Twitter data.

Cory Doctorow says fight against DRM laws is more important than his blogging – Cory Doctorow, the popular science fiction author and journalist blogger, says he will be writing a lot less in order to focus on his digital activism work in fighting Digital Rights Management (DRM) laws alongside the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF).

He was speaking at a recent event at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) Artist Talks series, on the topic of how museums and libraries can “shape conversations about civic participation and cultural citizenship.”

He said that museums and libraries employ lots of highly skilled archivists and that they should be taught some software engineering skills to help take their work into digital realms.

Much of his SFMOMA talk, however, was about current copyright laws and the danger they pose to democracy and to basic rights such as expectations of privacy and protection from government surveillance.

He warned that the Internet of Things and new electronics products such as a connected smart rectal thermometer would allow the government to spy inside our bodies.

He says government surveillance is tightly linked with DRM laws. People can be jailed for five years for disabling DRM systems, and can be prosecuted if they share such information. This bars researchers from discovering security holes that could be exploited by criminal organizations or or foreign states.

Tech Thoughts Net News – Monday – October 10, 2016

Why an unhackable mobile phone is a complete marketing myth;  How to stop failing Windows Updates from bothering you;  Infographic: How to identify and avoid phishing attacks;  How to encrypt your Facebook messages;  Google Pixel phone: The smart person’s guide;  What To Do If Your Smartphone Battery Is Overheating;  The Best Tablets of 2016;  These 5 SMART errors help you predict your hard drive’s death – and much more news you need to know.

Why an unhackable mobile phone is a complete marketing myth – Consider this: The smartphone in your pocket is 10 times more powerful than the fastest multi-million dollar supercomputers of just 20 years ago. There are tens of millions of lines of software in that phone of yours. There are hundreds of apps written by more than one million developers, some of whom are hackers, and some of whom are just incompetent at security. And then there are chips in your phone that run sophisticated software, from companies located in countries all around the world, all of which have security bugs. The complexity is mind-boggling — and so are all the security vulnerabilities that exist and will be found in the future. In short, anyone who claims to sell an “unhackable phone” is either ignorant or lying.

Google Pixel phone: The smart person’s guide – Our comprehensive guide covers the origin of the Google Pixel phone, its specifications and features, and what it means for Google’s mobile strategy.

Google Assistant: The smart person’s guide – This comprehensive guide covers the history behind Google’s AI-powered Google Assistant, its features, and what it means for the future of Google’s business.

Microsoft’s new Windows 10 beta build improves touchpads, updates Photos, and stabilizes your PC – While Windows 10 is designed for a range of hardware, more modern, powerful PCs will benefit from reliability improvements in the new Windows 10 Insider build 14942, released Friday. The new Insider build for the Fast ring includes a laundry list of tweaks and new changes, but the most important are some under-the-hood improvements that Microsoft promises will help improve the reliability of PCs with over 3.5GB of memory. Microsoft’s other updates include an extension of the Active Hours period, improving the touchpad, and an update to the Photos app.

How to stop failing Windows Updates from bothering you – Microsoft’s show or hide updates troubleshooter is a handy tool for those times when you need to say “no” to Windows 10’s mandatory updates.

How to Use and Tweak Your Windows 10 Lock Screen – The first item that greets you when you fire up Windows 10 is the Lock screen. Clicking or tapping on it brings you to the sign-in screen where you log in to Windows. Yes, the Lock screen seems unnecessary, but it carries with it some tidbits that can be useful before you even launch Windows.

Windows 10’s big Microsoft Paint refresh: Now you get 3D objects, stickers, new tools – Details of a new Windows 10 Paint app have leaked ahead of Microsoft’s supposed all-in-one Surface launch later this month.

How to encrypt your Facebook messages with Secret Conversations – Facebook’s new encrypted messaging feature, Secret Conversations, is now live for everyone on Android and iOS.

Samsung halts production of the Galaxy Note 7 – Following reports that replacement models of the Note 7 also suffered from the battery flaws that led to the initial recall, Samsung reportedly has stopped production of its latest phone.

What To Do If Your Smartphone Battery Is Overheating – As Samsung works to replace millions of Galaxy Note 7 devices amid reports of overheating and exploding batteries, we were curious: What should you do if your smartphone starts to overheat, smoke, or, worse, actually catch fire? So we reached out once again to battery expert Dr. Donald R. Sadoway, the John F. Elliott Professor of Materials Chemistry at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, for an answer. Sadoway previously us helped explain the science behind exploding batteries.

The Best Tablets of 2016 – Whether you’re looking for an Android, Apple, or Windows tablet, here’s what to consider, along with our top-rated slates.

Prisma Now Lets You Turn Videos Into Works of Art – The Prisma app arrived this summer to turn your photos into works of digital art, and now it’s doing the same for your videos. With the latest version of the iOS app, users can choose a saved file from the gallery, or shoot up to 15 seconds of content through the Prisma camera. Then watch as your clip is transformed using any of the nine available artist filters. “Turn your memories into moving artworks using unique video styles,” the App Store description says.

Five budget and bookkeeping apps to help SMBs make the most of the new fiscal year – It’s October, and that means it’s already 2017 for a lot of businesses. It can be hard for SMBs to manage finances, but it doesn’t have to be: Here are five apps that can help make FY2017 a breeze.

These 5 SMART errors help you predict your hard drive’s death – Online backup service Backblaze frequently provides interesting storage analysis based on hard drive statistics gathered from its data center. Now the company’s talking about how it determines if a hard drive is likely to die, another return to a topic broached in 2014. If you’re not familiar with SMART it stands for Self-Monitoring, Analysis, and Reporting Technology. It’s a self-analysis feature built into modern hard drives. The catch is you usually need third-party software to retrieve your hard drive’s SMART report—though you can also fetch the report via the command line. The five key SMART errors Backblaze tracks are the following:

The Windows weakness no one mentions: Speech recognition – Microsoft has buried dictation capabilities within Windows for a decade. Isn’t it time that Microsoft put speech recognition front and center as a productivity assistant for Microsoft Office?

Google Chrome soon won’t be such a burden your computer – New version of the browser won’t take up as much memory, especially on mobile devices, Google programmers promise.

22 Hidden Facebook Features Only Power Users Know – Facebook has been around for awhile, but there are probably a few tricks you don’t know about.

Security:

Infographic: How to identify and avoid phishing attacks – A recently-published infographic from Digital Guardian can help your employees recognize and steer clear of phishing, spear phishing, and social media attacks.

Australians fail to keep their smartphones secure despite dramatic rise in mobile malware – AUSTRALIANS are targeted by up to 100 malware threats per hour on their smartphones and yet two thirds admit they do not have any security software on their phones. New research released today shows that 14 million Aussies do not bother with extra security steps on their smartphones despite five per cent having had their phones infected by malicious malware in the past quarter. The national survey conducted by Intel Security to launch Stay Smart Online Week found that 60 per cent of Australians view their smartphones as “priceless” and more than a third would rather have their wallet stolen than have a thief take their smartphone. The survey found particular risks for those who use their work phones at home, with nearly four in ten parents admitting they hand over their work devices to their kids to play with. (recommended by Mal C.)

Remove ransomware infections from your PC using these free tools – A how-to on finding out what ransomware is squatting in your PC — and how to get rid of it.

Serious security: Three changes that could turn the tide on hackers – The state of tech security is currently so dire that it feels like anything you have ever stored on a computer, or a company or government has ever stored about you, has already been hacked into by somebody. So where did it all go wrong? Building secure systems is hard, especially when the security is being bolted on afterwards, as is often the case. And security is expensive and hard to justify as it doesn’t come with a visible return on investment, making it easier to skimp on when times are hard.

Russia deliberately interfering with election, US says – It’s official: The White House says Russia has been conducting a broad campaign to interfere with US elections. This included hacking into the computers of the Democratic National Committee and other agencies and political officials. “These thefts and disclosures are intended to interfere with the US election process,” the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and the Department of Homeland Security said in a joint statement Friday. “Such activity is not new to Moscow — the Russians have used similar tactics and techniques across Europe and Eurasia, for example, to influence public opinion there.”

U.S. could use sanctions to punish Russia for election hacking – The U.S. response to election-related hacks that the Obama administration now blames on the Russian government could include sanctions against that country. The administration has said that it has a range of options, including economic sanctions, to respond to Russian cyber attacks. On Friday, a Republican lawmaker said he would propose legislation to move those sanctions forward.

We’re not going to beat cybercrime in our lifetime says ex-FBI cyber chief – But we still need to proactively hunt down attackers or risk a “failure for future generations” says Shawn Henry.

Company News:

Apple v. Samsung heads to Supreme Court: What you need to know – The biggest patent case to hit the modern tech world is back again. Apple and Samsung will appear before the US Supreme Court on Tuesday to argue why their opponent was wrong when it came to a patent case from 2012. This is the first time a design patent case has been examined by the Supreme Court since the 1800s. A decision by the court could have a ripple effect across the technology industry and ultimately affect the gadgets you buy. What’s at question is how much money one company has to pay for copying the designs of another. Samsung says an Apple victory would stifle innovation. Apple argues that a Samsung win would weaken the protections afforded to new creations.

Three Law Firms Join iPhone 6 Plus ‘Touch Disease’ Lawsuit Against Apple – There is increasing pressure on Apple to explain why it’s ignored the fact that touchscreens on thousands of iPhone 6 Plus devices have stopped working, leaving consumers on the hook to replace devices that have a fundamental engineering flaw. Lawyers who filed a class action lawsuit against the company in California earlier this fall have signed on three additional law firms to support their case, and an additional class action lawsuit related to the issue has been filed against Apple in Utah.

Microsoft schedules its Fall hardware event for October 26 – The invitations are out: Microsoft will hold its Fall hardware launch on Oct. 26 in New York City. Expect Windows 10, Surface, and some gaming news.

Oracle says it’ll walk from NetSuite deal if shareholders balk – T. Rowe Price is one institutional shareholder that wants a higher price for NetSuite. Oracle is extending its tender offer for NetSuite until November 4, or it’ll walk.

Tesla to unveil “unexpected” new product October 17 – Tesla will unveil something on Monday October 17, according CEO and founder Elon Musk. It’ll be a new product, he said in a Tweet on Sunday, which will be “unexpected by most,” and which will be separate from a Tesla/SolarCity product unveiling on the 28th. Musk previously teased the October 28 event, saying it would include the unveiling of joint products from both the electric car and the solar energy companies, including a solar roof, along with an integrated second generation of the Tesla Powerwall energy storage solution, and a Tesla EV charger.

Games and Entertainment:

Halloween is coming! Stream these gems to get an early start on your monster mash – Here’s a fine collection of chilling monster and ghost movie recommendations, as well as a few favorites for the non-witching hour.

Gears of War 4 (PC) review: Passing the torch – The long time Xbox flagship finally lands on PCs.

EVE: Valkyrie arrives for PlayStation VR on October 13 – CCP Games has announced that EVE: Valkyrie will be available for the PlayStation VR starting on October 13. Following that launch, the studio will hold a double experience points weekend from October 14 to October 17, giving existing players and those new to the game the opportunity to level up quickly. The double experience points will be available to PC gamers, as well, not just those playing the PS VR version of the title.

Off Topic (Sort of):

6 biological strategies to help your business last for 100 years – Businesses are disappearing faster today than ever before. Here are some resilience and adaptivity tricks you can adopt from biology to help your business achieve long-term success.

Is sitting really the new smoking? An in-depth discussion with the experts – A new advisory from the American Heart Association reveals that anyone who sits for hours each day is at risk of developing a variety of health issues. Find out just how dangerous it can be.

Electronic stick-on notes make paper Post-its obsolete – Post-it and other sticky notes that you can quickly scribble a note on are great, and that’s probably why they’re not obsolete yet. Yes, you can set a reminder on your phone or tablet; it’s easy to sweep those notifications away, though, and they’re just not the same as a piece of yellow paper on your display or fridge. This could all change soon enough, though, thanks to the recent showcasing of an electronic sticky note powered by solar.

Something to think about:

“Men, it has been well said, think in herds; it will be seen that they go mad in herds, while they only recover their senses slowly, and one by one.”

–      Charles Mackay

In Pursuit of Freedom – The Pushback Continues:

FCC Moves to Let You Control How ISPs Use Your Data – FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler today formally circulated a proposal intended to give Internet users more control over how ISPs use their personal information.

ISPs are “collecting information about us every time we go online,” Wheeler said in a blog post. “The problem is, there are currently no rules in place outlining how ISPs may use and share their customers’ personal information.”

Wheeler first floated a plan for stricter oversight of ISP customer data in March, and today’s proposal takes into account the public comments the agency has received on the subject since then.

“Based on the extensive feedback we’ve received, I am proposing new rules to provide consumers increased choice, transparency and security online. I have shared this proposal with my colleagues and the full Commission will consider these proposed privacy rules at our upcoming monthly meeting on October 27,” Wheeler said.

Probe cops’ Stingray phone masts, senators tell US comms watchdog – A group of US Senators has asked the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to investigate concerns that police stingray devices are causing illegally high levels of interference to wireless networks.

In a letter addressed to FCC chairman Tom Wheeler, Senators Bernie Sanders (I‑VT), Ron Wyden (D‑OR), Al Franken (D‑MN), Sherrod Brown (D‑OH), Elizabeth Warren (D‑MA), Ed Markey (D‑MA), Jeff Merkley (D‑OR), Tammy Baldwin (D‑WI), Tom Udall (D‑NM), Chris Coons (D‑DE), and Martin Heinrich (D‑NM) all asked the commission to determine whether the use of the phone tower simulators is preventing local communities from being able to properly use their phones.

The concern, say the senators, is that by relying on Stingrays for long-term surveillance, police are violating FCC provisions on harmful radio interference.

“Reliable access to telecommunications services is vital to Americans’ ability to communicate and successfully engage in today’s economy, and it is the FCC’s responsibility to ensure that communications services are available to Americans of all backgrounds,” the letter reads.

The interference issue has been noted in the past by community groups. Because Stingrays impersonate functioning cell phone towers, nearby devices – both those of the targeted individuals and law-abiding citizens – connect to the fake towers. This, critics argue, can create a service disruption when the fake towers are used for a prolonged period.

The senators go on to note that minority communities in particular are suffering from the problem, as police have been more likely to use stingrays in those areas.

Thanks To Encryption, Governments Need Companies Like Yahoo To Spy on Users – Last year, the US government asked Yahoo to scan all its customers emails to look for the digital “signature” of certain method of communication used by a terrorist group.

The secret scanning tool rocked the tech world and that of privacy and anti-surveillance activists this week, shocked by how broad the request was, and the fact that it had kept under wraps. Until Reuters reported its existence this week, the tool remained a secret not just to the public, but also to most people at Yahoo, including the security team, which caught it and thought it was a sophisticated and dangerous piece of malware installed by hackers, as reported by Motherboard on Friday.

In an age where the FBI asked Apple to unlock the iPhone of a dead terrorist, and countless top secret documents revealed the vast surveillance powers of the NSA, asking Yahoo to use a scanning tool that former employees defined as a “buggy” and a “poorly designed” “backdoor” or “rootkit,” was an unusual request as it wasn’t targeted—Yahoo was essentially looking through the whole haystack looking for a few needles—and the company apparently didn’t fight back.

But such a request is a perfect example of how the rise of encryption technologies have changed the face of government surveillance. Before large tech companies such as Google and Yahoo turned on default encryption across their services, including email—in the process protecting their customers data as it travelled from their computers to the company’s servers, as well as when the data travelled through the internet—the NSA could’ve gone through users’ data without having to knock on Yahoo’s door.

Tech Thoughts Net News – Friday – October 7, 2016

Best second-screen apps for watching Major League Baseball;  How to enable two-step authentication in Dropbox;  $300 (or less) laptops for work and play;  Spotify ads slipped malware onto PCs and Macs;  Google Pixel phone: The smart person’s guide;  Facebook rolls out encryption for Messenger, but it’s not as private as you think;  10 best smartphones for the 2016 holiday season;  Battlefield 1, Call of Duty lead the way in Nielsen’s most anticipated games – and much more news you need to know.

Ed Bott: Microsoft releases fix for Windows 10 cumulative update issues – Six days after delivering a failed Windows 10 update, Microsoft has offered a fix-it script and an explanation.

Best second-screen apps for watching Major League Baseball – Major League Baseball’s playoff season is in full swing. Whether you’re in the stands or on the couch, our guide to the best second-screen apps will enable you to make the most of your experience.

Facebook rolls out encryption for Messenger, but it’s not as private as you think – Facebook recently enabled end-to-end encryption for all Facebook Messenger users with an opt-in program called Secret Conversations. Here’s what it means and how to use it.

How to enable two-step authentication in Dropbox – Concerned about the security of your Dropbox account? For an added layer of protection, follow this process of setting up two-step authentication in Dropbox.

$300 (or less) laptops for work and play – Not every wants to throw down thousands of dollars for a new laptop. Here are a handful of systems, all priced under $300.

Lenovo Ideapad 100S – Tech specs:

11.6-inch HD LED Glossy (1366×768) display

Intel Atom Z3735F quad-core CPU

Intel HD graphics

Up to 2 GB RAM

32GB storage

Dolby Advanced Audio

Windows 10

Price: $160

Google Pixel phone: The smart person’s guide – Our comprehensive guide covers the origin of the Google Pixel phone, its specifications and features, and what it means for Google’s mobile strategy.

10 best smartphones for the 2016 holiday season – Now that Google has announced the Pixel smartphones, it is time to see what Matthew Miller considers the ten best smartphones available as we head into the holiday gift buying season.

When will your phone get Android Nougat? – Our continually updated list has all the latest details, announcements, and rumors to give you the best possible picture of when you’ll get Android 7.0.

GIPHY Cam arrives on Android with GIF recording, fun editing tools – A short while after making the beta available, GIPHY Inc. has officially launched GIPHY Cam in the Google Play Store, making it available to all Android users. GIPHY Cam is just about the most fun and simple way to make creative GIFs with your phone, offering an interface not unlike what you find in Vine, but with its own flavors. After holding the record button to film a short looping GIF, users can spice it up with stickers, amusing animations, and more.

Hands on with Google Home: Your Google universe in a home-appliance wrapper – It’s impossible to discuss Google Home in a vacuum. It’s a direct, blatant, so-obvious-it-hurts competitor to the Amazon Echo—and if you spend just a few minutes with it, you may come away feeling it’s got the Echo’s number. It even costs $50 less than Amazon’s product on Google’s pre-order page.

How to use the Shell command to view all your applications in File Explorer – The Shell command offers a handy way to view your Applications folder. Here’s how it works–and why you might find the trick useful.

Security:

Spotify ads slipped malware onto PCs and Macs – Spotify’s ads crossed from nuisance over to outright nasty this week, after the music service’s advertising started serving up malware to users on Wednesday. The malware was able to automatically launch browser tabs on Windows and Mac PCs, according to complaints that surfaced online. As is typical for this kind of malware, the ads directed users’ browsers to other malware-containing sites in the hopes that someone would be duped into downloading more malicious software. The “malvertising” attack didn’t last long as Spotify was able to quickly correct the problem.

Cops arrest hundreds of people allegedly involved in IRS phone scam – Hundreds of people in Mumbai, India have been detained in relation to a massive telephone scam where fake callers “from the IRS” targeted Americans. In said calls, scammers tried to convince recipients that they were from the IRS in order to con victims into forking over thousands of dollars payable via prepaid credit cards. According to The Guardian, 200 Indian police officers raided nine locations across one of India’s largest cities.

Company News:

Verizon may want a $1 billion discount on Yahoo – Verizon may be getting cold feet with its acquisition of Yahoo. Reportedly, it’s asking for a $1 billion discount on the original $4.8 billion deal for the Internet company.

Google dealt setback in age bias case by judge interested in ‘Googleyness’ – An age discrimination lawsuit against Google was approved Wednesday as a ‘”collective action” by a federal court judge in San Jose. The decision means that certain types of software engineers, age 40 or over, who were rejected for jobs at Google since August 2014, and after an in-person interview, will be able to join the lawsuit. Thousands of others may be eligible.

Tesla hit with age discrimination lawsuit from former engineer – Tesla Motors is being sued by a former engineer who claims he suffered discrimination — and was ultimately fired — because of his age. Thomas Flessner, age 69, was hired by Tesla in 2012 to work as a materials engineer at a company facility in Fremont, California. While there, Flessner’s lawsuit alleges he was subjected to harsher treatment than his younger peers, and that his supervisor repeatedly singled him out or made it difficult to correct issues, reportedly cancelling scheduled meetings and more. Flessner was fired this past February.

Twitter shares drop 20% as takeover rumors fade away – Twitter has performed incredibly well on the stock market for the past couple of weeks. But the honeymoon is over as it’s back to reality and correction time. Twitter shares are currently down 20.06 percent to $19.88 compared to yesterday’s closing price of $24.87. So what happened? Recode has published multiple reports saying that many of the companies that were looking at Twitter for a potential acquisition backed away from the deal. Google, Apple and Disney don’t want to buy Twitter anymore.

Samsung buys Viv Labs in pursuit of its own AI assistant – Samsung is turning its attention to personal assistants—the company has acquired Viv Labs, a startup founded by Dag Kittlaus, Adam Cheyer, and Chris Brigham, all of whom were part of the original Siri team that Apple bought in 2010. The three departed Apple shortly after the acquisition to start Viv Labs, which recently showed off its AI personal assistant at Disrupt NY. While pricing has not been disclosed, the deal has been confirmed by Kittlaus in a post on Medium.

Snap is reportedly preparing for an IPO that could value it at $25B or higher – The Wall Street Journal is reporting that Snap — the now-parent company of Snapchat — is working on an initial public offering for as early as March that could value the company at $25 billion or higher. The company most recently raised $1.8 billion in a financing round in May this year. The company has around 150 million daily active users, and leaked documents reported by TechCrunch showed that it was projecting it could generate as much as $1 billion in revenue in 2017. The company estimated, according to those documents, that it would generate between $250 million and $350 million for 2016.

BitTorrent fires co-CEOs and shuts down BitTorrent Now – BitTorrent has fired its two CEOs, closed its Los Angeles production studio, and is giving up on BitTorrent Now, the ambitious media streaming service it launched less than six months ago. The changes were announced in an email to staff sent by BitTorrent founder Bram Cohen earlier this week, Variety reports, sent as an unknown number of employees were also let go from the company. CFO Dipak Joshi is moving into the role once occupied by Co-CEOs Jeremy Johnson and Robert Delamar.

Games and Entertainment:

Battlefield 1, Call of Duty lead the way in Nielsen’s most anticipated games – Nielsen Game Rank has released its list of the most anticipated games for the Holiday 2016 season, and it probably won’t come as much of a surprise that Battlefield 1 and Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare are in a dead heat for the most anticipated multi-platform title. The survey gives both titles an overall anticipation rating of 96%, while Final Fantasy XV and Batman: Return to Arkham round out the top four most anticipated multi-platform games.

Bethesda announces PS4 mod support for Fallout 4 and Skyrim Enhanced Edition, plus native 4K on PS4 Pro – Game developer Bethesda Softworks has announced the upcoming Skyrim Special Edition and Fallout 4 will both be receiving mod support on the PS4. Previously, this had been in some doubt — while Bethesda announced plans to bring FO4 mod support to both the Xbox One and PlayStation 4, updates from earlier this summer suggested that Sony wasn’t keen on the idea and Bethesda might scrap it altogether. It’s not clear how the two companies came to agree on extending modding support for Sony’s new system, but Skyrim Special Edition will arrive with modding options on Sony’s console when it ships on October 28.

Roku Express – Roku has created its most affordable streaming media device yet with the Roku Express – At $29.99, this little box costs less than the Google Chromecast and offers all of the apps and services you can find on any other Roku device. It also outputs video at 1080p, which is a pleasant surprise. It makes some compromises to reach its low price, like a very basic infrared remote control and noticeably slower performance than the Roku Streaming Stick. But if you’re looking to connect your television on the cheap and want to access the all the streaming media Roku offers, the Express is a very solid choice.

Off Topic (Sort of):

Smartphone reseller cheated customers out of millions, Feds say – The US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has sued a Nevada-based company called Laptop & Desktop Repair LLC (LDR) for allegedly bilking thousands of customers out of millions of dollars in promised funds for the resale of their smartphones. LDR operated dozens of websites that promised customers high returns for their smartphones and tablets using an instant quote generator. The customers, believing that this website would pay the highest price for their used gadget, sent their phones to LDR. Once LDR received the gadget, it would offer the customer a “revised quote” that was often only three to ten percent of the original quoted price.

Air bag bike helmets shown to reduce impacts as much as six-times – Researchers at Stanford have been developing a new breed of bicycle helmets that use air bags to significantly reduce injuries sustained in the event of an accident. David Camarillo is a bioengineer at Stanford working on the helmet design and according to testing performed at the University, the new airbag helmets can reduce the force of an impact as much as six times compared to a traditional bike helmet.

Ancient kangaroos didn’t hop and 15 other weird prehistoric animal facts – Oh, ancient Earth, your animal kingdom was wonderfully weird. Take the kangaroo. More than 30,000 years ago, a forerunner of our modern-day hippity-hopping mammal probably didn’t hop at all, researchers say; it was just too bulky. Instead, the quarter-ton “short-faced giant kangaroo” loped around on two legs. Here are 13 other cool facts about prehistoric animals, both great and shrunken.

Matt Drudge is an idiot who could be making a hurricane more dangerous – Thanks to the rise of Donald Trump, conspiracy theorists are having a moment — and it’s now an imminently dangerous one. Right now Hurricane Matthew, a Category 4 storm, is headed toward Florida. The state’s Republican governor, Rick Scott, said today that “this is going to kill people,” as he asked residents to evacuate. Coastal surges, waves beyond 18 feet, extreme winds, and debris all will threaten lives and property if the predictions of scientists and civil authorities hold up. But the best facts we have about the storm from professional weather scientists aren’t good enough for idiots like Matt Drudge, who is currently tweeting that meteorological reports might all be a government conspiracy to make climate change seem worse.

Something to think about:

“Put up with it and you will get more of it.”

–       Lynne Deal

In Pursuit of Freedom – The Pushback Continues:

Welcome to the machine—Yahoo mail scanning exposes another US spy tool – Imagine a futuristic society in which robots are deployed to everybody’s house, fulfilling a mission to scan the inside of each and every residence. Does that mental image look far-off and futuristic? Well, this week’s Yahoo e-mail surveillance revelations perhaps prove this intrusive robot scenario has already arrived in the digital world.

Days ago, Reuters cited anonymous sources and reported that Yahoo covertly built a secret “custom software program to search all of its customers’ incoming e-mails for specific information.” Yahoo, the report noted, “complied with a classified US government directive, scanning hundreds of millions of Yahoo Mail accounts at the behest of the National Security Agency or FBI.”

Reuters then followed up, saying Yahoo acted at the behest of the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. Not to be outdone, The New York Times reported Yahoo used its system designed to scan for child pornography and spam to search for messages containing an undisclosed “signature.” The Times said a FISA judge found probable cause to believe that this digital signature “was uniquely used by a foreign power.” The scanning has ceased, the report noted, but neither of the news agencies said how long the search lasted and when it began.

Yahoo denies how the reports portrayed its assistance, saying they are “misleading.” Other tech companies have denied participating in such surveillance as it was outlined in those reports.

EU privacy watchdogs have questions about Yahoo’s secret email scanning – European Union privacy watchdogs are concerned by reports that Yahoo has been secretly scanning its users’ email at the request of U.S. intelligence services.

“It goes far beyond what is acceptable,” said Johannes Caspar, Commissioner for Data Protection and Freedom of Information in Hamburg, Germany.

Reuters reported on Tuesday that Yahoo had built a system for U.S. government agencies to search all of its users’ incoming emails. Other tech companies were quick to distance themselves, saying they would have challenged any such request in court.

Yahoo later described that report as misleading, without saying what exactly did happen.

On Wednesday, the New York Times attempted to clarify the matter with a report that Yahoo had modified an existing system, designed to identify spam, malware and child pornography, so as to also search for code of interest to the FBI. The modification was made at the request of the U.S. Department of Justice, the newspaper reported.

Yahoo declined to comment on the new report.

Senators ask FCC to investigate Stingray surveillance tech – A group of Democratic senators asked the Federal Communications Commission to investigate cell site simulators like Stingrays to determine if the surveillance devices used by local law enforcement agencies are disrupting cellphone service for ordinary consumers and 911 calls. The senators are also asking the FCC to look into whether Stingray use disproportionately affects people of color.

Cell site simulators, commonly known as IMSI catchers or by the brand name Stingray, pose as normal cellphone towers. When nearby phones connect, the simulators can capture their unique ID numbers, track their locations and intercept the contents of calls and messages. Law enforcement agencies tend to be secretive about their use of Stingrays, but several civil rights groups, including Center for Media Justice, ColorOfChange.org and New America’s Open Technology Institute, claimed in August that the Baltimore Police Department’s use of the devices was inhibiting emergency calls and unfairly targeting communities of color.

The organizations complained to the FCC, asking it to intervene. According to the complaint (PDF), BPD used Stingrays 4,700 times over the course of nine years to investigate everything from kidnappings to petty thefts. Because the devices affect any phone within a 200-500 meter radius, it could absorb not only a suspect’s calls but also calls to emergency services, suicide hotlines and other important resources. The complaint also cites USA Today reporting that shows BPD most commonly used Stingrays in black communities.

Secure messenger app Signal fought government and kept privacy promises – After fighting a gag order, Moxie Marlinspike, the founder of Open Whisper Systems, went public with details of a federal subpoena (pdf) demanding Signal subscribers’ information and communication records.

Open Whisper Systems built the encrypted communication app Signal; the Signal encryption protocol is also used in Google’s Allo, WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger. If you know anything at all about Signal, then you know privacy and security are not just marketing buzzwords; end-to-end encryption is a feature to which OWS is deeply committed. Even Edward Snowden gave the thumbs up to use any OWS product.

Perhaps the government wanted to find out if Signal keeps it privacy and security promises, or perhaps the government was clueless about the Signal app and desperate for more information to help in a criminal case in Virginia. At any rate, when OWS received its first federal grand jury subpoena, the government demanded for OWS to cough up data associated with two subscribers, including phone numbers, name, address, email address, payment info, IP logs, web browsing histories, browser cookie data, as well as upstream and downstream providers.

The government tacked a gag order onto the subpoena served in 2016. It was meant to silence OWS about the surveillance for one year since the government claimed that if news about the subpoena got out, then it would “seriously jeopardize the investigation, including by giving targets an opportunity to flee or continue flight from prosecution, destroy or tamper with evidence, change patterns of behavior, or notify confederates.”

Tech Thoughts Net News – Wednesday – October 5, 2016

Yahoo spied on its own users’ emails for U.S. government;  Delete your Yahoo account;  Watch Google’s Pixel phone event in 10 minutes;  iOS 10 apps you should replace today;  How to encrypt your Facebook Messages;  Facebook launches Marketplace, a friendlier Craigslist;  Outlast 2 demo available for Xbox One, PS4 and PC;  Move over Raspberry Pi, here are a dozen, better alternatives – and much more news you need to know.

Yahoo spied on its own users’ emails for U.S. government – Yahoo is at the center of a new damning report in which sources claim the company built its own software to spy on all incoming Yahoo Mail emails on behalf of the United States government. According to the sources, the software monitored the incoming emails for certain bits of information as provided by either the NSA or the FBI, resulting in “hundreds of millions” of accounts suffering privacy violations. This spying allegedly resulted in former Chief Information Security Officer Alex Stamos leaving the company, as sources say he disagreed with CEO Marissa Mayer’s decision to comply with government orders.

Delete your Yahoo account – THERE’S NO GOOD reason to have a Yahoo account these days. But after Tuesday’s bombshell report by Reuters, indicating the enormous, faltering web company designed a bespoke email-wiretap service for the U.S. government, we now know that a Yahoo account is a toxic surveillance liability.

Watch Google’s Pixel phone event in 10 minutes – Google’s Pixel hardware event today unleashed a torrent of news and product announcements on the tech world. If you’re still trying to wrap your head around everything the company showed off, you’re in luck. We’ve boiled the 117-minute presentation down to 10 minutes of essential video. Check it out to catch up on Google’s ambitious play to control every bit of consumer computing and entertainment, from the smartphone to home appliances to internet connectivity.

Everything that will work with Google Home – With a built-in voice assistant, Google Home acts as your secretary, music hub and smart home controller. Here are all the products and services that will work with Google Home.

How to encrypt your Facebook Messages – All 1 billion Facebook Messenger users can now encrypt their messages so that governments, hackers, and even Facebook itself can’t read them. Facebook announced its “Secret” messages feature back in July. Now it’s fully rolled out, but still a bit tricky to use. Messenger threads aren’t Secret by default, so here’s a step-by-step guide for how to turn on encryption.

This Chrome extension mutes all tabs unless you whitelist them – Silent Site Sound Blocker lets you control which sites can shout at you. Here’s how.

iOS 10 apps you should replace today – iOS 10 lets you delete a whole bunch of built-in apps such as Mail and Calculator. Here are the apps you should be replacing them with.

Facebook launches Marketplace, a friendlier Craigslist – 450 million people already visit “buy and sell” Groups on Facebook each month, and now the company is launching a whole tab in its app dedicated to peer-to-peer shopping.

WhatsApp adds Snapchat-style emoji, drawing, and other camera editing tools – You can now draw and add emoji to your photos and videos on WhatsApp.

Move over Raspberry Pi, here are a dozen, better alternatives – The Raspberry Pi might be the name that springs to mind when people think of single board computers for homebrew projects, but there are other boards out there worth considering.

Windows 10 growth comes to screeching stop – Microsoft’s Windows 10 beat a retreat last month, losing user share for the first time since its debut more than a year ago. According to U.S. metrics vendor Net Applications, Windows 10 lost half a percentage point in user share during September, ending the month on 22.5% of all personal computers.

Windows 10 Anniversary Update: Fix for endless reboot problem coming soon, says Microsoft – Microsoft is in the final stages of fixing a Windows 10 update that endlessly rebooted some PCs. Issued last Friday, the patch, known as Cumulative Update 14393.222, would keep restarting some Windows 10 computers in a vain attempt to install itself. Microsoft has acknowledged the problem affecting the patch for the Windows 10 Anniversary Update and said it is on the verge of correcting it.

Security:

Insulin pump vulnerabilities could lead to overdose – Users of the Animas OneTouch Ping insulin pump system have been warned that security vulnerabilities in the device allow attackers to remotely deliver insulin doses. On Tuesday, researchers from Rapid7 revealed the existence of three vulnerabilities in the Animas OneTouch Ping insulin pump system. Johnson & Johnson subsidiary Animas produces the device reads user blood glucose levels through a meter before the pump uses these readings by “communicating wirelessly” in the 900mhz band to deliver insulin. According to the research team, one of the major security flaws within the OneTouch Ping is caused because there is a lack of encryption between these components.

Julian Assange: All That Malware on Wikileaks Isn’t a Big Deal – On Tuesday, Wikileaks celebrated its 10th anniversary with a press conference in Berlin. In addition to reflecting on the publisher’s various releases over the years, Wikileaks editor Julian Assange hinted that more disclosures around the US election would come soon. But recently, one researcher found that Wikileaks’ site is hosting tens of thousands of malicious files within its archives, potentially infecting visitors who execute them. At the press conference, Assange downplayed the risk to users, talking via video-link from London.

One more bites the dust: Kaspersky releases decryption tool for Polyglot ransomware – Kaspersky has released a decryption tool for the Polyglot ransomware to assist victims in recovering their files without giving in and paying a fee. On Monday, the cybersecurity firm launched the free tool (.ZIP), which is suitable for the Polyglot Trojan which is also known as MarsJoke, a strain which has been linked to attacks on government targets.

After Mozilla inquiry, Apple untrusts Chinese certificate authority – Following a Mozilla-led investigation that found multiple problems in the SSL certificate issuance process of WoSign, a China-based certificate authority, Apple will make modifications to the iOS and macOS to block future certificates issued by the company.

Company News:

Google gets more time to respond to EU antitrust charges – Alphabet (née Google) has been given yet another extension to file its respond to charges in Europe that it has misused the dominance of its Android mobile platform to lock out competition by promoting its own services over and above others. Reuters reported the extension today, which gives the company until the last day of this month to file its rebuttal, and follows another extension last month — at the time touted as Google’s last — which pushed the deadline from September 7 to September 20. The original EC deadline for Google’s response was in April so we’re heading for six months later already at this stage (meanwhile the EC’s initial probe of Android complaints dates back to April 2015).

Apple Pay launches in Russia with Sberbank partnership – Apple launched Apple Pay in Russia on Tuesday, extending the payment platform’s reach to 10 countries around the globe. Apple Pay, which allows users to pay with an iPhone or Apple Watch through a contactless sales point, will be available through Sberbank and MasterCard. It’s not clear if Apple is planning additional partnerships.

Salesforce will buy Krux to expand behavioral tracking capabilities – Salesforce.com has agreed to buy user data management platform Krux Digital, potentially allowing businesses to process even more data in their CRM systems. Salesforce will pay around $340 million in cash and a similar amount in shares for Krux, according to a filing it made with the Securities and Exchange Commission on Tuesday. It expects to close the deal by the end of January. Krux describes its business as “capturing, unifying, and activating data signatures across every device and every channel, in real time.”

Akamai acquires enterprise security firm Soha – Akamai hopes the deal will keep the firm’s enterprise clients safer when using cloud and mobile technologies.

Games and Entertainment:

Streaming game trials rolling out in Google Play Store – One of the most annoying things for mobile gamers who like to play on their smartphone is downloading a free or purchased game only to find out it’s terrible a few minutes into play and delete the game. To help users find games they really like Google began to support streaming samples of games in December of 2015 but the catch was that the streaming was only for certain apps. As of today, the ability to try games via streaming before you buy has begun to roll out to more games.

Outlast 2 demo available for Xbox One, PS4 and PC – It’s October, and that means it’s socially acceptable to shroud yourself in all things scary and disturbing. If you prefer to entertain fears via your gaming console, good news: Outlast 2 has a new demo that can be downloaded for free on Steam, Xbox One, and PlayStation 4 until November 1. The demo went live a handful of hours ago on the PlayStation Store and Microsoft Store, as well as Steam, of course, as an unexpected surprise for fans.

Why World of Tanks is wildly popular and no one seems to know why – How did World of Tanks become one of the top money-making games in the world?

Wargaming

18 Slick Xbox One Tips and Tricks – You probably have an Xbox One of your own (why else did you click into this story) and wonder how you can squeeze every last drop of digital delight out of the console. That’s why we put together this list of Xbone (does anyone call the console that but me?) features you may be missing out on.

Pokemon GO still pulls in $2 million in gross revenue per day – It isn’t uncommon to see some folks on the internet claiming that Pokemon GO is dead. While it’s true that you’re not likely to see as many people playing as you did when Pokemon GO fever was at its peak, a recent report from Newzoo shows that the game is far from dead, still managing to pull in $2 million per day without counting the cut Apple and Google take. That certainly isn’t chump change, and it shows that a significant number of people are still playing and downloading the game.

Off Topic (Sort of):

Test your ethics around killer AI cars with this Moral Machine game – Should a self-driving car full of old folks crash to avoid puppies in the cross-walk? Is it OK to run over two criminals if you save one doctor? Whose lives are worth more, seven-year-olds or senior citizens? This new game called the “Moral Machine” from MIT’s researchers lets you make the calls in the famous “trolley problem” and see analytics about your ethics. Thinking about these tough questions is more important than ever since engineers are coding this type of decision making into autonomous vehicles right now. Who should be responsible for these choices? The non-driving passenger, the company who made the AI or no one?

Researchers find no evidence ‘brain training’ games offset aging, cognitive decline – A new, massive research effort has examined all available data on whether cognitive training, also colloquially referred to as ‘brain training,’ can offset cognitive decline. The data isn’t particularly positive.

Intel ships RealSense-powered kits to build your own robots and drones – Want to build a drone at home? Intel’s now shipping its Aero Compute Board so you can get your unmanned aerial vehicle in the sky.

What happens if we live to be 150? – Humans have lived for approximately 8,000 generations, but only in the past four has life expectancy taken dramatic leaps upward thanks mostly to societies addressing some of the most basic life issues, including infant mortality, heart disease, homicide and influenza. In 1907, the average human life expectancy was 46 years; in 1957, it rose to 66; in 2007, it reached 76. But I predict we won’t stop there. Over the next generation or two, I see us living to 150 years, largely driven by breakthroughs in genomics and bioengineering. That might seem like a long-odds prediction, but it’s good to consider outlier possibilities.

Something to think about:

“In politics, absurdity is not a handicap.”

–    Napoleon Bonaparte

In Pursuit of Freedom – The Pushback Continues:

Yahoo scanned users’ email for U.S. intelligence agencies – Yahoo’s trust with users is damaged today by a Reuters report that claims the company developed a custom program to search all users’ incoming email for specific queries given by U.S. intelligence officials.

“We’ve worked hard over the years to earn our users’ trust and we fight hard to preserve it,” Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer says in the opening to the company’s transparency report, in which it documents government requests for user data. But it appears that Yahoo subverted user trust by creating the custom program, and excluded information about it from its transparency report.

The dragnet surveillance of Yahoo’s email customers was initiated last spring and was confirmed to Reuters by former employees. The former employees claimed that the software was developed in response to a classified government order and led to the June 2015 resignation of Yahoo’s then-Chief Information Security Officer, Alex Stamos. Mayer and Yahoo General Counsel Ron Bell directed email engineers to create the program, which was discovered by Yahoo’s security team in May 2015, Reuters reports. Stamos and other security team members initially thought hackers had compromised the company’s email security, and Stamos resigned when he learned that Mayer had approved the program.

“Yahoo is a law abiding company, and complies with the laws of the United States,” a Yahoo spokesperson told TechCrunch. A spokesperson at Facebook, where Stamos is currently Chief Security Officer, declined an interview request for Stamos.

The surveillance program has already been condemned by lawyers for the American Civil Liberties Union and members of Congress, who have called the government order received by Yahoo unconstitutional.

Twitter, Microsoft, Google and others say they haven’t scanned messages like Yahoo – Yahoo is under scrutiny today after former employees claimed the company designed custom software to enable U.S. intelligence agencies to scan incoming emails to all of Yahoo’s millions of users. The allegations, first published by Reuters, raise questions about the constitutionality of such dragnet surveillance and about the legal means used to compel Yahoo to build the software.

Other major tech companies were quick to distance themselves from the report, stating that they have not received similar requests for custom software from the government.

Tech Thoughts Net News – Monday – October 3, 2016

More than 400 malicious apps infiltrate Google Play;  25 best Android tips to make your phone more useful;  This Android App Can Help You Text Without Typing;  How to know when your SSD could die;  Find Out What Google Knows About You;  3 tips for taking faster screenshots in Windows 10 – and much more news you need to know.

More than 400 malicious apps infiltrate Google Play – Google Play was recently found to be hosting more than 400 apps that turned infected phones into listening posts that could siphon sensitive data out of the protected networks they connected to, security researchers said Thursday. One malicious app infected with the so-called DressCode malware had been downloaded from 100,000 to 500,000 times before it was removed from the Google-hosted marketplace, Trend Micro researchers said in a post. Trend Micro has found 3,000 such apps in all, 400 of which were available through Play.

25 best Android tips to make your phone more useful – Android is the most popular computing platform in the world thanks in part to how fast it has evolved over the years. Google is always adding new features and making changes to existing ones, and OEMs like Samsung and LG can add their own stuff on top of that. It can be hard to keep up, so we’ve gathered the 25 best tips for your Android phone right here.

This Android App Can Help You Text Without Typing – What separates TalkType from the myriad other smartphone keyboards out there is that its users aren’t greeted with a QWERTY typing pad, but rather a round microphone icon. Tapping this microphone triggers a “Speak now” prompt, indicating that the app is listening for input. As is the case with many other voice dictation capabilities, users will see the text field fill with words as they speak. (As a backup, Baidu’s app can also be used as a regular keyboard with the tap of a button, replete with animated GIFs, emoji, and the ability to search for restaurants built right in.) Of course, many smartphones have long offered voice dictation on their default keyboards. But Baidu’s app puts the feature front and center, a striking change from most smartphone keyboards.

3 tips for taking faster screenshots in Windows 10 – The default method of taking screenshots in Windows 10 is clunky. Use these tips to take faster and more precise screenshots without the need for an overpriced app.

Jim Hillier: Find Out What Google Knows About You – I recently visited Google’s new(ish) My Activity page which allows users with a Google account to delve into their Google past and find out just how much data the search giant has collected about them – and I got the shock of my life. This collection not only includes past search queries going back to the year dot but also all activity associated with any of Google’s online services – a veritable bottomless pit of information. To Google’s credit, setting up the My Activity service not only portrays a refreshing willingness toward transparency but also allows users to delete some or all of the collected data. Here’s how:

You might be surprised to learn who’s collecting your data – Most people understand that in order for digital services to work properly or stay free they may need to allow the services to track some of their data. But what about the businesses that provide services for consumer-facing companies? The partners and third-parties that operate behind the scenes? Typically they’re ISPs, cloud services or even content-delivery networks (CDNs), through which 45 percent of the internet’s traffic passes. They kept the Olympic games streaming fast and uninterrupted. They’re handling billions of transactions for e-commerce sites. What many people don’t realize is that these third-parties could also be tracking and selling their online behaviors as data.

Google Maps gains new voice commands via “OK Google” – It’s not a good thing when you are driving to take your eyes of the road for any reason. This includes taking eyes off the road to mess with your navigation device. Google Maps has gained some new voice controls that will make it easier to control Maps while you drive without having to touch the smartphone. When in navigation or driving mode, say “OK Google.”

Telegram levels up its bot platform with competitive games that live inside chats – Messaging platform Telegram is powering up on the chatbot front, with the launch of what it dubs a “bot-powered gaming platform” — in a bid to try to drive more engagement via addictive new features.

Facebook launches Messenger Lite app for basic Android phones – Facebook has come out with a “lite” version of its Messenger app, in a bid to reach users in emerging markets where mobile internet connections are slow. In a blog post published Monday, the company described Facebook Messenger Lite as a “slimmed down version of Messenger” designed for basic Android phones with low memory. The app rolls out today to users in Kenya, Tunisia, Malaysia, Sri Lanka and Venezuela, before expanding to other markets in coming months.

Meerkat, star app of 2015, is officially dead – Remember Meerkat? It came out of nowhere in early 2015 — a star of SXSW, in particular — and was on everyone’s tongue for weeks. Then came Periscope, a strikingly similar competitor built mostly in stealth mode, and word that Twitter had acquired it for nearly $100 million dollars before much of the world even knew it existed. Suddenly, interest in Meerkat fizzled. A year and a half later, Meerkat is dead, officially, as the company behind it shifts its efforts into a new project.

Twitch adds ad-free viewing, premium features for Amazon Prime subscribers – Live-streaming outfit Twitch said Friday that it will be letting viewers who have an active Amazon Prime membership eliminate ads and subscribe to one channel per month for free, among other video-game-related discounts and bonuses. Twitch is most known for letting people broadcast their video-gaming sessions, their own talk shows and even their adventures in cooking.

The best Google Cardboard VR apps – We first assembled this list in 2015, but the selection has grown and improved significantly since then, and we’ve responded in kind. If you’re just getting started with Cardboard or you’re looking for fresh ways to utilize Google’s entry-level VR solution, these are the first 15 apps and games worth experiencing—most of which are free. And remember, the split images are stitched into a single scene once it’s in your face.

How to know when your SSD could die – SSDs are fundamentally different from hard drives, and they can, in fact, die in one of two ways. In this column I’ll explain this difference, how SSDs can die, and how you can check yours to make sure it still has plenty of life.

New Ethernet standards will offer up to 5Gbps performance using cables you already own – A newly-approved wired Ethernet standard could deliver 2.5GbE and 5GbE connections over existing infrastructure. After nearly 20 years, are we finally ready to move past gigabit Ethernet?

Security:

Get to know the security features in the Edge browser – Microsoft knows that Internet Explorer ended up with a bad rap for being slow and lacking in security, so the company even disabled several legacy technologies in Edge to ensure it didn’t fall prey to the same (bad) reputation. The new browser has a lot of security tricks up its sleeve, including isolating Flash into its own separate AppContainer and making all Flash videos click-to-play.

What makes IoT ransomware a different and more dangerous threat? – Ransomware has already managed to carve itself a niche as one of the main cybersecurity threats of 2016. As individuals, organizations and government agencies, we’re taking precautionary steps to protect ourselves against malware that can encrypt files beyond our reach. What we’re ignoring though, is the next wave of ransomware attacks, which will not target our files, but rather our IoT devices, which can be more dangerous and damaging, given the different nature of IoT security.

Did attackers take down Newsweek because of an anti-Trump story? – Newsweek suspects that attackers took down its site for hours on Thursday in order to bury a story about a company that Donald Trump owned decades ago. The magazine claims that the company secretly did business in Cuba, even though that was illegal at the time. Details about the volume of the attack or what made it sophisticated were not immediately available. On Friday, Eichenwald described it as “a major attack on Newsweek.” Later in the afternoon, Eichenwald tweeted, “Lots of IP addresses involved. Main ones from Russia.”

Hacker Releases Code That Powered Record-Breaking Botnet Attack – It’s only been a few weeks since hackers hijacked more than 1 million Internet of Things devices to launch a record-breaking Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack against the website of cybersecurity reporter Brian Krebs. Now, the malware that powered the unprecedented attack has been released online for anyone to use.

Company News:

Apple loses patent retrial to the litigious VirnetX, ordered to pay $302.4M – Back in February we reported that Apple had been ordered to pay $625 million to notorious litigator VirnetX after a U.S. court judged that the iPhone-maker had infringed on patents held by VirnetX in its iMessage and FaceTime services. (VirnetX often described as a patent troll because it makes almost all of its revenue from patent licensing and lawsuits). Apple went ahead and appealed the decision, arguing that the patents in question were not valid. But on Friday night that appeal came to nothing. A federal jury in Texas ordered Apple pay more than $302 million in damages for using VirnetX’s internet security patent without permission. The $302.4 million award was close to what VirnetX had demanded.

Tesla sets record for vehicle deliveries and production in Q3 – Tesla set new quarterly records for vehicle production and deliveries in Q3, according to data released today by the company. The company delivered around 24,500 vehicles, an increase of 70 percent from last quarter when the company fell short of its own delivery projections. The deliveries this quarter were made up of 15,800 Model S sedans and 8,700 Model X SUVs, with vehicle production rising to 25,185. That’s up 37 percent from Q2’s production of 18,345.

Avast CEO on why it’s just spent $1.4BN to absorb security rival AVG – Security firm Avast has today confirmed the completion of a $1.4 billion acquisition of fellow Czech-based antivirus company AVG. The deal will see Avast’s customer base nearly double — swelling from 230 million to more than 400 million in total, 160M of whom are mobile users. The acquisition was announced back in July, with scale and geographical breadth touted as the driving forces, along with a plan to expand product offerings including in the Internet of Things space. Avast says the new combined entity reaches one-third of the world’s PC users outside of China. Both the Avast and AVG brands are likely to continue to operate, depending on relative market strengths.

Google’s Uber Competitor Is Finally Here – Google’s Uber-like app is now available to users throughout the San Francisco area, The Wall Street Journal reports, marking the latest escalation in the simmering battle between the search giant and the ride-hailing firm. The app, Waze Rider, is intended to match drivers and riders who are already headed in the same direction. By contrast, Uber drivers tend to criss-cross cities in search of fares. Another difference: Waze Rider offers cheaper prices for passengers, but also lower pay for drivers. And for now, drivers and riders alike can only use the app twice a day, the Journal reports.

The EU is considering major fines for Google over alleged Android antitrust violations – European antitrust regulators are set to order Google’s parent company Alphabet to stop incentivizing Android phone makers to pre-install Google Search on their phones, according to Reuters and are are also considering imposing a substantial fines on the company. This appears to be separate from massive fines that the EU is reportedly imposing on the company for monopolistic practices when it comes to search, which could go as high as €3.3 billion Euros.

Games and Entertainment:

Watch Alec Baldwin as Donald Trump on SNL’s Presidential Debate – Saturday Night Live‘s latest cold open was familiar for anyone who watched Monday’s first presidential debate, but introduced a new player: Alec Baldwin as Donald Trump. Baldwin took to a podium opposite SNL’s regular Clinton, Kate McKinnon. The show took digs at both candidates, such as by lampooning Trump’s thoughts about “the blacks” and Clinton’s concerted efforts to be relatable.

Everything Coming to Netflix in October – October has a lot going for it: crisp autumn weather, caramel apples, and—best of all—Halloween. Netflix has plenty this month to enhance the chill in the air, with season 11 of Supernatural, American Horror Story: Hotel, and season 7 of Vampire Diaries. There are also a few things to watch if you need some realistic horror (and maybe some costume ideas).

Nintendo shows off some highly nerdy features of the NES Mini – Nintendo has further taken the wraps off the must-have gaming gadget of the holidays — which is to say, the one we’re all buying ourselves as soon as it’s available. An aggressively retro-themed video released today visually demonstrates three of the NES Mini’s features. Brace yourselves, it’s about to get real nerdy in here. Most relevant to the average player is the save state option — Nintendo calls them suspend points. Those of you who’ve used emulators or the Virtual Console will be familiar with this, but old-school players will be amazed and possibly offended. Basically, you can save the game at any moment — mid-jump, just before a boss, before opening a randomized chest, etc. Then you can reload if you die, get a bad item, or just want to play through a part again.

Microsoft announces two more Xbox One S Gears of War 4 bundles – Gears of War 4 is the Xbox One’s big exclusive title this holiday season, and Microsoft is doing all it can to make sure as many gamers pick up a copy as possible. To make things easy, the company has announced two new bundle options that pair GoW4 with the new Xbox One S, in addition to the previous limited edition bundle that features a 2TB console in crimson red.

9 Games You’ll Want to Buy in October – Fall is in full swing, and we all know what that means in the video game world: shopping, and lots of it. With October here, publishers are scheduling their biggest and best titles for release in hopes of riding that big holiday shopping wave. With games big and small pouring into store and digital shelves, we’ve put together a list of nine of October’s must buy video game.

The CW network releases cable subscription-free Apple TV app – US television network The CW is making the jump into set-top box streaming in a way that can only be described as a cord cutter’s dream come true: with no requirement for a cable subscription. In addition to updating its iOS app, the network has released a new app for the fourth-gen Apple TV that allows viewers to watch The CW — including brand-new episodes of its shows — for free with no login or authentication of a cable subscription.

The Nintendo 64 launched 20 years ago—and changed my life forever – Only one year after the PlayStation, the Nintendo 64 launched in 1996 and became the first console I could afford to buy with my own cash. This week marks exactly 20 years since that system’s launch in the United States, and it’s a milestone I’ll never forget. My initial encounter with the N64 isn’t etched in memory just because it coincided with the release of one of the greatest 3D platformers of all time or because it was the first system to ship with four-player modes as a default. For me, it marked the beginning of the rest of my life.

Off Topic (Sort of):

The Coolest Real World Spy Gadgets – As civilians, we don’t have access to the good stuff our government is hiding. But the private sector is working hard to make our spy daydreams a reality. If you’ve got cash to spend, you can outfit yourself with all the coolest non-lethal weaponry, surveillance tools, and other amazing stuff you need to have. Grab your black ops budget and come with us on a tour of incredible spy gizmos that you can buy in the real world.

WTF is a mirrorless camera? – Digital cameras today tend to fall under one of two categories: SLR or mirrorless. What’s the difference? And why does it matter? To find out, let’s take a quick trip through the history of the medium. It turns out that many of the changes to how cameras work have been attempts to solve a simple problem: How do you show what’s in front of the lens to both the user and whatever’s recording that image?

“Trek against Trump” urges voters to choose Hillary Clinton – Over 100 prominent members of the Star Trek cast and crew have written an open letter against Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump.

The letter, which was posted to Facebook on Thursday, trumpets:

Star Trek has always offered a positive vision of the future, a vision of hope and optimism, and most importantly, a vision of inclusion, where people of all races are accorded equal respect and dignity, where individual beliefs and lifestyles are respected so long as they pose no threat to others. We cannot turn our backs on what is happening in the upcoming election. Never has there been a presidential candidate who stands in such complete opposition to the ideals of the Star Trek universe as Donald Trump. His election would take this country backward, perhaps disastrously. We need to elect a president who will move this country forward into the kind of future we all dream of: where personal differences are understood and accepted, where science overrules superstition, where people work together instead of against each other.

Yahoo open sources its porn-detecting neural network – Ever wonder how things get marked NSFW on the internet? It’s Yahoo. Yahoo does it — with their special-made, smut-trained, porn-detecting neural network. And now you can, too, because the team behind the system has made it open source. I guess you could say they’re down to fork. I jest, of course: Yahoo’s algorithm doesn’t do it all. In fact, detecting NSFW imagery is an infamously difficult problem. To paraphrase the famous saying, you know it when you see it, but you — admit it — have a lifetime of viewing pornography to reflect on when you make that categorization.

4 Ways to Learn Anything in 20 Hours – What if you could learn anything in 20 hours, what would you learn? Would you learn how to dance? Would you learn a new language? Would you learn an instrument? In the TED talk, The First 20 Hours — How To Learn Anything, Josh Kaufman explains how to practice intelligently and how to learn any new skill in 20 hours. It takes 10,000 hours to achieve mastery in a field. But it only takes 20 hours to get good at something, if you practice intelligently.

Wireless Emergency Alerts will soon support more characters, embedded URLs – The Wireless Emergency Alert system, which pushes AMBER Alerts and emergency notifications of things like natural disasters to phones across the US, is about to get something of an overhaul. The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) voted today to expand the WEA system in a number of different ways, ranging from giving the alerts more characters to adding embedded URLs where it’s appropriate.

Downloads:

Jim Hillier: Huge List of Ashampoo Freebies – Our contact at Ashampoo has offered the following software titles all free for DCT readers:

    Ashampoo Backup 2016

    Ashampoo Burning Studio 2016

    Ashampoo WinOptimizer 2016

    Ashampoo HDD Control 2017

    Ashampoo UnInstaller 2017

    Ashampoo Photo Commander 12 – (latest version is v14)

    Ashampoo Slideshow Studi0 2017

    Ashampoo Snap 2017

    Ashampoo Photo Optimizer 2016

    Ashampoo Music Studio 2016

NOTE: Ashampoo products with a number in the title (such as Ashampoo WinOptimizer 14) are full-featured Premium versions, while those products with a year in the title (such as Ashampoo WinOptimizer 2016) include fewer features at a lower cost. However, products with a year in the title still provide pretty much all significant features and are, generally speaking, far superior to freeware.

Something to think about:

“It is hard to believe that a man is telling the truth when you know that you would lie if you were in his place.”

–      H. L. Mencken

In Pursuit of Freedom – The Pushback Continues:

Researchers ask federal court to unseal years of surveillance records – Two lawyers and legal researchers based at Stanford University have formally asked a federal court in San Francisco to unseal numerous records of surveillance-related cases, as a way to better understand how authorities seek such powers from judges. This courthouse is responsible for the entire Northern District of California, which includes the region where tech companies such as Twitter, Apple, and Google, are based.

According to the petition, Jennifer Granick and Riana Pfefferkorn were partly inspired by a number of high-profile privacy cases that have unfolded in recent years, ranging from Lavabit to Apple’s battle with the Department of Justice.

As they wrote in their Wednesday filing:

Most surveillance orders are sealed, however. Therefore, the public does not have a strong understanding of what technical assistance courts may order private entities to provide to law enforcement. There are at least 70 cases, many under seal, in which courts have mandated that Apple and Google unlock mobile phones—and potentially many more. The Lavabit district court may not be the only court to have ordered companies to turn over private encryption keys to law enforcement based on novel interpretations of law. Courts today may be granting orders forcing private companies to turn on microphones or cameras in cars, laptops, mobile phones, smart TVs, or other audio- and video-enabled Internet-connected devices in order to conduct wiretapping or visual surveillance.

In their 45-page petition, they specifically say that they don’t need all sealed surveillance records, simply those that should have been unsealed—which, unfortunately, doesn’t always happen automatically.

US to Transfer Internet DNS Oversight After GOP Sabotage Effort Fails – The United States government moved to relinquish stewardship of key internet technical functions on Saturday, paving the way for a private, international non-profit group to assume oversight of the internet’s core naming directory.

Tech policy experts say the historic transfer of US stewardship over the Domain Name System (DNS) to an independent group of global stakeholders will help ensure internet openness and freedom. The transition moved forward after a last-ditch Republican effort to sabotage the handover was rejected by a federal judge late Friday.

The oversight transfer, which has been in the works for nearly two decades, is largely clerical in nature, and is unlikely to even be noticed by internet users. But that didn’t stop Republicans like Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas and presidential candidate Donald Trump from using scare-tactics to try to scuttle the plan for political gain.

“This is a symbolic, but important step in preserving the stability and openness of the internet, which impacts free speech, our economy and our national security,” Ed Black, President & CEO of the Computer & Communications Industry Association, which represents companies like Google, Amazon, and Facebook, said in an emailed statement.

Starting Saturday, stewardship of the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) functions, including the DNS, which translates website names like vice.com into numeric internet protocol (IP) addresses, will be fully overseen by a Los Angeles-based nonprofit group of international stakeholders called the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN).

Tech Thoughts Net News – Friday – September 30, 2016

Stop HTML5 autoplay videos in Chrome, Firefox, Opera;  How to create a secure and hidden folder on your Android phone;  21 essential Windows keyboard shortcuts;  10 Must-Read Tricks for Mastering Your New iPhone;  16 useful Windows 10 tools that help you get more done;  Is my Windows PC 32-bit or 64-bit? Why it matters;  The Best Laptops of 2016;  How Good Can Amazon’s New 8-Inch Tablet Be for Only $90? – and much more news you need to know.

Stop HTML5 autoplay videos in Chrome, Firefox, Opera (but not Edge, Explorer, Safari) – Websites have shifted from Flash to HTML5 for video, because many browsers now allow native disabling of Flash. Here’s what you now need to know to stop videos from playing as soon as the page loads.

16 useful Windows 10 tools that help you get more done – Microsoft has stuffed Windows 10 full of productivity-enhancing tools and features that streamline common pain points.

Is my Windows PC 32-bit or 64-bit? Why it matters – Especially if you have an older PC, there’s a big difference between 32-bit and 64-bit Windows. Here’s how to find out what you have and why you should care.

How to watch the MLB playoffs and World Series without cable – For cord-cutters, finding live postseason baseball games online can be tougher than hitting a dancing knuckleball. Our guide will make sure you’ll never miss a pitch.

Credit: Thinkstock

21 essential Windows keyboard shortcuts – These Windows keyboard shortcuts help you navigate your PC faster, master documents, wrangle various virtual desktops, and shut down and secure a computer, using just a few keys.

Windows 10 tip: Hide unwanted drivers in Windows Update – Windows 10’s new approach to updates won’t allow you to refuse a security or reliability patch. But you can use a special troubleshooter to say no to a driver delivered through Windows Update. Here’s how.

Google Maps gains new voice commands on Android – In a bid to eliminate distracted driving, Google is adding new voice capabilities to Maps.

Best Bluetooth speakers – We’ll help you find the best wireless speakers for pairing with your smartphone or tablet—whatever your budget, and whatever music floats your boat.

How Good Can Amazon’s New 8-Inch Tablet Be for Only $90? – Want a tablet for watching movies in bed? Amazon’s $89.99 Fire HD 8 offers the best media consumption value you can get right now. The Fire HD 8 is the big sibling to the 7-inch Fire, and it has distinct advantages: better Wi-Fi, louder speakers, a faster processor, and more storage. It’s a basic, affordable tablet with a heavily modified Android operating system devoted to downloading, streaming, reading, and watching Amazon content. Don’t try to push the Fire HD 8 too far beyond media, and you’ll be satisfied. But there’s a definite cost to giving up Google’s native apps and app store, Google Play, and it’s one you should be aware of.

How to create a secure and hidden folder on your Android phone – Want to keep away the prying eyes? Then it’s time to grab some apps that will make pictures, videos, and more disappear from plain sight.

Twitter finally lets everyone create their own “Moments” – Finally, finally, Twitter has rolled out a version of its storytelling feature called Moments that it should have released at launch. Today, the company says that it’s opening up the Moments platform so anyone can create their own stories using tweets and photos uploaded to the service.

The Best Laptops of 2016 – Whether you want an ultraportable, a gaming behemoth, or anything in between, our shopping advice and product recommendations will help you find your ideal laptop.

Skype for iOS updated with Siri support – Now that Apple’s iOS 10 has been out for over a week and is making its way to most users’ iPhones, lots of popular apps are updating to take advantage of the software’s new features. One such release is today’s update for Skype, which allows the app make use of the new Siri API for third-party developers. Now users can ask Siri to place a Skype call to someone without even opening the app.

Luna Launcher turns your Android phone into a kid-friendly device – On the fence about whether your child is old enough for their own smartphone? A new app called Luna Launcher can help you warm to the idea, by offering a simple way to limit access to select apps and actions, including who they can call or text – a list you can restrict to family members, for example. Of course, because of the way it needs to interact with your phone’s operating system in order to restrict access, Luna Launcher is only available on Android.

Raspberry Pi gets its own official desktop environment: PIXEL – The Raspberry Pi, in all its incarnations, has been used in every DIY project or dream imaginable, from security systems to obstruction-detecting robots to, well, mini desktop computers. While most of these projects won’t really use a traditional computer desktop environment, the RPi was still in need of a lightweight, beautiful, and user-friendly desktop for beginners as well as those using the single-board computer as a regular, though less powerful, everyday desktop. Thus, PIXEL was born and is now available for download and use.

A new Microsoft tool shows how Win 10 might affect devices – IT administrators trying to figure out how to move their organizations to Windows 10 have a new tool that might change the game. This week, Microsoft released the Windows Upgrade Analytics Service, designed to make it easier to decide whether you can carry out a massive upgrade. WUAS gives administrators a sense of what drivers and applications are running in their environment, as well as how many devices are running Windows 10. Using Microsoft telemetry data, it decides whether those devices and the software running on them will be compatible with Windows 10 and suggest fixes for compatibility problems.

Periscope revamps website to make live videos easier to find – The site’s new look highlights relevant curated channels and makes it easier to search for video.

10 Must-Read Tricks for Mastering Your New iPhone – 3D Touch, found on the iPhone 7 and iPhone 6s, enables lots of helpful shortcuts

Security:

FBI director warns that hackers have been ‘poking around’ voter registration systems – The systems underlying our elections process are more important than ever this year, and the bad guys know it too. FBI director James Comey said at a House Judiciary Committee hearing today that “bad actors have been poking around” voter registration systems lately. The FBI issued a similar warning a month ago, saying that one state’s election board was compromised and others had seen multiple attempts. More activity has been observed since then.

Verizon technician sold calling, location data for thousands of dollars – An Alabama man who worked as a Verizon Wireless technician has agreed to plead guilty to a federal hacking charge in connection to his illegal use of the company’s computers to acquire customer calling and location data. The man, Daniel Eugene Traeger, faces a maximum five years in prison next month. He admitted Thursday that he sold customer data—from 2009 to 2014—to a private investigator whom the authorities have not named.

Security: It might not be the outside world that’s the largest threat to businesses – A new report reveals that one in three businesses experienced an insider attack in the past year. More devices with more access are putting sensitive info in the hands of everyone: Spies included.

Record-breaking DDoS reportedly delivered by >145k hacked cameras – Last week, security news site KrebsOnSecurity went dark for more than 24 hours following what was believed to be a record 620 gigabit-per-second denial of service attack brought on by an ensemble of routers, security cameras, or other so-called Internet of Things devices. Now, there’s word of a similar attack on a French Web host that peaked at a staggering 1.1 terabits per second, more than 60 percent bigger. It’s not easy for most people to know if their routers, DVRs, and other Internet-connected devices are infected. Most come with only a minimal control panel, and it’s not possible to use antivirus software to scan them for infections. Depending on the type of attack they’re carrying out, devices may show no sign they’re taking part in a crippling DDoS. The most important things end users can do is to change all default passwords, or better yet, to never connect the devices to the Internet in the first place.

Company News:

HP will stop blocking its printers from using third-party ink – HP is backtracking on a firmware update that recently blocked some printers from using third-party ink cartridges. Some users reported that the update sometimes mistakenly marked legitimate ink as fake, so HP’s CEO Jon Flaxman wrote today that the company will issue a new update to turn off the DRM. HP also clarified that third-party cartridges still work with the original update, so long as they’re built with HP security chips — aka HP is getting a cut of their business. The first mandatory update took effect on September 13th and forced printers to display “damaged cartridge” whenever a bad third-party cartridge was loaded. Following its activation, at least one company vowed to create new chips that could subvert the security check. It looks like that won’t be needed for now.

Google rebrands its business apps as G Suite, upgrades apps & announces Team Drive – Google announced today that its now ten-year old service Google Apps for Work (formerly Google Apps for Your Domain), is getting rebranded yet again. This time around, the company will call it “G Suite.” Sounds more hip, right? Alongside the news, Google also noted a handful of upgrades and improvements in G Suite’s existing product lineup, which includes apps like Drive, Docs, Spreadsheets, Slides, Calendar, Hangouts, and more.

Apple inks partnership with Deloitte to push iOS devices in the enterprise – Apple has a new alliance with consulting giant Deloitte that could push more iPhones and iPads into the workplace. As part of the deal, Deloitte will open up a new in-house business unit comprised of 5,000 “iOS specialists” who will advise clients on how to adopt iPhones and iPads across their business. The unit will have teams in APAC, EMEA, and the Americas. Deloitte and Apple will also work together on a new service called EnterpriseNext. In a nutshell, the service will try to help companies build a mobile strategy around iOS devices as well as create custom-built iOS apps.

Mozilla is stopping all commercial development on Firefox OS – Mozilla ended development of Firefox OS phones in 2015, but there was still hope for the operating system. Mozilla wanted Firefox OS to power smart TVs, tablets, routers, all-in-one PCs, and all kinds of other devices. But that’s no longer in the cards. Mozilla just announced it’s now ending all commercial development of Firefox OS.

IBM, Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Amazon form enormous AI partnership – On Wednesday, the world learned of a new industry association called the Partnership on Artificial Intelligence, and it includes some of the biggest tech companies in the world. IBM, Google, Facebook, Microsoft, and Amazon have all signed on as marquis members, though the group hopes to expand even further over time. The goal is to create a body that can provide a platform for discussions among stakeholders and work out best practices for the artificial intelligence industry. Not directly mentioned, but easily seen on the horizon, is its place as the primary force lobbying for smarter legislation on AI and related future-tech issues.

Wells Fargo execs’ bonuses slashed as feds investigate and employees sue – On Tuesday evening, Wells Fargo announced that the bank’s CEO, John Stumpf, would forfeit $41 million in uninvested equity and forego his salary in the wake of a scandal that has hurt the bank’s reputation. The news comes on the heels of a new Labor Department investigation into the bank’s practices, as well as the filing of a proposed $7.2 billion class-action lawsuit by several ex-employees who claim they were forced to “choose between keeping their jobs and opening unauthorized accounts,” according to CNN Money.

Salesforce tries to block Microsoft’s LinkedIn acquisition – Microsoft made a splash earlier this year when it announced the largest acquisition in its history, signing an agreement to buy LinkedIn for $26.2 billion. But now, Salesforce is trying to convince the European Union to block the deal. Salesforce Chief Legal Officer Burke Norton will argue to the EU’s competition authority that Microsoft’s control of LinkedIn’s dataset following an acquisition would be anticompetitive. EU competition chief Margarethe Vestager said in January that her agency would be looking directly at whether a company’s use of data is bad for competition, and these complaints seem aimed squarely at those comments.

Amazon Launches $2.5 Million Alexa Prize Competition – Teams will build bots on Amazon’s Alexa platform that can converse with people about popular topics and news events.

Oracle denied new trial in copyright dispute with Google over Java – A federal court in California has denied Oracle another trial in its long-standing copyright infringement dispute with Google over the use of Java code in Android.

Games and Entertainment:

No Man’s Sky is now under investigation for false advertising – The UK’s Advertising Standards Authority announced it’s investigating the way No Man’s Sky has been advertised on Steam. Regulators from the ASA have examined the game’s Steam page and, based on the information presented there, compiled a list of ways that No Man’s Sky gameplay deviates from what the company’s advertising copy promises.

Civilization 6: The most in-depth Civ to date – This year marks the 25th anniversary of Sid Meier’s Civilization. It’s an important milestone for a series that has shaped the strategy genre in countless ways over the last quarter-century. The release of Civilization VI is the next big step, and after 2014’s good-but-not-outstanding Civilization: Beyond Earth, which felt more like a spinoff than a sequel, expectations are high. The good news is that in the 15 hours and several hundred turns I’ve poured into a pre-release version of the game—which features all of the structural and mechanical features from the retail release, half of the game’s 20 distinct civilisations, a comprehensive list of different map types, three map sizes, and two game speeds—Civ VI is already very good indeed. It might even be the most in-depth Civilization game to date.

Gears of War 4 Prologue previewed in 20-minute gameplay video – We’re less than two weeks out from the launch of Gears of War 4, and if you remain on the fence about whether or not you’ll pick the game up, Microsoft is hoping that new gameplay video might sway you. This isn’t a typical trailer, though, as Microsoft and developer The Coalition actually take us through the game’s prologue missions.

Amazon gives its $40 Fire TV Stick better Wi-Fi and a quad-core processor – It’s a good time to be in the market for a streaming TV box. Roku just updated its lineup earlier this week with the tiny $30 Roku Express and some mainstream boxes that bring 4K video support for less than $100. Google is expected to release a 4K version of its popular Chromecast dongle at its product event next week. And Amazon has just announced a new version of its $40 Fire TV Stick.

Off Topic (Sort of):

50 percent of parents knowingly text their teens while the teens are driving – A new study reveals some stunning statistics about texting behind the wheel and a parent’s role in making it worse.

A Commodore 64 has helped run an auto shop for 25 years – Apple’s Phil Schiller thinks it’s sad that people use 5-year-old computers. Well, Phil, there’s an auto repair shop in Poland that’s going to send you spiraling into a long depression. Why? Because one of the computers they’re using on a day-to-day basis is a Commodore 64, and I don’t mean one of the slick nostalgic remakes. I’m talking about a classically beautiful beige C64 and its whirring, clunking 5.25″ floppy disk drive. It’s been there for more than 25 years. See, not everyone finds the idea of using an old computer sad. Some, like the mechanics at this shop in Gdansk, treat their hardware like a trusted member of their team. Clearly this Commodore 64 has been pulling its weight for the past 25 years, or the shop would’ve found a different system to help them balance driveshafts.

FCC delays vote on controversial set-top box proposal – The Federal Communications Commission made a last-minute announcement this morning that it would delay the vote on a measure that would have effectively killed off the cable box by requiring TV providers to make their shows and movies available through free streaming apps. A revamped proposal was introduced earlier this month, attempting to address some major complaints, by giving cable companies more control over their content and adding more copyright protections for content providers.

    A few on that human garbage dump – Donald Trump.

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Trump fuels conspiracy that Google is ‘suppressing’ bad Clinton news – Donald Trump is not a stranger to the occasional conspiracy theory, and in a speech on Wednesday, he added a new one to the list: Google is suppressing bad news about Hillary Clinton. “A new post-debate poll that just came out, the Google poll, has us leading Hillary Clinton by two points nationwide, and that’s despite the fact that Google search engine was suppressing the bad news about Hillary Clinton,” Trump said at the speech in Waukesha, Wisconsin. “How about that. How about that.”

Search Interest in Voter Registration by Spanish Speakers Skyrocketed After the Debate – Searches of “registrarse para votar” (Spanish for “register to vote”) rose 2200% in the past week on Google, peaking after Monday’s first presidential debate. Searches in English grew by just 430%. While Google search data isn’t entirely predictive, it can provide useful insight for what voters are asking in their internet browsers. The candidate most searched for by Spanish speakers was Democrat Hillary Clinton, who had 86% of the Google searches containing “votar por” (Spanish for “vote for”) compared to Trump’s 14% of searches.

Trump’s Campaign Is Trying to Cover Up His Lies About Climate Change – In a delicious turn of events at this week’s presidential debate, Donald Trump received his comeuppance over a four-year-old tweet in which he denounced climate change. On stage, his opponent, Hillary Clinton, referenced the tweet from 2012, and remarked that “Donald Trump thinks that climate change is a hoax perpetrated by the Chinese.” His reply? An easily fact-checked lie. “I did not. I do not say that,” he scrambled to say, like a child who’s been caught with his hand in the cookie jar.

Hacker Zine Says It Will Pay $10,000 For Trump’s Tax Returns – A lot of people want to see Donald Trump’s tax returns. Especially in light of links between his campaign and Russian officials, what are his potential conflicts of interest while running for presidency? Now, infamous hacker zine 2600 says it will pay a hefty bounty for the documents. On Twitter, 2600 said, “We are offering $10K for 1st access to [Donald Trump’s] tax return.” The tweet suggests potential submitters can use PGP encryption to send the files and that the source’s identity will be protected.

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Canada Is Now Prescribing Heroin to Fight Addiction – Heroin addicts in Canada can now get their fix with a doctor’s prescription. As of September 13, doctors who apply for a permit from Canada’s Special Access Program can prescribe diacetylmorphine, or pharmaceutical grade heroin, to severely addicted patients. Canada has been especially progressive in legislation that oversees addiction, treating it as an illness rather than a moral failure. In 2003, Vancouver became home to the first ever SIF, or supervised injection facility, where heroin users can bring their own stash and shoot up with sterile needles in a clean, safe environment. And the policies could pave the way for global changes. Now, New York’s city council just approved a study of supervised injection facilities in the city, while in Ithaca the mayor also proposed to open a SIF.

Something to think about:

“The Google poll has us leading Hillary Clinton by two points nationwide, and that’s despite the fact that Google’s search engine was suppressing the bad news about Hillary Clinton. How about that?”

–   Donald Trump

“Egotism is the anesthetic that dulls the pain of stupidity.”

–   Frank Leahy

In Pursuit of Freedom – The Pushback Continues:

Human rights orgs take Five Eyes nations to court – Human rights organisations have today made the most direct legal challenge against the UK and USA’s surveillance activities since they were first revealed in 2013.

Despite the outcry against surveillance which followed the outpourings of rogue NSA sysadmin Edward Snowden, and a few successful legal challenges, the utility and lawfulness of bulk interception has been consistently upheld by courts on both sides of the Atlantic.

Ten organisations including Privacy International, Liberty, and Amnesty International, have today filed a direct complaint against the UK and USA to the European Court of Human Rights.

The 115-page complaint [PDF] is the first to directly challenge programmes such as GCHQ’s system Tempora, as well the NSA’s Upstream collection programme, on the grounds that they are in breach of Article 8 of the European Convention of Human Rights.

Article 8 provides for a qualified right to privacy, a right that may be abridged if particular conditions are met, including that there are clear legal regimes regulating how governments may engage in surveillance against their populations.

The claimants are concerned that domestic courts and independent oversight mechanisms haven’t been able to tackle the bulk interception of transnational data flows, and the sharing of such data between different government agencies, due to “institutional deficiencies” in some cases and “the geographically bounded jurisdiction of these mechanisms” in others.

Across US, police officers abuse confidential databases – Police officers across the country misuse confidential law enforcement databases to get information on romantic partners, business associates, neighbors, journalists and others for reasons that have nothing to do with daily police work, an Associated Press investigation has found.

Criminal-history and driver databases give officers critical information about people they encounter on the job. But the AP’s review shows how those systems also can be exploited by officers who, motivated by romantic quarrels, personal conflicts or voyeuristic curiosity, sidestep policies and sometimes the law by snooping. In the most egregious cases, officers have used information to stalk or harass, or have tampered with or sold records they obtained.

No single agency tracks how often the abuse happens nationwide, and record-keeping inconsistencies make it impossible to know how many violations occur.

But the AP, through records requests to state agencies and big-city police departments, found law enforcement officers and employees who misused databases were fired, suspended or resigned more than 325 times between 2013 and 2015. They received reprimands, counseling or lesser discipline in more than 250 instances, the review found.

Unspecified discipline was imposed in more than 90 instances reviewed by AP. In many other cases, it wasn’t clear from the records if punishment was given at all. The number of violations was surely far higher since records provided were spotty at best, and many cases go unnoticed.

Among those punished: an Ohio officer who pleaded guilty to stalking an ex-girlfriend and who looked up information on her; a Michigan officer who looked up home addresses of women he found attractive; and two Miami-Dade officers who ran checks on a journalist after he aired unflattering stories about the department.

FBI’s Controversial Surveillance Program Declined After Snowden – The FBI’s use of a controversial program that collected Americans’ phone records decreased significantly after Edward Snowden exposed it to the world in 2013, a new report has found.

The program allows the FBI to get access to phone records—but not the content of phone calls—with permission from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. Between 2012 and 2014, that court approved 561 so-called “business records orders,” but that number dropped from a nine-year high of 212 in 2012 to 170 in 2014, a nearly 20 percent decrease, according to a review by the Justice Department’s inspector general.

The number fell again in 2015 to 142 orders. Snowden’s revelations helped fuel a change in U.S. law that ended the government’s practice of collecting and storing the phone records. Now, the government must request the information from phone companies.

A Justice Department official attributed the diminishing use of the program to the “stigma attached” to it after Snowden’s leaks. But there may be other factors, including the FBI’s increasing use of different tools under surveillance law, notably Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. That section was associated with another controversial practice that Snowden exposed: collecting emails and other electronic information from large technology companies, including Facebook, Apple, and Google.

Poll: Should Edward Snowden be pardoned? – As President Obama concludes his term, the idea of pardoning Edward Snowden has percolated through the major media and been chattered about vociferously on social media. A petition on the White House’s We The People page has over 160,000 signatures.

The hacker and former NSA contractor remains controversial, three years after he swiped and released evidence that the US spy agency had been stockpiling massive amounts of data about internet users. Snowden argued that his actions revealed “unconstitutional activity” by the NSA and other government intelligence organizations.

The government, and many private sector cybersecurity firms, see Snowden as a criminal who broke the law and exposed state secrets.

The media is equally divided. Major news organizations, some of which collaborated with or have close ties to Edward Snowden, have been vocal about the idea of a pardon. The New York Times, The Intercept, and The Verge argue in favor of a pardon and compare the Snowden leaks to the release of the Pentagon Papers.

Microsoft sees rise in number of secret data requests – Microsoft has seen a rise in the number of accounts affected by secret government demands, according to its latest transparency report.

But the number of overall number of demands filed by world law enforcement and intelligence agencies declined during the last six-month reporting period.

The latest report from the tech giant, which covers the first half of this year ending June, revealed an 8 percent decrease in requests for customer data from global law enforcement and intelligence agencies.

In total, the company received 35,572 demands for data from law enforcement agencies, affecting 38,366 accounts across the world.

Tech Thoughts Net News – Wednesday – September 28, 2016

Windows 10: Here’s why it beats Windows 7 on security;  Twitter will now help you register to vote;  IObit Applock: An app locker Android users can count on;  FAQ: What’s so special about 802.11ad Wi-Fi?  How to build a budget PC for less than $300;  Best home security camera;   The Best Security Suites of 2016;  Why $130 for a pair of camera-glasses isn’t a crazy idea – and much more news you need to know.

Twitter will now help you register to vote, answer voter questions via direct message – Twitter today is the latest tech company to join the push to get more Americans registered to vote. The company is rolling out a new feature that will allow you to direct message the company’s @Gov Twitter account in order to receive voter registration assistance over private messaging. What’s clever about Twitter’s implementation is that it’s personalized to you, based on your zip code. Voter registration deadlines vary from state to state, which is why Twitter says you’ll need to send through your five-digit zip code in order to receive accurate information for where you live. After DM’ing the @Gov account, Twitter will respond to your message with your state’s deadline and a link to get registered. The company says it’s working with Rock the Vote to power this new feature.

Windows 10: Here’s why it beats Windows 7 on security, says Microsoft – At the Microsoft Ignite conference in Atlanta the tech giant showcased the new security features in Windows 10 that will help secure firms.

Here’s how Microsoft is walling off malware to protect Edge users – Microsoft is aiming to better protect users and organizations from the threats that they face in the browser with a new feature called Windows Defender Application Guard. It’s designed to isolate Microsoft Edge from the rest of the files and processes running on a user’s computer and prevent computer exploits from taking hold.

IObit Applock: An app locker Android users can count on – Of all the app locker software I’ve tried, IObit Applock is the one I prefer. Why? Because it works, it has the right features with very little fluff, and there are no ads. IObit Applock is rock solid. The feature list will please anyone looking to add another layer of security to their devices.

The Best Security Suites of 2016 – Using your computer for games and social media is fun; keeping it safe isn’t. A security suite can be your one-stop solution. We’ve tested almost four dozen of them, and these 10 get our highest recommendation.

How to use ‘Training for Google Apps’ as your personal tech support – Google’s services from Gmail to Drive are packed with all kinds of surprising features. Most of us know the basics, such as sending an email, formatting a word-processing document, and editing a few cells on a spreadsheet. But sometimes even the biggest Google services fan needs a little help. That’s where a handy Chrome extension by Google called Training for Google Apps comes in.

4 scanning apps for easily digitizing your documents – Thanks to our smartphone cameras, we’re all walking around with handheld scanners in our pockets. All you need to unlock them is the right app. The best scanning apps provide everything you need to manage your digital-document workflow: editing tools to clean up the scanned images, optical character recognition (OCR) so you can edit and search document text, and the ability to upload scans to your favorite note-taking app or cloud storage for anywhere access. Here are four apps that do that and more.

Snapchat Spectacles: Why $130 for a pair of camera-glasses isn’t a crazy idea – Smartglasses — or any sort of aggressive head-wearable eye tech — is still the final frontier for tech. Google Glass died as an awkward joke. Most smartglasses look like the sort of oddball things a normal person wouldn’t wear for more than a few seconds. Enter Spectacles. Can camera-glasses become a thing at last?

They light up when recording, just so everyone else knows what you’re doing. Spectacles.com

Record Labels Sue YouTube Audio-Ripping Site – Universal, Warner Bros. and Sony, among other labels, filed suit against YouTube-mp3.org, a Germany-based site that lets users convert YouTube videos with audio tracks into permanent audio files they can download. The labels are seeking $150,000 for each instance of piracy, the BBC reports; the suit alleges there could “hundreds of millions” of tracks ripped to computers each month through the site. Though YouTube-mp3.org is not alone in offering such services, the suit say it’s the “chief offender” with an estimated 60 million users per month.

Plex Cloud launched for Media Server lovers without hardware – Now for those users that like the idea of using Plex Media Server but don’t want the hassle of actually hosting the server themselves, the company has expanded. Plex has launched Plex Cloud, taking the approach other cloud storage companies have worked with and turning it on its head. While other cloud storage groups have launched their storage first, then their organizational tools, the Plex crew have been creating and refining their organizational software for while now – approximately 8.7-years, at this point.

Best home security camera: Our favorite tools for keeping an eye on the home front – A boom in wireless security cameras is inspiring a movement in DIY home surveillance. Follow our buying guide and read our reviews to find the best option for you.

Podo camera redux has larger pixels, wide-angle lens, two week battery – Remember the Podo wireless camera? It’s back again, this time as an upgraded version that has, among other things, twice the pixel size as the original and a wide-angle lens. Despite the changes, Podo still offers its best features — you can stick it anywhere (just about, anyway) for quick on-the-fly recording. Stick it to a door, and it’ll record your visitors; to a wall, and it’ll record your pets; to the fridge, and it’ll see who is stealing your lunch.

FAQ: What’s so special about 802.11ad Wi-Fi? – Here are the broad strokes about 802.11ad, the wireless technology that’s just starting to hit the market.

Cheap, but good: How to build a budget PC for less than $300 – Here’s how to build a cheap PC that can expertly handle all the “normal stuff” people do—web browsing, Office tasks, email, video playback, you name it—and do so on a tight budget. In fact, at less than $300, this budget PC is far cheaper than the average $448 selling price of Windows laptops, while still far less pokey than the cheap-o $250 Chromebooks stuffed with Celeron processors. And you’ll have a full keyboard and mouse to get stuff done.

    If you can handle a screwdriver – you can build a PC. It’s really as simple as – “this goes here” and, “this goes there.”

Intel Core i5 vs. Core i7: Which processor should you buy? – Whether you’re building your next PC or shopping for a new computer online, one of the questions that comes up from time to time is whether the Intel Core i5 or Core i7 is a better bargain. The short answer, “It depends,” isn’t all that helpful, so we’ve broken the data out in more detail and for both mobile and desktop processors. Here’s what you need to know.

Get an Arduino and teach yourself to program – Programming is more than just picking a language and framework. Programming means understanding how code interacts with actual computer hardware. If you want to get a visceral (and fun) understanding of programming, start with an Arduino.

Arduino Uno

OneDrive’s file placeholders will return to Windows 10 as On-Demand Sync – Windows 10 users are getting OneDrive placeholders with a new name: On-Demand Sync. If you aren’t familiar with the concept behind OneDrive placeholders (or On-Demand Sync), it’s a feature that allows you to see all your OneDrive-stored files in the Windows File Explorer. Even if a file isn’t stashed on your device’s local hard drive it will still be visible when you open the OneDrive folder in File Explorer.

What to expect from Google’s big Oct. 4 hardware event – Pixel phones, Google Home, a 4K Chromecast, and maybe even a new tablet may come to dine at the hardware feast.

Google announces Neural Machine Translation to improve Google Translate – The Google Neural Machine Translation system ‘surpasses’ the results of all other machine-translation solutions currently available, with GNMT now being used for Chinese-to-English translations.

Security:

Virlock ransomware can now use the cloud to spread, say researchers – A new strain of this two-year-old ransomware takes advantage of users syncing and sharing to spread infected files through their network.

It’s not the FBI demanding payment here, it’s criminals. Image: Netskope

Yahoo’s Password Breach Could Have Wide-Reaching Consequences – As investors and investigators weigh the damage of Yahoo’s massive breach to the internet icon, information security experts worry that the record-breaking haul of password data could be used to open locks up and down the web. While it’s unknown to what extent the stolen data has been or will be circulating — or how easy it would be to use if it were — giant breaches can send ripples of insecurity across the internet.

Yahoo’s claim of ‘state-sponsored’ hackers meets with skepticism – Yahoo has blamed its massive data breach on a “state-sponsored actor”. But the company isn’t saying why it arrived at that conclusion. Nor has it provided any evidence.

US senator asks SEC to probe Yahoo hack – Democratic Senator Mark Warner has asked the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to investigate whether Yahoo and its executives fulfilled its obligations to go public about the hack in 2014 that affected 500 million user accounts. In a letter to SEC chairwoman Mary Jo White, Warner said that public companies such as Yahoo are required to disclose material events that the public and shareholders should know about, and that “disclosure is the foundation of federal securities law”. Warner also asked the SEC to look into whether Yahoo made accurate representations concerning the security of its IT systems.

Beware: iOS 10 security flaw makes cracking encrypted backups 2,500 times easier – Russian security firm Elcomsoft discovered the flaw, which makes brute force password cracking far easier than in iOS 9. All iPhone and iPad users need to be aware of what’s at stake.

Armies of hacked smart devices launch unprecedented DDoS attacks – The botnets made up of compromised IoT devices are now capable of launching distributed denial-of-service attacks of unprecedented scale.

Trump hotel chain fined over data breaches – Trump Hotel Collection has arrived at a settlement with New York Attorney General Eric T. Schneiderman over hacks that are said to have led to the exposure of over 70,000 credit card numbers and other personal data.

Mozilla to China’s WoSign: We’ll kill Firefox trust in you after mis-issued GitHub certs – Mozilla has proposed to stop trusting new digital certificates from Chinese certificate authority WoSign for one year.

Cybercrime and cyberwar: A spotter’s guide to the groups that are out to get you – Security threats can come from a variety of different individuals and groups. Here’s a field guide to the major players.

Company News:

Rights warriors demand reverse-ferret on printers snubbing unofficial cartridges – The Electronic Freedom Foundation has written to HP Inc demanding it reverse its attempt to prevent any third-party ink cartridges or refilled cartridges from working in its Officejet Pro printers. The EFF objects that HP is depriving its customers of a useful feature – to use any ink they choose. It further accuses the ink giant of abusing the security update process by introducing doubt into the update and patching process.

Microsoft claims Windows 10 now active on 400 million devices – Microsoft released updated statistics on Windows 10, showing that 400 million people are now using the OS worldwide. It’s the fastest transition to a new version of Windows in at least a decade.

Google could soon bring free Wi-Fi to your bus – Why use your data on public transport when you can use free internet provided by Google? The American tech giant on Tuesday announced Google Stations, a project which aims to bring free Wi-Fi to trains and buses around the world. This all started last year when Google began providing Indian stations with free internet, but the company hopes to branch it out internationally.

Google Pushes Into India With Data-Saving Apps, More Wi-Fi – Google is making a big push into India this week with several new products intended to get people online without draining their data and bank accounts. During the second Google for India event, the company unveiled the data-saving YouTube Go app (pictured) and lighter versions of flagship products, but also tipped more options for activating public Wi-Fi and Hindi for Google Assistant.

Lenovo fires over 1,000 more employees, mostly from Motorola – Lenovo has confirmed it is making around 1,100 jobs redundant, with the cuts mostly impacting employees in its Motorola Mobility smartphone division.

Disney may bid for Twitter, too – You can add Disney to the list of companies considering making a bid for Twitter, at least if new sources are correct. According to these individuals, who are said to be familiar with the business plans, Disney is looking into possibly making a bid for Twitter, something Salesforce, Google, Verizon, and Microsoft are also reportedly looking into. As expected, neither Disney nor Twitter commented on the rumor; however, if Disney were to proceed with a successful bid, this would mark its largest acquisition in a decade.

Games and Entertainment:

Why you shouldn’t get excited about 4K and HDR gaming, at least not yet – One of the biggest letdowns of the “original” PS4 and Xbox One was the lack of 4K resolution. The new PS4 Pro and Xbox One S consoles fix that issue, offering the potential to game in 4K as well as high dynamic range, aka HDR. The combination promises better graphics, contrast and color than ever, especially when mated to a high-end big-screen TV. Sounds pretty awesome, right? Hold your horses. We aren’t quite in the era of 4K gaming just yet. Here’s what you need to know about these new consoles, what you need to get them to play 4K and HDR in your home, and where PC gaming fits in.

Roku reboots its entire lineup with five all-new Express, Premiere, and Ultra models – The streaming pioneer is retiring all of its current set-top boxes, but will keep the portable Roku Stick. Its top two new products will deliver 4K video and HDR decoding.

Forza Horizon 3 truly shines on Windows 10 — if you’re on high-end hardware – Even though Horizon 3 runs relatively smoothly at 30Hz on the Xbox One, the recommended specs for the Windows 10 version of the game are surprisingly high. The developers think you should be running at least a Core i7-3820 CPU, a GTX 970/R9 290X graphics card, 4GB of VRAM, and 12GB of RAM for a 1080p experience. Want to run the game at 2160p? Well, the “ideal specs” are listed as a Core i7-6700 CPU, a GTX 980Ti/R9 Fury X graphics card, 6GB of VRAM, 16GB of RAM, and an SSD.

New Battlefield 1 trailer previews single-player campaign – It’s hard to avoid talk of Battlefield 1 ever since the game’s multiplayer beta wrapped up, but one topic that’s been notably missing from discussion is the game’s single-player campaign. While multiplayer tends to be the primary focus of games like these, many of them do ship with a single-player component for players who prefer a little story with their gunplay, and Battlefield 1 will be no exception. Today, we’re getting a look at that campaign in the newest Battlefield 1 trailer.

GOG Connect offers more no-cost, DRM-free copies of Steam games you already own – Back in June, GOG.com announced its new “GOG Connect” program, a way by which it hoped to undermine Steam’s dominance as a platform. Feel like you’ve spent so much money that there’s no way you could ever switch away from Steam? GOG’s plan was to provide you with duplicate, DRM-free copies of games you’ve already bought, alleviating that burden.

The 10 Most Pirated Movies – Films starring Pierce Brosnan, Kate McKinnon, and Daniel Radcliffe appear in this week’s list of the most pirated movies on the Internet.

Off Topic (Sort of):

How machine learning and AI will ‘save the entire security industry’ – Machine learning and big data have led to many advances, including some in cybersecurity. Cylance CEO Stuart McClure explained the biggest implications the technology has for security.

A visual look at Elon Musk’s plan to move us to Mars (pictures) – In a much-anticipated talk at a space conference in Mexico on Tuesday, SpaceX founder Elon Musk revealed his grand ambition to build a city on Mars of as many as a million people and as soon as the 2060s. The plan centers on a huge new SpaceX rocket (shown here in a slide from Musk’s presentation) even more powerful than the huge Saturn V rockets used for the Apollo missions of the 1960s and ’70s.

Anti-Defamation League Declares Pepe the Frog a Hate Symbol – Pepe the Frog’s beginnings were unoffensive: he is the creation of comic book creator Matt Furie, who featured the frog as a character in the series Boy’s Club beginning in 2005. The character subsequently became a beloved meme, often called the “sad frog meme” and shared with a speech bubble reading “Feels good man” or “Feels bad man.” It was at times posted on social media by the likes of Katy Perry and Nicki Minaj. But recently, as the Daily Beast reported in May, the character has been co-opted by a faction of Internet denizens who decided to reclaim it from the mainstream, and began sharing it in anti-Semitic contexts.

Palmer Luckey lied — and that matters more than his politics – I don’t care who Oculus founder Palmer Luckey votes for or how he spends his money. If the 24-year-old VR pioneer decided that plastering billboards with anti-Hillary Clinton memes was the best way to spend his time, I won’t boycott his Oculus Rift headset or enjoy it any less. Particularly when Oculus (and its parent company Facebook) employ lots of people who shouldn’t be punished for Luckey’s actions. But I do care about the truth. And the truth is that Palmer Luckey — the poster boy for a technology we’ve dreamed about for decades, the one we’re trusting to build the future — lied about what he did or didn’t do.

Something to think about:

“Disconnecting from change does not recapture the past. It loses the future.”

–       Kathleen Norris

In Pursuit of Freedom – The Pushback Continues:

Twitter Refuses to Block Account of Noted Turkish Journalist – A Turkish court ordered Twitter to block the account of a noted journalist last week, accusing him of “instigating terrorism.” But despite receiving the court order, Twitter has decided not to comply, Motherboard has learned.

The company got a court order requesting the censorship of 17 accounts, including that of Mahir Zeynalov, a well known DC-based writer. But as of Monday morning, the account was still up all over the world, including within Turkey. Twitter also notified Zeynalov of the censorship request via email on Friday. Twitter declined to comment for this story.

“Twitter has not taken any action on the reported account at this time. One of our core values is to defend and respect the user’s voice,” the notice sent to Zeynalov, which was obtained by Motherboard, read. “Accordingly, we may consider filing petition of objection if we find that there is an appropriate legal basis to do so. If you intend to file an objection to this order in the Turkish courts, please reply immediately to let us know.”

Despite the company’s refusal, Zeynalov said he expects his account to be censored.

Facebook Ordered to Delete WhatsApp Data in Germany – German data protection authorities on Tuesday ordered Facebook to delete data, such as phone numbers, it has received from its subsidiary WhatsApp.

Facebook acquired the global messaging service two years ago and announced this summer that WhatsApp would begin sharing the phone numbers of its users with the social network as part of a program to synchronize the two businesses.

But Hamburg’s Commissioner for Data Protection ruled that Facebook “neither has obtained an effective approval from the WhatsApp users, nor does a legal basis for the data reception exist.”

“After the acquisition of WhatsApp by Facebook two years ago, both parties have publicly assured that data will not be shared between them,” the agency said in a statement. “The fact that this is now happening is not only a misleading of their users and the public, but also constitutes an infringement of national data protection law.”

Facebook, whose German operations are based in Hamburg, questioned the ruling.

Tech Thoughts Net News – Monday – September 26, 2016

The Best Antivirus Protection of 2016;  When is the first Presidential Debate? Live Streaming video detailed;  The Best Password Managers of 2016;   How to customize the Windows 10 Start menu;  What to do when you hate Windows 10;  Black Friday 2016 predictions include $90 Chromebooks;  Google Allo vs. Apple iMessage vs. Facebook Messenger;  Everything coming to Netflix, Amazon Prime, and HBO Now in October – and much more news you need to know.

Google Safe Browsing beats rivals but still only flags up 10 percent of hacked sites – Thousands of websites have been hijacked in the past three months, but just 18 percent were blacklisted by four major security services, including Google’s Safe Browsing system. Sucuri’s Hacked Website Report for the second quarter of 2016 contains a rundown of 9,771 infected sites that it has recovered in the past three months on behalf of customers. Only 18 percent of these infected sites have been blacklisted by Google’s Safe Browsing, Symantec’s Norton SafeWeb, Yandex’s Safe Browsing service, or McAfee’s SiteAdviser, according to Sucuri, meaning the vast majority have been spreading malware without users being warned about them.

Google’s service far outperformed the others, accounting for 52 percent of the roughly one-fifth of sites that have been blacklisted. Image: Sucuri

When is the first Presidential Debate? Live Streaming video detailed – Since the year 2008, the last time the United States had a presidential race that the entire world was interested in, a lot has changed in how we’re able to access video. The age of Live Video Streams has truly dawned, and we’re in a place where it’d more surprising to NOT see the debates available for live streaming online than if they were. And they are. And we’ve got all the links and video boxes and streamers in the world below, ready for the clicking and the watching.

Sling TV Capitalizing on Presidential Debate With Free Preview – The Sling TV free preview event starts at 8 a.m. ET on Monday, meaning you can watch pre-debate coverage, the beginning of the Falcons-Saints football game, which starts at 8:30, before (hopefully) flipping over to the debate at 9 p.m. ET. The free period will end at 2 a.m. ET the following day, so you can also check out post-debate coverage and game highlights.

What to do when you hate Windows 10 – I know this is probably not what you want to hear, but overall I don’t think Windows 10 is a bad OS like Windows 8 was when it launched. It’s essentially a hybrid version of Windows 7 and Windows 8.1, and it’s going to be around for a very long time in one form or another so you might as well get comfortable with it now. It also offers a lot of tweaks that could help it grow on you. Here are some of my favorites:

How to customize the Windows 10 Start menu with numbered shortcuts – You can streamline the Windows 10 Start menu and make it even easier to access and launch the apps you use most often. This illustrated walk-through explains the steps.

The best online backup service for securely encrypting your data – Every hosted backup solution manages encrypted storage a little differently. We look at who gives subscribers the keys to the castle.

The Best Antivirus Protection of 2016 – Antivirus software is a must for every computer. Without it, you risk losing your personal information, your files, even the cash from your bank account. We’ve tested 44 utilities to help you pick the right one for your PC.

The Best Password Managers of 2016 – A password like “123456” or “monkey” is easy to remember, but it’s also easy to crack. With the help of a password manager, you can have a unique and strong password for every secure website.

Black Friday 2016 predictions include $90 Chromebooks, $299 Apple iPad Air 2 tablets – Expect the trend of store gift cards to be given in lieu of deals on Apple products, while budget Windows laptops will probably be priced around $150.

How to search the full text of web pages in your Chrome browsing history with Falcon – A new Chrome extension called Falcon lets you find web pages in your browsing history by searching for any word or phrase contained on the page you’re looking for.

Messaging app Telegram adds selfie masks, DIY GIFs – With what looks to be an eye on Snapchat’s selfie-loving fanbase, messaging platform Telegram has beefed up its in-app photo editor in what it dubs an “entertainment-heavy update” — including an option that lets users customize selfies by adding cartoon masks that automatically align on their faces. Snapchat of course has a lenses feature for transforming users’ selfies. The Telegram feature is far less sophisticated than Snapchat’s lenses; more ‘selfie augmentation’ than full facial transformation, given it only works with photos (not video). And is really just another sticker set that can be added to photos you’ve already snapped. But the popularity of stickers on messaging platforms should not be underestimated.

Google Allo vs. Apple iMessage vs. Facebook Messenger: How They Compare – The messaging apps you likely use each day, like Apple’s iMessage and Facebook Messenger, have changed dramatically over the past few months. These apps, primarily designed for simple conversation, are gradually evolving into platforms for more complex messaging and outside services. The shift can be compared to the move from mobile webpages to apps that took place once smartphones like the iPhone rose in popularity nearly a decade ago.

Google planning to release Wi-Fi router at October event, Home to cost $129: Report – The Google Wi-Fi router is expected to be released at Google’s October 4 event, according to the blog, which has correctly pegged past Google releases. The router is said to be designed like a small, white Amazon Echo Dot, and you can reportedly expand it with multiple access points .

Skype Teams expected to launch in January 2017, beta in November – Earlier in the month, we heard that Microsoft was plotting a competitor to Slack under its Skype branding. This new program, Skype Teams, was rumored to borrow a fair number of features while at the same time attempting to improve on the experience Slack offers its users through things like deep integration with Office 365. Now, we’re hearing that Skype Teams could launch as early as January, with Microsoft rolling out a large scale beta before then.

Snapchat Is Releasing Video-Sharing Sunglasses. They’re Called Spectacles – Snapchat is expanding beyond its platform for short vanishing videos with the launch of video-sharing sunglasses this year. The camera-embedded sunglasses, capable of capturing a wider field of view known as “circular video,” will connect directly to Snapchat, allowing users to share videos that more closely resemble human vision.

Face-Recognition Porn Is Now a Thing – Porn site Megacams just introduced a not-creepy-at-all feature that lets you upload a photo of someone you want to see nude and get matched up with a lookalike “sex model.” The feature leverages facial-recognition technology to scan a photo — analyzing things like the bridge of the person’s nose, their forehead, and chin — to find a similar-looking sex model in the site’s database. What a world we live in, huh?

Uber rolls out security selfies in US for driver authentication – Uber has taken another step toward addressing safety concerns voiced by critics, doing so by starting a rollout of security selfies in the United States. With these selfies, an Uber driver takes a selfie using their phone before they can go online in the Uber system, which users the selfie to determine whether the driver matches the account owner’s photo on file. By doing so, it serves as an authentication of sorts that the driver is who he or she is supposed to be.

Security:

Malwarebytes: Top 10 ways to secure your mobile phone –  To get a leg up against a rising tide of mobile malware activity, don’t just phone it in—secure your mobile phone with these tried and true methods.

Malwarebytes: Hosts file hijacks – The hosts file is the internet variant of a personal phonebook. We discuss a few malware variants that replace or change that phonebook, so you end up calling the wrong sites. The ones they want you to call.

Why the silencing of KrebsOnSecurity opens a troubling chapter for the ‘Net – For the better part of a day, KrebsOnSecurity, arguably the world’s most intrepid source of security news, has been silenced, presumably by a handful of individuals who didn’t like a recent series of exposés reporter Brian Krebs wrote. The incident, and the record-breaking data assault that brought it on, open a troubling new chapter in the short history of the Internet. The crippling distributed denial-of-service attacks started shortly after Krebs published stories stemming from the hack of a DDoS-for-hire service known as vDOS. The first article analyzed leaked data that identified some of the previously anonymous people closely tied to vDOS. It documented how they took in more than $600,000 in two years by knocking other sites offline. A few days later, Krebs ran a follow-up piece detailing the arrests of two men who allegedly ran the service. A third post in the series is here.

iOS 10 Has a ‘Severe’ Security Flaw, Says iPhone-Cracking Company – Specifically, the company found that iOS 10 backups saved locally to a computer via iTunes allow password-cracking tools to try different password combinations at a rate of 6,000,000 attempts per second, more than 40 times faster than with backups created by iOS 9. Elcomsoft says this is due to Apple implementing a weaker password verification method than the one protecting backup data in previous versions. That means that cops and tech-savvy criminals could much more quickly and easily gain access to data from locally-stored iOS 10 backups than those produced by older versions.

Company News:

Yahoo already hit with lawsuits over hack – On Friday, the firms Robbins Geller Rudman & Dowd and Labaton Sucharow filed a suit in the US District Court in the Northern District of California. The suit, for which the firm intends to seek class action status, accuses Yahoo of “failure to establish and implement basic data security” and being “grossly negligent” with user data, according to the complaint. It also alleges the company knew of the breach “long before” it was disclosed, but hid it from the public until after its $4.83 billion sale to Verizon. A separate class action suit was filed Thursday in US District Court in San Diego, according to the San Jose Mercury News. In that case, plaintiffs came to the lawyer before Yahoo announced the hack, trying to figure out how people were accessing their information.

Snapchat unveils $130 connected sunglasses and rebrands as Snap, Inc. – Snapchat’s first hardware product is coming to the market sooner than anyone expected. The company said tonight that it will sell Spectacles, a set of connected sunglasses that record 10-second snippets of video, for $130 sometime this fall. It also rebranded itself as Snap, Inc. — a reflection of a fact that the company now makes more than its flagship app, co-founder and CEO Evan Spiegel told the Wall Street Journal. Spectacles have a single button that you press to begin recording your snap, according to the Journal.

Facebook apologizes for feeding inflated video-view numbers to advertisers – On Friday, Facebook took to its official blog to confirm and respond to a Wall Street Journal report. In the blog post, the company acknowledged that one of Facebook’s most crucial metrics for measuring video-view performance had been wildly inflated. The blog post, from Facebook VP of marketing David Fischer, spells out exactly what the company did wrong. Its advertising-dashboard measure of “average duration of video viewed” was apparently based on questionable math. To get that count, the “total time spent watching a video” was only divided by the number of people who have seen at least three seconds of the video rather than everyone who watched the video.

Leica and Huawei continue camera partnership with joint R&D center – Leica and Huawei have announced plans for a new research and innovation center to be situated at Leica’s headquarters in Wetzlar, Germany. The Max Berek Innovation Lab, named after the famed optical pioneer who created many of Leica’s early lenses, continues a partnership first announced in February and solidified in April with the launch of Huawei’s Leica-branded P9 phone. According to Huawei, the R&D lab will “drive further development of optical systems and software-based technologies to improve imaging quality in a wide range of photographic and mobile device applications,” including AR and VR solutions. It’s not clear when work will begin at the center.

Tesla Sues Michigan Over Direct Sales Ban – Tesla has sued Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder and two other officials over the state’s refusal to allow the automaker’s direct sales-and-service model. The suit was filed only days after the state government rejected Tesla’s application for direct vehicle sales, Reuters reports. Tesla does not operate franchised dealers, but instead chooses to run its own facilities, which are not allowed in Michigan—a decision that violates the company’s right to due process, equal protection, and commerce, it claims.

Singapore social music startup buys 49% stake in Rolling Stone – BandLab Technologies says it plans to set up an international subsidiary in Singapore to build up its business and drive Rolling Stone’s expansion into new markets including Asia.

Games and Entertainment:

Street Fighter V PC update included rootkit, now pulled over malware concerns – Thursday saw the release of an update for Street Fighter V on both PS4 and PC that included several new features, including new character Urien, a versus CPU mode, and stage KOs, or the ability for players to defeat opponents using a level’s environment. But those playing the fighting game on PC noticed that they got something extra for their platform: a rootkit that allows any application access to the PC’s kernel.

Forza Horizon 3 review: the unofficial Fast and Furious video game – After a superlative 30-minute intro, that is like test-driving every car in the lot at the speed of light, you choose a driver — Forza Horizon developer Playground Games offers a diverse set of playable characters, not just bald white beefcakes — and begin taking over Australia through good-spirited road races, that leave a paradoxical wake of joyful onlookers and destroyed property. Nobody ever gets hurt, and damaged fences, shredded yards, and obliterated vineyards are repaired within minutes, as if by a set decoration team prepping a second attempt at a film’s big stunt sequence. And even coming in last place accrues followers in your quest to convert the island into a never-ending party sequence that starts every Fast and Furious film. (In one respect, it bests the Fast and Furious films by not sexualizing car culture and providing a full wardrobe for all female characters, not just the ones driving the cars.)

More Minecraft goodies: llamas in September, dragons in October – The Minecraft “Boss Update” may be coming to the Pocket, Windows 10, and Gear VR editions of the game on October 18th, but even before that happens, there will be a double blow update to be unleashed. One of them even starts on the 28th! This time, however, it will be the PC (and Mac) players as well as console gamers who will experience the new features first, introducing maps and fluffy, spitting llamas for one and colossal dragons for the other.

No one’s playing No Man’s Sky, as developer remains silent and players flee the franchise – When No Man’s Sky launched in August, it was already clear that the game would primarily appeal to a niche audience. The title’s lead designer and head of developer Hello Games, Sean Murray, has been blasted for promising the game would include features that didn’t actually ship. Not long after launch, Murray and Hello Games went radio-silent as players began requesting refunds. Now, nearly a month later, the game has transformed into a ghost of its former self.

50 facts about Destiny that you may not know – With so much coverage of the game since launch, it feels as if Destiny has no more secrets left to uncover. However, there are still a few things that folks may not know about the game. From hidden messages buried in the game’s UI and clever pop culture references, to a strange working title, and even a few nods to the Dark Souls series, Destiny’s secrets run deep. Below, we’ve compiled a list of 50 Destiny facts you may or may not know about. Some are weirder than others, but they are all equally as interesting.

Call of Duty 3 gets Xbox One backwards compatibility – Xbox One backwards compatibility has added Call of Duty 3 to its roster, allowing those with the latest Xbox One console to play the older COD title. The addition was confirmed by Larry Hyrb via a tweet yesterday; the support is in place now, so you can go ahead and pick up the title for your Xbox One if you’re so inclined. The addition joins both Call of Duty 2 and Black Ops on the backwards compatibility list.

Everything coming to Netflix, Amazon Prime, and HBO Now in October – We’re just a few days away from October, and that means it’s time for Halloween. Scary movies. Spooky stories. Specters that crawl out of your television and have really long hair. Given that, it’s hard to not see this upcoming month as a streaming service contest: which player can out-Halloween the others?

The Best Original Shows On Netflix Streaming – Not all Netflix original series are great – we’ll have a tough time saying nice things about Fuller House – but the best ones are as good as anything on HBO or other prestige networks. Not being bound to a staggered release schedule lets creators get away with some stuff, too. What follows are our eleven top original series streaming on Netflix. As they debut more shows, expect some changing of the guard, but as of September 2016 these are the cream of the crop.

Off Topic (Sort of):

Register to Vote Now Via Snapchat – Snapchat is the latest platform to help consumers enroll in the voting process. Users in the US who are eligible to vote (those 18 years or older) can access video ads between Stories and Discover, Mashable reports. Tap to be redirected to an in-app voter registration site powered by TurboVote. Folks can sign up through the service to get registered, update current information, or request an absentee ballot. The joint campaign—run by Snapchat and nonprofit Democracy Works—runs through Oct. 7.

What The F? What swearing reveals about language and ourselves – In his new book What the F: What Swearing Reveals About Our Language, Our Brains, and Ourselves (UK) Benjamin Bergen—a linguist in the Cognitive Science Department at UC San Diego—tries to explain exactly why cussing is so amazing. His self-described “book-length love letter to profanity” defines what makes a swearword and why using one feels so great. Although What the F has its share of silliness, it’s full of cute tidbits you can drop at cocktail parties, like how all Samoan babies’ first words are “eat s#!t” and how Japanese completely lacks curse words. Japanese people with Tourette’s syndrome blurt out insults and childlike words for genitalia that are generally considered impolite and inappropriate, but not profane.

10 pieces of obsolete technology still in use today – The tech world moves fast, but not always as fast as you think. Obsolete technology has a tendency to hang on, and hang on strong. Here’s a list of 10 pieces of obsolete technology that are still alive and kicking, starting with a surprising one: dial-up internet. The days of connecting to the internet with a 56K modem are over for most of us, but approximately three percent of Americans are holding out–that’s about 9.5 million people. Who are they–and do they know they could get online faster?

Trump launches nationwide Snapchat filter to attack ‘Crooked Hillary’ before debate – After blasting her in Twitter tirades and during campaign trail speeches, Donald Trump is turning to Snapchat to attack Hillary Clinton. Trump’s campaign has purchased national Snapchat geofilters, the Independent Journal Review reports, that will be available to Snapchat users during Monday’s debate. A preview version of the filter frames the event as being “Donald J. Trump vs. Crooked Hillary,” but Time says it will be changed during the debate itself for a different version that removes the direct attack on the Democratic candidate.

Palmer Luckey’s Trump fund has been a kick in the teeth for VR – Last night, The Daily Beast reported that virtual reality pioneer Palmer Luckey had secretly funded a pro-Trump group called Nimble America, dedicated to promoting internet memes and “shitposting” in support of the candidate. While Luckey’s general political alignment hadn’t been a secret, the news potentially tied him to some of the uglier parts of Trump’s online support base, including alt-right cheerleader Milo Yiannopoulos. Late on Friday, Luckey called the reports of his Trump support inaccurate, although he admitted to donating $10,000 to the group in question — and one of his key claims remains in doubt.

What Does Alt-Right Patron Palmer Luckey Believe? – Palmer Luckey, the 24-year-old founder of Oculus and virtual reality pioneer, was just exposed by The Daily Beast for giving money to a pro-Donald Trump non-profit through a convoluted Reddit scheme. The news shocked the VR and tech community at large on Thursday night, but a look at Luckey’s Twitter activity reveals that he’s been openly in support of the alt-right and the bigotry that defines it since March. Luckey has “liked” many alt-right memes and WikiLeaks-sanctioned conspiracy theories on Twitter, many of them from his girlfriend Nikki Moxxi, a Trump supporter and GamerGater.

5 Oculus Rift alternatives if you’ve changed your mind – Today we’re running down a number of alternatives to the Oculus Rift, a device made by the folks who re-invigorated the modern world of virtual reality computing. While no device is exactly like the Oculus Rift, there are a few devices that fit the bill for a wide variety of computing situations – especially gaming. If you’ve been convinced today that you need to send your Oculus Rift right back where it came from, we’ve got a bit of info about that, as well.

What the List of Most Banned Books Says About Our Society’s Fears – When the American Library Association started keeping a database of challenged books in the early ’90s, the reasons cited were fairly straightforward, according to James LaRue, director of the ALA Office for Intellectual Freedom. “‘Don’t like the language,’ or ‘There’s too much sex’—they’d tend to fall into those two categories,” he says. Some books are still challenged for those reasons—Fifty Shades of Grey is a common example. But there’s been a shift toward seeking to ban books “focused on issues of diversity—things that are by or about people of color, or LGBT, or disabilities, or religious and cultural minorities,” LaRue says. “It seems like that shift is very clear.”

Pharma company boosts the price of an old acne cream 3,900% – The greedy, price-hiking ways of Turing, Mylan, Valent, and countless others are breaking out like blemishes across the face of the pharmaceutical industry. So it may come as no surprise that a simple acne cream, called Aloquin, saw its price hit a whopping $9,561 (£7,400) last week. The 60g tube of zit-zapping topical previously cost just $241.50—but that was months ago, before Chicago-based Novum Pharma bought the medication from Primus Pharmaceuticals in May of 2015 and made no changes to the product at all. Since then, Novum hiked the price three times, reaching an increase of 3,900 percent.

Something to think about:

“I can’t give you a sure-fire formula for success, but I can give you a formula for failure: try to please everybody all the time.”

–      Herbert Bayard Swope (1882 – 1958)

In Pursuit of Freedom – The Pushback Continues:

Police are increasingly using social media surveillance tools – We’re approaching a level of social unrest that we haven’t seen since the days of the Civil Rights movement. That means law enforcement agencies are trying to figure out how to manage and circumvent the unrest — a lot of which has resulted from the police killings of unarmed black people — through surveillance. You may remember that, back in August, Bloomberg found out that police in Baltimore had been secretly operating “wide-area surveillance” throughout the area. Well, that’s not the only type of surveillance law enforcement agencies are using.

This summer, the American Civil Liberties Union of California requested records from 63 police departments, sheriffs and district attorneys across California. Of the records they received, 40 percent of the agencies (20) used social media surveillance tools, and most of them started using them within the last year.

But these agencies didn’t notify the public or lawmakers about their use of this type of surveillance. And none of the agencies examined by the ACLU have any policies covering how to use those tools in a way that actually protects civil rights and civil liberties.

With these social media surveillance tools in hand, law enforcement agencies are able to target activists, according to the ACLU’s analysis of records. Agencies are using tools like MediaSonar, X1 Social Discovery and Geofeedia, some of which actively market their products as tools to target activists.

In addition to the fact that law enforcement agencies didn’t tell anyone about their use of social media surveillance tools, it’s unsettling to see the role Silicon Valley plays in all of this. Law enforcement agencies are using tools that are venture-backed and covered by the tech press.

Privacy groups urge US FTC to investigate WhatsApp promises – The U.S. Federal Trade Commission should stop mobile messaging service WhatsApp from sharing user data with parent company Facebook in violation of earlier privacy promises, several privacy groups said.

The FTC should step in to stop WhatsApp from violating “commitments the company previously made to subscribers,” the 17 groups said in a letter sent to the agency Thursday. WhatsApp has long billed itself as a secure and private messaging service.

WhatsApp’s recently released plan to share user data with Facebook as a way to target advertising could amount to an “unfair and deceptive” trade practice, said the groups, including the Center for Digital Democracy, Consumer Action, Consumer Watchdog, and Demand Progress.

“We are deeply concerned about the impact this proposed change in data practices will have on the privacy and security of WhatsApp users in the U.S. and across the world,” the letter added. When Facebook acquired the messaging service in 2014, both companies “made numerous promises” that WhatsApp’s privacy policies wouldn’t change, the letter added.

Tech Thoughts Net News – Friday – September 23, 2016

How the Yahoo mail hack affects you, and what to do;  How online surveillance cracked our trust in the web;  The Best Free Music Download Sites;  How To Make Your Kids Smarter: 10 Steps Backed By Science;   Google Allo: Don’t use it, says Edward Snowden;  How to use your Android, iOS, or Windows 10 smartphone as a Wi-Fi hotspot;  Firefox Will Now Narrate Articles as You Browse;  Pro Evolution Soccer 2017 review: The finest soccer game ever made – and much more news you need to know.

How the Yahoo mail hack affects you, and what to do – Today is was revealed that Yahoo experienced a breach of account names and passwords of epic proportions. Now we’re running down the ways which users – any user of Yahoo products of all sorts, with Yahoo accounts – should move forward. This includes password changing. This includes the potential use of Yahoo’s Account Key. It includes not having a heart attack about the situation while, at the same time, understanding that one’s account breach could mean some very serious things.

Google Allo: Don’t use it, says Edward Snowden – Google’s Allo messaging app and its Assistant bot have finally arrived, but Allo has been slammed for reneging on a promise that it would, by default, make it more difficult to spy on. Because of the missing privacy feature, NSA-contractor-turned-whistleblower Edward Snowden’s first take of Allo after yesterday’s US launch is that it’s just a honeypot for surveillance.

How to use your Android, iOS, or Windows 10 smartphone as a Wi-Fi hotspot – If your life is anything like mine, that will be the moment when you absolutely must get your laptop online to make adjustments to a document, or reply to a lengthy email. Sure, you could tough it out and do this work on your phone, but that small screen can be a big hassle for major work. That’s why knowing how to turn your smartphone into a Wi-Fi hotspot for your laptop is so useful.

Hands-on: Opera’s free, unlimited browser VPN is ready for secure surfing – Opera says its VPN service exists as an independent company, operating under strict Canadian privacy laws.

How to use advanced options in Windows 10 to access BIOS settings – In years past, getting to the BIOS configuration software involved pressing a specific key on the keyboard just before the operating system started to load. With Microsoft Windows 10, the advent of UEFI Firmware, and the fast boot setting now common on many PCs, getting to the BIOS settings these days often requires a far different approach and, as you will see, it can hardly be called intuitive. Here is how you access the BIOS settings screen if you are not given the opportunity to do so before Windows 10 starts loading.

Firefox Will Now Narrate Articles as You Browse – Mozilla just updated its browser with an option for text to be read aloud. This means Reader Mode will now narrate that article for you while you listen and browse the Web freely without interruptions. As Firefox users may know, Reader Mode strips away clutter from a page — things like buttons, ads, and background images — and changes the page’s text size, contrast, and layout for better readability. With this update, Mozilla has also added more customization options for Reader Mode, so you can adjust the text and fonts, as well as the voice narrating for you. If you tend to stay up late, you can now read in the dark better by changing the theme from light to dark.

Windows 10 tip: Change UEFI firmware settings or start in Safe Mode – Who can remember the magic keystroke combo that unlocks your PC’s UEFI firmware settings screen? Use the hidden Advanced Options menu instead; it lets you choose advanced startup options for maintenance or troubleshooting.

10 Quick Tips to Fix Your Bad Photos – It’s easy to place the blame on the camera (or your smartphone) if your images aren’t as nice as some others you see online, but by following a few guidelines you can improve the quality of your snapshots—without having to shell out big bucks for a new camera. Keep these 10 easy tips in mind next time you head out to capture the world around you. And if you have any tips that have helped you take better pictures, please share them in the comments section.

Samsung has shut down Milk Music – Samsung users are going to have to find a new way to listen to music: the company announced that it would be shuttering its streaming radio service Milk Music. According to Variety, Samsung will be shutting down Milk Music on September 22nd, urging its Galaxy and Note smartphone users to switch over to Slacker Radio, which powered the system. The elimination of the service has been rumored for several months, with reports that the company was going to shutter the service because it had failed to gain traction with users.

The Best Free Music Download Sites – What is this, you say? You don’t want to pay for music? Good on you! Live that frugal lifestyle since it’s only a matter of time before most humans lose the ability to make a living in an economy run by increasingly capable robots. Thankfully, there are a number of (legal) platforms out there where you can still find all manner of free music to download. Here are just a few.

Facebook Messenger now lets you poll your friends – Facebook Messenger is getting a new update today, tossing a pair of interesting new features into the mix. First and foremost is the addition of polls, which will let groups make decisions though the age-old concept of majority rule. Payments are also being refined in this update, and can now pick out phrases that would normally be associated with money to summon a “send money” button within the conversation itself.

Amazon Fights for Your Kids’ Eyeballs With $100 Kindle Bundle – Thinking of getting your kid an e-reader this holiday season? Amazon has just the thing. The Web giant just introduced a new, $100 Kindle for Kids Bundle, which includes the latest Kindle e-reader without sponsored screensavers; a kid-friendly cover in blue, green, pink, or purple; and a two-year guarantee. With that guarantee, if anything happens to the e-reader you can send it back to Amazon and the company will replace it with a new one for free, “no questions asked.”

With Google Pixel, the Android promise fulfilled, at last! – This October Google will have fulfilled the promise they’ve been making on the Android operating system for the past decade. In the year 2005, Google acquired Android. In 2011, Google acquired Motorola (then, not long after, sold everything but their patents). In 2016, Google is in a position to not only create a set of Android smartphones and control the hardware, sales, and distribution, but the software, too. Google will be panned for copying Apple’s game plan with these devices, but these devices will be exactly what consumers want, and will buy.

Security:

Yahoo says half a billion accounts breached by nation-sponsored hackers – At least half a billion Yahoo accounts have been breached by what investigators believe is a nation-sponsored hacking operation. Attackers probably gained access to a wealth of holders’ personal information, including names, e-mail addresses, phone numbers, birth dates, answers to security questions, and cryptographically protected passwords. Yahoo Chief Information Security Officer Bob Lord dropped that bombshell announcement on Thursday afternoon, several hours after news site Recode reported the company was poised to disclose a compromise affecting several hundred million accounts. With at least 500 million accounts included in Yahoo’s official statement, the breach is among the biggest ever to hit a single Web property.

Hackers post emails from White House staffer, including Michelle Obama’s passport – Anonymous hackers have compromised the private Gmail account of a low-level White House staffer, and posted the email archive publicly on the site DCLeaks. It’s the same site that published Colin Powell’s personal email archive earlier this month, as well as emails from the Democratic National Committee. A number of analysts believe the site is part of a Russian effort to influence US politics. The emails deal largely with day-to-day logistics, but also include what appears to be an image of first lady Michelle Obama’s passport. Since the staffer’s duties largely involve travel and other logistics, it’s plausible he would have had access to the passport, although it’s unclear why it was sent through his personal Gmail address.

Hackers sell tool to spread malware through torrent files – Be careful with what you torrent. A new tool on the black market is helping hackers distribute malware through torrent files in exchange for a fee. On Tuesday, security researchers at InfoArmor said they discovered the so-called “RAUM” tool in underground forums. It leverages torrenting — a popular file-sharing method associated with piracy — to spread the malware. Popular torrent files, especially games, are packaged with malicious coding and then uploaded for unsuspecting users to download. Using torrents to infect computers is nothing new. But the makers of the RAUM tool have streamlined the whole process with a “Pay-Per-Install” model, according to InfoArmor.

Which political party is more cybersecure? – Cybersecurity expert Tim Bandos reveals which political party is most vulnerable, common hacking techniques, and what companies can learn from watching how the DNC and RNC respond to cyberthreats.

71 percent of Australian-used IoT devices failed privacy probe – 71 percent of devices and services used by Australians did not provide a privacy policy nor a notice explaining how personal information is collected, used, and stored.

Report: The top 6 industries hit by ransomware – Education, government, and healthcare top the list of at-risk sectors, according to a new report. Here’s what you need to know to protect your company.

Company News:

Facebook gave advertisers inflated video-viewing metrics for two years – Facebook has been overestimating the average time it told advertisers that users were spending watching videos on its platform for two years, possibly affecting marketer spending on Facebook ads. The miscalculation likely led to an overestimated viewing time of 60 percent to 80 percent, according to a letter sent to an ad-buying agency that was reviewed by the Wall Street Journal. Facebook said it had taken steps to correct the issue. Facebook shares fell $1.78 to $128.30, or 1.3 percent, in after-hours trading after the Journal reported the error.

Yelp fighting court order requiring it to remove negative review – California’s top court is agreeing to hear a case in which a lower court has ordered Yelp to remove a bad review. The California Supreme Court did not say when it would hear the case that tests the Communications Decency Act, which San Francisco-based Yelp maintains protects it from having to remove content on its site posted by third parties. The case concerns a June decision by a state appeals court that requires Yelp to remove a defamatory review about a law firm written by an unhappy client. A lower court issued a default judgement for over $500,000 against the reviewer, Ava Bird, for a review that the law firm claimed was defamatory. Bird was sued for defamation but was a no-show in court.

Amazon undercuts rivals with launch of new photo printing service, Amazon Prints – Watch out, Shutterfly. Amazon has quietly launched a new service called Amazon Prints, which allows consumers to print photos and custom photo books, and soon, other photo products like stationery and calendars, at prices significantly cheaper than rivals. Though the company made no formal announcement, Amazon Prints debuted last week and is being made available to customers who use the Amazon Drive cloud storage service – in fact, that’s the only way you can use Prints, as it turns out. The news of the launch caused Shutterfly’s stock to take a big nose-dive, Bloomberg reported. With shares dropping 12 percent to close at $44.20 on Wednesday, it clocked in as the worst single-day decline for Shutterfly stock since February 2008.

Apple acquires another machine learning company: Tuplejump – Apple is on a machine learning company buying spree. After buying Perceptio at the end of 2015 and Turi just a few months ago, Apple has now acquired an India/US-based machine learning team, Tuplejump. We’d been hearing rumors of another acquisition in this space by Apple for some time. While Apple won’t outright confirm it, when asked about Tuplejump this morning, a representative from Apple gave us the company’s standard we’re-not-saying-yes-but-well-yes response that they only give when they have, in fact, bought the company in question:

Samsung, LG, and Vizio accused of exploiting TV energy tests – Scoring better energy use and efficiency makes a TV more desirable to consumers, so manufacturers are keen to score as best they can. What the NRDC discovered is that because the test loop used in the EnergyGuide testing is well known, it can be exploited. More specifically, Samsung, LG, and Vizio TVs have their energy saving features turned on during tests, but they are disabled if and when an owner adjusts settings on their TV. The tests also do not test the most up-to-date content and do not take into account relatively new visual features such as HDR or 4K content viewing, both of which can increase energy use.

Games and Entertainment:

Pro Evolution Soccer 2017 review: The finest soccer game ever made – There are many ways to interpret the beautiful game. Some teams prefer to keep the ball on the turf. Others prefer to launch it into the air. Defending deep in your own half is an option, as is pushing up the pitch towards the opposition. And do you play physically, or cerebrally? As long as you play by the rules, in football, there is no right or wrong approach. PES 2017 continues this tradition. Barcelona, Manchester United, Juventus, and Paris-Saint Germain all play very differently in real life, and that’s ably represented in PES. Football is a simple game made complex through myriad approaches it offers players, teams, and mangers. No other game comes as close to replicating those intricacies with a pair of analogue sticks as PES does. Simply put, PES 2017 is the finest football game ever made.

You can now stream Android games to Facebook Live from your PC – Game streaming is something that everyone working in streamed video wants a part of, and now Facebook Live can stream Android games (and other apps) via the BlueStacks desktop emulator for PC and Mac. The integration is pretty smart, and while it was previously available for Twitch, the addition of Facebook Live support means mobile games streamers can potentially reach a different, more varied audience than they might encounter on Amazon’s more gamer-centric streaming network.

Forza Horizon 3 (PC) review impressions: Get ready to make your graphics card sweat – Ever since Microsoft announced its Xbox Play Anywhere program—a fancy name for “We’re porting all our first-party titles to PC”—the game I’ve been looking forward to most is Forza Horizon 3. Bombing through the back-country of Australia at 144 frames per second, music thumping, tires squealing, reflections…reflecting. And after spending most of a night with the game, I can confirm it’s gorgeous. You’re going to need one monster of a PC, though.

Minecraft: Education Edition arrives November 1 – The full version of Minecraft: Education Edition is finally arriving on November 1, following an extended testing and free trial period that began this summer. The version of Minecraft aimed at educators and schools came out of Microsoft’s acquisition of learning game MinecraftEdu earlier this year, which built upon Minecraft to give teachers tools to build lessons around STEM, art, language and more. The free trials will still be available to educators up until the launch date, giving them a way to check out the early access edition and evaluate whether they might want to use the full software once it’s available. Minecraft: Education Edition will then be available for purchase from November 1 and following. Pricing is $5 per user, per year, and customers can either buy directly on their own, or via Microsoft’s Enrollment for Education Solutions volume licensing arrangement.

October Xbox Live Games With Gold Lineup Revealed – Heads up, Xbox Live Gold members: Microsoft just revealed next month’s Games With Gold lineup. Like usual, you can expect four free games in October — two on Xbox One and two on Xbox 360.

YouTube Gaming update smooths out chat experience and drops in a new Easter Egg – Version 1.7 also is built to better support Android Nougat and fix a number of pesky bugs that have hung around.

Off Topic (Sort of):

How To Make Your Kids Smarter: 10 Steps Backed By Science – I’ve explored the science behind what makes kids happier, what type of parenting works best and what makes for joyful families. But what makes children — from babies up through the teen years — smarter? Here are 10 things science says can help:

19 caffeine-laced foods to replace coffee – Face it: Your office latte machine has not been cleaned since the last tech-bubble crash. The cost of Starbucks soy mochas can add up. And you’re hungry. And you’re tired. So try these caffeine-infused food alternatives instead. You’d be amazed what they’re putting caffeine in these days.

Windows 10: ‘Microsoft should pay compensation for user upgrade woes’ – Now Microsoft’s pushy Windows 10 upgrade offer is over, a consumer rights group has called on Microsoft to compensate users for the issues it caused.

Chan Zuckerberg Initiative announces $3 billion investment to cure disease – The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative just announced a new program informally called Chan Zuckerberg Science to invest $3 billion over the next decade to help cure, prevent, or manage all disease. The money comes from the $45 billion organization Mark Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan started last year to advance human potential and equality. The project will bring together teams of scientists and engineers “to build new tools for the scientific community” Priscilla Chan said on stage at an event in San Francisco.

YouTube will livestream the election debates, too – Both Facebook and Twitter will be livestreaming the 2016 Presidential debates, and now YouTube has announced that it will be, too. The company is pushing for individuals to get out and vote this election season, and in that spirit it has announced the #voteIRL campaign. Livestreaming and campaigns such as this both largely target young viewer bases, the same group that is unlikely to have a regular cable subscription through which to watch the events.

Trump: Internet control belongs to US. Period – Trump lends his support to former Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz, Trump’s bitter rival and the highest profile government figure to lead the charge against the transition. Cruz argues that if the US cedes control to nonprofit ICANN, it could give countries like Russia and China power over the internet. Trump echoed that sentiment.

The most ancient civilisation on Earth is still around today – While there have been claims that Indigenous Australians were the world’s oldest civilisation for some years, the genomic study published in the science journal Nature is the first time extensive DNA evidence has been able to prove it. The study has revealed that not only did Indigenous Australians first come to Australia some 50,000 years ago, they remained almost entirely isolated on the continent until around 4,000 years ago.

Something to think about:

“It is folly to punish your neighbor by fire when you live next door.”

–       Publilius Syrus

In Pursuit of Freedom – The Pushback Continues:

The undercover war on your internet secrets: How online surveillance cracked our trust in the web – Learn how the battle over privacy technologies could define the future of the web. This TechRepublic cover story explains the strange history and the serious consequences of the fight over encryption.

Twitter Makes it Easier to See Who Wants Your Data – Twitter this week released its latest transparency report, and with it, a revamped website that makes the heaps of data easier to digest.

Updates include bigger and bolder visualizations (notably, the interactive graph at the top of the page), clearer explanations of numbers, and more granular details about requests.

Unsurprisingly, the US is Twitter’s biggest data requester, with 44 percent (2,520) of all worldwide applications (5,676) for account information between January and June 2016. Most originated from California, New York, Virginia, and Illinois and came from top requesters the FBI, Secret Service, and the New York County District Attorney’s Office. The microblogging service also received 25 information requests—emergency and nonemergency—from US embassies abroad.

This marks the first time Twitter has identified “the US law enforcement agencies that make the highest volume of requests for account information,” as well as the types of legal instruments—subpoenas, court orders, search warrants—they use,” Jeremy Kessel, director of Twitter’s global legal policy, wrote in a blog post.

Facebook is expanding its campaign to combat hate speech – Facebook is expanding its efforts to combat online hate speech, according to a report from The Wall Street Journal. The company’s Online Civil Courage Initiative, announced in January, will transition from a pilot phase to offer advertising credits and marketing advice to a wider range of groups that counteract extremist messaging. The Berlin-based program has so far focused its efforts on France, Germany, and the UK.

The announcement marks Facebook’s latest effort to combat propaganda from terrorist organizations and far-right groups. Facebook, Twitter, Google, and other major web companies have faced increased pressure to escalate anti-hate speech campaigns, and to more swiftly remove propaganda from groups like ISIS and far-right extremists. While the companies have touted an increase in takedowns of extremist content, the Online Civil Courage Initiative is focused on so-called counter-messaging, which seeks to discredit hate speech and propaganda. A Google-funded study published over the summer found that such campaigns can be an effective means of sparking debate online.

“Censorship is not effective,” Erin Saltman, program manager for the Online Civil Courage Initiative, tells the Journal. “Conversations would start on mainstream platforms and migrate to less regulated, encrypted platforms.”

Kids need to reclaim their data and security… especially at school – Another school year is now in full swing, which for many kids means reconnecting with friends and learning. It also means a start of another data collection cycle that is neither visible nor truly optional for the majority of the students.

Over a third of US middle and high school students use school-provided laptops or tablets. Even more kids are required to adopt a wide range of tech applications that allow for more personalized learning. Although this approach certainly has great educational benefits, it raises serious questions about the long-term security and privacy implications for this generation.

Palmer Luckey is funding Donald Trump’s internet trolls with his Oculus money – Oculus founder Palmer Luckey is financially supporting a pro-Donald Trump group of “shitposters,” he confirmed to the Daily Beast today, using his considerable personal fortune to fund the creation of memes attacking Hillary Clinton. Luckey, who is believed to have received some $700 million from Facebook’s $2 billion Oculus purchase, said he had donated “significant funds” to Nimble America — a group that calls itself a “social welfare 501(c)4 non-profit dedicated to shitposting in real life.”

In its announcement post on Trump-fan subreddit r/The_Donald, Nimble America said it had already “proven that shitposting is powerful and meme magic is real,” and that it wanted to bring so-called “shitposting” into the real world “in a way that was transparent and had purpose.” In practice, the unofficial Trump-supporting group suggested this could be done via T-shirts, Nimble America’s spokesperson saying that it would “not just sell t-shirts to sell them, but to sell t-shirts to shitpost.” The group’s home page was last updated on July 11th.

Luckey said that he first reached out to the unofficial group over Facebook. “It went along the lines of ‘hey, I have a bunch of money. I would love to see more of this stuff,'” he told the Daily Beast, referring to the anti-Clinton memes the group had produced before its official launch as Nimble America. Luckey said the group wanted to “build buzz and do fundraising,” and he offered to pay for both its initial push and its ads, as well as promising to match any money earned during a 48-hour donation drive. “I thought it sounded like a real jolly good time,” he said.

Should Hacking a Tor User to Get an IP Address Require a Warrant? – On Monday, a judge chucked out all evidence obtained by a piece of FBI malware in a child porn case, becoming the third court to suppress evidence related to the FBI’s investigation of dark web site Playpen.

But US District Court Judge Robert W Pratt also threw a punch in an ongoing legal debate with implications that stretch beyond any single case.

In recent months, judges, defense lawyers, and the government have fought over whether obtaining a Tor user’s real IP address, perhaps through hacking, counts as a search under the Fourth Amendment. The debate has serious consequences for whether law enforcement requires a warrant to break into a suspect’s computer, even if it’s only to learn the target’s IP address.

Pratt argued that when the FBI hacked suspected Playpen users and grabbed their IP addresses, that constituted a search.

“If a defendant writes his IP address on a piece of paper and places it in a drawer in his home, there would be no question that law enforcement would need a warrant to access that piece of paper—even accepting that the defendant had no reasonable expectation of privacy in the IP address itself,” Pratt writes in his order.

Tech Thoughts Net News – Wednesday – September 21, 2016

Microsoft surprises everyone by releasing a new $37 Nokia phone;    Ransomware’s next target: Your car and your home;  This Tool Lets You Check If Your Personal Info Is on the Dark Web;  The essential macOS Sierra upgrade guide;  Opera’s free VPN is now available in its main desktop browser;    SanDisk reveals world’s first 1TB SD card;  10 Beyond-Basic Photography Tips;  The CW prepares to launch subscription-free streaming – and much more news you need to know.

Microsoft surprises everyone by releasing a new $37 Nokia phone – No, this is not an extremely late April Fool’s Day prank. Microsoft really did just reveal another phone that bears the Nokia brand name. The new Nokia 216 is exactly what you’d expect from a budget phone. It sports a 2.4-inch QVGA display, VGA front and rear-facing cameras, integrated FM radio tuner, and an impressive 24 days of standby time. It comes in three colors: white, black, and a sort of robin’s egg blue. And yes, it still has a headphone jack.

Consumer Reports: iPhone 7 camera does not outperform iPhone 6s – Apple is advertising major improvements in the cameras on the new iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus, and the second telephoto camera on the 7 Plus is new for Apple. However, Consumer Reports initial testing shows the performance for the main cameras are about the same.

Ditching Microsoft Office? Tips on how to switch to LibreOffice – Breaking up with Microsoft doesn’t have to be difficult if you follow this advice from those in the know.

Opera’s free VPN is now available in its main desktop browser – VPNs or virtual private networks are services that re-route your traffic through different countries. They’re good if you want a little more anonymity or are trying to find your way around geoblocks, but they usually cost money. Not in Opera’s latest browser, though. After testing out a built-in VPN in the beta version earlier this year, the company is now rolling out the same service on its main software stream. That means if you download the latest version of the browser, Opera 40, you get a free VPN with unlimited data. We’ve tested the software and it’s quick and easy to use.

Opera

5 awesome Android widgets for a more useful home screen – Whether you’re looking to speed-dial friends or quickly scan documents, these widgets will help you get stuff done.

macOS Sierra is now available to download – After a summer of beta versions, Apple has just released the final version of macOS Sierra. macOS Sierra is the major update of OS X El Capitan — yes, OS X is dead, long live macOS. Other than the name change, this year’s update brings many neat improvements over El Capitan, making it a polished update from day one. It’s available in the Mac App Store as a free download. If you don’t see the update right away, don’t panic as it could take a few minutes due to App Store propagation.

The essential macOS Sierra upgrade guide – Mac users everywhere are full of anticipation as they await the next release of macOS Sierra, the latest version of the OS they rely on each day. There are a few hours to go until the release (traditionally though not exclusively at around 10am PDT) so please take a moment to review this upgrade guide.

You can now save drafts of your photos on Instagram – Instagram is now letting users save drafts of their photo edits so they can come back to them later. You know the situation: you just spent 15 minutes perfecting the shadows and highlights on your next Instagram post, only to realize you’re late for work and need to rush. Now the Instagram app will prompt you to either discard or save your photo draft if you leave the editing screen. Up until today, you had to use some serious tricks to save your work.

Blockchain: The smart person’s guide – This comprehensive guide covers everything you need to know about the blockchain, the innovative technology that powers Bitcoin, Litecoin, and other cryptocurrencies.

SanDisk reveals world’s first 1TB SD card – SanDisk today showcased its upcoming 1TB SDXC card prototype at a European trade show for photo and video professionals. The Western Digital subsidiary, which just two years ago debuted the first 512GB SD card, said doubling the capacity of its Extreme PRO SDXC UHS-I Memory Card was necessary to address the increasing demand for high-resolution content, such as 4K and 8K videos, virtual reality and 360-degree videography. SanDisk’s 512GB SD card sells for $345.77 on online retail sites.

Canary Flex is a small, smart outdoor security camera – Canary has launched a new security camera product called the Canary Flex; it is small, smart, and can be used outdoors, withstanding things like rain and wind to stand ever vigilant over your home. The camera sits idle, and starts recording when it detects movement. If something particularly odd — at least in the camera’s estimation — comes into view, it’ll fire off a push notification to its owner. Overtime, Flex will better understand what kind of things are worth sending notifications about and which ones are, while unusual, of no particular interest or importance.

Samsung: just 25 percent of Note 7s in US have been exchanged – Samsung has just announced that it has shipped 500,000 replacement Galaxy Note 7 devices to US retailers and carriers. They’ll be available beginning tomorrow to owners of the original, fire-hazard Note 7 for in-store exchanges. This first batch of replenishment stock is intended exclusively for exchanges; Samsung hasn’t yet said when Note 7 retail sales will officially resume — but VentureBeat claims the relaunch will come in late October. In another update, Samsung now says 25 percent of Note 7 devices have so far been exchanged in the United States.

Mobile productivity: These are the three apps Ed Bott can’t work without – What handful of mobile apps are essential to your daily work life? We asked our writers and editors to name the iOS or Android productivity tools they can’t live without. These are Ed Bott’s favorites.

Google Trips: This iOS, Android app gives you all your travel data plus offline access – Google has created a smart travel app that makes it easier to plan trips and search for information when on the go.

How to Take a Screenshot on Any Device – No matter what your platform, here’s how to take a picture of what’s on your screen.

10 Beyond-Basic Photography Tips – You don’t have to be a pro to really love photography. If taking pictures is your passion, consider these tips and ideas to help expand your skills and bring new perspective to your work.

Google’s New Messaging App Allo Is Surprisingly Addictive – Allo is more than just a messenger, it’s the future of Google Search.

Security:

Data-stealing Qadars Trojan malware takes aim at 18 UK banks – Sophisticated malware has been discovered, capable of tricking users into giving away admin rights to their entire system, as well as stealing their bank details.

Hackers hijack Tesla Model S from afar, while the cars are moving – Chinese hackers have attacked Tesla electric cars from afar, using exploits that can activate brakes, unlock doors, and fold mirrors from up to 20 kilometres (12 miles) away while the cars are in motion.

Ransomware’s next target: Your car and your home – Cybersecurity researchers have demonstrated how vulnerabilities in everyday connected devices can allow hackers to hold whole areas of your life to ransom.

This Tool Lets You Check If Your Personal Info Is on the Dark Web – It’s pretty hard to know when your data might have been compromised. Over the last few years, an industry of threat intelligence firms has popped up that offer to monitor criminal forums, paste sites, and Tor hidden services for stolen intellectual property or customer information. Now, one of these companies is letting anyone monitor the dark web for a limited amount of their own personal information. On Tuesday, Terbium Labs announced it was opening up its “Matchlight” product to the general public, allowing users to keep tabs on five different pieces of info for free.

Someone Is Putting Malicious USB Sticks in Australian Mailboxes – Some people just can’t resist the urge to plug random USB sticks into their computers. Now, someone in Australia is taking full advantage of the public’s naivety when it comes to cybersecurity. On Wednesday, police from Victoria warned of malicious USB sticks being placed in citizens’ mailboxes. “The USB drives are believed to be extremely harmful and members of the public are urged to avoid plugging them into their computers or other devices,” the announcement reads. Those who plug the devices into their PCs are presented with “fraudulent media streaming service offers, as well as other serious issues,” the announcement adds.

A picture of the offending USBs. Image: Victoria Police

Raum turns the most popular torrents on the web into malware spreading weapons – According to InfoArmor, Raum is used to “weaponize” these torrents by inserting malware into the packages through both the uTorrent client and a “special infrastructure” which allows the threat actors to manage new seeds for torrents using a network of dedicated and virtual servers, alongside compromised devices. The cybercriminals behind the scheme use data analytics to identify trends on video, audio, software and other downloads which are popular through torrents. Once the group has identified the most popular — and therefore most likely to distribute malicious code — Raum is used to create malicious “seeds” — the systems hosting the full file for download — while “leechers” seek the file for download, execute, and potentially become compromised.

Hackers Hit ‘Some’ Cisco Customers With Leaked NSA Hacking Tools – Unknown hackers have used NSA hacking tools released online last month to breach some targets using firewalls, switches and routers made by Cisco Systems, according to the tech company. This is apparently the first real-world cyberattack leveraging an unknown vulnerability that was in the arsenal of the NSA elite hacking team for years until a mysterious group calling itself The Shadow Brokers dumped several of those NSA tools on the internet.

Over 554M data records breached, with identity theft most common – More than 970 data breaches were reported worldwide in the first half of 2016, up 15 percent from the previous six months, according to Gemalto’s Breach Level Index.

Company News:

Google’s October 4 “Pixel phones” Nexus event is official – Google has confirmed it will hold an event on October 4, where we’re expecting to see the next generation of Android Nexus smartphones. The event, which will take place in San Francisco, has been rumored for some time now, with Google predicted to make some significant changes to how it runs its own-brand smartphone program.

Google is Facing a $400 Million Tax Bill and a Criminal Case in Indonesia – Indonesia plans to pursue Alphabet Inc’s Google for five years of back taxes, and the search giant could face a bill of more than $400 million for 2015 alone if it is found to have avoided payments, a senior tax official said. Muhammad Haniv, head of the tax office’s special cases branch, told Reuters its investigators went to Google’s local office in Indonesia on Monday. Asked to respond to Haniv’s comments, Google Indonesia reiterated a statement made last week in which it said it continues to cooperate with local authorities and has paid all applicable taxes.

HP inkjet printers refuse to accept third-party ink cartridges after stealth firmware update – The inkjet printer market has been a ridiculously profitable racket for HP and its ilk for decades, and manufacturers have fought tooth and nail to keep it that way. HP launched the latest salvo in this effort earlier this month, when a six-month-old firmware update suddenly kicked in and locked out third-party ink cartridges. Multiple models in HP’s OfficeJet, OfficeJet Pro, and OfficeJet Pro X were all affected, even though none of these models had seen a firmware update in the past six months. The consensus is that HP actually baked this response into the March 2016 update it released, but told no one it was coming. This ensured more people would adopt the firmware and report that it worked without incident.

  Purchased an OfficeJet Pro last month – and, had this HP policy been in effect, I would not have bought this printer (love the printer though). Limiting a purchaser’s options in such a fundamental way, after the fact, seems like a class-action lawsuit in the making, to me. What’s next – Nissan telling you that you can only use a particular brand of gasoline (in which they have a financial interest, naturally), in their vehicles?  Is that a stretch to far? Maybe not.

BlackBerry “Argon” DTEK60’s existence leaked by BlackBerry – BlackBerry apparently isn’t done with Android smartphones yet. Or at least isn’t half done. If you remember the days preceding the announcement of the oddly named DTEK50, there were rumors about “Neon” and “Argon”, even a “Mercury” smartphones coming up. Well, “Neon” eventually became the DTEK50 we know today and, apparently, Argon is going to be the DTEK60 after all. That is according to a product page that was, funnily enough, “accidentally” published by BlackBerry itself. And even if BB takes the page down, the Internet now knows and will remember.

Facebook makes its dynamic ads more friendly to brick-and-mortar retailers – Facebook just announced some new features for its dynamic ads, aimed at making the format more appealing to businesses with brick-and-mortar stores. Facebook’s dynamic ads show you different products based on your activity and interests. Now, the company says it can incorporate data about local product availability, pricing and special offers into these ads. So instead of just showing you the product, the ad can direct you to a specific store where the product is available at a specific price. Then if the product sells out at local stores, the campaign can start featuring something else from the catalog.

AT&T AirGig to Test Broadband Over Power Lines – AT&T today announced new technology it says has the potential to deliver “low cost, ultra-fast multi-gigabit per second wireless internet speeds” using existing infrastructure — power lines. The technology “has the potential to transform Internet access globally, well beyond the AT&T footprint,” delivering speedy wireless connectivity to homes and wireless devices all around the world. It’s performed “extremely well” in AT&T’s internal tests, so the company is now gearing up to see how it works in the real world and plans to soon announce AirGig market trials in select cities and countries.

Games and Entertainment:

The state of 4K gaming: What you need to know, from pricing to performance needs – When we last updated this article in November 2015, you’d need to drop roughly $1,300 at least on just your graphics card, 4K monitor, and power supply to get your PC up to snuff. A whole new PC would of course cost far more. Has the lower price of 4K displays and the launch of a supercharged new generation of graphics cards taken ultra-high resolution gaming mainstream? We’ll tell you what you need to start PC gaming at 4K resolution.

How LG uses fuzzy math to label some of its LCD TVs as 4K – By replacing every fourth red, green, or blue subpixel with a white one, LG boosts the brightness of its 6100-, 6500-, and 6800-series models. The trick works, but it sacrifices resolution.

The CW prepares to launch subscription-free streaming – The CW is making a big move many of its peers are still too afraid to make: it is getting ready to launch subscription-free streaming across just about every major device, including Apple TV, Fire TV, Chromecast, Roku, and Xbox, as well as on iOS and Android, and over AirPlay. Because it will be subscription-free streaming, you won’t need an applicable for-pay cable plan in order to sign in and access the content.

Gears of War 4 comes free with Nvidia’s GTX 1070 and GTX 1080 cards – Microsoft is teaming up with Nvidia to give away free copies of Gears of War 4. If you purchase a GTX 1070 or GTX 1080 as a graphics card, part of a system, or inside a laptop then you’ll get a free copy of Gears of War 4. The promotion runs from today until October 30th, and as the game is Xbox Play Anywhere you’ll get a copy of the PC version and Xbox One variant for free. While graphics card game bundles are common on the PC side, it’s unusual to see Microsoft pairing up with Nvidia. Microsoft currently uses AMD chips inside its Xbox One, but there’s speculation the company may make the move to Nvidia in the future.

TV Shows Every Self-Respecting Geek Should Watch This Fall – A quick guide to the sci-fi/fantasy shows sure to get the nerd-rage/love as we start a new round of TV watching.

The 10 Most Pirated Movies – Films starring Chadwick Boseman, Tom Hanks, and Sheri Moon Zombie appear in this week’s list of the most pirated movies on the Internet.

Off Topic (Sort of):

MIT’s New Device Uses Wireless Signals to Detect Emotions – If you’ve ever dated an introvert you know that guessing someone’s emotions can be very risky. But soon, you may have more clues: A new device can detect people’s emotions using wireless signals. Designed by MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab, “EQ-Radio” measures heartbeat and breath to determine if someone is excited, happy, angry, or sad. “Our work shows that wireless signals can capture information about human behavior that is not always visible to the naked eye,” said MIT professor and project lead Dina Katabi. “We believe that our results could pave the way for future technologies that could help monitor and diagnose conditions like depression and anxiety.”

Here’s the full U.S. Federal Automated Vehicles Policy – The U.S. Federal Government noted yesterday that it would be releasing an autonomous vehicle policy designed to help guide the safe development of driverless tech, while also allowing flexibility so that companies can continue to innovate in this space. The full policy is now available, and viewable in full either via the embed below, or at the Transportation.gov official website.

ABC News will stream the presidential debates on Facebook Live – ABC News and Facebook are teaming up to bring live streams of all the 2016 presidential debates online. The three debates will air live across eight TV networks as they typically do, but also on ABC News’ Facebook page. Viewers will be able to ask questions and make comments, which ABC says will be incorporated into the Facebook Live coverage. The debates will also be preceded by a new show called Strait Talk and then followed by another Facebook Live show hosted by Nightline co-anchor Dan Harris. The first debate is on September 26th in Hempstead, NY. This isn’t the first time Facebook Live has been involved in political moves this year.

Cops record themselves allegedly fabricating charges with suspect’s camera – In a US federal civil rights lawsuit, a Connecticut man has shared footage to bolster his claims that police illegally confronted the pedestrian because he was filming one of them. Authorities seized Michael Picard’s camera and his permitted pistol, and the officers involved then accidentally recorded themselves allegedly fabricating charges against the man.

New report details 3 reasons why messaging apps are taking over customer service – A recent report from Forrester explained that messaging apps will play a deeper and deeper role in how businesses interact with customers in the future. Here’s why.

Facebook, Google, other tech giants answer Obama’s refugee plea – President Obama says 51 US companies, including major tech players, will provide money, training and tech to help millions of refugees.

Microsoft wants to crack the cancer code using artificial intelligence – Cancer is like a computer virus and can be ‘solved’ by cracking the code, according to Microsoft. The computer software company says its researchers are using artificial intelligence in a new healthcare initiative to target cancerous cells and eliminate the disease. One of the projects within this new healthcare enterprise involves utilizing machine learning and natural language processing to help lead researchers sift through all the research data available and come up with a treatment plan for individual cancer patients. IBM is working on something similar using a program called Watson Oncology, which analyzes patient health info against research data.

Something to think about:

“Read, every day, something no one else is reading. Think, every day, something no one else is thinking. Do, every day, something no one else would be silly enough to do. It is bad for the mind to be always part of unanimity.”

–     Christopher Morley (1890 – 1957)

In Pursuit of Freedom – The Pushback Continues:

Terence Crutcher’s shooting was absent from Facebook Trends – Facebook said 53,000 people were talking about Terence Crutcher’s death by police, but instead it showed me Trends about Xbox, a Game Of Thrones actor, and New Jersey’s governor, even though they all had less chatter.

[Update 3:45pm PT: As of rougly 2:45pm Pacific, “Tulsa Police Shooting” become a Trend on Facebook. But the fact that it took an entire day to appear, and four hours after TechCrunch published this story, demonstrates just how badly Facebook Trends needs to be rethought. This article has been revised.]

Facebook denies it’s a media company, and has tried to distance itself from editorial decision-making by firing all its human Trend curators. But its values and stance towards important social issues are coded into the algorithms and processes that surface trends, and they’re not doing the public justice.

Hopefully this incident will spur Facebook to re-examine how it chooses trends, the way the Ferguson protests inspired Jack Dorsey to get Twitter more involved with activism for worthy causes.