February 8, 2018 – Tech Today w/ Ken May

Inside Hong Kong’s insanely cramped and illegal "coffin homes"

Photographer Benny Lam spent several years documenting grim living conditions in Hong Kong where people live inside tiny “coffin cubicles” within illegally divided apartments. The images are grim glimpses of life in the city with the most expensive housing market in the world. The photo series is titled “Trapped.” From National Geographic : Pushed out by soaring rents, tens of thousands of people have no other option than to inhabit squatter huts, sub-divided units where the kitchen and toilet merge, coffin cubicles, and cage homes, which are rooms measuring as small as 6’ x 2.5’ traditionally made of wire mesh. “From cooking to sleeping, all activities take place in these tiny spaces,” says Lam. To create the coffin cubicles a 400 square flat will be illegally divided by its owner to accommodate 20 double-decker beds, each costing about HK$2000 (over $250 USD) per month in rent. The space is too small to stand up in.

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Inside Hong Kong’s insanely cramped and illegal "coffin homes"

FDA Declares Popular Alt-Medicine Kratom an Opioid

An anonymous reader quotes a report from NBC News: The Food and Drug Administration declared the popular herbal product kratom to be an opioid on Tuesday, opening a new front in its battle to get people to stop using it. New research shows kratom acts in the brain just as opioids do, FDA Commissioner Dr. Scott Gottlieb said in a statement. And he said the agency has documented 44 cases in which kratom at least helped kill people — often otherwise healthy young people. “Taken in total, the scientific evidence we’ve evaluated about kratom provides a clear picture of the biologic effect of this substance, ” Gottlieb wrote. “Kratom should not be used to treat medical conditions, nor should it be used as an alternative to prescription opioids. There is no evidence to indicate that kratom is safe or effective for any medical use.” The FDA released detailed accounts of several of the deaths. The victims often had mixed kratom with other substances, including chemicals taken out of inhalers and found in over-the-counter cold and flu drugs. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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FDA Declares Popular Alt-Medicine Kratom an Opioid

Chandelier containing living microalgae to "purify the air"

https://youtu.be/Lxd43iH-CX0 Artist, inventor, and bio-hacker Julian Melchiorri created “Exhale, the Bionic Chandelier,” a hanging electric light that “purifies the air indoors through photosynthesis performed by living microalgae enclosed into leaf modules.” Exhale is now part of the Victoria and Albert Museum’s permanent collection. From the project page: Exhale is also the first living object which continuously grows while performing biologically-driven depurative functions. The light of the chandelier illuminate the space but also stimulates photosynthesis performed by tiny microalgae, this living microorganisms feed on carbon dioxide while releasing breathable oxygen into the room. This biological process performed by the chandelier establishes and explores a new symbiotic relationship between object and people where life-giving resources are constantly exchanged, and where each other waste enables respective metabolic processes. This exchange recalls how biospheric systems work, where waste ultimately doesn’t exists but is a valuable resource for other elements in that system. Bionic Chandelier (via The Kid Should See This )

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Chandelier containing living microalgae to "purify the air"

Foxconn Unit To Cut Over 10,000 Jobs As Robotics Take Over

According to Nikkei Asian Review, “Foxconn’s panel arm Innolux is planning to slash more than 10, 000 jobs this year as part of the company’s aggressive efforts to increase the use of automation in manufacturing.” Honorary Chairman Tuan Hsing-Chien said in a press conference on Tuesday: “We will reduce our total workforce to less than 50, 000 people by the end of this year, from some 60, 000 staff at the end of 2017.” From the report: Innolux is a liquid crystal display-making affiliate of major iPhone assembler Hon Hai Precision Industry, better known as Foxconn Technology Group. Tuan is also a technology adviser to Foxconn, Sharp and Innolux. Tuan said up to 75% of production will be fully automated by the end of 2018. Most of Innolux’s factories are in Taiwan. Tuan’s pledge came a few days after Foxconn Chairman Terry Gou said the company would pour in some $342 million to overhaul its manufacturing process by using artificial intelligence. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

US busts $530 million Infraud cybercrime ring

The US just took down one of the larger online crime organizations in recent memory — certainly one of the largest prosecuted by the feds. Department of Justice officials have filed charges against 36 people allegedly involved with Infraud Organization (no really, that’s the name), a global cybercrime ring with roots in the US as well as numerous other countries. Combined, the group is believed to have trafficked in stolen financial data (including up to 4 million cards), identities and contraband worth over $530 million in losses. And that’s what they actually managed to accomplish. Reportedly, they hoped to inflict a total of $2.2 billion in damage. Law enforcement has only arrested 13 of the members so far, five of which are from the US and only one of which (Sergei Medvedev) is considered top brass. Ukraine resident Svyatoslav Bondarenko, who’s believed to have founded Infraud back in 2010, isn’t one of them. And while there are just five suspects still at large, the actual membership is considerably deeper with 10, 901 registered members as of March 2017. The Americans involved with Infraud have already appeared in court, and they could face more than 30 years in prison if they’re found guilty. This is unlikely to dissuade other groups — Infraud wasn’t the first big cybercrime ring, and probably won’t be the last. Nonetheless, the scale suggests this should put at least a temporary dent in digital fraud. Via: CNET Source: Department of Justice

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US busts $530 million Infraud cybercrime ring

Crucial iPhone source code posted in unprecedented leak

Critical, top secret Apple code for the iPhone’s operating system was posted on Github, opening a new, dangerous avenue for hackers and jailbreakers to access the device, Motherboard reported. The code, known as “iBoot, ” has since been pulled, but Apple may have confirmed it was the real deal when it issued a DMCA takedown to Github, as Twitter user @supersat noted . iBoot is the iOS code that ensures a secure boot by loading and checking that kernel is properly signed by Apple before running the OS. The version that was posted to Github, supposedly by a Twitter user named @q3hardcore, was for iOS 9, but much of it likely still exists in the latest version, iOS 11. Fun thing about the DMCA: it required Apple to state, under penalty of perjury, that the iBoot source code was legit: https://t.co/PKHZqcEe6h — Karl (@supersat) February 8, 2018 The code can’t be compiled because certain files are missing, but researchers and hackers who know what to look for could probe it for vulnerabilities. “This is the biggest leak in history, ” author and security researcher Jonathan Levin told Motherboard . “The leaked sources of iBoot … bring us closer to a truly liberated iOS booted on generic arm boards and/or emulator, ” he added on Twitter . Levin and other security researchers believe the code is the real deal. iPhones used to be relatively easy to jailbreak before Apple introduced the ” secure enclave co-processor ” with the TouchID of the iPhone 5s. Now, it’s nearly impossible for hackers to even find bugs in iOS code, making iOS exploits relatively rare, unlike in Windows and Android. As such, the iBoot leak is exposing code that hardly anyone has seen before. The iBoot dump first appeared last year on Reddit, but received little notice from the security community until it hit Github. Apple considers iBoot to be such a critical part of iOS that it offers $200, 000 for vulnerabilities, the most in its bug bounty program. That means the release of the source code could amount to a gold rush for many researchers. Via: Motherboard Source: Github