Author: kenmay

Pope cautions youths about social media’s “false image of reality”

Enlarge / Pope Francis holds his homily during his weekly audience Wednesday in St. Peter’s Square in Vatican City, Vatican. Pope Francis is warning the world’s youth to be wary of the “false image of reality” portrayed in social media and on reality television shows. In a written message the Vatican issued Tuesday, the pontiff cautioned followers not to let the Internet dilute the church’s message. The speech will be released in video format on World Youth Day on April 9. “History teaches us that even when the Church has to sail on stormy seas, the hand of God guides her and helps her to overcome moments of difficulty. The genuine experience of the Church is not like a flash mob, where people agree to meet, do their thing, and then go their separate ways,” Francis wrote. Read 5 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Pope cautions youths about social media’s “false image of reality”

Hackers Claim Access To 300 Million iCloud Accounts, Demand $75,000 From Apple To Delete the Cache of Data

A hacker or group of hackers calling themselves the “Turkish Crime Family” claim they have access to at least 300 million iCloud accounts, and will delete the alleged cache of data if Apple pays a ransom by early next month. Motherboard is reporting that the hackers are demanding “$75, 000 in Bitcoin or Ethereum, another increasingly popular crypto-currency, or $100, 000 worth of iTunes gift cards in exchange for deleting the alleged cache of data.” From the report: The hackers provided screenshots of alleged emails between the group and members of Apple’s security team. One also gave Motherboard access to an email account allegedly used to communicate with Apple. “Are you willing to share a sample of the data set?” an unnamed member of Apple’s security team wrote to the hackers a week ago, according to one of the emails stored in the account. (According to the email headers, the return-path of the email is to an address with the @apple.com domain). The hackers also uploaded a YouTube video of them allegedly logging into some of the stolen accounts. The hacker appears to access an elderly woman’s iCloud account, which includes backed-up photos, and the ability to remotely wipe the device. Now, the hackers are threatening to reset a number of the iCloud accounts and remotely wipe victim’s Apple devices on April 7, unless Apple pays the requested amount. According to one of the emails in the accessed account, the hackers claim to have access to over 300 million Apple email accounts, including those use @icloud and @me domains. However, the hackers appear to be inconsistent in their story; one of the hackers then claimed they had 559 million accounts in all. The hackers did not provide Motherboard with any of the supposedly stolen iCloud accounts to verify this claim, except those shown in the video. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Hackers Claim Access To 300 Million iCloud Accounts, Demand $75,000 From Apple To Delete the Cache of Data

About half of Detroit can’t read

America’s public education system is failing the citizens of Detroit, where the Detroit Regional Workforce Fund reports that 47% of people in Detroit are illiterate . In nearby suburbs, up to one-third are functionally illiterate. (more…)

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About half of Detroit can’t read

Hands-on with Android O—A million new settings and an awesome snooze feature

Android O is actually here! After diving into Google’s blog post , we fired up our developer tools and loaded Android O on a sacrificial device. There are a few new interesting features, lots of UI tweaks, and plenty of odd bugs and unfinished areas. Let’s dive in. Notifications: Snooze, channels, and a terrible new ambient mode My favorite new feature in Android O is the ability to do system-wide notification snoozing. If you don’t want to deal with a notification right now, just pull it to the side a bit, which will unveil a new “clock” icon. Tap it, and the notification will be automatically snoozed for 15 minutes. You can tap on the drop-down menu to increase the time to 30 minutes or an hour. This is really handy, but I’d like to be able to customize the times here. I’m sure some people would like a few hours, or maybe a “tomorrow” option. A “type in your time” option would be fine, too. Read 32 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Hands-on with Android O—A million new settings and an awesome snooze feature

London police allegedly used hackers to target activists

If it wasn’t already clear why it’s a problem when police surveillance goes wrong , it is now. An independent investigator is looking into claims that London’s Metropolitan Police used an illegal, roundabout way to access the emails of activists and journalists. An anonymous former worker alleges that a Met intelligence unit took advantage of India “counterparts” that used hackers to obtain email logins for innocent people ranging from Greenpeace protesters to Guardian reporters. The snooping had been going on for a “number of years, ” according to the insider, and there was reportedly widespread document shredding to cover up the monitoring. There’s evidence to support the claim. The tipster provided passwords for 10 email accounts, most of which have been proven authentic by the users themselves. The investigation is still early, but a police spokesman says that the claims are “deeply troubling” and that the force will provide its “fullest possible support.” If the allegations are as serious as they sound, though, they would represent a serious blow to the Met’s reputation. They would show that a key law enforcement division was regularly spying on people who weren’t even suspected of crimes, and was fully aware that it was doing something wrong. Via: Ars Technica Source: The Guardian , BBC

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London police allegedly used hackers to target activists

American Farmers Are Turning To Ukraine To Hack Into Their Own Tractors: Report

Modern John Deere tractors are outfitted with dozens of sensors and computers, many of which cannot be serviced by owners because of a stupid licensing agreement John Deere forces upon its customers. Since farmers have neither the time nor money to waste on a technician’s visit, some are taking matters into their own… Read more…

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American Farmers Are Turning To Ukraine To Hack Into Their Own Tractors: Report

This Nest Security Flaw Is Remarkably Dumb

The internet has made it supremely easy to install connected security cameras wherever you want. Unfortunately for Nest, that easy connectivity makes it simple for hackers to disable its cameras with just a few keystrokes. And that’s a very bad feature for a security camera. Read more…

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This Nest Security Flaw Is Remarkably Dumb

Email scheme stole $100 million from two US tech companies

It’s tempting to assume that technology workers are intelligent enough to avoid email fraud , but that’s not always the case. Both the FBI and the state of New York have charged a Lithuanian man, Evaldas Rimasauskas, with perpetrating a phishing campaign that siphoned $100 million away from two US tech companies companies. They’re both choosing to remain unnamed, although one is a “multinational online social media company” — you can probably whip up a short list of candidates based on that description. The scheme wasn’t particularly complicated, either, and mostly relied on less-than-attentive employees. Between 2013 and 2015 (possibly earlier), Rimasauskas allegedly ran a fake company in Latvia that had the same name as an “Asian-based computer hardware manufacturer.” He used this bogus firm to fool victims into responding to phishing emails, getting them to wire millions of dollars to his bank accounts in Latvia and Cyprus. The fraudster quickly spread the money to accounts elsewhere in the world (including Lithuania, Hong Kong, Hungary and Slovakia), and even sent forged documents to the banks to convince them that the large sums of money were legitimate. If the charges (which include wire fraud, identity theft and money laundering) hold up, Rimasaukas faces stiff punishment. He’s looking at a minimum of 2 years in prison if he’s found guilty of identity theft, and each of the remaining charges could get him up to 20 years behind bars. However, it’s also safe to say that his targets are learning a hard lesson, too. Even the most tech-savvy companies can fall prey to online fraud, and they may need to step up their security measures (including staff education) to prevent similar incidents. Source: Department of Justice

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Email scheme stole $100 million from two US tech companies

Researchers break efficiency record for consumer-friendly solar panels

Turning sunlight into power is a surprisingly tricky thing. Experiments in academia have created solar arrays that can capture up to 40-percent of the sun’s energy and convert it to electricity, but consumer cells are notably less efficient. At best, silicon-based technology has a theoretical 29-percent efficiency ceiling — meaning any consumer panel in the low 20s is doing pretty well. Still, we’re inching ever closer to the technology’s limit. Researchers at Kaneko corp recently announced that they’ve developed a silicon solar cell with a record-breaking 26.3 percent efficiency rating. The score is only just barely higher than the previous record of 25.6, but that 0.7 percent gain is no easy feat. Researchers had to analyze what factors in current cell design was keeping the technology from reaching its theoretical limits. The group decided that reducing optical loss was the best path forward, and moved low-resistance electrodes to the rear of the cell to increase the amount of photons that could be captured. That’s a lot of technical jargon, sure — but the big win here isn’t just that the cell is more efficient, it’s that the more productive silicon cell was produced using the same kind of production process used for consumer sells. In other words, this isn’t just an experiment, it’s something we might actually see on the market soon. Via: Ars Technica Source: Nature Energy

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Researchers break efficiency record for consumer-friendly solar panels