Author: kenmay

Google Unveils Smart Contact Lens That Lets Diabetics Measure Their Glucose Levels

This isn’t Google Glass in a contact lens, but it may just be Google’s first step in this direction. The company’s Google[x] lab just teased a smart contact lens on its blog that is meant to help diabetics measure their glucose levels. The company says it is currently testing prototypes of this contact lens that use a tiny wireless chip and a miniaturized glucose sensor. These chips are embedded in between two soft layers of lens material. In its announcement , Google notes that scientists have long looked into how certain body fluids can help them track glucose levels. Tears, it turns out, work very well, but given that most people aren’t Hollywood actors and can cry on demand, using tears was never really an option. According to Google, the sensor can take about one reading per second, and it is working on adding tiny LED lights to the lens to warn users when their glucose levels cross certain thresholds. The sensors are so small that they “they look like bits of glitter.” Google says it is working with the FDA to turn these prototypes into real products and that it is working with experts to bring this technology to market. These partners, the company says, “will use our technology for a smart contact lens and develop apps that would make the measurements available to the wearer and their doctor.” [image via recode ]

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Google Unveils Smart Contact Lens That Lets Diabetics Measure Their Glucose Levels

Make 20 Meals to Feed a Family of Four for $150 and One Trip to Costco

Costco is one of the best places to buy quality ingredients in bulk and save money on food. With just one trip and $150, you can pick up enough to make nearly three weeks’ worth of dinners (4 servings each)—and have lots of leftovers. Read more…        

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Make 20 Meals to Feed a Family of Four for $150 and One Trip to Costco

This Bike Jacket Uses Embedded Glass "Pixels" to Light Up the Night

With an increasing number of bikes now sharing American roads with vehicle traffic, it’s more important than ever to be as visible as you can on two wheels, especially at night. But with the Zap commuter jacket from Sugoi, that won’t be much of a problem. Read more…        

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This Bike Jacket Uses Embedded Glass "Pixels" to Light Up the Night

The NSA Scoops Up 200 Million Random Text Messages Every Day

The NSA is monitoring thousands upon thousands of offline computers every day. It’s watching cellphone calls, location data. And if that wasn’t enough, a new report from the Guardian indicates it’s also scooping up around 200 million text messages a day. At random. Read more…        

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The NSA Scoops Up 200 Million Random Text Messages Every Day

Spotify Now Provides Unlimited Free Music on its Desktop App

Until now, Spotify’s free accounts provided unlimited as-supported streaming via its desktop client for six months, until it then imposed a cap on your streaming. Now, though, that cap is being scrapped. Read more…        

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Spotify Now Provides Unlimited Free Music on its Desktop App

Point-of-sale malware infecting Target found hiding in plain sight

Cyberslayer Independent security journalist Brian Krebs has uncovered important new details about the hack that compromised as many as 110 million Target customers, including the malware that appears to have infected point-of-sale systems and the way attackers first broke in. According to a post published Wednesday to KrebsOnSecurity, point-of-sale (POS) malware was uploaded to Symantec-owned ThreatExpert.com on December 18, the same day that  Krebs broke the news of the massive Target breach . An unidentified source told Krebs that the Windows share point name “ttcopscli3acs” analyzed by the malware scanning website matches the sample analyzed by the malware scanning website . The thieves used the user name “Best1_user” to log in and download stolen card data. Their password was “BackupU$r”. KrebsonSecurity The class of malware identified by Krebs is often referred to as a memory scraper, because it monitors the computer memory of POS terminals used by retailers. The malware searches for credit card data before it has been encrypted and sent to remote payment processors. The malware then “scrapes” the plain-text entries and dumps them into a database. Krebs continued: Read 2 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Point-of-sale malware infecting Target found hiding in plain sight

Google Play Movies & TV comes to iOS, minus the store and offline support

Google loves itself some iOS apps. Its newest addition to Apple’s platform is Google Play Movies & TV , Google’s video content store. To call the app a “store” on iOS is a bit of a misnomer, as buying content from the iOS app isn’t possible, thanks to Apple’s restrictions. What it  can do is play existing content that you’ve purchased on an Android device or through the Google Play Web interface . There isn’t much to the app. Movies and TV shows are broken out into separate categories, and everything is displayed as a large thumbnail. The individual content pages show a short description, a minimal list of credits, and the all-important “play” button. The app supports Google’s Chromecast via a button in the top right corner, and that’s about it. It’s simple, but a movie player doesn’t really need to be complicated. Compared to the Android version, there are a few things missing. The lack of a store means Google’s recommendation engine is missing too, which leads to of a lot of blank-looking pages. The biggest omission is offline support—there is no way to download a video for later offline viewing, so make sure you have a great Internet connection before pressing “play.” In fact, the app doesn’t work over a cellular connection at all—Wi-Fi is required. Read 2 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Google Play Movies & TV comes to iOS, minus the store and offline support

Creator of PGP e-mail encryption making secure Android “Blackphone”

Blackphone Phil Zimmerman, creator of PGP e-mail encryption , is leading a team of security industry executives building an Android phone with a variety of built-in privacy tools. “I’ve been interested in secure telephony for longer than I’ve been interested in secure e-mail,” Zimmerman said in a video on so-called Blackphone ‘s website. “I had to wait for the rest of the technology infrastructure to catch up to make it possible to do secure telephony. PGP was kind of a detour for me while waiting for the rest of the technology to catch up to make really good secure telephony possible.” The narrator of the Blackphone video ominously says, “Technology was supposed to make our lives better. Instead we have lost our privacy—we have become enslaved.” The Blackphone website says the phone will use “PrivatOS,” an Android-based operating system, while letting users “make and receive secure phone calls; exchange secure texts; exchange and store secure files; have secure video chat; browse privately; and anonymize your activity through a VPN.” Read 4 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Creator of PGP e-mail encryption making secure Android “Blackphone”

Critical Microsoft, Adobe, and Oracle updates: Like dental floss for your PC

drueckert.com I was still wiping the sleep from my eyes this morning when the nagging voice kicked in: before trawling the Internet for news, you better install yesterday’s security updates. It wasn’t a pleasant thought, given the raft of patches released yesterday by Microsoft, Adobe, and Oracle for a variety of products. But as someone who has covered computer security for eight years, I’ve come to make updating a top priority. And for good reason. A large percentage of the booby-trapped websites that surreptitiously install malware on visitors’ machines exploit vulnerabilities that have already been patched. The recent hack on Yahoo’s ad network , for instance, targeted two security flaws in the Java software framework that Oracle had fixed 17 and 24 months ago, Trend Micro reported in a blog post . Those who visited compromised Yahoo servers with up-to-date systems were immune to those attacks. By contrast, people using unpatched software were exposed to malicious payloads that installed the Dorkbot and Gamarue trojans, as well as malware that turned visitors’ machines into Bitcoin miners. Read 5 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Critical Microsoft, Adobe, and Oracle updates: Like dental floss for your PC