events – Page 267

Apple Is Fighting A Secret War To Keep You From Repairing Your Phone

It’s no secret that Apple makes a ton of money by charging ‘astronomical’ fee for replacing and fixing display and other components of iPhone and iPad (as well as Mac line). For instance, the company charges $599 for replacing the display on the iPad Pro tablet. Which sounds insane when you realize that you can almost certainly purchase a new iPad Pro under $700. And this is what most people do. A Huffington Post article notes that this behavior has contributed significantly in “generating heaps of e-waste.” Citing many advocates, the publication claims that Apple has “opposed legislation that could help curb it.” From the report: The Huffington Post spoke with politicians in two states who support such legislation, and confirmed through government filings that Apple has lobbied on the issue. Four states — Minnesota, Nebraska, Massachusetts and New York — have considered adopting “right to repair” amendments, which would update existing laws regarding the sale of electronic equipment. Amending these laws would make it easier to fix your devices and would help reduce “e-waste, ” a catch-all term for any electronic detritus. The New York State Senate and Assembly could approve one of these amendments next week. This would help unofficial repair shops get the information they need to fix your iPad, ideally driving down repair costs and encouraging you to squeeze more life out of your old devices — thus cutting down on the e-waste generated by our voracious appetites for new gadgets. Apple asserts that it helps recycle millions of pounds of electronics equipment every year. But it won’t support right to repair amendments.One would ask what is preventing a user from getting their device repaired by unofficial service person? In addition to the security implication, you also run a risk of getting your device bricked by Apple. To recall, the iPhone maker was found bricking the handsets that had been repaired by third-party vendors earlier this year. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Apple Is Fighting A Secret War To Keep You From Repairing Your Phone

iMessage for Android Would Change Everything

As is tradition, some last-minute rumors are sneaking their way into the news before Apple’s big reveal on Monday morning in San Francisco. We already have a good idea what of what we think is coming , but this latest bit that says iMessage is coming to Android is very intriguing. Read more…

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iMessage for Android Would Change Everything

Movie Written By Algorithm Turns Out To Be Hilarious and Intense

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Ars is excited to be hosting this online debut of Sunspring, a short science fiction film that’s not entirely what it seems. It’s about three people living in a weird future, possibly on a space station, probably in a love triangle. You know it’s the future because H (played with neurotic gravity by Silicon Valley’s Thomas Middleditch) is wearing a shiny gold jacket, H2 (Elisabeth Gray) is playing with computers, and C (Humphrey Ker) announces that he has to “go to the skull” before sticking his face into a bunch of green lights. It sounds like your typical sci-fi B-movie, complete with an incoherent plot. Except Sunspring isn’t the product of Hollywood hacks — it was written entirely by an AI. To be specific, it was authored by a recurrent neural network called long short-term memory, or LSTM for short. At least, that’s what we’d call it. The AI named itself Benjamin. The report goes on to mention that the movie was made by Oscar Sharp for the annual film festival Sci-Fi London. You can watch the short film (~10 min) on The Scene here. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Movie Written By Algorithm Turns Out To Be Hilarious and Intense

KeePass Vulnerability Could Let Attackers Steal Your Passwords With Shady Updates

KeePass isn’t the most popular password manager around here, but many of our readers use it . The next time you download an update for it, you may want to verify it yourself to prevent a malicious attack. Read more…

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KeePass Vulnerability Could Let Attackers Steal Your Passwords With Shady Updates

7 More Viral Photos That Are Totally Fake

Everything is fake. Or at least it’s starting to feel that way. With the American campaign season still going strong, and the internet still, well… existing, we’ve been seeing a lot of suspicious photos in our social media streams. But don’t fall for any of these. They’re all fake. Read more…

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7 More Viral Photos That Are Totally Fake

Google To Deprecate SSLv3, RC4 in Gmail IMAP/POP Clients

Michael Mimoso, reporting for Threatpost: Google said that it will initiate on June 16 a gradual deprecation of SSLv3 and RC4 for Gmail IMAP/POP mail clients. Both the crypto protocols cipher are notoriously unsafe and are being phased out in big chunks of the Internet. Google, for its part, had already announced in May that it would no longer support SSLv3 and RC4 connections for Gmail SMTP. Google does note that most mail clients already default to safer TLS connections, and most will not be affected by the impending changes.”Unlike Gmail SMTP, this change will be rolled out as a gradual change, where it may take longer than 30 days for users to be fully restricted from connecting to Gmail from SSLv3 or RC4 connections; however, we recommend updating your clients soon in order to avoid any potential disruption, ” Google said in an announcement. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Why Complex Password Requirements Don’t Necessarily Make You Safer

We already know that most users’ clever passwords aren’t protecting them from hackers . It turns out that the complex password requirements most sites ask you for aren’t doing as much to help either. Read more…

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Why Complex Password Requirements Don’t Necessarily Make You Safer

Many Lexus Navigation Systems Bricked By Over-The-Air Software Update

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: An unknown number of Lexus automobiles have seen their infotainment and navigation head units broken by a bug in an over-the-air software update from Lexus. The glitch, which was confirmed by a Lexus spokesperson, was delivered in a routine software update. In affected cars, it can cause the dashboard screen to spontaneously reset itself and, as a result, both the radio and navigation system can be unusable. It affects cars equipped with Lexus’ Enform system with navigation. Lexus social media channels have been flooded by frustrated owners, but the company has been unable to give any estimates for when the problem will be resolved. The company also couldn’t say whether customers will see the problem fix itself with another software update or if they will need to head into dealers to get it fixed. Some users on Twitter have reported success with disconnecting their battery for a few moments to force a reset of the system. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Many Lexus Navigation Systems Bricked By Over-The-Air Software Update

Finnish Mail System Abandons Tuesday Delivery

Reader jones_supa writes: In a world moving to electronic communications, the snail mail traffic has seen a huge drop. Because of this, Posti, the mail delivery organization of Finland will not be delivering letters and magazines on Tuesdays anymore. Tuesday was selected because it generally has the lowest volume of mail. For example, magazines and advertisements are targeted to the end of the week, so that people have more time for shopping dreams in the weekend. Another reason is that Posti recently launched a lawn mowing service which operates on Tuesdays. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Finnish Mail System Abandons Tuesday Delivery

‘Alarming’ Rise In Ransomware Tracked

An anonymous reader quotes a report from BBC: Cyber-thieves are adopting ransomware in “alarming” numbers, say security researchers. There are now more than 120 separate families of ransomware, said experts studying the malicious software. Other researchers have seen a 3, 500% increase in the criminal use of net infrastructure that helps run ransomware campaigns. The rise is driven by the money thieves make with ransomware and the increase in kits that help them snare victims. Ransomware was easy to use, low risk and offered a high reward, said Bart Parys, a security researcher who helps to maintain a list of the growing numbers of types of this kind of malware. Mr Parys and his colleagues have now logged 124 separate variants of ransomware. Some virulent strains, such as Locky and Cryptolocker, were controlled by individual gangs, he said, but others were being used by people buying the service from an underground market. A separate indicator of the growth of ransomware came from the amount of net infrastructure that gangs behind the malware had been seen using. The numbers of web domains used to host the information and payment systems had grown 35-fold, said Infoblox in its annual report which monitors these chunks of the net’s infrastructure. A lot of ransomware reached victims via spear-phishing campaigns or booby-trapped adverts, he said, but other gangs used specialized “crypters” and “packers” that made files look benign. Others relied on inserting malware into working memory so it never reached the parts of a computer on which most security software keeps an eye. Ars Technica reports that drive-by attacks that install the TeslaCrypt crypto ransomware are now able to bypass Microsoft’s EMET. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Ken May

Tag: events