Google’s museum app finds your fine art doppelgänger

If you’ve ever wondered if there’s a museum portrait somewhere that looks like you and you’re ready to have your ego crushed, there’s now an app for that. Google Arts & Culture’s latest update now lets you take a selfie, and using image recognition, finds someone in its vast art collection that most resembles you. It will then present you and your fine art twin side-by-side, along with a percentage match, and let you share the results on social media, if you dare. My Google Arts & Culture match is with a guy literally named Bourgeois A post shared by Steve Dent (@stevetdent) on Jan 15, 2018 at 1:43am PST The app is like an automated version of an article that circulated recently showing folks standing in front of portraits at museums. In many cases, the old-timey people in the paintings resemble them uncannily, but, other than in rare cases, that’s not the case at all with Google’s app. Google matched me with someone who doesn’t look like me in the slightest, a certain Sir Peter Francois Bourgeois, based on a painting hanging in Dulwich Picture Gallery. Taking a buzz around the internet, other folks were satisfied with their matches, some took them as a personal insult, and many were just plain baffled, in that order, as presented below. From all that, it’s pretty clear that deep learning systems like those from Google are great at matching individual details, but painfully miss the big picture. The left is from “Children Begging, ” from the second half of the 17th century. Anonymous painter, Italy. I can kind of see it #googleartsandculture A post shared by Avren Keating (@mxavren) on Jan 12, 2018 at 7:59am PST Nothing like a little self esteem boost from google arts and culture on a Saturday night pic.twitter.com/hYYtdNN308 — Amy Stone (@amyhannumstone) January 14, 2018 Cool 🙂 #googleartsandculture A post shared by BoyWonder (@boywonderrocks) on Jan 14, 2018 at 5:12am PST Via: GQ Source: Google Arts & Culture (Play Store)

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Google’s museum app finds your fine art doppelgänger

WeWork Employees Caught Spying on Competition

An anonymous reader shares a report: The battle in the red-hot co-working space business is heating up. WeWork, the No. 1 player in the sector, allegedly sent two spies to infiltrate rival Knotel — to steal info and some customers, Knotel claimed. The spies showed up at seven Knotel properties in Manhattan last month in a “systematic attempt to pilfer Knotel’s proprietary information and trade secrets, ” according to a cease-and-desist letter the smaller company sent to WeWork. The Post has obtained a copy of the letter. The corporate espionage rookies may have pulled off the caper except, in a totally random happening, a Knotel employee recognized one of them as a friend of a friend, according to sources close to Knotel. While the pair used fake names to gain entry, according to the letter, a call to the Knotel worker’s pal got the spy’s real name — and a couple of social media inquiries turned up the fact that he worked for rival WeWork, sources said. The letter to WeWork asks for a reply by Oct. 13 — but so far Knotel hasn’t heard a peep from its rival, according to CEO Amol Sarva. While inside the Knotel offices, visited Sept. 12-14, the luckless spies posed “as the founders of a fast-growing startup” and said they needed space for their six-person company, according to the letter. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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WeWork Employees Caught Spying on Competition

Returning to Second Life

Seriously, this once happened. A decade ago, dozens of media outlets and technologists discovered “The Next Internet.” An original cyberspace science fiction fantasy had finally come to fruition as the world gained a second digitized reality. In a short period of time, countries  established embassies , media companies  opened bureaus , one of Earth’s biggest rock bands played a concert , political campaigns took to its streets, and people became real-world millionaires plying their skills in this new arena. That much hyped “Next Internet?” You may remember it better by its official name—Second Life. For many modern Internet users, the platform has likely faded far, far from memory. But there’s no denying the cultural impact Second Life had during the brief height of its popularity. Explaining Second Life today as a MMORG or a social media platform undersells things for the unfamiliar; Second Life became an entirely alternative online world for its users. And it wasn’t just the likes of Reuters and U2 and Sweden embracing this platform. Second Life boasted 1.1 million active users at its peak roughly a decade ago. Even cultural behemoth Facebook only boasted 20 million at the time. Read 38 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Returning to Second Life

India shut off the internet in an attempt to maintain order

Last week, local governments in the northern Indian states of Punjab and Haryana shut down citizens’ internet access and text messaging services just before a verdict was to be released on a high-profile rape case. The case involved a cult leader with a large following who was accused of raping two women in his group. A statement from the Additional Chief Secretary of Haryana said the order was “issued to prevent any disturbance of peace and public order” in the region. Around 50 million people lost internet access for five days. India has a history of censoring web content in the name of social order. Some areas of the country have made liking blasphemous social media posts punishable with jail time, it has blocked sex sites and has arrested WhatsApp group members who have posted altered, unflattering photos of the prime minister, which is against the country’s law prohibiting fake news. If the order to temporarily shut off the region’s internet had any effect, it wasn’t to prevent a disturbance of the peace. After the cult leader was found guilty, his followers violently protested the verdict, resulting in 38 deaths. Trains were also stopped from traveling to and from the states, schools and businesses were closed and security officers were sent to regain order. Internet and messaging services were restored this morning. Source: CNET

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India shut off the internet in an attempt to maintain order

Developer Accidentally Deletes Production Database On Their First Day On The Job

An anonymous reader quotes Quartz: “How screwed am I?” asked a recent user on Reddit, before sharing a mortifying story. On the first day as a junior software developer at a first salaried job out of college, his or her copy-and-paste error inadvertently erased all data from the company’s production database. Posting under the heartbreaking handle cscareerthrowaway567, the user wrote, “The CTO told me to leave and never come back. He also informed me that apparently legal would need to get involved due to severity of the data loss. I basically offered and pleaded to let me help in someway to redeem my self and i was told that I ‘completely fucked everything up.'” The company’s backups weren’t working, according to the post, so the company is in big trouble now. Though Qz adds that “the court of public opinion is on the new guy’s side. In a poll on the tech site the Register, less than 1% of 5, 400 respondents thought the new developer should be fired. Forty-five percent thought the CTO should go.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Developer Accidentally Deletes Production Database On Their First Day On The Job

Scuttlebutt: an "off-grid" P2P social network that runs without servers and can fall back to sneakernet

Dominic Tarr is a developer who lives on a self-steering sailboat in New Zealand; he created Scuttlebutt, a secure messaging system that can run without servers, even without ISPs. (more…)

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Scuttlebutt: an "off-grid" P2P social network that runs without servers and can fall back to sneakernet

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”

The best password managers

By Joe Kissell This post was done in partnership with The Wirecutter , a buyer’s guide to the best technology. When readers choose to buy The Wirecutter’s independently chosen editorial picks, it may earn affiliate commissions that support its work. Read the full article here . If you’re not using a password manager, start now. As we wrote in Password Managers Are for Everyone—Including You , a password manager makes you less vulnerable online by generating strong random passwords, syncing them securely across your browsers and devices so they’re easily accessible everywhere, and filling them in automatically when needed. After 15 hours of research and testing, we believe that LastPass is the best password manager for most people. It has all the essential features plus some handy extras, it works with virtually any browser on any device, and most of its features are free. Who should get this Everyone should use a password manager . The things that make strong passwords strong—length, uniqueness, variety of characters—make them difficult to remember, so most people reuse a few easy-to-remember passwords everywhere they go online. But reusing passwords is dangerous: If just one site suffers a security breach, an attacker could access your entire digital life: email, cloud storage, bank accounts, social media, dating sites, and more. And if your reused password is weak, the problem is that much worse, because someone could guess your password even if there isn’t a security breach. If you have more than a handful of online accounts—and almost everyone does—you need a good password manager. It enables you to easily ensure that each password is both unique and strong, and it saves you the bother of looking up, remembering, typing, or even copying and pasting your passwords when you need them. If you don’t already use a password manager, you should get one, and LastPass is a fabulous overall choice for most users. How we picked and tested Although I’d already spent countless hours testing password managers in the course of writing my book Take Control of Your Passwords , for this article I redid most of the research and testing from scratch, because apps in this category change constantly—and often dramatically. I looked for tools that do their job as efficiently as possible without being intrusive or annoying. A password manager should disappear until you need it, do its thing quickly and with minimum interaction, and require as little thought as possible (even when switching browsers or platforms). And the barrier to entry should be low enough—in terms of both cost and simplicity—for nearly anyone to get up to speed quickly. I began by ruling out the password autofill features built into browsers like Chrome and Firefox—although they’re better than nothing, they tend to be less secure than stand-alone apps, and they provide no way to use your stored passwords with other browsers. Next I looked for apps that support all the major platforms and browsers. If you use only one or two platforms or browsers, support for the others may be irrelevant to you, but broad compatibility is still a good sign. This means, ideally, support for the four biggest platforms—Windows, macOS, iOS, and Android—as well as desktop browser integration with at least Chrome and Firefox, plus Safari on macOS. I excluded apps that force you to copy and paste passwords into your browser rather than offering a browser extension that lets you click a button or use a keystroke to fill in your credentials. And, because most of us use more than one computing device, the capability to sync passwords securely across those devices is essential. After narrowing down the options, I tested eight finalists: 1Password, Dashlane, Enpass, Keeper, LastPass, LogmeOnce, RoboForm, and Sticky Password. I tested for usability by doing a number of spot checks to verify that the features described in the apps’ marketing materials matched what I saw in real life. I set up a simple set of test forms on my own server that enabled me to evaluate how each app performed basic tasks such as capturing manually entered usernames and passwords, filling in those credentials on demand, and dealing with contact and credit card data. If my initial experiences with an app were good, I also tried that app with as many additional platforms and browsers as I could in order to form a more complete picture of its capabilities. I did portions of my testing on macOS 10.12, Windows 10, Chromium OS (as a stand-in for Chrome OS), iOS 10, Apple Watch, and Android. Our pick You can access LastPass in a browser extension, on the Web, or in a stand-alone app. Before I get to what’s great about LastPass, a word of context: LastPass , Dashlane , and 1Password are significantly better than the rest of the field. I suspect most people would be equally happy with any of them. What tipped the scales in favor of LastPass was the company’s announcement on November 2, 2016, that it was making cross-device syncing (formerly a paid feature) available for free. Although there’s still a Premium subscription that adds important features (more on that in our full guide ), this change makes LastPass a no-brainer for anyone who hasn’t yet started using a password manager. Even its $12/year premium tier is much cheaper than 1Password or Dashlane’s paid options. LastPass has the broadest platform support of any password manager I saw. Its autofill feature is flexible and nicely designed. You can securely share selected passwords with other people; there’s also an Emergency Access feature that lets you give a loved one or other trusted person access to your data. An Automatic Password Change feature works on many sites to let you change many passwords with one click, and a Security Challenge alerts you to passwords that are weak, old, or duplicates, or that go with sites that have suffered data breaches. LastPass works on macOS, Windows, iOS, Android, Chrome OS, Linux, Firefox OS, Firefox Mobile, Windows RT, Windows Phone—even Apple Watch and Android Wear smartwatches. (Sorry, no BlackBerry, Palm, or Symbian support.) It’s available as a browser extension for Chrome, Firefox, Safari, Internet Explorer, and Microsoft Edge, and it has desktop and mobile apps for various platforms. Upgrade pick for Apple users 1Password offers Mac and iOS users features not found in LastPass, plus a more-polished interface. If you’re a Mac, iPhone, and/or iPad user with a few extra bucks, and you’d like even more bells and whistles in your password manager, 1Password is well worth a look. 1Password has a more polished and convenient user interface than either LastPass or Dashlane. It’s also a little faster at most tasks; it has a local storage option if you don’t trust your passwords to the cloud; it gives you more options than LastPass for working with attached files; and it can auto-generate one-time tokens for many sites that use two-step verification—LastPass requires a separate app for this. 1Password is, however, more expensive than LastPass and doesn’t work on as many platforms: Windows and Chromebook users, especially, are better off with LastPass. This guide may have been updated by The Wirecutter . To see the current recommendation, please go here . Note from The Wirecutter: When readers choose to buy our independently chosen editorial picks, we may earn affiliate commissions that support our work.

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The best password managers

Kaspersky Lab Promises New Backup Tool To Help Unhappy Social Media Users Quit

Kaspersky Lab surveyed 16, 750 people and concluded that often negative experiences on social experience overpower their positive effects — and they’re doing something about it. JustAnotherOldGuy pointed us to their latest announcement. 59% have felt unhappy when they have seen friends’ posts from a party they were not invited to, and 45% revealed that their friends’ happy holiday pictures have had a negative influence on them. Furthermore, 37% also admitted that looking at past happy posts of their own can leave them with the feeling that their own past was better than their present life. Previous research has also demonstrated peoples’ frustration with social media as 78% admitted that they have considered leaving social networks altogether. The only thing that makes people stay on social media is the fear of losing their digital memories, such as photos, and contacts with their friends. To help people decide more freely if they want to stay in social media or leave without losing their digital memories, Kaspersky Lab is developing a new app — FFForget will allow people to back up all of their memories from the social networks they use and keep them in a safe, encrypted memory container and will give people the freedom to leave any network whenever they want, without losing what belongs to them — their digital lives. The FFForget app will be released in 2017, but there’s already a web page where you can sign up for early access. Kaspersky plans to monetize this by creating both a free version of the app — limited to one social network — and a $1.99-per-month version which automatically backs up social content from Facebook, Google, Twitter, and Instagram in real-time with a fancier interface and more powerful encryption. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Kaspersky Lab Promises New Backup Tool To Help Unhappy Social Media Users Quit

Hacking Group Hits Buzzfeed: ‘We Have Your Database’ 

OurMine , the hacking group that has previously taken credit for hacking into the social media accounts for Mark Zuckerberg and Jack Dorsey , has apparently gained access to BuzzFeed’s systems and published on its website. Read more…

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Hacking Group Hits Buzzfeed: ‘We Have Your Database’