Tom McKay

Tech NewsFacebook

Report: Facebook Staff Suddenly Concerned About Privacy, Specifically Theirs

The ridiculous mess over at Facebook has continued to get worse, with staff allegedly in a full-on “uproar” over the fallout of the leak of consumer hardware VP Andrew Bosworth’s 2016 memo claiming things like terrorism and cyberbullying suicides were justifiable side effects of the site’s continued growth. Per the New York Times, what began … Continued

Tech NewsAmazon

Trump’s One-Sided Feud With Amazon Continues to Fester

President Donald Trump’s dumb feud with Amazon—a company he almost certainly hates solely because it’s owned by billionaire Jeff Bezos, who also owns the Trump-critical Washington Post—continued on Saturday with another series of incoherent tweets. Trump has long insisted that Amazon doesn’t pay “internet taxes,” which aren’t a thing. He’s also repeatedly claimed it doesn’t … Continued

ScienceHealth

Scientists Conclude Your Rubber Bath Ducky Is Probably Gross as Hell

It turns out the cute, harmless-looking rubber ducky floating around in your bathtub may actually be a Trojan horse for ravenous legions of “potentially pathogenic bacteria.” That’s the conclusion of a recent study by a research team from the Swiss Federal Institute of Aquatic Science and Technology, ETH Zurich, and the University of Illinois published … Continued

Tech NewsFacebook

Facebook: Would It Help If We Traded Less User Info With Huge Data Brokers?

Facebook’s big data-sharing scandal apology tour continued on Wednesday with the announcement the site would be cancelling its “Partner Categories” advertising section, in which the site partners with third-party data brokers to aggregate even more monetizable information about users. Per the Wall Street Journal, Facebook is under the impression that this will somehow help dispel … Continued

Tech NewsPrivacy and Security

Boeing Says Suspected WannaCry Attack Only Hit ‘Small Number of Systems,’ Probably Not Planes

A South Carolina facility owned by aerospace and defense contracting giant Boeing was hit by a WannaCry attack on Wednesday, the Seattle Times reported, but the company is now trying to tamp down fears that the dreaded ransomware is back on the rise after it was only barely snuffed out last year. Per the Times, … Continued

Tech NewsPrivacy and Security

At Least Two Flaws in Monero Could Make Some Transactions Partially Traceable

A flaw in ostensibly untraceable cryptocurrency Monero, which has picked up steam as market leader Bitcoin has stumbled in value, may make it possible to trace transactions—and since the entire history of Monero is encoded in its blockchain in what is now known to be a semi-vulnerable method, transactions that happened years ago could potentially … Continued

Tech NewsFacebook

Facebook: Yeah, Maybe Now Isn’t the Best Time to Launch Our New Speaker Designed to Spy on You

Facebook “has decided not to unveil” its line of connected home speakers, which boast digital assistant and video-chat capabilities, at its developer conference in May because too many people have wised up to the fact said products will probably turn their homes into Mark Zuckerberg-surveilled Panopticons, Bloomberg reported. According to Bloomberg, Facebook has decided that … Continued

Tech NewsNews

Shyp Hits the Fan

On-demand package delivery startup Shyp, which offered to take care of the entire packing-and-shipping process for customers in exchange for rates ranging from $5 to more than double the cost of just going to FedEx, announced it is going out of business on Tuesday. Shyp’s business model was simple: It negotiated deep discounts with package … Continued

Tech NewsNews

Elon Musk Has Some Literal Rocks to Sell You, Maybe

Elon Musk claims his Boring Company, which is currently in the middle of two tunnel-digging projects in Los Angeles and the Washington, D.C. region, will soon be in the business of selling its leftover rocks. In a Twitter post early Monday morning ET, Musk announced that the Boring Company will in the future be selling … Continued

Tech NewsApple

A Bug in the iOS Camera App’s QR Code Reader Could Send iPhone Users to Malicious Websites

A vulnerability in the way iOS’ camera app handles QR codes could potentially result in users being unknowingly redirected to malicious destinations. Per 9to5Mac, security researcher Roman Mueller of Infosec recently discovered that a flaw in the camera app’s automatic QR code scanning function could result in it displaying a link and then sending users … Continued

Tech NewsNews

San Francisco Uber Driver Accidentally Turns Onto Pedestrian Staircase, and Down He Goes

An Uber car took an ill-advised turn in San Francisco’s Castro district on Monday and ended up stuck on a concrete staircase with nowhere to go outside a Safeway supermarket. Per Business Insider, the white Toyota Camry got stuck on the pedestrian walkway at around 4:23pm ET (1:23pm local time), and “was driven by a human … Continued

Tech NewsGoogle

European Union Competition Watchdog Renews Threats to Break Up Google Into Smaller Companies

Facebook may be having a very bad week stateside and in the UK over its Cambridge Analytica data scandal, but over in the continental European Union officials are maintaining that fellow tech giant Google may ultimately need to be broken up, lest it swallow the internet whole. Per the Telegraph, the EU’s competition commissioner Margrethe … Continued

Tech NewsPrivacy and Security

The State Department Has Reportedly Purchased a $15,000 iPhone Encryption Cracking Device

A department of the US State Department dedicated to diplomatic security has reportedly procured a $15,000, Apple TV-sized device its manufacturers advertise as being able to break iPhone encryption in anywhere from two hours to three days. Per Motherboard, public federal procurement documents show that the State Department’s Bureau of Diplomatic Security purchased a GrayKey … Continued

Tech NewsFacebook

Zuckerberg’s Full-Page Newspaper Ads on Facebook Data Scandal: ‘We Expect There Are Others’

Facebook and its CEO Mark Zuckerberg seem increasingly worried about the fallout of the Cambridge Analytica data-scraping scandal, which has put a renewed focus on the terrifying amount of info it has accumulated on its users, and specifically how doling all that information out to third parties for profit is its real business model. The … Continued

Tech NewsGadgets

At Long Last, Flat Earth Rocketeer Finally Manages to Blast Himself Into Sky at God Knows What Speed

Self-declared Flat Earth researcher and DIY steam rocket enthusiast “Mad” Mike Hughes has finally managed to prove the haters wrong about his ability to blast himself some 1,875 feet into the sky without being crushed or scalded to death, the Associated Press reported on Sunday. After the failure of two previous attempts to launch his … Continued

Tech NewsApple

Tim Cook Takes His Turn to Dunk on Facebook, Backing Data Privacy Regulations

Mark Zuckerberg and his data-hoarding creation Facebook remain in the crosshairs this week as scrutiny over its Cambridge Analytica profile-scraping scandal continues to mount, with the social media giant’s stock price falling by over 13 percent this week. So it’s not surprising that some of his fellow tech moguls are taking Zuckerberg’s moment of vulnerability … Continued

Tech NewsNews

The NRA Quadrupled Its Digital Ad Budget After Parkland Killings, Flooding Facebook and YouTube

Hundreds of thousands of demonstrators have churned out across the country on Saturday to support the March for Our Lives movement demanding action on gun control and that politicians begin standing up to the National Rifle Association. That movement is spearheaded by student survivors of mass shootings, particularly those who attended the Parkland, Florida high … Continued

Tech NewsNews

UK Authorities Finally Raid Cambridge Analytica After Obtaining Warrant

UK authorities with the Information Commissioner’s Office raided the offices of Cambridge Analytica, a shady election-data firm that allegedly partnered with an app to take advantage of mile-wide loopholes in Facebook policies and run off with 50 million users’ data, on Friday. Per the AP, the much-awaited raid took place after a High Court judge … Continued

Tech NewsNews

Operators of Verrückt, World’s Largest Water Slide, Charged in 2016 Death of 10-Year-Old Rider

A grand jury in Wyandotte County, Kansas has returned an indictment against waterpark and resort operator Schlitterbahn and one of its managers, charging them with “involuntary manslaughter, aggravated battery, and reckless endangerment of a child” over the 2016 death-by-decapitation of 10-year-old Caleb Schwab on the world’s tallest water slide, the Kansas City Star reported. Per … Continued

Tech NewsNews

Jack Dorsey Seems Pretty Sure Bitcoin Will Be the World’s ‘Single Currency’ in 10 Years

Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, who also happens to be the chief executive of crypto-friendly mobile payments company Square, appears to be under the impression that Bitcoin will overtake the world’s supply of fiat currency within ten years. In an interview with the Times, Dorsey made the rather dubious proposition that some form of cryptocurrency, and … Continued