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8 votes
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Machine learning can offer new tools, fresh insights for the humanities
10 votes -
A short history of computers in the movies: Panel lights, spinning tapes, and lab coats
4 votes -
Have you quit any social media?
Have you quit social media? Why? Why not? I have been thinking about it (specifically Facebook). I have not done so, because I fear that I'll lose contact with friends from my past (even though I...
Have you quit social media? Why? Why not?
I have been thinking about it (specifically Facebook). I have not done so, because I fear that I'll lose contact with friends from my past (even though I have not messaged any of them, or seen their profile, in years).25 votes -
These portraits were made by AI: None of these people exist
16 votes -
Dead musicians are touring again, as holograms. It's tricky — technologically and legally
5 votes -
Formula E starts season five in Saudi Arabia with a faster electric race car
7 votes -
How we lost our ambitions for the tech-enabled home
16 votes -
More than porn: Tumblr affirmed trans youths' identities
12 votes -
Kelly Slater’s Shock Wave
5 votes -
Apple Watch's ECG feature is already proving its worth
6 votes -
Chinese scientist who used CRISPR on human babies gone missing
15 votes -
Macedonia's former ruling party organized a trolling apparatus for spreading hate speech, threats
8 votes -
First gene-edited babies claimed in China
12 votes -
The 100 greatest innovations of 2018
6 votes -
'Sci-fi' plane with no moving parts flies successfully
12 votes -
A program to reduce Earth's heat capture by injecting aerosols into the atmosphere from high-altitude aircraft is possible, but unreasonably costly with current technology.
9 votes -
Healing the body electric: In the next five to ten years, a new generation of small networked sensors will provide doctors with up-to-the-moment insight into patients’ health
5 votes -
The future of aging just might be in Margaritaville
9 votes -
Cat tongue spines help smear saliva and inspire new 3D-printed brush
4 votes -
Period-tracking apps are not for women
28 votes -
Denuvo: Four years later
14 votes -
Near the end of the Middle Ages a device came into service that helped avid readers: the book carousel or book wheel
14 votes -
'There are no rules': The unforeseen consequences of sex robots
21 votes -
Waymo has been granted the first permit in California to begin driverless testing on public roads
7 votes -
What are some current examples of "the emperor's new clothes?"
For those unfamiliar with the story, "The Emperor's New Clothes" is about an emperor who parades around naked, but nobody will point out the obvious for fear of being seen as ignorant....
For those unfamiliar with the story, "The Emperor's New Clothes" is about an emperor who parades around naked, but nobody will point out the obvious for fear of being seen as ignorant. Idiomatically, it refers to something seen as true or widely praised, simply because nobody is willing to speak out against it.
I saw a rant about "blockchains" being the new overhyped hotness for tech companies, and it made me wonder what other "new clothes" are out there right now. What's something you have a strong takedown for that everybody else seems to love/support?
38 votes -
Meet the scientists bringing extinct species back from the dead
3 votes -
Why do you lock your smartphone?
I'm genuinely curious. I'm a late adopter FWIW and am still rocking an older iPhone that doesn't support any face recognition or finger prints. But I don't use a pass code either, and never have,...
I'm genuinely curious. I'm a late adopter FWIW and am still rocking an older iPhone that doesn't support any face recognition or finger prints. But I don't use a pass code either, and never have, and doubt I ever will. I just don't get it... what are folks afraid of happening if they don't lock their phone? I suppose the "nightmare" scenario would be someone steals your phone and then messages your contacts asking for $. Is that it?
I've always practiced greater digital security than physical security (counting the phone unlock as physical) as I think it much more likely that a ne'er-do-well would attack some large company than to single me out in person. I mean if the FBI or some hacker is going through my garbage then I probably have larger problems, right?
For me it's cost/benefit - swiping/fingerprinting/face IDing multiple times a day is not worth the slim chance that my phone is stolen by someone who going to use the info in it for something nefarious. I wouldn't lock my car if I was in/out of 20x a day, I just wouldn't leave anything terribly valuable in it.
Please let me know why locking your phone is/isn't important to you.
EDIT: To be clear, I have one banking app and it requires an additional password to get in. It's an app so there isn't a saved password for it anywhere.
EDIT2: Made this as a comment below, but thought I'd add it up here as well - "I find it strange that people in general seem to be OK with putting up with an inconvenience (even though minor to many) that affects them multiple times a day, but we hold large companies almost wholly unaccountable for major data breaches. "
EDIT3: This just occurred to me. We lock our phones, but not our wallets/purses. The argument that a pass-code is a protection against identity theft rings sort of hollow when we consider we have much of the same info on an ID card that we keep unprotected. Some states will even list the SSN on a driver's license.
EDIT4: I'm convinced everyone thinks their personal lives are terribly interesting to strangers and my suspicion is they're not. Only two real cases of bad things happening when a phone is unlocked that I've counted so far: 1) long distance calls 2) pokemon themed contacts.
EDIT5: That said, sounds like the fingerprint scanner is the way to go for convenient security. I'll be checking that out. Sincere thanks!
EDIT6: Some folks said that edit 4 came off as condescending. Not my intention. I was trying to tie in the idea of "everyone being the main character in their own story." I'm definitely not implying that people should leave their phones unlocked because others wouldn't find their lives uninteresting.
I think many have a personal connection to their devices that I do not feel. Intellectually I find that very interesting as this seems less a monetary issue and more a privacy issue. It'd be as if a stranger picked up a lost diary and started reading. I fear my diary would be more like a ship captain's logbook and wholly uninteresting. If I were to have my phone stolen I'd simply change a couple passwords and buy a new one.
32 votes -
The lie generator: Inside the black mirror world of polygraph job screenings
6 votes -
Worthwhile to post about a spammer targeting nonprofits?
I volunteer with several small nonprofits. A few weeks ago, one of them got a spam message from a "volunteer" offering to create a free website for the organization and disclosing a connection to...
I volunteer with several small nonprofits. A few weeks ago, one of them got a spam message from a "volunteer" offering to create a free website for the organization and disclosing a connection to DonorComplete. There was no unsubscribe link. I hit Google, which eventually led me to a thread on TechSoup where I commented with what I had found to that date under the same user name: http://forums.techsoup.org/cs/community/f/24/t/43439.aspx This & other results showed that the "free" website is linked to historically very expensive hosting (historically , ~ $20-$40/mo, now showing about $10/mo) for a static website with very limited support or options.
My research continued intermittently, but there appears to be a network of over 100 domains (active, expired, dormant and/or returning server errors) connected to spam efforts over roughly the last 6 years, questionable marketing tactics dating back to ~ 1998, 4 overlapping corporations with one man as a central figure, several throwaway email addresses and a couple that seem to be dedicated & longer running, a handful of apparently dedicated servers and several shared servers with many connected domains hosted. The messages target nonprofit organizations and churches, with 4 textual variations posted via email, mailing lists, and comments. The first archived comments I found targeted FOSS project mailing lists. Based on the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine, many small nonprofits used their service years ago, but it looks like the spammers' services have been largely abandoned over the last few years - probably why the new campaign started ~ June.
I've filed complaints with two of the registrars, and at least one of the recently active domains appears to be in non-hosted status. Would there be any interest in my posting a thread with the details of what I've found so far (spreadsheets and mind maps in progress)? Would anyone be interested in helping me present the data in a more easily digestible format a la r/dataisbeautiful? Or can anyone recommend an easier way to report the registrant tied to the spam? I'm not trying to start a witch hunt, but these people seem to have flown under the radar for a long time, and I know many small nonprofits aren't tech savvy enough to recognize the warning signs these folks present.
8 votes -
Justice Department sues to stop California net neutrality law
17 votes -
Yuval Harari: The most important investment is building a more flexible mind
7 votes -
Two years since South Australia was plunged into darkness during a statewide blackout, new light has been shed on the cost of the Tesla battery.
5 votes -
Amazon makes Alexa-controlled microwave
5 votes -
Yelp for noise: A new app helps diners find the quietest bars and restaurants
14 votes -
Solar panels replaced tarmac on a motorway. Here are the results.
14 votes -
What to do about reddit and trolls?
So I was following this discussion on Reddit today about someone finding evidence of Russia trolls finding a safe haven on reddit and the admins not addressing it. And then also this one on Tildes...
So I was following this discussion on Reddit today about someone finding evidence of Russia trolls finding a safe haven on reddit and the admins not addressing it.
And then also this one on Tildes that clears up why the OP deleted his account and the Reddit admin's overall poor response.
So I was wondering...is there any way to fix reddit? I've all but left it, but I really wish it wasn't so horrible a place to be.
In one of the reddit threads, a user posted an idea of having many many redditors all refuse to log in to reddit for a single day as a protest against how the site is being ran. Would this be advisable or effective? What other things could be done to "wake up" the site owners to what has been going on for so long?
EDIT: Here was the reddit admin team's response to the incident.
22 votes -
Bitcoin miners flock to New York’s remote corners, but get chilly reception
9 votes -
Construction to begin on thirty-six megawatt Moroccan wind farm for Bitcoin mining
11 votes -
What steps do you take to secure your online use and privacy?
I do the following: Use a VPN (NordVPN) Use Firefox with a tweaked about:config and the following security extensions: uBlock Origin NoScript HTTPS Everywhere Privacy Badger Decentraleyes Cookie...
I do the following:
- Use a VPN (NordVPN)
- Use Firefox with a tweaked about:config and the following security extensions:
- uBlock Origin
- NoScript
- HTTPS Everywhere
- Privacy Badger
- Decentraleyes
- Cookie Autodelete
- Skip Redirect
- CanvasBlocker
- Run Linux Mint (I know, Ubuntu-based distros aren't ideal but I'm a Linux beginner)
- Don't have any social media as of a year ago
- Don't use any Google services, including YouTube, Google Search, or Gmail
- Use a password manager (KeePassXC)
The next step would be for me to switch from iPhone to Android running Lineage OS, but money is a bit tight right now. As for day-to-day lifestyle choices, I try to use cash whenever possible and never sign up for things like store rewards programs.
What's your setup? Do you consider yourself a privacy-minded individual? Are you more concerned with protecting yourself from corporate or government entities?
46 votes -
How useful is the Apple Watch's heart-monitoring feature?
9 votes -
The startup world’s cuddly, cutthroat battle to walk your dog
5 votes -
A band of Polish mathematicians figured out much about how German Enigma encoding machines operated, years before Alan Turing did
6 votes -
The new science of seeing around corners
10 votes -
How China's giant solar farms are transforming world energy
9 votes -
California lawmakers pass nation’s toughest net neutrality law
14 votes -
For poorer people in India and many other countries, a computer engineer has found a way to detect breast cancer without radiation
10 votes -
The memoir by Steve Jobs' daughter makes clear he was a truly rotten person whose bad behavior was repeatedly enabled by those around him
17 votes -
Milwaukee - The Silicon Valley of water technology?
5 votes -
Spinning sail technology is poised to bring back wind-powered ships
6 votes