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14 votes
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New technology favors tyranny. Yuval Noah Harrari on artificial intelligence, democracy, and the bigger picture
6 votes -
Microsoft now faces a big Windows 10 quality test after botched update
27 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 -
Google announces "Made by Google" family 2018: Phones (Pixel 3, Pixel 3 XL), tablet (Pixel Slate), and virtual assistant (Google Home Hub)
6 votes -
Facebook Isn’t Sorry — It Just Wants Your Data
15 votes -
Data for good: Wonderful ways that big data is making the world better
7 votes -
Alphabet to shut Google+ social site after user data exposed
18 votes -
Create-React-App 2 is live
8 votes -
The rise of Netflix competitors has pushed consumers back toward piracy
39 votes -
The US Navy’s terrible accident record is now hidden from public view
10 votes -
Microsoft shakes up its Surface laptops with more powerful models
7 votes -
DOJ demands Facebook information from 'anti-administration activists'
17 votes -
The very first social network
10 votes -
Panopticlick: How unique is your browser?
29 votes -
Instagram is testing the ability to share your precise location history with Facebook
20 votes -
Windows Controlled Folder Access
I recently enabled controlled folder access in Windows 10. It restricts programs from modifying folders in a blacklist. I have all of the music/pictures/videos/documents/desktop folders and...
I recently enabled controlled folder access in Windows 10. It restricts programs from modifying folders in a blacklist.
I have all of the music/pictures/videos/documents/desktop folders and folders containing backups added, is there anything else I should consider adding?
7 votes -
Did Facebook lLearn anything from the Cambridge Analytica debacle? An even bigger data breach suggests it didn’t.
14 votes -
Aether: Distributing Social Networks Without Distributed Consensus
3 votes -
Supply chain security is the whole enchilada, but who’s willing to pay for it?
13 votes -
Meet the man who test drives sex robots
12 votes -
I made a post awhile back about asking for inspiration for a new project. I built a thing.
hey all! i made a post awhile back talking about how i was in a tech rut, and tired of creating the same things over and over again, working with the same libraries and the same frameworks. i was...
hey all!
i made a post awhile back talking about how i was in a tech rut, and tired of creating the same things over and over again, working with the same libraries and the same frameworks.
i was bored of it!
so last week i said hell with it and i spent more money than i should've on udemy courses, learned a lot about javascript and the mern stack (mongodb, express.js, react, node.js)
then, after a few nights of staying up way later than i should have (i have presently been awake for 27 hours) i built this thing:
https://dry-castle-80238.herokuapp.com/dashboard
dev-connector.
a small little social media site for the technically-minded.
nothing groundbreaking or super fancy - just a basic social media site with posts, comments, user profiles and all that. but it's the first thing in awhile that i've actually finished and put into production on some capacity (even if it's just heroku)
jump in, leave a few comments, and let me know what you think. :)
passwords are hashed with bcryptjs, but i've been recommending everyone just use fake login info on sign up for safety's sake.
12 votes -
Weak default passwords for internet-connected devices banned in California from 2020
19 votes -
This tech would have spotted the secret Chinese chip in seconds
7 votes -
The future of war will be ‘liked’
6 votes -
'Siri, I'm getting pulled over': A new shortcut for iPhones can automatically record the police
17 votes -
Disinformation, ‘fake news’ and influence campaigns on Twitter
13 votes -
The Army may have found its next rifle in a Colorado garage
18 votes -
Why I’m Worried About Google - I used to trust some of its products, like Chrome. I increasingly don’t.
28 votes -
Raised by YouTube - The platform’s entertainment for children is weirder—and more globalized—than adults could have expected
11 votes -
How game design transformed Hillary for America's supporter engagement
2 votes -
Amazon eliminates monthly bonuses and stock grants after minimum wage increase
25 votes -
A directory of direct links to delete your account from web services
14 votes -
What does big data look like when cross-referenced?
Google knows a lot about its users. Facebook knows a lot about its users. FitBit knows a lot about its users. And so on. But what happens when these companies all sell their data sets to one...
Google knows a lot about its users. Facebook knows a lot about its users. FitBit knows a lot about its users. And so on.
But what happens when these companies all sell their data sets to one another? It'd be pretty trivial to link even anonymized users from set to set by looking for specific features. If I went for a run, Google tracked my location, FitBit tracked my heart rate, and Facebook tracked my status about my new best mile time, for example. Thus, Google can narrow down who I am in the other sets using pre-existing information that coincides with theirs. With enough overlap they can figure out exactly who I am fairly easily. Furthermore, each additional layer of data makes this discovery process from new data sets even easier, as it gives more opportunities to confirm or rule out concurrent info. So then when, say, Credit Karma, Comcast, and Amazon's data enter the fray, my online identity stops looking like an individual egg in each different basket but a whole lot of eggs in all in one. And they can do this across millions/billions of users--not just me!
I don't know for certain that this is a thing that happens, but... I have to assume it definitely is happening, right? How could it not? With how valuable data is and how loose protections are, this seems like a logical and potentially very lucrative step.
Right now, is there an aggregate version of "me" that exists in a data store somewhere that is a more comprehensive and accurate picture than my own self-image? After all, my memory and perception are imperfect and biased, but data stores aren't.
6 votes -
The Internet Archive fixes nine million broken links on Wikipedia
16 votes -
How the humble pocket calculator morphed into the smartphone
10 votes -
Reddit founder Alexis Ohanian has $225 million in fresh funding to back health and elder tech startups
9 votes -
Firefox Color V2 released
17 votes -
This blog has moved
25 votes -
OPPO Find X review: Are phones only about Style now? - LinusTechTips
9 votes -
A Critical Look at Sovereign Identity Startups
4 votes -
Data Factories
6 votes -
Concerning the iPhone XS' camera—from the makers of the Halide iPhone photography app
12 votes -
Voice phishing scams are getting more clever
19 votes -
Russian Wikipedia reaches 1,500,000 articles
15 votes -
Silicon Valley billionaire Vinod Khosla rebuffed as US Supreme Court rejects beach-access appeal
8 votes -
Reddit Experimenting with Community Points & Polls
17 votes -
Google announces "Project Stream", a test of streaming Assassin's Creed Odyssey through Chrome (signup available)
10 votes -
DuckDuckGo usage is growing fast
63 votes -
Trustworthy Chrome Extensions, by default
6 votes