Miscellaneous Tech News
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@nadnerB said in Miscellaneous Tech News:
@DustinB3403 said in Miscellaneous Tech News:
@mlnews said in Miscellaneous Tech News:
How insurance companies are fueling a rise in ransomware attacks
Is anyone actually shocked about this? Restoring an entire city is no small feat and paying your insurance premium is an easy way to get back to operational if in fact the keys work.
So of course Insurance would want people to get hit, pay the ransom and move on, they make money, increase the monthly premium and move on.
You could almost call it a conflict of interest.
All insurance is a conflict of interest.
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Chrome's Tab Context Menu Is Losing Options
If you're a power user reliant on the Chrome web browser, you're probably going to miss some of the menu options being removed.
If you're a Chrome user who regularly right-clicks tabs to access the context menu options, prepare yourself for some changes. That menu is about to get a lot shorter. As Techdows reports, after years of debate on the matter and a lot of data crunching, the Chromium team has decided to remove four options from the tab context menu. There's a discussion on the Chromium bugs forums dating back to 2015 discussing the removal of context menu options "if the usage does not outweigh the cost." A 2016 usage review found all of the above options now being removed had well below 10 percent usage by Chrome users. Bookmark all tabs was the lowest with 0.64 percent. -
@mlnews I can honestly say "Bookmark All Tabs" is a bizarre feature that I'm glad to see go.
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@scottalanmiller said in Miscellaneous Tech News:
@mlnews I can honestly say "Bookmark All Tabs" is a bizarre feature that I'm glad to see go.
really? why? that solves the - I need to reboot but I have 40 tabs open and want them back after the reboot.
I have a plug-in just for that purpose called Tab session manager - it records the tabs I have open like once an hour and allows me to restore those tabs later.
This is really helpful if the browser crashes, or, as I mentioned, I need to reboot and don't want to loose all of my tabs.
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@scottalanmiller said in Miscellaneous Tech News:
@mlnews I can honestly say "Bookmark All Tabs" is a bizarre feature that I'm glad to see go.
I use "Bookmark All Tabs" when I wanted temporary add them to my Read Later folder.
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@Dashrender said in Miscellaneous Tech News:
really? why? that solves the - I need to reboot but I have 40 tabs open and want them back after the reboot.
There are other tools for that that don't create a huge sprawl of bookmarks that need to be immediately cleaned up. That's not what that tool is good for, because it doesn't even reopen them. Chrome does that on its own, though.
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@Dashrender said in Miscellaneous Tech News:
This is really helpful if the browser crashes, or, as I mentioned, I need to reboot and don't want to loose all of my tabs.
I don't think my browser has crashed in years without bringing all of the tabs back for me. The protection against that is already built in to all major browsers, has been for a long time.
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BackBlaze opens new Data Center
Announcing Our First European Data Center
Big news: Our first European data center, in Amsterdam, is open and accepting customer data! As part of this launch, we are also introducing storage regions. When creating a Backblaze account, customers can choose whether that account’s data will be stored in the EU Central or US West region. Whether you choose EU Central or US West, your pricing for our products will be unchanged. Learn more about all our settings and options to take advantage of our new European data center in today's announcement. -
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@black3dynamite said in Miscellaneous Tech News:
https://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2019/08/microsoft-is-bringing-exfat-to-the-linux-kernel
Nice, that'll be very helpful.
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@scottalanmiller said in Miscellaneous Tech News:
BBC News - Facial recognition: School ID checks lead to GDPR fine
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-49489154That's fucked. Why would you have any expectation of privacy in a public school?
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@JaredBusch said in Miscellaneous Tech News:
@scottalanmiller said in Miscellaneous Tech News:
BBC News - Facial recognition: School ID checks lead to GDPR fine
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-49489154That's fucked. Why would you have any expectation of privacy in a public school?
Why would anyone have any expectation of privacy in public?
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Privacy is one thing, I imagine that the underlying concern is the persistence and use of the data that's being collected without peoples' permission
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@notverypunny said in Miscellaneous Tech News:
Privacy is one thing, I imagine that the underlying concern is the persistence and use of the data that's being collected without peoples' permission
Except it was used with permission
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@JaredBusch said in Miscellaneous Tech News:
@notverypunny said in Miscellaneous Tech News:
Privacy is one thing, I imagine that the underlying concern is the persistence and use of the data that's being collected without peoples' permission
Except it was used with permission
Exactly. And they don't need to keep the video - just record the results of the facial recognition.
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Unix at 50: How the OS that powered smartphones started from failure
Today, Unix powers iOS and Android—its legend begins with a gator and a trio of researchers.
Maybe its pervasiveness has long obscured its origins. But Unix, the operating system that in one derivative or another powers nearly all smartphones sold worldwide, was born 50 years ago from the failure of an ambitious project that involved titans like Bell Labs, GE, and MIT. Largely the brainchild of a few programmers at Bell Labs, the unlikely story of Unix begins with a meeting on the top floor of an otherwise unremarkable annex at the sprawling Bell Labs complex in Murray Hill, New Jersey. It was a bright, cold Monday, the last day of March 1969, and the computer sciences department was hosting distinguished guests: Bill Baker, a Bell Labs vice president, and Ed David, the director of research. Baker was about to pull the plug on Multics (a condensed form of MULTiplexed Information and Computing Service), a software project that the computer sciences department had been working on for four years. Multics was two years overdue, way over budget, and functional only in the loosest possible understanding of the term. -
State by State: Alaskans Spend the Most Time in Front of Screens
Without even including time at work, watching TV, or playing games, the results reveal state-by-state that Americans spend from 45 minutes to over 3 hours a day online.
If you've ever heard of the American Time Use Survey (from the Bureau of Labor Statistics), you probably have time on your hands. According to the survey, most people don't—it measures time spent doing just about everything, from work, to volunteering, to taking care of kids. It also happens to ask people how much time they spend in front of screens. The folks at authorized Verizon reseller VerizonSpecials.com decided to look at the data in the ATUS and see what the average leisure time spent online really amounts to, using data collected from 2013 to 2017. This doesn't even include what we really spend most of our time doing on screens: watching TV, gaming, and, mostly, working. It's all about all that other mind-numbing screen-staring we do for "fun," including browsing, social networking, watching online video, and waiting for things to download. Then they broke it down by state (but only 47 states are included—Maryland, Rhode Island, and Hawaii didn't have enough data). -
Which OS Will Huawei's New Phones Run? Stay Tuned
Huawei's new Mate 30 smartphones will likely launch without Google apps such as Maps and Google Play, the search giant says. But it's unclear if the devices will run open-source Android or Huawei's own HarmonyOS.
With a US blacklist still in place, Huawei's new smartphones will likely launch without Google apps such as Maps and Google Play, the search giant says. The Trump administration has banned US companies from doing business with Huawei, ostensibly due to security concerns, but President Trump has suggested the blacklist could be lifted as part of a trade deal. A temporary reprieve will not apply to Huawei's next flagships, the Mate 30 and Mate 30 Pro, which are set to launch in late September. So barring a trade deal in the coming days, Huawei's upcoming mobile phones cannot be sold with licensed Google apps and services because of the ban, a Google spokesperson tells Reuters. Reportedly, the US Commerce Department has received more than 130 applications from various companies for licenses to sell their products to Huawei. None have been approved. -
Google finds 'indiscriminate iPhone attack lasting years'
Security researchers at Google have found evidence of a “sustained effort” to hack iPhones over a period of at least two years.
The attack was said to be carried out using websites which would discreetly implant malicious software to gather contacts, images and other data. Google’s analysis suggested the booby-trapped websites were said to have been visited thousands of times per week. Apple told the BBC it did not wish to comment. The attack was shared in great detail in a series of technical posts written by British cybersecurity expert Ian Beer, a member of Project Zero, Google’s taskforce for finding new security vulnerabilities, known as zero days. "There was no target discrimination,” Mr Beer wrote. “Simply visiting the hacked site was enough for the exploit server to attack your device, and if it was successful, install a monitoring implant." -
Apple gives third-party repair shops more access to authorized parts
The program provides parts and resources for out-of-warranty iPhones.
Apple has been a bit of a mixed bag when it comes to iPhones and independent repair shops. Earlier this month, we discovered that people are running into problems with third-party iPhone XR, iPhone XS, and iPhone XS Max repairs due to a particular chip on the battery. And repair specialists like iFixit have repeatedly called Cupertino's design decisions "user-hostile." But on Thursday, Apple announced a new independent repair program for out-of-warranty iPhones. "To better meet our customers’ needs, we’re making it easier for independent providers across the US to tap into the same resources as our Apple Authorized Service Provider network,” said Jeff Williams, Apple’s chief operating officer in a press release. "When a repair is needed, a customer should have confidence the repair is done right. We believe the safest and most reliable repair is one handled by a trained technician using genuine parts that have been properly engineered and rigorously tested."
