Miscellaneous Tech News
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Chinese start-up Mobike loses more than 200,000 bikes
Chinese start-up Mobike has announced that it lost more than 200,000 bikes in 2019.
The company said in a blog that 205,600 "dockless" bikes were lost to theft and vandalism. In 2018, it pulled out of Manchester after a series of incidents. Shared dockless bikes, which are hired via an app, have become commonplace in cities worldwide over the last few years. Companies like Uber, Lime and Ofo have all put shared bikes on city streets, as have some local councils. In China, thousands of shared bikes have ended up in huge scrapheaps, leading to questions about whether there is demand for them. -
Wyze data breach (emailed text)
Wyze Users,
There is nothing we value higher than trust from our users. In fact, our entire business model is dependent on building long-term trust with customers that keep coming back.
We are reaching out to you because we’ve made a mistake in violation of that trust. On December 26th, we discovered information in some of our non-production databases was mistakenly made public between December 4th - December 26th. During this time, the databases were accessed by an unauthorized party.
The information did not contain passwords, personal financial data, or video content.
The information did contain Wyze nicknames, user emails, profile photos, WiFi router names, a limited number of Alexa integration tokens, and other information detailed in the link below.
If you were a user with us before we secured this information on December 26th, we regretfully write this email as a notification that some of your information was included in these databases. If you are receiving this email and joined us after December 26th, we write this email because you use our products and deserve to know how your data is being handled.
Upon finding out about the public user data, we took immediate action to secure it by closing any databases in question, forcing all users to log in again to create new access tokens, and requiring users to reconnect Alexa, Google Assistant, and IFTTT integrations. You can read in more detail about the data leak and the actions we took at this link:
https://forums.wyzecam.com/t/updated-12-30-19-data-leak-12-26-2019
As an additional security measure, we recommend that you reset your Wyze account password. Again, no passwords were compromised, but we recommend this as a standard safety measure. You may also add an additional level of security to your account by implementing two-factor authentication inside of the Wyze app. Finally, please be watchful for any phishing attempts. Especially watch any communications coming from Wyze and ensure they come from official @wyze.com and @wyzecam.com email addresses.
We are deeply sorry for this oversight. We promise to learn from this mistake and will make improvements going forward. This will include enhancing our security processes, improving communication of security guidelines to all Wyze employees, and making more of our user-requested security features our top priority in the coming months. We are also partnering with a third-party cyber security firm to audit and improve our security protocols.
As we continue our investigation into what happened, we will post future updates to the forum link above. More details will follow and we appreciate your patience during this process. Please reach out with any questions or concerns to our customer support team by going to support.wyze.com.
Sincerely,
Yun Zhang
CEO @ Wyze3f205602-c887-45fe-8897-901756b8972a.png f0b8ece4-03d6-4a63-b7ee-bcdfd63c9255.png 2f7f729a-2726-4312-9857-302f7ed3dad2.png 38522248-2ad2-4812-9dfb-afd5e0419fba.png 2a61240c-2961-4f2b-a5e8-a9c06fe516b9.png
2019 Wyze Labs, Inc.
You're receiving this email because you have a Wyze account.
Wyze Labs, Inc.
3933 Lake Washington Blvd NE
Suite 350
Kirkland, WA 98033 -
Tech 2019: Our biggest technology stories
As 2019 splutters to a close, it's time for our annual lookback at our most-read tech stories, and to ask: "What happened next?".
Facebook and its family of apps dominates this year's list with four entries - it probably won't be a surprise that none of them were particularly brand-enhancing. The Chinese viral video app TikTok makes the cut for the first time. And many of the other "big tech" names are there too in one form or another. But there are a few notable exceptions. Neither Elon Musk nor Tesla made it, despite the window-smashing launch of the Cybertruck and plans to hack our brains. Google's co-founders were originally on the list after deciding to give up day-to-day control of their empire, but were squeezed out just before publication. Video gaming also missed out, even though Prince Harry attracted lots of attention for suggesting Fortnite should be banned. And both Huawei and Samsung are absent, even though the former's loss of Google's apps and the latter's folding phone fiasco were two of the year's standout developments. -
@DustinB3403 The Wyzecam breach is a non-issue as I always assume email addresses are already known.
But it does provide more information for social engeering attacks with the camera nicknames being part of it.
That said, the supposed security researcher and news organization that posted it did not follow any kind of responsible reporting delay either. They outed the breach mere minutes after sending in a notice to Wyze. I've not seen but one news article mention that.
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Pokemon Go: Documents show Canadian military's struggle with game
The arrival of Pokemon Go left a baffled Canadian military struggling to understand a surge in trespassing, newly released documents show.
When the game was launched in 2016, civilians started walking and driving on to operational bases at all hours. "Plse advise the Commissionaires that apparently Fort Frontenac is both a PokeGym and a PokeStop," one email from a major read. "I will be completely honest in that I have no idea what that is." The documents were released to national broadcaster CBC in response to an information request. The news organisation had spotted a criminal advisory in July 2016 - eight days after the game's release, warning police that many defence locations were "game landmarks". -
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H2Go Power seeks to power drones with a 'happy gas'
When you think about hydrogen and flight, the image that comes to mind for most is the Hindenburg airship in flames.
But in a lab deep in the basement of Imperial College in London, a young team has built what it believes is the future of air travel. H2Go Power is seeking a patent to store the explosive gas cheaply and safely. Until now, storing hydrogen required ultra-strong and large tanks which could withstand pressures of up to 10,000 pound-force per square inch (psi). That is hundreds of times greater than what you would find in a car tyre. But, while studying for her PhD in Cambridge, Dr Enass Abo-Hamed came up with a revolutionary structure which could store hydrogen as a stable solid without compression. -
@mlnews said in Miscellaneous Tech News:
H2Go Power seeks to power drones with a 'happy gas'
When you think about hydrogen and flight, the image that comes to mind for most is the Hindenburg airship in flames.
But in a lab deep in the basement of Imperial College in London, a young team has built what it believes is the future of air travel. H2Go Power is seeking a patent to store the explosive gas cheaply and safely. Until now, storing hydrogen required ultra-strong and large tanks which could withstand pressures of up to 10,000 pound-force per square inch (psi). That is hundreds of times greater than what you would find in a car tyre. But, while studying for her PhD in Cambridge, Dr Enass Abo-Hamed came up with a revolutionary structure which could store hydrogen as a stable solid without compression.This is pretty interesting.
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@mlnews said in Miscellaneous Tech News:
H2Go Power seeks to power drones with a 'happy gas'
When you think about hydrogen and flight, the image that comes to mind for most is the Hindenburg airship in flames.
But in a lab deep in the basement of Imperial College in London, a young team has built what it believes is the future of air travel. H2Go Power is seeking a patent to store the explosive gas cheaply and safely. Until now, storing hydrogen required ultra-strong and large tanks which could withstand pressures of up to 10,000 pound-force per square inch (psi). That is hundreds of times greater than what you would find in a car tyre. But, while studying for her PhD in Cambridge, Dr Enass Abo-Hamed came up with a revolutionary structure which could store hydrogen as a stable solid without compression.I like that they are just using a drone for the initial test. They are talking about the possibility of powering air planes with it.
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@dafyre said in Miscellaneous Tech News:
@mlnews said in Miscellaneous Tech News:
H2Go Power seeks to power drones with a 'happy gas'
When you think about hydrogen and flight, the image that comes to mind for most is the Hindenburg airship in flames.
But in a lab deep in the basement of Imperial College in London, a young team has built what it believes is the future of air travel. H2Go Power is seeking a patent to store the explosive gas cheaply and safely. Until now, storing hydrogen required ultra-strong and large tanks which could withstand pressures of up to 10,000 pound-force per square inch (psi). That is hundreds of times greater than what you would find in a car tyre. But, while studying for her PhD in Cambridge, Dr Enass Abo-Hamed came up with a revolutionary structure which could store hydrogen as a stable solid without compression.This is pretty interesting.
Hydrogen has long been a great power source. just storing it safely and producing it have been cost prohibitive.
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@travisdh1 said in Miscellaneous Tech News:
When you think about hydrogen and flight, the image that comes to mind for most is the Hindenburg airship in flames.
That is definitely not what I think of, especially when talking about power sources.
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@scottalanmiller said in Miscellaneous Tech News:
@travisdh1 said in Miscellaneous Tech News:
When you think about hydrogen and flight, the image that comes to mind for most is the Hindenburg airship in flames.
That is definitely not what I think of, especially when talking about power sources.
Hydrogen wasn't the fuel source.
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@scotth said in Miscellaneous Tech News:
@scottalanmiller said in Miscellaneous Tech News:
@travisdh1 said in Miscellaneous Tech News:
When you think about hydrogen and flight, the image that comes to mind for most is the Hindenburg airship in flames.
That is definitely not what I think of, especially when talking about power sources.
Hydrogen wasn't the fuel source.
It is. It's an article specifically about fuel sources.
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@scottalanmiller said in Miscellaneous Tech News:
@scotth said in Miscellaneous Tech News:
@scottalanmiller said in Miscellaneous Tech News:
@travisdh1 said in Miscellaneous Tech News:
When you think about hydrogen and flight, the image that comes to mind for most is the Hindenburg airship in flames.
That is definitely not what I think of, especially when talking about power sources.
Hydrogen wasn't the fuel source.
It is. It's an article specifically about fuel sources.
Correction: fuel source for dirigibles. Hydrogen was the source for lift
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@scotth said in Miscellaneous Tech News:
@scottalanmiller said in Miscellaneous Tech News:
@scotth said in Miscellaneous Tech News:
@scottalanmiller said in Miscellaneous Tech News:
@travisdh1 said in Miscellaneous Tech News:
When you think about hydrogen and flight, the image that comes to mind for most is the Hindenburg airship in flames.
That is definitely not what I think of, especially when talking about power sources.
Hydrogen wasn't the fuel source.
It is. It's an article specifically about fuel sources.
Correction: fuel source for dirigibles. Hydrogen was the source for lift
But the article wasn't about dirigibles.
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@scotth said in Miscellaneous Tech News:
Hydrogen was the source for lift
That's actually a misnomer. H doesn't produce lift, it just displaces heavier items that cause it to sink. That's different than a fuel source. You could do the same with a vacuum, but wouldn't consider a "vacuum" to be a power source. Or throwing a chunk of wood into water. If floats, but not due to life or a fuel source. Just a lack of gravitational pull.
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@scottalanmiller said in Miscellaneous Tech News:
@scotth said in Miscellaneous Tech News:
@scottalanmiller said in Miscellaneous Tech News:
@scotth said in Miscellaneous Tech News:
@scottalanmiller said in Miscellaneous Tech News:
@travisdh1 said in Miscellaneous Tech News:
When you think about hydrogen and flight, the image that comes to mind for most is the Hindenburg airship in flames.
That is definitely not what I think of, especially when talking about power sources.
Hydrogen wasn't the fuel source.
It is. It's an article specifically about fuel sources.
Correction: fuel source for dirigibles. Hydrogen was the source for lift
But the article wasn't about dirigibles.
Previous post
When you think about hydrogen and flight, the image that comes to mind for most is the Hindenburg airship in flames. -
@scotth said in Miscellaneous Tech News:
When you think about hydrogen and flight, the image that comes to mind for most is the Hindenburg airship in flames.
And my exact response was that that definitely doesn't come to mind when hydrogen is brought up as a fuel source. I was responding to exactly that statement stating that it seems like a weird connection to make when the two are so completely unrelated (building a ship from H gas vs. powering a plane with H fuel).
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@scottalanmiller said in Miscellaneous Tech News:
@scotth said in Miscellaneous Tech News:
Hydrogen was the source for lift
That's actually a misnomer. H doesn't produce lift, it just displaces heavier items that cause it to sink. That's different than a fuel source. You could do the same with a vacuum, but wouldn't consider a "vacuum" to be a power source. Or throwing a chunk of wood into water. If floats, but not due to life or a fuel source. Just a lack of gravitational pull.
The regular air is what lifts it, not the hydrogen. Same with an airplane. Air lifts the plane, engines propel it forward, jet fuel fuels the engines.
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Dynabook Unveils Light, But Sturdy 13-Inch Windows Laptop
The PC vendor formerly owned by Toshiba has announced the Portégé X30L-G, a Windows 10 business laptop that runs Intel's 10th-generation Core chips and weighs only 1.9 pounds.
At CES, the PC vendor announced the Portégé X30L-G, a Windows 10 business laptop that's slated to go on sale in February. Dynabook is the PC business unit that was formerly under Toshiba before it was sold to Foxconn-owned Sharp. Dynabook claims the Portégé X30L-G is the world's lightest 13.3-inch laptop with Intel's 10th-generation Core processors. The upcoming model weighs in at 870 grams, but can get slightly heavier, depending on the configuration. To achieve the light weight, DynaBook fitted the laptop in a magnesium metal chassis. The same casing was engineered with US military standards in mind to withstand drops, temperature swings, and dust.
