Miscellaneous Tech News
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Facebook removes 'deceptive' Trump census ads
Facebook has removed a series of misleading adverts from the Donald Trump campaign promoting "the Official 2020 Congressional District Census".
The adverts made it appear respondents were taking part in the official 2020 US census, which begins on 12 March. They were promoted by a fundraising group backed by Republican officials and Mr Trump's re-election team. "There are policies in place to prevent confusion around the official US census," Facebook said. "This is an example of those being enforced," said the spokesperson. The adverts began running on Facebook on 3 March. Clicking the link takes users to a general survey focusing on Republican talking points. -
Cambridge Analytica: Australia takes Facebook to court over privacy
Australia's privacy regulator is taking Facebook to court over the Cambridge Analytica scandal.
The Office of the Australian Information Commissioner said Facebook had seriously infringed the privacy of more than 300,000 Australians. The social media giant left personal data "exposed to be sold and used for... political profiling". The scandal involved harvested Facebook data of 87 million people being used for advertising during elections."Facebook failed to take reasonable steps to protect those individuals' personal information from unauthorised disclosure," the Australian commissioner's office said. Australia's federal court can impose a fine of A$1.7m (£860,000) for every serious or repeated interference with privacy, it added. -
Sextortion hackers use 'friend's naked girlfriend' lure
A novel attempt to convince people to open malicious email attachments is spreading online, purporting to offer nude photos of a friend's girlfriend.
Instead of threatening to distribute stolen private images, this new attempt claims to have already "sextorted" the recipient's friend, who refused to pay. It tells them it is now emailing nude photos to every contact of the supposed victim - and to check the attachment. Researchers said the "new take on sextortion is quite remarkable". Recipients who click on the attachment open a Word document with a blurred image that hints at possibly sexual content - and instructions on how to "enable content". -
Google tells staff to work at home due to coronavirus
Google's parent company Alphabet has asked its North American staff to work from home to reduce the potential spread of the coronavirus.
Last week the tech giant sent a memo to staff recommending that employees in Washington state work from home. It has now expanded that request to all of its almost 100,000 workers across 11 office in the US and Canada. Alphabet is the latest company to make such an announcement as US coronavirus cases have risen to almost 1,000. "Out of an abundance of caution, and for the protection of Alphabet and the broader community, we now recommend you work from home if your role allows," Chris Rackow, Google's vice president of global security, wrote in an email to workers. -
@mlnews said in Miscellaneous Tech News:
Google tells staff to work at home due to coronavirus
Google's parent company Alphabet has asked its North American staff to work from home to reduce the potential spread of the coronavirus.
Last week the tech giant sent a memo to staff recommending that employees in Washington state work from home. It has now expanded that request to all of its almost 100,000 workers across 11 office in the US and Canada. Alphabet is the latest company to make such an announcement as US coronavirus cases have risen to almost 1,000. "Out of an abundance of caution, and for the protection of Alphabet and the broader community, we now recommend you work from home if your role allows," Chris Rackow, Google's vice president of global security, wrote in an email to workers.What's interesting is that this could cost the employees some coin... sure they aren't driving to work anymore, but now they don't have free food to eat all day.
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Posting sans text so that it can't be searched. Should be totally public in a few hours, that's hundreds of people announced to. But in case people here didn't know or see it.
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Coronavirus: How hackers are preying on fears of Covid-19
Security experts say a spike in email scams linked to coronavirus is the worst they have seen in years.
Cyber-criminals are targeting individuals as well as industries, including aerospace, transport, manufacturing, hospitality, healthcare and insurance. Phishing emails written in English, French, Italian, Japanese, and Turkish languages have been found. -
@mlnews not at all surprising. So much opportunities for chaos.
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Tech Tent: Controlling coronavirus with apps
It's the first pandemic of the smartphone era - and that means governments have access to new ways of tracking the spread of Covid-19.
On this week's Tech Tent, we find out about the apps that are monitoring people with the virus and look at whether they pose a long-term threat to civil liberties. In South Korea, the authorities have created an app that lets them know whether people who should be in quarantine have broken the rules. In China, the Alipay Health Code app, created by e-commerce giant Alibaba, lets users know if they are allowed to leave home or use public transport. But according to analysis by the New York Times, signing up to the apps can mean handing over data about your location and identity to the police. -
Google's coronavirus site launches amid Trump confusion
A coronavirus testing project by Google has been thrown into confusion over comments made by US President Donald Trump.
He said the company was developing a website for all Americans to check whether they should get tested. However, Google's sister company Verily had actually been working on a pilot limited to California's Bay Area. Two sites launch on Monday - but only the localised one contains screening features for tests. -
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@black3dynamite only one more week!
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Speaking of "new" Linux, we are getting ambitious and doing a lot of deployments right now, so starting to roll out Ubuntu 20.04 beta for some SaaS apps.
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@scottalanmiller installed 20.04 from "daily" on a spare low end Intel NUC, it's looking good!
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@warren-stanley said in Miscellaneous Tech News:
@scottalanmiller installed 20.04 from "daily" on a spare low end Intel NUC, it's looking good!
So far no issues. The daily is a desktop build, which I've not played with yet. We are using a Server build from the LXC libraries.
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@scottalanmiller I'm hoping 20.04 will be a good release to stand Nextcloud up on
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@black3dynamite said in Miscellaneous Tech News:
@scottalanmiller said in Miscellaneous Tech News:
@black3dynamite only one more week!
End of April.
What the heck, did they delay again?
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@scottalanmiller said in Miscellaneous Tech News:
@black3dynamite said in Miscellaneous Tech News:
@scottalanmiller said in Miscellaneous Tech News:
@black3dynamite only one more week!
End of April.
What the heck, did they delay again?
Fedora seems to preferred releasing the stable version in April on the 30th and in October on the 30th.
Fedora 32 Release Schedule
https://fedorapeople.org/groups/schedule/f-32/f-32-key-tasks.html
If I remember correctly Fedora is released days within days after Ubuntu is released.
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Coronavirus: Facebook blames bug for incorrectly marked spam
Facebook has said that a software issue was responsible for posts on topics including coronavirus being wrongly marked as spam.
The social media giant's head of safety said: "This is a bug in an anti-spam system." The statement was in response to widespread complaints from Facebook and Instagram users. It came a day after the firm said contract workers who review content would be sent home due to the outbreak. "We've restored all the posts that were incorrectly removed, which included posts on all topics - not just those related to COVID-19," Guy Rosen, Facebook's vice president for integrity, said on Twitter.
