Sad: Chuck Yeager, the first man to break the sound barrier, dead at 97
He was awesome: Chuck Yeager, the historic test pilot portrayed in the movie “The Right Stuff,” is dead at the age of 97, according to a tweet posted on his…
Facial recognition’s 96 percent false positive rate
Close enough for government work, eh? “If we would use the software only , we would not solve the case 95-97 percent of the time,” Craig said. “That’s if we…
Duh: Contact-tracing apps have a trust problem
Experts believe that at least half the population needs to use contact-tracing apps for them to work. The challenge will be convincing the public to opt in after years of…
A call for a code of tech ethics?
Some are calling for a "code of tech ethics", particularly regarding social media and privacy issues. Where this is logically headed is to Professional Engineer licensing for at least some…
U.S. Copyright Office expands copyright exemptions for fair use, security research and other activities
U.S. Copyright Office gives okay to computer security researchers to thwart copyright protection systems for the purpose of good faith security research. This, and many other exemptions, have been added…
Bloomberg’s “hacked” Supermicro server boards article comes under fire
Bloomberg wrote an article a few weeks back accusing Supermicro of delivering compromised server system boards that were used by Apple, Amazon and up to 30 companies. Apple and Amazon…
Loyalty Cards are used to spy on your purchases, and not just with the vendor
The story of how that Sudafed ad got to me begins at Walgreens. As I bought tissues and Afrin, I keyed in my phone number so I could get loyalty…
Total information surveillance society
Law enforcement agencies are now using systems, even mobile devices, that automatically and quickly perform facial recognition of subjects. This data is being stored into databases to create dossiers that…
AVOID MAIL.COM URL: Unreliable, unacceptable cloud-based email service
What is “Mail.com” Last fall, I switched my email accounts to an email service hosted at the url mail.com which provides “free email” at your choice of up to about…
The primary business of the Internet is surveillance
Similar to Uber’s “God View” scandal, Lyft staffers have been abusing customer insight software to view the personal contact info and ride history of the startup’s passengers. One source that…