50 Million Facebook Accounts Compromised

Facebook, already facing scrutiny over how it handles the private information of its users, said on Friday that an attack on its computer network had exposed the personal information of nearly 50 million users. The breach, which was discovered this week, was the largest in the company’s 14-year history. The attackers exploited a feature in Facebook’s code to gain access to user accounts and potentially take control of them.

In the conference call on Friday, Guy Rosen, a vice president of product management at Facebook, declined to say whether the attack could have been coordinated by hackers supported by a nation-state. Three software flaws in Facebook’s systems allowed hackers to break into user accounts, including those of the top executives Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg, according to two people familiar with the investigation but not allowed to discuss it publicly. Once in, the attackers could have gained access to apps like Spotify, Instagram and hundreds of others that give users a way to log into their systems through Facebook.




Credits:
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/28/technology/facebook-hack-data-breach.html

Electrical Implants in Violinist's Brain Eliminates Tremors

For a professional musician, the smallest change in your motor skills could be detrimental, and that's particularly true for string players. When violinist Roger Frisch was diagnosed with essential tremors, which often causes one to lose control of muscle movements in the hands, he ultimately became a groundbreaking success story for a procedure called deep brain stimulation. Roger Frisch played his violin during deep brain stimulation so that doctors could see exactly how it affected his brain.

After some convincing, Frisch agreed to undergo deep brain stimulation surgery (DBS) to combat his condition. While DBS is still considered an experimental treatment by some in the medical field, it has proven to be successful in helping essential tremor patients regain control of their steady hands. For the surgery at the Mayo Clinic Neural Engineering Lab, main surgeon Kendall Lee and his team placed electrodes inside Frisch's brain to help regulate abnormal impulses. However, in Frisch's case, the tremor was so small, the doctors could not determine the best location to apply the electrodes. Then a lightbulb went off — what better way to pinpoint the exact spot on Frisch's brain than by having him perform a short concerto during the procedure.



Credits:
https://www.bustle.com/articles/35791-watch-inspiring-violinist-roger-frisch-play-during-brain-surgery-with-amazing-results-video

Social Media Affects Our Brains

You’ve heard that social media is screwing with your brain. Maybe you even read about it on social media. (So meta; so messed up.) The neurochemical culprit, dopamine, spikes when you like and get liked, share and are shared. You’ve probably also heard scientists compare the affliction to drug or alcohol addiction. That’s fair. The same part of the brain lights up.

Having your posts liked, and liking other people's posts, on social media activates your brain's reward center. This is one of the reasons why social scrolling can be so addictive. What's more, the more likes a post or photo has, the greater the reward. "Viewing photos with many (compared with few) likes was associated with greater activity in neural regions implicated in reward processing, social cognition, imitation, and attention," a study published in the journal Psychological Science revealed.

Credits:
https://www.wired.com/story/learn-from-these-bugs-dont-let-social-media-zombify-you/amp?__twitter_impression=true

This Telescope Finds Objects for You

Now you can leave the star-searching to the smartphone-connected Stellina scope from the French company Vaonis. The companion app streamlines heavenly gazing by precisely aiming the robotic telescope—at, say, Pegasus—in as little as a few seconds. The system uses Wi-Fi to display the live view on your phone, where it’s easy to capture photographs and video, and it tracks the target across the sky long enough for everyone to get a look. For a mere $3,000, you can own a telescope that does not have an eye piece.

The scope, a backpack-size instrument that is the visual crossroads between Hal of "2001: A Space Odyssey" and Eve from "Wall-E," was admired and inspected by the crowd like a delicate sculpture. The artistic display seemed fitting, as Stellina has been featured by the MoMA Design Store for their "La French Tech au MoMA" event. The most shocking feature from this telescope seemingly plucked from the pages of a sci-fi screenplay: Stellina has no eyepiece.

Credits: 

https://www.wired.com/story/vaonis-stellina-smart-telescope/amp?__twitter_impression=true

Self Driving Motorcycle

Check out @CNET’s Tweet: https://twitter.com/CNET/status/1042496046339899393?s=09

Google's AI Tool Identifies Tumors

In new research published today in Nature Medicine, scientists at New York University re-trained an off-the-shelf Google deep learning algorithm to distinguish between two of the most common types of lung cancers with 97 percent accuracy. This type of AI—the same tech that identifies faces, animals, and objects in pictures uploaded to Google’s online services—has proven adept at diagnosing disease before, including diabetic blindness and heart conditions. But NYU’s neural network learned how to do something no pathologist has ever done: identify the genetic mutations teeming inside each tumor from just a picture.

To do so, the NYU team started with Google’s Inception v3—an open-source algorithm that Google trained to identify 1000 different classes of objects. To teach the algorithm to distinguish between images of cancerous and healthy tissue, the researchers showed it hundreds of thousands of images taken from The Cancer Genome Atlas, a public library of patient tissue samples. Once Inception figured out how to pick out cancerous cells with 99 percent accuracy, the next step was teaching it to tell two kinds of lung cancers apart—adenocarcinoma from squamous cell carcinoma. Together, they represent the most prevalent forms of the disease, which kills more than 150,000 people a year. While they appear frustratingly similar under the microscope, the two cancer types are treated very differently. Getting it right can mean the difference between life and death for patients.

Credits:
https://www.wired.com/story/google-ai-tool-identifies-a-tumors-mutations-from-an-image/amp?__twitter_impression=true

Gabage Patch Clean Up Launched

The Great Pacific Garbage Patch is now twice the size of Texas and contains 1.8 trillion pieces of trash floating in the ocean. The Ocean Cleanup is an ambitious non-profit committed to removing it, and on Saturday it launches its first system out to sea from the San Francisco Bay. Dutch entrepreneur Boyan Slat came up with the idea when he was 16 years old. System 001 is a 600 meter long float, with a 3 meter skirt and it's designed to corral plastic and debris. The collected garbage will then be removed by garbage truck-like ships. The initial contraption will be used for testing and aims remove about 50 tons of the garbage, but the goal is to launch 60 systems to reduce the floating garbage patch by 50 percent in the next five years.




Credits: 

https://www.cnbc.com/2018/09/07/ocean-cleanup-launches-to-take-on-the-great-pacific-garbage-patch.html

Want to go soaring through the air but lack things like, you know, a pilot's license and an airplane? Startup Kitty Hawk is ready to make that dream a reality with the Flyer, a new all-electric ultralight plane. The tiny Kitty Hawk Flyer seats just one person in a central pod, flanked by 10 propellers. Powered by batteries, it can fly up to 10 feet off the ground at speeds up to 20 miles per hour. Battery life is said to be 12 to 20 minutes, depending on speed and pilot weight. In the US, the Flyer falls under the FAA's rules for ultralight aircraft, meaning no pilot's license is needed so long as it's flown over water or "uncongested areas." Kitty Hawk says the Flyer is "easy to fly" but recommends professional training.

Because it's powered by motors rather than internal combustion engines, Kitty Hawk says the Flyer will be significantly quieter than other ultralight aircraft, promising that it's only as loud as a lawnmower from 50 feet away. The Flyer is a real product that interested parties can preorder through the company's website now. No price is listed publicly so far. Instead, Kitty Hawk says it wants to partner with companies to establish fleets of Flyers around the world for recreational users to enjoy. That probably points to some sort of rental scheme, such as at amusement parks or similar venues.




Credits:
https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-first-flying-car-review-1536753601

U.S. charges North Korean hacker in Sony, WannaCry cyberattacks

In only 22 lines of code, hackers took on the UK's largest airline and stole data from up to 380,000 people. But the hackers behind British Airways' data breach, which took place from late August into early September, left behind a trail of evidence showing just how the major airline had suffered its cyberattack, according to researchers from cybersecurity firm RiskIQ. Cybercriminal gangs represent a new, more potent threat to businesses because the organized efforts don't just steal from companies, but also the millions of customers paying for their services. While hackers can act alone, coordinated cyberattacks mean the potential to affect more people.

The group stashed some modified code in British Airways' baggage claim webpage, where customers would fill in their names, addresses, email and financial information. Looking through data logs, RiskIQ's researchers found a slight change on the page's code from mid-August. The baggage claim page contained a JavaScript library that sent all the data on the screen to the URL "baways.com." The hackers would obtain a copy of the data while the victim was sending that personal and financial information to the airliner, without realizing that anything was wrong. To an unsuspecting eye, "Baways" might look like short-hand for British Airways, but RiskIQ found that the URL was hosted in Romania and only registered on Aug. 15 -- just six days before Magecart started stealing data from the airliner.

Click here for the video.

Credits:

California to be Carbon-free by 2045

Gov. Jerry Brown yesterday signed legislation that would put California on the path to eliminating fossil fuels from its energy sector. Senate Bill 100 speeds up the state’s timeline for moving to renewable energy sources like solar and wind, and requires that all retail electricity be carbon-free by 2045. California is the second state to adopt such a goal, after Hawaii. The governor said at a signing ceremony in Sacramento. “California is committed to doing whatever is necessary to meet the existential threat of climate change.” The bill was initially introduced last year, but stalled in the Legislature amid heavy resistance from electric utilities, oil companies and labor unions. Opponents argued that SB 100 would not make a substantial difference to global emissions as the planet continues to warm, while harming workers in fossil fuel industries and raising electricity prices for consumers.

SB 100 increases to 60 percent, from 50 percent, how much of California’s electricity portfolio must come from renewables by 2030. It establishes a further goal to have an electric grid that is entirely powered by clean energy by 2045, which could include other carbon-free sources, like nuclear power, that are not renewable. Brown has focused in his final years in office on making California a worldwide leader on climate policy. He has previously supported efforts to reduce the state’s greenhouse gas emissions to 40 percent below 1990 levels by 2030, and to shore up the cap-and-trade system that requires polluters to buy permits for their emissions.



Credits:
https://www.sacbee.com/news/politics-government/capitol-alert/article218128485.html
https://www.newsy.com/stories/california-wants-to-rely-on-100-renewable-energy-by-2045/

Walmart to Record Employee - Customer Conversations

Walmart this week was awarded a US patent for a new listening system for its stores that could raise serious privacy concerns from its shoppers and workers. According to the filing, the system would capture a variety of sounds in the store to figure out employees' performance and effectiveness at checkout. For instance, the system can be used to capture beeps produced by a scanner and the rustling of bags at checkout to find out the number of items in a transaction or even the number of bags used. In a statement, Walmart said the patent is a concept of theirs that would help to gather metrics and improve the checkout process. It is not, they pointed out, intended for any other use.

The patent for “sound sensors” that could be installed at checkout is the latest example of controversial workplace surveillance technology and automated systems that purport to quantify and increase employees’ productivity. The patent filed this week described a system of sensors “distributed throughout at least a portion of a shopping facility”. Audio of both workers and customers could potentially be used to determine “if employees are performing their jobs efficiently and correctly” and aid in increased “cost savings” and “guest satisfaction”, the document said.




Credits:
https://www.cnet.com/news/walmart-gains-patent-to-eavesdrop-on-shoppers-and-employees-in-stores/?ftag=COS-05-10aaa0g&utm_campaign=trueAnthem:+Trending+Content&utm_content=5b95ed8204d3010edb9a5851&utm_medium=trueAnthem&utm_source=twitter

Hulking Robot

Credits:
Ben Barnes

Large Asteroid "Nearly" Misses Earth

NASA has issued an alert that a "potentially hazardous asteroid" is on a "close approach" toward Earth. However, it's nothing to be alarmed at, as the asteroid is expected to zoom past the planet approximately 3 million miles away. The enormous space rock, known as asteroid 2016 NF23 and estimated to be between 230 and 525 feet in diameter, will zip past Earth on Aug. 29 at a velocity of 9.04 kilometers per second, or approximately 20,000 miles per hour, the government space agency said on its Earth Close Approaches page.

It is the third largest near-Earth object (NEO) on the page, behind two other asteroids which will fly past Earth in the early part of September: 2001 RQ17 and 2015 FP118. At 230 feet, it would be slightly smaller than a Boeing 747. At the high-end of the estimate, 525 feet, it would be taller than the Great Pyramid of Giza, which is approximately 455 feet high. Near-Earth objects regularly fly by the planet, though "potentially hazardous objects" are ones that are less than 0.05 au (astronomical units) away from the planet, or approximately 5 million miles. Any asteroid that comes within 4.6 million miles of Earth with a diameter greater than 500 feet is termed “potentially hazardous," according to NASA.

Click here to view the video
Credits:
http://www.foxnews.com/science/2018/08/23/potentially-hazardous-500-foot-asteroid-set-to-zoom-past-earth-at-20000-mph.html