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Amazon Has a Mole in the California State Assembly

Andrew Orr ·

Perhaps using the word “mole” is hyperbole. But it’s deeply concerning that California Assemblywoman Jacqui Irwin is actively trying to kill California’s privacy act that would impede companies like Amazon Ring, when her husband is the COO for Ring.

Like other companies that collect vast amounts of consumer data, Ring — and its parent company, Amazon — has a financial stake in the details of California’s groundbreaking data-privacy law. Industry groups, including those representing Amazon, have been scrambling to change the law before it takes effect Jan. 1.

“We can talk about this later,”Jacqui Irwin said, side-stepping questions about a potential conflict outside her office last week. “It’s a little bit offensive there.”

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Steam Gets Long-Awaited Library Overhaul

Charlotte Henry ·

Steam’s library view got an upgrade in the latest public Beta. Eurogramer looked at what’s new.

Once you’ve opted in to the beta (which merely requires selecting the appropriate drop-down option from Steam’s settings menu), the first thing you’ll likely notice is your new library’s aesthetic overhaul. That immediately comes into play on the new library landing page, which offers a snapshot of recently played titles, as well as recent activity for select games in your collection – seemingly pulled from developer-created news posts. There’s also an overview of recent friend activity, and the ability to display games organised into user-created collections. Steam’s library update (which, incidentally, isn’t reflected across its Big Picture mode at present) also brings with it new-look pages for individual games. Select a title in your library at random, and you’ll be presented with a broad selection of information pertaining to that game, now organised in a manner which doesn’t appear to have tumbled out of the 90s.

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Why The iPhone 11 Pro Has 3 Cameras

John Martellaro ·

Just what are the two cameras on the iPhone 11 doing? What’s different about the three cameras on the iPhone 11 Pro? TechCrunch explains.

On the back of the iPhone 11 Pro can be found three cameras. Why? Because the more light you collect, the better your picture can be. And we pretty much reached the limit of what one camera can do a little while back. Two, three, even a dozen cameras can be put to work creating a single photo — the only limitation is the code that makes them work.

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Your X-Ray Images and Medical Data Are Available on the Internet

Andrew Orr ·

A ProPublica investigation revealed that medical images and health data are often stored in insecure servers that are easily accessible to anyone with a bit of computer knowledge.

We identified 187 servers — computers that are used to store and retrieve medical data — in the U.S. that were unprotected by passwords or basic security precautions. The computer systems, from Florida to California, are used in doctors’ offices, medical-imaging centers and mobile X-ray services.

All told, medical data from more than 16 million scans worldwide was available online, including names, birthdates and, in some cases, Social Security numbers.

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The United States Sues Edward Snowden Over Book

Andrew Orr ·

Edward Snowden recently published a book called Permanent Record. The United States filed a civil lawsuit against him and his publisher, saying that he violated nondisclosure agreements because he didn’t submit the book to the CIA and NSA for pre-publication review.

The United States’ lawsuit does not seek to stop or restrict the publication or distribution of Permanent Record. Rather, under well-established Supreme Court precedent, Snepp v. United States, the government seeks to recover all proceeds earned by Snowden because of his failure to submit his publication for pre-publication review in violation of his alleged contractual and fiduciary obligations.