Mozilla Calls on Retailers to Avoid Insecure Smart Devices

The Mozilla Foundation published its Minimum Security Guidelines and urged retailers stop selling insecure smart devices.

Dear Target, Walmart, Best Buy and Amazon –

The advent of new connected consumer products offers many benefits. However, as you are aware, there are also serious concerns regarding standards of privacy and security with these products. These require urgent attention if we are to maintain consumer trust in this market.

Sorry, Facebook Messenger Decryption is Secret

Yesterday a U.S. judge ruled that a secret government effort to compel Facebook to decrypt Messenger voice conversations won’t be revealed.

Groups including the American Civil Liberties Union argued that the public’s right to know the state of the law on encryption outweighed any reason the U.S. Justice Department might have for protecting a criminal probe or law-enforcement method.

One word: PRISM.

Hiding Your Unborn Child From Facebook and Google

When writer James Temperton and his partner found out they were having a child, they resolved to keep it hidden from the internet. It proved even more difficult than you might think. Changes to how the couple used technology were just the start of it, as Mr. Temperton’s story in Wired revealed.

Completely relearning how to use the internet is one thing, but becoming a social pariah is something else entirely. And then, when the baby is born, a new problem arises. How on Earth can you stop anyone who takes a photo of your child from storing that image on Google Photos, thus opening it up to Google’s machine learning algorithms? That’s my child. Why should Google be allowed to sink its algorithmic claws into his beautiful face and use that data to better personalise its products and services?

 

Nebia - the Luxury Shower Head Backed by Tim Cook

It is not all that often that Apple CEO Tim Cook and Google founder Eric Schmidt come together on a product. However, they both invested early on in the Nebia luxury shower head. The product launched its second iteration on Kickstarter Tuesday, and Mark Wilson tested it out for Fast Company. The idea of Nebia, as well as being luxurious, is to reduce water consumption in a shower by between 50% and 65%.  Version 2 has received investment from the likes of Joe Gebbia (co-founder, Airbnb), James Park (CEO, Fitbit), and Barry Sternlicht (CEO, Starwood Capital Group).

So what’s new with the Nebia 2.0? For the most part, it’s the same system it always was. Its core is an aluminum tower that slides up and down depending how tall you want your shower to be. It still features a wand that sticks to the shower wall with a powerful magnet, serving as a body sprayer most of the time. And it’s the only shower system on the market that can be installed without screws or drilling.