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Facebook Leaks Data of 553 Million People Like Phone Numbers

Andrew Orr ·

The personal data of 553 million Facebook users was posted in a hacking forum over the weekend. Data includes phone numbers, full names, locations, email addresses, and other information.

While it’s a couple of years old, the leaked data could prove valuable to cybercriminals who use people’s personal information to impersonate them or scam them into handing over login credentials, according to Alon Gal, the chief technology officer of the cybercrime intelligence firm Hudson Rock, who discovered the trough of leaked data on Saturday.

Facebook PR has been downplaying the leak, saying it’s “only” two years old. But for most people, their phone number, email addresses, and full names probably haven’t changed in that time.

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Supreme Court Sides With Google in Legal Battle Over APIs

Andrew Orr ·

Google and Oracle have been fighting for a decade over the copyright status of APIs, or application programming interfaces. But Google just won [PDF].

The high court punted on whether APIs can be copyrighted in the first place. But the court’s fair use reasoning was broad enough that it should provide a strong defense for most API copying, making the question of API copyrights much less important.

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The Singularity: Can Computers Make Themselves Smarter?

Andrew Orr ·

Writing for The New Yorker, Ted Chiang believes that the concept of a technological singularity, in which computers / AI would be able to make themselves ever smarter, is similar to an ontological argument. In other words, it probably won’t happen.

How much can you optimize for generality? To what extent can you simultaneously optimize a system for every possible situation, including situations never encountered before? Presumably, some improvement is possible, but the idea of an intelligence explosion implies that there is essentially no limit to the extent of optimization that can be achieved.

TMO Deals

GoFish Cam Wireless Underwater Fishing Camera: $199.99

Bryan Chaffin ·

Our friends at Stack Commerce have a fun deal for us today on the GoFish Cam Wireless Underwater Fishing Camera, a wireless underwater fishing camera that sits on your fishing line and works with a mobile app so you can see your footage right from your phone. The camera attaches in-line between your main line and leader line, and it allows you to both view and share your underwater fishing footage. It’s $199.99 through our deal.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jKUJI2R_vlo

Podcast

M1 Mac Troubleshooting, Quick Tips, and More — Mac Geek Gab 864

John F. Braun & Dave Hamilton · · 3 Comments

M1 Macs have only been available for a few months, but y’all are buying them up like crazy. Of course, troubleshooting them is a bit different than familiar Intel models, and Dave and John talk through some of that while answering your questions. Quick Tips help to make this episode accessible for all, in addition to some non-platform-specific questions about troubleshooting in general. Listen in as your two favorite geeks help share the knowledge, and perhaps you’ll learn five new things, too!

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NSA Wants to Spy on Americans Because Reasons

Andrew Orr ·

U.S. government servers have been getting hacked left and right. In response, the NSA wants us to think that approval of domestic spying will solve the problem, despite suffering an egregious hack in 2016 where its zero-day exploits were stolen.

“We truly need to look at the ability for us to see ourselves and right now it’s difficult for us to see ourselves,” Nakasone testified on Thursday to the Senate Armed Services Committee. Adversaries like China and Russia “are operating with increased sophistication, scope [and] scale, including operations that can end “before a warrant can be issued,” he warned.

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Google Bravely Blocks Apps From Scanning Your Other Apps

Andrew Orr ·

Google announced that it will stop Android apps from scanning the list of your other apps in Android 11. Why this behavior was accepted before is beyond me.

Google has another page that lists allowable use cases for Play Store apps querying your app list, including “device search, antivirus apps, file managers, and browsers.” The page adds that “apps that must discover any and all installed apps on the device, for awareness or interoperability purposes may have eligibility for the permission.”

Time to make a fake antivirus app which queries your list of apps to sell to other companies.

TMO Deals

Babbel Language Learning Lifetime Subscription (All 14 Languages): $199

Bryan Chaffin ·

We have a deal on Babbel language learning software, and it’s a lifetime subscription at that. Babbel lets you practice with 10-15 minute bite-sized lessons, and Babbel uses speech recognition technology to keep your pronunciation on point. And, it comes with 10,000 hours of online language education. That lifetime subscription is $199 through our deal, and it covers all 14 languages.

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Document Collaboration That Doesn’t Need the Cloud

Andrew Orr ·

Collabio Spaces is an interesting new office suite that allows for document collaboration without needing external servers. Unfortunately it requires a subscription, but could be a useful tool for sensitive documents.

The P2P software lets multiple people co-edit a document locally — from a mobile device or desktop computer — without A) the risk of uploading sensitive information to the cloud (i.e. as you must if you’re using a shared document function of a service like Google Docs); or B) the tedium of emailing a text to multiple recipients and then having to collate and resolve changes manually, once all the contributions trickle back.