Today’s Tech Sightings:
Koh Dong-jin, president of Samsung Electronics Mobile Communications Business, speaks during a launching ceremony for Galaxy Note 7 new smartphones in Seoul, South Korea, Aug. 11, 2016. (Reuters)
Samsung Kills Galaxy Note 7 Over Fire Concerns
Samsung on Tuesday killed its flagship Galaxy Note 7 smartphones, weeks after reports started coming in that the phones were exploding or going up in smoke. Even after a global recall of 2.5 million devices, so-called “safe” replacement smartphones also ran into trouble. The Note 7 fiasco could be one of the costliest product safety failures in tech history, leaving a $17 billion hole in Samsung’s account and a huge stain on its reputation and outlook.
NSA Could Put Undetectable ‘Trapdoors’ in Millions of Crypto Keys
Cryptographic keys protect websites, internet servers and virtual private networks from hackers. But researchers have found a way to load the keys with undetectable backdoors. This means hackers can decrypt communications and impersonate key owners who might not notice the difference. But hackers do. And if this were to become a mainstream application, government snoopers would be able to eavesdrop on millions or billions of encrypted communications.
Huawei, UC Berkeley Join Forces to Develop AI
China’s Huawei has partnered with the University of California, Berkeley to develop artificial intelligence applications for everyday use. Researchers from Huawei and UC Berkeley’s Artificial intelligence Research lab will work on natural language processing, computer vision and reinforcement learning. If successful, the results could find their way into Huawei’s smartphones and tablets.
More:
- Social Media Companies Suspend Geofeedia’s Access After Reported Police Tracking
- Facebook, Twitter, Instagram Surveillance Tool Was Used to Arrest Baltimore Protestors
- Justices Lean to Samsung in Smartphone Design Dispute With Apple
- Symantec: Second Hacker Group Targets SWIFT Users
- Let’s Get Serious About IoT Security
- Google Aims to Prevent Machine Learning Discrimination
- Twitter’s Woes Signal the End of the Social Wars
- The Number of Women in IT Will Grow Significantly by 2020
- Yahoo ‘Temporarily’ Disables Auto Email Forwarding
