Today’s Tech Sightings: The Future of Storage May Be in DNA It used to be a big deal to have a hard drive with 20 or 40 megabytes of storage space. Now they can fit terabytes of data. But the sheer volume of space needed now and in the future to store all of humanities’ […]
Tech Giants Look to DNA for Data Storage; Zuckerberg’s Webcam Tape
Apple Pulls Refugee ‘I Sea’ App; Preserving Digital History
Today’s Tech Sightings: App That Falsely Claimed to Aid Refugees at Sea Pulled From App Store Apple has pulled from its App Store an app called I Sea that claimed it could help find refugees lost at sea by showing real-time satellite footage of the Mediterranean Sea. But developers found the app only shows the […]
Apple’s Youngest Developer; African Startup Wins Major US Investment
Today’s Tech Sightings: Meet Apple’s Youngest App Developer. She’s Nine. Her name is Anvitha Vijay. The nine-year-old who created an app about animals in Australia applied to a scholarship to attend Apple’s Worldwide Developer’s Conference. She was accepted – the youngest developer to attend – and got a shout-out from CEO Tim Cook himself. Scholarship […]
Facebook, India Push to Curb Suicide; Is Facebook’s Future All-video?
Today’s Tech Sightings: Facebook Launches Suicide Prevention Tools for 148 Million Indian Users India leads the world with depression rates and has more suicides than any other country, according to the World Health Organization. Mental illness topics remain taboo in that country and in other developing parts of the world. Facebook’s new tools help nudge […]
Ransomware Bosses Earn Big Bucks; N. Korea Hacks 140,000 PCs
Today’s Tech Sightings: Ransomware Bosses Make $90K Annually A recent study found that Russian ransomware bosses “earn” US$90,000 a year. That’s 13 times the average income of people who were taught that crime doesn’t pay. The availability of Ransomware as a Service (RaaS) business model is saving hackers a lot of money and accelerating the […]
Millions of Twitter Accounts Hacked; Malware Plagues Cloud Apps
Today’s Tech Sightings: Russian Hacker Claims to Be Selling Millions of Twitter Accounts A Russian hacker known as Tessa88 allegedly is in possession of the email addresses, passwords and usernames of 379 million Twitter accounts – more than 10 percent of Twitter’s monthly active users. Breach notification website LeakedSource received the database from the seller. […]
Passenger Drone Tests Begin This Year; Apps Put Wildlife at Risk
Today’s Tech Sightings: China’s Ehang Will Test World’s First Passenger Drone This Year Ehang – the Chinese company that unveiled an electric passenger drone in January – now has clearance to begin testing it in Nevada sometime this year. The permissions were secured through a partnership with the Nevada Institute for Autonomous Systems and the […]
India Tops World Smartphone Growth; The Most Hackable Nations
Today’s Tech Sightings: Ericsson: India Will Have 810 Million Smartphone Users by 2021 India already has the world’s fastest-growing smartphone market, and that’s likely to continue. According to the latest Ericsson Mobility Report, India’s mobile subscriptions will grow to 1.37 billion by 2021. In the first quarter of 2016, India added 21 million new mobile subscribers, compared […]
Musk: We’re Probably Living in a Video Game; the Future With AI
Today’s Tech Sightings: Elon Musk: We’re Probably Living in a Video Game Speaking at California’s Code Conference, the founder of Tesla and SpaceX Elon Musk warned that the lines between the real world and increasingly-sophisticated simulated environments could become so blurred that it will be hard to distinguish reality from simulation. The scenario is not […]