Gamers and computer owners are joining forces with EVE Online’s Project Discovery and IBM’s World Community Grid in what could be a future avenue for accelerating underfunded scientific research. Nearly 50,000 people are hunting for new planets outside Earth’s solar system in the massively multiplayer game EVE Online, thanks to a recent tweak from developer […]
Gamers, Computer Users Push Limits of Scientific Research
‘Devil’s Ivy’ Bug Hits IoT Devices; China Begins VPN Crackdown
Today’s Tech Sightings: Millions of IoT Devices Hit by ‘Devil’s Ivy’ Bug in Open Source Code Library Cybersecurity experts have been warning about potential risks to Internet of Things (IoT) devices for months. Now, millions of IoT devices, including Axis Communications’ security cameras, are vulnerable to remote attacks because of a flaw in a widely-used […]
WhatsApp Partially Blocked in China; Google Overhauls Mobile Search
Today’s Tech Sightings: Chinese Government Partially Blocks WhatsApp Service The WhatsApp messaging service ran afoul of Chinese government censors as part of a wider effort to restrict messengers that do not follow the country’s surveillance policies. The government partially blocked messages in China on Monday, with users reporting instances of undelivered messages that contain pictures […]
Facebook Rejects Pakistan Policy Change; ‘GhostCtrl’ Malware Returns
Today’s Tech Sightings: Facebook Denies Pakistan Policy Change Request Facebook informed the Pakistani government it was not interested in complying with its request to change authentication policies from email addresses to telephone numbers. Last week, Pakistan asked Facebook to make the change in order to track fake account owners and those who engage in hate […]
Here’s Why You Shouldn’t Give Away Your Cellphone Number
Cellphone numbers are slowly becoming personal identifiers – a role all-important social security and national numbers have fulfilled for decades. But these mobile gateways to your life are left unprotected in an age of hacking, data mining, and sheer negligence. For the past 50, 60, 70 years, social security numbers have been the key that […]
Report: AI Will Deepen Social Divides; India Leads Global Facebook Use
Today’s Tech Sightings: New Report Says Robots, AI Will Make Social Inequality Even Worse A new report from UK charity Sutton warns that developments in automation and artificial intelligence will deepen the divide between rich and poor in the UK unless the government takes action. The report suggests it will be easier for richer people […]
Millions of Verizon Records Leaked; Tech Giants Rally for Net Neutrality
Today’s Tech Sightings: Millions of Verizon Customer Records Exposed in Security Lapse Up to 14 million Verizon subscriber records were left unprotected on an Amazon storage server in Israel. An employee of Israel-based NICE Systems left the information unsecured on the server and available for download with little difficulty. The leak includes sensitive records of […]
China Eyes VPN Ban; Wednesday Set as Net Neutrality Day of Action
Today’s Tech Sightings: China Will Block All VPNs by February 2018 The Chinese government has notified internet carriers that they have until February 1, 2018 to block all Virtual Private Networks (VPN) connections and shut down unauthorized VPN operators. Thanks to the country’s Great Firewall, a lot of internet services, including Western social media networks […]
Techtonics will return on July 11
App Roundup: RedZone; Medici; Life of Dad
Techtonics is always on the lookout for apps that have the potential to improve people’s lives – or save them as the case may be with two of the three notable apps that recently crossed our path – RedZone, Medici, and Life of Dad. RedZone RedZone is a navigation app that provides real-time insights into […]