Archive for the 'Technology' Category
China’s Powerful Surveillance State Has Created at Least Four Billionaires
February 23rd, 2019Via: Bloomberg: Before he became a billionaire, Dai Lin would ride his bike to work, pedaling through the streets of Tianjin to the headquarters of Tiandy Technologies Co., the camera maker he built with support from China’s government. When Dai started his company in 1994, roadside surveillance cameras were rare in China. Now they’re everywhere […]
Warning Issued Over Attacks on Internet Infrastructure
February 23rd, 2019Keep this in mind: Russia to Disconnect from Internet to Test Cyber Defenses. Via: AFP: Key parts of the internet infrastructure face large-scale attacks that threaten the global system of web traffic, the internet’s address keeper warned Friday. The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) declared after an emergency meeting “an ongoing and […]
AI Taking Fast Food Orders
February 22nd, 2019Via: San Francisco Chronicle: “The system takes a lot of friction out of interactions between customers and employees,” Carpenter said, noting that the AI was designed to sound like an amiable woman’s voice. “The AI never gets offended and it will just keep talking to you in a very calm and friendly voice.” There’s an […]
China’s Social Credit System: Millions Banned from Taking Flights, Trains
February 20th, 2019Via: South China Morning Post: Millions of Chinese individuals and businesses have been labelled as untrustworthy on an official blacklist banning them from any number of activities, including accessing financial markets or travelling by air or train, as the use of the government’s social credit system accelerates. The annual blacklist is part of a broader […]
Airplane Seat Cameras Could Be Your New Spy in the Sky
February 20th, 2019Don’t worry, the cameras are disabled. *chortle* In other news: Google says the built-in microphone it never told Nest users about was ‘never supposed to be a secret’ Via: Cnet: Twitter user Vitaly Kamluk shared a photo of what looked like a camera installed directly beneath the inflight entertainment screen on a Singapore Airlines aircraft. […]
Calling Your Bank? Be Prepared to Have Your Voice Biometrics Collected
February 19th, 2019Via: FastCompany: In Chase’s case, the biometric program was announced back in April, but there’s a good chance many customers missed the announcement. (I missed it, and I actually write about these topics for a living.) Now, when you call Chase, an automated recording informs you that your voice is being used to identify you […]
Neuroscientists Say They’ve Found an Entirely New Form of Neural Communication
February 18th, 2019Make sure everyone is bathed in directed energy weapon beams 5G network signals. Via: ScienceAlert: What they found was that slow periodic activity can generate electric fields which in turn activate neighbouring cells, constituting a form of neural communication without chemical synaptic transmission or gap junctions. “We’ve known about these waves for a long time, […]
Radiation From Smartphones May Impair Memory In Teens
February 18th, 2019Via: StudyFinds: Don’t want your child to have a cellphone? One recent study gives you good reason to make kids wait as long as possible for their first mobile device: it appears that radiation from phones can hurt a teenager’s memory. A research team at the Swiss Tropical and Public Health Institute says that radio […]
The New Totalitarianism
February 17th, 2019Via: Richard Dolan:
China Tracking Physical Locations of 2.5 Million People in Western Region of Country
February 17th, 2019Via: South China Morning Post: A Chinese surveillance firm is tracking the movements of more than 2.5 million people in the far-western Xinjiang region, according to a data leak flagged by a Dutch internet expert. An online database containing names, ID card numbers, birth dates and location data was left unprotected for months by Shenzhen-based […]
