Remember back in 2014 when every iTunes music library suddenly started showing U2’s new album, Songs of Innocence? In a new memoir (excerpted by the Guardian), U2’s lead singer Bono says he’s very sorry — and explains exactly how it happened: “Free music?” asked Tim Cook, the CEO of Apple, Read more…
It’s the tale of a company manufacuring precision card-shuffling machines for casinos — and a gang of hustlers who used a hidden video camera to film the shuffler’s insides. “The images, transmitted to an accomplice outside in the casino parking lot, were played back in slow motion to figure out Read more…
Sure, you may be trying to cut down on screen time by tracking your minutes in an app on the very same smartphone you’re trying to unplug from, but how about a smartphone that doesn’t even have a screen to stare at in the first place? Enter MyManu’s Titan screenless Read more…
“Farmers have urged whoever succeeds Liz Truss as UK prime minister to abandon plans to ban solar energy from most of England’s farmland,” reports the Guardian, “arguing that it would hurt food security by cutting off a vital income stream.” Truss, who resigned on Thursday, and her environment secretary, Ranil Read more…
Bill Gates’s climate-oriented venture fund “is plowing more money into climate adaptation,” reports MIT Technology Review: To date, the fund has focused on “climate mitigation,” which largely concentrates on driving down climate pollution. Climate adaptation refers to developing ways of bolstering protections against the dangers of climate change, rather than Read more…
Computer science professor Moshe Y. Vardi is the Senior Editor of Communications of the ACM. And he’s concerned about the state of cybersecurity today: In 2017, I wrote: “So here we are, 70 years into the computer age and after three ACM Turing Awards in the area of cryptography (but Read more…
“Auto industry insiders have waxed poetic about the safety benefits of the ‘software-defined vehicle’ — which also enables revenue-boosting data collection and subscriptions that make it safer to be an auto executive too,” writes Wired. “Less talked about are the consequences of computerized cars at the auto shop.” Fixing complex Read more…