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In 2015, then-Twitter CEO Dick Costolo secretly ordered employees to filter out abusive and hateful replies to President Barack Obama during a Q&A session, sources tell BuzzFeed News. According to these sources, the May 2015 #AskPOTUS town hall came out of Twitter senior leadership’s frustration with the fact that platforms like Reddit had become home to celebrity Q&As.

Redmond races to revoke Secure Boot policy Microsoft leaked the golden keys that unlock Windows-powered tablets, phones and other devices sealed by Secure Boot – and is now scrambling to undo the blunder. These skeleton keys can be used to install non-Redmond operating systems on locked-down computers. In other words, on devices that do not allow you to disable Secure Boot even if you have administrator rights – such as ARM-based Windows RT tablets – it is now possible to sidestep this block and run, say, GNU/Linux or Android. What's more, it is believed it will be impossible for Microsoft...

A cyclist is pedalling across the country from Land's End to John o'Groats - from the comfort of his own living room. Aaron Puzey, 44, from Dundee, is nearly halfway on his journey, which he is completing through virtual reality technology.So far, he has cycled over 400 miles, with his route taking him through Cardiff, Bristol and Manchester.Mr Puzey says it was initially boredom that made him come up with the idea to cycle the 1,500 kilometers via virtual reality software. He said that he had been using an exercise bike every day for years, but had found it 'monotonous'....

The “Quadrooter” vulnerabilities in Qualcomm-based Android phones might grant total control over target devices, but Google reckons attacks should hardly ever reach users. The Chocolate Factory reckons the Verify Apps feature in its Play Store was already blocking apps that tried to take advantage of Quadrooter. Only a reckless user would be compromised in the first place, since you'd have to download a compromised app from a non-Google source – and that's where Verify Apps comes in. Google pointed out to Android Central that the four-year-old feature, along with its SafetyNet, was designed to protect users from non-Play Store malice....

Santa Clara County Sheriff's deputies on Wednesday arrested one suspect at Starbucks and were searching for two more after a laptop robbery reported at Apple. Sgt. James Jensen identifed the man as Richard Bejarno. While two of his accomplices remained at large, Bejarno was taken into custody after Apple security notified deputies about a getaway car leaving the corporate building at Bubb Road and Results Way in Cupertino about 4:30 a.m., which they later spotted on Highway 85. The driver didn't stop and a chase led deputies to San Jose's Cambrian neighborhood, when the car became disabled at Camden Avenue...

Whether you are a fan of drones or not, one fact remains the same: the drone is here to stay. Considering the many positive things for which they can be used, it makes sense to welcome such possibilities. However, with pluses come minuses, and not every drone operator is going to have good intentions at heart. Due to the small percentage of people who enjoy behaving badly, it has become necessary to have plans in place to quickly and efficiently resolve drone-related issues. Although there are a few options for grounding a rogue drone, the Dutch National Police are taking...

http://watchdog.org/265844/google-obama-revolving-door/

Has anyone else received weird calls from a place called MapSupport? It starts with a recorded intro that say many people have flagged your business address as inaccurate, to correct the info press a number to talk to an associate..." I tried to get some info out of someone who identified himself as Aaron, but he became very testy when I would not cooperate with his line of questioning. I have been called several times by this company, I ask them to stop calling, my info is correct on Google and Google maps, so I'm not sure what they are...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IP6kBcP7LKo I plan to do an article on this filthy commie animal on YT who has on many occasions tried to shut down my blog and my channel and those of my friends. He is one of the biggest scum on youtube. A hater of God, religious freedom and gun rights. He has stated over and over again, that religion should be criminalized and those who don't agree with him should be banned from voting. If ever liberalism and fascism were the same here's proof

WICHITA, Kan. (CN) — An Internet protocol company turned a Kansas family's idyllic farm life into a "digital hell," assigning 600 million IP addresses to their property, sending police there at all hours looking for runaway children, stolen cars and pornographers, a married couple claims in court.     James and Theresa Arnold sued MaxMind on Friday in Federal Court. Maxmind, based in Waltham, Mass., provides Internet protocol intelligence and online fraud detection tools, through its GeoIP brand, the Arnolds say in the complaint.     Unfortunately, they add, "for the last 14 years, every time Maxmind's database was queried about a location in the United...

There is an odd game of musical chairs happening in the world of streaming television. Hulu, the service co-owned by many of the major broadcasters, announced that it will be eliminating its free tier, moving to a subscription-only model. At the same time, Yahoo announced a new streaming service, "Yahoo View," which "features" Hulu, and will let viewers see the five most recent episodes of the big broadcast shows for free. So consumers will still have largely the same set of choices, just in different places, and paid for by a different set of corporate backers. Hulu is co-owned by...

Jeannine Buck took this selfie, using her iPhone moments before she accidentally dropped it out the window.— image credit: Submitted Almost everyone knows that sinking feeling when their beloved smartphone slips from their grasp and falls victim to the laws of gravity. The seconds between falling, hitting the ground and picking the phone up again to assess the damage can seem like an eternity.For one Abbotsford woman, that ordeal took over three hours after she dropped her phone 2,500 feet from the small Cessna 1-40 feet she was riding in on Monday night.One minute Jeannine Buck was taking pictures of...

Amazon surprised a lot of people when its Echo, a $180 so-called smart speaker, became a hit, giving them a novel way to play music, turn on the lights in their homes and set thermostats with voice commands. Amazon, though, has much bigger plans for the technology behind Echo. It wants the Alexa Voice Service, which powers Echo, to be an ingredient in devices around the home and beyond, even if they aren’t made by Amazon.

The flaws affect devices containing Qualcomm chips Serious security flaws that could give attackers complete access to a phone's data have been found in software used on tens of millions of Android devices. The bugs were uncovered by Checkpoint researchers looking at software running on chipsets made by US firm Qualcomm. Qualcomm processors are found in about 900 million Android phones, the company said. However, there is no evidence of the vulnerabilities currently being used in attacks by cyberthieves. "I'm pretty sure you will see these vulnerabilities being used in the next three to four months," said Michael Shaulov, head...

"A pair of security researchers recently uncovered a Nigerian scammer ring that they say operates a new kind of attack...after a few of its members accidentally infected themselves with their own malware," reports IEEE Spectrum. "Over the past several months, they've watched from a virtual front row seat as members used this technique to steal hundreds of thousands of dollars from small and medium-sized businesses worldwide." Wave723 writes: Nigerian scammers are becoming more sophisticated, moving on from former 'spoofing' attacks in which they impersonated a CEO's email from an external account. Now, they've begun to infiltrate employee email accounts to...

Image: Salvador Mendoza/YouTube A security researcher has discovered limitations in Samsung Pay's security, which, if exploited by an attacker, could be used in another phone to allow someone else to fraudulently make payments.The magnetic-based contactless payment system, which comes standard in many newer Samsung phones, works by translating credit card data into tokens so that a hacker can't grab credit card numbers from the device.But those tokens aren't as secure as one might hope.Salvador Mendoza found that the tokenization process is limited and the sequencing of the tokens can be predicted. In an email prior to his Black Hat talk...

Despite restrictions on internet usage Iranians on social media have discussed playing Pokemon Go in recent weeks. Reports last month said Iranian authorities were waiting to see to what extent the game's creators would co-operate with them before making a decision on banning it.

I am posting this thread in hopes maybe someone out there may have a better solution to the problem I am about to describe. I am working on a laptop for a friend. It's older (Acer Aspire 5520), but it actually runs pretty well. The system was designed for Windows Vista and I had to run a restore on the system because it got infected. I took the system back to factory condition and here's where things get difficult. As we all know with the advent of Windows 10 and the draconian lengths Microsoft is going to in order to...

ISRAELI HACKERS break into the Islamic State on the heavily encrypted dark net, revealing past and future attack plansAn Israeli cyber intelligence company has hacked ISIS communications on the dark net and learned about the group’s plans to attack U.S. air bases in Kuwait, Bahrain and Saudi Arabia. According to the latest Homeland Security report, which calls the terrorist’s success rate “alarmingly high” and “growing,” statistics claim 44% of the group’s plots have been completed so far this year Haaretz According to cyber intelligence company Intsights, ISIS uploads potential targets – the French church attack was among them –...

Have you had to write a rent check lately? Or maybe fax some important documents? Despite things like Venmo and email that normal people use every day, these ancient bits of tech and culture just keep hanging on. There's clearly better technology, it's just that not everyone is using it. Here are nine outmoded technologies that just won't disappear.Fax MachineWhen they were invented: 1843Purpose: Sending copies of physical documents over phone linesWhere they're still used: Doctors' offices, lawyers, the CIA (which demands the FOI requests be faxed, rather than mailed or sent online), people in JapanWhy they're still used:...