Archive for April 2024

As part of its compliance with EU’s Digital Markets Act (DMA) rules, Apple has announced a change in its App Store rules to allow emulators for retro console games globally. The change allows an option for downloading the titles, but Apple has warned the developers of such emulator apps that need to follow copyright rules.…

A researcher from Swiss security firm, Pentagrid, has reported discovering that the self-service check-in terminal at a German Ibis budget hotel could be easily fooled into leaking hotel room keycodes. This has prompted fears that similar systems in hotels around Europe could be at risk. The researcher reported that, simply by inputting a series of…

Space Solar’s plan is to be able to power more than a million homes by the 2030s using a mile-wide complex of mirrors and solar panels – a solar farm – orbiting 22,000 miles above Earth. Panels Must Rotate Towards The Sun  For the space-based solar farm to work effectively, the panels must be able…

This week’s Social and AI news video-update explains how to stop those annoying messages where you’re included in a group mailing in Facebook. https://videovault.vip/videos/social/2024-Apr-Stopping-At-Everyone-Notifications.mp4

As part of a deal to resolve a class action lawsuit in the US dating back to 2020, Google has said it will delete the incognito mode search data of millions of users. What Lawsuit?  In June 2020 in the US, three Californians named Chasom Brown, Christopher Castillo, and Monique Trujill (along with William Byatt…

With Google Maps now one of the most popular mapping services globally, used by millions of people every day, plus having new features regularly being added, here we look at a dozen top Google Maps (Android) tricks to help you on your way. Driving  Since Google Maps can be extremely useful in the car, the…

OpenAI has announced the preview of its (two years in the making) ‘Voice Engine’ voice cloning tool, although there’s no firm release date yet. What Can It Do?  OpenAI says Voice Engine uses “text input and a single 15-second audio sample to generate natural-sounding speech that closely resembles the original speaker.”  OpenAI says this “small model” with a…

Amazon’s (Luxembourg-based) Polish e-commerce site, Amazon.pl (Amazon EU SARL) has been fined by Poland’s competition and consumer protection watchdog following customer complaints that their orders were being mysteriously cancelled. Massive Fine  Following an investigation about the complaints, the President of Poland’s UOKiK consumer protection watchdog found Amazon EU SARL guilty of infringement of collective consumer…

It’s been reported that some iPhone users have recently been targeted with an MFA bombing / multi-factor fatigue phishing attack. The attack (which uses a bug in Apple’s password reset feature) bombards the user’s phone with password reset requests and ‘Allow’ or ‘Disallow’ options. If the user eventually clicks on ‘Allow’ in an attempt to…

A recent analysis by Google’s Threat Analysis Group (TAG) and Google Cloud’s Mandiant has suggested that government-backed threat actors are more likely to be behind most exploitations of zero-day vulnerabilities than money-motivated cyber criminals. In the report outlining the findings of the analysis, of the 58 zero-days in 2023 that could be attributed to the…