Category: Computers, Science & Technology

Change your passwords now!

Under Armour says 150 million MyFitnessPal accounts hit by data breach

ZDNet – By: Natalie Gagliordi and Zack Whittaker – “Under Armour revealed on Thursday after the markets closed that its MyFitnessPal app has been hacked.

The fitness apparel company learned that data on 150 million accounts for the site and app were breached earlier this week, a statement said.

‘The investigation indicates that the affected information included usernames, email addresses, and hashed passwords — the majority with the hashing function called bcrypt used to secure passwords,’ said the statement, referring to the use of a stronger password hashing algorithm.

The company said payment card data was not affected. Under Armour is currently notifying MyFitnessPal users about the breach via email and in-app messaging, and it’s requiring all app users to change their passwords.

Later in the day, the California attorney-general released the company’s data breach notification, per the state’s law — a mirror statement of what the company posted on its website.

Under Armour, thanks to its acquisitions of several fitness app firms — including MyFitnessPal — has amassed massive amounts of data on both professional athletes and fitness enthusiasts. The company has even claimed to have the largest database of athlete behavior, including stats on workouts, nutrition, and sleep patterns. Under Armour has said that it uses this trove of data to make its gear smarter.

The data has helped Under Armour morph from an apparel maker into an athletic performance and technology company, rivaling Nike for the same target demographic.

Under Armour’s connected fitness platforms includes UA Record, MapMyFitness, Endomondo, and MyFitnessPal, and all of those platforms have unified to run on Amazon Web Services.”

Can you imagine a whole Data Center made up of Raspberry Pi’s?

Linux on Raspberry Pi: SUSE support turns $35 board into enterprise IoT platform

ZDNet – By Liam Tung – “SUSE has released a SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 12 SP3 (SLES) for the popular Raspberry Pi, which comes with full commercial support for enterprise customers.

The release upgrades an unsupported version of SLES SP2 Raspberry Pi image released at 2016 SUSECON, which offered enterprises an alternative to Raspbian OS with an OS that uses the SUSE Linux Enterprise kernel for Arm.

Raspberry Pi chief Eben Upton was very pleased with SUSE’s experimental release, because it was first the major 64-bit OS to support the Raspberry Pi’s wireless networking and Bluetooth.

Today, Upton is thrilled because SLES 12 SP3 is the first time a major vendor has offered a full, commercially-supported Raspberry Pi image.

“Unlike two years ago when they just provided a downloadable image with community support, SUSE can now offer 12 x 5 or 24 x 7 support,” writes Upton. “This is all built on the same SUSE Linux that is available on everything from Raspberry Pi to the mainframe.”

According to SUSE, companies have been using SLES for Arm on Raspberry Pi for monitoring older industrial equipment such as robotic screwdrivers and sending alerts when they malfunction.

Download now: Linux distribution comparison chart

The new SUSE Raspberry Pi image still targets the Raspberry Pi Model 3 B, although SUSE says it is planning support for the new Raspberry Pi Model 3 B+.

The new version also contains a few updates and fixes. According to SUSE, developers have made the new image smaller — around 630MB — by trimming compilers and debugging tools while tuning the Arm OS for IoT tasks.

The image supports the Raspberry Pi’s Wi-Fi module by default, as well as HDMI, Ethernet, and GPIO ports. However, it doesn’t support audio, 3D graphics, the Raspberry Pi touchscreen, or camera.

SUSE is also planning to update I/O support so that SLES can be installed on a Raspberry Pi over a network rather than using an SD card image. And it’s planning to add support for the Raspberry Pi Compute Module, which has the same hardware as the Model B but in a smaller form.”

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Pay off your friends!

You can finally send money to your contacts by asking Google Assistant

The Verge – By: Dieter Bohn – “Google is rolling out the ability to send peer-to-peer payments with Google Assistant. Starting today (only in the US), iPhone and Android users can say something like ‘Send Lauren $2,’ and Assistant will take you through the steps to send the money via Google Pay. Your recipient will also need to set up Google Pay to receive the funds.

In January of this year, Google finally ended the Google Wallet / Android Pay confusion by merging them into the Google Pay system. Although, the confusion still exists: for the next few months, there will still be a separate ‘Google Pay Send’ app for peer-to-peer payments.

But you don’t have to understand the weird history of Google Pay to use the new feature in Assistant. If you’ve ever sent money via the little $ button in Gmail, you likely already have a Google Pay account set up, and so you will be able to use Google Pay inside Google Assistant.

If you don’t have a Google Pay account, you’ll be prompted to set one up the first time you ask to send money. Transactions with Assistant will still require authentication beyond just your voiceprint to send money — either with your fingerprint or your Google password.

Google says that payments via the Google Home smart speaker will also be available ‘in the coming months.’ It’s not clear what kind of authentication or confirmation will be required to send money if you’re just talking to a speaker.

Although Google announced a Google Payment API for Assistant last May, it’s only now arriving, but the Google Pay rebranding has helped pick up that momentum. In addition to this recent feature, Google has recently managed to set up transit payments and payments to stores inside Assistant.

The Assistant peer-to-peer payment system is a rare case where Google has been behind Apple in an intelligent assistant feature. Right now in Siri, you can ask to send somebody money, and you’ll be asked if you’d like to use Apple Pay, Venmo, or Square Cash. As of today, Google Assistant can only use Google Pay.”

Mozilla Pulls Advertising from Facebook

Slashdot – “An anonymous reader shares a report:

Mozilla is not happy with Facebook. Not happy at all. Having already started a petition to try to force the social network to do more about user privacy, the company has now decided to withdraw its advertising from the platform. The organization is voting with its money following the misuse of user data by Cambridge Analytica, as it tries to force Facebook into taking privacy more seriously. Mozilla says that it is not happy to financially support a platform that does not do enough to protect user privacy. But the company is not severing ties completely. It says that advertising is being “paused” and that if the right steps are taken by Facebook ‘we’ll consider returning.'”

Are tablets computers? Are they your “main driver?”

It is finally really going to happen!

Chrome 66 to finally gain the ability to block autoplaying video content

NeoWin – By: Boyd Chan – “Earlier this month we saw the public release of Google Chrome 65 just a couple of months after its predecessor. Despite a slew of refinements over these last couple of browser versions, including improved pop-up blocking, one highly anticipated feature was notably absent, specifically the measure to tackle autoplay videos. The feature had been scheduled for release in Chrome 64 after having been foreshadowed in September last year but now it appears that it will soon see the light of day.

It’s worth restating that the feature won’t stop all videos from autoplaying, as per Google’s original outline, such as muted or video-only content. or if you’ve indicated an interest in the site by clicking on the site during the current session. The implementation will harmonize the behavior of how video content is handled by Chrome on both mobile and desktop. However, if you still find specific websites audibly annoying, you can permanently mute them with your preference persisting between sessions.

Chrome 66 is already in the Beta channel and is expected to hit the Stable channel somewhere around April 17, 2018. The forthcoming version of the browser will also revoke trust of certificates previously issued by Symantec before June 1, 2016, following the leak of private keys that compromised the security of up to 23,000 certificates.

Source: Google via The Verge”

From OS News:

“Google renames Android Wear to Wear OS

As our technology and partnerships have evolved, so have our users. In 2017, one out of three new Android Wear watch owners also used an iPhone. So as the watch industry gears up for another Baselworld next week, we’re announcing a new name that better reflects our technology, vision, and most important of all – the people who wear our watches. We’re now Wear OS by Google, a wearables operating system for everyone.

If a company changes the name of one of its operating system, but nobody cares – has the name really been changed?”

Looking for reviews and info on guns, YouTube may not be the place to go much longer…

YouTube to Ban Videos Promoting Gun Sales

New York Times – By: Niray Chokshi – “YouTube said this week that it would tighten restrictions on some firearm videos, its latest policy announcement since coming under scrutiny following last month’s mass shooting at a high school in Parkland, Fla.

The video-streaming service, which is owned by Google, said it would ban videos that promote either the construction or sale of firearms and their accessories. The new policy, developed with expert advice over the past four months, will go into effect next month, it said.

‘While we’ve long prohibited the sale of firearms, we recently notified creators of updates we will be making around content promoting the sale or manufacture of firearms and their accessories, specifically, items like ammunition, gatling triggers, and drop-in auto sears,’ YouTube said in a statement.

YouTube, which described the move as part of ‘regular changes’ to policy, notified users in a Monday forum post. The company had previously banned videos showing how to make firearms discharge faster, a technique used by the gunman who killed 58 people in Las Vegas last fall.

The announcement comes days before planned student-led protests against gun violence on Saturday. It was met with frustration from gun rights advocates.

‘Much like Facebook, YouTube now acts as a virtual public square,’ the National Shooting Sports Foundation, a private group representing gun makers, said in a statement. ‘The exercise of what amounts to censorship, then, can legitimately be viewed as the stifling of commercial free speech, which has constitutional protection. Such actions also impinge on the Second Amendment.’

The policy shift comes as YouTube and other technology platforms face increased scrutiny after the Parkland shooting, in which 17 people were killed at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School.

Days after that massacre, a video promoting a baseless conspiracy about a shooting survivor became the top-trending video on YouTube, prompting a crackdown on such videos. YouTube’s chief executive also said that the platform planned to fight misinformation by working in partnership with Wikipedia, the nonprofit user-run online encyclopedia. But Wikipedia said it knew nothing about that plan.

Other businesses have also made changes amid growing pressure following the Parkland attack.

Dick’s Sporting Goods, Walmart and Kroger all raised the age limit for firearm purchases to 21. The retail chains REI and Mountain Equipment Co-op suspended orders of some popular products because the company that owns those brands, Vista Outdoor, also manufactures assault-style rifles.

In 2016, Facebook announced a ban on private gun sales on its flagship website as well as on Instagram, the photo-sharing social network it owns. Anti-gun activists have complained that sellers still found ways around Facebook’s ban.”