Boston Mayor Michelle Wu confirmed the city has ended its use of Flock Safety's automated license-plate reader cameras after a vendor error let outside law enforcement agencies access BPD-collected vehicle data nationwide, despite a contract requiring the sharing feature be disabled. The city's 2025 surveillance report says the breach occurred within days of launching a pilot with about 45 cameras and was corrected once discovered, but Boston has since moved on to trials with Motorola and Axon instead.
Security firm Strix ran an unauthenticated scan against Baseten's public infrastructure and within 25 minutes uncovered a live GitHub personal access token with admin rights to Baseten's core product repo, GitOps repo, and Homebrew tap. The token, tied to a container image built in March 2023, had gone unnoticed for over three years and still granted read/write access to private customer repositories when discovered in July 2026. Baseten's security team confirmed the issue as critical and rotated the token within a day of disclosure.
Apple Wallet and Google Wallet now let users store a state driver's license or ID digitally, with built-in options to share only limited information—such as confirming someone is over 21—instead of a full birth date, address and license number. Both companies say the data is encrypted, stored locally on the device rather than in the cloud, and requires biometric or passcode authentication before any information is shared with a verifier.
ChargePoint's latest report finds that public charging infrastructure buildout continues to lag behind EV adoption, even as sales remain strong—over 1.8 million EVs sold globally between January and August. CEO Rick Wilmer said demand signals like high used-EV retention rates and steady RFP volume suggest the North American market is healthier than press coverage implies.
The Internet Archive said the Wayback Machine has faced surges of high-volume automated traffic, prompting it to deploy protective measures that occasionally block legitimate users. The organization updated the error message shown when requests are rejected with a 429 'too many requests' code and is refining how it distinguishes abusive bots from genuine visitors.
The Justice Department alleges that Hong Kong-based firms Hexa Whale and Blessed Trust used Binance to route roughly $1.5 billion in cryptocurrency tied to black-market Iranian oil sales to Chinese buyers, with proceeds ultimately reaching Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. Prosecutors filed a forfeiture complaint seeking to seize $61 million connected to the scheme, and some funds reportedly passed through the US financial system to obscure their origin. Binance confirmed the companies' involvement, removed them from its platform, and dismissed several internal investigators who flagged the transactions.
Google announced an 'Opening Night' event in New York on October 5 to formally showcase its first Googlebook laptops, which run an Android-based version of ChromeOS. The event follows the September 21 pre-order launch and will feature interactive displays along with the debut of the first laptop built for Gemini Intelligence. Partners including Acer, ASUS, Dell, HP and Lenovo are manufacturing the devices, which include a lid light called a 'glowbar.'
At a Fast Company event, executives from WeTransfer, Kickstarter and the Fashion Institute of Technology discussed how artists, designers and other creative professionals remain central to innovation even as AI and advanced technology draw massive investment. The panel, moderated by Fast Company's Kc Ifeanyi, examined how creative industries can maintain influence and funding in a tech-dominated landscape.
New data shows that more than 70% of recently added solar power capacity in the United States is being built in states that voted for Donald Trump. This trend continues despite Republican-backed policies at the federal level that could slow renewable energy expansion going forward.
A discussion thread examines how medieval mathematicians like Scipione del Ferro hid discoveries such as cubic-equation solutions to protect their livelihoods, using secrecy as leverage in public problem-solving contests. The post traces this culture of concealment through the Newton–Leibniz calculus dispute, contrasting it with today's norm of open publication despite paywalls and peer-review issues.
Apple has unveiled 'Audio Intelligence,' a feature for upcoming Apple Watches that continuously listens to and transcribes nearby conversations, then summarizes them daily. Although Apple has built in some privacy safeguards for the watch wearer, anyone speaking near a person using this feature could be recorded and transcribed without their knowledge or consent.
Acronis has patched a high-severity local privilege escalation flaw, tracked as CVE-2026-87886, in its backup add-ons for cPanel/WHM and Plesk. The company says it has seen limited, targeted exploitation attempts against affected deployments, based on a report from one potentially affected customer. Fixed versions are 1.9.3 HF3 for cPanel/WHM and 1.8.11 for Plesk.