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Security may not be exciting, but AWS proves it's essential

Editor's take: If I'm being totally honest, it's difficult to get excited about improved security capabilities in the tech world. I know they're incredibly important and absolutely essential to keep everything functional in today's cyberthreat-filled world. But it's kind of like thinking about insurance – not much fun. On top of that, by necessity, security updates need to be released at a rate that's as fast (or even faster) than the latest technological innovations in order to keep bad actors

Finding Dead Websites

As some of the work planned for Marginalia Search this year has been progressing a bit faster than anticipated, there was time to implement an unplanned change. This post details the implementation of a system for detecting when servers are online, to avoid serving dead links and improve data quality, and for detecting when websites have significant changes including ownership transfers and parking. Table Of Contents Feature Rationale Availability detection is useful not just for filtering o

In-Memory C++ Leap in Blockchain Analysis

Real-Time, Court-Admissible Crypto Intelligence at 1/400th the Cost of Inferior Legacy Systems The explosion of blockchain data isn’t just a challenge; it’s a crisis for conventional analytics. Financial institutions, investigators, and law enforcement agencies are hamstrung by tools that are too slow, expensive, and built on legacy database technologies incapable of keeping pace. Critical insights are missed, opportunities vanish, and illicit activities remain obscured by systems that offer on

A staggering 16 billion logins exposed in epic data breach, including Apple accounts

Security researchers have discovered what they describe as “one of the largest data breaches in history,” comprising a staggering 16 billion logins, which include Apple accounts (formerly known as Apple IDs). The researchers said that the stolen data gives cybercriminals “unprecedented access to personal credentials that can be used for account takeover, identity theft, and highly targeted phishing” … You may recall a report last month that Apple login credentials were among a massive database

Krispy Kreme says November data breach impacts over 160,000 people

U.S. doughnut chain Krispy Kreme confirmed that attackers stole the personal information of over 160,000 individuals in a November 2024 cyberattack. The American multinational coffeehouse chain employed 22,800 people in 40 countries as of December 2023 and operates 1,521 shops and 15,800 points of access. It also manages four "Doughnut Factories" in the United States and 37 others internationally, and it partners with McDonald's to have its products sold in thousands of McDonald's locations wo

Everything You Should Know About Enhanced Visual Search on Your iPhone

Apple announced at its Worldwide Developers Conference on June 9 that the next version of the iPhone operating system is called iOS 26. The tech giant said iOS 26 will bring a transparent glass design to icons and menus, the Camera and Photos apps will get redesigned interfaces and much more to iPhones. But when Apple released iOS 18 in September 2024, it included a feature called Enhanced Visual Search, and some people online have voiced privacy concerns about the feature. Read more: Everythin

Citizen science illuminates the nature of city lights

The Nachtlichter app was developed within a project called Nachtlicht-BüHNE (Citizen-Helmholtz Network for research on night light phenomena)5, using a co-design process in which academic and citizen scientists met regularly over a several year period. Our co-design process, app methodology, site selection, systematic variability of the observations, data pre-processing and data structure have already been described in detail5. This section therefore briefly covers the data and validation and fo

T-Mobile Data Breach Settlement Checks Are Arriving: Here's the Scoop

Check your bank account lately? Is there an unexpected deposit from a company you don't recognize? It could be the money you're due from T-Mobile's 2022 class-action settlement. Those who qualify were told to expect settlement checks in April, but then that was moved to May. And now, in mid-June, as cited by Android Authority, Reddit users are saying they are seeing money in their bank accounts. Some are saying they received $56, but others are reporting amounts as high as $375. The account the

Smart TV OS owners face “constant conflict” between privacy, advertiser demands

StreamTV Insider provided flights from New York City to Denver and two nights of accommodation so Ars could attend its StreamTV Show. Ars does not accept paid editorial content. DENVER—Most smart TV operating system (OS) owners are in the ad sales business now. Software providers for budget and premium TVs are honing their ad skills, which requires advancing their ability to collect user data. This is creating an “inherent conflict” within the industry, Takashi Nakano, VP of content and program

Topics: ad data smart streamtv tv

Spatializing 6k years of global urbanization from 3700 BC to AD 2000

Transcription Chandler’s book includes population data from 2250 BC to AD 1975 in various charts and tables. The book contains 656 9×5.5 inch pages and is divided into multiple sections, including Sources and Methods, Continental Tables and Maps (highlighting locations of major cities as illustrated in Fig. 4), Data Sheets for Ancient Cities (the main tables of the book shown in Fig. 1), Tables of the World’s Largest Cities, and Whereabouts of Unfamiliar Cities. Each page in the Data Sheets for

OpenAI drops Scale AI as a data provider following Meta deal

OpenAI is phasing out its work with Scale AI and cutting ties with the data provider following Meta’s deal with the startup, an OpenAI spokesperson told Bloomberg on Wednesday. Sarah Friar, the chief financial officer of OpenAI, previously suggested the company would continue its work with Scale AI. Now, it appears OpenAI has changed its tone. OpenAI said it was already winding down its work with Scale AI ahead of Meta’s announcement last week that it was investing billions of dollars in the s

Topics: ai data meta openai scale

Building agents using streaming SQL queries

LLMs are general-purpose models created from huge bodies of publicly available datasets. However, many, if not most, AI Agents for enterprise use cases require access to context such as internal data and resources, tools and services. How can this be implemented when building an agentic system using Flink SQL? First, let’s consider the case of structured data, for instance details about a given customer stored in an external database. SQL is a natural fit for accessing that kind of data: Flink

We Did the Math: Trump Mobile Is a Bad Deal for Consumers

When the Trump Organization announced its new Trump Mobile cell service and gold colored T1 phone -- complete with an American flag on the back -- it raised a lot of questions. While most of them focused on the numerous mistakes and typos on the Trump Mobile site -- some of which have been fixed -- other errors and questionable policies, like calling RAM storage, not identifying the handset's processor or the fact that you can't get a refund for the T1 phone raised several flags for us. Even the

Internet collapses across Iran, say web-monitoring firms

Internet connectivity in Iran almost completely disappeared on Wednesday, according to web-monitoring firms, as war with Israel enters its sixth day. NetBlocks, a firm that tracks internet access across the world, wrote on X that Iran is “now in the midst of a near-total national internet blackout.” The firm’s assessment was confirmed by other internet-monitoring organizations. Data collected by IODA, which is a system that “monitors the Internet infrastructure connectivity in near-real time,

OpenSERDES – Open Hardware Serializer/Deserializer (SerDes) in Verilog (2020)

OpenSERDES Serializer/Deserializer (SerDes) is the most important functional block used in high speed communication. SerDes converts parallel data into a serial (one bit) stream of data that is transmitted over a high-speed connection, such as LVDS, to a receiver that converts the serial stream back to the original, parallel data. A global CLOCK signal is present to sequence the serialization and deserialization of data from one block to another. Technology: Skywater OpenPDK 130nm Tools Use

Show HN: Workout.cool – Open-source fitness coaching platform

Workout.cool Modern fitness coaching platform with comprehensive exercise database Table of Contents Contributors About A comprehensive fitness coaching platform that allows create workout plans for you, track progress, and access a vast exercise database with detailed instructions and video demonstrations. 🎯 Project Origin & Motivation This project was born from a personal mission to revive and improve upon a previous fitness platform. As the primary contributor to the original workout.lo

This AI Agent Should Have Been a SQL Query

LLMs are general-purpose models created from huge bodies of publicly available datasets. However, many, if not most, AI Agents for enterprise use cases require access to context such as internal data and resources, tools and services. How can this be implemented when building an agentic system using Flink SQL? First, let’s consider the case of structured data, for instance details about a given customer stored in an external database. SQL is a natural fit for accessing that kind of data: Flink

Internet collapses across Iran, say web monitoring firms

Internet connectivity in Iran almost completely disappeared on Wednesday, according to web monitoring firms, as war with Israel enters its sixth day. NetBlocks, a firm that tracks internet access across the world, wrote on X that Iran is “now in the midst of a near-total national internet blackout.” The firm’s assessment was confirmed by other internet-monitoring organizations. Data collected by IODA, which is a system that “monitors the Internet infrastructure connectivity in near-real time,

Demystifying Multi-Modal AI

Artificial Intelligence has come a long way in understanding language, recognizing images, and interpreting sound—but what happens when it can do all of that at once? That’s where Multi-Modal AI steps in: a new frontier where machines learn to process and combine information from different types of input—like text, images, audio, and video—just as humans do. What Is Multi-Modal AI? Multi-modal AI refers to systems that can understand and reason across multiple forms of data. For example, a sin

Topics: ai data like modal multi

Does the Internet Have an Environmental Impact? Yes, Actually. And It’s Getting Bigger

Diagnosing the environmental sustainability of the internet might seem, at first, like trying to figure out where the molecules of water in your morning cup of coffee originated. Water is constantly evolving, cycling through our environments and often carrying the secrets of the places it last passed through. The internet, in all its complexity, appears to operate in a similar fashion. Every time we log online, we step foot into an incredibly intricate stream of data, often cycled, reused and e

What happens when you feed AI nothing

If you stumbled across Terence Broad’s AI-generated artwork (un)stable equilibrium on YouTube, you might assume he’d trained a model on the works of the painter Mark Rothko — the earlier, lighter pieces, before his vision became darker and suffused with doom. Like early-period Rothko, Broad’s AI-generated images consist of simple fields of pure color, but they’re morphing, continuously changing form and hue. But Broad didn’t train his AI on Rothko; he didn’t train it on any data at all. By hack

AVG Antivirus Review 2025: Robust Free Version but Middling Premium Plans

CNET’s expert staff reviews and rates dozens of new products and services each month, building on more than a quarter century of expertise. 7.6 / 10 SCORE AVG Antivirus Buy at AVG Score Breakdown Performance 9 /10 Security 7 /10 Customer Support 7 /10 Usability 9 /10 Value 7 /10 Features 7 /10 Pros Robust protection from both online and offline threats Resource-light scans TuneUp makes it easy to improve device performance Variety of safe browsing and anti-tracking tools Cons Data sharing w

Healthcare SaaS firm says data breach impacts 5.4 million patients

Episource warns of a data breach after hackers stole health information of over 5 million people in the United States in a January cyberattack. Episource is an American healthcare services company that provides risk adjustment, medical coding, data analytics, and technology solutions to health plans and providers. They help insurers optimize payments and compliance in government programs like Medicare Advantage. In a data breach notification on its website, Episource says it detected unusual a

Workout.cool – Open-source fitness coaching platform

Workout.cool Modern fitness coaching platform with comprehensive exercise database Table of Contents Contributors About A comprehensive fitness coaching platform that allows create workout plans for you, track progress, and access a vast exercise database with detailed instructions and video demonstrations. 🎯 Project Origin & Motivation This project was born from a personal mission to revive and improve upon a previous fitness platform. As the primary contributor to the original workout.lo

Wyze Announces a Major Security Revamp with New Metadata Tricks for Security Cameras

CNET reviewers have been fans of Wyze's security platform and cameras in the past, but in the last couple of years I've pulled back from recommending their affordable cams and similar security devices due to a series of unsettling security breaches that I covered in-depth. Now it's been well over a year, and Wyze's security changes have culminated in a fascinating new safety layer called VerifiedView. Wyze VerifiedView basics Wyze video, photo and streaming content from cams is getting a serio

Ultrahuman's new AI tool can predict your risk for cancer, fatigue, and more - here's what it costs

What if there were a way to see the future of your health through a simple blood test? This test would assess your susceptibility to certain cancers and present your cholesterol, blood health, fatigue, glucose, and more in the context of longevity and holistic wellness. While this vision appears similar to Elizabeth Holmes' blood test startup Theranos, the end product this time comes from a different company -- and could produce life-changing results. Best known for its smart ring, Ultrahuman h

How Trump Mobile Compares to Other Cheap Phone Plans (That You Can Actually Get Now)

When the Trump Organization announced its new Trump Mobile cell service and gold colored T1 phone -- complete with an American flag on the back -- it raised a lot of questions. While most of them focused on the numerous mistakes and typos on the Trump Mobile site -- some of which have been fixed -- other errors and questionable policies, like calling RAM storage, not identifying the handset's processor or the fact that you can't get a refund for the T1 phone raised several flags for us. Even the

Scientists once hoarded pre-nuclear steel; now we’re hoarding pre-AI content

Former Cloudflare executive John Graham-Cumming recently announced that he launched a website, lowbackgroundsteel.ai, that treats pre-AI, human-created content like a precious commodity—a time capsule of organic creative expression from a time before machines joined the conversation. "The idea is to point to sources of text, images and video that were created prior to the explosion of AI-generated content," Graham-Cumming wrote on his blog last week. The reason? To preserve what made non-AI medi

I counted all of the yurts in Mongolia using machine learning

The Fall of Civilizations podcast put out a 6¾-hour episode on the history of the Mongol Empire, which I eagerly listened to. After finishing the episode I wondered about contemporary Mongolian society, I wanted to learn what the lands that the Mongol Empire exploded from are like in our current day. There are many ways to try to understand a society, whether it be quantifying it or looking at the lived experiences within it. If you look at data provided by the World Bank, you’ll see a country t

Scientists once hoarded pre-nuclear steel, and now we’re hoarding pre-AI content

Former Cloudflare executive John Graham-Cumming recently announced that he launched a website, lowbackgroundsteel.ai, that treats pre-AI, human-created content like a precious commodity—a time capsule of organic creative expression from a time before machines joined the conversation. "The idea is to point to sources of text, images and video that were created prior to the explosion of AI-generated content," Graham-Cumming wrote on his blog last week. The reason? To preserve what made non-AI medi