Saturday 15 December 2018

The Morning After: Facebook's latest data leak

Engadget Email Newsletter

It's Saturday, December 15, 2018.

Hey, good morning! You look fabulous.

Welcome to your weekend! We regret to report there’s more bad news to share about Facebook and how it’s protecting your privacy. Some of the highlights from earlier this week include an incredible tech demo, tech gift ideas that cost less than $50 and hands-on with Tesla’s latest Autopilot system.

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Bad Password

Maria Butina: Cybersecurity charlatan, spy

As columnist Violet Blue explains, “anyone holding even the barest minimum of cybersecurity knowledge could've figured out in minutes that Butina's interest in cybersecurity was minimal. While she spied on and infiltrated the Republican party, she also was a research assistant at American University and co-authored a paper titled "Cybersecurity Knowledge Networks." Read it if you want to see what achingly fake, buzzword bingo looks like.”

Oops!

'Overpowered' Infinity Blade removed from 'Fortnite'

Epic admitted it "messed up" with the weapon and has already sent the Infinity Blade into Fortnite's vault.

So long, space cowboy.

NASA’s Voyager 2 probe has entered interstellar space

NASA's Voyager 2 spacecraft has exited the heliosphere -- the plasma bubble created by the sun that encompasses most of our solar system -- and entered interstellar space, making it the second human-made object to do so. Voyager 1 was the first to do it, but this spacecraft still has a working Plasma Science Experiment, used to measure solar-wind particle flow until the amount dropped to nothing at all. Both spacecraft are still technically within the solar system, however. And they will be until they exit the Oort Cloud, a large collection of distant objects that are still affected by the sun's gravity.

See the most in-demand tech skills for 2019!

Do it live.

50 years ago, 'the mother of all demos' foretold our tech future

Innovation usually happens in slow, measured steps over many years, but a demo in 1968 transformed the world of personal computers in just 90 minutes. In a presentation dubbed "the mother of all demos," Douglas Engelbart showed off technology that would lead directly to Apple's Macintosh, the internet, Windows, Google Docs, the computer mouse and much, much more. The most remarkable part was that it happened 50 years ago, in 1968, when microchips were just a gleam in scientists' eyes.

Again, seriously?

Facebook bug let apps access unposted photos for millions of users

Facebook has disclosed yet another privacy flub. This time around, it says a bug in the Photo API led to third-party apps being able to access not only timeline photos (which users had permitted them to do), but Stories, Marketplace images and photos people uploaded to Facebook but never actually shared. The bug affected as many as 6.8 million people across up to 1,500 apps, Facebook says, and it was active for 12 days before it was detected and fixed on September 25th

It’s an exploration of video game tropes and cliches.

‘Travis Strikes Again’ is an indie-sized comeback for Suda51

Goichi Suda is back with a No More Heroes spin-off called Travis Strikes Again. The game has a smaller story that focuses on Travis Touchdown, the series' foul-mouthed hero, as he battles his way through a phantom console called the Death Drive Mark II. It's launching on Nintendo Switch next month and is, unsurprisingly, pretty weird. But maybe in a good way?

But wait, there's more...

1. Nintendo warns it won't make more retro NES and SNES consoles

2. The Pixel 3 has 2018's best smartphone camera

3. PlayStation Classic review: A disappointing dose of nostalgia

4. Tesla's Navigate on Autopilot takes on LA's freeways

5. What's coming to Netflix in January: 'Kimmy Schmidt,' 'Ant-Man 2' and Star Wars

6. Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo reaches space for the first time

7. The OnePlus 6T McLaren edition packs 10GB of RAM

8. The best tech gifts under $50

9. Apple's streaming service will include new 'Peanuts' cartoons

The Morning After is a new daily newsletter from Engadget designed to help you fight off FOMO. Who knows what you'll miss if you don't subscribe.

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Friday 14 December 2018

Editor's Pick: E-Commerce Success Strategies: Think Local, Not Global

E-Commerce Success Strategies: Think Local, Not Global

Erich Litch Dec 14, 2018 5:00 AM PT
	The borderless promise of e-commerce doesn't mean one size fits all. Your business can have customers from around the globe, but if you want to keep them and grow, it is crucial to understand local shopper preferences and behaviors, and be able to respond to them. Without localization, you won't have an effective go-to-market strategy, and your opportunity for growth will stall. [More...]

More Picks:

Wix Launches 20-Product CRM Suite for SMBs
Wix has launched Ascend, a CRM suite consisting of 20 products, including tools for site promotion, cross-channel customer interaction management, intuitive search engine optimization, content creation for social media channels, lead capture, and the ability to respond to queries automatically. Its chat-centric interface allows real-time interactions with customers. [More...]

Pantheon Desktop Makes Linux Elementary
Developers of U.S.-based Elementary OS recently released the community's annual major update, Juno 5. What makes this distro so nontraditional is its own desktop interface, called "Pantheon." This desktop interface is somewhat of a hybrid, inspired by Apple's Debian Ubuntu-based OS X. It combines some similarities of the GNOME 3 Shell with the visual finesse of the OS X dock. [More...]

Pichai Puts Kibosh on Google Search Engine for China
Google is not working on a bespoke search engine that caters to China's totalitarian tastes, and it has no plans to develop one, CEO Sundar Pichai told lawmakers on Capitol Hill. "Right now, we have no plans to launch in China," he told members of the U.S. House Judiciary Committee at a public hearing on Google's data collection, use and filtering practices. [More...]

No Time Like the Present to Get Up to Speed on Sales Tax Laws
Americans are used to hearing the refrain, "We pay the sales tax," from mattress sellers and car dealerships during big sales weekends. The phrase, "You pay the sales tax," however, is something we're all going to become a lot more familiar with in the wake of the Supreme Court's ruling in South Dakota v. Wayfair. That's because the Wayfair decision reverses a precedent set in 1967 and upheld in 1992. [More...]

BlackBerry Makes Autonomous Vehicle Play
BlackBerry this week introduced its new Security Credential Management System. SCMS -- a free service for the public and private sectors -- could encourage efforts to develop autonomous and connected vehicle pilot programs. BlackBerry undertook development of this technology to provide the critical infrastructure for vehicles and traffic lights to exchange information securely. [More...]

Supermicro: Our Motherboards Are Clean
Supermicro CEO Charles Liang has informed the company's customers that a leading third-party investigations company found "absolutely no evidence of malicious hardware" on its motherboards. The investigation was undertaken in response to a recent claim that bad actors had inserted spy chips in the firm's motherboards on behalf of the Chinese People's Liberation Army. [More...]

Oracle and the JEDI Contract
Oracle has filed a suit in federal court over the $10 billion Pentagon JEDI contract to be awarded to a single vendor. Oracle claims that the single-vendor award is unfair and illegal, a claim it first filed with the GAO, or Government Accountability Office. The suit followed the GAO's denial of Oracle's claim. My first instinct was to call this legislative entrepreneurship. [More...]

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The Morning After: Virgin Galactic goes to space for the first time

Engadget Email Newsletter

It's Friday, December 14, 2018.

Hey, good morning! You look fabulous.

What’d you do this week? If it didn’t involve a historic trip into space then Richard Branson and Virgin Galactic have you beat. Other out-of-reach experiences include hopping behind the wheel of McLaren’s 720S and taking a selfie on Mars, but we can all share the season-two trailer of Star Trek Discovery.

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First human spaceflight launched from the US since 2011.

Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo reaches space for the first time

SpaceShipTwo has reached space after months of testing, flying to an altitude of 271,268 feet before returning to Earth. The stay was brief (SST fired its rocket for all of a minute), but it was enough to both verify the spacecraft as well as conduct four NASA-backed scientific experiments that studied the effects of microgravity and devices that could handle life support and counteract vibration.

Beauty and brains.

McLaren’s 720S is a glorious nerd-built supercar

At $288,000, the McLaren 720S is out of the reach of pretty much everyone. For those lucky enough to have a chance to get behind the wheel, it's an absolute blast even when it's constrained by the realities of city driving. That’s thanks to an active suspension system developed at Cambridge University -- and whatever those nerds were doing, worked.

A Valve-Epic rivalry isn't a matter of life or death for either company.

The Epic Games Store is the best thing that could happen to Steam

Before it could properly innovate, Steam needed competition. And now, with the launch of the Epic Games Store, it has exactly that.

This $400 photography master class is just $29 right now

Someone show this to Stephen Curry.

NASA's InSight lander proves it's on Mars with a selfie

Next time you can't find the perfect angle for your selfie, just thank the universe you're not NASA's InSight lander. The spacecraft had to take 11 images with a camera attached to its robotic arm and then stitch them together to create its first self portrait.