Wednesday, October 5, 2022

Best Keyboard Deals: Save on Mechanical, Bluetooth, Gaming Keyboards and More - CNET

Shop the best bargains out there on keyboards for every need and budget.

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Splatoon 3's Idols Are Holding a Live Concert on Oct. 9. - CNET

DJ K.K. from Animal Crossing is also performing.

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Webb, Hubble Telescopes Team Up for Ethereal View of Dusty Galaxy - CNET

Break out the cosmic dust buster.

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Best Wireless Mouse Deals: Save on Travel, Gaming and Everyday Computing Mice - CNET

The best bargains out there right now on wireless mice for every need and budget.

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How to Watch Astronauts Arrive at the ISS Aboard a SpaceX Dragon - CNET

The Crew-5 mission passengers safely made it to orbit Wednesday.

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Latest Gadgets News

Google Pixel 7 and Pixel 7 Pro will be launched by the tech giant today at the ‘Made By Google’ event scheduled to begin at 10am ET (7.30pm IST). The Google event will launch a number of other products, including the Google Pixel Watch which was first teased by the company in May.

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Android Owners, Watch Out for These 7 Shady VPN Apps - CNET

Virtual private network apps are supposed to protect your privacy, not put it at risk by requesting dangerous permissions.

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Latest Tech News

The White House have released a blueprint for an “AI bill of rights” that looks to increase the privacy and safety of American citizens who encounter automated systems.

The announcement of the blueprint, developed by the government’s Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP), looks to promote five key areas around AI safety: “Safe and Effective Systems”, “Algorithmic Discrimination Protections”, “Data Privacy”, “Notice and Explanation”, and “Human Alternatives, Consideration, and Fallback”.

The blueprint will apply to any automated systems that “have the potential to meaningfully impact the American public’s rights, opportunities, or access to critical resources or services,” the White House wrote. 

Regulating artificial intelligence

At a glance, the ideas in the blueprint are exactly the sort of thing the federal government should be looking to address as businesses and governments across the whole world moves toward automation in their processes. 

The trouble is that these are just ideas. It’s what the federal government believes should become legislation, but nothing in the blueprint is legally binding, and - fundamentally - nothing has changed.

The blueprint also takes the rise of artificially intelligent automation systems as an inevitability, rather than a threat to be opposed. 

The OSTP’s heart is in the right place as it looks to protect marginalised Americans from predictive policing (whereby an automated system may suspect a person of committing a crime before doing so, usually on the basis of ethnicity or gender), but it can do better than simply trusting that businesses will make its proposed changes to their automated systems.

A stylistic representation of a person looking down at their phone while streams of data flow beside them.

Image credit: Unsplash (Image credit: Unsplash)

Notably, the OSTP wants human oversight to be the “fallback” when automation fails, and never the primary implementation of a system, regardless of whether, in certain scenarios such as healthcare and insurance, that would make for a safer system.

Speaking to Wired, Annette Zimmermann, researcher of AI, justice and moral philosophy at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, believes that the blueprint failing to consider simply not deploying automation is the biggest threat to the right Americans have to justice.

“We can’t articulate a bill of rights without considering non-deployment, the most rights-protecting option,” she claimed.

Elsewhere in the world, legislation taking a hard line against AI’s role in people’s lives could be on the way.

This year, the European Parliament has deliberated on redrafting the European Union's AI Act, with some MEPs supporting a ban on predictive policing. A vote is expected to take place by the end of 2022, while those leading the amendment process have stated predictive policing “violates the presumption of innocence as well as human dignity.”

The White House’s proposals could be interesting to watch develop, but, in comparison with efforts in the EU, may not be enough, and ultimately lead to nothing.



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Tuesday, October 4, 2022

Pixel Watch: All the Rumors We Know Ahead of Google's Smartwatch Reveal - CNET

Google's October event is set to reveal the Pixel Watch's price, release date and other features.

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Latest Tech News

Researchers have found that Google Chrome's Application Mode can be abused for phishing threats.

Used to offer ChromeOS users a clean, minimal interface for certain websites such as YouTube, when launched, Application Mode brings up a new browser window without the address bar, toolbars, or other familiar elements - even the taskbar displays the website favicon instead of the Chrome icon.

But this mode can be abused, cybersecurity researcher mr.d0x discovered. If an attacker manages to convince a user to run a Windows shortcut that runs a phishing URL with Chromium’s Application Mode feature, the user will only see what seems to be the login form for an app. In reality, though, it would be a phishing page that steals people’s login data. 

Shortcut files 

Ever since Microsoft moved to kill malicious Office files, cybercriminals have been pivoting towards Windows shortcut files (.LNK). 

Cybersecurity experts have since uncovered countless attack campaigns that successfully leveraged .LNK files to deliver all kinds of viruses and malware, from QBot, to BazarLoader, to anything in between. 

Explaining this new potential method, mr.d0x says an attacker could use a shortcut file to launch a phishing “applet” on the victim’s endpoint: 

  • For Chrome:
    "C:\Program Files\Google\Chrome\Application\chrome.exe" --app=https://example.com
  • For Microsoft Edge
    "c:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft\Edge\Application\msedge.exe" --app=https://example.com

There are multiple ways to abuse this flaw, mr.d0x added, including having access to the target device, using a portable HTML file with the “-app” parameter embedded, or using the Browser-in-the-Browser technique to add a fake address bar. Finally, the attack can also be pulled off on macOS and Linux devices, he said. 

Via: BleepingComputer



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How to Download Overwatch 2 and Set Up SMS Protect - CNET

You'll need to add a verified phone number to your Blizzard account to launch the game.

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Latest Tech News

The latest update to Microsoft Edge is set to deliver some important security feature updates.

First up, the web browser has had a boost to its web defence that Microsoft says makes it “more reliable”. The update uses a rewritten ‘Microsoft Defender SmartScreen’ library, which was first introduced in Edge 103. This feature is exclusive to users running Edge on a Windows machine. 

As part of the improvement, the ‘NewSmartScreenLibraryEnabled’ policy is deprecated in Microsoft Edge 106, and will be considered obsolete in the next major release (107). 

Microsoft Edge 106

This follows the news that Edge will enter an ultra-high security mode when users navigate to less popular websites. The settings to enable this are in ‘Settings and more’ > ‘Settings’ > ‘Privacy, search, and services’, where users can pick from ‘Basic’, ‘Balanced’, and ‘Strict’. 

Microsoft’s developers have also been busy updating the work results feature in the browser’s address bar. 

The number of results that can be displayed has doubled from two to four, which should offer “greater visibility into the work content available to you as you search.” To get work results, you will need to enable the ‘AddressBarMicrosoftSearchInBingProviderEnabled’ policy.

Other updates to the latest version of Edge 106 include three new policies, two deprecated policies, and two that are now obsolete (‘OutlookHubMenuEnabled’ and ‘EdgeDiscoverEnabled’).

Microsoft Edge 106 is available in the Stable Channel now.

Earlier this year, we reported that Edge is finally on the up following the retirement of Internet Explorer. The browser passed the 10% global desktop market share in April 2022 and peaked at 10.92% in August 2022, however it still trails a long way behind Google Chrome at more than 67%.

Unlike Internet Explorer, Microsoft Edge can be installed on macOS and Linux devices as well as the Windows operating system. There are iOS and Android versions of the browser, too. 



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Latest Tech News

The founder of Raspberry Pi has confirmed that getting hold of the latest models will continue to be a struggle for regular consumers for the foreseeable future.

Contacted by Jeff Geerling, a prominent YouTuber whose videos regularly feature Pi boards of one variety or another, Eben Upton conceded that the problems described back in April are yet to be resolved.

Specifically, Raspberry Pi has suffered from a variety of supply chain issues that have made it impossible to produce boards in high volumes, a situation made worse by the allocation of limited manufacturing capacity to larger players.

Raspberry Pi shortage

In December 2021, we reported on the beginnings of the shortage of Raspberry Pi models. At the time, official resellers were estimating they would be unable to ship some of the most popular SKUs for many months.

In a blog post, Upton said he expected supply chain challenges to continue “throughout much of 2022”, with the problem set to become less acute as more manufacturing capacity comes online and logistics bottlenecks are resolved.

However, the recovery has been hindered by other external factors too. Namely, the shortage has been aggravated by a plague of scalpers, who are using automated bots to scoop up any supply that does hit the shelves, with a view to flipping it for a profit on secondary markets.

A similar problem has made it extremely difficult to get hold of the latest graphics cards and video game consoles, some of which have been sold on at exorbitant prices.

Worse, Upton told Geerling that while Raspberry Pi ringfences a percentage of stock for regular consumers, the priority is currently to deliver on large-scale orders from OEMs and industrial customers. The rationale is that, otherwise, companies reliant on Pi boards might “wither and die”.

As noted by our sister site Tom’s Hardware, the best bet for hobbyists hoping to get their hands on a Raspberry Pi is currently to monitor stock tracking sites (like rpilocator), pay a premium in the secondary market, or opt for a more costly Raspberry Pi alternative. An unpalatable selection of choices, if ever there was one.



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Startling NASA Satellite Image Shows Hurricane Ian's Wide Eye - CNET

The powerful storm's eye appeared as a massive swirl of clouds just hours before landfall in Florida.

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Latest Tech News

A study by the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) examining the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic on our working environments has predicted what it calls an “office real estate apocalypse”.

The September 2022 paper found a significant 45% decline in office values during 2020, with a longer term fall of 39%. The NBER places the long run figure at an alarming $453 billion, however among the findings was a hint at how offices can protect themselves against impending doom.

The abstract reads: “Higher quality office buildings were somewhat buffered against these trends due to a flight to quality, while lower quality office buildings see much more dramatic swings.” 

Should I rent an office?

That said, an article on the San Francisco Standard entitled “Turning Downtown Offices Into Housing Isn’t the Solution You Think It Is” suggests that repurposing old office buildings may not be such a savior after all. Not only is a building’s suitability for residential development a sticking point, but renovation costs remain high as the cost of living crisis continues.

As the pandemic was unravelling, an estimated 95% of physical offices were occupied, a figure that dropped to just 10% in March 2020. While many companies are now warning their employees of a return to office, as of September 2022, the figure had just crept up to around half of what it was pre-pandemic, at 47%.

The research suggests that higher quality offices, with more amenities, are performing best, with rents either maintaining or increasing. Meanwhile, less equipped office spaces are facing tougher challenges and are being faced with potentially having to repurpose.

However, the future remains uncertain. Almost two in three (62%) US office leases have not come up for renewal since the pandemic, and NBER’s researchers think that “rents may not have bottomed out yet.” 

There have been mixed reactions to hybrid working routines across the globe, but in the face of challenging rental conditions, working from home may be about to experience yet another boom.



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Latest Tech News

Some TV shows are like comfort food, and for me, there’s no show more comforting than Peep Show. The British sitcom from the early 2000s h...