More than 267 million Facebook users allegedly had their user IDs, phone numbers and names exposed online, according to a report from Comparitech and security researcher Bob Diachenko. From a report: That info was found in a database that could be accessed without a password or any other authentication, and the researchers believe it was gathered as part of an illegal scraping operation or Facebook API abuse. Dianchenko says he reported the database to the service provider managing the IP address of the server, but the database was exposed for nearly two weeks. In the meantime, he says, the data was posted as a download in a hacker forum. That's a lot of personal data to be floating around in the wild, and as Comparitech notes, it could be used to carry out phishing scams and other foul play.

How an overlooked feature of deep learning networks can turn into a major breakthrough for AI. From a report: Traditionally, deep learning algorithms such as deep neural networks (DNNs) are trained in a supervised fashion to recognize specific classes of things. In a typical task, a DNN might be trained to visually recognize a certain number of classes, say pictures of apples and bananas. Deep learning algorithms, when fed a good quantity and quality of data, are really good at coming up with precise, low error, confident classifications. The problem arises when a third, unknown object appears in front of the DNN. If an unknown object that was not present in the training set is introduced, such as an orange, then the network will be forced to "guess" and classify the orange as the closest class that captures the unknown object -- an apple! Basically, the world for a DNN trained on apples and bananas is completely made of apples and bananas. It can't conceive the whole fruit basket.

While its usefulness is not immediately clear in all applications, the idea of "nothing" or a "class zero" is extremely useful in several ways when training and deploying a DNN. During the training process, if a DNN has the ability to classify items as "apple," "banana," or "nothing," the algorithm's developers can determine if it hasn't effectively learned to recognize a particular class. That said, if pictures of fruit continue to yield "nothing" responses, perhaps the developers need to add another "class" of fruit to identify, such as oranges. Meanwhile, in a deployment scenario, a DNN trained to recognize healthy apples and bananas can answer "nothing" if there is a deviation from the prototypical fruit it has learned to recognize. In this sense, the DNN may act as an anomaly detection network -- aside from classifying apples and bananas, it can also, without further changes, signal when it sees something that deviates from the norm. As of today, there are no easy ways to train a standard DNN so that it can provide the functionality above.

pgmrdlm shares a report: Boeing's new Starliner capsule went off course after launch Friday and won't dock with the International Space Station during its first test flight. It was supposed to be a crucial dress rehearsal for next year's inaugural launch with astronauts. The blastoff from Cape Canaveral, Florida, went flawlessly as the Atlas V rocket lifted off with the Starliner capsule. But a half-hour into the flight, Boeing reported that the capsule didn't get into the right orbit to reach the space station. The capsule is still in space and will be brought back to Earth, landing in New Mexico as early as Sunday. Boeing is one of two companies hired by NASA to launch astronauts from the U.S. The space agency has been relying on Russian rockets to travel to the space station since the retirement of the space shuttle almost nine years ago. [...] This was Boeing's chance to catch up with SpaceX, NASA's other commercial crew provider that successfully completed a similar demonstration last March. SpaceX has one last hurdle -- a launch abort test -- before carrying two NASA astronauts in its Dragon capsule, possibly by spring.

Apple has a secret team working on satellites and related wireless technology, striving to find new ways to beam data such as internet connectivity directly to its devices, Bloomberg reported Friday, citing people familiar with the work. From a report: The Cupertino, California-based iPhone maker has about a dozen engineers from the aerospace, satellite and antenna design industries working on the project with the goal of deploying their results within five years, said the people, who asked not to be identified discussing internal company efforts. Work on the project is still early and could be abandoned, the people said, and a clear direction and use for satellites hasn't been finalized. Still, Apple Chief Executive Officer Tim Cook has shown interest in the project, indicating it's a company priority. Apple's work on communications satellites and next-generation wireless technology means the aim is likely to beam data to a user's device, potentially mitigating the dependence on wireless carriers, or for linking devices together without a traditional network. Apple could also be exploring satellites for more precise location tracking for its devices, enabling improved maps and new features.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Many IT workers worry their positions will become obsolete as changes in hardware, software, and computing tasks outstrip their skills. A former contractor for Siemens concocted a remedy for that -- plant logic bombs in projects he designed that caused them to periodically malfunction. Then wait for a call to come fix things. On Monday, David A. Tinley, a 62-year-old from Harrison City, Pennsylvania, was sentenced to six months in prison and a fine of $7,500 in the scheme. The sentence came five months after he pleaded guilty to a charge of intentional damage to a protected computer. Tinley was a contract employee for Siemens Corporation at its Monroeville, Pennsylvania, location.

According to a charging document filed in U.S. District Court for the Western District of Pennsylvania, the logic bombs Tinley surreptitiously planted into his projects caused them to malfunction after a certain preset amount of time. Because Siemens managers were unaware of the logic bombs and didn't know the cause of the malfunctions, they would call Tinley and ask him to fix the misbehaving projects. The scheme ran from 2014 to 2016. Tinley will be under supervised release for two years following his prison term. He will also pay restitution. The parties in the case stipulated a total loss amount of $42,262.50. Tinley faced as much as 10 years in prison and a $250,000 fine.

dryriver writes: 27 years ago, the BBC's "Tomorrow's World" show broadcasted this little gem of a program [currently available on YouTube]. After showing old Red-Cyan Anaglyph movies, Victorian Stereoscopes, lenticular-printed holograms and a monochrome laser hologram projected into a sheet of glass, the presenter shows off a stereoscopic 3D CRT computer display with active shutter glasses. The program then takes us to a laboratory at Massachusetts Institute Of Technology, where a supercomputer is feeding 3D wireframe graphics into the world's first glasses-free holographic 3D display prototype using a Tellurium Dioxide crystal. One of the researchers at the lab predicts that "years from now, advances in LCD technology may make this kind of display cheap enough to use in the home."

A presenter then shows a bulky plastic VR headset larger than an Oculus Rift and explains how VR will let you experience completely computer-generated worlds as if you are there. The presenter notes that 1992 VR headsets may be "too bulky" for the average user, and shows a mockup of much smaller VR glasses about the size of Magic Leap's AR glasses, noting that "these are already in development." What is astonishing about watching this 27-year-old TV broadcast is a) the realization that much of today's stereo stereo 3D tech was already around in some form or another in the early 1990s; b) VR headsets took an incredibly long time to reach the consumer and are still too bulky; and that c) almost three decades later, MIT's prototype holographic glasses-free 3D display technology never made its way into consumer hands or households.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from ProPublica: Multiple state attorneys general, including Josh Stein of North Carolina, have opened investigations of TurboTax maker Intuit, following ProPublica's reporting that the company charged millions of Americans for tax filing services they were eligible to receive for free, according to people with knowledge of the investigations. As part of the investigations, Intuit has been subpoenaed for records. At least four states besides North Carolina are investigating, but the exact number is not clear.

The company has not specifically disclosed the state investigations to shareholders. Its recent quarterly financial report contains a broad statement that, "Beginning in May 2019, various legal proceedings were filed and certain regulatory inquiries were commenced in connection with the provision and marketing of our free online tax preparation programs." It continues: "We believe that the allegations contained within the legal proceedings are without merit. We intend to vigorously defend against the legal proceedings and cooperate in the investigations." Previous ProPublica reports described how Intuit routinely charged millions of Americans who were eligible to file their taxes for free, sometimes luring them in with deceptive marketing. They also found that Intuit had even hidden its free tax-filing program, offered through a partnership with the IRS, from search engines such as Google.

Last year, Finland launched a free online crash course in artificial intelligence with the aim of educating its citizens about the new technology. Now, as a Christmas present to the world, the European nation is making the six week program available for anyone to take. The Verge reports: Strictly speaking, it's a present for the European Union. Finland is relinquishing the EU's rotating presidency at the end of the year, and decided to translate its course into every EU language as a gift to citizens. But there aren't any geographical restrictions as to who can take the course, so really it's to the world's benefit. The course certainly proved itself in Finland, with more than 1 percent of the Nordic nation's 5.5 million citizens signing up. The course, named Elements of AI, is currently available in English, Swedish, Estonian, Finnish, and German.

Dominion Energy, the utility that supplies the Commonwealth of Virginia with most of its electricity, is about to begin an ambitious plan to roll out electric school buses in the state that will store electricity when not ferrying kids to school. "Earlier this week, it was announced that phase one, which begins in 2020, will start with 50 electric school buses built by Thomas Built Buses in partnership with Proterra and Daimler Trucks," reports Ars Technica. From the report: The buses will be Saf-T-Liner C2 Jouleys, an electric version of one of TBB's existing buses. Each one will carry 220kWh of lithium-ion battery storage for a range of about 134 miles (216km), and they will recharge in about three hours using Proterra's 60kW DC fast charging system.

Dominion Energy says that replacing a single diesel school bus with an EV bus has the same effect as taking more than five gasoline cars off the road, and by 2025 it hopes to have deployed 1,000 EV school buses to the Commonwealth. Should all go well, it wants 50 percent of Virginia's school bus fleet to be battery electric by 2030. The utility is offsetting the costs to school districts, in part because it wants to use the buses for vehicle-to-grid storage when they're not on the school run. In fact, a school district's suitability for V2G is the main determining factor in deciding which districts will be chosen for the first 50 buses.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Motherboard: When Amazon confirmed it was planning to launch 3,236 broadband internet-beaming satellites into low-Earth orbit, much of the media reported it as if it were a done deal -- the latest, inevitable step in the corporation's quest to conquer commerce, the cloud, and beyond. Amazon officials said the massive satellite constellation, called Project Kuiper, would one day provide low-latency, high-speed broadband to tens of millions of underserved people around the world, no doubt also connecting them to the wide world of Amazon offerings.

But before Project Kuiper can launch, it must receive approval from the Federal Communications Commission to operate within a certain frequency spectrum. In an application filed this July, Amazon requested a special waiver to FCC rules that would grant it the necessary permission. The problem, though, is that the FCC already handed out licenses to that spectrum years ago to nine other satellite internet companies in a different, more complicated process. Those companies -- including SpaceX and OneWeb -- are now lobbying the FCC to deny Amazon's waiver request, according to FCC records. If successful, they could significantly reduce Project Kuiper's viability in an already oversaturated market. "Top SpaceX officials have met with FCC Chairman Ajit Pai and other agency staff at least three times to lodge in-person complaints about Project Kuiper's application," reports Motherboard, citing FCC records. "The first meeting came several weeks after Amazon filed its application, the most recent took place on Dec. 2 and 3."

"Amazon's overt attempt to override long-standing rules would undermine confidence in Commission processes, harm competition, and eliminate broadband options for consumers," SpaceX lawyers wrote in a Nov. 25 filing. Project Kuiper would have a "significant detrimental impact [on] SpaceX ... Amazon's flawed analysis yields results that defy common sense."

The log-in credentials for 3,672 Ring camera owners were compromised this week, exposing log-in emails, passwords, time zones, and the names people give to specific Ring cameras, which are often the same as camera locations, such as "bedroom" or "front door." BuzzFeed News reports: Using the log-in email and password, an intruder could access a Ring customer's home address, telephone number, and payment information, including the kind of card they have, and its last four digits and security code. An intruder could also access live camera footage from all active Ring cameras associated with an account, as well as a 30- to 60-day video history, depending on the user's cloud storage plan. We don't know how this tranche of customer information was leaked. Ring denies any claims that the data was compromised as a part of a breach of Ring's systems. A Ring spokesperson declined to tell BuzzFeed News when it became aware of the leak or whether it affected a third party that Ring uses to provide its services.

Security experts told BuzzFeed News that the format of the leaked data -- which includes username, password, camera name, and time zone in a standardized format -- suggests it was taken from a company database. They said data obtained via credential stuffing -- when previously-compromised emails and passwords are used to get access to other accounts -- would likely not display Ring-specific data like camera names or time zone. BuzzFeed News was alerted to the leak by a security researcher, who claimed he used a web crawler to search the internet for any data leaks pertaining to Ring accounts. The security researcher found the list of compromised credentials posted anonymously on a text storage site. "Ring has not had a data breach. Our security team has investigated these incidents and we have no evidence of an unauthorized intrusion or compromise of Ring's systems or network," a Ring spokesperson said. "It is not uncommon for bad actors to harvest data from other company's data breaches and create lists like this so that other bad actors can attempt to gain access to other services."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the BBC: Severed fibre optic cables disrupted internet access in parts of eastern Europe, Iran and Turkey on Thursday. The issue, which lasted for about two hours, was caused by multiple fibre cables being physically cut at the same time, a highly unusual thing to happen. Google said its services were among those unavailable in the region for about 30 minutes. The company told internet service providers to connect to its other servers to "route around the problem."

In a statement, the company blamed "multiple simultaneous fibre cuts," which are very rare. BBC Monitoring confirmed that internet access in Bulgaria, Iran and Turkey had been disrupted for about two hours on Thursday morning. Sadjad Bonabi, a director at Iran's Communications Infrastructure Company, said two cuts happened at once, one between Iran and Bucharest and the other on a line to Munich. This disrupted traffic on one of the major fibre cables in the region. But Mr Bonabi said traffic had been routed on to "healthy" connections in western and southern Iran. No explanation for the cut cables has been offered.

Facebook won't use the phone numbers some users give it for two-factor authentication for its "people you may know" feature. From a report: The social network says the move is "part of a wide-ranging overhaul of its privacy practices." It previously used phone numbers to serve ads too but says it stopped doing that in June. Two-factor authentication is a great way to reduce the risk of accounts being compromised, so giving users reasons to avoid using it is vile, even by Facebook's admittedly low standards. When news broke last year that Facebook was misusing phone numbers in that way it was met with appropriate opprobrium from the media and privacy advocates.

Because some internet websites unfairly block browsers from accessing their services, starting with Vivaldi 2.10, released today, the Vivaldi browser plans to disguise itself as Chrome to allow users to access websites that unfairly block them. From a report: Vivaldi will do this by modifying its default user-agent (UA) string to the UA string used by Chrome. A UA string is a piece of text that browsers send to websites when they initiate a connection. The UA String contains data about the browser type, rendering engine, and operating system. For example, a UA string for Firefox on Windows looks like this: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64; rv:71.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/71.0. UA strings have been in use since the 90s. For decades, websites have used UA agent strings to fine-tune performance and features or block outdated browsers. However, many website owners these days use UA strings to block users from accessing their sites. Some do it because they're not willing to deal with browser-specific bugs, some do it because of pettiness, while big tech companies like Google and Microsoft have done it (and continue to do it) to sabotage competitors on the browser market.

orange shares a report: The organization responsible for allocating internet addresses across Africa has yet again become embroiled in scandal, this time over long-standing claims of corruption. A founding employee of Afrinic resigned soon after allegations emerged that millions of its valuable public-facing IPv4 addresses had been stolen and sold or leased to others through companies he controlled. Soon after, Afrinic's external auditor PwC informed the organization it, too, was resigning from its role.

In both cases, Afrinic's board has attempted to place itself above the issue by ordering an investigation and sending a letter to PwC asking for an explanation. But internet insiders say the rot goes far deeper, and note that warnings of unusual activity at Afrinic, including misdirected organizational funds, have long gone unanswered by a series of CEOs and boards, despite a series of "investigations." In an explosive article earlier this month, the lease and sale of allegedly stolen blocks of IP addresses going back years was traced directly to the organization's second employee, Ernest Byaruhanga, Afrinic's policy coordinator.

Facebook doesn't want its hardware like Oculus and Portal to be at the mercy of Google because they rely on its Android operating system. From a report: That's why Facebook has tasked a co-author of Microsoft's Windows NT named Mark Lucovsky with building the social network an operating system from scratch, according the The Information's Alex Heath. "We really want to make sure the next generation has space for us," says Facebook's VP of hardware Andrew 'Boz' Bosworth. "We don't think we can trust the marketplace or competitors to ensure that's the case. And so we're gonna do it ourselves."

By moving to its own OS, Facebook could have more freedom to bake social interaction -- and hopefully privacy -- deeper into its devices. It could also prevent a disagreement between Google and Facebook from derailing the roadmaps of Oculus, Portal, or future gadgets. One added bonus of moving to a Facebook-owned operating system? It could make it tougher to force Facebook to spin out some of its acquisitions, especially if Facebook goes with Instagram branding for its future augmented reality glasses.

An anonymous reader shares a report: Earlier this year, researchers installed the world's highest weather station on the upper reaches of Mount Everest. The roughly 50-kilogram station, taller than a person, is one of five on and near the mountain that are collecting data about jet steam winds and warming conditions in High Mountain Asia, a region jam-packed with the most glaciers outside of Earth's poles. Tom Matthews, a climate scientist at Loughborough University in the United Kingdom, and Paul Mayewski, a glaciologist at the University of Maine in Orono, were part of the record-setting expedition. Matthews presented some of the group's results last week here at the annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union. The two researchers chatted with Science about working at extreme altitudes, the power of body heat, and dealing with crowds on one of the world's most dangerous mountains.

There are real concerns about the way 5G is being deployed in the US, including security issues, the potential to interfere with weather forecasting systems, and the FCC steamrolling local regulators in the name of accelerating the 5G rollout. But concerns over the potential health impacts of 5G are overblown. From a report: If you weren't worried about prior generations of cellular service causing cancer, 5G doesn't produce much new to worry about. And you probably didn't need to be worried before. Few 5G services will use higher frequencies in the near term, and there's little reason to think these frequencies are any more harmful than other types of electromagnetic radiation such as visible light. Most concerns about health impacts from 5G stem from millimeter-wave technology, high-frequency radio waves that are supposed to deliver much faster speeds. The catch is that millimeter-wave transmissions are far less reliable at long distances than transmissions using the lower frequencies that mobile carriers have traditionally used. To provide reliable, ubiquitous 5G service over millimeter-wave frequencies, carriers will need a larger number of smaller access points.

That's led to two fears: That the effects of millimeter-wave signals might be more dangerous than traditional frequencies; and that the larger number of access points, some potentially much closer to people's homes, might expose people to more radiation than 4G services. But millimeter waves aren't the only, or even the main, way that carriers will deliver 5G service. T-Mobile offers the most widespread 5G service available today. But it uses a band of low frequencies originally used for broadcast television. Sprint, meanwhile, repurposed some of the "mid-band" spectrum it uses for 4G to provide 5G. Verizon and AT&T both offer millimeter-wave-based services, but they're only available in a handful of locations. The wireless industry is focused more on using mid- and low-band frequencies for 5G, because deploying a massive number of millimeter-wave access points will be time-consuming and expensive. In other words, 5G will continue using the same radio frequencies that have been used for decades for broadcast radio and television, satellite communications, mobile services, Wi-Fi, and Bluetooth.

Airbnb will be breathing a sigh of relief today: Europe's top court has judged it to be an online platform which merely connects people looking for short term accommodation, rather than a full-blown estate agent. From a report: The ruling may make it harder for the 'home sharing' platform to be forced to comply with local property regulations -- at least under current regional rules governing ecommerce platforms. The judgement by the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) today follows a complaint made by a French tourism association, AHTOP, which had argued Airbnb should hold a professional estate agent licence. And, that by not having one, the platform giant was in breach of a piece of French legislation known as the 'Hoguet Law.' However the court disagreed -- siding with Airbnb's argument that its business must be classified as an 'information society service' under EU Directive 2000/31 on electronic commerce.

Every minute of every day, everywhere on the planet, dozens of companies -- largely unregulated, little scrutinized -- are logging the movements of tens of millions of people with mobile phones and storing the information in gigantic data files. The Times Privacy Project obtained one such file, by far the largest and most sensitive ever to be reviewed by journalists. It holds more than 50 billion location pings from the phones of more than 12 million Americans as they moved through several major cities, including Washington, New York, San Francisco and Los Angeles. The New York Times: Each piece of information in this file represents the precise location of a single smartphone over a period of several months in 2016 and 2017. The data was provided to Times Opinion by sources who asked to remain anonymous because they were not authorized to share it and could face severe penalties for doing so. The sources of the information said they had grown alarmed about how it might be abused and urgently wanted to inform the public and lawmakers. After spending months sifting through the data, tracking the movements of people across the country and speaking with dozens of data companies, technologists, lawyers and academics who study this field, we feel the same sense of alarm. In the cities that the data file covers, it tracks people from nearly every neighborhood and block, whether they live in mobile homes in Alexandria, Va., or luxury towers in Manhattan.

One search turned up more than a dozen people visiting the Playboy Mansion, some overnight. Without much effort we spotted visitors to the estates of Johnny Depp, Tiger Woods and Arnold Schwarzenegger, connecting the devices' owners to the residences indefinitely. If you lived in one of the cities the dataset covers and use apps that share your location -- anything from weather apps to local news apps to coupon savers -- you could be in there, too. If you could see the full trove, you might never use your phone the same way again.