Security

Gen Z Officially Worse At Passwords Than 80-Year-Olds (theregister.com) 97

A NordPass analysis found that Gen Z is actually worse at password security than older generations, with "12345" topping their list while "123456" dominates among everyone else. The Register reports: And while there were a few more "skibidis" among the Zoomer dataset compared to those who came before them, the trends were largely similar. Variants on the "123456" were among the most common for all age groups, with that exact string proving to be the most common among all users -- the sixth time in seven years it holds the undesirable crown.

Some of the more adventurous would stretch to "1234567," while budding cryptologists shored up their accounts by adding an 8 or even a 9 to the mix. However, according to Security.org's password security checker, a computer could crack any of these instantly. Most attackers would not even need to expend the resources required to reveal the password, given how commonly used they are. They could just spray a list of known passwords at an authentication API and secure a quick win.

Businesses

Visa, Coinbase Offer Real-Time Crypto Purchases Via Debit Cards (bloomberg.com) 47

Visa customers with eligible debit cards will be able to deposit funds into their Coinbase accounts -- sometimes instantly -- via a partnership announced by the payments giant and crypto exchange. From a report: Coinbase already has millions of connections to customers' debit cards but this new development allows for the real-time flow of funds for customers in the US and European Union, according to the Tuesday statement.

Eligible Visa debit card holders can now "take advantage of trading opportunities day and night," said Yanilsa Gonzalez Ore, head of the Visa Direct business for North America. Visa, which powers the Coinbase debit card, said customers will also be able to buy cryptocurrencies on Coinbase with an eligible debit card and cash out their money from the platform to a bank account, also via the card.

The Almighty Buck

Walmart Plans Instant Bank Payments, Cutting Out Card Networks (bnnbloomberg.ca) 139

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: Walmart customers will soon have the option to pay directly from their bank accounts with instant transfers for online purchases. The enhanced feature is a flash point in the escalating tensions between merchants and the card networks setting the fees for payment processing. The world's largest retailer has offered pay-by-bank through Walmart Pay since earlier this year. Until now, the transactions were akin to digital checks and took roughly three days to finalize when being processed through The Automated Clearing House, the same network often used for bill payments or paycheck deposits. Soon, customers opting for pay-by-bank transactions will see the purchase reflected in their bank account balance instantly -- and Walmart will receive the funds immediately. [...]

Walmart's upgraded pay-by-bank offering will be rolled out in 2025. The transactions will occur over bank technology provider Fiserv's NOW Network, which integrates with The Clearing House's Real Time Payments network and the Federal Reserve's FedNow. Until now, large retailers hesitated to launch real time payment options because many banks were not connected to an instant settlement system, meaning their customers would not be able to use the product. NOW Network aims to connect to as many banks as possible to reach 100% of deposit accounts by combining its own network with RTP and FedNow. The instant pay-by-bank product will be available for online checkout on Walmart.com. The Bentonville, Arkansas-based retailer already has customers set up a profile when they shop online. If they opt to add pay-by-bank as a payment option on their profile, they will enter their bank login credentials to connect their account. Fiserv's AllData platform connects with their bank clients and vendors including Plaid, MX, Akoya and Finicity to link and authenticate consumer accounts.
With this instant pay-by-bank product, consumers will avoid stacked pending transactions, which can open them up to the risk of overdraft or non-sufficient fund fees from their bank. "When the transaction processes as a real time payment, customers get immediate access to see that payment come through, I see it hit my account and I can properly budget," said Jamie Henry, vice president of emerging payments at Walmart. "It's not as if I've got this phantom payment out there that's going to take place a couple days down the road."
Windows

What Happens If You Connect Windows XP To the Internet In 2024? (youtube.com) 73

Long-time Slashdot reader sandbagger writes: Have you ever wondered if it's true you can instantly get malware? In this video, a person connects an XP instance directly to the internet with no firewall to see just how fast it gets compromised by malware, rootkits, malicious services and new user accounts. The answer — fast!
Malwarebytes eventually finds eight different viruses/Trojan horses -- and a DNS changer. (One IP address leads back to the Russian federation.) Itâ(TM)s fun to watch -- within just a few hours a new Windows user has even added themself. And for good measure, he also opens up Internet Explorer...

âoeWindows XP -- very insecure,â they conclude at the end of the video. âoeVery easy for random software from the internet to get more privileges than you, and it is very hard to solve that.

âoeAlso, just out of curiosity I tried this on Windows 7. And even with all of the same settings, nothing happened. I let it run for 10 hours. So it seems like this may be a problem in historical Windows.â
Facebook

Meta Risks Sanctions Over 'Sneaky' Ad-Free Plans Confusing Users, EU Says (arstechnica.com) 23

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: The European Commission (EC) has finally taken action to block Meta's heavily criticized plan to charge a subscription fee to users who value privacy on its platforms. Surprisingly, this step wasn't taken under laws like the Digital Services Act (DSA), the Digital Markets Act (DMA), or the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). Instead, the EC announced Monday that Meta risked sanctions under EU consumer laws if it could not resolve key concerns about Meta's so-called "pay or consent" model. Meta's model is seemingly problematic, the commission said, because Meta "requested consumers overnight to either subscribe to use Facebook and Instagram against a fee or to consent to Meta's use of their personal data to be shown personalized ads, allowing Meta to make revenue out of it." Because users were given such short notice, they may have been "exposed to undue pressure to choose rapidly between the two models, fearing that they would instantly lose access to their accounts and their network of contacts," the EC said. To protect consumers, the EC joined national consumer protection authorities, sending a letter to Meta requiring the tech giant to propose solutions to resolve the commission's biggest concerns by September 1.

That Meta's "pay or consent" model may be "misleading" is a top concern because it uses the term "free" for ad-based plans, even though Meta "can make revenue from using their personal data to show them personalized ads." It seems that while Meta does not consider giving away personal information to be a cost to users, the EC's commissioner for justice, Didier Reynders, apparently does. "Consumers must not be lured into believing that they would either pay and not be shown any ads anymore, or receive a service for free, when, instead, they would agree that the company used their personal data to make revenue with ads," Reynders said. "EU consumer protection law is clear in this respect. Traders must inform consumers upfront and in a fully transparent manner on how they use their personal data. This is a fundamental right that we will protect." Additionally, the EC is concerned that Meta users might be confused about how "to navigate through different screens in the Facebook/Instagram app or web-version and to click on hyperlinks directing them to different parts of the Terms of Service or Privacy Policy to find out how their preferences, personal data, and user-generated data will be used by Meta to show them personalized ads." They may also find Meta's "imprecise terms and language" confusing, such as Meta referring to "your info" instead of clearly referring to consumers' "personal data."
A Meta spokesperson said in a statement: "Subscriptions as an alternative to advertising are a well-established business model across many industries. Subscription for no ads follows the direction of the highest court in Europe and we are confident it complies with European regulation."
Android

Google's New Pixel Tablet Is a $500 Slate For the Home (theverge.com) 81

Google has announced the Pixel Tablet after teasing it during last year's Google I/O conference. The Verge reports: The Pixel Tablet is designed from the ground up to be good at what people typically use tablets for: watching video or playing games in the comfort of their own home. It is not, however, making any statements about the future of computing. The looks of the Pixel Tablet are relatively generic. It has an 11-inch, 16:10, 2560 x 1600 pixel LCD display, even bezels all around, and a matte back. It comes in three colors: white, dark green, and light pink, with the dark green model featuring a black bezel. Though it looks like plastic from a distance, the Pixel Tablet has an aluminum frame with a nanotexture coating, not unlike what Google did with the Pixel 5 smartphone.

Bundled in the box with the Pixel Tablet is a magnetic speaker dock. This serves multiple purposes and is meant to prevent the dreaded "dead tablet in a drawer" syndrome: it's a place to store the Pixel Tablet when it's not in use; it charges the battery; and it has a louder, fuller speaker better suited for communal listening than the speakers that are built into the tablet. If you're playing music or watching a video on the tablet when you put it on the dock, it will seamlessly transfer the audio to the dock's speaker. Pull the tablet off the dock while something is playing, and it will instantly switch to the tablet's speakers.

When mounted on the speaker dock, the Pixel Tablet looks an awful lot like the Nest Hub Max, a $250 smart display that Google released back in 2019. But make no mistake, the Pixel Tablet is an Android tablet and not a smart display -- it runs completely different software and has different capabilities compared to the Nest Hub. That said, when the tablet is docked on the speaker, it can show a slideshow of images from your Google Photos albums just like the Nest Hub. It also has a quick access button to the Google Home app so you can control smart home devices, and it can accept voice commands from a distance for hands-free Google Assistant queries. The lock screen won't show any personal information like notifications -- for that, you'll have to unlock the tablet to access the accounts that are set up on it.
The $499 slab is available for preorder starting today, and will begin shipping on June 20th.
Games

Amazon Luna Can Now Play Games You Own On PC, No Channel Subscriptions Required 18

Amazon Luna is one of the better cloud gaming options if you play a lot of Ubisoft titles, and it's getting a big upgrade this week. You can now sync purchases on Luna to PC and play without a subscription. 9to5Google reports: Since its launch, Amazon Luna has worked solely on a subscription model. Players can access games through "channels," each of which includes a rotating selection of games. One of those channels is Ubisoft+, which has a selection of Ubisoft games for $17.99/month that can share that subscription cost with other platforms such as PC. But the one downside of Luna is that you always need one of those subscriptions -- that is, until now.

Available starting today, Amazon Luna will allow players to stream Ubisoft games they've purchased on PC without any channel subscriptions needed. You just need accounts from Amazon and from Ubisoft and to purchase compatible games. The only subscription required is Amazon Prime. By syncing Ubisoft Connect with Luna, players can stream their purchases instantly with no downloads and on more devices, such as Chromebooks and smartphones. But unlike other cloud platforms that have allowed purchases, such as Stadia, these games can also be downloaded and played on PC. Amazon notes that once your accounts are linked, future purchases from the Ubisoft Store will automatically appear in Luna.
Earth

Company Plans To Dig World's Deepest Hole To Unleash Boundless Energy (vice.com) 231

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Motherboard: A company that plans to drill deeper into Earth than ever before, creating holes that would extend a record-shattering 12 miles under our planet's surface, has raised a total of $63 million since its launch in 2020. Most recently, Quaise Energy, a startup that aims to revolutionize the geothermal energy market, secured $40 million in series A funding in February, reports Axios. The goal of these super-deep holes is to access a limitless amount of renewable energy from the heat deep inside Earth.

"This funding round brings us closer to providing clean, renewable baseload energy," said Carlos Araque, CEO and co-founder of Quaise Energy, according to BusinessWire. "Our technology allows us to access energy anywhere in the world, at a scale far greater than wind and solar, enabling future generations to thrive in a world powered with abundant clean energy." Geothermal energy has a low profile compared to other renewable energy sources such as solar, wind, and hydro, but Quaise believes it is "at the core of an energy-independent world," according to the company's website. This form of energy is among the oldest power sources harnessed by humans, but it only accounts for about 0.4 percent of net energy production in the United States, which is the world's biggest geothermal producer.

Quaise, which is a spinoff from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), intends to pioneer this technology using vacuum tubes known as gyrotrons that shoot millimeter-wave light beams, powered by electrons in a strong magnetic field. Using these devices, the company plans to burn almost twice as far into Earth as the deepest holes ever made, such as Russia's Kola Superdeep Borehole or Qatar's Al Shaheen oil well, both of which extend for about 7.5 miles. Gyrotrons are powerful enough to heat plasma in nuclear fusion experiments, making them an ideal tool to probe unprecedented depths of some 12 miles, where subterranean rocks roil at temperatures of about 500C (930F). Water pumped into this searing environment would instantly vaporize as steam that could be efficiently converted to electricity. Araque and his team at Quaise plan to funnel their seed money into prototype technologies within the next few years. By 2028, the company aspires to retrofit coal-fueled power plants into geothermal energy hotspots, reports ScienceAlert. The process of drilling out these super-deep holes would take a few months, but once the setup is complete, they could provide limitless energy to a region for up to a century, according to Araque.

Facebook

Facebook Bans Developer Behind Unfollow Everything Tool (theverge.com) 84

A developer who made a tool that let people automatically unfollow friends and groups on Facebook says he's been banned permanently from the social networking site. From a report: Louis Barclay was the creator of "Unfollow Everything," a browser extension that allowed Facebook users to essentially delete their News Feed by unfollowing all their connections at once. Facebook allows users to individually unfollow friends, groups, and pages, which removes their content from the News Feed, the algorithmically-controlled heart of Facebook. Barclay's tool automated this process, instantly wiping users' News Feed.

[...] In response, Facebook sent Barclay a cease-and-desist letter earlier this year, saying he'd violated the site's terms of service by creating software that automated user interactions. Barclay says the company then "permanently disabled my Facebook and Instagram accounts" and "demanded that I agree to never again create tools that interact with Facebook or its other services."

Crime

How Cybercriminals Almost Stole $1 Billion From Bangladesh's National Bank (bbc.com) 49

"In 2016 North Korean hackers planned a $1bn raid on Bangladesh's national bank," reports the BBC, "and came within an inch of success — it was only by a fluke that all but $81m of the transfers were halted, report Geoff White and Jean H Lee...

"It all started with a malfunctioning printer..." It was located inside a highly secure room on the 10th floor of the bank's main office in Dhaka, the capital. Its job was to print out records of the multi-million-dollar transfers flowing in and out of the bank. When staff found it wasn't working, at 08:45 on Friday 5 February 2016, "we assumed it was a common problem just like any other day," duty manager Zubair Bin Huda later told police. "Such glitches had happened before." In fact, this was the first indication that Bangladesh Bank was in a lot of trouble. Hackers had broken into its computer networks, and at that very moment were carrying out the most audacious cyber-attack ever attempted. Their goal: to steal a billion dollars.

To spirit the money away, the gang behind the heist would use fake bank accounts, charities, casinos and a wide network of accomplices.... When the bank's staff rebooted the printer, they got some very worrying news. Spilling out of it were urgent messages from the Federal Reserve Bank in New York — the "Fed" — where Bangladesh keeps a US-dollar account. The Fed had received instructions, apparently from Bangladesh Bank, to drain the entire account — close to a billion dollars. The Bangladeshis tried to contact the Fed for clarification, but thanks to the hackers' very careful timing, they couldn't get through... The bank's HQ in Dhaka was beginning two days off. And when the Bangladeshis began to uncover the theft on Saturday, it was already the weekend in New York... And the hackers had another trick up their sleeve to buy even more time. Once they had transferred the money out of the Fed, they needed to send it somewhere. So they wired it to accounts they'd set up in Manila, the capital of the Philippines. And in 2016, Monday 8 February was the first day of the Lunar New Year, a national holiday across Asia...

They had had plenty of time to plan all of this, because it turns out the Lazarus Group had been lurking inside Bangladesh Bank's computer systems for a year... Once inside the bank's systems, Lazarus Group began stealthily hopping from computer to computer, working their way towards the digital vaults and the billions of dollars they contained... But they still had one final hurdle to clear — the printer on the 10th floor. Bangladesh Bank had created a paper back-up system to record all transfers made from its accounts. This record of transactions risked exposing the hackers' work instantly. And so they hacked into the software controlling it and took it out of action.

With their tracks covered, at 20:36 on Thursday 4 February 2016, the hackers began making their transfers — 35 in all, totalling $951m, almost the entire contents of Bangladesh Bank's New York Fed account.

There's more to the story — it's a whole episode on a 10-episode BBC World Service podcast which they're calling an example of "the new front line in a global battleground: a murky nexus of crime, espionage and nation-state power-mongering. And it's growing fast."

The story has a surprise ending — but alongo the way, the BBC's article points out that the consequences for the bank's governor were almost instant. "He was asked to resign," says U.S.-based cyber-security expert Rakesh Asthana. "I never saw him again."
Advertising

'I Opened Microsoft Edge and Apple Got Angry' (zdnet.com) 117

After downloading Microsoft's Edge, "Technically Incorrect" columnist Chris Matyszczyk "was then subject to constant pestering from Microsoft to, well, download the new Edge. Which was an entirely new dimension of irritation."

But occasionally browsing with Edge triggered other responses... Initially, this annoyed Google. When the misguided logged into their Gmail accounts from Edge, Google sent them a helpful message telling them that Chrome was better. You know, fast, simple, and secure. Supposedly. As the months rolled on, things seem to calm down. Google and Microsoft came to a rapprochement. Edge is now the second most popular browser — it does help that it descends upon all Windows users like manna from Seattle.

Perhaps it's Edge's swift rise that has finally made Apple shriek in public. Last week, I opened Edge, only to get a big surprise. In the top right-hand corner of my MacBook Air, there appeared a message. From Apple. "TRY THE NEW SAFARI," shouted the headline. The text added: "Fast, energy efficient and with a beautiful design."

I gasped in wonder. I stared and then, naturally, took a screenshot.

The notifications in the top right-hand corner of my screen are usually confined to declarations of a pending update, or a nag about my last backup. But never actually selling. I've never seen an Apple ad appear there. I don't think I've ever seen Apple instantly react to my opening any rival's product on my MacBook Air.

It's not as if, every time I open Microsoft Word, Apple taps me on the shoulder and aggressively suggests I use Pages.

Data Storage

Windows 10 Bug Corrupts Your Hard Drive On Seeing This File's Icon (bleepingcomputer.com) 96

An unpatched zero-day in Microsoft Windows 10 allows attackers to corrupt an NTFS-formatted hard drive with a one-line command. Bleeping Computer reports: In August 2020, October 2020, and finally this week, infosec researcher Jonas L drew attention to an NTFS vulnerability impacting Windows 10 that has not been fixed. When exploited, this vulnerability can be triggered by a single-line command to instantly corrupt an NTFS-formatted hard drive, with Windows prompting the user to restart their computer to repair the corrupted disk records. The researcher told BleepingComputer that the flaw became exploitable starting around Windows 10 build 1803, the Windows 10 April 2018 Update, and continues to work in the latest version. What's worse is, the vulnerability can be triggered by standard and low privileged user accounts on Windows 10 systems. [...] It is unclear why accessing this attribute corrupts the drive, and Jonas told BleepingComputer that a Registry key that would help diagnose the issue doesn't work.

One striking finding shared by Jonas with us was that a crafted Windows shortcut file (.url) that had its icon location set to C:\:$i30:$bitmap would trigger the vulnerability even if the user never opened the file! As observed by BleepingComputer, as soon as this shortcut file is downloaded on a Windows 10 PC, and the user views the folder it is present in, Windows Explorer will attempt to display the file's icon. To do this, Windows Explorer would attempt to access the crafted icon path inside the file in the background, thereby corrupting the NTFS hard drive in the process. Next, "restart to repair hard drive" notifications start popping up on the Windows PC -- all this without the user even having opened or double-clicked on the shortcut file.

Government

Feds Issue Emergency Order For Agencies To Patch Critical Windows Flaw (arstechnica.com) 61

The US Department of Homeland Security is giving federal agencies until midnight on Tuesday to patch a critical Windows vulnerability that can make it easy for attackers to become all-powerful administrators with free rein to create accounts, infect an entire network with malware, and carry out similarly disastrous actions. Ars Technica reports: Zerologon, as researchers have dubbed the vulnerability, allows malicious hackers to instantly gain unauthorized control of the Active Directory. An Active Directory stores data relating to users and computers that are authorized to use email, file sharing, and other sensitive services inside large organizations. Zerologon is tracked as CVE-2020-1472. Microsoft published a patch last Tuesday. The flaw, which is present in all supported Windows server versions, carries a critical severity rating from Microsoft as well as a maximum of 10 under the Common Vulnerability Scoring System. Further raising that stakes was the release by multiple researchers of proof-of-concept exploit code that could provide a roadmap for malicious hackers to create working attacks.

Officials with the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, which belongs to the DHS, issued an emergency directive on Friday that warned of the potentially severe consequences for organizations that don't patch. [The agency's statement can be found in the article.] CISA, which has authorization to issue emergency directives intended to mitigate known or suspected security threats, is giving organizations until 11:59pm EDT on Monday to either install a Microsoft patch or disconnect the vulnerable domain controller from the organization network. No later than 11:59pm EDT on Wednesday, agencies are to submit a completion report attesting the update has been applied to all affected servers or provide assurance that newly provisioned or previously disconnected servers will be patched.

Social Networks

LinkedIn and the Art of Boastful Self-Promotion (ft.com) 52

Harry Barnes runs a Twitter account called The State of LinkedIn with more than 100,000 followers. On it, he tweets a curated selection of the most egotistical, self-unaware, jargon-ridden posts from LinkedIn members [Editor's note: the link may be paywalled]. From a report: Recent gems range from the boastful "You call it luck, I call it 80 hours a week", to the baffling "How easy is it to hire me? I interviewed myself", as well as the awful-wonderful morning routine which begins "I wake up. Instantly. From the fogginess of dreams, to the readiness of full consciousness..." Humble brags, including Mr Barnes's favourite, in which a man is pictured playing pool while a supercar just happens to be parked in the background, also feature regularly. Mr Barnes, who has worked in social media but runs the account as a hobby, says the idea is to poke fun at the ridiculous world of workplace self-promotion, rather than individuals. "All the content is sent to me," he says. "I don't trawl LinkedIn looking for it."

Mr Barnes is not the only one enjoying the lighter side of LinkedIn. There is also the @CrapOnLinkedIn Twitter feed and parody LinkedIn accounts, such as the "demotivational speaker" Mike Winnet. Unlike other social networks, however, humour is not the norm for LinkedIn, which has always been a more grown-up, professional place. For better or for worse, that may be changing.

The Almighty Buck

US Banks Launching Answer To Peer-To-Peer Payment App Venmo (reuters.com) 43

The U.S. banking industry is about to launch its answer to the popular mobile payments app Venmo. "Over the next week, five of the largest U.S. banks will light up their segments of a new payments network called Zelle, executives said in interviews," reports Reuters. "They plan to announce details of the launch on Monday, and expect another two dozen banks and credit unions to join over the next year." From the report: The long-awaited network will allow tens of millions of bank customers to send money to each other instantly - known as person-to-person payments - with a few taps on their smartphones. That is an improvement over Venmo, which immediately alerts users that a money transfer is in progress, but takes time to shift funds between bank accounts. Customers who use existing bank payment apps may not notice much of a change beyond marketing. Transfers will simply happen faster because the banks are finally linking to each other, executives said. JPMorgan, Bank of America Corp, Wells Fargo & Co, U.S. Bancorp and Capital One Financial Corp will be the first to plug into Zelle.
Nintendo

Your Save Data Is Not Safe On the Nintendo Switch (arstechnica.com) 161

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: In a post-launch update to our initial Nintendo Switch review, we noted that there is no way to externally back up game save data stored on the system. A recent horror story from a fellow writer who lost dozens of hours of game progress thanks to a broken system highlights just how troublesome this missing feature can be. Over at GamesRadar, Anthony John Agnello recounts his experience with Nintendo support after his Switch turned into a useless brick for no discernible reason last week (full disclosure: I know Agnello personally and have served with him on some convention panels). After sending his (under warranty) system to Nintendo for repair, Agnello received a fixed system and the following distressing message from the company two days later: "We have inspected the Nintendo Switch system that was sent to us for repair and found that the issue has made some of the information on this system unreadable. As a result, the save data, settings, and links with any Nintendo Accounts on your system were unable to be preserved." Agnello says he lost 55 hours of progress on The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, as well as more progress on a few other downloadable games. While he was able to redownload the games that were deleted, he'd have to start from scratch on each one (if only all that progress was easily, instantly unlockable in some way...)
Security

More Passwords, Please: 98 Million Leaked From 2012 Breach Of 'Russia's Yahoo' (arstechnica.com) 23

Sean Gallagher, writing for ArsTechnica: Another major site breach from four years ago has resurfaced. Today, LeakedSource revealed that it had received a copy of a February 2012 dump of the user database of Rambler.ru, a Russian search, news, and e-mail portal site that closely mirrors the functionality of Yahoo. The dump included usernames, passwords, and ICQ instant messaging accounts for over 98 million users. And while previous breaches uncovered by LeakedSource this year had at least some encryption of passwords, the Rambler.ru database stored user passwords in plain text -- meaning that whoever breached the database instantly had access to the e-mail accounts of all of Rambler.ru's users. The breach is the latest in a series of "mega-breaches" that LeakedSource says it is processing for release. Rambler isn't the only Russian site that has been caught storing unencrpyted passwords by hackers. In June, a hacker offered for sale the entire user database of the Russian-language social networking site VK.com (formerly VKontakte) from a breach that took place in late 2012 or early 2013; that database also included unencrypted user passwords, as ZDNet's Zach Whittaker reported.
Facebook

Facebook Introduces Payment System 95

An anonymous reader writes: Today Facebook announced a new feature for its Messenger services: the ability to send money to friends. The payment system will work by connecting debit cards from Visa or Mastercard — no credit cards, and no bank accounts. The company claims they aren't trying to make money on it, since it'd be such a small business compared to their ad revenue. "Once the $ button is tapped, users simply enter the dollar amount and hit Pay. The money is instantly taken from their debit account and delivered to the recipient's debit account. Facebook never holds the money, though the receiver's bank will usually take a few days to make the funds available as is standard. Both users see a confirmation message detailing the transfer status and time." Facebook says transaction information is encrypted, and users will protect their cards with a dedicated passcode (or fingerprint identification).
Google

Google I/O 2013 Underway: Watch For Updates 115

Google's I/O annual conference is ramping up at San Francisco's Moscone Center. Last year, in the conference keynote, the company took its biggest-yet dive into hardware when it introduced the Nexus 7 tablet, Google Glass, and the ill-fated Nexus Q. The secret is out on Glass, of course: this year, there's a pavilion inside the conference center where I'm sure they'll be showing off applications for it. (Quite a few of the people in the endless lines here are wearing their own, too.) Anticipating the announcements at I/O is practically its own industry, but it's easy to guess that there will be announcements from all the major pots in which Google has its many thousands of (tapping) fingers. Android, search, Chrome, mapping, and all the other ways in which the behemoth of Mountain View is watching what you do. You can watch the keynote talk (talks, really) streamed online from the main conference link above, but this story will be updated with highlights of the announcements, as well with stories that readers contribute. Update: 05/15 16:22 GMT by T : Updates below. Update: 05/15 19:02 GMT by T :Update details: Notes (ongoing) added below on maps, gaming, the Play store, Google+, and more. And, notable, Larry Page is (at this writing) on stage, with an unannounced Q & A session.
Social Networks

New York's Slap to the Facebook 157

Frequent Slashdot Contributor Bennett Haselton writes "Last month Facebook had to submit to some ritualistic lashing when New York Attorney General Cuomo accused them of misrepresenting the site's safety features and exposing minors to sexual predators -- thus making it official that "Facebook is the new MySpace". Facebook did agree to make some concessions, mainly responding faster to abuse reports. But would this make any difference, when anyone who loses their account can sign up for a new one instantly? More generally, when politicians beat up on social networking sites, what changes do they want to see made, and why do they think those changes would accomplish anything?" Hit that link below to continue to read what Bennett has to say...

Slashdot Top Deals