On July 20, 1969, astronaut Neil Armstrong uttered the now famous line, "That's one small step for [a] man, one giant leap for mankind," when he became the first person to set foot on the moon. It fulfilled the almost as famous "We choose to go to the moon" line delivered by President John F. Kennedy to a crowd at Rice Stadium in Houston, Texas, on Sept. 12, 1962. [More...]

Twitter has unveiled a fresh new look for its desktop website that mimics the look and feel of its mobile platforms. The company has been testing a new version of its desktop website since the beginning of the year. The most noticeable change is the organization and layout of the Twitter home screen itself. The upgraded design simplifies navigation with a new and larger left-hand sidebar. [More...]

Alan Turing, the British mathematician known for his World War II code-breaking exploits and for a test to distinguish between human and machine intelligence, will be on 50-pound notes in the UK by the end of 2021. The Bank of England, which made the announcement, explained that Turing, who died in 1954, was chosen from a field of 989 eligible characters after a public nomination period. [More...]

For Halloween, we buy all kinds of crap we shouldn't be eating and feed it to our kids. When Valentine's Day approaches, husbands and boyfriends live in fear of getting their significant other's gift wrong again. Fourth of July is when we buy expensive things we can burn and piss off our neighbors. Of course, there are the various gift-giving holidays that are linked to specific religious groups. [More...]

Ravelry, an online knitting community that has more than 8 million members, last month announced that it would ban forum posts, projects, patterns and even profiles from users who supported President Trump or his administration. "We cannot provide a space that is inclusive of all and also allow support for open white supremacy," the administrators of Ravelry posted on the site. [More...]

A security researcher has found a flaw in the popular video conferencing app Zoom that could be used to turn on the camera on a Macintosh computer without a user's permission. The vulnerability allows any website to forcibly join a user to a Zoom call, with their video camera activated, without a user's permission, explained Jonathan Leitschuh, a senior software engineer at Gradle. [More...]

It is newly minted conventional wisdom that not a single information security conference goes by without a presentation about the abysmal state of IoT security. While this is a boon for researchers looking to make a name for themselves, this sorry state of affairs is definitely not beneficial for anyone who owns a connected device. IoT device owners aren't the only ones fed up, though. [More...]

State motor vehicle departments have become a rich source of facial recognition data for and FBI and Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents. Researchers at Georgetown Law's Center on Privacy & Technology reportedly used public records requests to gather a cache of documents that show the agencies have turned state DMV databases into the foundation of a vast surveillance infrastructure. [More...]

After reading about the departure of Jony Ive, I'm trying to wrap my head around Apple without a design focus. Now this isn't as hard as you might think, given the last truly successful Apple product came out around a decade ago and was called the "iPad." It is also somewhat ironic that Apple just effectively relaunched the iPod, the product that Steve Jobs rode to Apple's massive success. [More...]

Mageia 7 redefines the concept of traditional Linux. It is a solid operating system well suited to both newcomers and seasoned Linux users alike. The Mageia distro is a powerhouse Linux OS filled with features and options unmatched in other Linux versions. Mageia Linux is a fork of the now-defunct Mandriva Linux. The first Mageia version was released in September 2010. [More...]

While good communication is pretty much universally beneficial, there are times when it's more so than others. One such time? During a cybersecurity incident. Incident responders know that communication is paramount. Even a few minutes might mean the difference between closing an issue vs. allowing a risky situation to persist longer than it needs to. [More...]