Miscellaneous Tech News
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Firefox taking a hard line against noisy video, banning it from autoplaying
Firefox's policy is much simpler, and much stricter, than Chrome's.
Last year, Chrome introduced changes to try to prevent the persistent nuisance that is pages that automatically play noisy videos. Next month, Firefox will be following suit; Firefox 66, due on March 19, will prevent the automatic playback of any video that contains audio.
Mozilla's plan for Firefox is a great deal simpler and a great deal stricter than Chrome's system. In Chrome, Google has a heuristic that tries to distinguish between those sites where autoplaying is generally welcome (Netflix and YouTube, for example) and those where it isn't (those annoying sites that have autoplaying video tucked away in a corner to startle you when it starts making unexpected sounds). Firefox isn't doing anything like that; by default, any site that tries to play video with audio will have that video playback blocked.
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@scottalanmiller said in Miscellaneous Tech News:
[Scott's personal note: LTE is already falsely labeled as 4G. LTE is a 3G technology that is fast enough that most people have been convinced it is 4G. The "G" refers to the tech generation, not the speed, and LTE is as fast as many common 4G technologies, but predates 4G. It is just the fastest 3G. So not only is AT&T using 5Ge to mean something less, it's simply rebranding 3G LTE as 5G just as everyone rebranded it as 4G in the past.]
Re LTE:
You are incorrect, because the ITU has declared that it can be called LTE.The ITU is the standards body that gets to make that call. Not you.
They also defined the actual 4G as "True 4G"
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@scottalanmiller said in Miscellaneous Tech News:
AT&T’s misleading “5G E” indicator comes to 4G iPhones in iOS 12.2 beta
AT&T's 5G E icon for 4G phones previously rolled out to some Android models.
AT&T's misleading "5G E" network indicator for 4G phones, which was rolled out to some Android smartphones last month, has now come to iPhones in a beta version of iOS 12.2.
Even worse is that there is this rush to market a 5G when the actual 5G standard is not even set yet.
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@JaredBusch said in Miscellaneous Tech News:
Even worse is that there is this rush to market a 5G when the actual 5G standard is not even set yet.
That didn't go well for bluetooth either
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@JaredBusch said in Miscellaneous Tech News:
@scottalanmiller said in Miscellaneous Tech News:
[Scott's personal note: LTE is already falsely labeled as 4G. LTE is a 3G technology that is fast enough that most people have been convinced it is 4G. The "G" refers to the tech generation, not the speed, and LTE is as fast as many common 4G technologies, but predates 4G. It is just the fastest 3G. So not only is AT&T using 5Ge to mean something less, it's simply rebranding 3G LTE as 5G just as everyone rebranded it as 4G in the past.]
Re LTE:
You are incorrect, because the ITU has declared that it can be called LTE.The ITU is the standards body that gets to make that call. Not you.
They also defined the actual 4G as "True 4G"
It was changed later, after the names were made. When 4G was created, LTE was already a 3G tech that already had been named.
Claiming something from 3G just "became" 4G itself removed the ITU from any credibility in the process. It means that an ITU defined "G" is inconsistent and unreliable.
The ITU doesn't recognize the ITU's decision. So why would we? I would call this "self de-authoritative." They essentially declared themselves non-authoritative in the matter.
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Chrome OS’ Instant Tethering now works with more than 30 Android smartphones
15 additional Chromebooks now support the feature, too.
The handy feature that lets Chromebook users connect to a smartphone's cellular hotspot is now coming to more devices. Google announced that Chrome OS' Instant Tethering feature will now be available on more than 15 Chromebooks and more than 30 smartphone models, including handsets from HTC, LG, Motorola, and Samsung.
Previously, Instant Tethering was only available on a handful of Chromebooks, including the Pixelbook and the new Pixel Slate. The list of supported smartphones was similarly short, initially confined to Google-made handsets like the Pixel and Nexus. The expansion is part of Google's effort to make the experience of using a Chromebook easier and more seamless for those with Android smartphones, regardless of the handset's manufacturer.
Instant Tethering, which first came to Chromebooks in 2017, requires an initial setup process that users can complete upon setting up the Chromebook or at any time from the Settings menu. Users must be signed in to the same Google account on the Chromebook and the Android smartphone in order to use Instant Tethering features.
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Google releases Chrome extension that alerts users of breached passwords
Using hashed and encrypted store, add-on securely checks logins against breach database.
With lists of billions of compromised credentials floating around on underground forums and in text-paste pages across the Internet, it's difficult for anyone to keep up with the potential threat from breached passwords. That's why, as part of its security efforts during Safer Internet Day, Google has released a new add-on for the Chrome browser that automatically and securely checks website credentials against known password breaches.
The Chrome browser extension, called Password Checkup, is available today. It securely checks credentials used to log in to websites—whether they're manually entered or stored in Chrome's password manager—against hashed credentials stored in an encrypted database of billions of compromised accounts maintained by Google. Elie Bursztein, head of Google's anti-abuse research, told Ars that the protocol behind the service is being presented as a standard for securely checking account security and that the interface may be offered as an open application interface in the future.
Checking for password breaches is a sensitive operation. Google's security team has been offering password checks for G Suite users for some time, but doing the same thing for the rest of users' credentials is a much more delicate privacy dance. Users don't want to just hand over their passwords and accounts to Google openly, and "Google has a data set we don't want to publicly share," said Kurt Thomas, staff research scientist at Google. So Password Checkup uses a combination of anonymization and cryptography to protect the exchange, using a technique called "blinding" to create a secret search index. Credentials are anonymized with an Argon2 hash function to create a search key for Google's database and encrypted with Elliptic Curve cryptography.
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@scottalanmiller said in Miscellaneous Tech News:
Google releases Chrome extension that alerts users of breached passwords
Using hashed and encrypted store, add-on securely checks logins against breach database.
With lists of billions of compromised credentials floating around on underground forums and in text-paste pages across the Internet, it's difficult for anyone to keep up with the potential threat from breached passwords. That's why, as part of its security efforts during Safer Internet Day, Google has released a new add-on for the Chrome browser that automatically and securely checks website credentials against known password breaches.
The Chrome browser extension, called Password Checkup, is available today. It securely checks credentials used to log in to websites—whether they're manually entered or stored in Chrome's password manager—against hashed credentials stored in an encrypted database of billions of compromised accounts maintained by Google. Elie Bursztein, head of Google's anti-abuse research, told Ars that the protocol behind the service is being presented as a standard for securely checking account security and that the interface may be offered as an open application interface in the future.
Checking for password breaches is a sensitive operation. Google's security team has been offering password checks for G Suite users for some time, but doing the same thing for the rest of users' credentials is a much more delicate privacy dance. Users don't want to just hand over their passwords and accounts to Google openly, and "Google has a data set we don't want to publicly share," said Kurt Thomas, staff research scientist at Google. So Password Checkup uses a combination of anonymization and cryptography to protect the exchange, using a technique called "blinding" to create a secret search index. Credentials are anonymized with an Argon2 hash function to create a search key for Google's database and encrypted with Elliptic Curve cryptography.
I haven't read this yet - supposedly they have a way of figuring this out without sending the actual password outside your system.
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@Dashrender supposedly. Local hashed copies.
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Unifi Controller 5.10.12 release
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Motorola’s 2019 cheap smartphone lineup includes a 5000mAh battery option
Motorola shows off the Moto G7, G7 Power, and G7 Play.
Today, Motorola is announcing the new Moto G series for 2019: the Moto G7 family. There are three devices to take a look at: the Moto G7, the Moto G7 Power, and the Moto G7 Play. Along with the phones from Nokia, members of the G series are among those rare smartphones that can be had for under $400, and that makes them pretty interesting.
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@mlnews said in Miscellaneous Tech News:
Motorola’s 2019 cheap smartphone lineup includes a 5000mAh battery option
Motorola shows off the Moto G7, G7 Power, and G7 Play.
Today, Motorola is announcing the new Moto G series for 2019: the Moto G7 family. There are three devices to take a look at: the Moto G7, the Moto G7 Power, and the Moto G7 Play. Along with the phones from Nokia, members of the G series are among those rare smartphones that can be had for under $400, and that makes them pretty interesting.
Bah, humbug. They keep making reasonably priced, good spec phones, but Lenovo
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@travisdh1 said in Miscellaneous Tech News:
@mlnews said in Miscellaneous Tech News:
Motorola’s 2019 cheap smartphone lineup includes a 5000mAh battery option
Motorola shows off the Moto G7, G7 Power, and G7 Play.
Today, Motorola is announcing the new Moto G series for 2019: the Moto G7 family. There are three devices to take a look at: the Moto G7, the Moto G7 Power, and the Moto G7 Play. Along with the phones from Nokia, members of the G series are among those rare smartphones that can be had for under $400, and that makes them pretty interesting.
Bah, humbug. They keep making reasonably priced, good spec phones, but Lenovo
Glad you reminded me. -
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https://www.itnews.com.au/news/security-breach-strikes-parliaments-it-network-519035
Parliamentarians and their staff have been forced to reset passwords after an apparent malicious attack against the parliamentary computing network overnight.
In a statement, Parliament's presiding officers said it was one of a number of measures taken by the Department of Parliamentary Services to protected the network and its more than 4000 users. -
Messy office owners, rejoice: Skype now blurs the background to your video
No need to frantically tidy things up before making a call.
The background-blurring feature has already been rolled out to Microsoft's corporate communication client, Teams, and now it's in the consumer-oriented app. While bulletproof detection of the background requires a depth-sensing camera, the approach used in Skype (and Teams) uses machine learning-derived algorithms in order to work with any camera. The algorithms have been trained to detect human outlines, including the voluminous hair that some lucky people are blessed with as well as arms and hands. Presumably this means that it will properly detect even those arms and hands that appear dismembered, appearing from off the edge of the screen. Using blur is optional, and it can be enabled on a call-by-call basis.
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@mlnews chances are it's just an excuse to blur everything, because Skype almost never works anyway.
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