Most Viewed Technology Blogs (217)

Rights activists, journalists and lawyers around the world have been targeted with phone malware sold to authoritarian governments by an Israeli surveillance firm, media reports say.

They are on a list of some 50,000 phone numbers of people believed to be of interest to clients of the company, NSO Group, leaked to major news outlets.

It was not clear where the list came from - or how many phones had actually been hacked.

NSO denies any wrongdoing.

It says the software is intended for use against criminals and terrorists and is made available only to military, law enforcement and intelligence agencies from countries with good human rights records.

It said the original investigation which led to the reports, by Paris-based NGO Forbidden Stories and the human rights group Amnesty International, was "full of wrong assumptions and uncorroborated theories".

But it added that it would "continue to investigate all credible claims of misuse and take appropriate action".

The allegations about use of the software, known as Pegasus, were carried on Sunday by the Washington Post, the Guardian, Le Monde and 14 other media organizations around the world.

Pegasus infects iPhones and Android devices to enable operators to extract messages, photos and emails, record calls and secretly activate microphones and cameras.

What do we know about the people targeted?
Media outlets working on the investigation said they had identified more than 1,000 people spanning over 50 countries whose numbers were on the list.

They include politicians and heads of state, business executives, activists, and several Arab royal family members. More than 180 journalists were also found to be on the list, from organizations including CNN, the New York Times and Al Jazeera.

Many of the numbers were clustered in 10 countries: Azerbaijan, Bahrain, Hungary, India, Kazakhstan, Mexico, Morocco, Rwanda, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, according to the reports.

When contacted by the outlets involved in the investigation, spokespeople for these countries either denied that Pegasus was used or denied that they had abused their powers of surveillance.

It was not clear how many of the devices on the list had actually been targeted, but forensic analysis of 37 of the phones showed there had been "attempted and successful" hacks, the Washington Post reported.

This included people close to Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, who was murdered while visiting the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, Turkey, in October 2018 and his body dismembered.

The investigation found that spyware was installed on his fiancée's phone days after his murder, and that his wife's phone was targeted with spyware between September 2017 and April 2018.


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....As hinted at, here it is. We all have to thank the founders of this great CS service for making our lives better in lots of ways. And doing so without the shameless direct money grubbing of the paid for sites. World wide coverage---with reasonable exceptions. Fun and practical features. Educational value, and so on. But have you ever wondered, just what type of person(s) might they be? Sure, a sense of business. Perhaps cyber/IT skills. But I'm thinking more about people skills. Psychological insight?. Wife/husband/partner team? Whence the great idea? Craigslist sorts? And so on. THINK.

The wind is down and I'm charging batteries to catch a few model aircraft flights this morning. The batteries I use are lithium polymer or Li-Po for short. They develop lots of power for a short time, so I have several when I go flying.
It's important to monitor the flight time because draining a battery below 3.8 volts will shorten its life. Batteries are pretty expensive, around 25 to $30 a piece for the style I use.
Depending on batteries deserves a Blog of its own!

....ending their heyday?....Some (academic--so likely alt liberally biased-VERY biased) researchers claim that the costs of these operations will now be much greater than for renewable technical sources. Into the hundreds of billions of USD. Even talking of solving the sun down storage problems using liquefied air. Slick, Jack! Technology. Often badmouthed reflexively by the whiny ueber liberals, as with the BIG BAD corporations. But they all live on the products and income of same. Can't make....well, by now all know the line. CMTSUF. Sort of rolls off the tongue. And off the keyboard.

....links and nodes... Sure, concepts such as like sorts with like (homophily), contagion and resilience, she who has tends to beget more, falsehoods spread faster than truths, etc., are with us. But here's the surprise, they have always been. They underlie everything from Martin Luther's anti Pope reformation, to the fake news on the internet. And, the early idealists of the latter foresaw a totally decentralized non commercial world wide web. How'd that turn out, folks? Our dad's were glued at day's end to every word and page of the local fish wrap. Our kids can't sit for a family meal without phone in hand. Who could dream this stuff up, peebles?

There was a time I had control of all my tools, gadgets and hobby parts. I could switch hobbies for months and when I returned back to one everything was in places I recognize.
Since my move, all the knowledge is gone. Guitar things are mixed with drone and model helicopter things, plumbing supplies are in the same box as my vintage record albums.
You get the picture. What's amazing is my partner has perfect recall for things... well, the things in Miami before the move. If I needed the little metal tool to open a can of paint, she could find it in a few seconds.
I had two bookshelves one with computer books and software and the other with model aircraft things. In the aircraft was a few SD memory cards and adapters that allowed me to plug the SD into a computer. This is how I transferred drone videos to my computer. Hold that thought...

Recently, I've been looking for different things that disappeared in my move and after searching high and low and about to give up, I'll see the item I've been looking for set aside within arms reach, close enough to say it was 'under my nose' all along.

The last model helicopter I purchased has new technology the previous models didn't offer. Telemetry between the model and transmitter. Things like RPM, battery voltage can be read via the transmitter. Very cool, except I need to do a firmware update on the transmitter communicate with the receiver.

I downloaded the file to make the upgrade and I need the adapter. I have at least 3 of these things and made no less than four attempts to find them. My guess is they are together in one small plastic bag... somewhere.

It's a holiday weekend and I plan to be at the flying field a good part of it. That upgrade would be 'icing on the cake' so I've got to continue my search and check under my nose again and again for the SD card adapters.

If you wanna be a power user, you shouldn't deny the usefulness of hotkeys. They improve your everyday work and give an absolute boost in your productivity. These hotkey combinations will certainly come in handy for every Windows and OS X user!

Create a virtual desktop 0:46
Switch between virtual desktops 1:24
Return to the desktop from apps 2:15
Open an app from the taskbar 3:04
Split-screen between two apps 3:50
Switch apps 4:24
Program management and troubleshooting 5:27
Open File Explorer 6:17
Use the Magnifier 6:48
Take screenshots 7:41
Use Action Center 8:24
Access the Settings 9:02
Talk to Cortana or Siri 9:22
Use the Windows Game Bar 10:02
Lock down your PC 11:20

I should heed my own advice about changing out old computer parts. Two computers failed last month and are being replaced. The good thing is the hard drives are intact and I'm able to save most of the data contained on them.

Unfortunately, some licensed programs I got free cannot be replaced or would now require payment.

I found a 2gig spare video card and installed into a spare computer I haven't used in a while and now, it's giving error messages. The drivers are updated but I'm unable to troubleshoot... for lack of time. It's quicker to remove the video card and revert back to the onboard video.

I tried removing 4 gigs of RAM from a dead computer and put into a computer with 4gigs expecting 8 gigs... it won't boot now, so I reverted back to a working computer with 4 gigs.

If it's not broken... don't (try to) fix it.

Okay, Okay... no more swapping parts and upgrades... for today.
Tomorrow is a different story!

Houston, we've got a problem. Could be a glitch. I'm working from my cellphone right now and parts of the website aren't working correctly.

Spot is a robotic dog by Boston Dynamics and via their choreographer software they can get spot to dance.