You probably already know by now, but Ticketmaster and Ticketek have experienced breaches of their vast (over 500 million people globally) entire customer databases. They don't seem to be linked, but the data lost seems like the usual name, date of birth (why??), physical address, email address and phone numbers. It's unknown exactly how the breach happened, but some middleware thing for AWS called Snowflake that Ticketmaster uses told Bleeping Computer it observed "unauthorized access to certain customer accounts", but "we do not believe this activity is caused by any vulnerability, misconfiguration, or malicious activity within the Snowflake product". I'm so nonchalant about data breaches I wasn't even sure if these are worth a mention. Data breaches happen so often and there seems to be no punishment for those involved, be it the "hackers" (if you can call these crooks that) or the companies that play so fast and loose with our personal info.
Once again Signal's boss has made a public statement saying that if the EU passes its shit "Chat Control" law, Signal will "leave the EU market rather than undermine our privacy guarantees". If you're unfamiliar with the EU's Chat Control, it's proposed mandate that will force operators of "apps and services with chat functions" to moderate user uploads. That means if you wanted to post an image, URL or video in WhatsApp or Signal, those services would have to look at the contents of your messages to make sure you aren't posting an image that the EU thinks is naughty. Countries like France and Belgium are pushing for it as a way to deal with CSAM and "grooming". It'll never end, will it? Random groups keep trying and trying with this horrible mass surveillance stuff and I'm scared that one day it's gonna stick when we aren't looking - then we are fucked.
A bloke that pays for X (lol) made a long post about buying wired headphones with a Lightning plug that didn't work unless he had Bluetooth enabled on his iPhone. He tried multiple headphones at the store and each time he was told by the store staff to turn Bluetooth on, which to you and I seems ridiculous for wired headphones, but the store staff didn't see what the big deal was. Apparently there's loads of these cheap "wired" earbuds that are actually Bluetooth headphones and the wire is simply for power. This is somehow cheaper than paying for legitimate Lightning "certification" (i.e: the DRM chip that Apple mandates). What a world we live in.
Technology provides the capacity to improve our standard of living. But whether such benefits occur depends upon how it's used... and for whom. Technology should be used to make our work easier and more rewarding not simply as a way of increasing productivity and reducing job satisfaction. (National Library of Australia)
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