Troy Hunt found a collection of 773 million unique email addresses and 21 million unique passwords sitting on MEGA (a file sharing site), so he downloaded it and added the data to Have I Been Pwnd. Some of the mainstream press has seen the 773 million figure and said this is a massive hack, but really, it's not that bad. This is a collection of many old data breaches and the vast majority were already in Have I Been Pwnd, with only 18% of the data not already in there. Due to the age of the data, there's also a good chance (I hope), that you've changed your password since then. Either way, let it this be another reminder to use a password manager, with unique passwords for every site and turn on 2FA whenever available.
Tim Cook has an op-ed in Time magazine today, where he makes the argument for the US government to pass more regulation regarding how data on you is collected, sold and stored. His point is that there's all this stuff happening with people's data that most of us have no idea about and that entire industry should be way more transparent. The only way that's gonna happen is if the government makes some laws. Without those laws, Tim reckons, technology "will never achieve that potential without the full faith and confidence of the people who use it". I know all this privacy stuff is just Apple leveraging a perceived competitive advantage versus Google to sell more iPhones, but I like it.
Ashley Feinberg has interviewed Jack Dorsey (Twitter's CEO) over at the Huffington Post and man, it is a wild ride. She is tough on Jack and calls him out often about the fact Twitter is doing basically nothing to stop harassment on its platform. Jack's view on it all is that Twitter is being abused by bad people and his job is to stop that abuse, but doesn't explain how that works in practice and what happens when it doesn't work. My favourite bit of the interview is where Ashley asks Jack "is there a situation where you would just decide that it’s better to be free of this?" and delete Twitter. That's what I call a fearless interview.
The South Australian government has launched a six month trial of two "autonomous smart transit hubs" at Holdfast Bay in Adelaide. "The trial will see an eight-person, electric shuttle called Olli – made by US-based Local Motors – traverse a one kilometre route through the beachside suburb of Glenelg between two "Matilda" autonomous bus stops". The stops will be located "outside the Stamford Grand and at Broadway Kiosk" and will have "interactive touchscreen displays and a virtual assistant powered by IBM Watson". Buzzword bingo over here! I can't wait to grab a ride on one of these in April when I'm in Adelaide to watch North beat Port.
Apple Pay now supports eftpos in Australia. This means when you go to tap your watch or phone on a card reader, you can be prompted if you want to use Visa/Mastercard or eftpos from your cheque or savings account - if your added card supports it. At this stage it seems to be just ANZ's Access Advantage Visa debit card that has eftpos support, but I'm sure it will come to others soon. The sweet thing about eftpos support is you can now get cash out at a shop via eftpos without having to carry an extra card with you. Pretty handy. If VIC had digital drivers licenses like SA & NSW, I think I could ditch my wallet for good.
One of my favourite YouTube channels, Autogefühl, has an informative video explaining the differences between the various levels of autonomous driving. Each level is graded from 0 to 5, with 0 being no assistance, 1 is stuff like radar cruise control, 2 is a combination of things like radar cruise and active lane-keep assist, 3 is like level 2 but without the driver having to pay as much attention, level 4 makes it autonomous with no driver input but only in certain areas (e.g: highway) and 5 being full-on robocar action anywhere, any time. Level 5 seems so far away, but level 4 on highways/freeways I could see being mandatory in some countries within a decade or so.
A few of you have said you've enjoyed my AliExpress window shopping, so here's some more:
That's it, see ya tomorrow!
--Anthony
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