Facebook leaks half billion profiles 👥, Google's new phone chip 📱, brain connected to computer 🧠

TLDR

Daily Update 2021-04-05

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Big Tech & Startups

Personal data of 533 million Facebook users leaks online (3 minute read)

Personal data from 533 million Facebook accounts was recently leaked online. The dataset was scraped by exploiting a vulnerability that was fixed in 2019. It contains information such as phone numbers, Facebook IDs, full names, locations, birth dates, email addresses, and more. Portions of the dataset were available for purchase earlier this year through a Telegram bot. The leaked emails have been uploaded to Have I Been Pwned, but the owner of the site is still debating whether to make the leaked phone numbers available.

Google will reportedly use its own chip in the Pixel 6 (2 minute read)

Google may debut its first System on a Chip (SoC) in its Pixel phones slated to launch this fall. It has been working with Samsung to develop its Whitechapel chipset, which is reported to be an SoC for phones and Chromebooks. Other phone producers have already made or are appearing to shift to their own chipsets.

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Science & Futuristic Technology

Scientists connect human brain to computer wirelessly for first time ever (2 minute read)

A recent study from BrainGate technology successfully demonstrated the first-ever wireless brain-computer interface on humans. The system can transmit brain signals at single-neuron resolution and in full broadband fidelity to a computer. It allowed the participants in the study to achieve similar typing speeds and point-and-click accuracy as wired systems continuously for up to 24 hours in their own homes. The system will allow researchers to look at brain activity over long periods in a way that was nearly impossible before.

For the first time, scientists find X-rays coming from Uranus (2 minute read)

Scientists discovered X-rays emitting from Uranus after analyzing two visuals of the planet taken by NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory in 2002 and 2017. Most of the X-rays come from the sun, but there are hints of at least one other source present. Figuring out the source could reveal insights into how other objects in space emit X-rays, including black holes and neutron stars. Uranus is particularly interesting to scientists because of its side rotation and magnetic field.

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Programming, Design & Data Science

MapLibre GL (GitHub Repo)

MapLibre GL is a community fork of mapbox-gl before their switch to a non-OSS license. mapbox-gl provides interactive, customizable maps in the browser. An example on how to migrate from mapbox-gl is available.

Lip Gloss (GitHub Repo)

Lip Gloss enables style definitions for terminal layouts, built with TUIs in mind. It uses an expressive, declarative approach to terminal rendering. Lip Gloss supports inline formatting, block-level formatting, aligning text, copying styles, inheritance, and more. Users familiar with CSS will feel at home with Lip Gloss.

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Miscellaneous

GitHub investigating crypto-mining campaign abusing its server infrastructure (2 minute read)

GitHub is investigating a series of attacks against its cloud infrastructure that allows the attackers to use the servers for crypto-mining operations. The attacks abuse a feature called GitHub Actions, which allows users to execute tasks and workflows. It involves forking legitimate repositories, adding malicious GitHub Actions, and then filing Pull Requests with the original repository. The attacks target project owners who have automated workflows that test incoming pull requests via automated jobs. They create huge computational loads for GitHub's infrastructure, but they don't appear to damage users' projects in any way.

The cesspool of the internet is to be found in a village in North Holland (22 minute read)

Two men from The Hague, 75-year-old Bap K. and 34-year-old Reinier van E., ran Ecatel from a data center in a town north-west of Amsterdam. Due to Dutch law, hosting companies can't be prosecuted for the actions of those who hire their servers. Ecatel shielded its clients from the law by claiming to know nothing about its clients' actions, responding to no one, and being obstructive. The Ecatel network was known for its connections with cybercrime, malware, and child pornography. Ecatel's offices were raided in September by the Dutch Fiscal Intelligence and Investigation Service based on suspicions that the business had avoided paying hundreds of thousands of euros in tax.

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Facebook leaks half billion profiles 👥, Google's new phone chip 📱, brain connected to computer 🧠

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