What’s new
Instagram admits hackers used a bug in its system to access ‘high profile accounts’
Instagram has alerted all its verified users of unlawful access to phone and email contact information for its “high-profile” users thanks to a buggy API. The company said no passwords were accessed, it quickly fixed the bug, and is conducting an investigation into the incident. It’s not clear how many users were affected, but TechCrunch speculates it’s a small number as hackers were only targeting celebrities.
You can read more here.
‘Onliner’ malware spambot targets 711 million email accounts
More than 700m email addresses, as well as a number of passwords, have leaked publicly thanks to a misconfigured spambot, in one of the largest data breaches ever. The data was available because the spammers failed to secure one of their servers, allowing any visitor to download many gigabytes of information without needing any credentials.
More info are available here.
New products
Sony Xperia XZ1
The phone will have a 5.2-inch FullHD display, 2,700 mAh battery and a Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 processor. It will come with 4 GB RAM and 128 GB of internal storage.
More info here.
Samsung Gear Fit 2 Pro
The smartwatch has 5 ATM water resistance which means it is safe to use under water up to 50 meters deep. It comes with a 1.5-inch Super AMOLED display, GPS sensor and heart rate monitor.
More info here.
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TeamViewer will add screen sharing to iOS app
With the release of Apple’s iOS 11 software, users will now benefit from TeamViewer’s best of breed screen sharing capabilities across all of their devices, from laptops, to smartphones and tablets. This industry-first true iOS screen sharing capability is a now available as a preview for all users.
You can read more here.
Astronomers use AI to reduce analysis time from months to seconds
A research team from Stanford and the SLAC particle accelerator developed a neural network that can analyze images of gravitational lensing 10 million times faster than conventional techniques. “The amazing thing is that neural networks learn by themselves what features to look for,” Phil Marshall, a researcher within the project, said in a statement. “This is comparable to the way small children learn to recognize objects”.
More info can be found here.
Fun stuff
An AI system writes the next “Game of Thrones” book
A bot has analysed all of the previous texts from the author to predict and write the 2019 instalment; Winds of Winter. Software engineer Zack Thoutt created a type of AI known as a recurrent neural network which was fed the 5,000 or so pages of Mr Martin’s previous books and predicted what will happen next.
You can read more here.
