Posthaste: The Canadian dollar is getting hammered — and its future looks even bleaker | Financial Post

So what’s up with the Canadian dollar? While many thought the currency would strengthen in 2023, the loonie has slid to depths not seen since the height of the pandemic. (This morning it was trading near a 6-month low of 72.43 US cents) A big part of this mystery is that the drivers of the currency have changed. When a hawkish Bank of Canada was raising interest rates it supported the loonie, but now that the slowing economy has reduced the risk of more hikes, new drivers are taking over.…

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Windows 11’s huge 2023 Update is available now: Here’s what’s new | PCWorld

Mere days after Microsoft released the Moment 4 Update for Windows 11 users, adding numerous new features and improvements to Windows 11 version 22H2, the company also unleashed the huge annual Windows 11 2023 Update (also known as Windows 11 version 23H2). “Because Windows 11, version 23H2 shares the same code base and servicing branch as Windows 11, version 22H2, this feature update will be delivered via Windows Update (as with the monthly update process) to enable a quick installation,” Microsoft explains. Read full story here: Windows 11’s huge 2023…

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Why A Few Bad Quarters Won’t Spell Doom For The Electric Car Revolution | InsideEVs

If you went into 2023 thinking this year would mark the permanent rise of electric vehicles along some perfect, up-and-to-the-right growth curve, a gloomy tide of recent news may have you wondered how and when, exactly, you ended up in the Twilight Zone. In just the past few weeks, General Motors had a disastrous Q3 earnings call where it abandoned its goal of building 400,000 EVs by mid-2024, announced a delay of more electric models and even hit pause on a new battery plant. Read full story here: Why A…

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What the evolution of our own brains can tell us about the future of AI | engadget

The explosive growth in artificial intelligence in recent years — crowned with the meteoric rise of generative AI chatbots like ChatGPT — has seen the technology take on many tasks that, formerly, only human minds could handle. But despite their increasingly capable linguistic computations, these machine learning systems remain surprisingly inept at making the sorts of cognitive leaps and logical deductions that even the average teenager can consistently get right. Read full story here: What the evolution of our own brains can tell us about the future of AI |…

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How an award-winning Halifax professor nurtured a network of battery entrepreneurs | CBC News

They call themselves the “Dahn lab” graduates, and they’re powering an unlikely, Halifax-based research hub for batteries designed to replace fossil fuels. At the tightly wired network’s heart is Jeff Dahn, a professor of chemistry and physics at Dalhousie University, who on Oct. 9 was presented with the Olin Palladium Award from the Electrochemical Society for a lifetime of working to improve rechargeable batteries. The prestigious prize has previously been won by Nobel laureates. According to the award citation, the 66-year-old researcher is an author or co-author of 78 inventions…

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Darknet markets generate millions in revenue selling stolen personal data | Ars Technica

It is common to hear news reports about large data breaches, but what happens once your personal data is stolen? Our research shows that, like most legal commodities, stolen data products flow through a supply chain consisting of producers, wholesalers, and consumers. But this supply chain involves the interconnection of multiple criminal organizations operating in illicit underground marketplaces. The stolen data supply chain begins with producers—hackers who exploit vulnerable systems and steal sensitive information such as credit card numbers, bank account information, and Social Security numbers. Read full story here:…

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Security experts urge Chrome users to patch new zero-day exploit immediately | TechSpot

What just happened? Google just released an emergency security update to patch a newly discovered vulnerability in the Chrome web browser. The buffer overflow-based exploit was discovered by Clément Lecigne, a member of the Google Threat Analysis Group (TAG). Google acknowledged the issue and pledged to withhold further details about the vulnerability until the patch has been widely deployed. Read full story here: Security experts urge Chrome users to patch new zero-day exploit immediately | TechSpot

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Hitting the Books: How can privacy survive in a world that never forgets? | Engadget

As I write this, Amazon is announcing its purchase of iRobot, adding its room-mapping robotic vacuum technology to the company’s existing home surveillance suite, the Ring doorbell and prototype aerial drone. This is in addition to Amazon already knowing what you order online, what websites you visit, what foods you eat and, soon, every last scrap of personal medical data you possess. But hey, free two-day shipping, amirite? The trend of our gadgets and infrastructure constantly, often invasively, monitoring their users shows little sign of slowing — not when there’s…

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Some Top 100,000 Websites Collect Everything You Type—Before You Hit Submit | Ars Technica

When you sign up for a newsletter, make a hotel reservation, or check out online, you probably take for granted that if you mistype your email address three times or change your mind and X out of the page, it doesn’t matter. Nothing actually happens until you hit the Submit button, right? Well, maybe not. As with so many assumptions about the web, this isn’t always the case, according to new research: A surprising number of websites are collecting some or all of your data as you type it into…

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Your Digital Footprint: It’s Bigger Than You Realize | c|net

A few years ago, Ken Crum started getting uncomfortable with how much of his life seemed to be online. The long-time computer programmer was particularly concerned by what companies appeared to know about him. The amount of personal information was mind-boggling to the 66-year-old Texan, who recently moved from Dallas to the small town of Weatherford. Data brokers were collecting his personal details. Social media was targeting ads at him. Then one day, after shopping at a local home improvement store, he got an email from the company asking how…

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