The old system of addresses that cities have relied on for hundreds of years just isn’t cutting it any more. Originally intended to help with taxation and policing, the aging way of assigning street numbers to buildings isn’t precise enough for today’s — and tomorrow’s — intelligent services. “For smart cities, there’s a real need to address more specific locations,” Giles Rhys Jones, the chief marketing officer for What3Words, told Digital Trends. What3Words is a London-based startup behind a geocoding location system that’s used by Mercedes-Benz, the United Nations, and…
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More Companies Are Chipping Their Workers Like Pets | Engadget
The trend of blundering into the void of adopting new tech, damn the consequences, full speed ahead, continues this week. The Telegraph tells us about “a number of UK legal and financial firms” are in talks with a chip company to implant their employees with RFID microchips for security purposes. “One prospective client,” The Telegraph wrote, “which cannot be named, is a major financial services firm with “hundreds of thousands of employees.” Read full story here: More Companies Are Chipping Their Workers Like Pets | Engadget
Read MoreScientists Are Redefining The Kilogram | CBC News
Just as the redefinition of the second in 1967 helped to ease communication across the world via technologies like GPS and the internet, experts say the change in the kilogram will be better for technology, retail and health — though it probably won’t change the price of fish much. The kilogram has been defined since 1889 by a shiny piece of platinum-iridium held in Paris. All modern mass measurements are traceable back to it — from micrograms of pharmaceutical medicines to kilos of apples and pears and tonnes of steel or cement.…
Read MoreIn A Data Driven Tomorrow, Does Privacy Need To Survive the Future? | Digital Trends
“If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear.” It was an argument we heard a lot in the years following Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s famous claim that privacy was no longer a social norm. A lot has changed in the eight years since. The web has evolved, new tools make it easier to protect our privacy online, and scandals with social networks and other online entities have made privacy itself a hot topic once again. Read full story here: In A Data Driven Tomorrow, Does Privacy Need To Survive the…
Read MoreElectric Car Drivers Can Now ‘Roam’ In The US And Canada On ChargePoint And FLO Charging Networks | Electrek
A week after announcing a similar deal in Europe, ChargePoint has unveiled a new “roaming partnership” with FLO to allow electric vehicle drivers to use both charging networks across North America with “a seamless charging experience.” Earlier this month, Chargepoint and EVBox launched a similar partnership for the European market. Now they have reached a deal with FLO, which is the leading electric car charging network operator in Canada. Read full story here: Electric Car Drivers Can Now ‘Roam’ In The US And Canada On ChargePoint And FLO Charging Networks | Electrek
Read MoreHere’s How To See If You’re Among The 30 Million Compromised Facebook Users | Ars Technica
The attackers who carried out the mass hack that Facebook disclosed two weeks ago obtained user account data belonging to as many as 30 million users, the social network said on Friday. Some of that data—including phone numbers, email addresses, birth dates, searches, location check-ins, and the types of devices used to access the site—came from private accounts or was supposed to be restricted only to friends. Read full story here: Here’s How To See If You’re Among The 30 Million Compromised Facebook Users | Ars Technica
Read MoreGoogle+ To Shut Down After Coverup Of Data-Exposing Bug | TechCrunch
Google is about to have its Cambridge Analytica moment. A security bug allowed third-party developers to access Google+ user profile data since 2015 until Google discovered and patched it in March, but decided not to inform the world. When a user gave permission to an app to access their public profile data, the bug also let those developers pull their and their friends’ non-public profile fields. Indeed, 496,951 users’ full names, email addresses, birth dates, gender, profile photos, places lived, occupation and relationship status were potentially exposed, though Google says it…
Read MoreFacebook Says At Least 50 million Users Affected By Account Takeover Bug | TechCrunch
Facebook has said 50 million user accounts may be at risk after hackers exploited a security vulnerability on the site. The company said in a blog post Friday that it discovered the bug earlier in the week. The bug is part of the site’s “View As” feature that lets a user see their profile as someone else. Facebook has switched off the “View As” feature in the meantime while it investigates the bug further. The bug allowed hackers to obtain account access tokens, which are used to keep users logged in…
Read MoreClimate Change Is Causing Earth To Wobble On Its Axis, NASA Says | The Weather Channel
Climate change is impacting how Earth spins on its axis, NASA says. Over the past century, Earth’s axis – the imaginary line that passes through the North and South Poles – has drifted about 4 inches, and a decrease in Greenland’s ice mass is the main contributor to the wobble, the space agency has announced. As temperatures increased throughout the 20th century because of humans, Greenland’s ice mass decreased. Rad full story here: Climate Change Is Causing Earth To Wobble On Its Axis, NASA Says | The Weather Channel
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