The researchers, working with cyber-security firm VPNMentor, said that they had been able to access the Biostar 2 biometrics lock system that manages access to secure facilities like warehouses or office buildings. This control mechanism, run by the firm Suprema, is reportedly part of a system used by 5,700 organizations in 83 countries, including governments, banks and the UK’s Metropolitan Police. This breach highlights a major problem with biometric security systems that effectively use people’s biological measurements as passwords....

Fast-forward to today, and things have changed drastically. Hundreds of millions of people around the globe use cryptocurrencies, with nations such as Nigeria seeing adoption rates as high as 32 percent. There are many factors that have played a role in this trend, from trading apps and play-to-earn games, to influencer endorsements. Each of these has helped bring cryptocurrency into the mainstream. As usage accelerates among businesses and everyday customers, some believe crypto-based loyalty rewards could soon become the next big trend in e-commerce....

State-of-the-art facial recognition sucks. AI simply isn’t good at recognizing faces unless they’re white. This simple fact has been confirmed by academics, experts, and the biggest technology companies on the planet. Here at TNW we’ve dedicated significant coverage to the danger facial recognition technology poses to persons of color, as have many of our peers. But, for whatever reason, Blue Line Technologies — the company responsible for the convenience store system — thinks it’s got it figured out....

According to a report from The New York Times, Telegram will be delivering the “first batches” of the Gram tokens to investors by October 31. Three investors – that have spoken with Telegram – told NYT that the messaging app is planning to make Gram wallets available to two-thirds of its 300 million global users. NYT’s sources asked to remain anonymous as they have signed nondisclosure agreements. The informants also told NYT that a test net of the Gram network will be released within the next week or two....

The Ego4D project provides a huge collection of first-person video and related data, plus a set of challenges for researchers to teach computers to understand the data and gather useful information from it. In September, the social media giant launched a line of “smart glasses” called Ray-Ban Stories, which carry a digital camera and other features. Much like the Google Glass project, which met mixed reviews in 2013, this one has prompted complaints of privacy invasion....

While the browser is in beta, I’ve been using it for a few days, and I haven’t faced any major hiccups. Here are some of the features I enjoyed in the new mobile version: Easy bookmark management Vivaldi calls its bookmarks displayed on its home screen ‘speed dials.’ They’re just tiles to access your favorite websites just with a tap. You can also organize these speed dials into folders such as news, technology, and sports....

This attention on the voice-loving amongst us has led to what I believe is the best self-contained podcast production studio around: the RØDECaster Pro. Basically, the RØDECaster Pro has all the features you could want from a podcast production studio (sound pads, multi-track recording, in-built effects, etc.), and is still small enough to carry around with you in our bag. In other words, it’s brilliant. Make sure you keep an eye on Plugged for a full review of the hardware, but in the meantime you can find more info about the RØDECaster Pro itself here....

It appears that in North America, the launch will only be live-streamed rather than booking a publicly-accessible venue like we’ve seen in the past. You’ll be able to watch the launch at 10:30 AM ET on OnePlus’ YouTube, Twitter, and Facebook pages. OnePlus will also be holding offline events in New Delhi and London, beginning at 19:00 IST and 16:00 BST, respectively. The company isn’t saying much beyond confirming the device’s name, and that it will once again feature a silk-smooth 90hz display....

But in all regions, the newly launched OnePlus Nord is an attractive buy without shelling out too much money. The phone has a sturdy build, with a good screen and reliable performance — ticking almost all boxes for a phone in this price range. I’ve been using this device for more than two weeks, but before we talk about this phone more, let’s look at its impressive spec sheet....

Amid calls for more scrutiny over Facebook’s business practices in the wake of one privacy mishap after the other, shareholders of the company made a case for Zuckerberg’s ouster as Facebook’s chairman. At the company’s annual stockholder meeting on May 30, some 83 percent of independent shareholders proposed an overhaul of the voting structure that would limit Zuckerberg’s outsized influence on the company he co-founded. They also pushed for a vote to decide whether Zuckerberg can stay on in his current role as both chairman and CEO, and whether it’s time for the company to separate the two roles....

Through its early discoveries, it quickly became the leading instrument of its kind. Today, 60 years later, it is still arguably the finest single-dish radio telescope in the world. It is still performing world-class science and making discoveries that shape our understanding of the Universe. The telescope’s origins date back to wartime radar research by the Radiophysics Laboratory, part of the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), the forerunner of the CSIRO....

It makes sense. People want to trust the creators of what they’re reading. It’s the difference between a stranger telling you something and a dear friend saying something else. Whose message are you more likely to believe? But my team and I wanted to know for sure. So we worked on a project with BuzzStream to see how people rated the authority of different snippets of the same hypothetical article....

Resident Evil 2’s sequel, Resident Evil 3: Nemesis, got the same treatment and is due for release this Friday (April 3). I got my quarantined hands on an early copy, and I’m sad to say it didn’t blow me away as much as its predecessor did. Resident Evil 3 takes place in the 24 hours leading up to the events of Resident Evil 2. It tells the story of former S....

Over the past few years, the fintech industry has started to prove that it can be a driving force to disrupt the financial services sector. Banks now have serious competition from tech-forward lending companies, transfer startups, personal finance and investment apps, and non-traditional banks. The majority of this activity has come from fintech companies in Europe. Why? Europe has led the charge in bridging the gap between older banking practices and rapidly advancing consumer technology....

These gaps include inadequate security by a major software producer, fragmented authority for government support to the private sector, and a national shortfall in software and cybersecurity skills. None of these gaps is easily bridged, but the scope and impact of the SolarWinds attack show how critical they are to U.S. national security. The SolarWinds breach, likely carried out by a group affiliated with Russia’s FSB security service, compromised the software development supply chain used by SolarWinds to update 18,000 users of its Orion network management product....

In an age of supersonic jet travel and Cannonball Run records, there’s still an allure for a time-honored method of travel that stands as a distinct polar opposite. Even today, trains remain romantic, soothing and utterly entrancing for millions. Still the backbone of American distribution and commerce, the surging power and grace of a locomotive churning by stops both adults and children in their tracks to watch. That appeal is what spawned the creation of the Trainz Railroad Simulator nearly two decades ago — and now, you can explore the full railway experience in its nearly photo-realistic digital reality with The Trainz Railroad Simulator Platinum Edition Bundle ($39....

Interestingly, this puts it within spitting distance of Cupertino’s first UK Apple Store, which opened in 2004 and is based on Regent Street. Although Microsoft has had a continuous presence in the US retail space 2009, its growth overseas has been comparatively sluggish. Beyond the borders of the continental United States, Redmond operates a modest chain of stores within Canada, as well as one in Sydney, Australia, and another in the US overseas territory of Puerto Rico....

I am a high energy particle physicist, and I am part of the team of hundreds of scientists that built and ran the Collider Detector at Fermilab in Illinois – known as CDF. After trillions of collisions and years of data collection and number crunching, the CDF team found that the W boson has slightly more mass than expected. Though the discrepancy is tiny, the results, described in a paper published in Science on April 7, 2022, have electrified the particle physics world....

In what’s become the biggest “will they/won’t they” story since Ross and Rachel, the Twitter board has finally decided to accept Musk’s $44 billion takeover offer. Early speculation on Monday morning led Twitter stock to rally after a weeks-long slump. Ironically, the stock’s recent decline in performance had been attributed to a lack of confidence in the Musk/Twitter deal. That’s over with now, and we can expect stocks to take at least a short-term hike in the wake of the massive deal....