A virus thought to be used in the hack has been found on employee computers and is linked to Russian hacker groups, the Asahi Shimbun reports. The hackers allegedly emailed employees with malicious files, including the known Mokes and Netwire malware, which grant attackers remote access to infected systems. It’s believed that employees inadvertently, or unknowingly, installed the viruses onto their machines. As a result, attackers were able to gain access to and manipulate the company’s security keys to steal the cryptocurrency....

According to the release notes: Security keys improve account security because they are designed with an intent to cryptographically verify an individual’s identity when signing in to an online service, thereby defending users against account takeover attacks. WebAuthn (aka Web Authentication) is a key standard as part of the World Wide Web specification developed by the FIDO alliance in an attempt to streamline the implementation specifics of authenticating users to web-based apps and services under the FIDO2 Project....

Yesterday, Samsung hosted an event in San Francisco on the “Growth and Innovation in the Wearable Device Market.” Co-hosted with SF Women in Tech, the conference showed off some of the biggest new innovations in tech — but apparently drew the line when it came to women’s sexual health. Liz Klinger, the co-founder and CEO of Lioness, a women-led company designing tech-driven sex toys whose mission is to destigmatize pleasure, was asked to remove her stall from the event, even though she was previously approved to attend....

They’ll be accessible via screens and perhaps holographic displays. STAR Labs says they’ll be far more capable than today’s voice assistants. They can serve as “an individualized teacher, a personal financial advisor, a healthcare provider, or a concierge. A NEON can also be an actor, a spokesperson, or a TV anchor. A NEON can be our friend, collaborator or companion.” These avatars are powered by two technologies: CORE R3, a proprietary platform (R3 stands for ‘Reality, Realtime, and Responsive’), and SPECTRA, which “complements CORE R3 with the spectrum of Intelligence, Learning, Emotions and Memory....

Welcome to another edition of Bitcoin Today, where I, Satoshi Nakaboto, tell you what’s been going on with Bitcoin in the past 24 hours. As Machiavelli used to say: Money makes the world go around! Bitcoin price We closed the day, May 03 2020, at a price of $8,897. That’s a minor 0.95 percent decline in 24 hours, or -$86.14. It was the lowest closing price in one day. We’re still 55 percent below Bitcoin’s all-time high of $20,089 (December 17 2017)....

Welcome to another edition of Bitcoin Today, where I, Satoshi Nakaboto, tell you what’s been going on with Bitcoin in the past 24 hours. As de Beauvoir used to say: Let’s pull this rabbit out the hat! Bitcoin price We closed the day, September 08 2020, at a price of $10,131. That’s a notable 2.29 percent decline in 24 hours, or -$237.78. It was the lowest closing price in forty-three days....

In a paper published in late August, astrophysicists Zephyr Penoyre and Emily Sandson of the University of Cambridge and Columbia University respectively, describe a method for the construction of a 322,000 kilometer-long (200,000 miles) cable anchored to the Moon and dangled across space into the Earth’s gravitational field. Before we get into how, let’s talk about why we’d want to build an elevator to the Moon. The easiest answer is that it’s incredibly cost-effective....

Researchers from Darmstadt University of Technology (DUT) in Germany fed their model books, news, and religious literature so it could learn the associations between different words and sentences. After training the system, they say it adopted the values of the texts. As the team put it in their research paper: This allows the system to understand contextual information by analyzing entire sentences rather than specific words. As a result, the AI could work out that it was objectionable to kill living beings, but fine to just kill time....

Scientists from Samsung and Harvard University have unveiled a new approach to building smarter computer chips: “copying and pasting” the brain onto a memory network. They propose copying the brain’s neuronal wiring map by using a novel nanoelectrode array to record electrical signals produced by neurons. The extracted map would then be rapidly pasted onto a memory network. Per the study paper: The researchers claim that this could lead memory chips to better approximate the brain’s low power, facile learning, adaptation, and “even autonomy and cognition....

According to the complaint, ICOBox raised the funds in 2017 to create a platform for issuing initial coin offerings (ICOs). The SEC says the firm sold its “ICOS” tokens to more than 2,000 investors without registering them as securities. Defendants allegedly claimed the tokens would go up in value upon trading and that ICOS token holders would be able to swap them at a discount for other tokens available on the ICOBox platform....

Hello from the lockdown trenches, Since Tristan’s taking a much-needed break — and seriously, who doesn’t need a break after everything this year has thrown at us? — I’m here to take over his weekly epistle. It still seems like the biggest bugbear for everyone is the need to wear a mask, which is… stupid. Trust me, I don’t like beating this drum anymore than y’all like hearing about it, but apparently a lot of you are still resisting this very basic safety measure....

Police in Winnipeg have issued a warning to locals after con-artists started targeting users of the city’s Bitcoin ATMs with the worst con ever, Canadian outlet City News reports. According to the report, scammers have been putting homemade out-of-order signs on the Bitcoin ATMs stating that they are currently undergoing software updates. The sign asks users to scan a QR code attached the sign as they buy Bitcoin from the convenience machine....

The new tome, dubbed “The Orange Erotic Bible,” comes in at a whopping 64,167 words – enough to call itself a full-fledged novel, though paltry compared to the Bible’s nearly 800K. Its developer – so far we haven’t been able to identify the person(s) responsible – generated the book as part of an AI novel-writing contest called NaNoGenMo (National Novel Generation Month) that’s been held annually since 2013. According to the project’s GitHub page, the person or team responsible for The Orange Erotic Bible set out to answer a simple question: “If gpt-2 read erotica, what would be its take on the Holy scriptures?...

Anyone who has spent some time in a coffee bar with wifi already knew it, yet it’s official when Wired reports it. Mac users aren’t special anymore. First of all, every college student has a Macbook, secondly, have you ever seen the sales numbers of the iPhone?! If you need a more thorough analysis of the undoing of the Mac cult, read the Wired article. Here are their eight reasons with links to articles supporting the thesis, the complete story is here....

When we think about communicating more, most of us imagine it’s about talking more. But communication is really about exchanging information — that includes receiving it. You can’t listen when you’re talking, or as Larry King once put it: “I never learned anything while I was talking.” Despite this, most conversations are composed of two people just waiting for their own turn to speak. Now before you start thinking I’m putting myself on a high horse… I’m definitely guilty of talking too much....

Spotify has mostly diverted the questions about the podcasts’ content — until now. In an interview with Axios, CEO Daniel Ek, said that the company exercises no editorial control over its creators: It’s great that Spotify allows creators to express themselves freely, but it will have to face the music eventually. Platforms can’t simply ignore moderating the content they host. In fact, with cases like Alex Jones, it may have to issue an outright ban....

Let’s be honest, most writers don’t come up with their best, or most creative ideas, sat at their desks all day. Inspiration often comes when you least expect it and it’s important to be prepared. So, whether you’re constantly on the move, on the hunt for ideas, or simply want to make the most of your downtime, I’d recommend having a note-taking app to hand. With this in mind, here are some of the best note-taking apps and tools: use them and you’ll spend more time working on your ideas than waiting for inspiration to arrive – I promise!...

Since its inception, facial recognition technology has been met with equal doses of skepticism and controversy. One company scraped billions of photos from social media without the public’s knowledge, building a near-universal facial recognition application and inciting cries of infringement on constitutional freedom and exacerbation of racial biases. [Read: We asked 3 CEOs what tech trends will dominate post-COVID] Typically, facial recognition technology captures, analyzes, and stores facial scans to identify the actual identity of a person....

Let’s look at one example – fizzy drinks. You might assume that plastic bottles are the least green option, but is that always the case? To find out, we compared five different types of pressurized drinks containers. We tested their environmental impact according to a range of criteria, including how each contributes to climate change and the pollution each produces during manufacture, use and disposal. Here they are, ranked from worst to best....

Unsurprisingly, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) has issued a safety recall of the feature, which it deemed dangerous: Thanks for that, NHTSA. The background: According to the NHTSA, Tesla introduced the rolling stop functionality last October through a “limited access” over-the-air update. As part of this, Tesla owners could choose between different profiles for their car’s self-driving features: Chill, Average, and Assertive. The Assertive mode was accompanied with a warning that the vehicle “may perform rolling stops....