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Kaspersky and WeChat have been banned from Canadian government devices due to security concerns - although both companies think other motives are at play. This isn’t the first time both apps have been prohibited on the North American continent, as they were previously banned on US government devices too. Kaspersky, a well-known antivirus software suite, and WeChat, an instant messaging service , are rumored to have connections to Russia and China respectively, hence the decision from yet another western power to throw them out of official circles. “An unacceptable level of risk to privacy and security" In a statement released by the Treasury Board of Canada, both applications "present an unacceptable level of risk to privacy and security," due to their potential affiliations with governments that may seek to compromise the security of Canada and its allies. Both WeChat and Kaspersky responded to the ban by blaming geopolitical tensions and ideology as its basis, r...

Hamas posted gruesome images and videos that were designed to go viral. Sources argue that Telegram’s lax moderation ensured they were seen around the world. from Security Latest https://ift.tt/4s6qcDS

A judge in California earlier this week dismissed some claims raised by artists in their fight against AI image-generating websites. The artists believe such sites have been using their work unlawfully. Parts of a class action brought by Sarah Andersen, Kelly McKernan, and Karla Ortiz were dismissed by US District Judge William Orrick, including all the allegations made against DeviantArt and Midjourney, two popular text-to-image AI art generators. However, despite some claims being dismissed and the offer for an amended complaint to be submitted, the artists' attorneys Joseph Saveri and Matthew Butterick confirmed that their “core claim” survived. Artists claim generative AI image creators use their copyrighted work The case goes as follows: “Plaintiffs allege that Stable Diffusion was “trained” on plaintiffs’ works of art to be able to produce Output Images “in the style” of particular artists.” Orrick adds: “Finding that the Complaint is defective in numerous respects, I l...

Starting in November, Meta will offer Facebook and Instagram users in the EU, EEA, (European Economic Area,) and Switzerland the opportunity to remove all advertisements from the platforms via a new subscription plan. There will be two different prices available at launch depending on where you purchase a plan. People will be charged €9.99 a month on desktop, while on mobile, the price tag is bumped up to €12.99 a month. The higher cost on smartphones supposedly takes into account all “the fees that Apple and Google charge” developers through their respective app stores, according to the announcement . The company goes on to say it will not collect or use information from a subscribed account for targeted ads. There is one small catch: users must be at least 18 years old. Otherwise, they can't pay for a plan. One subscription will cover all linked profiles in a person’s Account Center until March 1, 2024. After that date, Meta will begin charging “for each additional account”...

Earlier this month, we reported that some wireless charging docks found in current BMW vehicles were interfering with the NFC chip embedded in the iPhone 15 . And now according to an internal memo picked up by MacRumors , Apple has acknowledged that the issue is affecting a "small number" of wireless BMW chargers. After charging via the BMW wireless system, some users found they received a "Could Not Set Up Apple Pay" error message in the Wallet app, with the only fix being a replacement phone.  Other users on Apple's forums even reported that the wireless charging pads were leading to catastrophic failure of the chips in some phones. The issue subsequently renders the NFC chip redundant, meaning users can’t take advantage of Apple Pay or use certain tickets and cards stored in Apple Wallet. It can also leave the iPhone 15 unable to access BMW's digital car keys, which is another big issue if that's the method you use to unlock your car.    The App...

When you buy car insurance, you do so on the promise that you will demonstrate good behavior. You would not expect your car insurer to pay out if you broke the speed limit, never had your brakes or tyres checked, or left your pride and joy unlocked overnight. There is a mutual pact between you and your insurer. You take responsibility for your car’s safety and your own actions, and they pay out when bad things happen that you could not have foreseen, prevented, or mitigated against. The same principle applies with cyber insurance. As an organization, you are 100% responsible for your own cybersecurity , and the insurance providers are there in the event of the unthinkable and unpreventable. For some businesses, especially small and medium-sized, having cyber insurance could mean the difference between staying open and going bust. That is reflected in the market’s growth, with Munich Re estimating cyber premiums will reach a value of $22bn by 2025. However, as the volume of cyberatta...

It's time for your daily dose of Quordle hints, plus the answers for both the main game and the Daily Sequence spin off.  Quordle is the only one of the many Wordle clones that I'm still playing now, around 18 months after the daily-word-game craze hit the internet, and with good reason: it's fun, but also difficult. What's more, its makers (now the online dictionary Merriam-Webster) are also keeping it fresh in the form of a variant called the Daily Sequence, which sees you complete four puzzles consecutively, rather than concurrently.  But Quordle is tough, so if you already find yourself searching for Wordle hints , you'll probably need some for this game too.  I'm a Quordle and Wordle fanatic who's been playing since December 2021, so I can definitely help you solve Quordle today and improve your game for tomorrow. Read on for my Quordle hints to game #644 and the answers to the main game and Daily Sequence.  SPOILER WARNING: Information about Quo...

It's almost November, and while the official Black Friday deals event is slated for the 24, Amazon is treating us with a massive sale on its own devices that you can shop for now. Amazon's early Black Friday deals include up to 50% off Fire tablets, TVs, the Echo Show, and the best-selling Fire TV Stick. • Shop more early Amazon Black Friday deals While retailers typically hold on to their best deals for the official Black Friday sale, today's early device deals at Amazon are very good. The retailer has record-low prices on some of Amazon's best-selling devices, allowing you to score an early bargain right now and avoid the madness of Black Friday proper. Some of today's best early Black Friday deals include the Fire TV Stick on sale for just $19.99 (was $39.99), a massive 50% discount on the Fire HD 10 tablet, bringing the price down to $74.99 (was $149.99), Amazon's top-rated 55-inch 4K smart TV on sale for $269.99 (was $519.99). See more of Amaz...

AMD will rely on advancements in high-bandwidth memory (HBM) in its bid to unseat Nvidia as the industry leader for making the components that power generative AI systems. Building on the theme of processor-in-memory (PIM), Xilinx, which is owned by AMD, showcased its Virtex XCVU7P card, in which each FPGA had eight accelerator-in-memory (AiM) modules. The firm showcased this at OCP Summit 2023, alongside SK Hynix’s HBM3E memory unit, according to Serve the Home . Essentially, by performing compute operations directly in memory, data won’t need to move between components on systems, meaning performance increases and the overall system becomes more energy efficient. Using PIM, with SK Hynix’s AiM, led to ten times shorter server latency, five times lower energy consumption, and half the costs in AI inference workloads.   The latest twist in the ongoing AI arms race Nvidia and AMD make most of the best GPUs between them, and one may assume that efforts to improve the quality of...

The Samsung Galaxy S23 phones were unveiled on February 1, 2023, but it looks increasingly likely that the Samsung Galaxy S24 series is going to show up earlier in 2024 – probably before the end of January. As per seasoned tipster @UniverseIce on Chinese social media site Weibo (via @Tech_Reve and Google Translate), the Galaxy S24 has now entered mass production, which puts it on course for a "mid-to-late January" launch. That said, sources speaking to SamMobile suggest an "early-to-mid January" launch is still a possibility, though "things could go either way". Everyone seems to be agreed that January is the month, though the exact date is yet to be fixed. It's certainly plausible that there's still some uncertainty even inside Samsung, and that a specific date for the launch has yet to be decided on. No doubt there will be another Samsung Unpacked event attached, and we will of course cover it all live. The Galaxy S24 has entered pro...

The SD 9.1 standard will double the speeds of the best microSD cards out there today, with the next generation of SD cards hitting speeds of up to 2GB/s. With SD 9.1, unveiled by the SD Assocation (SDA), the next cohort of SD Express memory cards uses PCIe Gen4 that can deliver 1,969MB/s – more than double the maximum speeds introduced with the first microSD protocol in the SD 7.1 spec. SD Express memory cards come in four varieties, including SD Express Seed Class 150, 300, 450 and 600 – with these numbers corresponding with minimum read and write speeds measured in Mb/s. This means these microSD cards can range anywhere from 0.6GB/s to 2GB/s. By contrast, the best portable SSDs usually land at roughly 1GB/s. The fastest microSD cards ever What that means, in real terms, is the ability to transfer a Blu-ray movie , which is roughly 25GB, in 12.5 seconds. Speeds like this will also be fast enough to handle transferring 8K video files, which are relatively massive, with ease. T...

It's time for your daily dose of Quordle hints, plus the answers for both the main game and the Daily Sequence spin off.  Quordle is the only one of the many Wordle clones that I'm still playing now, around 18 months after the daily-word-game craze hit the internet, and with good reason: it's fun, but also difficult. What's more, its makers (now the online dictionary Merriam-Webster) are also keeping it fresh in the form of a variant called the Daily Sequence, which sees you complete four puzzles consecutively, rather than concurrently.  But Quordle is tough, so if you already find yourself searching for Wordle hints , you'll probably need some for this game too.  I'm a Quordle and Wordle fanatic who's been playing since December 2021, so I can definitely help you solve Quordle today and improve your game for tomorrow. Read on for my Quordle hints to game #643 and the answers to the main game and Daily Sequence.  SPOILER WARNING: Information about Quo...

Samsung unveiled a slew of memory products and technologies this week that caught TechRadar Pro’s eye, ranging from the new HBME3 Shinebolt memory technology to the possibility of a petabyte SSD (PBSSD). But it’s the throwaway reference to a BM9C1 SSD that’s among the most compelling. Described as a high-capacity quad-level cell (QLC) SSD, the BM9C1 unit may well be an expansion in Samsung’s QLC SSD series of QVO SSDs .  The latest edition is the 870 QVO SATA 2.5-inch SSD, which is known to be among the cheapest high-capacity SSDs . The largest capacity currently in production is 8TB and retails for $330 right now on Amazon .  The BM9C1 may be a device that extends the maximum storage capacity from 8TB to 16TB, for instance, or it can be a successor to this device in the form of the long-awaited 880 QVO, which hasn’t yet been announced formally.  Should we expect a Samsung 880 QVO SSD? QLC SSDs are optimized to have as high a capacity as possible and deliver a dollar...