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Your Expired Visa Card Could Be 'Zombified' to Make Contactless Payments

WIRED

Security News This Week: Your Expired Visa Card Could Be'Zombified' to Make Contactless Payments Plus: Apple sends out an "unprecedented" number of spyware warnings, Ukraine hits a Russian ecommerce giant with cyber and drone attacks, and more. As the controversial vehicle surveillance giant Flock Safety continues to expand, WIRED got the code for the company's new AI policing tool and reconstructed the software to show that its capabilities go far beyond reading license plates and tracking vehicles. We also published the story this week of a Rhode Island police officer who was subjected to five internal affairs investigations in less than two years after he publicly questioned his department's use of Flock cameras . Following incidents of high-profile rogue activity by some of its AI agents, OpenAI said this week that it is halting model training runs and overhauling internal safety protocols. The company said that its upcoming Astra model may represent a turning point of "critical" cyber capabilities.


eMeet SmartCam C960 Ultra webcam review: Almost perfect

PCWorld

Only the surprisingly bad mics hold back the eMeet SmartCam C960 Ultra 4K webcam from what could have been a perfect score. The eMeet C960 Ultra 4K webcam is a well-constructed, affordable, 4K autofocus camera with terrific image quality. However, the input mics are truly bad. It's hard to find anything to dislike about the eMeet C960 Ultra 4K autofocus webcam, which continues the industry's trend to provide 4K resolution at ever-lower prices. The key here is the webcam's 1/1.5-inch sensor, unusually large for the price range, which helps the camera excel in low-light situations.


Are You Sure You Want a Car With a Giant Touch Screen?

The Atlantic - Technology

Are You Sure You Want a Car With a Giant Touch Screen? The AI boom is making phones and laptops more expensive. New drivers may never have to learn how to parallel park. Many new cars--a Ford Mustang Mach-E, a BMW sedan, a Tesla Cybertruck--will just maneuver into a spot for you with a click of a button. Even a decade-old Toyota Corolla has a backup camera and pedestrian detection.


Flock is testing a new AI tool that tracks and identifies people based on their driving habits

Engadget

Flock has long pretended to be a simple automated license plate reader (ALPR) company, despite overwhelming evidence that its cameras can track a lot more than that. Now there's a report that it has been developing new AI tools that can potentially locate people by how they drive, according to Wired. The software was reportedly called Nightshift and is now going by the name OS Investigate. It draws from a network of cameras in 6,000 communities and logs the movements of drivers in those communities, Wired reports. This could be used, for instance, to find a witness to a crime by analyzing vehicle movements near where a crime occurred.


Will AI give you the job? Automated hiring tools spark discrimination and secrecy lawsuits

The Guardian

'Companies in the US are increasingly turning to AI to make faster and more efficient workplace decisions, often under the guise of objectivity.' 'Companies in the US are increasingly turning to AI to make faster and more efficient workplace decisions, often under the guise of objectivity.' Will AI give you the job? F or the last four years, Erin Kistler has applied for thousands of jobs at companies like Paypal, Microsoft and Netflix, only to find her résumé disappear into a black hole. A product manager with nearly 20 years of experience, Kistler believes she was qualified for every role, yet she never received a single interview.


Pump up the summer jams with the perfect poolside radio station

PCWorld

Poolsuite brings endless-summer vibes to your browser with upbeat music and a playful throwback look. Poolsuite is the perfect internet radio station for when you want to put on some sunglasses, pull up a beach chair, grab a cold one, and refuse to admit summer will ever end. The site features a sun-soaked mix of retro graphics, palm trees, poolside clips, and breezy music. The whole thing feels like an '80s vacation ad crossed with a swanky beach bar DJ. Since it's a curated internet radio station, you don't need to build playlists or dig through albums yourself.


Flock Has a Powerful New AI Tool for Police. We Got Its Code

WIRED

Flock Has a Powerful New AI Tool for Police. Flock's surveillance cameras have already sparked outrage. WIRED reconstructed its next-generation AI system, already in use by some police, to confirm it goes much further than tracking license plates. Vehicle surveillance giant Flock Safety has told the public for years that its technology "cannot recognize, identify, or track individuals." It has now built a system that does both, an artificial intelligence tool for police that can identify drivers and track vehicles by their patterns of movement alone, WIRED has learned. Drawing on a network of cameras that logs the movements of drivers in more than 6,000 communities, the tool can pick out potential witnesses by how often their cars pass through a neighborhood, or surface a driver's "associates" from the cameras they pass together. Because the system also reaches police case files, 911 dispatch logs, and commercial identity records, those plates can be turned into names, home addresses, and relatives.


Child-monitoring apps might need a reboot

MIT Technology Review

Monitoring apps promise to keep young people safer online, but looking in on kids' phones can backfire. Online safety experts say there's a better way. Pam Wisniewski's digital adolescence showed her the best and the worst of the internet. At 14, she left an abusive home, where she'd been isolated in a fifth-wheel trailer at the end of a seven-mile dirt road. She moved in with her older sister and taught herself to type on AOL Instant Messenger. Online, she sought out the support and the community she'd lacked at home. She also discovered how thin the ice can be. "I sent my address to some guy in New Mexico to send me a mug with my name on it," she recalls. "And then I found a news story like five, 10 years later that he killed somebody." Those experiences set the course of her career.


This free app lets you grab text from anywhere on your screen

PCWorld

When you purchase through links in our articles, we may earn a small commission. Use NormCap to extract words from photos, scanned documents, videos, and more. Have you ever tried to copy a line from a photo, scanned PDF, video, or app? In many cases, you can see the text but can't select it. You then end up arduously typing it by hand.


Make your next PC upgrade painless with this 34.99 transfer bundle

PCWorld

When you purchase through links in our articles, we may earn a small commission. Make your next PC upgrade painless with this $34.99 transfer bundle Get three lifetime PC utilities for $34.99: PCmover Professional to transfer your apps, files, and settings, DiskImage to back up and restore your entire system, and SafeErase to permanently wipe sensitive data. Getting a new PC should feel like an upgrade, not a weekend-long IT project. Unfortunately, moving your files, apps, settings, and personal data can turn that shiny new machine into a migration headache. The PC Transfer Kit Bundle brings three useful tools together for $34.99 (MSRP $129.85),