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The Internet May Be Hurting Your Sleep

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Can you imagine life without the always-on internet?  If you’re like most people today, it’s a simply indispensable tool, and the thought of suddenly being without it makes you shudder and brings images of the Dark Ages to mind.

It’s glorious, no doubt, and it really is a remarkable tool, but unfortunately, it’s not all upside.  A recent study funded by the European Research Council has concluded that access to broadband internet access costs you as much as 25 minutes of lost sleep every night.  Considering that most of us are already getting by on far too little sleep, that’s not good.

Luca Stella, one of the researchers responsible for the study, had this to say about it:

“Internet addiction and technology use near bedtime are often blamed as a major cause of the sleep deprivation epidemic.  Yet the empirical evidence on this relationship is still limited.  In our study, we first show descriptive evidence that the use of digital services at night is correlated with shorter sleep duration.  Then, exploiting differences in the access to high-speed internet caused by the pre-existing telephone infrastructure in Germany, we analyze the relationship between high-speed internet and sleep.  We find that access to broadband internet reduces sleep duration and sleep satisfaction.”

While the report is clearly bad news, in many ways, it merely confirms what we already knew.  It seems self-evident that if you spend time surfing the web just before bed, you’re probably going to get sucked in, which is going to cut further into your already limited sleep time. Sure enough, we now have evidence that supports this notion.

What is interesting in the report, and something that runs counter to most people’s assumptions, is that people in the 30-59 year age range suffered more sleep loss than those in the under 30 crowd.

A fair question then, is how much sleep are you getting?  If you’d like more, it might be time to consider curtailing late-night internet use.

New Tools Help You Limit Your Social Media Time

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Facebook and Instagram are rolling out new tools designed to help manage how much time you’re spending on those two social media platforms.

On Facebook, the new feature is called “your time on Facebook,” and on Instagram, it’s called “Your Activity,” but both features do essentially the same thing.

They monitor and report on how much time you’re spending on the platform and can be fine-tuned by users to temporarily mute your push notifications.

The changes are being rolled out in an effort to address concerns that a number of groups are now raising. The concerns are about the addictive feedback loops built into social media apps. These feedback loops have been demonstrated to have a negative effect on the well being of users who get sucked in too deeply.

The new features will be rolled out to 99 percent of the users on each platform.  The company is withholding the new features from 1 percent to allow for comparative testing.

Once they become available, the new features can be found under the “Hamburger Menu,” which is the nickname for the three vertical lines at the top right-hand corner of the Facebook app.  On Instagram, the new feature can be found under the settings menu, accessible by tapping the gear icon on your Instagram profile.

It remains to be seen whether these new features will have the desired effect.  Since they have to be manually activated, odds are that the impact will be minimal. For a certain subset of users who seem not to be able to control their social media addiction on their own, it might provide just enough of a boost to make a difference.

Even if that proves not to be the case, it’s clear that the company takes the matter seriously, so we can expect to see more from them on this front in the months ahead.

Automatic Mobile Picture Sync Coming To Windows 10

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Microsoft has made numerous ventures into the smartphone ecosystem, but so far, they’ve only been met with limited success.  This time, they’re trying something a little different.

Instead of making their own Windows-based phones, they’ve created a “Your Phone” app that syncs your phone with your PC.  The app is still in testing and is slated to be released sometime in October.

At present, while there are two versions (Android and iOS), the Android version is currently more limited than the iOS version.  The Android version works like this:  If you take a picture with your Android smartphone, it will sync automatically to your PC, allowing you to access or edit the image in something close to real time.

With the iOS version, you can surf the web on your phone, send the web page to your phone and pick up surfing where you left off.  That’s much handier, because among other things, it allows you to start watching a streaming video on your phone, then switch to a bigger screen for a better viewing experience.

In addition to the development of this new app, Microsoft is taking steps to try and bolster the popularity of its Edge browser.  Coming soon will be a biometric sign-in for Edge, which gives users a password-free method of signing into websites in hopes of keeping at least some percentage of users from switching their default browsers to Chrome, Firefox, or some other option.

At present, the changes are interesting, but not compelling.  We expect that Microsoft will continue heavily investing in integration, however, in a bid to increase its presence in the market.  Whether their latest efforts will bear fruit remains to be seen, but from what we’ve seen so far, the early versions of the Your Phone app show promise.  Kudos to Microsoft, and here’s hoping these first steps lead to even greater integration and an improvement to the overall experience down the road.

Twitter Is Getting Tough On Apps

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Twitter has long had a reputation for being at the mercy of bots that have been used to sway public discourse and opinion.

Often, these bots are controlled via Twitter API apps that allow the authors to automate most of their actions, such as tweets, follows, and likes.

In the face of Facebook’s recent grilling before congress, Twitter has decided to take a more proactive stance, and has recently announced major changes to their policies.

The first part of the company’s statement to that effect reads as follows:

“Starting today, all new requests for access to Twitter’s standard and premium APIs are required to go through a new individual approval process.”

In addition to the newly announced approval process, the company moved decisively to cut off more than 143,000 apps they deemed to be in violation of the company’s terms of service.

The more robust approval process requires app developers to provide more information about themselves and the ultimate purpose of the apps they design.  Additionally, Twitter has put a hard cap on the number of apps that developers can create and manage, which tops out at ten.  If developers need to run more than that, they’ll need special permission from Twitter, and they’ll have to provide a compelling reason to justify the need.

Beginning September 10th, 2018, the company will be placing additional restrictions on every Twitter App which will control their use rates.

The new rate limits (per app) will be:

300 Tweets and Retweets per hour

1,000 likes per 24 hours

1,000 follows per 24 hours

15,000 direct messages per 24 hours

The company reserves the right to either remove or further restrict these limits for legitimate reasons.

On top of all that, Twitter has also modified its Twitter API support page to include an option for reporting “bad apps” that break one of the company’s policies.  According to the company, the combined effect of all of these changes should “help cut down on the ability of bad actors to create spam on Twitter via their APIs.”

While it remains to be seen how effective these changes will be, kudos to Twitter for taking action.

Microsoft Working On Delay Feature For Windows 10 Update Installs

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If you’ve used Windows 10 for any length of time, you’ve probably had this happen to you.  You’re right in the middle of working on something important, and all of a sudden, your OS decides it would be a great time to install some updates!

In response to user complaints, Microsoft introduced a “snooze” feature that allowed users to delay the installation of upgrades.

However, this sparked as many complaints as it silenced, because unfortunately, it causes more frequent device reboots. Now, Microsoft is trying again.

According to Dona Sarkar, Window’s Insider Chief:

“We heard you, and to alleviate this pain, if you have an update pending, we’ve updated our reboot logic to use a new system that is more adaptive and proactive.”

The company is using machine learning to accurately predict when the best time to restart the device is.

“We will not only check if you are currently using your device before we restart, but we will also try to predict if you had just left the device to grab a cup of coffee and return shortly after,” Sarkar says.

So far, the company has limited itself to internal testing, but the early results have been promising.  As of now, the new model should be available to Windows Insiders (Redstone 5 and 19H1 updates), which will give company engineers a much broader pool of feedback which will allow for additional fine-tuning.

It’s too early to tell if this is indeed the solution to the problem, but if it is, it will finally put an end to one of the most frustrating aspects of using Windows 10.  We have to say, we’re impressed with the changes in the company in recent years. Kudos to Microsoft for taking action and being responsive to their user base.

Bluetooth Vulnerability Allows Hackers To Access Devices

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There’s a new Bluetooth security vulnerability to be aware of, tracked as CVE-2018-5383, and it’s a nasty one.

It’s a cryptographic vulnerability that affects firmware or operating system software drivers from a number of major vendors, including Qualcomm, Broadcom, Intel and Apple. At this point, the implication of the bug on Linux, Android, and Google are unknown.

The flaw is related to two important Bluetooth features: BR/EDR implementations of Secure Simple Pairing in device firmware and Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) of Secure Connections Pairing in OS system software.

It was discovered by researchers operating out of Israel’s Institute of Technology. They discovered that the Bluetooth specification recommends (but critically does not mandate) that devices supporting the two features make any effort to validate the public encryption key received during secure pairing.

Since the specification is optional, it’s hardly a surprise that some vendors producing Bluetooth products do not take sufficient steps to validate the parameters used to generate public keys during the exchange.

This allows a would-be hacker the possibility of executing a man-in-the-middle attack to obtain the cryptographic key used by the device. This would give them the opportunity to not only spy on the device’s owner, but also to inject malware that could allow the hacker to take full control over the device.

SIG (the Bluetooth Special Interest Group which maintains the technology), had this to say about the flaw:

“For an attack to be successful, an attacking device would need to be within wireless range of two vulnerable Bluetooth devices that were going through a pairing procedure.

The attacking device would need to intercept the public key exchange by blocking each transmission, sending an acknowledgement to the sending device, and then injecting the malicious packet to the receiving device within a narrow time window. If only one device had the vulnerability, the attack would not be successful.”

Bluetooth SIG has now updated the specification to require products to validate public keys received as part of the public key-based security procedures. Of the manufacturers mentioned above, Apple and Intel have both released patches. Broadcom has made fixes available to its OEM customers who are responsible for providing them to end-users. There has been no word yet from Qualcomm.

Girl Scouts Can Now Earn New Badges For High Technical Skills

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The girl scouts have officially moved into the 21st century.

The Girl Scouts of America recently announced the creation of a whole raft of new badges that address (in the organization’s words) “some of society’s most pressing needs.”

A total of 30 new badges will be available exclusively for girls between the ages of five to eighteen for efforts and advocacy in the following areas:

Computer Science

Cybersecurity

Environment

Robotics

Space Exploration

Badges are awarded on the basis of completing specific tasks. So, for instance, when a girl learns how to code and completes a small project, she could be awarded with the new computer science badge, and when she builds a simple robot, the robotics badge would be awarded.

This is part of an ongoing effort to boost interest and participation in fields where women are generally under-represented.

According to the Girl Scouts USA CEO, Sylvia Acevedo:

“Whether they are fighting cybercrime, exploring how engineers solve problems, or advocating for issues affecting their community, Girl Scouts are learning how to proactively address some of the foremost challenges of today, while also building skills that will set them up for a lifetime of leadership.”

In recent years, the Girl Scouts have struggled to maintain enough membership nationally to remain viable. This is at least one of the reasons why the Boy Scouts of America announced in October 2017 that they would begin accepting girls into their program.

It remains to be seen whether the move to modernize the badges available to girls in the organization will be enough to boost membership and ensure the organization’s long-term viability. Even if it’s not, it’s a fantastic idea and long overdue. Kudos to Girl Scouts’ leadership for taking innovative action, and to all the girls who earn these new badges!

Hackers May Set Their Sights On Your GPS Next

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If you’re like most people, you probably rely heavily on the GPS function of your phone. Type in an address and your phone helpfully guides you, turn by turn, to your destination. It’s one of the most often utilized features of a smartphone, and of course, the hackers are very interested in interfering with it.

Until now though, hackers have been unable to fool humans into driving to the wrong destination by hacking their GPS, because their instructions often make no sense given the prevailing terrain features the humans are seeing on the road. For instance, nobody is going to turn left into a Jiffy Lube parking lot or a corn field just because GPS says to (unless your destination was Jiffy Lube, of course).

That’s changing, thanks to researchers from Virginia Tech and the University of Electronic Science and Technology of China.

The team has devised a way to hack into a GPS system and spoof the results well enough to fool humans, giving bogus driving directions that seem to make sense given local conditions, and as such, don’t raise red flags.

Accomplishing the task was no small feat, involving the creation of an algorithm that works in something close to real time. This along with a portable device for spoofing GPS that can be attached to the car of your target or placed in a trailing car. Its effective range is about fifty meters.

Once the equipment is in place, the algorithm crafts GPS inputs that follow the real world road network, allaying suspicion in 95 percent of the team’s test cases, while still ultimately sending the target to the wrong destination.

There are any number of ways this exotic type of attack could be used, but the two primary use cases would be to intentionally steer the target into hazardous road conditions, or to lure them to an isolated area where a physical attack could be carried out.

Unfortunately, in the months and years ahead, we can probably count on seeing both.

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