Month: October 2018

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It's a common adage in the tech world: "privacy is hard."

On the one hand, a city like Oakland wants to have enough surveillance that it can mitigate crimes like the recent tragic killings at local public transit stations. On the other hand, Oaklanders—as they have for decades—are concerned about the real possibility of the government overreaching.

Enlarge (credit: TechBargains)

Greetings, Arsians! Courtesy of our friends at TechBargains, we have another round of deals to share. Today's list is headlined by a deal on Apple's AirPods, which are available for $127 at Rakuten with a coupon code at checkout. Normally, the totally wireless earbuds sell for $159, though we've seen a handful of discounts like this in recent months.

You should know the deal with the AirPods by now: they aren't the best sounding earphones around, and their design doesn't work for everyone, but they're still one of the steadiest pairs of truly wireless headphones on the market. An updated model with wireless charging support and a new wireless chip is still likely to arrive at some point, but after Apple neglected the earphones at its iPhone XS event last month, it's unclear when they'll get here. Either way, they're unlikely to cost less than $130. Just note that you'll have to sign up for a free Rakuten account to take advantage of the discount code here.

If you don't want a new pair of earphones, we also have deals on Roku TVs, Kindle Unlimited subscriptions, Dell laptops, and much more. Have a look for yourself below.

Google has announced plans to further restrict Chrome extensions in a bid to crack down on the number of malicious extensions found in the Chrome Web Store.

We've seen a spate of malicious extensions this year; the extensions do things like steal credentials and participate in click fraud schemes. The malicious extensions take advantage of the considerable access to Web pages that extensions have.

Google has already taken some steps to limit malicious extensions. Last year, a stricter multi-process model was applied to extensions to limit the impact of security flaws in the browser, and earlier this year Google deprecated the ability for extensions to offer installation from third-party websites (instead forcing all installations to go via the Chrome Web Store). This feature will be fully removed in Chrome 71 in December.

Enlarge (credit: Getty / Aurich)

Greg Nojeim is director of the Freedom, Security, & Technology Project at the Center for Democracy & Technology. Eric Wenger is the director of Cybersecurity and Privacy Policy at Cisco Systems, Inc. Marc Zwillinger is the founder of ZwillGen PLLC and frequently represents technology companies on surveillance-related issues. The opinions expressed here do not necessarily represent those of Ars Technica.

In the wake of news from Reuters on Friday that a federal court in California rejected Department of Justice demands that Facebook break, bypass, or remove the encryption in its Messenger app, it’s worth noting how little we still know about such an important dispute.

Depending on what specific relief the government sought from the court, the case may signal a potentially significant threat to the security of Internet-based communications. In a hyperconnected world, the implications of the government’s demand for expanded surveillance capabilities go far beyond any legitimate law enforcement equities in any single case.

Enlarge / Common Brown Rat (Rattus norvegicus). (credit: Getty | Nature Picture Library)

The first known case of rat hepatitis jumping to a human patient has reopened a long-standing mystery of how the cryptic viruses spread and bounce between humans and animal reservoirs.

Last Friday, September 28, researchers at the University of Hong Kong revealed that a 56-year-old-man had contracted a strain of hepatitis E previously thought to only infect rats. Hepatitis E viruses, generally, cause liver inflammation in humans that is usually self-limiting but can become severe or even fatal to some, including organ transplant patients and pregnant women.

Researchers spotted the man’s infection back in September of last year, after he had undergone a liver transplant in May. They reported that the man’s infection was treated and cleared by March of this year, after which they verified the presence of the unexpected virus and tried to track down its source.

Enlarge / "Dreams mean everything. They’re the stories we tell ourselves of what could be, who we could become." (credit: HBO)

Today, we’re launching “season two” of Ars on your Lunch Break, in which we take episodes from the After On Podcast and break them into two or three segments of roughly a half hour each. You can then listen to them while having lunch at your desk, while partaking of other meals, or while eating nothing whatsoever. It’s that interactive!

We ran the first set of these episodes on Ars in the summertime. They included in-depth conversations with folks including George Church (one of the world’s top bioengineers), Rodney Brooks (one of the world’s top roboticists) and Tim O’Reilly (one of tech’s top thinkers and commentators—and certainly its top publisher).

Your host in the audio segments is me, Rob Reid—a long-time entrepreneur who now podcasts and writes science fiction. My show is built around deep-dive interviews with world-class thinkers, founders, and scientists. I talk about my podcast’s approach in the introduction to today’s segment, and I won’t repeat all that here.