Month: March 2024

Enlarge (credit: NurPhoto / Contributor | NurPhoto)

Unsealed court documents have revealed more details about a secret Facebook project initially called "Ghostbusters," designed to sneakily access encrypted Snapchat usage data to give Facebook a leg up on its rival, just when Snapchat was experiencing rapid growth in 2016.

The documents were filed in a class-action lawsuit from consumers and advertisers, accusing Meta of anticompetitive behavior that blocks rivals from competing in the social media ads market.

"Whenever someone asks a question about Snapchat, the answer is usually that because their traffic is encrypted, we have no analytics about them," Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg (who has since rebranded his company as Meta) wrote in a 2016 email to Javier Olivan.

Enlarge / Affinity's photo editor. (credit: Canva)

Online graphic design platform provider Canva announced its acquisition of Affinity on Tuesday. The purchase adds tools for creative professionals to the Australian startup's repertoire, presenting competition for today's digital design stronghold, Adobe.

The companies didn't provide specifics about the deal, but Cliff Obrecht, Canva's co-founder and COO, told Bloomberg that it consists of cash and stock and is worth "several hundred million pounds."

Canva, which debuted in 2013, has made numerous acquisitions to date, including Flourish, Kaleido, and Pixabay, but its purchase of Affinity is its biggest yet—by both price and headcount (90). Affinity CEO Ashley Hewson said via a YouTube video that Canva approached Affinity about a potential deal two months ago.

Enlarge / The basic requirements for an AI PC, at least when it's running Windows. (credit: Intel)

Microsoft said in January that 2024 would be the year of the "AI PC," and we know that AI PCs will include a few hardware components that most Windows systems currently do not include—namely, a built-in neural processing unit (NPU) and Microsoft's new Copilot key for keyboards. But so far we haven't heard a whole lot about what a so-called AI PC will actually do for users.

Microsoft and Intel are starting to talk about a few details as part of an announcement from Intel about a new AI PC developer program that will encourage software developers to leverage local hardware to build AI features into their apps.

The main news comes from Tom's Hardware, confirming that AI PCs would be able to run "more elements of Copilot," Microsoft's AI chatbot assistant, "locally on the client." Currently, Copilot relies on server-side processing even for small requests, introducing lag that is tolerable if you're making a broad request for information but less so if all you want to do is change a setting or get basic answers. Running generative AI models locally could also improve user privacy, making it possible to take advantage of AI-infused software without automatically sending information to a company that will use it for further model training.

Enlarge / OnLeak's renders of the Pixel 9 Pro XL, the Pixel 9 Pro, and the Pixel 9. (credit: OnLeaks / 91Mobiles / MySmartPrice)

When renders of the Pixel 9 came out in January from OnLeaks, we got our first hints that a big change in Google's lineup was afoot. Usually, the company does a big "Pro" phone with three cameras and all the premium features and then a smaller Pixel that gets cut down somewhat, usually with only two cameras. Those January renders showed a big and small phone both with three cameras, indicating the base model Pixel 9 was getting updated to be a "mini-Pro" model—a smaller phone, but still with all the trimmings. The small Pro model still seems to be in the works, but apparently, that's not the base model.

The new render from OnLeaks and 91Mobiles shows a third Pixel 9. This one is the usual cut-down small model with only two cameras. Apparently, the lineup would now be a 6.8-inch "Pixel 9 Pro XL," a "Pixel 9 Pro" at 6.1 inches, and a "Pixel 9" at 6.0 inches.

The base model's design looks just like the other Pixel 9 leaks. The camera bar takes on a new rounded pill shape. The sides switch to a flat metal band, like an iPhone 4/15. The corners of the display and phone body are much more rounded.

Enlarge / A Venus Aerospace drone makes a powered flight. (credit: Venus Aerospace)

Venus Aerospace conducted its first powered flight last month, reaching Mach 0.9 with a drone.

The 8-foot-long vehicle was dropped from an Aero L-29 Delfín aircraft at 12,000 feet and flew under the power of a hydrogen peroxide monopropellant engine. This engine was not fired at full thrust because the location of the test flight, an unspecified range in the United States, did not permit flight faster than the speed of sound, said Andrew Duggleby, co-founder and chief technology officer of the Houston-based company.

This first powered flight came as the company announced a long-duration test firing of its rotating detonation rocket engine, an experimental approach to propulsion that could be about 15 percent more efficient than a conventional chemical rocket engine. The company's long-term ambition is to develop a commercial aircraft that can travel at Mach 9—far faster than any previous airplane. That's clearly a ways off, but these are important, if early, steps on that path.

Enlarge / They look like normal notifications, but opening an iPhone with one or more of these stacked up, you won't be able to do much of anything until you tap "Allow" or "Don't Allow." And they're right next to each other. (credit: Kevin Purdy)

Human weaknesses are a rich target for phishing attacks. Making humans click "Don't Allow" over and over again in a phone prompt that can't be skipped is an angle some iCloud attackers are taking—and likely having some success.

Brian Krebs' at Krebs on Security detailed the attacks in a recent post, noting that "MFA Fatigue Attacks" are a known attack strategy. By repeatedly hitting a potential victim's device with multifactor authentication requests, the attack fills a device's screen with prompts that typically have yes/no options, often very close together. Apple's devices are just the latest rich target for this technique.

Both the Kremlin-backed Fancy Bear advanced persistent threat group and a rag-tag bunch of teenagers known as Lapsus$ have been known to use the technique, also known as MFA prompt bombing, successfully.

Enlarge / The steel frame of the Francis Scott Key Bridge sits on top of a container ship after the bridge collapsed in Baltimore on March 26. (credit: Jim Watson/AFP via Getty Images))

Just shy of half past 1 in the morning, the MV Dali, a giant container ship, was sailing gently out of the port of Baltimore when something went terribly wrong. Suddenly, lights all over the 300-meter-long vessel went out. They flicked on again a moment later, but the ship then began to veer to the right, toward one of the massive pylon-like supports on the Francis Scott Key truss bridge—a huge mass of steel and concrete that spans the Patapsco River.

The Dali’s lights went out a second time. Then the impact came. The ship plowed into the support, with large sections of the bridge’s main truss section instantly snapping apart and falling into the river. It took just 20 seconds or so for the structure to come down.

Enlarge / The Polestar 4 went on sale in China late last year, then in Europe and Australia in January. Now it's North America's turn. (credit: Jonathan Gitlin)

NEW YORK—On Wednesday, Polestar formally launched its next electric vehicle in the North American market at the New York International Auto Show. Until now, Polestar's range has been a little limited—there was the Polestar 1, a handsome if a little eccentric plug-in hybrid GT that went out of production after just 1,500 examples. And there's the Polestar 2 sedan, now available as a more efficient, more fun rear-wheel drive variant. But the brand has lacked that most popular of body styles, the SUV—until now.

"We have been obviously waiting for this year so much in order to really accelerate now. So the two cars coming are SUVs, [which] is, for us, key to really get into the dimension that we want to be," said Thomas Ingenlath, CEO of Polestar. "We have invested so much into the brand. We have so much invested into being in 25 countries. Of course we need now that kind of scale, a minimum of a three-car company to justify all of that," he said.

The latest addition is called the Polestar 4, which slightly confusingly slots between the smaller Polestar 2 sedan and larger, more expensive Polestar 3—the other SUV that joins the range this year. It has a clear family resemblance to its siblings, with similar front styling to the Polestar 3 and a fastback rear that calls back to the Polestar 2. The decision to ditch the rear windshield will no doubt be controversial—instead, the Polestar 4 uses a camera-based mirror that provides a wider-angle view of things behind the car than a normal passive mirror.