As a safety measure, SNL writer Nick Kocher recently installed a Nest cam in his apartment.

He then left town for the weekend, letting his friend Jon Bass crash at his place.

Jon doesn't at first know about the camera or that he's being watched by his friend remotely.

"The Trouble with Bias," Kate Crawford's (previously) keynote at the 2017 Neural Information Processing Systems is a brilliant tour through different ways of thinking about what bias is, and when we should worry about it, specifically in the context of machine learning systems and algorithmic decision making -- the best part is at the end, where she describes what we should do about this stuff, and where to get started.

The system analyzes foot-traffic data captured from hallway/doorway sensors and security cameras, and combines it with weather data and real-time flight arrival data from the control tower, to help manage gates better by automatically opening those closest to connecting gates, dispatching gate crews, and alerting facilities staff when and which washrooms to clean. All decisions are acted upon instantly and without human intervention.

However over in France, the country’s government is proposing an age-of-consent rule in which all teens/children below the age of 16 will need to get consent from their parents to open an account on Facebook or any other form of social media.

“After reviewing it carefully, I have decided that it cannot be finalised until further work has been done in some of these areas.”

But Lamb told The Register that this was “unacceptable”, pointing out that the fact the technology is already being used – the police have used it at the last two Notting Hill Carnivals – should be reason to push out a strategy sooner.

Earlier this year, Microsoft launched an app called Seeing AI that was aimed at those who are visually impaired. What the app does is that it uses your phone’s camera and when you point it at objects or people, through the use of AI it will be able to recognize them and tell the user what it is, which we guess in turn helps the user “see” their surroundings.

Now it looks like Microsoft has recently released an update for the app in which they add a bunch of new features, one of which includes handwriting recognition

The Internet Engineering Task Force has taken the first steps towards a better way of protecting users' DNS queries and incidentally made a useful contribution to making neutrality part of the 'net's infrastructure instead of the plaything of ISPs.

Internet of Things users need to become sysadmins, America's Federal Bureau of Investigation says.

That's a summary of the Feds' blog post, published this week, in which the agency's Beth Anne Steele wrote that Things are best deployed on their own network, with an off-switch.

Homes signed up to AT&T's DirecTV service may be inadvertently running hardware that can be easily hacked, according to a security researcher.

An easily-exploitable security flaw was found in the wireless video bridge that ships with DirecTV, which lets laptops, tablets, and phones connect with the main Genie digital video recorder. Because the wireless video bridge, manufactured by Linksys, isn't protected by a login page, anyone with access to the device could obtain sensitive information about the device.

Singapore's Ministry of Defence (Mindef) is turning to the global community of ethical hackers for help in identifying vulnerabilities in its internet-facing systems.

Specifically, some 300 selected white hackers would be invited to penetrate eight such systems, including the ministry's public website, NS Portal, and Defence Mail.

Banks will have to publish details of incidents that stop people using their payment services under new rules proposed by the UK's Financial Conduct Authority.

The move is part of attempts to give Brits more information on the resilience of the services touted by banks, and help them better choose where to put their cash.

Plans to expand the vast National Pupil Database to include information on why kids leave mainstream education have been slammed by privacy campaigners.

The government's stated aim is to better understand how and why pupils end up with alternative provision (AP) by adding more detail to the information collected in the annual AP Census. It should also help sniff out cases where mainstream schools send kids out to boost their performance stats.

The new version (PDF) gives eight reasons for a pupil being in AP – for instance mental health needs, pregnancy, being an offender or permanent exclusion – and the info will be collected for the first time next month.

Theresa May should consider the introduction of two new laws to deter the intimidation of MPs during elections and force social media firms to monitor illegal content, an influential committee has said.

A Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) routing incident saw a bunch of high-profile Internet destinations mis-routed through Russia on Tuesday, US time.

In what BGPMon called a “suspicious” event, “Starting at 04:43 (UTC) 80 prefixes normally announced by organisations such Google, Apple, Facebook, Microsoft, Twitch, NTT Communications and Riot Games were now detected in the global BGP routing tables with an Origin AS of 39523 (DV-LINK-AS), out of Russia.”

Researchers working on a technology to detect unannounced data breaches have found, to their dismay, that one per cent of the sites they monitored were hacked over the previous 18 months.

Fitness trackers and mental health apps could be doing more harm than good because they are not based on sound science, researchers have warned, comparing some health app developers to “snake oil salesmen of the 1860s”.

Launched on Indiegogo, as you can see in the video above it is pretty clear how Moon differs from the competition. It is a spherical camera that floats on its base, defying gravity in the process. What this means is that the camera can spin around fully and can capture everything in its surroundings.

Avis has teamed up with Continental where they will be applying Continental’s Key-as-a-Service (KaaS) technology to some of its rental cars. The test will be kicking off in Kansas City where according to Larry De Shon, president and chief executive officer, Avis Budget Group, it will help lay the foundation for a potential future involving keyless car rental.

To privacy advocates and those in the media, the quip set off alarm bells because it's not clear what kind of data is available to Netflix's employees and what kind of rules govern access to that data.