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5 Ways to Enhance Your Cyber Security

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Cyber Security

We live in a new age, a digital one that changes remarkably from year to year if not from day to day. It’s slowly evolving and forming into what it will be. Though it seems that we have been here for a while, our society is still really only at the beginning of the digital age. One of the biggest concerns of our new age is data protection and cyber security. Consulting with an expert (who asked that neither he or his company be named), he recommended 5 ways to increase your cyber security:

Use Different Passwords on Each Site

This is actually a pretty simple measure, but most people typically don’t do this. That’s understandable considering a vast majority of us have accounts on an uncounted number of sites. Staying up-to-date with social media causes most people to have at least three. That’s before you add in sites like Amazon, Google, eBay, and sites for credit cards or banking. Most people aren’t going to remember twenty or more different passwords. Luckily, some nifty software engineer created a password manager. A password manager will keep all those different passwords together so you can have security and don’t have to worry about remembering 20+ passwords. Here’s a list of ones to look at!

Uninstall Unneeded Apps

I shudder to think about how many apps I’ll need on my phone in even the next five years. The truth is that even though I have over a hundred apps, I probably only use around thirty of them even semi-consistently. Delete the apps you never use when your phone gets cluttered. Those apps typically have access to and record information on you. And if someone were to hack that app, it likely doesn’t have the most robust security… then the hacker has your information. So declutter your phone and trash all of those apps that you don’t use.

Don’t Overshare On Social Media

This is about accidentally giving out the answers to our password reset questions. When this happens we do it innocuously. Simply put most of us aren’t thinking when we tell Facebook about our first puppy named Dozer and how cute he was. Or even when we share with our friend and discuss our favorite book. We aren’t hackers so it never crosses our mind when we unintentionally tell someone the answer to a security question. We didn’t share it and think about the security. It’s just a cute story or something we love talking about. But to someone else out there its an open door to steal your information. So be conscious of what you’re posting online.

Use Two Factor Authorization

This term in cyber security sounds like something most of us aren’t familiar with, but its actually something that’s quite common. Have you ever went to sign into an account on a new device and a message pops up saying that it has to send you an email or a text to verify that you are you? That’s two-factor authentication. So make sure you have it set it up. Most popular sites offer it in some variety. Not all will be able to send you a text message, but an email is something that most website have been able to do for many years now.

If It Looks Too Good to be True, It Probably Is

This is probably the most obvious advice in cyber security and yet also the one that tricks most people. For example, your Xbox live account could get hacked while trying to win a pass for a closed beta on a random and unsafe website. Basically, we want to believe. Whether out of naivety or innocence we see something that just seems perfect and we want to believe it’s real. It’s much better to be suspicious and curious. It’s better to be cynical than to have someone steal your information.

Android

Pixel 8 Pro runs Google’s generative AI models

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Rick Osterloh, Google’s SVP of devices and services, says the Pixel 8 Pro will be the first hardware to run Google’s generative AI models.

At an event today, Osterloh said the Pixel 8 Pro’s custom-built Tensor G3 chip, which accelerates AI workloads, can run “distilled” versions of Google’s text- and image-generating models to power image editing and other apps.

Osterloh said, “We’ve worked closely with our research teams across Google to take advantage of their most advanced foundation models and distill them into a version efficient enough to run on our flagship Pixel.”

Google improved Magic Eraser, its photo-editing tool, to remove larger objects and people smudge-free using on-device models. Osterloh claims that this improved Magic Eraser creates new pixels to fill in shot gaps, producing a higher-quality image.

Osterloh says a new on-device model will “intelligently” sharpen and enhance photo details, improving zoom.

On-device processing benefits audio recording. The Pixel 8 Pro’s recording app will soon summarize meeting highlights.

Gboard will use a large language model on the Pixel 8 Pro to power smart replies. Osterloh claims that the upgraded Gboard will provide “higher-quality” reply suggestions and better conversational awareness.

Osterloh said an update in December will add on-device generative AI features except for Magic Eraser, which appears on the Pixel 8 Pro at launch.

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Telegram launches a global self-custodial crypto wallet, excluding the US

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Telegram, with 800 million monthly users, is launching a self-custodial crypto wallet. The move will solidify its presence in the vibrant crypto community that has grown from its chat platform and may attract more people to crypto.

Telegram and TON Foundation announced TON Space, a self-custodial wallet, on Wednesday at Singapore’s Token2049 crypto conference, which draws over 10,000 attendees.

Telegram has a complicated blockchain relationship. After the SEC sued Telegram over a massive initial coin offering, the chat app abandoned its Telegram Open Network (TON) blockchain project in 2020. The Open Network Foundation (TON Foundation), founded by open-source developers and blockchain enthusiasts, supports the development of The Open Network (TON), the blockchain powering a growing number of Telegram applications, including the wallet.

The Open Platform (TOP) and TOP Labs, a venture-building division, created the TON-based wallet.

TON Space will be available to Telegram users worldwide without wallet registration in November. The U.S., which has cracked down on the crypto industry and promoted many crypto apps to geofence users, is currently excluded from the feature.

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Google’s massive antitrust trial begins, with bigger implications

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The Justice Department’s landmark antitrust case against Google began in court today, setting off a months-long trial that could upend the tech world.

At issue is Google’s search business. The Justice Department claims that Google has violated antitrust laws to maintain its search title, but the company claims that it does so by providing a superior product.

The Justice Department sued Google for civil antitrust in late 2020 after a year-long investigation.

“If the government does not enforce the antitrust laws to enable competition, we will lose the next wave of innovation,” said then-Deputy Attorney General Jeffrey A. Rosen. “If that happens, Americans may never see the ‘next Google.’”

A large coalition of state attorneys general filed their own parallel suit against Google, but Judge Amit Mehta ruled that the states did not meet the bar to go to trial with their search ranking complaints.

The search business case against Google is separate from a federal antitrust lawsuit filed earlier this year. The Justice Department claims Google used “anticompetitive, exclusionary, and unlawful means” to neutralize threats to its digital advertising empire in that lawsuit.

Justice Department attorney Kenneth Dintzer set the stakes for the first major tech antitrust trial since Microsoft’s late 1990s reckoning on Tuesday. “This case is about the future of the internet, and whether Google’s search engine will ever face meaningful competition,” Dintzer said.

Beginning the trial, the government focused on Google’s deals with phone makers, most notably Apple, that give its search product top billing on new devices. Dintzer claimed that Google maintains and grows its search engine dominance by paying $10 billion annually for those arrangements.

“This feedback loop, this wheel, has been turning for more than 12 years,” he said. “And it always benefits Google.”

Google lawyer John Schmidtlein refuted that claim, hinting at the company’s legal defense in the coming weeks.

“Users today have more search options and more ways to access information online than ever before,” Schmidtlein said. Google will argue that it competes with Amazon, Expedia, and DoorDash, as well as Microsoft’s Bing search engine.

Google planted the seeds for this defense. According to internal research, Google Senior Vice President Prabhakar Raghavan said last year that more young people are using TikTok to search for information than Google Search.

In our studies, almost 40% of young people don’t use Google Maps or Search to find lunch, Raghavan said. “They use TikTok or Instagram.”

Google will be decided by U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta in the coming months. We’re far from that decision, but the company could be fined heavily or ordered to sell parts of its business.

The trial could change Google’s digital empire if the Justice Department wins. Other tech companies that dominated online markets in the last decade are also watching. If the government fails to hold an iconic Silicon Valley giant accountable, big tech will likely continue its aggressive growth trajectory.

If the Justice Department succeeds, the next decade could be different. The industry-wide reckoning could cripple incumbents and allow upstarts to define the next era of the internet, wresting the future from tech titans.

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