John Lister

A Canadian woman has been fined for looking at an Apple smartwatch while at traffic lights. The court ruled it should be treated the same as checking a smartphone screen. Victoria Ambrose was fined $400 CAD (just over $300 USD) for breaking local ... laws on distracted driving. A police officer noticed that she failed to move when the lights turned green and was instead looking at her watch, only moving when the officer shone a light at the car. (Source: bbc.co.uk ) She did not dispute that report, but said that she looked at the watch solely to check the time. She said it may have looked as if ... (view more)

Google's Chrome browser may soon support biometric logins to websites such as fingerprints. It follows on from Firefox becoming the first major browser to support biometric logins just a few weeks ago. Both browsers are supporting "WebAuthn," a web ... standard for authenticating logins without passwords. While it's a big step, it's only half the journey as the standard also has to be supported by the websites in question. (Source: digitaltrends.com ) The standard has been jointly developed by two key groups. The World Wide Web Consortium is the main body that develops standards for ... (view more)

A series of Google Chrome browser 'tools' that claims to offer free movies is the first part of a convoluted credit card scam. The people behind it seem to be playing the numbers game. The tools are distributed via the Chrome Web Store. They aren't ... the usual apps (which run independently) or extensions (which add extra functionality to the Chrome Browser), but rather themes. The idea is they change the appearance of the browser in a similar way to the early 2000s craze for installing custom-made desktop wallpaper. While a browser theme shouldn't be anything but purely decorative, the ones in ... (view more)

Papua New Guinea is set to ban Facebook for a month. Unlike with bans in more authoritarian countries, it's designed to research cyber crime laws rather than stifle debate - or so the official explanation goes. However, the country's government have ... warned it might need to create a "more conducive" site that meets local laws. The government says its necessary to block access to the site while it investigates if and how Facebook helps users breach the Cyber Crime Act passed in 2016. The act was an attempt to update numerous laws to cover activity that was often already illegal in the "real ... (view more)

A man says his life may have been saved by his Apple watch. A heart rate alert revealed he was experiencing a serious problem. Kevin Pearson was, by coincidence, visiting his father in hospital when he got the alert. It came from his watch, which ... tracked his heart rate. Normally that's to reveal general patterns as well as tracking how quickly the rate returns to normal after exercise, an important fitness indicator. However, the watch alerted Pearson to the fact his heart rate was at 161 beats per minute even though he was sitting down reading a book. Given his age of 52, that's a rate that ... (view more)

Google has inadvertently revealed the names of rape victims whose identity is legally secret. It's all down to over-enthusiastic behavior by the search engine's "autocomplete" feature. Autocomplete works when a user starts typing a term into the ... Google search bar, then the search bar presents a drop-down menu with suggested terms based on what is being typed in. The user can then click or tap on any of these terms to carry out the search without having to type out the search query in full. As they continue typing more characters, the list of suggested terms will update to become ... (view more)

Both Microsoft and Google are warning of another bug in computer processors. It's similar to previous bugs known as 'Spectre' and 'Meltdown'. For now the new issue has the less dramatic codenames 'Speculative Store Bypass Variant 4' and ... 'CVE-2018-3639'. As with Spectre and Meltdown , it involves a processor function known as speculative execution that's meant to improve computation processes. Unlike some bugs, it's classed as a low risk to users but is significant because of the sheer number of computers that could be affected. The processor is the part of the computer that physically carries ... (view more)

Google is being sued for a potential $4 billion over claims it intentionally bypassed security settings on iPhones. It's likely to succeed following similar cases in the past. The case has been filed in the UK by a group called 'Google You Owe Us'. ... They are seeking "representative action" status, which is similar to class action status in the United States. If that's granted, any settlement or damages in the case could apply to as many as 4.4 million people. (Source: theguardian.com ) Claims May Sound Familiar On the face of it, the case looks bad for Google as it covers the same issue ... (view more)

British students have been banned from wearing any form of wristwatch in exams. It follows concerns that 'smart watches' containing helpful information could be disguised as ordinary watches. The new rules will affect most national exams for school ... students aged 16 and 18, including those which determined whether students can get a particular place on a university course. The rules say normally students must take off their watch and leave it in a visible place on their desk, though in some cases supervisors are collecting the watches and keeping them outside. The changes follow on from ... (view more)

Facebook says it deleted 583 million fake accounts in the first three months of the year. That means on average three to four percent of active accounts in this period were bogus. The figure comes in the company's first Community Standards ... Enforcement Report, which gives statistics about the action it takes over content that breaks its rules. It's part of an effort to improve transparency about the site and follows last month's publication of the full detail of the 'community standards' for the first time. Spam The Most Prevalent Problem As well as improving transparency, the figures are ... (view more)