Apple launches ‘Time to Walk’ for Fitness+ with Dolly Parton, Draymond Green, others
Apple today launched a new component of Fitness+ designed to get people out of their homes and away from their TVs. Called Time to Walk, it’s the first outdoor component of Fitness+ and opens the service up to a new world of workouts. Apple seemingly goes out of its way to not call them podcasts, but Time to Walk is a very much in the vein. Each “experience” is an audio-only episode ranging from 25 to 40 minutes that requires an Apple Watch and a pair of Bluetooth headphones. Each episode features a famous guest who recorded their stories while “walking outside or in locations that are meaningful to them,” so it will feel like you’re going on a walk alongside them.
A Home Security Worker Hacked Into Surveillance Systems to Watch People Have Sex
A former employee of prominent home security company ADT has admitted that he hacked into the surveillance feeds of dozens of customer homes, doing so primarily to spy on naked women or to leer at unsuspecting couples while they had sex. Telesforo Aviles, 35, pleaded guilty to a count of computer fraud in federal court this week, confessing that he inappropriately accessed the accounts of customers some 9,600 times over the course of several years. He is alleged to have done this to over 200 customers. Authorities say that the IT technician “took note of which homes had attractive women, then repeatedly logged into these customers’ accounts in order to view their footage for sexual gratification.” He did this by adding his personal email address to customer accounts, which ultimately hooked him into “real-time access to the video feeds from their homes.”
Google Effort to Kill Third-Party Cookies in Chrome Rolls Out in April
Google will debut its replacement for third-party internet cookies inside the Chrome browser this spring. The change will start rolling out in April with the Chrome 90 release. The software will include a new on-off switch for the company’s Privacy Sandbox initiative, an attempt to phase out the third-party cookies with a Google-sponsored alternative. Other browsers, including Apple’s Safari and Mozilla’s Firefox, already block third-party cookies by default because they can let companies profile your internet activities. This is usually done to serve up relevant ads, but most web users aren’t particularly well-versed on how their activity is tracked. Rather than go full nuclear on the tracking, Google came up with a compromise solution to the cookie debacle. The company plans on using the browser to group together internet users who have similar browsing patterns. In turn, businesses can serve relevant ads to these clusters of like-minded people, removing the need to track users individually.
SpaceX launches off more Starlink satellites as part of its first ride-sharing space service
Elon Musk’s SpaceX on Sunday launched a Falcon 9 rocket carrying a record 143 spacecraft in its premier run of the SmallSat Ridehsare Program. The program, dubbed Transporter-1, offers satellite operators a new way of putting compact satellites into a sun-synchronous orbit (SSO) at a cost of $1 million for a 440 pounds (200kg) satellite with additional mass priced at $5,000 per 2.2 pounds. “SpaceX’s rideshare offering provides increased access to space for small satellite operators seeking a reliable, affordable ride to orbit,” SpaceX said. There were 133 commercial and government spacecraft on this flight, including CubeSats, microsats, and orbital transfer vehicles, as well as 10 Starlink satellites. Starlink is the satellite broadband service Musk is launching to bring high-speed, low-latency broadband to rural America and eventually the rest of the world.
Hacker leaks data of 2.28 million dating site users
A well-known hacker has leaked the details of more than 2.28 million users registered on MeetMindful.com, a dating website founded in 2014, ZDNet has learned this week from a security researcher. The dating site’s data has been shared as a free download on a publicly accessible hacking forum known for its trade in hacked databases. The leaked data, a 1.2 GB file, appears to be a dump of the site’s users database. The content of this file includes a wealth of information that users provided when they set up profiles on the MeetMindful site and mobile apps. Messages exchanged by users were not included in the leaked file; however, this does not make the entire incident less sensitive. While not all leaked accounts have full details included, for many MeetMindful users, the provided data can be used to trace their dating profiles back to their real-world identities.
