Geekly Update - 05 April 2017

The AskBobRankin Geekly Update

From the Oops Files: Microsoft quietly removed the search function on its Docs.com document storage cloud service last week. Seems it allowed anyone to search everyone’s documents and retrieve password lists, medical and financial records, and other sensitive information. (Yeah, I never heard of Docs.com, either.)

Uber finally lets passengers correct errors in their pickup location, an obvious feature that makes life much easier on drivers and passengers.

AT&T landed a $6.5 billion contract to build a nationwide first responders communication network. FirstNet will serve police, firefighters, and EMTs throughout the USA. First responders will no longer compete during an emergency with frantic relatives trying to reach their loved ones via commercial cellular or data networks.

Domino’s Pizza is putting a cute little self-driving robot out on the streets of Germany to deliver pizzas. What could possibly go wrong?

“We won’t sell your browsing history even though Congress says we can.” That’s what Comcast, Verizon, and AT&T Inc. want you to believe.

Please, won't you be my Niebuhr? Only hours after FBI Director James Comey dropped a few clues, Gizmodo reporter Ashley Feinberg identified the secret fed’s private Twitter account. Click to see Comey’s unexpected reaction to being outed.

FCC chairman Ajit Pai has blocked the applications of several dozen ISPs to provide subsidized Internet access to poor people. Pai says he wants States to decide who can provide the Lifeline service that federal dollars subsidize.

Twitter has decreed that “@username” tags’ lengths are not deducted from the 140 character limit on Tweets. This allows a user to blast a tweet at a seemingly infinite number of people, and annoy every one of them.

Once you agree to receive faxes from a company, it is under no obligation to tell you how to opt-out. That’s the ruling of a federal appeals court, which said the FCC exceeded its authority by requiring opt-out information on solicited faxes as well as unsolicited ones.

Facing the facts... Facial recognition tech on the Samsung Galaxy S8 smartphone can be fooled by displaying a photo of the correct face to the S8’s sensor. The same problem afflicts Google and Microsoft phones.

More than 40 zero-day vulnerabilities have been found in Tizen, Samsung’s proprietary operating system that powers millions of its “smart” devices. "Everything you can do wrong there, they do it,” said security researcher Amihai Neiderman. “You can see that nobody with any understanding of security looked at this code or wrote it. It's like taking an undergraduate and letting him program your software."

And finally, from the "I Didn't Know This Was a Sport" Files: Australian daredevil performer Zoe Ellis broke her own Guinness World record for stopping 32 electric fans using her tongue in one minute. That record was surpassed shortly thereafter, but she still holds the record for "Most mouse traps released on the tongue in one minute (female)." If you're keeping score at home, the record is 24.

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