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The Bahamas has been devastated by Hurricane Dorian
Hurricane Dorian spent 36 hours squatting over the small island of Grand Bahama and left behind it what Bahamian prime minister Hubert Minnis described as “unprecedented and extensive” devastation (The Guardian).
Dorian hit the country's Abaco Islands on Saturday as the strongest storm ever to make landfall in the Atlantic, and has resulted in a massive humanitarian crisis in the country, with what's been described as apocalyptic devastation across island nation's population centres, wrecking homes and flooding infrastructure with seawater. Seven people have died as a result of the storm, now rated Category 2 and heading for the neighbouring US coast.
Kings Cross developer had plans to upgrade its dormant facial recognition system
It's emerged that the development group behind King's Cross Central planned to upgrade its currently-inactive facial recognition CCTV system with a version that scans crowds for “‘flagged’ individuals (for example, individuals who have committed an offence on the estate or high risk-missing persons)” while blurring out other faces in footage (BBC News).
The details of this appeared in a letter to London mayor Sadiq Khan. It's definitely against UK data protection regulations, as processing people's faces for biometric purposes counts as personal data, but following the furore, site developer Argent says it now has “no plans to reintroduce any form” of facial recognition to the site.
Facebook tells US authorities that they aren't allowed to create fake profiles
After the US Department of Homeland Security decided that it will now allow officers to create fake social media profiles to help spy on people seeking entry or citizenship, Facebook says that's against the rules (Gizmodo).
A representative of the social media giant told the Associated Press: “Law enforcement authorities, like everyone else, are required to use their real names on Facebook and we make this policy clear. Operating fake accounts is not allowed, and we will act on any violating accounts.” Twitter similarly says that it doesn't permit surveillance profiles, but given the number of fake accounts on both platforms, it's unlikely that these sentiments will have much of an impact.
In a swipe at Chrome, Firefox now blocks ad trackers by default
Firefox is continuing its fight against Facebook and Google's online ad tracking empire (WIRED). The browser, owned by Mozilla, will now block third-party tracking cookies by default. While most of us generally click absentmindedly to ‘accept cookies’ for the sites we alight on, these invisible hangers-on constitute a surprisingly insidious means of tracking your behaviour across the web.
Android 10 is rolling out now
Android 10 is officially out and on its way to users' system updates, starting with Google's own Pixel range (Ars Technica). The snack-based version names are gone, while new features include full gesture navigation, a system-wide dark theme, smart notification response suggestions and more niche features, such as extra support for folding phones and dual-boot options for multiple Android versions.
Why you shouldn't feel good about carbon offsetting
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This article was originally published by WIRED UK
