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Cloudflare takes down 8chan's protection after a weekend of shootings
Following a series of mass shootings in the US, one of which saw a perpetrator's manifesto of white supremacist terrorism published and praised on the infamous 8chan discussion forum, web infrastructure firm Cloudflare has terminated the site's service (Ars Technica).
A similar manifesto was posted on 8chan before the Christchurch terror attack earlier this year, and Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince writes that his firm is withdrawing its services – making 8chan easier to knock offline or penetrate – because “they have proven themselves to be lawless and that lawlessness has caused multiple tragic deaths.” Cloudflare provides DDoS protection and performance improvement services to some 19 million websites and online services.
Climate change made the UK July heatwave twice as likely
A report by the World Weather Attribution initiative (WWA) has determined that climate change made the UK’s latest heatwave twice as likely, and the heatwave in France and the Netherlands as much as staggering 100 times more likely (WIRED). Across all regions of Europe, heatwave temperatures would have been 1.5 to three degrees Celsius lower in the absence of climate change.
You can now tell Amazon not to listen to your Alexa recordings
Amazon has updated its Alexa privacy settings to make it clear that retaining the default setting that uses your data to improve Alexa may involve having your voice recordings manually reviewed (The Verge). Users can opt out using a switch. Google and Apple have also recently been lambasted over having users' recordings to be listened to by contractors: Apple suspended all contractor handling of Siri recordings, while Google has halted a similar programme in the EU, where data protection laws are most stringent.
Franky Zapata has crossed the Channel on a hoverboard
French inventor Franky Zapata has successfully crossed the Channel on his Flyboard Air hoverboard (The Guardian). It was his second attempt at flying the challenging 35km route, following a refuelling failure last month.
How inspirational quotes became a whole social media industry
Motivational quotes are endemic on social media, with Facebook and Instagram in particular riddled with “profound” messages, often set against a whimsical background (WIRED). You know the type – those pictures of waterfalls and sunsets with sayings like “You can’t have a rainbow without the rain” that your aunt keeps sharing with comments like “So true”. They might make many cringe, but so popular are motivational quotes online that, for some, they can be big business – liked, shared and monetised to create a whole inspirational quote industry.
The physics of Elon Musk's new super-rocket
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This article was originally published by WIRED UK
