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| The Security Spoon | |
| Number | 3730 |
| Broadcast Date | MARCH 3, 2020 |
| Episode Length | 31:19 |
| Hosts | Tom Merritt, Sarah Lane, Roger Chang |
| Guests | Seth Rosenblatt |
We get a wrap from this year’s RSA conference from security-news website “The Parallax” founder and editor-in-chief Seth Rosenblatt.
Guest
Quick Hits
- Google announced it will not host an in-person Google I/O event May 12 out of concern for the COVID-19 virus. Google is looking into an alternative format for the event. Tickets will be refunded by March 13. Facebook and Twitter have both pulled out of the SXSW conference in Austin, TX, due to virus concerns. SXSW organizers say the event is still proceeding as planned in March. In addition, Facebook is restricting visits to its offices and conducting job interviews by video conference. Twitter is encouraging its 4,800 employees to work from home.
- Major League Baseball is replacing Amazon Web Services with Google Cloud as its new data and analytics partner. The multiyear pact makes Google Cloud MLB’s official partner for business operations, including Statcast, the automated service that analyzes player performance and abilities. MLB will also use Google Ad Manager and its Dynamic Ad Insertion feature for its digital ads business for the third year in a row.
- Foxconn expects revenue to drop 15% in Q1 due to shutdowns and travel restrictions related to the COVID-19 outbreak. However, Foxconn believes normal production should resume by the end of March. Foxconn operates several factories in China and Apple is one of its biggest customers.
- Google announced Pixel owners are getting new features such as additional music controls, emojis, more photo and video features, expanded emergency help features through Google's Personal Safety app, Google Pay improvements, and more. Shortly after the release, Google pulled the update for AT&T Pixel 4 and Pixel 4 XL phones.
Top Stories
- Amazon announced that by adding smaller fulfillment centers in Philadelphia, Phoenix, Orlando and Dallas, it will increase same-day deliveries in those areas by 3 million items. Prime Now, the existing same-day service, offers roughly 20,000 items for rapid delivery, along with groceries. Customers will see a new “Today by” tag on items that are eligible, with an overnight delivery option as well.
- A new lightweight version of Facebook Messenger for iOS is going live. The iOS version has shrunk from 130 MB to 30 MB. It goes from 1.7 million lines of code to 360,000. This is the Project Lightspeed version of Messenger announced at F8 last year. It was also supposed to ship last year but missed its deadline. VP of Messenger Stan Chudnovsky told Fast Company it was like remodeling a house and discovering new problems when you open up the walls. It doesn't look too much different. The Discover tab is removed and the People tab got a redesign. Inbox read receipts and polls are temporarily gone. Facebook intends to incorporate some of the updates into future Android versions.
- Analyst Ming-chi Kuo sent a note to investors saying his sources indicate Apple has six products coming this year and next that will use mini-LEDs: a 12.9-inch iPad Pro, a 27-inch iMac Pro, a 14.1-inch MacBook Pro, a 16-inch MacBook Pro, a 10.2-inch iPad, and a 7.9-inch iPad mini. Mini-LEDs are smaller so they can use more backlights, control local dimming better and deliver improved contrast, brightness and black levels.
- Local US news app SmartNews announced it now has publishing partners in more than 6,000 cities. SmartNews has a tab for local news based on location sharing from the app's user. Article are picked by Machine Learning from sources curated by a team of journalists. SmartNews claims it wants to break users out of media bubbles. The election news tab, for instance, has a slider to let you see news about each candidate from a left, right, or center perspective. Members of the SmartNews engineering, product, data and marketing teams have taken listening tours through Minnesota, Iowa, Nevada and California to hear local concerns about news coverage. Michigan and Florida are next.
- Payment service Boku has noted a 30% rise in payments over the last two months, due in large part to the effects of the COVID-19 virus in South Korea, Hong Kong, Thailand, Taiwan, the Philippines, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, and Oman. Boku is an online payment system tied to a mobile number accepted on many entertainment websites including Spotify, PlayStation, and many gambling websites. And Google announced it will make advanced Hangouts Meet videoconferencing capabilities available to all G Suite and G Suite for Education customers until July 1, 2020. The features include larger meetings and live-streaming and the ability to record and save meetings for later viewing.
Discussion
- Coronavirus: The Unexpected Human Element at RSA Conference 2020
- How a Hacker's Mom Broke Into a Prison—and the Warden's Computer
- Kr00k Wi-Fi flaw exposes a billion devices to hackers
- Wendy Nather on How to Make Security 'Democratization' a Reality
Mailbag
- The loss of support for Google Reader may not be comparable for the prospects of Stadia but the drop of support for Daydream VR I think is. I was one of the people who bought into Daydream and Google has dropped support. They no longer are involved in developing apps, they have cut support for the device in their most recent phones and they are letting the platform die. I thought Daydream worked really well and would have done much better if it had been better supported by Google. If Stadia doesn't perform as quickly as expected how long will Google's attention span linger before they cut and run like they did with Daydream?
- Sent by James
- Hi DTNS Team.
Thank you for talking about the dangers of improper Lithium-ion battery disposal. I work in the waste industry, primarily dealing with landfill operations and the frequency of landfill fires being caused by these batteries has to be increasing as well just from my personal experience.
In 2019, I believe that every landfill fire we reported to our regulators was caused or suspected to be caused by a battery. Our last fire I had the luck of actually being the first person to spot and respond to the fire, and the mangled remains make it hard to determine what it was, but the number of cells makes me think something like a lawnmower battery pack. The ability for these batteries to put out an extreme amount of heat is impressive, especially because it’s chemical energy will continue to be expended even if you’ve thrown water on it. A few years back, a large fire was extinguished, with all of the charred surface waste removed and soaked, bucket by bucket as it was removed, one of these piles flared back up 22 hours later. That’s enough heat to re-light wet waste and begin smoldering again.
I was recently at another landfill and at the entrance, framed for all to see, is a charred musical greeting card, a source of a fire for them that was luckily extinguished very quickly.
Landfill operators do develop a quick eye for these things, one of our incidents a few years ago (pictures posted in the slack) was a Mophie pack, that was spotted smoking and removed before anything else caught fire. It was able to be spotted among all the waste, with really no sign of smoke from the cab of a landfill compactor.
While in most industries, a fire is a rare emergency event, in the waste industry, I now consider a fire event an expected, not a potential event. - Sent by Scott Theede, Operations Engineer with a Canadian City
- Hi DTNS Team.
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The Security Spoon |
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