Waze signs a deal to share data with local governments, millions are pirate streaming the World Cup, and we’ve got the details on the company’s whose mission it is to shut them down.
Plus can you hear the difference between hot and cold? We take the test.
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— Headlines —
Millions Watch World Cup Through Pirated Live Streams
Millions of people have tuned in to pirated World Cup streams thus far, with some games getting nearly half a million unauthorized viewers. TorrentFreak spoke with the French-Israeli content protection firm Viaccess-Orca, who sent roughly 2,000 takedown notices to content platforms that host or link to illegally streamed World Cup matches.
“The success rate varies per content platform but overall we manage to get 35 percent of the streaming links disabled before the game ends. I think this is a great success rate, especially compared to direct download sites,” Leporini informs us.
There are still hundreds of thousands of people getting through. The company estimates that between 100,000 and 500,000 people tune in to an average game. Up until last week, Belgium versus Russia was the most-watched match with 471,541 unauthorized viewers.
New Zealand ISP allows its customers to subscribe to the U.S. version of Netflix
Slingshot_, a local internet provider in New Zealand, wants to give its subscribers a little extra perk: The ISP just added a new “global mode”_to its internet plans that allows its customers to access video services like Netflix or Hulu without getting in trouble for coming from the wrong country
Slingshot’s global mode is essentially a VPN, meaning that it reroutes any traffic through servers situated in other countries. Slingshot subscribers using global mode may look like they’re located in New York
Anyone using this type of VPN likely violates the terms of of service of a streaming site, which is why Slingshot coyly suggests that the service is just for customers who happen to house international visitors
Why Google’s Waze Is Helping Local Governments Track Users
What may be especially tantalizing for planners is the super-accurate read Waze gets on exactly where drivers are going, by pinging their phones’ GPS once every second. The app can tell how fast a driver is moving and even get a complete record of their driving history, according to Waze spokesperson Julie Mossler.
Yet this passively-tracked data “is not something we share,” she adds. Waze, which Google bought last year for $1.3 billion, can turn the data spigots on and off through its application programing interface (API).
Waze has been sharing user data with Rio since summer 2013 and it just signed up the State of Florida. It says more departments of transport are in the pipeline.
But none of these partnerships are making Waze any money. The app’s currency of choice is data. “It’s a two-way street,” says Mossler. “Literally.”
In return for its user updates, Waze gets real-time information from Rio on highways, from road sensors and even from cameras, while Florida will give the app data on construction projects or city events.
Florida’s department of transport could not be reached for comment, but one of its spokesmen recently told a local news station: “We’re going to share our information, our camera images, all of our information that comes from the sensors on the roadway, and Waze is going to share its data with us.”
“This is a numbers game,” Mossler says. “We still want all the information we can get so that our app is as robust as possible.”
The Rise of Thin, Mini and Insert Skimmers
While most card skimmers are made to sit directly on top of the existing card slot, these newer mini-skimmers fit snugly inside the card reader throat, obscuring most of the device. This card skimmer was made to fit inside certain kinds of cash machines made by NCR.
The miniaturized insert skimmer was used in tandem with a tiny spy camera to record each customer’s PIN.
The United States is the last of the G-20 nations that has yet to transition to chip & PIN, which means most ATM cards issued in Europe have a magnetic stripe on them for backwards compatibility when customers travel to this country. Naturally, ATM hackers in Europe will ship the stolen card data over to thieves here in the U.S., who then can encode the stolen card data onto fresh (chipless) cards and pull cash out of the machines here and in Latin America.
NPR Listeners Show A Keen Ear For Temperature
NPR conducted an online poll asking listeners if they could hear the difference between cold and hot water simply by listening to the sound of the water being poured. Most listeners were spot-on.