Google Cloud expands its database portfolio with new AI capabilities
Google is hosting a version of its Cloud Next conference in Tokyo this week, and it’s putting the focus squarely on tweaking its databases for AI workloads (because at this point in 2024, AI is the only thing these major tech companies want to talk about). These include updates to its Spanner SQL database, which now features graph and vector search support, as well as extended full-text search capabilities. This wouldn’t be a Google announcement without some Gemini-powered features. These include Gemini in BigQuery and Looker to help users with data engineering and analysis, as well as governance and security…
Hackers could create traffic jams thanks to flaw in traffic light controller, researcher says
A security researcher says he found a flaw in a traffic light controller that would potentially allow malicious hackers to change the lights and create traffic jams. Andrew Lemon, a researcher at cybersecurity firm Red Threat, published two blog posts on Thursday detailing his findings of a wider research project investigating the security of traffic controllers. One of the devices Lemon looked at is the Intelight X-1, where he said he found a bug that allows anyone to take full control of the traffic lights. According to Lemon, the bug is very simple and basic: There is no authentication on…
Microsoft says 8.5M Windows devices were affected by CrowdStrike outage
Around 8.5 million devices — less than 1 percent of Windows machines globally — were affected by the recent CrowdStrike outage, according to a Microsoft blog post by David Weston, the company’s vice president of enterprise and OS security. These are the first real numbers released by either Microsoft or CrowdStrike around the scale of yesterday’s outage, which was caused by an update to CrowdStrike’s cybersecurity software that led Windows machines to crash. (Mac and Linux devices were not affected.) Although the number of affected devices was relatively low, the havoc was widespread and global, affecting banks, retailers, brokerage companies,…
Apple’s App Store hit with antitrust probe in Spain
Apple has a fresh antitrust headache in Europe: Spain’s competition authority, the CNMC, announced the opening of an investigation into Apple’s App Store Wednesday, citing concerns the iPhone maker could be imposing unfair trading conditions on developers who use its store to distribute their software to iOS users. Few details about the substance of the CNMC’s concerns have been made available, but in a press release the authority writes (in Spanish; this is a machine translation) that: “Apple may be engaging in anti-competitive practices by imposing unfair trading conditions on developers who use Apple’s App Store to distribute applications to…
How to enable Apple Intelligence on your iPhone
Apple is finally releasing some of the Apple Intelligence features it announced at its Worldwide Developers Conference in June. However, the rollout is currently restricted to developer beta versions of iOS 18.1. So if you don’t want to deal with early-stage buggy software, you might want to wait for the Apple Intelligence feature release of public betas or the stable release later this year. If you are on the developer beta, you can only use Apple Intelligence features if your language is set to U.S. English and your region is set to U.S. This doesn’t affect your App Store regions…
US cyber agency CISA says malicious hackers are ‘taking advantage’ of CrowdStrike outage
As much of the world slowly gets back online after an outage caused by cybersecurity giant CrowdStrike led to global travel and business gridlock, malicious actors are also trying to exploit the situation for their own gain. U.S. cybersecurity agency Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) said in a statement Friday that though the CrowdStrike outage was not linked to a cyberattack or malicious activity, it has “observed threat actors taking advantage of this incident for phishing and other malicious activity.” CISA warned individuals to “avoid clicking on phishing emails or suspicious links,” which can lead to email compromise and…
