Over 1,000 US businesses hit with the same cyberattack as Target

Target’s massive data breach grabbed headlines right in the middle of holiday shopping that year, and the fallout continues. According to a Department of Homeland Security advisory this afternoon, the attacks that hit the red-hued retailer, along with Supervalu and UPS, are much more widespread than first reported. The so-called “Backoff” malware in various versions has actually hit more than 1,000 businesses in the States, allowing hackers to snag info from millions of credit card payments. Remote network access for contractors provides the avenue for entry, and the announcement suggests that companies have vendors take a close look at their systems for possible criminal activity. It’s also calling for businesses to put cash registers on a separate network and employ two-factor authentication to help combat would-be intruders.

[Photo credit: Joe Raedle/Getty Images]

Filed under: Misc, Software

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Source: The New York Times

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Costa’s only gone and swapped coffee reward cards for apps

Is that Costa Coffee Club rewards card weighing down your wallet and generally just giving you the hump? Well, slice it up and chuck it in the bin, because now there’s an app for that. With Costa’s new Coffee Club app (new to Android, anyway, and updated on iOS) you can, instead, perfect your aggressive posture and sighing volume as a junior barista struggles to scan your grubby smartphone screen. As well as being useful for collecting and cashing in reward points, it’ll also direct you to your nearest Costa in case the only thing in your vicinity is an indy outlet serving Lavazza — I’ve seen the logo at service stations, which means it probably tastes like warm, caffeinated Carling. The app will even keep you up to date with offers and breaking news regarding your favourite beverage vendor. And who needs a fancy, Starbucks-like mobile wallet feature when you can have a user-defined profile image? (Mine’s going to be an on-theme selfie, with half my face obscured by a coffee cup, and maybe a little latte foam on the tip of my nose for comedic effect). On a serious note, though, if you frequent Costa then you might actually wanna download this.

Filed under: Cellphones, Software, Mobile

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Source: Costa Coffee Club app (Android), (iOS)

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You’ll soon be able to start a Tesla Model S just with an iPhone

It appears that Tesla Model S owners get as excited by firmware updates as gadget nuts get when a new phone operating system gets released. Someone on the Tesla Motors Club forum has posted some plausible-looking screenshots from what purports to be Model S OS v.6.0. The changelog promises some nifty improvements, like being able to start your EV with your iPhone if you forget your keyfob. If the leak is accurate, the car will also integrate your phone calendar into its dashboard, offer better power management options and a Google Now-esque navigation system that predicts busy routes on your commute to-and-from work. The notes also promise that Android handsets will get similar abilities in the near future, although with the update still in beta, we’d presume that it won’t be a few more weeks yet. Still, being able to start your car with your phone takes us one step closer to being able to recreate that scene from Tomorrow Never Dies.

Filed under: Transportation, Software

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Via: Electrek

Source: Tesla Motors Club

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Your smartphone can now tell you if you have a heart condition

How’s the ticker? Some dangerous heart problems can exist without any symptoms whatsoever, like “atrial fibrillation” (A-fib) a type of abnormal cardiac rhythm that affects one in four people. A visit to your physician is normally required to detect it (and is still a must), but a company called AliveCor has just announced that its AFib Dector algorithms have been approved by the FDA for professional or personal use. It consists of the company’s $199 heart monitor (also available in an integrated iPhone 5/5s case, shown above) which attaches to an Android or iOS smartphone and rests on your fingers or chest to record your electrocardiogram (ECG). It then sends the info to your smartphone via an ultrasonic signal which is picked up by your phone’s microphone, requiring much less power than a Bluetooth system.

Via the AliveECG app, that info can be uploaded to AliveCor’s servers, where the FDA-approved AFib Detector will give an almost instant, highly accurate interpretation for free. You can then send the information to a board-certified cardiologist or your personal physician, who can perform further tests to confirm the diagnosis. It sounds great and we’re all for DIY health devices, but of course it’s no substitute for a checkup — if you have even the slightest doubt about your heart, ask your doctor.

Filed under: Cellphones, Wearables, Software, Mobile

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Source: AliveCor

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Spotify’s resident media artist program unlocks the power and beauty of data

It’s always a gamble for a company to attach itself to an artist. But Spotify sees it as a natural extension of its corporate culture. For a company that holds regular hackathons and hack weeks, in which employees are encouraged to experiment and step outside of the box, bringing in a resident artist just makes sense. Kyle McDonald, an adjunct professor at ITP, is kicking off the company’s new Media Artist in Residence program (after hounding the company on Twitter) with Serendipity, a web app that shows when two people start playing the same song simultaneously. All the app does is tap into Spotify’s API and look for when a song starts in two locations within 100ms of each other. Then it highlights them on a map that zooms in and out, and dances about. Shockingly, this happens at least 10 times a second! Kyle said that for the most popular songs up to 10 different people will queue them up at the exact same moment, but for the purposes of his experiment he stuck with only displaying two instances.

The trick is pretty neat, for sure, but it was just one of easily a hundred ideas Kyle had in brainstorming document he showed me. And just one of a handful of those ideas that became actual pieces of code art over the last several months as he worked with engineers at Spotify. Other projects were also impressive, though perhaps a little less polished. One simply displayed every instance of a track playing in Spotify as a twinkle on a rotating globe, while another spat out every track shared through the service along with any included comments. The second got closer to the goal of pulling out the hidden personal connections in the data stream, but both were quite overwhelming to look at.

The immediate use for knowing when two people simultaneously play a song doesn’t seem obvious, and we wouldn’t count on it popping up in the next version of the Spotify desktop app. But Serendipity does show what’s possible thanks to the streams of data flowing through the company’s APIs. And that’s he whole idea. The Media Artist in Residence program isn’t about creating new features, it’s about igniting creative sparks that eventually lead to new features. The people at Spotify focused on its social tools are now looking at what Kyle built over the last couple of months and starting to think of practical ways leverage the tools he’s created.

Spotify hopes this is just the first in a series of partnerships with artists. There are no others lined up at the moment, but the company is taking applications through its Media Artist in Residence page. The results of those marriages might not be “useful” in the traditional sense. But maybe these pieces of code art will get Spotify’s engineers thinking about social networking or music discovery in new and interesting ways.

Filed under: Internet, Software

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Source: Spotify, Serendipity

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