Author: Tech Support

    • A look at Amazon's lobbying efforts in DC, where it spent $14.2M last year, a record for the company, up from its previous high mark of $12.8M in 2017 (Naomi Nix/Bloomberg)

    Naomi Nix / Bloomberg: A look at Amazon’s lobbying efforts in DC, where it spent $14.2M last year, a record for the company, up from its previous high mark of $12.8M in 2017  —  After building out a powerful influence machine in Washington over the last few years, Amazon is going on the attack. A

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    • Report: the goal of Chinese state-run social media influence campaigns is to promote an idealized view of China rather than sow discord among the US public (Recorded Future)

    Recorded Future: Report: the goal of Chinese state-run social media influence campaigns is to promote an idealized view of China rather than sow discord among the US public  —  Recorded Future analyzed data from several Western social media platforms from October 1, 2018 through February 22 … Report: the goal of Chinese state-run social media

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    Make XKCD-Style Plots From Python

    [Randall Munroe] certainly understands the power of graphical representation of data. The humorous plots in his xkcd webcomic are one of the favorite parts for many readers. Their distinctive, Tufteian style delivers the information – in this case, a punch line – without excessive decoration. To be honest, we can’t get enough of them. A

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    • Turnitin, a developer of AI software that checks for plagiarism, will be acquired by media conglomerate Advance Publications, reportedly for nearly $1.75B (Sydney Johnson/EdSurge)

    Sydney Johnson / EdSurge: Turnitin, a developer of AI software that checks for plagiarism, will be acquired by media conglomerate Advance Publications, reportedly for nearly $1.75B  —  A company best known (and sometimes rebuked) for its plagiarism checker has just received one of the biggest checks in the education technology industry. Turnitin, a developer of

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    • Okta, a provider of identity management services for enterprises, plans to acquire Seattle-based workflow automation startup Azuqua for $52.5M in cash (Robert Hackett/Fortune)

    Robert Hackett / Fortune: Okta, a provider of identity management services for enterprises, plans to acquire Seattle-based workflow automation startup Azuqua for $52.5M in cash  —  Okta, an identity-focused tech firm, said while reporting earnings Thursday that it plans to acquire Azuqua, a workflow automation startup based … Okta, a provider of identity management services

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    • Google says the Chrome zero-day it patched last week was used with a zero-day impacting Windows 7 32-bit systems and that Microsoft said it's working on a fix (Clement Lecigne/Google Online …)

    Clement Lecigne / Google Online Security Blog: Google says the Chrome zero-day it patched last week was used with a zero-day impacting Windows 7 32-bit systems and that Microsoft said it’s working on a fix  —  On Wednesday, February 27th, we reported two 0-day vulnerabilities — previously publicly-unknown vulnerabilities … Google says the Chrome zero-day

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    • Spotify, Google, Pandora, and Amazon have filed to appeal a copyright ruling that increases payouts to songwriters by 44%; sources: Apple not planning to appeal (Variety)

    Variety: Spotify, Google, Pandora, and Amazon have filed to appeal a copyright ruling that increases payouts to songwriters by 44%; sources: Apple not planning to appeal  —  Amazon is filing a separate appeal against the ruling, which would increase writer rates by nearly 50%. Spotify, Google, Pandora, and Amazon have filed to appeal a copyright

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    • Researchers find unprotected database owned by an email validation company with 150 GB of plaintext marketing data, including 763M unique email addresses (Lily Hay Newman/Wired)

    Lily Hay Newman / Wired: Researchers find unprotected database owned by an email validation company with 150 GB of plaintext marketing data, including 763M unique email addresses  —  Last week, security researchers Bob Diachenko and Vinny Troia discovered an unprotected, publicly accessible MongoDB database containing … Researchers find unprotected database owned by an email validation

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    This SDR Uses A Tube

    {$inline_image} When you think of a software defined radio (SDR) setup, maybe you imagine an IC or two, maybe feeding a computer. You probably don’t think of a vacuum tube. [Mirko Pavleski] built a one-tube shortwave SDR using some instructions from [Burkhard Kainka] which are in German, but Google Translate is good enough if you

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