This is quite an interesting find. Google Maps has recently made it availabe (looks to appear as of Nov. 2016) to view a detailed model of the Third Temple. Could this be what we will be seeing soon and why are they putting this up before the temple has even been built?
Apple / Google / Mircosoft News
REGINA DUGAN—THE FORMER head of Darpa who was running the Advanced Technologies and Projects lab at Google—has left the internet giant to take up a similar post at rival Facebook.
Facebook announced the news this morning through blog posts from Dugan, CEO and founder Mark Zuckerberg, and chief technology officer Mike “Schrep” Mike Schroepfer. “I’m excited to have Regina apply Darpa-style breakthrough development at the intersection of science and products to our mission,” Zuckerberg wrote, referring to the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, the research and development arm of the Department of Defense. “This method is characterized by aggressive, fixed timelines, extensive use of partnerships with universities, small and large businesses, and clear objectives for shipping products at scale.”
Dugan will lead a new team inside the company dubbed Building 8. At Facebook headquarters in Menlo Park, California, each building is tagged with its own number, but there is no Building 8—yet. The name seems to be a play off the aims of the new group: to build all sorts of future technologies for the company. Why 8? There are eight letters in the Facebook name. According to Zuckerberg, the company will put “hundreds of people and hundreds of millions of dollars” in the group, but he did not give a specific time frame for these commitments.
In a way, Dugan and Building 8 are merely continuing work that is already well underway at Facebook. This week, at its F8 conference, the centerpiece of its year, Facebook unveiled a new-age video camera that can generate 360-degree video for the social network and two new wireless antenna systems that can expand the reach of the internet (and thus the reach of Facebook). These projects are indicative of the company’s rather consistent effort to build new technologies—both with hardware and software—that can advance its core mission: to “connect everyone on Earth.”
Google takes a somewhat similar approach to research and development, and Dugan was a big part of that inside Facebook’s primary rival. As the head of Google’s Advanced Technologies and Projects group, or ATAP—which came to Google via its acquisition of phone maker Motorola—she oversaw the development of Project Tango (an effort to create tools for digitally capturing our surroundings and converting them into 3D virtual worlds), and Project Ara (an effort to create tools for building highly modular mobiles phones). The group has also explored projects related to biometrics and security, something that could be quite useful to Facebook. Inside ATAP, the aim was not just to explore new ideas that may or may not come to fruition in the years to come, but to rapidly and actively push new technologies into the real world.
Part of her working philosophy at Google was that researchers were assigned to projects that would last only two-years (before possibly being extended to more). “I believe that’s essential for innovation,” Dugan told WIRED last year. “One week of their time is 1 percent of their entire duration in ATAP. That makes them impatient with bureaucracy and process. And with a small enough group, you can start to strip away those things and go really fast.” This was inspired by her time at Darpa. From 1996 to 2000, she was a program manager inside the Defense Department lab, and from 2009 to 2012, she served as the Director of Darpa, overseeing the entire operation.
“I am on the one hand, tremendously excited. Building 8 is an opportunity to do what I love most… tech infused with a sense of our humanity. Audacious science delivered at scale in products that feel almost magic. A little [censored]. And beautiful. There is much to build at Facebook… and the mission is human… compelling,” Dugan wrote in her blog post this morning. “On the other hand, I am sad to leave the pirates of ATAP.”
Then she went on to describe some of the difficulties that faced the Google lab. “Each of our efforts to create new, seemingly impossible products, has been faced with intense challenges along the way. Technical challenges. Organizational challenges. Challenges that might have broken lesser teams,” she wrote, addressing her former charges inside ATAP directly. “This is the type of work we signed up for when we built ATAP. It is terrifying because it means we have to face our fear of failure, stare it down, more days than most. So be it.”
Official Source: http://www.wired.com/2016/04/regina-dugan-leaves-google-for-facebook/
If FBI wins the San Bernardino shooter’s iPhone hack case, it would force Apple to turn users’ smartphones into spying devices
The FBI vs. Apple iPhone hacking case is poised for judgement in the court but it has raised several issues associated with allowing a backdoor in any smartphone for any government agency. Apple’s head of services, Eddy Cue feels the same. He says that if at all, the FBI wins in its case against Apple to help it unlock the San Bernardino killer’s iPhone 5C, it won’t be long before the government forces Apple to turn on users’ iPhone cameras and microphones to spy on them.
If this is true than we would have a complicated situation where all our conversations and chats are spied upon by US government agencies. The FBI has demanded that Apple creates custom software (backdoor) that can bypass security features in iOS and allow law enforcement to brute force the passcode of the shooter’s iPhone 5C. Apple has since reiterated that making any modifications in iOS to allow access to FBI would set a dangerous precedent in offering backdoors into users’ smartphones.
Cue said to Univision: “Someday they will want [Apple] to turn on [a user’s]camera or microphone. We can’t do that now, but what if we’re forced to do that?
“Where will this stop? In a divorce case? In an immigration case? In a tax case? Some day, someone will be able to turn on a phone’s microphone. That should not happen in this country.”
FBI on its part is insisting that the San Bernardino shooter’s iPhone may have some dark secrets about terrorists, which could help it solve the case. However, without Apple’s help, it cannot break the software protections built into iOS, which requires a unique signature.
Not all believe that FBI cant hack the iPhone without Apple’s help. Former NSA contractor and serial leaker, Edward Snowden recently said that the FBI’s assertions that only Apple has the capability to unlock the phone is “respectfully, bull[censored]”.
Many other security researchers and experts have held similar opinions.
Experts also agree with what Cue has to say. By allowing FBI a backdoor in the shooter’s iPhone, Apple would then be required to provide access to different demands from different agencies in future.
Apple has the backing of the majority of the technology industry, including Microsoft, Twitter, Facebook and Google, which makes the most-used smartphone operating system, Android.
The case will heard this month when Apple and the FBI go to federal court to contest the order. Apple however has strong grounds in the case as it recently won an unrelated but similar case over the unlocking of an iPhone in New York.
Official Source: http://www.techworm.net/2016/03/apple-says-fbi-force-turn-iphone-cameras-microphones.html
Yes, FBI Director James Comey admitted that the investigators made a “mistake” with the San Bernardino investigation during a congressional hearing held by the House Judiciary Committee.
Apple is facing a court order to help the FBI unlock an iPhone belonged to San Bernardino Shooter by developing a backdoored version of iOS that can disable the security feature on the locked iPhone.
Apple’s Chief Executive Tim Cook has maintained his stand over Privacy and Security, saying the company will fight the court order because it is dangerous for the security and privacy of all of its users.
As the company earlier said, Apple had been helping the FBI with the investigation in San Bernardino case since early January by providing an iCloud backup of Farook’s iPhone under a court order and ways to access Farook’s iPhone…
…but the problem, according to Apple, was that the feds approached the company after attempting a ‘blunder‘ themselves.
Just after the San Bernardino terrorist attacks, an unnamed local police official ‘Reset the Apple ID Passcode‘ associated with the shooter’s iPhone 5C in “less than 24 hours after the government took possession of the device” in an attempt to access the data.
When the feds approached Apple to help them brute force the passcode without losing data, the company suggested the FBI an alternative way, i.e.:
Connect Farook’s iPhone to the Internet by taking it to a known Wi-Fi range. This way his iPhone would have automatically backed up device data with his iCloud Account.
FBI Director: It was a ‘Mistake’ to Reset iCloud Password
However, when one of the committee members asked Comey about whether the iPhone had its iCloud password changed, preventing the phone from backing up to accessible Apple servers.
Comey was forced to admit that the iCloud password was changed at the FBI’s request, calling it a “mistake.” Though the FBI previously stated that changing the iCloud password was not a screw-up.
“As I understand from the experts, there was a mistake made in that 24 hours after the attack where the [San Bernardino] county at the FBI’s request took steps that made it hard—impossible—later to cause the phone to back up again to the iCloud,” Comey said in testimony.
FBI Asked NSA to Unlock iPhone, But NSA couldn’t Do it
This was not the only difficult question Comey fielded in the hearing. Comey was also asked how many other federal agencies the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) had asked for help.
Apple itself asked the FBI similar question last week: If the FBI wants to hack an iPhone, why doesn’t it just ask the NSA?
Comey replied that people who watch too much television exaggerated the technical capabilities of federal agencies. He did directly respond to a question about whether the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) helped.
His answer was pretty clear: No, the NSA could not do it.
Here’s what Rep. Judy Chu, Democrat of California asked Comey during the hearing on “The Encryption Tightrope: Balancing Americans’ Security and Privacy”:
I’d like to ask about law enforcement finding technical solutions….Has the FBI pursued these other methods tried to get help from within the federal government, such as from agencies like the NSA?
Here’s the response from Comey:
Yes is the answer. We’ve talked to anybody who will talk with us about it, and I welcome additional suggestions.
During the hearing, Comey wanted to highlight Apple’s capability to create a backdoor to unlock the iPhone’s encryption, a fact Apple has admitted.
From the beginning, the members of the House Judiciary Committee indicated a strong disapproval of the FBI’s actions in the San Bernardino case. Rep. Conyers, a ranking member of the committee, noted that he has long opposed mandating backdoors in a service.
Official Source: http://thehackernews.com/2016/03/reset-icloud-passcode.html
“If you ask me today, is it possible to live to be 500? The answer is yes,” Bill Maris says one January afternoon in Mountain View, California. The president and managing partner of Google Ventures just turned 40, but he looks more like a 19-year-old college kid at midterm. He’s wearing sneakers and a gray denim shirt over a T-shirt; it looks like he hasn’t shaved in a few days.
Behind him, sun is streaming through a large wall of windows. Beyond is the leafy expanse of the main Google campus. Inside his office, there’s not much that gives any indication of the work Maris does here, Bloomberg Markets will report in its April 2015 issue. The room is sparse—clean white walls, a few chairs, a table. On this day, his desk has no papers, no notepads or Post-its, not even a computer.
Here’s where you really figure out who Bill Maris is: on his bookshelf. There’s a fat text called Molecular Biotechnology: Principles and Applications of Recombinant DNA. There’s a well-read copy of Biotechnology: Applying the Genetic Revolution. And a collection of illustrations by Fritz Kahn, a German physician who was among the first to depict the human body as a machine. Wedged among these is a book that particularly stands out to anyone interested in living to 500. The Singularity Is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology, published in 2005, is the seminal work by futurist Ray Kurzweil. He famously predicted that in 2045, humankind will have its Terminator moment: The rise of computers will outpace our ability to control them. To keep up, we will radically transform our biology via nanobots and other machines that will enhance our anatomy and our DNA, changing everything about how we live and die.
“It will liberate us from our own limitations,” says Maris, who studied neuroscience at Middlebury College and once worked in a biomedical lab at Duke University. Kurzweil is a friend. Google hired him to help Maris and other Googlers understand a world in which machines surpass human biology. This might be a terrifying, dystopian future to some. To Maris, it’s business.
This is where he hopes to find, and fund, the next generation of companies that will change the world, or possibly save it. “We actually have the tools in the life sciences to achieve anything that you have the audacity to envision,” he says. “I just hope to live long enough not to die.”
Official Source:
If you’ve ever wondered what the whistleblower of the largest government surveillance apparatus in the world would choose for his handheld, you can cross Apple’s wildly popular smartphone off the list of possibilities.
According to NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, Apple’s infamous iPhone has a remarkably well-kept secret in the form of “special software” designed to collect and transmit sensitive data about users, without their knowledge.
While speaking with Russian news outlet RIA Novosti during a recent interview, Snowden’s Russian lawyer Anatoly Kucherena said the former intelligence contractor specifically avoids Apple, and prefers a simpler device.
“Edward never uses an iPhone; he’s got a simple phone,” Kucherena said, according to Sputnik. “The iPhone has special software that can activate itself without the owner having to press a button and gather information about him; that’s why on security grounds he refused to have this phone.”
The claim sounds similar to one made by hacker and forensics researcher Jonathan Zdziarski last year about backdoors in iPhones, which fail to encrypt and secure data when the phone is unlocked. Though Zdziarski did not accuse Apple of working directly with the government, he said it was possible the vulnerability had been exploited by NSA.
Official Source:
http://dailycaller.com/2015/01/20/edward-snowden-says-iphones-are-loaded-with-secret-spyware/
The rumors are true, the latest set of iPhones will include near field communication and consumers will be able to pay by using the Touch ID sensor built into the handset. The Apple Watch, a new wearable from the computing giant, will also have NFC and enable payments. The iPhones 6 and 6 Plus will both include NFC and a secure element that will store all the payment card data. Apple teamed with MasterCard, Visa, American Express, Capital One, and other banks, as well as 220,000 retailers. Consumers will be able to use the credit card associated with their iTunes account or add another card by taking a picture of it with the iPhone’s camera. When making a purchase in store a consumer will hold the phone up to the contactless point-of-sale reader and then authenticate with Touch ID to make a purchase.
Read More: http://secureidnews.com/news-item/apple-pay-enabling-biometric-payments-at-the-point-of-sale/
Apple has thrown its hat into the ring with fellow technology and telecommunications giants Microsoft, Cisco, Verizon, and AT&T to oppose a federal court ruling that could force American companies to hand data about foreign customers over to the U.S. government in violation of international laws and treaties.
Cupertino, Calif.-based Apple’s participation comes in the form of an amicus curiae, or “friend of the court,” brief filed jointly with networking equipment maker Cisco on Friday in United States District Court for the Southern District of New York. The filings were first spotted by GigaOm.
Microsoft is appealing portions of a warrant issued by U.S. magistrate judge James Francis IV ordering the company to give U.S. authorities access to email data from an Irish customer. That data is held in Ireland, and Microsoft charges that complying with the order would force it to break Irish data protection laws.
After unexpectedly yanking apps associated with Bitcoin trading in late 2013 and early 2014, Apple on Monday offered a bit more clarity on how it intends to handle virtual currencies in the future.
Following the unveiling of iOS 8 during Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference keynote on Monday, the company issued a revised set of App Store Review Guidelines with a special portion dedicated to virtual currencies. It appears that Apple is ready to accept apps for review that deal in the transmission of these digital funds, at least to a limited degree.
As noted by Gliph, maker of the eponymous texting and Bitcoin wallet viewing app, Apple’s updated document is one of the first times the company has officially recognized virtual currencies. Apple has traditionally denied app submissions that dealt with Bitcoin trading, though the company never stated a hardline policy against software with such capability.
Revelation Unfolding 