When you consider the nagging privacy risks of online advertising, you may find comfort in the thought of a vast, abstract company like Pepsi or Nike viewing you as just one data point among millions. What, after all, do you have to hide from Pepsi?

And why should that corporate megalith care about your secrets out of countless potential Pepsi drinkers? But an upcoming study has dissipated that delusion. It shows that ad-targeting can not only track you at the personal, individual level but also that it doesn't take a corporation's resources to seize upon that surveillance tool—just time, determination, and about a thousand dollars. 

A new video of what would appear to be one of Apple’s “Project Titan” self-driving cars was posted to Twitter last night, and it looks much different than it did the last time we saw it. The car appears to be outfitted with standard third-party sensors and hardware, including (count ‘em) six Velodyne-made LIDAR sensors, several radar units, and a number of cameras — all encased in Apple-esque white plastic.

The video was captured by someone who knows his stuff about autonomous vehicles: MacCallister Higgins, co-founder of self-driving startup Voyage (that just launched its own pilot ride-hailing project in a San Jose retirement community). 

This month the iPhone changed in some big ways. Probably the most obvious is the missing “Home” button. That’s right: Apple’s newest flagship smartphone, the iPhone X, has no fingerprint scanner. It’s been replaced by something called Face ID.

Those who watched Apple’s presentation will already be somewhat familiar with Face ID, but we’ll shed some light on this technology, and then turn to the area that’s always on our minds: security. In brief, Apple’s Face ID is a technology used to recognize a user’s face and unlock the new iPhone as well as confirm payments by comparing its view of their face with a picture stored in the iPhone’s memory. 

Three-quarters of North American utility executives believe there is at least a moderate chance that the electrical grid in their nation will be interrupted by a cyberattack sometime in the next five years.

A worldwide study by Accenture of 100 power utility executives from 20 countries found that 63 percent believe there is a moderate likelihood a cyberattack would cause power interruptions with this figure increasing to 76 percent among North American executives. When it comes to what those surveyed most fear it is an attack that causes injury to customers or employees, while almost as many, worry about sensitive customer or employee data being stolen. 

Tired of your Lyft driver not knowing exactly where you are? A new extremely accurate GPS chip could help solve that problem — all while consuming half the power of current chips.

Broadcom's BCM47755 chip will allow smartphones to be accurate within 30 centimeters, the company said at a conference in Portland. That's compared to the current standard of 3 to 5 meters, the company said. Broadcom also said the BCM47755 would be more effective in cities than older chips. All of this would make them very useful for location-based apps. For example, lane-level knowledge of the vehicle's location vastly improves the turn-by-turn navigation performance.

Line and BlackBerry messengers can be unlocked in Russia, head of the Russian communications and mass media watchdog Roskomnadzor Alexander Zharov told.

"We are blocking Zello, BlackBerry, Line and WeChat for the time being," the official said. "Colleagues from Line visited us. This Japanese messenger requested to send requirements once again. We did so. Grounds exist to believe that their blocking will be released because they intend to abide by this law, as far as I understand from the outcome of talks," Zharov said. Representatives of BlackBerry will come to Russia in October for a meeting with the management of Roskomnadzor, Zharov said. 

The new top-of-the-range iPhone does away with the home button and its built-in fingerprint reader in favor of a new biometric — called Face ID — which uses a 3D scan of the user’s face for authenticating and unlocking their device. It also replaces Touch ID for Apple Pay too.

Apple suggests this is an advancement over a fingerprint reader because it’s an easier and more natural action for the user to perform — you just look at the phone and it unlocks; no need to worry if you have wet fingers and so on. However offering to gate the smorgasbord of personal content that lives on a smartphone behind a face biometric inevitably raises lots of security questions. 

China plans to ban trading of bitcoin and other virtual currencies on domestic exchanges, dealing another blow to the $150 billion cryptocurrency market after the country outlawed initial coin offerings last week.

The ban will only apply to trading of cryptocurrencies on exchanges, according to people familiar with the matter, who asked not to be named because the information is private. Authorities don’t have plans to stop over-the-counter transactions, the people said. China’s central bank said it couldn’t immediately comment. Bitcoin slumped on Friday after Caixin magazine reported China’s plans, capping the virtual currency’s biggest weekly retreat in nearly two months. 

The CIA is making use of several artificial intelligence programs that access, gather, and retrieve social media intelligence for the agency.

In a statement reported by Futurism, Dawn Meyerriecks, the deputy director for technology development with the CIA said at the Intelligence and National Security Summit that the agency had over 137 AI projects as part of "In-Q-Tel" where a large portion of it is created through collaborations with Silicon Valley firms. With greater ability and power to analyse data, AI programs thus created have reportedly taken to social media platforms and "comb through" all public records –all the stuff that is posted by people using social media.

Companies must tell employees in advance if their work email accounts are being monitored and such checks must not unduly infringe workers’ privacy, the European Court of Human Rights ruled.

In a judgment in the case of a man fired 10 years ago for using a work messaging account to communicate with his family, the judges found that Romanian courts failed to protect Bogdan Barbulescu’s private correspondence because his employer had not given him prior notice it was monitoring his communications. Email privacy has become a contested issue as more people use work addresses for personal correspondence even as employers demand the right to monitor email.