Facial recognition software is becoming more advanced and ubiquitous—I mean, you can unlock your phone with your face now.

As this progresses, researchers are trying to make systems more secure by getting ahead of any potential hacks, including creating an infrared light-projecting baseball cap that can fool a face recognition system into thinking you’re the musician Moby. Security researchers from universities in China and the United States recently uploaded a paper to the arXiv preprint server that details exactly how such a scam could be pulled off. 

Imagine the life smart home developers want you to see: Your busy day at work is over, and you’re almost home. Your door unlocks automatically the moment it recognizes your face and your iris.

The house is already warm and the light in the hall is on, music is playing quietly, and the electric kettle just turned itself off; the water in it boiled right before you stepped into your apartment. You eat your dinner and relax on the sofa, using your smartphone to dim the lights a little and to turn on the TV. Living in a smart house makes everything very convenient — all those small daily routines are either automated or controlled with your phone.

Volkswagen’s sports car maker Porsche could develop a flying passenger vehicle to compete with rivals in a possible market for urban air taxis and ride-sharing services, Porsche sales chief Detlev von Platen told.

“That would really make sense. If I drive from Zuffenhausen to Stuttgart airport, I need at least half an hour, if I’m lucky. Flying would take only three and a half minutes,” Automobilwoche quoted von Platen as saying. Porsche would join a raft of companies working on designs for flying cars in anticipation of a shift in the transport market away from conventional cars to self-driving vehicles shared via ride-hailing apps. 

Microsoft and Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation progenitor Bill Gates is not a fan of cryptocurrencies. In a Reddit AMA yesterday, he posited that cryptocurrencies subvert governments' abilities to intercept terrorist funding, illegal drug transactions, and more.

Redditor Askur1337 asked Gates, "Whats your opinion on Crypto Currencies?" To this, Gates responded: The main feature of cryptocurrencies is their anonymity. I don't think this is a good thing. The government's ability to find money laundering and tax evasion and terrorist funding is a good thing. Right now, cryptocurrencies are used for buying fentanyl and other drugs.

The adoption of chip-and-PIN card technology by an increasing number of merchants in the United States has led to a significant drop in cases of counterfeit card fraud, according to Visa.

The financial industry has been pushing for the adoption of EMV (Europay, MasterCard, Visa) card technology in the United States since 2011, and efforts were increased following the disclosure of the massive data breach suffered by Target in 2013. However, according to Visa, by September 2015, only roughly 392,000 merchant locations had been accepting chip cards, and the number of Visa debit and credit cards using this technology was only at 159 million. 

After reports and studies revealed that browsers' private modes aren't that secure, MIT graduate student Frank Wang decided to take things into his own hands.

He and his team from MIT CSAIL and Harvard have created a tool called Veil, which you could use on a public computer -- or on a private one on top of using incognito mode and Tor if you have big secrets to keep or if you've just become paranoid after years of hearing about hacks and cyberattacks. MIT explained that data tends to move between different cores in multicore chips and caches, which attackers could access by exploiting flaws.

SpaceX has successfully launched a Falcon 9 from SLC-4 at Vandenberg Air Force Base today, its first launch since its successful Falcon Heavy test earlier this month. The launch took off early Wednesday morning, after being rescheduled a couple of times from an initial target of this past weekend.

The launch was primarily designed to bring the PAZ satellite to orbit (which was deployed as planned into a low Earth, sun-synchronous polar orbit), a satellite for a Spanish customer that’s designed to provide geocommunications and radar imaging for both government and private commercial customers. 

Scientists from Google and its health-tech subsidiary Verily have discovered a new way to assess a person’s risk of heart disease using machine learning.

By analyzing scans of the back of a patient’s eye, the company’s software is able to accurately deduce data, including an individual’s age, blood pressure, and whether or not they smoke. This can then be used to predict their risk of suffering a major cardiac event — such as a heart attack — with roughly the same accuracy as current leading methods. The algorithm potentially makes it quicker and easier for doctors to analyze a patient’s cardiovascular risk, as it doesn’t require a blood test. 

The odds are about one in four that the crypto fanatic in your office is involved in illegal activities. After conducting a study of historical Bitcoin transaction data an Australian research group concluded:

We find approximately one-quarter of Bitcoin users and one-half of Bitcoin transactions are associated with illegal activity. Around $72 billion of illegal activity per year involves Bitcoin, which is close to the scale of the US and European markets for illegal drugs. And that $72 billion? Here’s a bone for you conspiracy theory types: Business Insider reports Bitcoin has lost $72 billion in value since the beginning of 2018. Coincidence? Probably.

A group of Silicon Valley technologists who were early employees at Facebook and Google, alarmed over the ill effects of social networks and smartphones, are banding together to challenge the companies they helped build.

The cohort is creating a union of concerned experts called the Center for Humane Technology. Along with the nonprofit media watchdog group Common Sense Media, it also plans an anti-tech addiction lobbying effort and an ad campaign at 55,000 public schools in the United States. The campaign, titled The Truth About Tech, will be funded with $7 million from Common Sense and capital raised by the Center for Humane Technology.