Tech news you can use, in two minutes or less:
Change your Facebook password
Facebook acknowledged a bug that caused hundreds of millions of user passwords (dating back to 2012) for both Facebook and Instagram to be stored as readable text internally. This basically means that thousands of Facebook employees could have searched for and found them. Facebook says they weren’t accessible outside of the company, and that there’s no evidence employees did in fact abuse or improperly access them. We say, change it anyway.
Airbnb may be beloved by you, but not by local governments
Our own Paris Martineau spoke to nearly two dozen city officials, hosts, and experts about their interactions with Airbnb, and the picture they painted was bleak: Millions in uncollected taxes. Intimidating lawsuits. Misinformation campaigns. Take a peek inside the “guerrilla war” Airbnb is waging against local governments.
Have an Android phone? Hackers have been able to spy on you for years
A bug that has been present since 2013 allowed hackers to spy on users and gain access to their accounts. It was undiscovered for more than five years, and even now the fix for it is only for newer phones. Users with Android 7 or later should get the fix through Google Chrome updates; Android 5/6 requires a special update through the Google Play store. Older than that, and well, you’re out of luck.
Cocktail Conversation
The next time someone talks about weird sports, blow their mind with this: Polo, but with dead goat carcasses. The centuries-old central Asian sport, called Buzkashi, is kind of like football, if football was played on horseback and the ball is an actual dead goat. Your goal, along with about other 80 horsemen (the game is traditionally played by men), is to carry the carcass past some defined point or throw it in a certain area. Prizes include sheep, rugs, cars, and sometimes a house.
WIRED Recommends: Amazon’s 2019 Kindle
Amazon has a brand new Kindle, and it’s $90 ($40 cheaper than the PaperWhite), can light up for night-time perusing, and can stream audiobooks to bluetooth. If you’re thinking of getting one, here’s our handy guide on how to choose the one that’s best for you.
More News You Can Use
- Whether you partake or not, the science of cannabis—how it works, what’s healthy, and how to stay safe—is fairly complicated. Let us guide you through the haze.
- As the New Zealand shooting laid bare, companies seem to struggle to contain terrorism on their platforms. But a new study suggests companies have much more success suspending ISIS accounts than they do white nationalist or Nazi accounts by an order of magnitude. What gives?