American’s National Security Agency (NSA) “has shared new guidance with U.S. military and intelligence personnel, suggesting they take additional precautions to safeguard their location data,” reports Engadget. “The agency argues the information devices and apps collect can pose a national security threat.” Ars Technica reports:
The National Security Agency is recommending that some government workers and people generally concerned about privacy turn…
Tag: fitness trackers
Mozilla’s Annual Buyer’s Guide Rates Amazon and Google Security Cameras ‘Very Creepy’
“Be Smart. Shop Safe,” warns Mozilla’s annual buyer’s guide for secure connected products. Based on their conversations with developers and dozens of privacy experts, they’ve awarded smiley faces with different expressions to rate products from “Not Creepy” up to “Super Creepy”. “While the variety of smart devices on offer is rapidly increasing, so are the number of products that pay no…
Buying Fitbit Won’t Save Google’s Failing Wear OS
David Ruddock of AndroidPolice technology blog tries to make sense of last week’s $2.1 billion acquisition of Fitbit by Google. He argues that Fitbit’s offerings — hardware, software, engineering talent, or even patent wall — can’t save Google’s wearable operating system Wear OS. From his column: Hardware is what Google is after, with a blog post cleatly stating its acquisition of…
Nokia’s Collapse Turned a Sleepy Town in Finland Into an Internet Wonderland
An anonymous reader shares a report: In the early days of the mobile phone, Nokia was everywhere — ubiquitous, inescapable, supreme. It created the best-selling 1100, with a keypad like droplets of water; the gray-blue 3310; even the cutting-edge 8810, with a slip-sliding protective cover that felt like the future. Today, the firm is doing just fine, though its primary money-makers…
Google-owner Alphabet in Talks To Buy Fitbit, Says Reuters
Google owner Alphabet has made an offer to acquire U.S. wearable device maker Fitbit, as it eyes a slice of the crowded market for fitness trackers and smartwatches, Reuters reported Monday, citing familiar with the matter. From the report: While Google has joined other major technology companies such as Apple and Samsung in developing smart phones, it has yet to develop…
Is ‘Amazon Care’ a True Benefit Or Industrial Era-Style Healthcare?
Lucas123 writes: Like Apple and Intel, Amazon is piloting an in-house program for employees that in addition to healthcare insurance affords workers access to telemedicine and at-home visits from a contracted provider. While growing in popularity, in-house healthcare programs, which even include corporate clinics, are seen by some as an example of the growth in fragmented care or mimicking corporate care…
From Fitbits To Rokus, Hedge Funds Mine Data For Consumer Habits
In an effort to gain an elusive trading edge, some of the world’s biggest hedge funds have been snapping up large swaths of alternative data from Fitbits, Rokus, Teslas and employment websites like Glassdoor. Bloomberg reports: Spotting trends and patterns in consumer habits is big business, part of a global market for big data, that a JPMorgan Chase report said could…
Using smart watches to monitor your heart could do more harm than good
Fitness trackers like the Apple Watch now allow you to detect heart conditions such as atrial fibrillation. That’s not always a good thing, says doctor Margaret McCartney Source: https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg24332394-700-using-smart-watches-to-monitor-your-heart-could-do-more-harm-than-good/?utm_campaign=RSS%7CNSNS&utm_source=NSNS&utm_medium=RSS&utm_content=home…