Also: How I used a Raspberry Pi to automate birdwatching The Bird Buddy is an adorable, yet uncomplicated, bird feeder, complete with a 720p-resolution camera module that sits in the perfect spot to record and photograph birds that visit for a snack. You’ll get notifications on your smartphone alerting you of a new bird visitor from the Bird Buddy app, which you can check to see the recorded footage, photos, and information about the species that visited your feeder....

BlackCat operates as a ransomware-as-a-service (RaaS) business model and allows affiliates to keep 80% to 90% of the ransom payments while the rest goes to the ransomware author. Palo Alto Networks released its findings on Thursday, January 27. They said that so far most of BlackCat’s victims are based in the US. The victims are organizations in a wide variety of sectors like construction, engineering, commercial services, retail, insurance, machinery, telecommunication, auto components, pharmaceuticals, professional services, and transportation....

Also: Want to save your aging computer? Try these 5 Linux distributions How about a little terminology to start the day? You see, all desktops are made up of a number of pieces, one of which is the window manager. The window manager is in charge of drawing, layout out, and remembering windows. For example, open the Firefox web browser. You’ll notice a title bar and a window border. You can grab the title bar and move it around the desktop....

Some 52,743 professionals were hired in the first quarter of 2021, a threefold increase in relation to the same period in 2020, when companies from the sector created 17,067 jobs, according to data from the Brazilian Association of Information Technology, Communication and Digital Technologies Companies (Brasscom). The amount of tech jobs created in Brazil between January and March is getting closer to the total number of new vacancies in the sector in 2020, when 59,153 jobs were created in the ICT segment....

The pandemic gave them a captive audience. Technology gave them a headstart in making it easy for customers to order and pick up. Or to come along to the drive-thru and even have a robot take their orders. All this gave the likes of McDonald’s, Chick-fil-A and the rest the ability to raise their prices. Dollar deals were no more. You’d think, though, that fast-food brands would use technology to create brand affection rather than something different....

Overair, the company behind the “Butterfly” electric vertical takeoff and landing craft, believes its full-scale propulsion system, which its testing in full-scale tests that make some pretty excellent video, will be a game changer for the next iteration of the aviation industry. “Achieving our full-scale propulsion test goals is an exciting milestone for the Butterfly program” said Jim Orbon, Butterfly Program Manager at Overair. “Not only does it allow us to validate our design choices and correlate our simulation results to real-world data, but it also proves the team’s technical capabilities and ability to execute our development plans....

VPN: using a VPN you can virtually change your location to a country where The Pirate Bay is permitted (e.g. Switzerland). This way you can visit The Pirate Bay using your regular browser. It is recommended to use a VPN if you want to use The Pirate Bay. Not only is a VPN used to gain access to the real Pirate Bay, it also ensures that you can download more securely and anonymously....

The Venture X, Capital One’s highest-tier travel card, will now come with unlimited access to more than 100 Plaza Premium Lounges worldwide. This expands on the card’s Priority Pass membership, which means cardholders can enjoy access to over 1,300 airport lounges globally thanks to both memberships. And until May 16, 2023, the Venture X will earn 10x miles per dollar for rental cars booked through Turo.com or on the Turo app....

CDW is best known as a business technology retailer, and the Sirius Computer Solutions acquisitions enables it to sell integrated systems for mid-sized and large companies. The company is acquiring Sirius Computer Solutions from private equity firm Clayton, Dubilier & Rice. According to CDW, the combined company would have had 2020 net sales of $20.5 billion. The purchase is also expected to boost CDW’s non-GAAP earnings. Sirius Computer Solutions has 3,900 customers and offers services and integration for hybrid cloud, security, data, and managed services....

Bard is powered by Google’s Language Model for Dialogue Applications (LaMDA) and will draw on all the information from the web to provide responses. This in itself is a big differentiating factor from ChatGPT, which can only access information from up until 2021 and does not have access to the web. Also: Google’s ChatGPT competitor spaces out at the start “Bard seeks to combine the breadth of the world’s knowledge with the power, intelligence and creativity of our large language models,” Google CEO Sundar Pichai said in the release....

In a notice released by the People’s Bank of China, a stark block of text reveals new legislative measures due to a rise in virtual currency “speculation”. Furthermore, these three following points (when translated to English by a web browser) are present in the notice by the People’s Bank of China that affirm the Chinese government’s commitment to the ban; (1) Virtual currency does not have the same legal status as legal tender (2) Virtual currency-related business activities are illegal financial activities It is also illegal financial activity for overseas virtual currency exchanges to provide services to domestic residents in China through the Internet....

For this promotion, we partnered with ProtonVPN and ProtonMail. Proton is a Swiss-based company committed to developing the necessary tools to protect your data online. Together, we are giving away 3 CyberSecurity Packages. Win a 2-year Proton Visionary package that includes: ProtonMail: Launched in 2014 by CERN and MIT scientists, ProtonMail is the world’s first email service to protect data with end-to-end encryption. Messages on its servers are stored in an encrypted format, making them accessible only to you, and there is no logging, storing or selling customer data....

The Department of Defense in 2019 awarded Microsoft the $10bn, 10-year JEDI contract to Microsoft but, following a lawsuit brought by AWS, the DoD terminated the JEDI with Microsoft contract in July 202. In November, the DoD asked AWS, Microsoft, Google and Oracle to bid for the new JWCC deal. SEE: What is cloud computing? Everything you need to know about the cloud explained JWCC is a multiple-award contract vehicle under which the DoD can acquire commercial cloud capabilities and services directly from the winners “at the speed of mission, at all classification levels, from headquarters to the tactical edge”, the Pentagon said in an announcement....

An SBOM (pronounced S-Bomb) is a record containing the details and supply chain relationships of the components used in building software. Since most programs today are made by assembling existing open-source and commercial software components, it’s essential to know the name and specific versions of all these elements. For instance, a program using Apache Log4j2 versions 2.17.0 is vulnerable to Log4Shell attacks. One using Log4j2 2.17.1 or newer is as safe as houses....

In an update sent to customers this week, the company said it expects to be able to begin accepting payments through its SmartHub platform and other payment kiosks during the week of December 6. “We also tentatively estimate we will be able to resume member billing the week of December 6 - 10. We recognize this will result in members receiving multiple energy bills close together. As a reminder, we will not disconnect services for non-payment or assess any penalties through January 31, 2022,” the company said on a page that has been updated repeatedly over the last month....

In a statement to ZDNet, the global retail giant said that in August, they discovered five card skimmers on payment card devices in four of their Chicago-area warehouses. “We promptly removed the skimmers, notified law enforcement, and engaged a forensics firm to analyze the devices,” a Costco spokesperson said. “It appears that these skimmers had the ability to capture information on the magnetic stripe of a payment card, including name, card number, expiration date, and CVV....

The New South Wales government announced on Friday morning that the certificate has begun rolling out to the entire state. “This is an extra digital service to make life easier for the businesses and customers of NSW as we open back up. NSW is the first jurisdiction in Australia to roll out an integrated QR code solution for displaying vaccination status statewide,” Minister for Digital and Customer Service Victor Dominello said....

As highlighted by software developer Geoffrey Huntley on Twitter, the DTA has disabled the ability to collaborate on GitHub. “This removes a huge wealth of information, history and discussion around decisions made, bugs that were fixed etc. @DTA surely this is a mistake?” But according to the DTA, it was not a mistake. “As part of the COVIDSafe app’s transition to ‘business as usual mode’, we have streamlined the channels for support and engagement with the community,” a spokesperson told ZDNet....

One of the newest distributions to attempt that feat is Crystal Linux. This new distribution not only helps make Arch Linux easier but also offers a few tweaks to the GNOME desktop with a UI the developers have dubbed Onyx. Onyx incorporates the GNOME Dash To Dock extension to help make the GNOME desktop environment a bit more palatable to users who might be migrating from the Windows desktop operating system....

Also: Live blog: The best early Cyber Monday deals 2022 in real time Now is also one of the only times of the year that big-name brands like Apple have discounts on their products. If you want the best stylus for iPad, the Apple Pencil (second generation) is currently still $40 off. This Apple Pencil builds on the first-generation model with a double-tap function that you can customize to switch between pencil and eraser, show the color palettes, and more, as well as attach to the side of the iPad Pro and charge wirelessly....