Tag Archive for: pretty

‘It’s a pretty big issue for the city’: Ransomware attack responsible for Toronto Public Library outage



Library branches remain open as scheduled but its website, public computers, printing services, digital collections and MAP passes are still unavailable.

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Getting a Google Pixel is pretty tempting


Google’s Pixel phones have a lot going for them.


Juan Garzon/CNET

Are you looking for a smartphone with Google Photos, Chrome, Gmail and Google Drive integration? If so, a Pixel might be a good choice for you. Google offers many iterations of its Pixel phones, including the Pixel 4A and Pixel 5, and now the new Pixel 6 and Pixel 6 Pro that come with the company’s in-house Tensor chip.

Pixel phones are known for taking great photos. But it isn’t just about having an excellent camera and luxurious hardware: Software and the services that a phone ties into are also important. Let’s get into a few of these.

Read more: CNET’s Pixel 6 and Pixel 6 Pro reviews

Unlimited storage for Google Photos 

One big reason to get a Pixel is unlimited storage in Google Photos. Unlike other non-Pixel handsets, Pixel phones have no data cap for backing up photos to the cloud. Photos you take on a Pixel will be saved in their original quality, not automatically compressed to save space. The extent of this benefit varies based on the Pixel you pick up: If you can find the first Pixel phone released in 2016, you should be able to upload photos at original quality for the life of the device. 

Read moreGoogle Pixel 6 vs. 6 Pro vs. Pixel 5 vs. 5A

Pixel phones will enjoy unlimited storage on Google Photos. Other handsets will not.


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Boffins propose Pretty Good Phone Privacy to end pretty invasive location data harvesting by telcos • The Register


Computer science boffins have devised a way to prevent the location of mobile phone users from being snarfed and sold to marketers, though the technique won’t affect targeted nation-state surveillance.

“We solve something that had previously been thought impossible – achieving location privacy in mobile networks,” said Paul Schmitt, an associate research scholar at the Center for Information Technology Policy (CITP) at Princeton University, told The Register.

In “Pretty Good Phone Privacy,” [PDF] a paper scheduled to be presented on Thursday at the Usenix Security Symposium, Schmitt and Barath Raghavan, assistant professor of computer science at the University of Southern California, describe a way to re-engineer the mobile network software stack so that it doesn’t betray the location of mobile network customers.

“It’s always been thought that since cell towers need to talk to phones then all users have to accept the status quo in which mobile operators track our every movement and sell the data to data brokers (as has been extensively reported),” said Schmitt. “We show how it’s possible to protect users’ mobile privacy while at the same time providing normal connectivity, and to do so without changing any of the hardware in mobile networks.”

In recent years, mobile carriers have been routinely selling and leaking location data, to the detriment of customer privacy. Efforts to alter the status quo have been hampered by an uneven regulatory landscape, the resistance of data brokers that profit from the status quo, and the assumption that cellular network architecture requires knowing where customers are located.

But thanks to evolving networking technology, which has shifted many core cellular functions from hardware to software, it’s now possible to redesign mobile networks to limit the availability of location data.

The SUPI…

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