Matt's Favorites: Hackable TVs, Black Hat, Free The Willies and Much More
So what's the latest and coolest in the ever-evolving world of high technology? Well, this'll make your Monday more interesting...
* Closing the curtains in your living room may not close the doors on potential hackers. At a demonstration Friday in Las Vegas, researchers showed an audience of children at Defcon Kids how a Samsung Smart TV can be hacked.
* When it comes to the hacking community versus the U.S. government, it's a wobbly balancing act for Shane MacDougal. While he makes the annual trip to Defcon to support the community he's become a fixture in, he's also here to work. Sponsored by his employer JL Bond Consulting, MacDougall teaches classes at Black Hat, a meeting where cybersecurity professionals share their research -- often revealing some of the most spine-chilling hacks of the year.
* The debate over the captivity and treatment of killer whales, also known as orcas, is rekindled in the new documentary "Blackfish." David Kirby, author of the book "Death at SeaWorld: Shamu and the Dark Side of Killer Whales in Captivity," joined the "CBS This Morning: Saturday" co-hosts to talk about the documentary.
* Speaking of marine mammals, an increasing number of dolphins are washing up dead on East Coast shores this summer. It's an upsetting trend, and the cause is still a mystery.
* It's a plotline so played out that if it were pitched as a script no network executive would bite. A TV broadcaster wants more money. A cable distributor doesn't want to pay. They trade public jabs while trying to reach an agreement, and then TV channels go black when the parties don't find common ground. That's how the story unfolded once again on Friday night between broadcaster CBS -- the parent company of WWJ and your Tech Report -- and distributor Time Warner Cable.
* You may hate parallel parking, but you're going to hate it even more when somebody commandeers control of your car with you in it. That was the scary scenario painted over the first two hours at the 21st annual Defcon hacker conference.
* Behold, the world's most expensive speakers, $800,000 a pair. They look like something out of an old Batman movie, but supposedly the sound is exquisite.
* Here's a fascinating interview with my favorite comic artist.
* The U.S. government is quietly pressuring telecommunications providers to install eavesdropping technology deep inside companies' internal networks to facilitate surveillance efforts. FBI officials have been sparring with carriers, a process that has on occasion included threats of contempt of court, in a bid to deploy government-provided software capable of intercepting and analyzing entire communications streams.
* Everyone has a smartphone these days, even toddlers. New research says 25 percent of kids 2 years old and younger have their own smartphones, which parents say is used as a learning tool for their kids. However, experts say that this is way too young for children to be utilizing this type of technology.
* Some three million tons of styrofoam products end up in landfills every year and it never disintegrates. One Iowa company has an idea to change all that -- and it's a business that's quite literally mushrooming. In a 40,000-square-foot warehouse, employees of Ecovative Design grow packaging, using organic waste like corn husks and stalks -- and mycelium, the roots of mushrooms.
* Brown University archaeologists have uncovered the site of a village in northwest Alaska that's believed to be at least 200 years old. The village dig is in Kobuk Valley National Park about 20 miles up the Kobuk River from the community of Kiana, according to KSKA. In the settlement, dozens of homes were connected by tunnels.
* Yahoo has acquired RockMelt, a U.S. start-up that built a Web browser tied to Facebook's social network. Terms of the deal announced Friday weren't disclosed. It's the 20th acquisition that Yahoo Inc. has completed since Marissa Mayer became the company's CEO nearly 13 months ago.
* In an unexpected move, the Obama administration vetoed an earlier ruling by the U.S. International Trade Commission that would have resulted in a sales ban of some older Apple devices. That ban, set to formally begin Monday, was decided in early June after Samsung accused Apple of infringing on its patents.
* Microsoft reduced the price of its Surface Pro tablet this weekend by $100, a few days after revealing that it has spent more money on marketing the in-house tablet than it has generated in revenue. The reductions, which were first reported by The Verge, cuts the price of Microsoft's 64GB and 128GB tablets to $799 and $899, respectively.
* More major brand-name Wi-Fi router vulnerabilities continue to be discovered, and continue to go unpatched, a security researcher has revealed at Defcon 21. Jake Holcomb, a security researcher at the Baltimore, Md.-based firm Independent Security Evaluators and the lead researcher into Wi-Fi router vulnerabilities, said that problem is worse than when ISE released its original findings in April.
* Twitter has updated its rules for users and is adding more staff to police abusive tweets after an uproar and arrests in the U.K. over rape and bomb threats, and a day before a scheduled boycott of the service.
* Peter Capaldi is the new Doctor. The 12th star of British TV show "Doctor Who" was announced live on the BBC Sunday, ready to replace Matt Smith as the time-travelling hero. In "Doctor Who Live: The Next Doctor," a half-hour special looking back over the 50-year history of the classic sci-fi show, the actor playing the next Doctor was revealed live on television for the first time.
* It's been almost one Earth year since NASA's Martian rover touched down on its new home. In that time, it's already sent back over 70,000 images. Here are some of the most interesting.
* Ho boy. Rupert Murdoch is trying to bring down the Labor government in Australia over its championing a national broadband network, which Murdoch sees as a threat to his interests. Clash of the titans! Ain't oligopoly fun?
