Is it too soon to call this a turnaround? Maybe, but things are starting to look up for Snap.

The company just reported its results for the first quarter of 2019 and delivered investors some long overdue good news: Snapchat added new users for the first time in a year.

The app now counts 190 million daily active users (DAUs), up from 186 million last quarter. Overall, DAUs are still down from its previous peak of 191 million, but the new growth suggests the company has been able to reverse the momentum caused by an unpopular redesign last year.

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Hacking facial-recognition systems is so easy a kid could do it. 

One Irish politician found this out the hard way when he discovered the reason he kept finding his laptop battery drained. It turns out his kids were using his campaign flyers — prominently featuring a picture of his face — to bypass the facial-recognition lock on his computer. 

“So, I was wondering why the battery on my laptop was running down every time I left it at home,” Sinn Féin MEP Matt Carthy, who represents the Midlands Northwest constituency, tweeted Tuesday. “Turns out the kids have been using my election leaflets to get through the facial recognition lock…” Read more…

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Mark Zuckerberg may soon find himself in an unfamiliar situation: facing actual, personal consequences for Facebook’s missteps. 

As the FTC continues to investigate the social network’s mishandling of user data, it’s looking more and more likely that officials will single out the Facebook CEO as they look to impose new punishments on the company. 

Days after the Washington Post reported the FTC is in the midst of “discussions about how to hold Zuckerberg accountable for Facebook’s data lapses,” the paper now reports a Democratic senator is urging the agency to put the Facebook founder on blast. Zuckerberg should be “individually liable,” for Facebook’s privacy violations, Oregon Senator Ron Wyden wrote in a letter to the FTC. Read more…

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U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) is set to expand the use of facial recognition tech to identify just about every person leaving the United States on a commercial flight.

As Quartz reports, the CBP already uses facial recognition technology at 15 U.S. airports. The system works by capturing a photo of a passenger as they approach their airport departure gate. The image is then compared to visa and passport applications for a possible match so as to create an “exit record.” No match flags the individual for closer inspection by the CBP.

In the Fiscal Tear 2018 Entry/Exit Overtstay Report released by Homeland Security, it’s stated (on page 11) that CBP intends to expand the use of this so-called biometric exit over the next four years to, “97 percent of departing commercial air travelers from the United States.” The reason? The technology is highly reliable and therefore very good at detecting individuals who are classed as overstays on a visa. Read more…

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As Elon Musk made clear Monday, the technology most of his competitors in the self-driving car space use to help vehicles detect what’s around them is lame. 

And his option is way better. 

“LiDAR is a fool’s errand,” he quipped about the laser-emitting tool that, in the simplest terms, acts as eyes for autonomous cars. “Anyone who is relying on LiDAR is doomed.”

That’s pretty much most of the businesses testing self-driving cars, including Waymo and Uber who went to court over LiDAR technology last year.

Musk let his strong opinions about LiDAR fly at Tesla’s Autonomy Day, an event that gave investors at the company’s Palo Alto headquarters and 50,000-plus livestream viewers an inside look at self-driving tech.  Read more…

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If you’ve ever had the misfortune of swiping on men on Tinder, you can probably relate to this video. 

A skit by writers Jon Foor and Luke Strickler poked fun at the overplayed trend of everyone on Tinder having exactly two personality traits: Liking The Office and loving dogs. 

“Where’d you grow up?” Strickler asks his hypothetical match, jabbing at the repetitive, surface-level conversations people on the app have before either meeting up or ghosting each other entirely. “Real though, if you’re racist, sexist, homophobic, or not hot, this will not work out.” 

But when confronted with the fact that women have multi-dimensional personalities and even worse, opinions, things take a turn. Read more…

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Look out, Uber. Tesla CEO Elon Musk plans to turn the electric car company’s fleet of vehicles into a massive autonomous ride-hailing network. 

Musk laid out his vision for the self-driving Tesla network — which he expects to be in operation as early as next year — at a Monday investor event focused on autonomous driving. It’s not the first time he’s floated the idea; he tweeted about Tesla robotaxis earlier this month.

But his timeline, and much of the other details about the service, should be taken with huge helpings of salt. Competitors that have been testing self-driving taxis for awhile couldn’t pull off what Musk is suggesting in the same timeframe.  Read more…

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Can we just take a moment to appreciate how well these gorillas know their angles?

Ndakazi and Ndeze, two orphaned gorillas who were raised at Virunga National Park in the Democratic Republic of Congo, posed for a selfie that went viral over the weekend. 

Standing upright behind ranger Mathieu Shamavu, the gorillas served nothing but face for the camera. That over the shoulder smize! That slight squat, just subtle enough to show off the gorilla’s figure! These girls take better selfies than any influencer can.

It’s stunning. 

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The world is awash in ’90s nostalgia — and it’s even showing up in our passwords.

A new study from the UK’s National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) has revealed the world’s most easily hacked passwords, CNN reports. The top no-brainer passwords overall are impersonal number combinations, like 12345. But in the category of “bands,” the most breached password is the name of the popular ’90s pop-punk outfit, Blink-182. 

That means that if you’re part of the apparently enormous group of people who use their passwords to pay homage to the spirit of teenage rebellion, you’re at risk of getting hacked.  Read more…

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