A bored hacktivist browses national security secrets, a laid-off engineer says big tech giants see staff as 100% disposable and Stanford university students use ChatGPT for final exams.
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That’s all the tech news that’s trending right now. Welcome to Hashtag Trending. It’s Tuesday, January 24th and I am your host, Ashee Pamma.
A Swiss hacker browsed an unsecured airline server and came across national security secrets, including the FBI’s ‘no fly list’, Business Insider reported. The server is hosted by CommuteAir, a regional airline that partners with United Airlines to form United Express routes. Among the host of sensitive information discovered were the files “NoFly.csv,” and “selectee.csv”, containing over 1.8 million entries including names and dates of birth of people the FBI identifies as “known or suspected terrorists” who are prevented from boarding aircraft “when flying within, to, from and over the United States. A spokesperson for the airline confirmed the authenticity of the files to Insider and said personally identifiable information belonging to employees was also found in the hack.
Source: Business Insider
Justin Moore, an engineer said in a LinkedIn post, he was laid off through an automatic account deactivation at 3 in the morning, after 16 years at Google. Moore was one of the 12,000 people impacted by the company’s mass layoffs last week, Business Insider wrote. He added that he did not receive any prior information or communication about being let go. He stressed that layoffs as such should remind you that your work is not your life and employers, especially big, faceless giants like Google see you as 100 per cent disposable. Moore, however, pointed out that his experience at Google had been “(largely) wonderful” and that he was proud of the work he had done around the world.
Source: Business Insider
According to an informal survey by Stanford Daily, a large number of students at Stanford University have used ChatGPT, the popular AI chatbot for their final exams. A University spokesperson confirmed that the Board of Judicial Affairs is aware of and monitoring these emerging tools. Among other districts that have cracked down on its use is the New York City’s education department that blocked the site on its networks and devices citing “concerns about negative impacts on student learning, and concerns regarding the safety and accuracy of content.
Source: Stanford Daily
Texas-based Rice University bioengineer, Jerzy Szablowski plans to identify non-genetic drugs that can temporarily enhance the human body’s resilience to extreme cold exposure. Szablowski plans to deploy a new screening method to find drugs capable of enhancing the cold adaptation response of brown adipose tissue (BAT) or brown fat which regulates body temperature by breaking down blood sugar and other fat molecules in a process called thermogenesis. For this project, Szablowski won the Young Faculty Award from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. A drug that boosts BAT response could help first responders treat victims of hypothermia and even lower the cost of arctic exploration.
Source: Rice University News
That’s all the tech news that’s trending right now. Hashtag Trending is a part of the ITWC Podcast network. Add us to your Alexa Flash briefings or your Google Home daily briefing. Make sure to sign up for our Daily IT Wire newsletter to get all the news that matters directly in your inbox every day. Also, catch the next episode of Hashtag Tendances, our weekly Hashtag Trending episode in French, which drops every Thursday morning. If you have a suggestion or a tip, drop us a line in the comments or via email. Thank you for listening, I’m Ashee Pamma.