Technology

You could say Arthur Krieger, a former detective with the Los Angeles Police Department, is the sort of guy who expects reasonable answers to reasonable questions.So Krieger, 88, was more than a little nonplussed when he recently contacted his car insurer, Hartford, to ask about the mileage being used for his coverage renewal.Like many if not most of us, the West L.A. resident … [Read more...] about Column: Your car insurer may be using pre-pandemic mileage to set 2021 rates

Robinhood Markets and Citadel, central players in the GameStop Corp. saga that gripped markets last month, are using congressional testimony to push back against conspiracy theories circulating in Washington that they coordinated to restrict retail investors from adding to their bets.Robinhood Chief Executive Officer Vlad Tenev said in written testimony for a Thursday House … [Read more...] about Robinhood, Citadel reject conspiracy claims they halted ‘meme’ trades

Three North Korean computer programmers have been charged in Los Angeles with conspiring to steal and extort more than $1 billion in a sweeping array of cyberattacks against banks, other companies and cryptocurrency traders around the world, federal authorities announced Wednesday.The hackers were working for a North Korean military agency, the Reconnaissance General Bureau, … [Read more...] about North Korean military hackers indicted in cyber plot to rob banks, attack companies

Ted Bacino purchased a used 2017 Mustang from a Palm Springs Ford dealer. He paid nearly $2,000 extra for an extended warranty to cover any repairs.Two things are noteworthy about this.First, the one time Bacino, 87, tried to use his extended warranty, he was told it didn’t cover the problem his car was having, a window that wasn’t closing properly.Second, he started received … [Read more...] about Column: Are extended car warranties worth it?

As one of the world’s most invasive species, it was only a matter of time before cats found their way to the inhabitants of the Mushroom Kingdom. And when they arrived in 2013’s “Super Mario 3D World,” cats, just as they did when they came as stowaways on boats to new worlds, immediately asserted their dominance among the members of the local population. It’s fitting, of … [Read more...] about One of the best and least-played Mario games is back — with meme-ready cats

A small group of app-based drivers backed by a major labor union are pushing forward their legal challenge to Proposition 22 — the California voter-approved law allowing gig companies to keep treating their workers as independent contractors — after the state Supreme Court threw the lawsuit out.The plaintiffs said they planned to refile the suit in a lower court, Alameda … [Read more...] about Lawsuit challenging Prop. 22 to be refiled in lower court

Amazon.com Inc. faces questions from senators over a reported contract with Dahua, a Chinese security camera company that indicated it has the ability to alert police when its facial recognition software identifies members of the Uighur ethnic group. Sens. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.) and Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) sent the letter to Amazon Chief Executive Jeff Bezos one day after the … [Read more...] about Senators question Amazon over contract with company that offered ‘real-time Uighur warnings’

Facial recognition software developed by China-based Dahua, one of the world’s largest manufacturers of video surveillance technology, purports to detect the race of individuals caught on camera and offers to alert police clients when it identifies members of the Turkic ethnic group Uighurs. Dahua, though among Chinese companies sanctioned by the U.S. government, has a growing … [Read more...] about Race detection and ‘real-time Uighur warnings’ — inside Dahua’s facial recognition technology

I jumped more than a few times while playing “Little Nightmares 2,” frightened by a sudden movement or the scurrying of something in the dark. I even had to set the controller down once or twice when my nervous hands made it impossible to properly maneuver the slow-moving child protagonist at the heart of the game. And then were moments I turned on all the lights in my … [Read more...] about Review: ‘Little Nightmares 2,’ a horror fairy tale game even this scaredy-cat finds beautiful

In the days following the Jan. 6 riot at the nation’s Capitol, there was a rush to identify those who had stormed the building’s hallowed halls.Instagram accounts with names like Homegrown Terrorists popped up, claiming to use AI software and neural networks to trawl publicly available images to identify rioters. Researchers such as the cybersecurity expert John Scott-Railton … [Read more...] about Facial recognition may help find Capitol rioters — but it could harm many others, experts say