The app used to harvest facebook data for Cambridge Analytica also harvested it from the *friends* of users that authorised it.

I was talking about how dangerous this was back in 2010. It's super common, almost nobody turns off the controls which allow it. If you're a Facebook user, then going to "Settings -> Apps -> Apps Others Use" will let you disable what information your friends' applications can harvest about you.

Because of course one of the most important privacy settings is hidden under "apps" rather than "privacy".

Some of you might be hearing about #Spectre and #Meltdown today, which allow memory from other processes and the kernel itself to be read. They exploit CPU designs.

I'm still doing my reading, but a good place to start if you're technically inclined is spectreattack.com Spectre involves training the CPU to speculatively run invalid code in the victim's address space, and then using a side-channel (such as cache timings) to infer details about the victim's memory.

It affects at least AMD, Intel and ARM CPUs

The sample exploit reads 10KB/s.

Lots of people have been telling me it's great that Australia voted yes to marriage equality in the recent referendum.

I have to explain that it wasn't a referendum, is not legally binding, and was an expensive attempt to get a different result than what the public wants. 1/ Even if we ignore the fact that it's abhorrent to be asking the majority whether a minority should have basic human rights, the government has known for years that there's strong majority support for marriage equality.

Because sampling and statistics are a thing. 2/

1/This terrifies me. The researchers go on to make a 3D printed turtle that the machine classifies as a "rifle", regardless of viewing angle

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2/ Machine classification of images is a *huge* growth area, and is already seeing extensive use. You'll see even more with autonomous cars.