SF fines two landords $2.25 million for illegal Airbnb rentals – TechCrunch

San Francisco City Attorney Dennis Herrera is laying down the law — literally. Today, Herrera’s office announced a $2.25 million settlement with two property owners in the city. The landlords, Darren and Valerie Lee, ran “an illicit hotel chain during San Francisco’s housing crisis rather than lawfully renting the units to residential tenants,” Herrera’s office…

Autonomous cars: Uber reveals ‘valuable lessons’ in safety report

Uber Advanced Technologies Group has released a report that outlines the company’s commitment to it’s self-driving vehicle strategy and what it’s doing to insure the safe development of autonomous cars. Titled ‘A Principled Approach To Safety’, the voluntary safety self-assessment was developed in line with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s guidance. The 70-page document…

Facebook’s election interference problem exponentially worse on eve of midterms, study suggests – TechCrunch

An analysis of political advertisers running extensive campaigns on Facebook targeting users in the United States over the past six months has flagged a raft of fresh concerns about its efforts to tackle election interference — suggesting the social network’s self regulation is offering little more than a sham veneer of accountability. Dig down and…

Security researchers have busted the encryption in several popular Crucial and Samsung SSDs – TechCrunch

Researchers at Radboud University have found critical security flaws in several popular Crucial and Samsung solid state drives (SSDs), which they say can be easily exploited to recover encrypted data without knowing the password. The researchers, who detailed their findings in a new paper out Monday, reverse engineered the firmware of several drives to find…

Technology and tyranny, lying to ourselves, and Spotify’s $1b repurchase – TechCrunch

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