(This appeared as an op-ed published February 12, 2026 in the San Jose Spotlight, written by Huy Tran (SIREN), Jeffrey Wang (CAIR-SFBA), and Jennifer Pinsof.) As ICE and other federal agencies continue their assault on civil liberties, local leaders are stepping up to protect their communities. This includes pushing back against automated license plate readers, or ALPRs, which are tools of mass surveillance that can be weaponized against immigrants, political dissidents and other targets. In recent weeks, Mountain View, Los Altos Hills, Santa Cruz, East Palo Alto and Santa Clara County have begun reconsidering their ALPR programs. San Jose should…
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This post was sponsored by WP Engine. The opinions expressed in this article are the sponsor’s own. In the race for audience attention, digital marketers at media companies often have one hand tied behind their backs. The mission is clear: drive sustainable revenue, increase engagement, and stay ahead of technological disruptions such as LLMs and AI agents. Yet, for many media organizations, execution is throttled by a “Sticky-taped stack,” which is a fragile, patchwork legacy CMS structure and ad-hoc plugins. For a digital marketing leader, this isn’t just a technical headache; it’s a direct hit to the bottom line. In…
Wiring up your home can be a monumental task, depending on whether you’re planning to run cables outside, along the floor, or inside walls. I opted for the second option since drilling channels into some stone walls wasn’t my idea of an enjoyable weekend or two. It wasn’t exactly the “right way,” but then again, so long as it works, it doesn’t really matter, which is precisely what my network became. Because of the property in question, we had to use more Ethernet cabling than initially planned. It’s an 1800s English cottage with a more recent extension. Half of the…
Can cloud-based password managers that claim “zero-knowledge encryption” keep users’ passwords safe even if their encrypted-vault servers are compromised? Researchers at ETH Zurich and Università della Svizzera italiana set out to answer that question, and the answer is (unfortunately) no. Attack paths against encrypted vaults Cloud-based password managers store users’s passwords in a password vault, which is created and encrypted by the user’s client software by using a cryptographic key derived from the user’s master password. The client software uploads the encrypted vault to a server run by the service provider and the provider can’t decrypt it. Only the user’s…
Gboard has been my default keyboard for years because it’s fast and reliable. But when I set up a new phone recently, I decided to pay closer attention to something I normally ignore: the keyboard settings. That’s when I realized that several default features were making typing more frustrating than it needed to be. They were adding visual noise, changing words I didn’t want changed, and occasionally interrupting my typing flow. After I turned off these features, typing started feeling fast and effortless again. Related I tried a weird 16-key keyboard, and it made me rethink phone typing 26 letters,…
Notepad++ has adopted a “double-lock” design for its update mechanism to address recently exploited security gaps that resulted in a supply-chain compromise. The new mechanism landed in Notepad++ version 8.9.2, announced yesterday, although work on it began in version 8.8.9 with implementing the verification of the signed installer from GitHub. The second part of the double-lock system is checking the signed XML from the notepad-plus-plus.org domain. In practice, this means that the XML file returned from the update service is digitally signed (XMLDSig). The combination of the two verification mechanisms adds to a more robust “and effectively unexploitable” update process, says…
TikTok is giving entertainment marketers in Europe new tools to reach audiences with precision, leveraging AI to drive engagement and conversions for streaming and ticketed content. What’s happening. TikTok is introducing two new ad types for European campaigns: Streaming Ads: AI-driven ads for streaming platforms that show personalized content based on user engagement. Formats include a four-title video carousel or a multi-title media card. With 80% of TikTok users saying the app influences their streaming choices, these ads can directly shape viewing decisions. New Title Launch: Targets high-intent users using signals like genre preference and price sensitivity, helping marketers convert…
Joe Maring / Android AuthorityTL;DR Google is introducing a new system in Android 17 to reduce time software threads spend waiting for each other to complete. By revising how access to memory is temporarily locked, DeliQueue lets threads run with fewer interruptions. That could result in a 4% reduction in apps dropping frames, or as high as 7.7% across the Android system UI. You may not even be consciously thinking about it, but chances are you notice that something’s up when your Android phone isn’t running as smoothly as it could be. Everything still gets done — you swipe around,…
Vulnerability intelligence company VulnCheck announced on Tuesday that it has raised $25 million to meet demand for its solutions. The Series B funding round, which brings the total raised by the company to $45 million, was led by Sorenson Capital, with participation from National Grid Partners, Ten Eleven Ventures, and In-Q-Tel. The money will be used to expand product development and scale growth. VulnCheck provides a platform for tracking the lifecycle of vulnerabilities and their active exploitation. The company’s solutions are designed to help security teams and threat intelligence analysts identify which vulnerabilities pose the most immediate risk. The platform…
We may earn a commission from links on this page. Impeccable period vibes are a highlight of Ponies, the Peacock spy show starring Emilia Clarke and Haley Lu Richardson. They play a couple of housewives living in Moscow with their CIA agent husbands, at least until their spouses are killed under mysterious circumstances. In order to get to the bottom of things, the two convince the Moscow station chief that they could be useful as agents themselves. He figures, hey—who’d ever suspect a couple of secretaries? You can stream Ponies on Peacock, and then stream these stories of other unexpected…