This Week in Tech – 9/17/2017
Chrome Will No Longer Autoplay Content With Sound in January 2018
Google today announced Chrome is going to war with autoplay. Starting next year, Chrome will only autoplay a given piece of content when the media won’t play sound or the user has indicated an interest in the media…
Chatbot Lets You Sue Equifax for Up to $25,000 Without a Lawyer
Equifax’s security failure affected 143 million US consumers, or 44 percent of the US population. To add insult to injury, Equifax waited over a month before revealing the security breach it had suffered. If you’re one of the millions affected by the breach, a chatbot can now help you sue Equifax in small claims court, potentially letting you avoid hiring a lawyer for advice…
Solar Now Costs 6¢ per Kilowatt-Hour, Beating Government Goal by 3 Years
On Tuesday, the Department of Energy (DOE) announced that utility-grade solar panels have hit cost targets set for 2020, three years ahead of schedule. Those targets reflect around $1 per watt and 6¢ per kilowatt-hour in Kansas City, the department’s mid-range yardstick for solar panel cost per unit of energy produced (New York is considered the high-cost end, and Phoenix, Arizona, which has much more sunlight than most other major cities in the country, reflects the low-cost end)…
Internet Companies Too Big? FTC Chair Says More Than Market Share Counts
A speech Tuesday by the acting chairperson of the Federal Trade Commission pushes back, hard, against a growing clamor among those who fear Internet companies are getting too big…
TechCrunch: Equifax Hack-Checking Web Site Is Returning Random Results
TechCrunch has concluded that “the checker site, hosted by Equifax product TrustID, seems to be telling people at random they may have been affected by the data breach.” One user reports that entering the same information twice produced two different answers. And ZDNet’s security editor reports that even if you just enter Test or 123456, “it says your data has been breached.”…
Pirate Bay Founder Launches Anonymous Domain Registration Service
Pirate Bay founder Peter Sunde has a new privacy-oriented startup. Today he launches the domain registration service Njalla, which offers site owners full anonymity, shielding them from the prying eyes of outsiders. “Think of us as your friendly drunk (but responsibly so) straw person that takes the blame for your expressions.”…
Equifax Had ‘Admin’ as Login and Password in Argentina
Cyber-crime blogger Brian Krebs said that an online employee tool used in the country could be accessed by typing “admin” as both a login and password…