The end of child pornography? Google’s new web crawler could help

By Lulu Chang May 1, 2016

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Internet giants like Facebook and Google have long aided in the fight against child pornography, and now, another technological weapon is being added to the government’s arsenal. Google has created a so-called “web crawler” that finds and identifies child pornography, helping the police and federal officials remove images of abuse from the Internet.

As per a new report released by the Internet Watch Foundation, Google’s new tool takes “individual child sexual abuse image codes,” and searches for such images across the web. Illegal content is then blocked from being uploaded or removed in a process that experts say is much more efficient than alternate practices. “The exciting bit is that the web crawler could make it much quicker to identify and remove hashed images,” the IWF report reads. “It will allow any duplicate images to be removed or blocked, and ease the burden on analysts, as they won’t have to see so many disturbing images.”

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The web crawler is just one component of a larger project overseen by the “Googler in Residence” program of the IWF. The Silicon Valley-based company has an engineer dedicated to assisting the Foundation with its efforts, and both organizations seem optimistic about future innovations their partnership may facilitate.

“[The web crawler] could be a real game changer,” the Foundation said in its report. “This is hugely important for the victims of child sex abuse, as this technology should block thousands of their illegal images from being viewed on the internet.” While the tool remains in its nascent, pilot stages, the implications of this work could herald the beginning of the end of child porn on the web.

“By harnessing our engineering expertise through the Googler in Residence program, (the foundation’s) skilled analysts have made amazing progress in identifying and then removing this illegal content from the web,” said Katie O’Donovan, a public policy manager for Google in the U.K. “We look forward to the next phase of the Googler in Residence project in 2016.”

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Computing

Update your Google Chrome browser now: New exploit could leave you open to hacks

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If you’re a Google Chrome user, you should update the browser immediately. Google released a software update to the browser late yesterday evening that patches two zero-day vulnerabilities to the browser that could potentially allow the browser to be hijacked by hackers.
One of the vulnerabilities affects Chrome’s audio component (CVE-2019-13720) while the other resides in the PDFium (CVE-2019-13721) library.
Hackers can corrupt or modify the data in Chrome’s memory using the exploit, which will eventually give them access to the computer as a whole.
One of the exploits, CVE-2019-13720 has been discovered in the wild by researchers at Kaspersky.
Google says that the update to the browser will be rolling out to users automatically over the coming days and weeks.
That said, if you’re a Chrome user it would be more prudent for you to go ahead and do that update manually right now instead.
To make it happen you’ll want to launch Chrome on your computer and then click on “Chrome” in the menu bar followed by “About Chrome.” That will launch the Settings menu. From there, click “About Chrome” at the bottom of the menu on the left. That will likely trigger an automatic update if yours hasn’t already happened. If it doesn’t, you’ll see a button to manually update the browser as well.
Once you update the browser you should be good to go without fear of the security threat becoming an issue. Last month many Mac users ran into issues with Google Chrome when it seemed to send computers into an endless reboot cycle.
An investigation by Mac enterprise and IT blog Mr. Macintosh found that the issue was actually a bug that deletes the symlink at the/var path on the Mac it’s running on, which essentially deletes a key in the MacOS system file.
That issue only impacted Macs where the System Integrity Protection (SIP) had been disabled. The issue particularly impacted older Macs that were made before SIP was introduced with OS X El Capitan in 2015.
All this comes as Google is gearing up to launch some major updates to Chrome, including one update that will change how you manage tabs using the browser. That update is expected to roll out later this year.

Deals

A new Best Buy sale just started – our 11 favorite deals

Presidents Day sales with electonic devices packed in open boxes.

If you've been looking to do some shopping recently but haven't found the best time, you're in luck! Best Buy has just started an excellent weekend sale with many different products, but, to help save you some hassle, we've collected our 11 favorite deals from the bunch, ranging from robot vacuums to gaming laptops. So, without further ado, let's dive right in!
Shark ION Robot RV761 -- $143, was $260

If you're looking to dip your toes into robot vacuums without spending a lot, the Shark ION Robot RV761 falls within the Shark Ion 700 range and has a few nifty features, making it a good starting robot vacuum. For example, it has a triple brush mechanism that makes it great for picking up pet hair and does relatively well on carpeted flooring. It also has its own that allows you to schedule and control it to fit your schedule, and it comes with sensing technology that lets it avoid bumping into things. On the other hand, it doesn't have home mapping, which is great for the privacy-minded, but that does mean the occasional bump does happen. The Shark ION RV761 has about 90 minutes of battery life before it takes itself in for recharging.

Web

When is Prime Day 2023? Dates confirmed for the shopping event

Best Prime Day 2022 Deals graphic with multiple products.

After weeks of speculation, we finally know when Prime Day 2023 is kicking off. Amazon has announced that the event will start July 11 at 3AM ET and will run through July 12. As always, Prime members can score some fantastic deals from the sale with popular brands like Peloton, Victoria's Secret, YETI, and Sony just some of the names being touted by Amazon as featuring in the big sale. Members will also be able to shop more deals on small business products than ever before too. As always, expect great discounts on Amazon-owned properties like Kindles, Ring doorbells, Amazon Echo units, and so much more. It's the sale we've all been waiting for since Black Friday.

The Prime Day deals promise to drop every 30 minutes during select periods with deep discounts expected. Select discounts on other Amazon-related things are already available such as 20% off in-store purchases at when you spend $50 or more and . It's a small taste of what is no doubt to come with other Amazon properties likely to see discounts.