Toyota admits location data breach affecting 2.15 million customers

Image: Toyota

Toyota has revealed that the locations of 2,150,000 million customers were exposed to potential hackers from November 6, 2013, to April 17, 2023. The data included the vehicle GPS and navigation terminal ID number, the chassis number, and the location and time data of the vehicle. This data came from Toyota’s Connected service, which offers maintenance reminders, entertainment streaming, and emergency assistance to owners. Users of Toyota Connected, G-Link, and G-Book may have been affected.

Toyota also said that video recordings taken outside the car could have been leaked. However, the company claims there is no evidence of data misuse, and no personal information was involved. Unless a potential bad actor knew the VIN (or chassis) number of a car, they wouldn’t have been able to use the data to track someone specifically. The data breach has been fixed, and the data is no longer accessible. Toyota has issued apology notices to affected customers and set up a call center for inquiries.

Source

Report: How Amazon plans to make Astro smarter

Photo: Amazon

Amazon is reportedly working on a secret AI robot project called Burnham, according to internal documents seen by Insider. Burnham would add intelligence and voice interaction to Astro, the company's smart home robot. Burnham would use large language models and other advanced AI to understand and respond to the context of a household. The documents say that Burnham would remember what it saw and understood and engage in Q&A dialogues and actions based on it.

For example, Burnham could alert the owner if it found a stove or a faucet left on. It could call emergency services if it saw someone fall and need help. It could help locate keys, check windows, and monitor kids’ activities. These are things that existing smart home devices can do, but they need multiple steps and devices. Astro with Burnham would do them with one device.

Click to read more ...

Unreal Engine 5.2 brings native support for Apple Silicon

Image: Epic Games

Epic Games’ Unreal Engine 5 lets anyone create 3D worlds easily for games, virtual sets, and more. But Mac users needed Rosetta technology to run it, until now, that is. Mac users can finally run it natively on Apple Silicon with the new 5.2 update, boosting performance on M1 and M2 Macs.

Click to read more ...

Google’s Magic Compose lets you personalize your texts

Image: Google

Google recently announced a new feature today that uses Android’s guided customization and generative artificial intelligence to help users write more personalized text in its Messages app. Magic Compose lets you choose the tone of your message and then adjusts the text for you. You can use it for different types of messages and conversations. For instance, you can make your message more upbeat or more formal, or you can have some fun and make it sound like Shakespeare.

Magic Compose could be helpful for people who text a lot and need to switch between different tones and styles. But it doesn’t seem like an essential feature from what was demonstrated so far. It’s more like another way for the company to show off its AI capabilities in its Android apps. Along with other new AI-related tools, this new Google Messages feature could make Android more attractive in the competitive device market. Magic Compose will be available in beta later this summer.

Source