Tech News Today for May 24, 2017

Tech News for Wednesday May 24, 2017

Proposed Rules Would Allow U.S. to Track and Destroy Drones. Read more at nytimes.com.

Google can now prove to advertisers that you're buying stuff, even if you're buying it in a brick and mortar store. The company announced a new tool that uses credit card receipts to track purchases in physical stores. The company says they're using machine learning to do it. Read more at washingtonpost.com.

In its attempt to bring Thunderbolt further into the mainstream, Intel announced plans to make the Thunderbolt 3 specification royalty-free, removing a barrier for hardware manufacturers that want to use the data transfer spec in their products. Intel is also integrating Thunderbolt 3 into its CPUs, which it hopes will help drive adoption of the protocol in devices and peripherals using Intel’s chips. Read more at wired.com.

At an event at Grand Central Station in New York today, DJI announced a new tiny drone. It's the Spark Mini Drone and if DJI is to be believed, it is the drone for everyone. Everyone who has $500 to drop on a drone that's the size and weight of a soda can. It's got some cool features including the ability to control it with your hand gestures and a camera that can recognize faces. The Spark will be available in Alpine White, Sky Blue, Meadow Green, Lava Red, and Sunrise Yellow. It will ship in June, but its available for pre-order right now. Read more at theverge.com.

If you need another reminder why it might not be a good idea to download pirated content online, here you go: Check Point researchers have discovered that subtitle files, commonly offered by pirated films on services like Kodi, Popcorn Time, Stremio, and even the cross-platform VLC media player app, can carry payload code that grants remote hackers access to the viewers computer when loaded without any indication that its happened in the background. Subtitle files have been easily overlooked as an attack vector, and as such, Check Point says this is the most widespread, zero-resistance vulnerability to be discovered in a while. Read more at engadget.com.

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