Venmo launches instant transfers to bank accounts | TechCrunch

August 15, 2019August 12, 2019 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

PayPal -owned payments app Venmo today announced support for instant transfers to U.S. bank accounts. The feature is an optional alternative to Venmo’s standard bank transfer service, which typically takes one to three business days to process transactions. With Instant Transfer, however, funds from your Venmo account can hit your bank account within minutes.

As of January 2018, Venmo has offered Instant Transfers to eligible Visa and Mastercard debit cards for a small fee. At launch, the fee was a flat $0.25, but Venmo bumped it up to 1% of the transferred amount last October. Now, the minimum fee is $0.25 and the maximum fee is $10. Of course, users can still choose the standard transfer option if they don’t want to pay for the convenience of instant payments.

Ebola Is Now Curable. Here’s How the New Treatments Work | WIRED

August 15, 2019August 12, 2019 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

Amid unrelenting chaos and violence, scientists and doctors in the Democratic Republic of Congo have been running a clinical trial of new drugs to try to combat a year-long Ebola outbreak. On Monday, the trial’s cosponsors at the World Health Organization and the National Institutes of Health announced that two of the experimental treatments appear to dramatically boost survival rates.

Hackers can ransomware your fancy digital camera | Mashable

August 12, 2019August 11, 2019 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

Not even your precious memories are safe from hackers.

That much was made clear at the annual DEF CON hacking conference in Las Vegas, where a security researcher demonstrated just how easy it is to remotely encrypt a digital camera with ransomware. And once that happens, you can say goodbye to all your photos — unless you pay up.

The specific camera in question was a Canon EOS 80D, but, as Eyal Itkin explained to the early Sunday morning crowd of seemingly hungover hackers, it’s likely not the only model vulnerable.

“If you can do something to cameras, you have many potential victims you can affect,” he observed. “Would you pay to get your camera back?”

Radioactive Grain from Chernobyl Has Been Distilled into Vodka | Live Science

August 9, 2019August 8, 2019 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

Thrill seekers visiting the ruins of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in Ukraine may soon be able to take a piece of the site’s radioactive history home with them — in their livers.

A team of scientists from the U.K. and Ukraine have just produced the first bottle of what they’re calling Atomik vodka: artisanal spirits made from water and grain harvested in the reactor’s once-forbidden exclusion zone.

Why cable companies basically don’t care if you cut the cord | Fast Company

August 8, 2019August 6, 2019 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

After a quarter in which another million customers cut the cord on cable or satellite TV, the research firm eMarketer expects a 4% drop in pay-TV subscribers this year, bringing the total down to 86.5 million. The firm also expects customers to defect at a faster rate of 7.5% next year, with subscriptions dropping to 80 million. By 2023, eMarketer predicts that pay-TV households will drop to 72.7 million, versus 56.1 million households that will have cut the cord.

Cable companies aren’t really sweating it, though. Instead of extending promo deals to keep customers from dropping TV service, they’re simply extracting more revenue from those who haven’t formulated an escape plan. Either way, companies like Comcast profit from selling high-margin internet service.

Beware: Fake IRS Letters Are Making The Rounds This Summer | Forbes

August 7, 2019August 6, 2019 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

Correspondence season is in full swing. That means that the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) is sending out bills and notices to taxpayers – including correspondence focused on cryptocurrency and healthcare reporting. It may be hard for taxpayers to tell the real thing from the fakes – and scammers are taking advantage of the confusion. Here’s what you need to know.

Many taxpayers are aware that the IRS will never call to demand immediate payment over the phone, or call about taxes owed without first having mailed you a bill. To try and trick taxpayers, some scammers are sending letters, hoping that folks will take the bait.

British Airways pilots set for summer strike | BBC News

August 1, 2019July 31, 2019 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

British Airways has lost an appeal aimed at halting planned strike action by its pilots.

The British Airline Pilots’ Association (Balpa) voted in favour of industrial action on 22 July, after three days of negotiations failed to resolve the dispute.

BA-owner IAG sought an injunction to prevent the strike in the High Court, but it was overturned.

Here’s What the Federal Reserve’s Interest Rate Cut Means for You and Your Savings | Inc.com

August 1, 2019July 31, 2019 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

The Federal Reserve announced on Wednesday that it would cut interest rates for the first time in a decade.

In an effort to sustain the US economy’s longest expansion on record, the Federal Reserve is cutting interest rates by a quarter-percentage-point, bringing the target range for the federal funds rate to between 2 percent and 2.25 percent.

Capital One’s breach was inevitable, because we did nothing after Equifax | TechCrunch

July 31, 2019July 30, 2019 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

Another day, another massive data breach.

This time it’s the financial giant and credit card issuer Capital One, which revealed on Monday a credit file breach affecting 100 million Americans and 6 million Canadians. Consumers and small businesses affected are those who obtained one of the company’s credit cards dating back to 2005.

That includes names, addresses, phone numbers, dates of birth, self-reported income and more credit card application data — including over 140,000 Social Security numbers in the U.S., and more than a million in Canada.

How The Meat Industry Will Look Like In 20 Years | CoolBusinessIdeas.com

July 26, 2019July 25, 2019 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

Over the past few years, countless plant-based meat alternatives have hit the market, and customers’ increased demand for more ethical and environmentally-friendly products are slowly starting to disrupt the meat industry. And according to a new paper, it’s predicted that 20 years from now, the market for vegan meat and lab-grown meat will actually surpass the market for animal-based meat.

In fact, the report predicts that only 40 percent of the meat we eat in 2040 will come from the bodies of animals, while 35 percent will come from lab-grown meat, and the other 25 percent will come from plant-based replacements.