Google just made a huge change to the way app permissions work on Android. Apps already on your device can now gain dangerous permissions with automatic updates. Future apps can gain dangerous permissions without asking you, too. This is all thanks to the latest Play Store update and its simplified app permission interface. The core idea here — making Android app permissions comprehensible to normal users — is good. The implementation is the big problem.

http://www.howtogeek.com/190863/androids-app-permissions-were-just-simplified-now-theyre-much-less-secure/

In a new assessment released yesterday, the group says Australians are paying 39 per cent more than people in the US to download the top 10 movies in Apple’s iTunes store and 33 per cent more for PlayStation 4 video games.

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/were-paying-39pc-more-for-downloads/story-e6frg8zx-1226951246207#

Google is testing a new browser extension that will be able to encrypt Gmail messages sent to and from Google Chrome, making it harder for someone to read them. While email encryption software isn't new, and Google already offers an encrypted connection for Gmail (shown as https on the address bar), the new service would encrypt the message content. Google said it hoped the plug-in would make the process of encryption more accessible and therefore more widely used. Encryption software tools like PGP and GnuPG are freely available but are cumbersome for consumers. Google's plug-in, is called End-to-End, promising uninterrupted protection of data travelling between two parties.

http://www.smh.com.au/digital-life/consumer-security/google-testing-software-to-take-email-encryption-to-the-masses-20140605-zry0e.html

A "super computer" has duped humans into thinking it was a 13-year-old boy to become the first machine to pass the "iconic" Turing Test, experts say. Five machines were tested at the Royal Society in central London to see if they could fool people into thinking they were humans during text-based conversations. The test was devised in 1950 by computer science pioneer and World War II code breaker Alan Turing, who said that if a machine was indistinguishable from a human, then it was "thinking". No computer had ever previously passed the Turing Test, which requires 30 per cent of human interrogators to be duped during a series of five-minute keyboard conversations, organisers from the University of Reading said.

http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/computer-becomes-first-to-pass-turing-test-in-artificial-intelligence-milestone-but-academics-warn-of-dangerous-future-9508370.html

http://www.smh.com.au/digital-life/computers/super-computer-first-to-pass-turing-test-convince-judges-its-alive-20140608-zs1bu.html