eSariSari.com – a new approach to daily deals

Filipinos love a bargain, and it comes to no surprise that our local industry welcomes a new website offering great deals. From spa packages all the way to massive restaurant discounts, there is no better way to spend money, than to spend less of it.
With that said, keep your eyes peeled for eSariSari.com, a daily deals service that is set to launch its beta site. While they offer great discount packages just like other similar sites, what makes them unique is their use of a distinct algorithm to display their current deals. According to their press release

Careful analysis has been conducted by the eSariSari.com team to come up with this algorithm that benefits merchants and puts fairness and balance on all deals. Numerous factors have been used in developing this algorithm, each given its corresponding weight in the algorithm. eSariSari.com boasts their algorithm to be something different and new adding spice to the conventional daily deals service that most consumers are familiar with.

eSariSari.com is founded by the same minds behind SocialApp.ly, so users may expect the same creative output and quality of service. Through this newly developed algorithm, consumers will be able to better connect with local businesses and vice versa, promoting a mutually beneficial relationship between buyers and merchants.

Read the story >

The predator becomes the prey: Lulzsec members supposedly unmasked by rival hacking group

Well color us surprised</sarcasm>. Notorious internet hacking collective Lulzsec, which claim have disbanded a few days ago have themselves been hacked by a rival group calling themselves the A-Team, and have been unveiled via a comprehensive list of names, email addresses and possible locations of those involved in some of the group’s hacking activities in the same site that Lulzsec used when dumping data, namely pastebin. The timing of the unveiling sheds new light to Lulzsec’s abrupt departure from the hacking scene, which confirms rumours that the group was forced to go their separate ways because of rising pressure from both government agencies like the FBI and other hacking groups that doesn’t share Lulzsec’s view on hacking for the lulz. The data dump gives the A-Team’s motivation for unmasking, or in internet speak, doxing, the group, and gives hackers everywhere a piece of wisdom that’s always conveniently forgotten: “The internet by definition is not anonymous.  Computers have to have attribution. If you trace something back far enough you can find its origins.”
Via: Gizmodo
Source: Pastebin

Read the story >

LulzSec at it again, hacked game developer Bethesda and Senate website

LulzSec, the hacking group behind the recent breach for a porn website is at it again, and now they’ve set their sights a bit higher up the food chain. Recently they’ve managed to break into game developer Bethesda and, believe it or not, the website for the United States Senate. Bethesda says on their official blog that “a hacker group attempted an unlawful intrusion of our websites to gain access to data. We believe we have taken appropriate action to protect our data against these attacks. While no personal financial information or credit card data was obtained, the hackers may have gained access to some user names, email addresses, and/or passwords.” The group has taken credit for the attack, and has released some of the information to prove that they’ve actually done what they said they’ve done, stopping short of giving away the information of 200000+ Brink user accounts. “We actually like this company and would like for them to speed up the production of Skyrim, so we’ll give them one less thing to worry about,” said the group on the press release they published on their site.
Their hack of the United States Senate site however, wasn’t as friendly. The release they published for that little act reads like a major challenge to the superpower. “We don’t like the US government very much. Their boats are weak, their lulz are low, and their sites aren’t very secure. In an attempt to help them fix their issues, we’ve decided to donate additional lulz in the form of owning them some more!  This is a small, just-for-kicks release of some internal data from Senate.gov – is this an act of war, gentlemen? Problem?” If you’d recall, the Pentagon recently concluded that could be considered an act of war. There’s still no official response out of the White House, but at this point in time it’s probably safe to say that the group is treading in really dangerous waters.
Source: Lulzsec (1), Lulzsec (2), Bethesda

Read the story >

Facebook rolls out facial recognition feature without notifying users that it’s on by default

Facebook hasn’t had the best track record when it comes to privacy concerns, and a new feature isn’t about to buck that trend. Facebook has rolled out its suggest tag feature, which uses newly developed facial recognition software to tag people. The official blog post on the Facebook blog explains the process: “Because photos are such an important part of Facebook, we want to be sure you know exactly how tag suggestions work: When you or a friend upload new photos, we use face recognition software—similar to that found in many photo editing tools—to match your new photos to other photos you’re tagged in. We group similar photos together and, whenever possible, suggest the name of the friend in the photos.” Not all of us are comfortable in being tagged in photos, and the fact that Facebook is pushing your friends to tag you is a little bit disconcerting, especially when the feature is turned on by default. Security site Sophos comments that “many people feel distinctly uncomfortable about a site like Facebook learning what they look like, and using that information without their permission.” We agree. Users should opt-in to any new features that any social networking site rolls out (especially when it involves making private information public) instead of opting-out instead. The site also lays down a list of things you need to do to opt-out of the feature. We’ve linked it below for your perusal.
Source: Sophos

Read the story >