Nicole Prause is a sex researcher who wanted to design a gender-neutral orgasm-measuring tool that would fit in the anus and detect and measure pelvic contractions but all the buttplugs she tried to modify ("We ordered like 20 of these butt plugs off Amazon, and it messed up my recommendation engine for all time") were designed to be pistoned in and out, and thus had a taper that made it prone to popping out at the moment of orgasm. Read the rest

Vodafone discovered that the home routers that Huawei provided for its Italian residential broadband business had a "backdoor" -- an open telnet interface that could allow attackers to take over the router and surveil the user's network -- and after they complained to Huawei about it, Huawei released an update that they claimed removed the interface, but that this was a lie. Read the rest

Investigative tech journalist Joseph Menn's (previously) next book is a history of the Cult of the Dead Cow (previously) the legendary hacker/prankster group that is considered to be "America's oldest hacking group." Read the rest

The rush to put networked sensors and controllers into sex toys is grounded in foolish, convenient untruths, like the idea that the incredibly sensitive data generated by these systems can be anonymized and then analyzed for insights without exposing users to risk. Read the rest