Jan 5, 2026
The Techtonic tradition continues, as WFMU station manager Ken Freedman and Mark Hurst kick off the new year with a look at some of the weirdest, most unsettling tech trends and news stories that will shape our near future.
Four people have been arrested in South Korea for allegedly hacking more than 120,000 video cameras in homes and businesses and using the footage to make sexually exploitative materials for an overseas website.• NYC Wegmans is storing biometric data on shoppers' eyes, voices and faces (Gothamist, Jan 3, 2026):
Police announced the arrests on Sunday, saying the accused exploited the Internet Protocol (IP) cameras’ vulnerabilities, such as simple passwords.
A cheaper alternative to CCTV, IP cameras - otherwise known as home cameras - connect to a home internet network and are often installed for security or to monitor the safety of children and pets.
Anyone entering the store could have data on their face, eyes and voices collected and stored . . .(Above: thanks to listener Ed)
Will Owen, a privacy advocate with the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project, said that storing customer’s biometric data can open them up to risks from hackers or immigration enforcement.
“It’s really chilling that immigrant New Yorkers going into Wegmans and other grocery stores have to worry about their highly sensitive biometric data potentially getting into the hands of ICE,” he said.
A Walt Disney executive acknowledged on Monday that phones are ruining Disneyland’s magic.
“You’re there together with friends and family and people that you care about, and every time you have to look down at a device or a phone, it breaks that spell,” Walt Disney Imagineering President Bruce Vaughn said . . .
But according to Vaughn, Disney has the perfect solution: Meta’s AI glasses, which will “reinforce the shared experience” with your family by allowing you to leave your phone in your pocket. What he doesn’t address, however, is the extent to which the glasses let the wearer check out of reality almost entirely, allowing you to simultaneously look at image overlays, do a two-way video call, watch an Instagram Reel, listen to a podcast, view text notifications or record people unknowingly.
After taking off from Cancun, Mexico, on October 30, a packed JetBlue airliner . . . suddenly dropped in altitude.• Tech billionaires want to make gene-edited babies (The Economist, Nov 19, 2025): “And then, of course, there is the question of designer babies. Dr Harrington has said that Preventive will focus on severe disease. Yet it is only a small leap from fixing a genetic mutation to engineering protective gene variants against cancer or dementia. Ultimately, some companies may promise edits aimed at a person’s appearance or intelligence.”
The pilots regained control of the plane, an Airbus A320, but the plunge was so violent and abrupt that at least three passengers cut their heads open after smashing them on the ceiling. . . .
Airbus finally shared the suspected culprit: cosmic rays from outer space messing up the aircraft’s computer systems. According to the BBC's reporting (Dec 1, 2025), the bit flip error occurred in the A320’s Elac system, which controls parts of the plane’s wings and tail.