Tech Roundup: Facebook Ad Controversy, Google Pixel 2 Event & More

[A recurring feature on the latest in Science & Technology.]

• Researchers from Wits University in South Africa link a human brain directly to the internet in a world first, turning the brain "…into an Internet of Things (IoT) node on the World Wide Web."
• NASA-led Cassini probe to Saturn crashes into the planet on September 15 after running out of fuel and after 13 years of remarkable discoveries that helped shape our understanding of the ringed planet and the cosmos at large.
• Apple's much touted Differential Privacy techniques, announced alongside iOS 10 back in 2016 as a means to anonymize user data using machine learning techniques before repurposing it for advertising and other purposes, may be leaking more data than necessary by allotting a significantly high privacy budget, according to a new in-depth peek into iOS and macOS.
• Facebook gets embroiled in fresh ad controversy after a ProPublica investigation (similar to the one it brought to light last year about letting advertisers exclude users by race) finds that it enables advertisers to reach 'Jew Haters'; Buzzfeed and The Daily Beast follow up with similar findings on Google and Twitter's advertising platforms.
• Nonprofit watchdog The Campaign Legal Center wants Facebook to release the contents of more than 3,000 sponsored ads targeting American voters that were found to be sold to approximately 470 fake users between 2015 and May this year, all of which were traced to a shadowy Russian troll farm.
• Consumer credit reporting agency Equifax faces more troubling questions after it emerges that scores of accounts on the company's website in Argentina were protected by the same generic username and password: "admin" and that hackers made away with 200,000 credit cards in the epic data breach in mid-May 2017.
• U.S. Department of Homeland Security orders government agencies to stop using software products from Kaspersky citing possible collusion between the antivirus software maker and Russian government.
• Advertisers once again express their dissatisfaction with Apple over new intelligent tracking restrictions in Safari 11 on iOS and macOS (remember the furore over its introduction of content blockers in iOS 9?); Apple responds by saying that "people have a right to privacy."
• Google plans Pixel successor unveil on October 4.
• Apple removes iOS App Store from iTunes app for Windows and Mac as it begins to cut the bloat from the ponderous, all-in-one software.
• Instagram adds capabilities to share Stories via Direct Messages.
• Google set to launch a new payments app Tez (meaning fast in Hindi) in India, a repurposed version of Android Pay, as early as tomorrow, reports The Ken (paywall) even as the digital payments market in the country, fueled in part by Paytm, is expected  to balloon to US$ 500 billion by 2020.
• Interest network Pinterest crosses 200 million monthly active users.
• Facebook Messenger hits 1.3 billion monthly active users, up from 1.2B in April; refuses to share stats about Messenger Day as it removes Instant Articles support from the messaging service.
• Slack says it has more than 6 million daily active users, opens up cross-organization teams for easier communication.
• Facebook follows the footsteps of fellow messenger apps like Telegram, WeChat and Viber; set to roll out 'Delete for everyone' feature in WhatsApp, which lets users delete unintended messages before the receiver has had a chance to read them.
• Google's parent Alphabet Inc. reportedly considering a US$ 1 billion investment in ride-hailing startup Lyft as its rift with Uber widens.
• Facebook tests new Snooze button that temporarily hides people from users' News Feeds without having to unfriend or unfollow them, in addition to trialling yet another group video chat app called Bonfire (available only in Denmark).
• Google unveils plans to block autoplaying video ads on Chrome browser by default starting January next year.