GitHub Logins Hacked, Facebook Gets Football Game... [Tech News Digest]

GitHub logins are hacked with stolen passwords, Facebook Messenger gets a hidden football game, Snapchat, Facebook and Twitter evolve their advertising, Now On Tap gets a useful upgrade, and NASA conducts a fire experiment in space.

GitHub Logins Hacked With Stolen Passwords

A GitHub attacker has launched a massive campaign to access accounts using stolen passwords. On Tuesday evening, GitHub became aware of the attack and noticed that the attacker had successfully logged in to some accounts.

All affected accounts have had their passwords reset, and users are encouraged to use two-factor authentication. Affected users have also been contacted by GitHub to explain how they can reset their accounts.

GitHub has not been hacked or compromised. -- GitHub

The attacker seems to be using lists of email addresses and passwords harvested from breaches of other online services, then trying them on GitHub accounts. There have been many notable breaches recently, including LinkedIn, MySpace, and TeamViewer.

Facebook Messenger Gets a Hidden Football Game

As a little treat for all the Euro 2016 fans out there, Facebook has incorporated a hidden football game into Facebook Messenger. The game is triggered in the exact same way as the basketball game on Facebook Messenger.

Send a football emoji to your friend to start the game. Now, the point of the game is to keep the ball in play as long as possible, a.k.a. the #Euro2016 #KeepyUpChallenge. Just keep tapping the screen, flappy-bird style.

The football game is mobile-only, so it can't be played on the web app.

David Marcus from the Facebook Messenger team was pleased to announce the new football game.

"Our little Messenger game we launched for March Madness and the NBA season was played over 1 billion times (!) over the course of the last 3 months. Since you loved it so much, and it's the Euro 2016 & Copa America... You get where I'm going... ???! It's on!" -- David Marcus

The update is rolling out slowly worldwide, so just be sure to update Messenger as soon as possible if you want to play. Along with this update, you'll also notice a redesigned home screen, which pre-populates your favorites by who you chat to most, and will also remind you of birthdays. One more step towards Facebook Messenger ruling your life.

Snapchat, Facebook and Twitter Evolve Advertising

Snapchat launched "Snapchat Partners" in a move to insert advertising in between your snaps. The intention for now is to show the advertising in the auto-playing stories, also known as "Snap Ads Between Stories".

Meanwhile, Twitter will now let advertisers target you based on the emoji you're using. So, if you're tweeting Eiffel Towers, you can soon expect responses from travel agencies.

"Emojis have become a ubiquitous way for people, publishers, and brands to express their feelings." -- Neil Shah, Twitter

From Facebook, we see a move to connect us to the real world. If you have location sharing enabled on your device, Facebook will be tracking the stores you enter.

This means if an advertiser shows you an advert, Facebook can let the advertisers know if that resulted in a store visit, and possible sales for them. Facebook will be doing this anonymously, so the advertisers will only see the numbers.

Facebook will also be letting advertisers give location data in their adverts so that users can quickly find their nearest store location.

"People increasingly navigate through the world on mobile. While people use mobile in 45% of all shopping journeys, the majority of sales still occur in brick-and-mortar businesses. In fact, more than 90% of retail sales take place in store." -- Facebook

Now On Tap Gets Useful Upgrade

Some users of the 6.0 beta version of Now On Tap have noted new useful shortcuts when activated on the home screen. The shortcuts are for various Google tasks, including: create event, new reminder, start timer, set an alarm, navigate to work, and navigate home. Pressing the shortcuts opens the interface users see when they use voice commands.

Version 6.0 also lets users disable Google Now cards, and yet continue to use Now On Tap.

Now on Tap was released as part of the Marshmallow update and aims to bring Google Now's predictive and contextual features to other Android apps.

NASA Conducts Fire Experiment

And finally, NASA is setting fire to stuff in space. It burned a 16x37-inch sample aboard a Cygnus spacecraft, which is the largest fire experiment in space to date.

This film shows how it works, but we're still waiting on the footage of how the experiment went.