Good2Know is your daily dose of stories that impact your life.
THE BARCODE CELEBRATES 50 YEARS
On Monday, the barcode or "universal product code" marked its 50th anniversary. Grocery stores and canned food manufacturers originally rejected the idea of a universal barcode system, but they eventually came around, and now billions of items are scanned every day across the globe. Yet all these years later it's still unclear who actually invented the barcode.
GARAGE HACKERS
A security engineer has exposed a serious flaw in Nexx wi-fi-connected garage door openers, which allowed him to remotely hack into people's homes across the world and open their garages. Apparently, a single password stands between a potential hacker and all Nexx users' private data, including their names and email addresses. A cybersecurity and infrastructure security agency has released an official warning for three Nexx devices, including the garage door opener, a smart plug that controls outlets in your home, and a smart alarm system. Nexx has so far not commented publicly on the report.
The world population grew by 75 million people over the past year and on New Year's Day, it was estimated to stand at more than 8 billion people, according to figures released by the U.S. Census Bureau on Thursday.
UW-La Crosse Chancellor Joe Gow. Wisconsin-La Crosse fired Gow on Wednesday, Dec. 27, 2023, after learning Gow and his wife have been producing and appearing in pornographic videos. Gow maintains the firing violated his free speech rights.
The U.S. military is now putting independent lawyers in charge of its investigations of sexual assault and other major crimes, what Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III has called the "most important reform" to the military justice system in recent history.
A decades-old law bans Medicare from paying for weight loss drugs. Now, drugmakers and a wide-ranging bipartisan coalition of lawmakers are gearing up to push for that to change next year.
Barring a court order, in March Texas police will start being able to arrest people they suspect have entered the U.S. illegally, but increases in border crossings since a 2021 law authorizing some arrests shows the limits of that approach in the face of desperation that causes people to risk everything and travel thousands of miles to the U.S.
Mexico began clearing tents, both occupied and unoccupied, from the encampment in the border city of Matamoros, across from Brownsville, Texas, starting Tuesday.
