 EFF Sues US Postal Office For Records About Covert Social Media Spying Program
The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit against the U.S. Postal Service and its inspection agency seeking records about a covert program to secretly comb through online posts of social media users before street protests, raising concerns about chilling the privacy and expressive activity of internet users. From the press release: Under an initiative called Internet Covert Operations Program, analysts at the U.S. Postal Inspection Service (USPIS)
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YouTube Punishes Brazil's President For Spreading Lies About COVID
YouTube has removed videos posted by Brazil's Jair Bolsonaro for violating its content policies, in the strongest measure yet that tech giants in the social media-loving country have taken toward censoring the president. VICE News reports: YouTube has said that if Bolsonaro breaks the video-sharing service's rules again, his channel may be suspended for a week and, in case of recurrence, he should be permanently banned. The video platform told the far-right leader last week that 15 of his videos
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Instagram Makes Under-16s' Accounts Private By Default
Instagram has made new under-16s' accounts private by default so only approved followers can see posts and "like" or comment. The BBC reports: Tests showed only one in five opted for a public account when the private setting was the default, it said. And existing account holders would be sent a notification "highlighting the benefits" of switching to private. But Instagram also said it was pushing ahead with new apps for under-13s, despite a backlash from some groups. "The reality is that they a
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Activision Blizzard Employees To Walk Out Following Sexual Harassment Lawsuit
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: Activison Blizzard employees are staging a walkout on Wednesday, July 28th in response to the company's handling of sexual harassment allegations brought by the state of California. Employees will meet outside Blizzard's main campus in Irvine at 10AM PST. "We believe that our values as employees are not being accurately reflected in the words and actions of our leadership," the organizers said in a statement.
The news comes after California
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'Pharma Bro' Martin Shkreli's One-of-a-Kind Wu-Tang Clan Album Sold By US Government
H_Fisher writes: Only one copy exists of the Wu-Tang Clan album Once Upon a Time in Shaolin, and it was owned by "Pharma Bro" Martin Shkreli. Now, NPR reports that this album has been sold by the U.S. government to an unnamed buyer in order to pay Shkreli's civil forfeiture judgment following his conviction for securities fraud. The album, which was originally sold for $2 million, exists only as one physical CD copy. It was seized along with other assets in 2018, and while the sale price and buy
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Lucasfilm Hires Deepfake YouTuber Who Fixed The Mandalorian
Lucasfilm has hired the YouTuber known as Shamook, whose The Mandalorian deepfake, published in December, has earned nearly 2 million views for improving the VFX used to de-age Mark Hamill. CNET reports: "As some of you may already know, I joined ILM/Lucasfilms a few months ago and haven't had the time to work on any new YouTube content," Shamook wrote in the comment section of a recent video. "Now I've settled into my job, uploads should start increasing again. They'll still be slow, but hopefu
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Google Cloud Offers a Model For Fixing Google's Product-Killing Reputation
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Google's reputation for aggressively killing products and services is hurting the company's brand. Any new product launch from Google is no longer a reason for optimism; instead, the company is met with questions about when the product will be shut down. It's a problem entirely of Google's own making, and it's yet another barrier that discourages customers from investing (either time, money, or data) in the latest Google thing. The wide publ
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Elon Musk Sniped at Apple Twice on Earnings Call
Tesla CEO Elon Musk sniped at Silicon Valley neighbor Apple twice during a conference call to discuss Tesla earnings on Monday. From a report: Although the companies don't compete directly today, Apple is reportedly building an electric self-driving vehicle under a project code-named Titan, and has attracted a number of engineers and executives away from Tesla. When asked about Tesla's supply chain, Musk said that there's a misperception that Tesla uses a lot of cobalt, a key material in the pro
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Former eBay Supervisor Sentenced To 18 Months in Prison For Cyberstalking Case Targeting Natick Couple
A former security supervisor at eBay received an 18-month federal prison sentence Tuesday for his role in a bizarre campaign of cyberstalking aimed at a Natick couple that ran an online newsletter often critical of the e-commerce giant, authorities said. The Boston Globe: The ex-supervisor, Philip Cooke, 56, of San Jose, Cali., had pleaded guilty in US District Court in Boston in October 2020 to conspiracy to commit cyberstalking and conspiracy to tamper with a witness, legal filings show. On Tu
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CDC: Vaccinated People in COVID Hotspots Should Resume Wearing Masks
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued updated guidance on Tuesday recommending that vaccinated people wear masks in indoor, public settings if they are in parts of the U.S. with substantial to high transmission, among other circumstances. From a report: The guidance, a reversal from recommendations made two months ago, comes as the Delta variant continues to drive up case rates across the country. Millions of people in the U.S. -- either by choice or who are ineligible -- remain
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Harvard Professor Begins New Search For Alien Spaceships in Our Skies
Harvard's controversial astronomer Avi Loeb is leading a new initiative, dubbed the Galileo Project, to check Earth's skies and the rest of the solar system for signs of extraterrestrial intelligence. From a report: The longtime astronomy professor, who became well-known for his belief that interstellar object Oumuamua was likely an alien probe, announced the details of his plan via a virtual press conference Monday. Officially, the initiative is described as "a transparent scientific project to
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50 Years Ago, NASA Put a Car on the Moon
The lunar rovers of Apollo 15, 16 and 17 parked American automotive culture on the lunar surface, and expanded the scientific range of the missions' astronaut explorers. From a report: Dave Scott was not about to pass by an interesting rock without stopping. It was July 31, 1971, and he and Jim Irwin, his fellow Apollo 15 astronaut, were the first people to drive on the moon. After a 6-hour inaugural jaunt in the new lunar rover, the two were heading back to their lander, the Falcon, when Mr. Sc
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Facebook Creates New Unit To Build a 'Metaverse'
Facebook has announced it is forming a new Metaverse product group to advance its efforts to build a 3D social space using virtual and augmented reality tech. From a report: In an interview with journalist Casey Newton, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said he sees the metaverse -- a term widely used in both tech and science fiction to describe broadly shared, open virtual environments -- as "the successor to the mobile internet." Zuckerberg also said it was "not something that any one company is go
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Power Regulations Cut Off Select Dell PCs from Certain US States
Dell is no longer shipping certain PCs to a handful of U.S. states that have tightened their rules and regulations around computer power consumption. From a report: The headline and "what you need to know" box already summarize this, meaning you're 99% caught up on the current situation, but there are a few specific details to go over in the event you live in Hawaii, Oregon, Vermont, Washington, California, or Colorado. As reported by The Register, Dell is no longer shipping the Alienware Aurora
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A Grandfather Died in 'Swatting' Over His Twitter Handle, Officials Say
Mark Herring had a fatal heart attack after the police swarmed his house after a fake emergency call. A Tennessee man was sentenced to five years in prison in connection with the episode. From a report: Mark Herring was at home in Bethpage, Tenn., one night in April 2020 when the police swarmed his house. Someone with a British accent had called emergency services in Sumner County and reported having shot a woman in the back of the head at Mr. Herring's address. The caller had threatened to set
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Facebook Pauses Sales of the Oculus Quest 2 Due To Face Irritation Concerns
Facebook said on Tuesday that it is temporarily halting sales of the Oculus Quest 2, a month before a planned update to a new entry-level model with more onboard storage. The move comes after several reported cases of skin reactions to the headset's included foam faceplate, the social media giant confirmed. From a report: According to a Facebook post on the issue from earlier this year, the company says a small percent of Quest 2 owners have reported the issue. But some cases reported online hav
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Google Launches New Bug Hunters Vulnerability Rewards Platform
Google has announced a new platform and community designed to host all its Vulnerability Rewards Programs (VRP) under the same roof. From a report: Since launching its first VRP more than ten years ago, the company has rewarded 2,022 security researchers from 84 different countries worldwide for reporting over 11,000 bugs. [...] "To celebrate our anniversary and ensure the next 10 years are just as (or even more) successful and collaborative, we are excited to announce the launch of our new plat
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Intel Details Comeback Plan To Leapfrog Chipmaking Rivals by 2025
Intel unveiled on Tuesday a smorgasbord of new technologies designed to help it reclaim processor manufacturing leadership within four years. The plans bear the fingerprints of newly installed CEO Pat Gelsinger, who has pledged to restore the company's engineering leadership and credibility. From a report: The developments include a new push to improve the power usage of Intel chips, a key element of battery life, while simultaneously raising chip performance. The technologies involve deep redes
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Tencent's WeChat Suspends New User Registration for Security Compliance
Tencent's WeChat has temporarily suspended registration of new users in mainland China as it undergoes a technical upgrade "to align with relevant laws and regulations," China's dominant instant messaging platform said on Tuesday. From a report: "We are currently upgrading our security technology to align with all relevant laws and regulations," the company said in a statement to Reuters. "During this time, registration of new Weixin personal and official accounts has been temporarily suspended.
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Valve Promises Steam Deck Will Run 'The Entire Steam Library' At 30+ FPS
Valve expects that its recently announced Steam Deck portable gaming console will be able to run "really the entire Steam library" on its 1280x800 LCD screen at frame rates of 30 fps or higher. Ars Technica reports: That's according to a recent IGN video interview in which Valve Hardware Engineer Yazan Aldehayyat said that "all the games that we wanted to be playable had really good [performance], a really good experience" in Steam Deck testing. Valve developer Pierre-Loup Griffais expanded on t
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Scientists Create One-Atom-Thin Magnet That Works At Room Temperature
Mogster shares a report from SciTechDaily: A one-atom-thin 2D magnet developed by Berkeley Lab and UC Berkeley could advance new applications in computing and electronics. The researchers synthesized the new 2D magnet -- called a cobalt-doped van der Waals zinc-oxide magnet -- from a solution of graphene oxide, zinc, and cobalt. The new material -- which can be bent into almost any shape without breaking, and is a million times thinner than a sheet of paper -- could help advance the application
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Bezos Offers To Cover $2 Billion In NASA Costs In Exchange For Astronaut Lunar Lander Contract
Blue Origin founder Jeff Bezos on Monday offered to cover billions of dollars of NASA costs in exchange for a contract to build a lunar lander to land astronauts on the moon. CNBC reports: Bezos said Blue Origin would waive all payments up to $2 billion from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration in the current and next two government fiscal years. Blue Origin would also fund its own pathfinder mission to low-Earth orbit, according to Bezos. In return, the company requested a fixed-pr
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'Record-Shattering' Heat Becoming Much More Likely, Says Climate Study
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: Record-shattering" heatwaves, even worse than the one that recently hit north-west America, are set to become much more likely in future, according to research. The study is a stark new warning on the rapidly escalating risks the climate emergency poses to lives. The research found that highly populated regions in North America, Europe and China were where the record-shattering extremes are most likely to occur. One illustrative heatwave pro
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Is Your Phone Infected With Pegasus?
Fossbytes has an article detailing how you can check to see if your mobile device is infected with the "Pegasus" spyware. What's Pegasus you ask? It's phone-penetrating spy software developed by NSO Group and sold to governments to target journalists and activists around the world. The CEO of NSO Group says law-abiding citizens have "nothing to be afraid of," but that doesn't help us sleep any better. Here's how to check if your device has been compromised (heads up: it's a bit of a technical an
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Amazon Denies Report of Accepting Bitcoin As Payment
Amazon on Monday denied a media report saying the e-commerce giant was looking to accept bitcoin payments by the end of the year. Reuters reports: The report from London's City A.M. newspaper, citing an unnamed "insider," sent the world's biggest cryptocurrency up as much as 14.5% before it trimmed gains to last trade 6% higher at $37,684.04. "Notwithstanding our interest in the space, the speculation that has ensued around our specific plans for cryptocurrencies is not true," said a spokesperso
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Olympics Broadcaster Announces His Computer Password on Live TV
In what is, at least so far, the biggest cybersecurity blunder of the Tokyo Olympics, an Italian TV announcer did not realize he was on air when he asked the password for his computer. Motherboard reports: "Do you know the password for the computer in this commentator booth?" he asked during the broadcast of the Turkey-China volleyball game, apparently not realizing he was still on air. "It was too hard to call the password Pippo? Pippo, Pluto or Topolino?" he complained, referring to the Italia
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Tether Executives Said To Face Criminal Probe Into Bank Fraud
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: A U.S. probe into Tether is homing in on whether executives behind the digital token committed bank fraud, a potential criminal case that would have broad implications for the cryptocurrency market. Tether's pivotal role in the crypto ecosystem is now well known because the token is widely used to trade Bitcoin. But the Justice Department investigation is focused on conduct that occurred years ago, when Tether was in its more nascent stages. Sp
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Google Updates Timeline For Unpopular Privacy Sandbox, Which Will Kill Third-Party Cookies In Chrome By 2023
Google has updated the schedule for its introduction of "Privacy Sandbox" browser technology and the phasing out of third-party cookies. The Register reports: The new timeline has split the bundle of technologies in the Privacy Sandbox into five phases: discussion, testing, implementation in Chrome (called "Ready for adoption"), Transition State 1 during which Chrome will "monitor adoption and feedback" and then the next stage that involves winding down support for third-party cookies over a thr
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Fauci Wants To Make Vaccines for the Next Pandemic Before It Hits
If funded, a government program costing several billion dollars could develop "prototype" vaccines to protect against 20 families of viruses. From a report: In one sense, the world got lucky with the new coronavirus. By sheer chance, scientists just happened to have spent years studying coronaviruses, developing exactly the tools needed to make Covid vaccines as soon as the virus's genetic sequence was published. But what will happen if the next pandemic comes from a virus that causes Lassa feve
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Japan Pitches 'Society 5.0' To Keep Its Edge In Tech and Science
The Cabinet Office of Japan is co-hosting an event dedicated to "Society 5.0," a future society the government believes Japan should aspire to. Defined by the Cabinet Office as "a human-centered society [helped] by a system that highly integrates cyberspace and physical space," Society 5.0 is a concept intended to broaden the discussion of innovation from science and technology to all of socioeconomic activity. Nikkei Asia Review reports: The government has also established multiple large-scale
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Police Are Telling ShotSpotter To Alter Evidence From Gunshot-Detecting AI
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Motherboard: On May 31 last year, 25-year-old Safarain Herring was shot in the head and dropped off at St. Bernard Hospital in Chicago by a man named Michael Williams. He died two days later. Chicago police eventually arrested the 64-year-old Williams and charged him with murder (Williams maintains that Herring was hit in a drive-by shooting). A key piece of evidence in the case is video surveillance footage showing Williams' car stopped on the 6300 block
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Internal Documents Reveal NSA Cafeteria Sucks
An anonymous reader writes: As reported by Motherboard, Emily Crose, a FOIA researcher, obtained emailed complaints showing how life at the NSA can be incredibly mundane:"The cafe menu items and pricing are out of control! Weighing the food to get more money, the scales are not properly adjusted, ripping us off. They stopped serving fried eggs at the OPS1 breakfast bar because it's faster and cheaper to get them. Now if you go to the grill the price is inflated. What's the difference between the
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Consumer Losses Top $500 Million Due To Covid-Related Fraud
Consumer losses due to Covid-related fraud top $500 million, according to data from the Federal Trade Commission. From a report: The agency has received more than 558,000 complaints from consumers related to the pandemic since the start of 2020. About 60% of the complaints were associated with fraud, citing an aggregate loss of $501 million through July 22. The typical person lost about $370, according to the agency. "Scammers always take advantage of disasters, manmade or natural," said Susan G
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Citizen is Now Paying New Yorkers To Livestream Crimes
Citizen, otherwise known as "the worst kind of hyperlocal app ever created," is now willing to pay people to livestream crimes around New York City. The company is reportedly hiring people in the Big Apple at a starting rate of $25 per hour to run around the city and start streaming crimes to the web in real-time. From a report: The exact nature of these hires -- including their very existence -- is being kept mostly quiet by Citizen. Any public-facing recruiting for these positions is being don
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NASA Taps SpaceX Falcon Heavy Rocket To Launch Jupiter Moon Mission
Jupiter's unusual icy moon Europa may be one of the best spots in the solar system to check for signs of alien life. But first we have to get there. NASA's Europa Clipper spacecraft will get a boost in the right direction from a SpaceX Falcon Heavy, one of the most powerful rockets ever built. From a report: NASA announced Friday that it has selected SpaceX to provide the launch services for the Jupiter moon mission. The launch is scheduled for October 2024 from the Kennedy Space Center in Flori
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Olympics Opening Ceremony Ratings Fall To 33-year Low
Ratings for the Olympic Games opening ceremony were down 36% compared to 2016, according to preliminary numbers from NBC Universal. From a report: The figures for the Tokyo Games event mark the lowest audience for an Olympics opening ceremony event in over three decades, per Reuters. Roughly $1 billion has been spent on advertising around the Olympics. Ratings are the only real metric marketers can use to justify much of that spend. About 17 million people watched the event on broadcast and stre
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Toyota Led on Clean Cars. Now Critics Say It Works To Delay Them.
Toyota bet on hydrogen power, but as the world moves toward electric the company is fighting climate regulations in an apparent effort to buy time. From a report: The Toyota Prius hybrid was a milestone in the history of clean cars, attracting millions of buyers worldwide who could do their part for the environment while saving money on gasoline. But in recent months, Toyota, one of the world's largest automakers, has quietly become the industry's strongest voice opposing an all-out transition t
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European Commission Starts Legal Action Against 23 EU Countries Over Copyright Rules
France, Spain, Italy and 20 other EU countries may be taken to court for their tardiness in enacting landmark EU copyright rules into national law, the European Commission said on Monday as it asked the group to explain the delays. From a report: The copyright rules, adopted two years ago, aim to ensure a level playing field between the European Union's trillion-euro creative industries and online platforms such as Google, owned by Alphabet, and Facebook. Some of Europe's artists and broadcaster
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EU Pushes for Changes To Google's Flight and Hotel Search Results
The European Union is pushing for clarity from Google about how the company processes flight and hotel searches. From a report: The tech giant must explain why it ranks certain flights and hotels above others and provide more clarity about how it calculates prices, European Union regulators demanded Monday, accusing the company of having "misled" consumers. The final prices that Google displays should include all fees and taxes that can be calculated in advance, regulators said in a statement. "
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Facebook, Twitter and Other Tech Giants To Target Attacker Manifestos, Far-right Militias in Database
A counterterrorism organization formed by some of the biggest U.S. tech companies including Facebook and Microsoft is significantly expanding the types of extremist content shared between firms in a key database, aiming to crack down on material from white supremacists and far-right militias, the group told Reuters. From the report: Until now, the Global Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism's (GIFCT) database has focused on videos and images from terrorist groups on a United Nations list and so h
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Google Explored New Safari-like Redesign for Chrome in 2016 -- But Decided Against It
Chris Lee, a former staff interaction designer at Google, writes in a blog post: Chrome Home was an ambitious redesign of mobile Chrome's main UI. It brought Chrome's toolbar to the bottom of the screen and turned in into a peeking panel that could be swiped to expose additional controls. I created the original concept and pitch for Chrome Home in 2016. It was based off two insights:
1. Phones were growing in size, and we had opportunity to innovate in creating a gestural, spatial interface
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Chinese Market Regulator Strengthens Protection for Food Delivery Workers
Food delivery platforms in China will be required to guarantee riders' income above minimum pay, insurance and a relaxation in deadlines for deliveries, under reforms announced on Monday by China's market regulator. From a report: The guidelines were issued by the State Administration for Market Regulation along with six other administrative departments, including the National Development and Reform Commission, the Cyberspace Administration of China and the Ministry of Public Security. Food deli
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Baseball's Newest Anti-Cheating Technology: Encrypted Transmitters for Catchers' Signals
First Major League Baseball experimented with automated umpiring of balls and strikes in the minor leagues.
Now the Verge reports they're trying a time-saving tactic that might also make it harder to cheat:
Baseball has a sign stealing problem — or at least, a technological one, seeing how reading another team's pitches is technically legal, but using Apple Watches or telephoto cameras and then suspiciously banging on trash cans is very much not. But soon the MLB may try fighting fi
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'Disinformation for Hire' is Becoming a Booming Industry
Sunday the BBC reported YouTube influencers were offered money to spread vaccine misinformation.
But according to the New York Times, that's just the tip of the iceberg. "The scheme appears to be part of a secretive industry that security analysts and American officials say is exploding in scale: disinformation for hire:
Private firms, straddling traditional marketing and the shadow world of geopolitical influence operations, are selling services once conducted principally by intelligence
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Teen Loneliness Has Increased in 36 Countries. The Reason May be Smartphones
"Loneliness among adolescents around the globe has skyrocketed since a decade ago," reports the Washington Post, "and it may be tied to smartphone use, a new study finds."
In 36 out of 37 countries, feelings of loneliness among teenagers rose sharply between 2012 and 2018, with higher increases among girls, according to a report released Tuesday in the Journal of Adolescence. Researchers used data from the Programme for International Student Assessment, a survey of over 1 million 15- and 16-y
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Facebook is Now Aggressively Courting a New Partner: Churches
When the 150,000-member "megachurch" Hillsong opened a branch in Atlanta, its pastor Sam Collier says Facebook suggested using it to explore how churches can "go further farther on Facebook..." reports the New York Times:
He is partnering with Facebook, he said, "to directly impact and help churches navigate and reach the consumer better."
"Consumer isn't the right word," he said, correcting himself. "Reach the parishioner better."
Facebook's involvement with churches has been intense:
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Quake-Measuring Device on Mars Gets Detailed Look at Red Planet's Interior
"A quake-measuring device on Mars is providing the first detailed look at the red planet's interior, revealing a surprisingly thin crust and a hot molten core beneath the frigid surface," reports the Associated Press:
In a series of articles published this week, scientists reported that the Martian crust is within the thickness range of Earth's. The Martian mantle between the crust and core is roughly half as thick as Earth's. And the Martian core is on the high side of what scientists antici
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Russia Encounters More Problems Sending Long-Delayed Module and Robotic Arm to Space Station
First Slashdot reader Thelasko quotes the BBC's report Wednesday: A Russian rocket has departed the Baikonur Cosmodrome, Kazakhstan, to deliver a new science module to the International space station (ISS). The 13m-long, 20-tonne [44,000-pound] Nauka laboratory will go on the rear of the orbiting platform, connected to the other major Russian segments, Zvezda and Zarya. The new module carries with it a large robotic arm supplied by the European Space Agency (Esa). Nauka is much delayed. It was o
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Microsoft Warns of 'Evolving' LemonDuck Mining Malware Targeting Linux and Windows Machines
The threat intelligence team for Microsoft's 365 Defender security suite recently focused on an example of "modern mining malware infrastructure," describing how "Anything that can gain access to machines — even so-called commodity malware — can bring in more dangerous threats."
Specifically, it offered a case study of LemonDuck. The blog post's title? "When coin miners evolve..."
Today, beyond using resources for its traditional bot and mining activities, LemonDuck steals cre
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Amazon's Hiring a 'Digital Currency and Blockchain' Lead, Confirms Interest in 'Modern' Payments
"Amazon is looking to add a digital currency and blockchain expert to its payments team," reports CNBC, "suggesting the company could be taking a more serious look at cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin."
According to a recent job posting, Amazon's payments acceptance and experience team is seeking to hire an "experienced product leader to develop Amazon's Digital Currency and Blockchain strategy and product roadmap."
"You will leverage your domain expertise in Blockchain, Distributed Ledger
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Two US Companies Propose Thousands of Miles of Pipelines - for Capturing Carbon
"Two companies seeking to build thousands of miles of pipeline across the Midwest are promising the effort will aid rather than hinder the fight against climate change," reports the Associated Press, "though some environmental groups remain skeptical.
"The pipelines would stretch from North Dakota to Illinois, potentially transforming the Corn Belt into one of the world's largest corridors for a technology called carbon capture and storage."
Environmental activists and landowners have hin
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YouTube Stars Were Offered Money to Spread Vaccine Misinformation
"A mysterious marketing agency secretly offered to pay social media stars to spread disinformation about Covid-19 vaccines," reports the BBC.
"Their plan failed when the influencers went public about the attempt to recruit them."
An influencer marketing agency called Fazze offered to pay [Mirko Drotschmann, a German YouTuber and journalist] to promote what it said was leaked information that suggested the death rate among people who had the Pfizer vaccine was almost three times that of th
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For Million of Americans, Unemployment Benefits Require Facial Recognition Scanning
Millions of Americans "are being instructed to use ID.me, along with its facial recognition software, to get their unemployment benefits," reports CNN. The software compares their photo ID with a selfie video they take on their phone with the company's software — but some privacy advocates are concerned:
A rapidly growing number of U.S. states, including Colorado, California and New York, turned to ID.me in hopes of cutting down on a surge of fraudulent claims for state and federal bene
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Colonial Pipeline Sued by Customers Affected by Its Ransomware Incident
The owner of the EZ Mart gas station is suing Colonial Pipeline, accusing it of lax security, reports the Washington Post:
He and his lawyers are hoping to also represent the hundreds of other small gas stations that were hurt by the hack. It's just one of several class-action lawsuits that are popping up in the wake of high-profile ransomware attacks. Another lawsuit filed against Colonial in Georgia in May seeks to get damages for regular consumers who had to pay higher gas prices. A third i
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SANS Institute Hopes to Find New Cybersecurity Talent With a Game
storagedude writes: Alan Paller, founder of the cybersecurity training SANS Technology Institute, has launched an initiative aimed at finding and developing cybersecurity talent at the community college and high school level — through a game developed by their CTO James Lyne. A similar game was already the basis of a UK government program that has reached 250,000 students, and Paller hopes the U.S. will adopt a similar model to help ease the chronic shortage of cybersecurity talent. And Pa
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RNA Breakthrough Creates High-Yield, Drought-Tolerant Rice, Potatoes
"Thanks to a breakthrough in RNA manipulation, crop scientists have developed new potato and rice varieties with higher yields and increased drought tolerance," reports UPI:
By inserting a gene responsible for production of a protein called FTO, scientists produced bigger rice and potato plants with more expansive root systems. In experiments, the plants' longer roots improved their drought resistance.
Test results — detailed Thursday in the journal Nature Biotechnology — showed
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Virtual Comic-Con Includes Trailers For 'Blade Runner' Series, 'Dune' Movie - and NASA Panels
Comic-Con went virtual again in 2020. (San Diego businesses will miss the chance to profit from the 100,000 visitors the convention usually attracted.) And NPR reports the convention has gotten smaller in other ways:
Both Marvel Studios and DC are staying away; as it did last year, DC is again directing its resources towards its own event, DC FanDome, set for mid-October. But fans of shows like Doctor Who, Dexter and Comic-Con stalwart The Walking Dead will have lots to look forward to.
Rot
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'Nuclear Power's Reliability is Dropping as Extreme Weather Increases'
A comprehensive new analysis published in Nature "calculates that the frequency of climate-related nuclear plant outages is almost eight times higher than it was in the 1990s," reports Ars Technica.
"The analysis also estimates that the global nuclear fleet will lose up to 1.4 percent — about 36 TWh — of its energy production in the next 40 years and up to 2.4 percent, or 61 TWh, by 2081-2100."
The author analyzed publicly available databases from the International Atomic Ener
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Does the Open Source Movement Need to Evolve?
A cloud company's CTO argues on CTO that the "hypocrite commits" controversy "is symptomatic, on every side, of related trends that threaten the entire extended open-source ecosystem and its users."
That ecosystem has long wrestled with problems of scale, complexity and free and open-source software's (FOSS) increasingly critical importance to every kind of human undertaking. Let's look at that complex of problems:
- The biggest open-source projects now present big targets.
- Their comp
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Amazon Wants Apartment Buildings to Install a 'Key' System that Lets Them Enter the Lobby
"Amazon is tired of ringing doorbells," reports the Associated Press. "The online shopping giant is pushing landlords around the country — sometimes with financial incentives — to give its drivers the ability to unlock apartment-building doors themselves with a mobile device."
The service, dubbed Key for Business, is pitched as a way to cut down on stolen packages by making it easy to leave them in lobbies and not outside. Amazon benefits because it enables delivery workers to mak
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Church Official Exposed Through America's 'Vast and Largely Unregulated Data-Harvesting'
The New York Times' On Tech newsletter shares a thought-provoking story:
This week, a top official in the Roman Catholic Church's American hierarchy resigned after a news site said that it had data from his cellphone that appeared to show the administrator using the L.G.B.T.Q. dating app Grindr and regularly going to gay bars. Journalists had access to data on the movements and digital trails of his mobile phone for parts of three years and were able to retrace where he went.
I know that
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Three Die After Untreatable 'Superbug' Fungus Infections in Two Different Cities
"U.S. health officials said Thursday they now have evidence of an untreatable fungus spreading in two hospitals and a nursing home," reports the Associated Press:
The "superbug" outbreaks were reported in a Washington, D.C, nursing home and at two Dallas-area hospitals, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported. A handful of the patients had invasive fungal infections that were impervious to all three major classes of medications. "This is really the first time we've started see
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Kaspersky Warns Fake Windows 11 Installers Are Spreading Malware
Long-time Slashdot reader Ammalgam writes: If you're planning to install Windows 11, you should make sure you download it from official sources. This is because, people who are using pirated or fake methods to get Windows 11 are also downloading malware along with it, according to Kaspersky. The particular file referenced is called 86307_windows 11 build 21996.1 x64 + activator.exe. While it sounds like it includes Windows 11 build 21996.1, and an installer that will automatically activate Windo
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China Compromised More than a Dozen US Pipelines Between 2011 and 2013
"Hackers working for the Chinese government compromised more than a dozen U.S. pipeline operators nearly a decade ago, the Biden administration revealed Tuesday while also issuing first-of-its-kind cybersecurity requirements on the pipeline industry," reports the Wall Street Journal.
The disclosure of previously classified information about the aggressive Chinese hacking campaign, though dated, underscored the severity of foreign cyber threats to the nation's infrastructure, current and forme
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Mozilla Stops FTP Support in Firefox 90
A post on Mozilla's security blog calls FTP "by now one of the oldest protocols still in use" — and it's suffering from "a number of serious security issues."
The biggest security risk is that FTP transfers data in cleartext, allowing attackers to steal, spoof and even modify the data transmitted. To date, many malware distribution campaigns launch their attacks by compromising FTP servers and downloading malware on an end user's device using the FTP protocol.
Aligning with our inte
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With Profits Soaring, Tech Companies 'Won the Pandemic'
In April of 2020, Jeff Bezos announced Amazon would spend their next quarter focusing on people instead of profits, remembers the New York Times:
At the end of July 2020, Amazon announced quarterly results. Rather than earning zero, as Mr. Bezos had predicted, it notched an operating profit of $5.8 billion — a record for the company. The months since have established new records. Amazon's margins, which measure the profit on every dollar of sales, are the highest in the history of the c
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Researchers Found a Malicious NPM Package Using Chrome's Password-Recovery Tools
Threatpost reports on "another vast software supply-chain attack" that was "found lurking in the npm open-source code repository...a credentials-stealing code bomb" that used the password-recovery tools in Google's Chrome web browser.
Researchers caught the malware filching credentials from Chrome on Windows systems. The password-stealer is multifunctional: It also listens for incoming commands from the attacker's command-and-control (C2) server and can upload files, record from a victim's scre
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Repairable, Modular Framework Laptop Begins Shipping
"Are you old enough to remember when laptops had removable batteries?" asks CNET. "Frustrated by mainstream laptops with memory soldered to the motherboard and therefore not upgradable?"
"The 13.5-inch Framework Laptop taps into that nostalgia, addressing one of the biggest drawbacks in modern laptops as part of the right-to-repair movement. It was designed from the ground up to be as customizable, upgradable and repairable as technologically possible... and boy does it deliver."
It feature
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Iconic Japanese Videogame Music Incorporated Into Olympic Opening Ceremony
"Fans of Japanese video games couldn't believe their ears as Olympic athletes paraded into Tokyo's National Stadium during the opening ceremony for the 2020 Games on Friday..." reports the Huffington Post.
During the Parade of Nations section of the ceremony, "The orchestra was playing tunes from some of their favorite games."
In a celebration of Japanese popular culture that is appreciated worldwide, the entry parade was set to tunes from games developed by Sega, Capcom and Square Enix. It ki
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Amazon MMO New World Is Bricking RTX 3090s, Players Say; Amazon Responds
An anonymous reader quotes a report from GameSpot: Amazon [...] is now bricking high-end graphics cards with a beta for its MMO, New World, according to players. Amazon has now responded to downplay the incident but says it plans to implement a frame rate cap on the game's menus. According to users on Twitter and Reddit, New World has been frying extremely high-end graphics cards, namely Nvidia's RTX 3090. It's worth noting that while the RTX 3090 has an MSRP of $1,500, it's often selling for mu
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Society Is Right On Track For a Global Collapse, New Study of Infamous 1970s Report Finds
fahrbot-bot shares a report from Live Science: Human society is on track for a collapse in the next two decades if there isn't a serious shift in global priorities, according to a new reassessment of a 1970s report, Vice reported. In that report -- published in the bestselling book "The Limits to Growth" (1972) -- a team of MIT scientists argued that industrial civilization was bound to collapse if corporations and governments continued to pursue continuous economic growth, no matter the costs.
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Oregon Congressman Proposes New Space Tourism Tax
U.S. Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-Oregon) plans to introduce legislation called the Securing Protections Against Carbon Emissions (SPACE) Tax Act, which would impose new excise taxes on space tourism trips. Space.com reports: "Space exploration isn't a tax-free holiday for the wealthy. Just as normal Americans pay taxes when they buy airline tickets, billionaires who fly into space to produce nothing of scientific value should do the same, and then some," Blumenauer said in a statement issued by his
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Maker of Dubious $56K Alzheimer's Drug Offers Cognitive Test No One Can Pass
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Do you ever forget things, like a doctor's appointment or a lunch date? Do you sometimes struggle to think of the right word for something common? Do you ever feel more anxious or irritable than you typically do? Do you ever feel overwhelmed when trying to make a decision? If you answered "no, never" to all of those questions, there's a possibility that you may not actually be human. Nevertheless, you should still talk to a doctor about addi
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Hole Blasted In Guntrader: UK Firearms Sales Website's CRM Database Breached, 111K Users' Info Spilled Online
Criminals have hacked into a Gumtree-style website used for buying and selling firearms, making off with a 111,000-entry database containing partial information from a CRM product used by gun shops across the UK. The Register reports: The Guntrader breach earlier this week saw the theft of a SQL database powering both the Guntrader.uk buy-and-sell website and its electronic gun shop register product, comprising about 111,000 users and dating between 2016 and 17 July this year. The database conta
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Facebook Details Experimental Mixed Reality and Passthrough API
Facebook shared some details about its experimental Passthrough API to enable new kinds of mixed reality apps for Oculus Quest 2. UploadVR reports: The feature may also serve as the foundation for the company's long-term efforts in augmented reality, effectively turning Quest 2 into a $299 AR developer kit. When asked if the feature is coming to the original Oculus Quest, a Facebook representative replied "today, this is only available for Quest 2." The new feature will be available to Unity dev
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Jeff Bezos and Sir Richard Branson Not Yet Astronauts, US Says
New Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) rules say astronaut hopefuls must be part of the flight crew and make contributions to space flight safety. That means Jeff Bezos and Sir Richard Branson may not yet be astronauts in the eyes of the US government. The BBC reports: These are the first changes since the FAA wings program began in 2004. The Commercial Astronaut Wings program updates were announced on Tuesday -- the same day that Amazon's Mr Bezos flew aboard a Blue Origin rocket to the edge
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Parking Startups Are Cashing In On America's Traffic Surge
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: During the depths of the U.S. coronavirus pandemic, cars sat idly in driveways, city streets were deserted, onetime commuters worked from bed -- and it was much, much easier to find a parking spot. All of which was devastating news for the small cadre of tech startups dedicated to helping people find and reserve places to park. For SpotHero, which makes an app that helps drivers locate parking spaces, business was down 90% in April 2020 compare
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Google's Wear OS 3 Update Plans Will Leave Most Existing Devices Behind
In a post titled "What Wear OS 3 means for you," Google provides a few more details about its upcoming Wear OS update plans, which will be the first major Wear OS update since Wear OS 2 in 2018. Unfortunately, as Ars Technica points out, the list of devices receiving the new update are limited to some of Mobvoi's TicWatch devices and Fossil Group's new generation of devices launching later this year. Older Wear OS devices featuring the Wear 3100 SoC, which makes up almost all the current Wear OS
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NSO Group CEO Says Law-Abiding Citizens Have 'Nothing To Be Afraid Of'
The CEO of NSO Group, whose spyware tools have reportedly been used to target journalists and activists, says that people who aren't criminals shouldn't be afraid of being surveilled AppleInsider reports: Shalev Hulio, 39, recently spoke to Forbes after investigations indicated that NSO Group's Pegasus spyware was used by authoritarian governments to hack and surveil the mobile devices of world leaders, high-profile journalists, and activists. NSO Group says that it sells its tools to government
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Judges Reject Viasat's Plea To Stop SpaceX Starlink Satellite Launches
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: SpaceX can keep launching broadband satellites despite a lawsuit filed by Viasat, a federal appeals court ruled Tuesday. Viasat sued the Federal Communications Commission in May and asked judges for a stay that would halt SpaceX's ongoing launches of low Earth orbit (LEO) satellites that power Starlink Internet service. To get a stay, Viasat had to show that it is likely to win its lawsuit alleging that the FCC improperly approved the satell
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Google is Finally Doing Something About Google Drive Spam
You can now block people in Google Drive. From a report: A notification pops up on your phone: "Click here for hot XXX action!" It's Google Drive again. Someone shared a document containing that title, and now your phone is begging you to look at it. Even if you ban Google Drive from generating phone notifications, you'll still get emails. If you block the emails, you'll have to see the spam when you click on the "shared" section of Google Drive. The problem is that Drive document sharing was bu
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A 3-degree Celsius World Has No Safe Place
The extremes of floods and fires are not going away, but adaptation can lessen their impact. Economist (paywalled): If temperatures rise by 3C above pre-industrial levels in the coming decades -- as they might even if everyone manages to honour today's firm pledges -- large parts of the tropics risk becoming too hot for outdoor work. Coral reefs and the livelihoods that depend on them will vanish and the Amazon rainforest will become a ghost of itself. Severe harvest failures will be commonplace
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Flexible Computer Processor is the Most Powerful Plastic Chip Yet
Could a flexible processor stuck on your produce track the freshness of your cantaloupe? That's the idea behind the latest processor from UK computer chip designer Arm, which says such a device could be manufactured for pennies by printing circuits directly onto paper, cardboard or cloth. From a report: The technology could give trillions of everyday items such as clothes and food containers the ability to collect, process and transmit data across the internet -- something that could be as conve
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Startup Claims Breakthrough in Long-Duration Batteries
A four-year-old startup says it has built an inexpensive battery that can discharge power for days using one of the most common elements on Earth: iron. From a report: Form Energy's batteries are far too heavy for electric cars. But it says they will be capable of solving one of the most elusive problems facing renewable energy: cheaply storing large amounts of electricity to power grids when the sun isn't shining and wind isn't blowing. The work of the Somerville, Mass., company has long been s
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Clubhouse Is the 'Big Stinker That Nobody Wants To Talk About'
Ed Zitron, CEO of national Media Relations and Public Relations company EZPR, writes about Clubhouse -- a one-year-old social audio app that is valued at $4 billion and is backed by several high-profile investors including A16z and Tiger Global and whose popularity appears to be on a decline: Yes, Clubhouse's vanity metrics say that people are creating "500,000 rooms a day," and they've launched a DM feature, but seriously -- I am asking you, dear reader, do you know a single soul who has spent
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Everyone Cites That 'Bugs Are 100x More Expensive To Fix in Production' Research, But the Study Might Not Even Exist
"Software research is a train wreck," says Hillel Wayne, a Chicago-based software consultant who specialises in formal methods, instancing the received wisdom that bugs are way more expensive to fix once software is deployed. Wayne did some research, noting that "if you Google 'cost of a software bug' you will get tons of articles that say 'bugs found in requirements are 100x cheaper than bugs found in implementations.' They all use this chart from the 'IBM Systems Sciences Institute'... There's
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Microsoft Backtracks On Dark Mode; Windows 11 Will Ship In Light Mode By Default
New submitter SofiaWW writes: A few days ago, at Microsoft Inspire, it was announced that Windows 11 would ship with dark mode activated by default. This was not a case of rumor or speculation, this was an announcement made at an official Microsoft event by a Microsoft employee. But now it transpires that the statement was not correct. Microsoft has now clarified that it "will ship Windows 11 SKUs in light mode on by default." No explanation for the miscommunications has yet been given.
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Kaseya Obtains REvil Decryptor, Starts Customer Data Recovery Operations
Remote management software vendor Kaseya said this week it had obtained a universal decryptor for the REvil ransomware and is now in the process of helping customers recover their encrypted data following a major ransomware attack that targeted its on-premises VSA servers on July 2 this year. From a report: In a phone call today, a Kaseya spokesperson told The Record it obtained the decrypter from a "trusted third-party," but declined to elaborate further, for the moment. The company said it obt
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A Defunct Video Hosting Site Flooded Normal Websites With Hardcore Porn
Hardcore porn was embedded all over several regular websites late Thursday because a porn company has purchased the domain of a popular, defunct video hosting site. From a report: As pointed out by Twitter user @dox_gay, hardcore porn is now embedded on the pages of the Huffington Post, New York magazine, The Washington Post, and a host of other websites. This is because a porn site called 5 Star Porn HD bought the domain for Vidme, a brief YouTube competitor founded in 2014 and shuttered in 201
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Most Unvaccinated Americans Don't Want Shots: AP-NORC Poll
Most Americans who haven't been vaccinated against COVID-19 say they are unlikely to get the shots and doubt they would work against the aggressive delta variant despite evidence they do, according to a new poll that underscores the challenges facing public health officials amid soaring infections in some states. AP: Among American adults who have not yet received a vaccine, 35% say they probably will not, and 45% say they definitely will not, according to a poll from The Associated Press-NORC C
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Facebook's Kustomer Deal Set To Face EU Antitrust Investigation
Facebook's acquisition of U.S. customer service startup Kustomer is set to trigger a full-scale EU antitrust investigation next month, Reuters reported Friday, citing three people familiar with the matter. From the report: The world's largest social network, which announced the deal in November, is looking to the deal to scale up its instant messaging app WhatsApp, whose usage has soared during the COVID-19 pandemic. The European Commission will conclude its preliminary review of the deal on Aug
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Malware Increasingly Targets Discord for Abuse
Threat actors who spread and manage malware have long abused legitimate online services. As we found during our investigation into the use of TLS by malware, more than half of network traffic generated by malware uses TLS encryption, and 20 percent of that involved the malware communicating with legitimate online services. During the timeframe of that research, we found that four percent of the overall TLS-protected malware downloads came from one service in particular: Discord. From a report: T
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China Considers Turning Tutoring Companies Into Non-Profits
China is considering asking companies that offer tutoring on the school curriculum to go non-profit, Bloomberg News reported Friday, citing people familiar with the matter, as part of a sweeping set of constraints that could decimate the country's $100 billion education tech industry. Shares sank. From a report: In rules currently being mulled, the platforms will likely no longer be allowed to raise capital or go public, the people said, asking to not be identified because the information is not
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39-Year-Old Becomes First US Patient To Receive 'Aeson' Artificial Heart Implant
An anonymous reader quotes a report from ScienceAlert: [A] team of surgeons has successfully completed the first human implantation in the US of an artificial heart device called the 'Aeson', developed by French company CARMAT. The artificial heart has two ventricular chambers and four biological valves, just like the real organ, and is powered by an external device. Made from "biocompatible materials" including bovine tissue, the artificial heart uses a combination of sensors and algorithms to
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Snapchat Is Growing Faster Than It Has In Years
Snapchat is growing faster than it has since 2017, the year it went public. The Verge reports: On Thursday, the camera-based messaging app said it added 13 million daily users during the second quarter, a 23 percent increase from the year-ago period. That means 293 million people use Snapchat every day around the world, up from 173 million this time four years ago. (Twitter reported 206 million daily users in the second quarter, by comparison.) Snap's revenue also soared 116 percent to $982 mill
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Researchers Hid Malware Inside An AI's 'Neurons' And It Worked Scarily Well
According to a new study, malware can be embedded directly into the artificial neurons that make up machine learning models in a way that keeps them from being detected. The neural network would even be able to continue performing its set tasks normally. Motherboard reports: "As neural networks become more widely used, this method will be universal in delivering malware in the future," the authors, from the University of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, write. Using real malware samples, their e
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Google Turns AlphaFold Loose On the Entire Human Genome
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Just one week after Google's DeepMind AI group finally described its biology efforts in detail, the company is releasing a paper that explains how it analyzed nearly every protein encoded in the human genome and predicted its likely three-dimensional structure -- a structure that can be critical for understanding disease and designing treatments. In the very near future, all of these structures will be released under a Creative Commons licen
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China Plans To Build the World's First Waterless Nuclear Reactor
AltMachine shares a report from Interesting Engineering: Government researchers in China unveiled their design for a commercial molten salt nuclear reactor that is expected to be the first in the world to not utilize water for cooling. As the reactor won't need water it can be deployed in desert regions, allowing operators to utilize otherwise desolate spaces in order to provide energy for large populations. The molten salt reactor is powered by liquid thorium instead of uranium. Molten salt rea
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CIA Director Says He Is Escalating Efforts To Solve 'Havana Syndrome' Mystery
CIA Director William Burns says he has redoubled the agency's efforts to uncover the cause of Havana syndrome -- the mysterious set of ailments that has afflicted more than 200 U.S. officials and family members around the world. NPR reports: That includes the assignment of a senior officer who once led the hunt for Osama bin Laden to lead the investigation and tripling the size of a medical team involved in the probe, Burns told NPR on Thursday in his first sit-down interview since being confirm
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Mercedes-Benz To Go All-Electric By 2030
Mercedes-Benz maker Daimler plans to invest more than 40 billion euros, or $47 billion, between 2022 and 2030 to develop battery-electric vehicles, and be ready for an all-electric car market by 2030. NBC News reports: Outlining its strategy for an electric future, the German luxury carmaker said on Thursday it would, with partners, build eight battery plants as it ramps up EV production, and that from 2025 all new vehicle platforms would only make electric cars. "We really want to go for it ...
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