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Parler was so excited to tell its users that the artist formerly known as Kanye West had decided to buy the social media network, it accidentally doxed all its members. Fortune reports: The platform has been embraced by conservatives who departed Twitter over allegations of political censorship, and West, a known lover of controversy, agreed to buy it earlier this week so those users could "freely express" themselves. But in an email announcing the rapper's involvement, the company publicly copied in 300-plus email addresses of its verified VIP members instead of blind copying, allowing their personal contact details to be visible to everyone else in the email chain. The incident was revealed by newsletter writer Adam Ryan who shared screenshots of the original message from Parler about the "monumental new chapter," explaining that they expected the acquisition to be complete by the end of the year and describing their VIP members as "an invaluable part of the Parler family and experience." Ryan's screenshot also showed the blurred-out addresses of "gold-badged" members in the email chain who consist of "influencers, celebrities, journalists, media organizations, public officials, government entities, businesses, organizations, and nonprofits." Some of the well-known names in the email chain include Sen. Ted Cruz, former President Donald Trump, and Rep. Matt Gaetz. Further reading: Ye's 'Buyout' Of Parler Looks Very Much Like A Failed Company Taking Advantage Of Troubled Rich Guy (Techdirt)Read more of this story at Slashdot.

"Good news, readers: After using nearly every virtual reality headset made in the last seven years, including the latest $1,500 goggles from Mark Zuckerberg's Meta, I've seen the best of what the metaverse could offer," writes the New York Times' Brian Chen. "Yes, the best is already here, and has been for quite some time. It's video games." An anonymous reader shares an excerpt from his report: At Meta's Burlingame office, I strapped on the Quest Pro to see what was new. Meta highlighted three features: the headset's higher-definition picture, which is receiving quadruple the number of pixels of its predecessor, the $400 Quest 2; the array of cameras embedded into the headset, which can now create a real-time rendering of your facial expressions and eye movements; and new motion controllers with improved pressure sensitivity so you can squeeze a virtual object gently or grab it aggressively. Meta employees and app developers gave me an hourlong tour through software tailored for the headset. I created a digital avatar of my face that mimicked my grins and frowns as I raised a curious brow. I made 3-D drawings and tossed virtual darts. I found the improved graphics and controllers impressive (and my animated avatar a bit creepy), but after I removed the headset and returned to reality-reality, I could only imagine wanting to use these new features to play games. My favorite virtual-reality game, Blaston, which was released in 2020 and involves players shooting one another in a virtual arena, would probably benefit from the improved motion controllers to make trigger squeezes for the different guns more realistic.PokerStars VR, where gamers gather around a virtual card table to play Texas hold 'em, would be more fun if we could pick up tells through each player's facial expressions. By the end of the demo, I was also doubtful that I would get any work done with this headset. In a promotional video for the product, Meta suggested that the Quest Pro could be a multitasking tool for workers juggling meetings while scrolling through emails and other tasks. But the device's battery lasts only one to two hours, according to Meta. (The headset can still be used while plugged in, but using a computer is less complicated.) This is the reality on which we should base our buying decisions. Not even Meta seems to believe many people will buy the Quest Pro. It said the device's target audience would be early adopters, designers and businesses. If you fall into any of those camps, I recommend a wait-and-see approach to gauge whether useful virtual-reality applications become available for your profession. The company left a more obvious niche off its target list: hard-core gamers willing to spend lots of money on every piece of new gaming hardware. They are in for a treat. In addition to providing access to high-resolution virtual reality games made for the Quest Pro, the headset will work with hundreds of games already made for the Quest 2. Many of those older Quest 2 titles are quite good. Games that get your heart pumping and make you break a sweat, likeBeat Saber and FitXR, which both involve swinging your arms around to hit objects, are a boon in an era when people need to wear smartwatches to remind them to stand up. None of this -- a first impression that the Quest Pro will be great for playing games and primarily be used for entertainment -- is a bad thing. The fact that we can get visually stunning, immersive gaming in a lightweight, wireless headset means virtual reality has come a long way in less than a decade. For now, that's the only reason to buy one of these.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Wireless home Internet provider Starry is cutting 500 employees, about half of its workforce, and canceling plans to expand into new states. Starry's board of directors yesterday approved the plan to cut 500 jobs, the Internet service provider said in a Securities and Exchange Commission filing today. From a report: "The decision was based on cost-reduction initiatives intended to reduce operating expenses and allow the Company to focus on serving its existing core markets and customers," the filing said. Starry said the job cuts will be "substantially complete" by the end of December. Starry also announced a freeze on hiring and non-essential expenditures and withdrew full-year 2022 guidance that was previously given to investors. "This is an extremely difficult economic climate and capital environment, and at present we don't have the capital to fund our rapid growth. Because of that, we're focusing our energies on our core business: serving multi-tenant buildings in our existing dense urban markets," Starry CEO Chet Kanojia said in a press release. The press release suggests the job cuts won't be the last major changes for Starry. The company said the cost-cutting plan will "conserve capital and improve its capital runway as it explores all strategic options." Starry launched in 2016. In mid-2019, Starry spent $48.5 million on 24 GHz spectrum licenses covering more than 25 million households in 25 states. "Combined with Starry's current deployment roadmap, Starry's fixed wireless footprint will reach more than 40 million households, covering more than 25 percent of all US households," the company said at the time.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Clearview AI, the controversial facial recognition firm that scrapes selfies and other personal data off the Internet without consent to feed an AI-powered identity-matching service it sells to law enforcement and others, has been hit with another fine in Europe. From a report: This one comes after it failed to respond to an order last year from the CNIL, France's privacy watchdog, to stop its unlawful processing of French citizens' information and delete their data. Clearview responded to that order by, well, ghosting the regulator -- thereby adding a third GDPR breach (non-cooperation with the regulator) to its earlier tally. Here's the CNIL's summary of Clearview's breaches:Unlawful processing of personal data (breach of Article 6 of the GDPR)Individuals' rights not respected (Articles 12, 15 and 17 of the GDPR)Lack of cooperation with the CNIL (Article 31 of the RGPD) "Clearview AI had two months to comply with the injunctions formulated in the formal notice and to justify them to the CNIL. However, it did not provide any response to this formal notice," the CNIL wrote in a press release today announcing the sanction [emphasis its]. The size of the fine is $19.57 million.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Amazon is facing a lawsuit in Britain for damages of up to 900 million pounds ($1 billion) over allegations the online marketplace abused its dominant position by favouring its own products, lawyers said. From a report: Consumer rights advocate Julie Hunter plans to bring the collective action on behalf of British consumers who have made purchases on Amazon since October 2016, lawyers representing her said. The proposed case - which Amazon said was "without merit" - would be the latest mass action against a tech giant to be filed at London's Competition Appeal Tribunal (CAT). Law firm Hausfeld, which represents Hunter, said on Thursday that Amazon has breached competition law by using "a secretive and self-favouring algorithm" to promote its own products through the "Buy Box" feature on its website. Hunter said in a statement: "Far from being a recommendation based on price or quality, the Buy Box favours products sold by Amazon itself, or by retailers who pay Amazon for handling their logistics. Other sellers, however good their offers might be, are effectively shut out."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The Federal Aviation Administration is investigating the cause of mysterious GPS interference that, over the past few days, has closed one runway at the Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport and prompted some aircraft in the region to be rerouted to areas where signals were working properly. From a report: The interference first came to light on Monday afternoon when the FAA issued an advisory over ATIS (Automatic Terminal Information Service). It warned flight personnel and air traffic controllers of GPS interference over a 40-mile swath of airspace near the Dallas-Fort Worth airport. The advisory read in part: "ATTN ALL AIRCRAFT. GPS REPORTED UNRELIABLE WITHIN 40 NM OF DFW." An advisory issued around the same time by the Air Traffic Control System Command Center, meanwhile, reported the region was "experiencing GPS anomalies that are dramatically impacting" flights in and out of Dallas-Fort Worth and neighboring airports. It went on to say that some of the airports were relying on the use of navigation systems that predated GPS.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The deaths of nearly 100 children in Indonesia have prompted the country to suspend sales of all syrup and liquid medication. From a report: It comes just weeks after a cough syrup in The Gambia was linked to the deaths of nearly 70 children. Indonesia said some syrup medicine was found to contain ingredients linked to acute kidney injuries (AKI), which have killed 99 young children this year. It is not clear if the medicine were imported or locally produced. On Thursday, Indonesian health officials said they had reported around 200 cases of AKI in children, most of who were aged under five. Earlier this month, the The World Health Organization (WHO) issued a global alert over four cough syrups that were linked to the deaths of almost 70 children in The Gambia. The WHO found the syrups used there - made by an Indian pharmaceutical company - contained "unacceptable amounts" of diethylene glycol and ethylene glycol. The syrups have been "potentially linked with acute kidney injuries", said the organisation. Indonesia's Health Minister on Thursday said the same chemical compounds were also found in some medicines used locally.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

SpaceX continues to expand its satellite-internet constellation with its 186th overall launch. From a report: SpaceX's 100th launch from Space Launch Complex 40 at Florida's Cape Canaveral Space Force Station featured a set of 54 Starlink satellites, which launched to orbit on Thursday (Oct. 20) at 10:51 a.m. EDT (1451 GMT). "With the completion of today's launch, it marks SpaceX's 48th successful Falcon 9 mission of 2022," SpaceX Space Operations Engineer Siva Bharadvaj said during live commentary. This was the 10th flight overall for this particular Falcon 9. It's first stage touched down a little less than nine minutes later at sea on the SpaceX droneship A Shortfall of Gravitas. The satellites successfully deployed into low Earth orbit a little over 15 minutes after liftoff, according to SpaceX.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Microsoft says that an unspecified amount of customer data, including contact info and email content, was recently left exposed to potential access over the internet as a result of a server configuration error. From a report: Cybersecurity vendor SOCRadar, which reported the data leak to Microsoft, said in a blog post that data belonging to more than 65,000 companies was affected. Microsoft, however, said in its own post that SOCRadar "has greatly exaggerated the scope of this issue." Microsoft didn't disclose specifics around the number of companies whose data may have been exposed in the leak or the amount of data involved. The server misconfiguration was reported on Sept. 24, and the impacted server was "quickly secured" after that, according to Microsoft. Due to the configuration error, there was a potential that certain "business transaction data" could have been accessed without a need for authentication, Microsoft said. The data corresponds to "interactions between Microsoft and prospective customers," including around the planning and implementation of Microsoft services, the company said in its post.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Nilay Patel, reporting for The Verge: It has never been clear what Foxconn is attempting to do in Wisconsin, and every time the company or one of its executives tries to explain it, things have just gotten weirder. For example, the company has said for years that its empty warehouse in southeastern Wisconsin is the centerpiece of an "AI 8K+5G" strategy, without ever explaining what that means. (Nothing. It means nothing.) Anyway, throw that mystery out of your brain because AI 8K+5G has been completely scrubbed from Foxconn's Wisconsin website. Instead, get ready for "3+3=infinity," which is Foxconn's new strategy, or Foxconn 3.0, which the company claims follows the famous and beloved Foxconn 1.0 and Foxconn 2.0 strategies that totally made sense and revolutionized the industrial economy of southeastern Wisconsin. Sorry! That never happened. Anyway, Foxconn's website actually labels the new plan "3+3 Transformation" and says it's a combination of "Electric Vehicle," "Digital Health," and "Fii Robotics" with "5G Solutions," "Semiconductors," and "Industrial AI," which, you see, is a list of three industries and another list of three technologies. (Fii, you will recall, is the company Foxconn created to oversee the Wisconsin project, which then created many levels of additional chaos.) How will 3+3=infinity create jobs in Wisconsin? It remains to be seen! Further reading: Wisconsin's $4.1 Billion Foxconn Boondoggle (2018)Why Won't Foxconn Tell Wisconsin What It's Building? (2019)Wisconsin Report Confirms Foxconn's So-Called LCD Factory Isn't Real (2020)Foxconn Mostly Abandons $10 Billion Wisconsin Project (2021)Foxconn Factory Fiasco Could Leave Wisonsinites On the Hook For $300 Million (May, 2022).Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader shares a report: As the economy slows, more tech companies have been showing employees the door. Now some senior leaders at Silicon Valley fintech giant Stripe, which in early 2021 was valued by private investors at $95 billion, have asked managers to start giving lower ratings on performance reviews, current and former employees say. That move could lead to more people being fired or feeling pressured to quit and comes at a time when tech businesses, particularly Stripe's payments and ecommerce peers, have been struggling. Potential cuts, which Stripe wouldn't have to disclose as layoffs because they would be performance-based, could affect hundreds of workers at the dual Dublin- and San Francisco-headquartered company, which has more than 8,000 employees. The pressure to lower ratings follows months of anxious speculation among workers after Stripe added a new question, asking whether a manager would rehire someone, to its performance reviews this past summer. Forbes spoke to ten former and current Stripe employees for this story; all asked to remain anonymous. In interviews and in comments online, workers say Stripe's recent moves have exacerbated a lack of "psychological safety" at the hard-charging private company, leaving some afraid to speak up or express dissenting opinions.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Texas has filed a lawsuit against Alphabet's Google for allegedly collecting biometric data of millions of Texans without obtaining proper consent, the attorney general's office said in a statement on Thursday. From a report: The complaint says that companies operating in Texas have been barred for more than a decade from collecting people's faces, voices or other biometric data without advanced, informed consent. "In blatant defiance of that law, Google has, since at least 2015, collected biometric data from innumerable Texans and used their faces and their voices to serve Google's commercial ends," the complaint said. "Indeed, all across the state, everyday Texans have become unwitting cash cows being milked by Google for profits."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

India's antitrust watchdog fined Google $161.9 million on Thursday for anti-competitive practices related to Android mobile devices in "multiple markets" in a major setback for the search giant in the key overseas nation where it has poured billions of dollars over the past decade. From a report: The Competition Commission of India, which began investigating Google several years ago after complaints from local firms, said in its order that Google requiring device manufacturers to pre-install its entire Google Mobile Suite and mandating prominent placement of those apps "amounts to imposition of unfair condition on the device manufacturers" and thus was in "contravention of the provisions of Section 4(2)(a)(i) of the Act." It also ordered the Android-maker to not offer any incentives to smartphone makers to exclusively carry its search services.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Prime Minister Liz Truss announced on Thursday that she would resign, just days after her new finance minister reversed virtually all of her planned tax cuts, sweeping away a free-market fiscal agenda that promised a radical policy shift for Britain but instead plunged the country into weeks of economic and political turmoil. From a report: "I cannot deliver the mandate on which I was elected," she said in brief remarks outside Downing Street. She said she had informed King Charles III that she was resigning as leader of the Conservative Party, and that she would remain leader and prime minister until a successor is chosen within a week. Her departure, after only six weeks in office, was a shockingly rapid fall from power, and throws her Conservative Party into further disarray, following the messy departure of Boris Johnson from Downing Street over the summer. The announcement came minutes after Ms. Truss held an unscheduled meeting with Graham Brady, the head of a group of Conservative lawmakers known as the 1922 Committee that plays an influential role in selecting the party leader. Ms. Truss's political viability had become tenuous after her proposals for broad unfunded tax cuts roiled markets and sent the pound's value plunging. She suffered a grave blow on Monday, when her newly appointed chancellor of the Exchequer, Jeremy Hunt, said that the government was undoing the last vestiges of Ms. Truss's tax proposals. Financial Times adds: She will go down in history as Britain's shortest-serving prime minister, her government having collapsed in the wake of its failed "mini" budget of last month, which contained $50.6bn of unfunded tax cuts and triggered turmoil in the sterling and gilt markets.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: TikTok users would still risk having personal data exposed to hacking and espionage by China even if the Biden administration forges a security agreement designed to spare the video platform from a total US ban. That's the conclusion of former national security officials and other experts as the Justice Department reviews an accord that would keep the popular video-streaming app, which is owned by China's ByteDance, accessible to its millions of US users. TikTok has been under US scrutiny since 2019 over concerns that Chinese actors might tap those users' information for espionage or other harmful purposes. "They built the whole system in China," said Stewart Baker, a national security lawyer at Steptoe & Johnson LLP. "Unless they're going to rebuild the system in the United States at great expense, sooner or later, when something goes wrong, there's going to turn out to be only one engineer who knows how to fix it. And he or she is likely to be in China." This analysis of the agreement is based on interviews with former national security officials, lawyers who have worked on similar deals and experts who have studied data security, social media platforms and telecommunications companies. There's no indication a decision has been made. TikTok is routing all its US user traffic through servers maintained by Oracle and the database giant is auditing the app's algorithms. Still, additional restrictions on how US user data is stored and accessed will be necessary -- and might not resolve US security concerns no matter how strong a deal looks on paper, the experts said. The experts' skepticism is shared by Senator Mark Warner, the Virginia Democrat who chairs the Senate Intelligence Committee. He said he's aware of the conversations around TikTok and couldn't give details. Nonetheless, he said the company has "a big mountain to climb with me to prove the case that it can really be safe." Warner said China has a bad track record on protecting users' privacy. "They've shown repeatedly the ability to create this surveillance state that ought to scare the dickens out of all of us." He added that it's much harder today to wall off TikTok's data technically or ban it outright than it was five or six years ago as the popularity of the app has surged. "The burden of proof that you can really segregate American data, particularly if the code is still being written in China -- that would be a tough case to make." Brooke Oberwetter, a spokesperson for TikTok, said that while the company would not comment on the specifics of its discussions with the US government, "We are confident that we are on a path to fully satisfy all reasonable U.S. national security concerns." Oberwetter said that while some employees based in China would have access to public data posted by users, they would not have access to private user information, and their use of the public data -- including videos and comments -- would be very limited.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Intel is being taken to court in Massachusetts over its proposals to build a distribution and logistics warehouse on the site of its defunct R&D offices and chip factory that closed in 2013. The Register reports: At the heart of this showdown are claims by townsfolk that Intel has not revealed to the surrounding community what exactly it intends to build, and that the land is supposed to be used for industry and manufacturing yet it appears a huge commercial warehouse will be built instead. The x86 giant has spent years trying to figure out what to do the campus -- whether to salvage it for production or research, or to sell it to a developer. It came close to securing a buyer earlier this year. The site in question is at 75 Reed Road in Hudson, Massachusetts, which holds a special place in computer history. It was the home of Digital Equipment Corporation's R&D and chip manufacturing before Intel took over the land and facility following a patent battle with DEC in 1997. Intel continued R&D at the site and kept it producing chips until it threw the towel in, leaving the location open to options. Ultimately, the site was up for sale with Intel planning to demolish the 40-year-old main buildings while offloading the land. However, the chipmaker, perhaps in response to a revitalization of American semiconductor manufacturing funded by CHIPS Act government subsidies, decided it wants to remake the property into a distribution and logistics and storage facility -- something that might sound innocuous but has the nearby community up in arms. Further, Intel doesn't have to use the redeveloped site for its own purposes at all: it can, and probably will, market the facility to a future tenant. And it can breeze through planning law requirements without having to reveal the full scope of traffic, pollution, and other impacts due to its status as a "logistics" facility. And that is what really has the locals enraged. Crucially, the site is adjacent to two retirement villages with 286 units and a childcare center. As a former R&D and manufacturing facility, neighboring communities understood the scope of traffic and resource impacts of such a factory. [...] The even bigger problem is that this represents another example of a large tech company wheedling its way through local restrictions to build community-damning facilities, said Michael Pill, the lawyer representing both retirement condo facilities and the childcare center in their legal challenge [PDF] to Intel. "What Intel has done here is something deeply unpleasant that grows out of its desire to dump the property without any thought to the community where they were once an important pillar of manufacturing," Pill told The Register. "There is a pattern of development in which big companies come sailing into towns, saying they'll build million-plus square foot facilities with hundreds of loading docks and all the planning is done on spec." In response to the lawsuit, Intel's lawyers said in a filing that the proposed changes are subject to approval by the town: "Because the proposed redevelopment is a permitted use in the zoning district, the project will require site plan review from the town of Hudson planning board."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Transparent wood promises to be an environmentally friendly substitute for glass or plastic used for making car windshields, see-through packaging and biomedical devices, according to a study. Phys.Org reports: Originally fabricated in 1992 by German scientist Siegfried Fink and since improved upon by other researchers, transparent wood is made by removing the lignin content in wood and replacing it with transparent, plastic materials. Lignin is a naturally occurring biopolymer which supports plant tissue; unlike plastics it can biodegrade and is non-toxic. According to the authors, production of transparent wood using sodium chlorite to remove lignin from wood and infiltrating it with epoxy infiltration had far less environmental impacts than commonly used methods that rely on the use of methacrylate polymer. The end-of-life analysis suggests that, transparent wood is less environmentally friendly than glass but is still better than producing polyethylene, indicating the need to improve the production technology, the authors said. "Transparent wood is mostly developed using thin slices of wood, and has good strength as that of regular wood but is lighter in weight. The scope for imparting multiple and advanced properties through the incorporation of specialized materials makes it a unique bio-based substrate for versatile applications," said Anish M. Chathoth, an assistant professor at Kerala Agricultural University's College of Forestry, in India.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Last week, the Alaska Department of Fish and Game canceled the winter snow crab season in the Bering Sea due to their falling numbers. "Officials suggested that a combination of climate change and some kind of crustacean health crisis might be to blame," reports TIME Magazine. "But that's only part of the story, says Wes Jones, the Fisheries, Research, and Development Director for the Norton Sound Economic Development Corporation." The most immediate cause of their death: "a mass cannibalism frenzy." An anonymous reader shares an excerpt from the report: To understand what really happened in the icy depths of Alaska's Bering Sea this year means going back to 2017, when fishermen started reporting an unprecedented population explosion of juvenile snow crabs -- what is called, in crabber speak, a "recruit." The population boom continued into 2018 and 2019, creating what Jones says was the largest recruitment event on record. Jones is something of a local piscine historian. He can quote fishery statistics going back 30 years in the same way a Red Sox fan might quote batting averages. At the time the young crabs were too small for a legal harvest -- juvenile snow crabs take four to five years to mature -- but there were enough of them for seasoned crabbers to start the count-down to huge hauls starting in 2022. In the meantime, Bering Sea temperatures, which usually hover around freezing, were on the rise, spiking several degrees between 2017-2019. Unlike mammals, who use less energy when temperatures rise, cold-water fish and crustaceans speed up their metabolism. The faster the crabs grow and expend energy, the faster they have to replace it, says Jones. Some of the crabs may have headed north into cooler Russian waters, but most seem to have stayed put. "All of a sudden you had this huge number of little crabs coming up, eating themselves out of house and home," says Jones. "Then the water warmed, which meant they had to eat more." It was a double whammy, he says, and the results were inevitable for a hungry, omnivorous species that has run out of its usual food source: "They basically cannibalized each other."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Meet Crimson Storage, the world's largest single-phase battery, which is now live in the California desert. Electrek reports: Crimson Storage is also the second-largest energy storage project currently in operation of any configuration. The 350 megawatt (MW)/1400 megawatt-hour (MWh) battery storage project, which sits on on 2,000 acres west of Blythe in Riverside County, broke ground in 2021. Canadian Solar oversaw construction and provided the battery energy storage systems, and Axium Infrastructure and solar and storage developer Recurrent Energy will be Crimson Storage's long-term owners. Residential homes are usually served by a single-phase power supply, and this project, on average, is expected to store and dispatch enough electricity to power more than 47,000 homes each year. Crimson Storage holds two long-term contracts with local utilities: a 200 MW/800 MWh 14-year and 10-month contract with Southern California Edison, and a 150 MW/ 600MWh 15-year contract with Pacific Gas and Electric.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The Apple TV HD (also called the fourth-generation Apple TV) is no longer available in Apple's US store after the addition of an updated Apple TV 4K yesterday. Ars Technica reports: The Apple TV HD debuted in 2015, and it was the first Apple TV to run tvOS, with its own App Store. Up until its discontinuation this week, it included a now-aging A8 chip (the one from the iPhone 6). By contrast, the new Apple TV 4K has the A15 chip found in the iPhone 13; it's dramatically faster. The 2015 model was also the first to introduce Apple's controversial touch-based remote, which was radically redesigned in response to user feedback in recent years. Apple introduced the first iteration of the Apple TV 4K in 2017, but the company continued to offer the Apple TV HD alongside it in its store as a cheaper option compared to the 4K model, which currently starts at $129 -- still much more expensive than the dongles and set-top boxes most people use to stream to their TVs. At present, you can't even find the Apple TV HD in Apple's refurbished store, so this appears to mark the end-of-life for the non-4K Apple TV. It's not too surprising, though; 4K TVs have been a hit. More than half of United States households had a 4K TV as of last summer, and the percentage has been growing substantially year over year.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

BMW says it will make batteries for its electric vehicles at a factory in South Carolina in the latest move by a major automaker to localize EV production in the United States. The Verge reports: The German company plans to invest $1.7 billion in the US, including $1 billion for EV production at BMW's Spartanburg plant and $700 million for a new battery-assembly facility in nearby Woodruff. By 2030, BMW says it will have at least six electric models in production in the US. Establishing a US-based EV plant will allow BMW's upcoming line of plug-in vehicles to qualify for the federal EV tax credit. BMW said it is partnering with Envision AESC on its plans for a dedicated battery plant in South Carolina. The Japan-based energy company will produce round lithium-ion battery cells specifically designed for BMW's next-gen EV platform. When it's completed, the battery factory will have an annual capacity of 30 gigawatt-hours (GWh). BMW has also announced plans to build EV production facilities in Europe and China to meet demand. The company currently has several electric models for sale, including the i4 sedan and iX SUV.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Techdirt: [AT&T] was fined $23 million for bribing a state lawmaker's ally in order to secure a key policy vote. According to a deferred prosecution agreement, the vote in question was a 2017 vote on Carrier of Last Resort (COLR) legislation that would have eliminated AT&T's obligation to continue to provide landline service to all state residents. AT&T of course wants to be free of having to provide dated landlines. Consumer groups are quick to note many of those landlines are used by old people who often can't afford (or don't understand how to use) cellular service, leaving them cut off from essential services and 911. They were also paid for on the back of millions in taxpayer subsidies, suggesting that taxpayers should have some say in the matter. Instead of just making its case, AT&T used an intermediary lobbying firm to deliver $22,500 to former Illinois Speaker of the House Michael J. Madigan to influence his vote: "AT&T allegedly used a lobbying firm as an intermediary to make the payment and disguise its true purpose. US Attorney John Lausch's office filed a one-count criminal information in US District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, charging AT&T Illinois with using an interstate facility to promote legislative misconduct. Former AT&T Illinois President Paul La Schiazza was indicted on five charges as a result of the same investigation."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Firefox 106 is now available for download, bringing various new features and enhancements, such as a new PDF editing feature and new way to organize recently closed tabs. 9to5Linux reports: Mozilla says that Firefox 106 finally brings the long-anticipated two-finger swipe horizontal gesture for navigating back and forward on a website without having to hold down the Alt key. [...] Firefox 106 also introduces annotation capabilities to the built-in PDF viewer so you can write text, draw, or add signatures on PDF files. You'll be able to change the size and color of the text tool, as well as the thickness, opacity, and color of the draw tool. Another interesting new feature of the Firefox 106 release is called Firefox View, which is implemented as a pinned tab, promising to help you get back to the content you've previously discovered by allowing you to switch seamlessly between your devices running Firefox. On top of all that, Firefox 106 also brings major WebRTC changes to improve Windows and Wayland screen sharing, RTP performance and reliability, statistics, and more. There are also the usual bug and security fixes to make Firefox more stable and reliable on your system.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Former Celsius executive Aaron Iovine has joined JPMorgan Chase & Co as executive director of digital assets regulatory policy, according to his LinkedIn profile, days after the bank's Chief Executive Jamie Dimon blasted cryptocurrencies as fraud and decentralized ponzi schemes. Reuters reports: Iovine was head of policy and regulatory affairs at bankrupt crypto lender Celsius, which he left in September after an eight-month stint. Celsius filed for bankruptcy in July, as risk assets including bitcoin were crushed by monetary policy tightening. Crypto markets were also squeezed by the collapse of major tokens TerraUSD and Luna in May. Mr. Iovine said he has "focused on developing policies that foster responsible innovation while emphasizing consumer protection and regulatory oversight" and has worked on issues related to crypto licensing, anti-money-laundering requirements and cybersecurity standards.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Register: GitHub Copilot -- a programming auto-suggestion tool trained from public source code on the internet -- has been caught generating what appears to be copyrighted code, prompting an attorney to look into a possible copyright infringement claim. On Monday, Matthew Butterick, a lawyer, designer, and developer, announced he is working with Joseph Saveri Law Firm to investigate the possibility of filing a copyright claim against GitHub. There are two potential lines of attack here: is GitHub improperly training Copilot on open source code, and is the tool improperly emitting other people's copyrighted work -- pulled from the training data -- to suggest code snippets to users? Butterick has been critical of Copilot since its launch. In June he published a blog post arguing that "any code generated by Copilot may contain lurking license or IP violations," and thus should be avoided. That same month, Denver Gingerich and Bradley Kuhn of the Software Freedom Conservancy (SFC) said their organization would stop using GitHub, largely as a result of Microsoft and GitHub releasing Copilot without addressing concerns about how the machine-learning model dealt with different open source licensing requirements. Copilot's capacity to copy code verbatim, or nearly so, surfaced last week when Tim Davis, a professor of computer science and engineering at Texas A&M University, found that Copilot, when prompted, would reproduce his copyrighted sparse matrix transposition code. Asked to comment, Davis said he would prefer to wait until he has heard back from GitHub and its parent Microsoft about his concerns. In an email to The Register, Butterick indicated there's been a strong response to news of his investigation. "Clearly, many developers have been worried about what Copilot means for open source," he wrote. "We're hearing lots of stories. Our experience with Copilot has been similar to what others have found -- that it's not difficult to induce Copilot to emit verbatim code from identifiable open source repositories. As we expand our investigation, we expect to see more examples. "But keep in mind that verbatim copying is just one of many issues presented by Copilot. For instance, a software author's copyright in their code can be violated without verbatim copying. Also, most open-source code is covered by a license, which imposes additional legal requirements. Has Copilot met these requirements? We're looking at all these issues." GitHub's documentation for Copilot warns that the output may contain "undesirable patterns" and puts the onus of intellectual property infringement on the user of Copilot, notes the report. Bradley Kuhn of the Software Freedom Conservancy is less willing to set aside how Copilot deals with software licenses. "What Microsoft's GitHub has done in this process is absolutely unconscionable," he said. "Without discussion, consent, or engagement with the FOSS community, they have declared that they know better than the courts and our laws about what is or is not permissible under a FOSS license. They have completely ignored the attribution clauses of all FOSS licenses, and, more importantly, the more freedom-protecting requirements of copyleft licenses." Brett Becker, assistant professor at University College Dublin in Ireland, told The Register in an email, "AI-assisted programming tools are not going to go away and will continue to evolve. Where these tools fit into the current landscape of programming practices, law, and community norms is only just beginning to be explored and will also continue to evolve." He added: "An interesting question is: what will emerge as the main drivers of this evolution? Will these tools fundamentally alter future practices, law, and community norms -- or will our practices, law and community norms prove resilient and drive the evolution of these tools?"Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Waymo, Alphabet's driverless-vehicle unit, plans to expand its robo-taxi service to Los Angeles, the third region where it will be offered. From a report: The company will follow the same playbook for the service, called Waymo One, that it has elsewhere, according to an announcement Wednesday. Local employees will try the program first, followed by so-called "trusted testers" who sign nondisclosure agreements, followed by unaccompanied, paying members of the public. Waymo One is already open to the general public in the Phoenix metro area and is in the advanced testing stage in the more crowded downtown areas of Phoenix and San Francisco.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader shares a report: Torontonians now have another way to get cannabis without having to wait too long for it to show up, as Uber Eats is offering deliveries in the city starting today. Uber Eats has teamed up with cannabis marketplace Leafly to offer residents swift weed delivery from local, licensed retailers. Uber Eats claims this is a world first for a "a major third-party delivery platform." Users in Ontario have been available to order weed through the app since last November, but until now items were only available for pickup. If you're in the city and feel the need to take the edge off, you can select the cannabis category or search for one of the retailers (Hidden Leaf Cannabis, Minerva Cannabis and Shivaa's Rose are the first three to sign up). You'll receive a warning that you need to be of legal age, which is 19 in Ontario, to view the products. After you place an order and the retailer confirms it, one of the retailer's own licensed "budtenders" will deliver your items. As is the case with alcohol orders, the delivery person will verify your age and level of sobriety before handing over the goods.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

What secrets does the inside of the Pixel Watch hold? iFixit -- Google's new repair partner -- tore down Google's first self-branded smartwatch to see exactly how this thing was put together. From a report: Like us, iFixit came away with strong "first generation" vibes. The good news is that it does not look impossible to replace the display. The usual bit of heat and prying pops the top off, but the less-than-ideal layout means you'll have to remove the battery, too, since the connector is buried under the soft battery pouch. A display replacement is a real concern here, considering the entire top half of the watch is glass. If you bang the watch against something or drop it, there's a good chance you'll shatter the all-glass corners. [...] iFixit took a good amount of time in the four-minute video to call Google's internal construction "ugly." After cracking open the front, iFixit's Sam Goldheart noted, "Right away, it's obvious we're in Android country. The silver battery pouch and Kapton tape are almost a shock after all our Apple teardowns," later adding that the welds holding together the haptic feedback buzzer were "kind of ugly."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A Russian lawmaker on Wednesday urged state institutions to stop using WhatsApp messenger and the industry ministry sought to promote domestically produced software as Russia tries to wean itself off Western technology. From a report: WhatsApp owner Meta Platforms was found guilty of "extremist activity" in Russia in March and later added to financial monitoring agency Rosfinmonitoring's list of "terrorists and extremists." Meta's lawyer in court has said Meta was not carrying out extremist activity and was against Russophobia. Russia blocked Meta's Facebook and Instagram in March, objecting to restrictions on Russian media and some posts permitted by users in Ukraine. Widely used among Russians, WhatsApp has always remained available, but Anton Gorelkin, deputy head of the Russian parliament's committee on information policy, on Wednesday said he personally would be deleting the app and recommended a wider ban.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

SpaceX has introduced Starlink Aviation, promising 350Mbps broadband with unlimited data for each airplane it's installed in. From a report: "Starlink can deliver up to 350Mbps to each plane, enabling all passengers to access streaming-capable Internet at the same time," the company said. "With latency as low as 20 ms, passengers can engage in activities previously not functional in flight, including video calls, online gaming, virtual private networks and other high data rate activities." Starlink said the airplane service will use a "low-profile Aero Terminal" with "an electronically steered phased array antenna, which enables new levels of reliability, redundancy and performance." It has a "simplified design" that "enables installations during minimal downtime and combines well with other routine maintenance checks," Starlink says. The service hardware also includes two wireless access points. There's a one-time hardware cost of $150,000, not including installation. "The installation can be performed by your current maintenance organization or Starlink can recommend experienced and qualified installers," Starlink says.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Microsoft is building an Xbox mobile store to directly offer games on mobile devices, challenging Apple and Google. The software giant first hinted at a "next-generation" store it would "build for games" earlier this year but has now quietly revealed details of the plans in filings with the UK's Competition and Markets Authority (CMA). From a report: The CMA is currently investigating the $68.7 billion Activision Blizzard acquisition and has asked Microsoft for context. In its filings, Microsoft says a big motivation for the purchase is to help build out its mobile gaming presence. Its plans for this space apparently include creating an Xbox mobile gaming platform and store. Here's what the company says in the filings: "The transaction will improve Microsoft's ability to create a next generation game store which operates across a range of devices, including mobile as a result of the addition of Activision Blizzard's content. Building on Activision Blizzard's existing communities of gamers, Xbox will seek to scale the Xbox Store to mobile, attracting gamers to a new Xbox Mobile Platform. Shifting consumers away from the Google Play Store and App Store on mobile devices will, however, require a major shift in consumer behavior. Microsoft hopes that by offering well-known and popular content, gamers will be more inclined to try something new."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Uber is launching a dedicated advertising arm in a push to cash in on a captive audience and tap the higher-margin revenue stream. From a report: The new division encompasses ad offerings on Uber's ride-hailing and food-delivery apps. On Uber Eats, for example, brands will be able to pay for sponsored listings, prominent placing on the homepage or checkout, and featured menu items. Uber also rolled out Journey Ads, a new service that runs advertisements for ride-share users while they wait for their driver and during their trip. More than 40 brands have partnered with Uber to run Journey Ads, including NBCUniversal and Heineken NV, Uber said in a statement on Wednesday. The move expands Uber's prior efforts to monetize an audience of 122 million monthly active users.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader shares a report: We've said it before, and we'll say it again: USB-C is confusing. A USB-C port or cable can support a range of speeds, power capabilities, and other features, depending on the specification used. Today, USB-C can support various data transfer rates, from 0.48Gbps (USB 2.0) all the way to 40Gbps (USB4, Thunderbolt 3, and Thunderbolt 4). Things are only about to intensify, as today the USB Implementers Forum (USB-IF) published the USB4 Version 2.0 spec. It adds optional support for 80Gbps bidirectional bandwidth as well as theoptional ability to send or receive data at up to 120Gbps. The USB-IF first gave us word of USB4 Version 2.0 in September, saying it would support a data transfer rate of up to 80Gbps in either direction (40Gbps per lane, four lanes total), thanks to a new physical layer architecture (PHY) based on PAM-3 signal encoding. For what it's worth, Intel also demoed Thunderbolt at 80Gbps but hasn't released an official spec yet. USB4 Version 2.0 offers a nice potential bump over the original USB4 spec, which introduced optional support for 40Gbps operation. You just have to be sure to check the spec sheets to know what sort of performance you're getting. Once USB4 Version 2.0 products come out, you'll be able to hit 80Gbps with USB-C passive cables that currently operate at 40Gbps, but you'll have to buy a new cable if you want a longer, active 80Gbps.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Inside Netflix's movie studio, top executives lobbied Ted Sarandos, the company's co-chief executive, for much of this year to experiment with releasing more Netflix original movies broadly in theaters WSJ is reporting. From the report: They outlined their case in a memo shared in June on the company network. Some argued that Netflix is leaving hundreds of millions in box-office receipts on the table with its current strategy of showing only select movies in a few hundred theaters for at most a few weeks before streaming them, according to people familiar with the matter. Other executives thought showing movies in more theaters would create valuable buzz for the streaming service. Soon after, in an internal meeting, Mr. Sarandos told Netflix studio leaders that he had doubts, and still felt that streaming is the future of entertainment, movies included. Instead, he suggested that studio chief Scott Stuber and other executives meet with their counterparts at Sony Pictures Entertainment to see if they would agree to let Netflix stream Sony's movies just four to six weeks after they came out in theaters, instead of after six to eight months, as spelled out in a partnership the two studios reached last year. If a new deal could be struck, some executives said, it would help Netflix understand how the company might benefit from streaming a movie shortly after it had been shown on thousands of big screens across the country. The debate inside Netflix over how best to distribute its films -- details of which haven't been previously reported -- is one that is playing out across an entertainment industry that has been rapidly upended by the rise of streaming video. Every major company in Hollywood is facing some version of the same question: What is the best way to release a movie? Is it in a cinema, with stadium seating, popcorn and digital surround sound? Or is it at home, streamed on a flat-screen TV or a laptop? Should movies go to theaters first, then to streaming, or should they be released at the same time? How long should a studio wait between theatrical and streaming release? How many theaters should show a film? Should all movies go to the big screen, or just splashy action thrillers?Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Japan plans to further loosen cryptocurrency rules by making it easier to list virtual coins, potentially burnishing the country's allure for Binance and rival foreign digital-asset exchanges. From a report: The body that governs crypto exchanges plans to allow them to list coins without going through its lengthy screening process, unless the tokens are new to Japan's market, according to documents seen by Bloomberg News. The relaxed rule could take effect as early as December, helping startups compete with established players by smoothing the process of listing tokens and lowering the bar for market entry. The documents outlining the changes were distributed to member firms recently. By March 2024, the Japan Virtual and Crypto assets Exchange Association could also scrap pre-screenings for coins new to the nation, as well as for tokens issued through initial coin or exchange offerings, Vice Chairman Genki Oda said in comments he described as personal views.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader shares a report: In July, Reddit jumped on the NFT train, launching an NFT-based marketplace that allows users to purchase blockchain-based profile pictures for a fixed rate. Given the general sentiment around NFTs today, you might assume -- like me -- that the experiment ended poorly. But the opposite's the case apparently . Today during a panel at TechCrunch Disrupt, Reddit chief product officer Pali Bhat revealed that over three million Redditors have used Reddit's Vault blockchain wallet to create over three million crypto wallets to date. Most of those -- 2.5 million -- were created to purchase NFT avatars that can be used as profile pics on the platform, he said.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Whon Namkoong, the co-chief executive of Kakao, has resigned in a remarkable demonstration of corporate accountability after a fire incident at an SK C&C data center in the south of Seoul caused a mass outage over the weekend and disrupted Kakao's several services, including messenger, ride-hailing, payment, banking and gaming. TechCrunch reports: Namkoong, who joined Kakao in 2015, was elevated to the co-CEO role this March. At a press conference on Wednesday, co-CEOs of Kakao apologized for the mass outage "for such an extended period." Namkoong said that he feels "the heavy burden of responsibility" over the incident, adding that the company will do its best to restore the faith of users. Euntaek Hong, co-CEO of Kakao, who led the firm alongside Namkoong and is currently leading Kakao's emergency taskforce team, will remain the firm as the sole head of Kakao, per a company filing. Kakao said today morning it had restored additional services like Kakaomail and TalkChannel. Most of its services are in almost full operation, with some remaining partially down. Kakao's slow recovery process was caused by the company's lack of owned server infrastructure and "high dependence" on the SK C&C data center, which caught fire, analysts at Bernstein said in a report this week. Kakao also didn't have a well-distributed backup system, they added. Hong said at a press conference today that the company plans to invest 460 billion KRW (~$325 million) to build its own data center from next year, aiming to complete it in the following year. According to a report in August, the company said its Kakao Talk messenger app has more than 47 million active users in South Korea and 53 million globally.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Today, tech archivist Jason Scott announced a new website called Discmaster that lets anyone search through 91.7 million vintage computer files pulled from CD-ROM releases and floppy disks. The files include images, text documents, music, games, shareware, videos, and much more. The files on Discmaster come from the Internet Archive, uploaded by thousands of people over the years. The new site pulls them together behind a search engine with the ability to perform detailed searches by file type, format, source, file size, file date, and many other options. Discmaster is the work of a group of anonymous history-loving programmers who approached Scott to host it for them. Scott says that Discmaster is "99.999 percent" the work of that anonymous group, right down to the vintage gray theme that is compatible with web browsers for older machines. Scott says he slapped a name on it and volunteered to host it on his site. And while Scott is an employee of the Internet Archive, he says that Discmaster is "100 percent unaffiliated" with that organization. One of the highlights of Discmaster is that it has already done a lot of file format conversion on the back end, making the vintage files more accessible. For example, you can search for vintage music files -- such as MIDI or even digitized Amiga sounds -- and listen to them directly in your browser without any extra tools necessary. The same thing goes for early-90s low-resolution video files, images in obscure formats, and various types of documents. "It's got all the conversion to enable you to preview things immediately," says Scott. "So there's no additional external installation. That, to me, is the fundamental power of what we're dealing with here." "The value proposition is the value proposition of any freely accessible research database," Scott told Ars Technica. "People are enabled to do deep dives into more history, reference their findings, and encourage others to look in the same place." "[Discmaster] is probably, to me, one of the most important computer history research project opportunities that we've had in 10 years," says Scott. "It's not done. They've analyzed 7,000 and some-odd CD-ROMs. And they're about to do another 8,000."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Netflix wants to extend its nascent gaming efforts to PCs and TVs, and it's looking to launch its own cloud gaming service to do so, VP of game development Mike Verdu confirmed at TechCrunch Disrupt on Tuesday. Protocol reports: "We're very seriously exploring a cloud gaming offering," Verdu said. "We'll approach this the same way as we did with mobile -- start small, be humble, be thoughtful -- but it is a step we think we should take," Verdu added. "The extension into the cloud is really about reaching the other devices where people experience Netflix." Verdu didn't share many additional details, but suggested the company was looking to launch more than just casual games on TVs. He declined to say whether Netflix would build its own game controllers like Google has done for its failed Stadia service, but he said the titles wouldn't rely on TV remotes for input. [...] Verdu called Netflix's expansion into gaming a pivotal moment for the company, but admitted that it was a slow and deliberate multiyear effort. However, the company may already be seeing some rewards from those efforts. "We're seeing some encouraging signs of gameplay leading to higher retention," the company wrote in its letter to investors Tuesday. The report notes that Netflix has released a total of 35 games for mobile devices thus far, with an additional 55 games in its pipeline. "Fourteen of those games are being built by Netflix's own studios, Verdu said, adding that the company was going to launch an additional studio in Southern California soon." Further reading: Netflix Password-Sharing Crackdown Will Roll Out Globally In 'Early 2023'Read more of this story at Slashdot.

At least five hours sleep a night may cut the over-50s' chances of multiple chronic health problems, researchers say. The BBC reports: The PLoS Medicine study tracked the health and sleep of UK civil servants. All of the about 8,000 participants were asked: How many hours of sleep do you have on an average weeknight?" Some also wore a wrist-watch sleep tracker. And they were checked for chronic conditions, including diabetes, cancer and heart disease, over two decades of follow-up: - Those who slept five hours or less around the age of 50 had a 30% greater risk of multiple ailments than those who slept seven hours- Shorter sleep at 50 was also associated with a higher risk of death during the study period, mainly linked to the increased risk of chronic diseaseRead more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Scientific American: With a few notable exceptions -- such as during the 1918 influenza pandemic, World War II and the HIV crisis -- life expectancy in the U.S. has had gradual upward trajectory over the past century. But that progress has steeply reversed in the past two years as COVID and other tragedies have cut millions of lives short. U.S. life expectancy fell by a total of 2.7 years (PDF) between 2019 and 2021 to 76.1 years -- the lowest it has been since 1996, according to provisional data recently released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS). The drop was 3.1 years for male individuals and 2.3 years for female ones. Non-Hispanic Native American and Alaska Native peoples saw the biggest decline -- a staggering 6.6 years. But every racial and ethnic group suffered: life expectancy decreased by 4.2 years in the Hispanic population, by four years in the non-Hispanic Black population, by 2.4 years in the non-Hispanic white population and by 2.1 years in the non-Hispanic Asian population. "Basically, all the gains between 1996 and 2019 are as if they never happened," says Elizabeth Arias, director of the U.S. life table program at the NCHS and co-author of a report on the new data. COVID deaths drove much of the decline as the country grappled with the world's worst pandemic in a century. But unintentional injuries -- largely driven by drug overdoses -- also played a significant role, the data show. Increases in deaths from heart disease, chronic liver disease and suicide also contributed. "This isn't supposed to happen," says Philip Cohen, a professor of sociology at the University of Maryland, who studies demographic trends and inequality. "I think it's a wake-up call for us ... that we can't put public health on autopilot; that we don't have this invisible hand of development just raising living standards over time." The drop in life expectancy would have been even more stark if it had not been partially offset by declines in influenza and pneumonia deaths, which were likely reduced by pandemic-related precautions such as masking and social distancing.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The failure rate of semiconductors shipped from China to Russia has increased by 1,900 percent in recent months, according to Russian national business daily Kommersant. The Register reports: Quoting an anonymous source, Kommersant states that before Russia's illegal invasion of Ukraine the defect rate in imported silicon was two percent. Since that war commenced, Russian manufacturers have apparently faced 40 percent failure rates. Even a two percent defect rate is sub-optimal, because products made of many components can therefore experience considerable quality problems. Forty percent failure rates mean supplies are perilously close to being unfit for purpose. According to Kommersant, Russian electronics manufacturers are not enjoying life at all because, on top of high failure rates, gray market gear doesn't flow with the same speed as legit kit and supply chains are currently very kinked indeed inside Russia. The newspaper lays the blame on economic sanctions that have seen many major businesses quit Russia. Gray market distributors and other opportunistic operators have been left as the only entities willing to deal with Russian businesses. Gray market folks are not renowned for their sterling customer service nor their commitment to quality. They get away with it because buyers of products with -- ahem -- unconventional origins self-incriminate if they complain to authorities. Perhaps they're even dumping dud product on Russian buyers, knowing that they can't easily access alternatives.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

"Everyone visiting Qatar for the World Cup needs to install spyware on their phone," writes security researcher Bruce Schneier. His comments are in response to an article from the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation (NRK), reporting: Everyone traveling to Qatar during the football World Cup will be asked to download two apps called Ehteraz and Hayya. Briefly, Ehteraz is an covid-19 tracking app, while Hayya is an official World Cup app used to keep track of match tickets and to access the free Metro in Qatar. In particular, the covid-19 app Ehteraz asks for access to several rights on your mobile., like access to read, delete or change all content on the phone, as well as access to connect to WiFi and Bluetooth, override other apps and prevent the phone from switching off to sleep mode. The Ehteraz app, which everyone over 18 coming to Qatar must download, also gets a number of other accesses such as an overview of your exact location, the ability to make direct calls via your phone and the ability to disable your screen lock. The Hayya app does not ask for as much, but also has a number of critical aspects. Among other things, the app asks for access to share your personal information with almost no restrictions. In addition, the Hayya app provides access to determine the phone's exact location, prevent the device from going into sleep mode, and view the phone's network connections. It remains to be seen whether Qatar will strictly enforce the installation of these apps. "I know people who visited Saudi Arabia when that country had a similarly sketchy app requirement," says Schneier. "Some of them just didn't bother downloading the apps, and were never asked about it at the border."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Germany's cybersecurity chief has been fired after allegations of being excessively close to Russia through an association he helped set up. The BBC reports: Arne Schonbohm had led the Federal Cyber Security Authority (BSI) -- charged with protecting government communications -- since 2016. German media have accused him of having had links with people involved with Russian intelligence services. The interior ministry is investigating allegations made against him. But it confirmed he had been fired with immediate effect. Mr Schonbohm had come under scrutiny after his potential links to a Russian company through a previous role were highlighted by Jan Bohmermann, the host of one of Germany's most popular late-night TV shows. Before leading the BSI, Mr Schonbohm had helped set up and run the Cyber Security Council Germany, a private association which advises business and policymakers on cybersecurity issues. He is said to have maintained close ties to the association and attended their 10th anniversary celebrations in September. One of the association's members was a cybersecurity company called Protelion, which was a subsidiary of a Russian firm reportedly established by a former member of the KGB honored by President Vladimir Putin. Protelion was ejected from the association last weekend, and Cyber Security Council Germany says the allegations of links to Russian intelligence are untrue.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from STAT: Research at Boston University that involved testing a lab-made hybrid version of the SARS-CoV-2 virus is garnering heated headlines alleging the scientists involved could have unleashed a new pathogen. There is no evidence the work, performed under biosecurity level 3 precautions in BU's National Emerging Infectious Diseases Laboratories, was conducted improperly or unsafely. In fact, it was approved by an internal biosafety review committee and Boston's Public Health Commission, the university said Monday night. But it has become apparent that the research team did not clear the work with the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, which was one of the funders of the project. The agency indicated it is going to be looking for some answers as to why it first learned of the work through media reports. Emily Erbelding, director of NIAID's division of microbiology and infectious diseases, said the BU team's original grant applications did not specify that the scientists wanted to do this precise work. Nor did the group make clear that it was doing experiments that might involve enhancing a pathogen of pandemic potential in the progress reports it provided to NIAID. "I think we're going to have conversations over upcoming days," Erbelding told STAT in an interview. Asked if the research team should have informed NIAID of its intention to do the work, Erbelding said: "We wish that they would have, yes." The research has been posted online as a preprint (PDF), meaning it has not yet been peer-reviewed. The senior author is Mohsan Saeed, from BU's National Emerging Infectious Diseases Laboratories. STAT reached out to Saeed on Monday but had not received a response by the time this article was published. In the paper Saeed and colleagues reported on research they conducted that involved creating a hybrid or chimeric virus -- in which the spike protein of an Omicron version of SARS-2 was fused to a virus of the Wuhan strain, the original version that emerged from China in 2020. Omicron viruses first emerged in late 2021 and have since splintered into multiple different sub variants. The goal of the research was to determine if the mutations in the Omicron spike protein were responsible for this variant's increased ability to evade the immunity to SARS-2 that humans have built up, and whether the changes led to Omicron's lower rate of severity. The testing actually showed, though, that the chimeric virus was more lethal to a type of lab mice than Omicron itself, killing 80% of the mice infected. Importantly, the original Wuhan strain killed 100% of mice it was tested in. The conclusion of the study is that mutations in the spike protein of the Omicron variant are responsible for the strain's ability to evade immunity people have built up via vaccination, infections, or both, but they are not responsible for the apparent decrease in severity of the Omicron viruses. The university disputed the claims made by some media outlets that the work had created a more dangerous virus, saying: "In fact, this research made the virus [replication] less dangerous." They noted that other research groups have conducted similar work. "That 80% kill rate, that headline doesn't tell the whole story," Erbelding said. "Because Wuhan" -- the original strain -- "killed all the mice." The fatality rate seen in this strain of mice when they were infected with these viruses raises questions about how good a model they are for what happens when people are infected with SARS-2. The Wuhan strain killed less than 1% of people who were infected.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The new, 10th-generation iPad only supports the first-generation Apple Pencil, meaning that it requires an adapter to charge separately via a wired connection since the device has moved to USB-C. MacRumors reports: The new iPad has no magnetic wireless charger on the side to connect to the second-generation Apple Pencil. Only the first-generation Apple Pencil is supported by the device, which normally needs to be plugged into a Lightning port to charge. The iPad now has a USB-C port, meaning that the Apple Pencil can no longer be charged directly via the iPad. Entry-level iPad users who want to use the Apple Pencil will need to charge the accessory using a USB-C cable and a separate adapter. The first-generation Apple Pencil came with a female to female Lightning adapter allowing it to be charged separately, but now Apple is offering a new variant of the accessory called the "USB-C to Apple Pencil Adapter" that enables Apple Pencil users to charge. The adapter is available separately at a price of $9 for existing Apple Pencil users, while new Apple Pencil units include the adapter in the box. For those interested in a more powerful tablet, Apple announced the new sixth-generation iPad Pro, featuring the M2 chip that first debuted in the MacBook Air and 13-inch MacBook Pro earlier this year and support for Wi-Fi 6E.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: Flights into the Dallas area are being forced to take older, cumbersome routes and a runway at Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport was temporarily closed after aviation authorities said GPS signals there aren't reliable. The Federal Aviation Administration said in an emailed statement Tuesday it's investigating the possible jamming of the global-positioning system that aircraft increasingly use to guide them on more efficient routes and to runways. So far, the agency has found "no evidence of intentional interference," it said. American Airlines, the primary carrier at DFW, said the GPS issue is not affecting its operations. Southwest Airlines, which flies from nearby Love Field, said it also isn't experiencing any disruptions. The FAA reopened the closed runway earlier on Tuesday. The GPS problem -- despite the lack of impact -- highlights the risk of widespread reliance on the weak GPS radio signals from space used for everything from timing stock trades to guiding jetliners. The FAA occasionally warns pilots in advance of military testing that may degrade the GPS signals and pilots sometimes report short-lived problems, but the interference in Dallas is atypical, said Dan Streufert, founder of the flight-tracking website ADSBexchange.com. "In the US, it's very unusual to see this without a prior notice," Streufert said in an interview. ADSBExchange.com monitors aircraft data streams that indicate the accuracy of the GPS signals they are receiving and the website began seeing problems around Dallas on Monday, he said. The military has told the FAA it isn't conducting any operations that would interfere with GPS in that area, said a person familiar with the situation who wasn't authorized to speak publicly about it. The primary way FAA's air-traffic system tracks planes is based on GPS, but older radars and radio-direction beacons have remained in place as backups.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

As part of Netflix's earning results today, which says the company reversed customer losses, Netflix plans to crack down on password sharing beginning in 2023. The Verge reports: After giving users the ability to transfer their profiles to new accounts last week, the streamer says it will start letting subscribers create sub-accounts starting next year in line with its plans to "monetize account sharing" more widely. [...] Earlier this year, Netflix reported losing subscribers for the first time in over 10 years, with the company's subscriber count dipping by another 1.3 million in the US and Canada and 1 million worldwide last quarter. To remedy this, Netflix has also been slowly nudging subscribers away from password sharing. The company conducted tests that prompted users in Chile, Costa Rica, and Peru to pay extra for a sub-account if Netflix detected someone was using the owner's subscription outside of their household. It also tried out a way for users in Argentina, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, and the Dominican Republic to buy additional "homes" for accounts located outside of the subscriber's primary household. More recently, Netflix widely introduced a Profile Transfer tool that lets users easily transfer their personalized recommendations, viewing history, My List, saved games, and other settings to a new account after testing it in other countries. Last month, a report from Rest of World revealed frustration from users subject to the tests in Latin America. The earnings report (PDF) projects that the company's new ad-supported streaming service, which starts at $6.99 per month and launches in November, will help attract 4.5 million subscribers by year's end. This quarter it added 2.4 million subscribers and grew by 104,000 paid subscribers in the U.S. and Canada over the last three months, up from 73,000 in the same period last year.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A new report from The Information details more changes Google CEO Sundar Pichai's budget cuts are having across the company, with some divisions surviving and others getting ominous resource cuts. From a report: First, we have news that the hardware division, other than losing laptops, seems mostly safe. Google's biggest Android partner, Samsung, is in decline in many established markets, and Apple is hitting an all-time high in US market share last quarter. The report says Google views Apple as more of a problem than it has in the past, thanks to worries that regulators might shut down the usual multi-billion-dollar Google/Apple agreement to put Google Search on iPhones. If iPhones stop showing Google ads, the rise of Apple and fall of Samsung is one of the few things that could actually be a major problem for Google's revenue. According to the report, Google views itself as the solution to this problem. As a hedge against what the report calls the "further decline" of Samsung, Google is "doubling down" on its investment in Pixel hardware. Google is apparently doing this by "moving product development and software engineering staff working on features for non-Google hardware to work on Google-branded devices." The goal here is to not spend more money, so Google is apparently sacrificing partner devices to focus on the Pixel division. So what projects are seeing cuts? Google TV is one, with the report saying: "Executives also have discussed moving some product managers working on Google TV software for television sets" to Wear OS and the Pixel Tablet. This is the only OS called out as specifically receiving less OS development. A lot of this report seems to focus on cuts to Google Assistant's support for specific form factors, which is strange since Google Assistant is more or less the same on every platform. The whole point of the Assistant is one reliable, predictable voice assistant that lives everywhere, and it's not clear what platform-specific support needs to be done other than whipping up an app that can receive audio and read back results.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

News outlet The Wire is investigating its own reporting amid an explosive dispute with Meta. From a report: Last week, The Wire, a small but gutsy Indian news outlet, seemed to land one explosive punch after another on Meta, the social media giant that owns Instagram and Facebook. The California company had given an influential official from India's ruling party the extraordinary power to censor Instagram posts that he didn't like, The Wire reported, citing a document leaked by a Meta insider. A day later, The Wire reported that Meta executives were scrambling to find the mole who leaked the story, citing a new internal email the publication had obtained. Finally, after Meta executives denied both reports on social media -- and, in an unusual move, insisted that The Wire's documents appeared fabricated -- The Wire released a lengthy rebuttal on Saturday that the outlet said would lay to rest any doubts about its reporting. It did not. Instead, The Wire is now investigating itself. The publication said Tuesday it launched an internal review of its stories about Meta, adding a new twist to a sensational dispute between a reputed Indian news organization and a powerful Silicon Valley company -- a clash that has captivated the technology and media industries in both India and the United States.Read more of this story at Slashdot.