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Security researchers have found a massive malware operation that has infected more than 10 million Android smartphones across more than 70 countries since at least November 2020 and is making millions of dollars for its operators on a monthly basis. The Record reports: Discovered by mobile security firm Zimperium, the new GriftHorse malware has been distributed via benign-looking apps uploaded on the official Google Play Store and on third-party Android app stores. If users install any of these malicious apps, GriftHorse starts peppering users with popups and notifications that offer various prizes and special offers. Users who tap on these notifications are redirected to an online page where they are asked to confirm their phone number in order to access the offer. But, in reality, users are subscribing themselves to premium SMS services that charge over $35 per month, money that are later redirected into the GriftHorse operators' pockets. Zimperium researchers Aazim Yaswant & Nipun Gupta, who have been tracking the GriftHorse malware for months, described it as "one of the most widespread campaigns the zLabs threat research team has witnessed in 2021." Based on what they've seen until now, the researchers estimated that the GriftHorse gang is currently making between $1.5 million to $4 million per month from their scheme.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Rivian held a three-day press event in Colorado last week where a number of journalists, including TechCrunch's Kirsten Korosec, were able to take the R1T electric truck for a spin. Today, the embargo lifted and we're able to hear about their experience." An anonymous reader shares an excerpt from Korosec's report: On its first try, Rivian produced the Goldilocks of pickup trucks. The Rivian R1T electric truck is neither too big nor small. It handles rock crawling and off-camber trails with ease, can zip from zero to 60 miles per hour on a dirt road in just a few seconds without the typical back-end slippage -- although there is an option to provide that drifting effect -- and it can crank through winding mountain roads, pushing the edge of each corner without body roll. It's loaded with the kind of interior and exterior touches that put it firmly in the premium zone -- and yet the Rivian R1T is no delicate flower. The company's designers and engineers helped the truck steer clear of pretension by combining form and function from tip to tail. Some of the added surprises -- the location of functional details like tie-downs, an air compressor and outlets -- suggest that numerous Rivian employees tested the truck in real-world conditions, including camping, mountain biking and even more mundane tasks like grocery-fetching. The result is a vehicle that feels right for all seasons and ready for anything. And, importantly, it's a joy to drive. On a press drive over three days, a near-production-spec R1T proved to be the electric truck none of us knew we needed. That's not to say every choice landed perfectly. There are a few hardware details and elements on the software user interface side of things that could use a nip here and a tuck there. I'm looking at you, odd notch that is maybe a pen holder, but certainly the soon-to-be dust collector by the wireless charging pad. To be clear, far more time and miles are required to provide a full review. Still, as a total package, the Rivian R1T impresses. [Continue reading to hear about Korosec's thoughts on the nuts and bolts, circuit, handling and performance, user interface(s), and hardware accessories.] For a technical in-depth review of the Rivian R1T, Quinn Nelson from Snazzy Labs has produced an excellent video explaining his thoughts on the driving dynamics, vehicle functions, user interface design, and more. Fair warning: it's nearly 30 minutes long. Further reading: Autoblog: 2022 Rivian R1T First Drive Review: An Electric Truck Is a Better Truck Car and Driver: The 2022 Rivian R1T Electric Pickup Embraces Duality Business Insider: Rivian R1T: Hitting the Trails In the New Electric Pickup Fox News: Test Drive: The 2022 Rivian R1T Electric Pickup Is a Game-Changing TruckRead more of this story at Slashdot.

Rolls-Royce is the latest automaker to reveal plans to move entirely to electric vehicles within the next decade. Engadget reports: Spectre, Rolls-Royce's first EV, will arrive in the last quarter of 2023. The BMW brand plans to start testing the vehicle soon, according to Reuters. Rolls-Royce teased the EV in some images, but it literally kept the Spectre's design under wraps. Rolls-Royce CEO Torsten Muller-Otvos said that by 2030, the automaker "will no longer be in the business of producing or selling any internal combustion engine products." Sibling brand Mini has made a similar pledge. Parent company BMW has not set a date for making a full switch to EVs, though it aims to move half of production to electric models by the end of this decade.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

AltMachine writes: U.S. Commerce Secretary Raimondo wants the U.S. to work with Europe to slow China's innovation rate, while at the same time accusing China of ripping of western intellectual properties. "America is most effective when we work with our allies," Raimondo told CNBC's Kayla Tausche in an exclusive interview. "If we really want to slow down China's rate of innovation, we need to work with Europe. They're ripping off our IP, they are not playing by the rules. It's not a level playing field. And so we need to hold their feet to the fire to make sure that they do that." Raimondo invokes the ideological divide to justify the push. "We don't want autocratic governments like China, writing the rules of the road. We together with our allies, who care about privacy, freedom, individual rights, individual protection, we need to write the rules of the road," Raimondo said. Similar to innovation history of the U.S. which evolved from apprehending IPs of other countries before turning into a technological innovation powerhouse, China has in recent years greatly accelerated its R&D spendings and fortified IP protections. Of the more than 1,600 cases analyzed, IP owners won more than 80% of the time and permanent injunctions were issued by the Chinese courts in more than 90% of the cases. As noted by Judge Gang Feng of the Beijing IP Court in 2016, foreign corporations had a 100% win rate before that court in 2015. "We have to work with our European allies to deny China the most advanced technology so that they can't catch up in critical areas like semiconductors," Raimondo added. "We want to work with Europe, to write the rules of the road for technology, whether it's TikTok or artificial intelligence or cyber." Further reading: China's Growing Power Crunch Threatens More Global Supply Chain ChaosRead more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Krebs On Security: The new $30 AirTag tracking device from Apple has a feature that allows anyone who finds one of these tiny location beacons to scan it with a mobile phone and discover its owner's phone number if the AirTag has been set to lost mode. But according to new research, this same feature can be abused to redirect the Good Samaritan to an iCloud phishing page -- or to any other malicious website. The AirTag's "Lost Mode" lets users alert Apple when an AirTag is missing. Setting it to Lost Mode generates a unique URL at https://found.apple.com/ and allows the user to enter a personal message and contact phone number. Anyone who finds the AirTag and scans it with an Apple or Android phone will immediately see that unique Apple URL with the owner's message. When scanned, an AirTag in Lost Mode will present a short message asking the finder to call the owner at at their specified phone number. This information pops up without asking the finder to log in or provide any personal information. But your average Good Samaritan might not know this. That's important because Apple's Lost Mode doesn't currently stop users from injecting arbitrary computer code into its phone number field -- such as code that causes the Good Samaritan's device to visit a phony Apple iCloud login page. The vulnerability was discovered and reported to Apple by Bobby Rauch, a security consultant and penetration tester based in Boston. Rauch told KrebsOnSecurity the AirTag weakness makes the devices cheap and possibly very effective physical trojan horses.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Germany's federal cybersecurity watchdog, the BSI, is conducting a technical examination of a mobile phone manufactured by China's Xiaomi, a spokesperson for the interior ministry told Reuters on Wednesday. From the report: The spokesperson did not provide further details on what kind of examination the agency was carrying out. Lithanua's state cybersecurity body said last week that Xiaomi phones had a built-in ability to detect and censor terms such as "Free Tibet," "Long live Taiwan independence" or "democracy movement." Xiaomi said on Monday it was engaging a third-party expert to assess the allegations by Lithuania that its smartphones carry built-in censorship capabilities.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A global deceleration of laptop sales is being linked in a new report from market research firm Trendforce to increasing vaccination rates and a corresponding decrease in remote work and remote learning. From a report: According to the findings, demand for Chromebooks slid by over 50 percent during one month since July. And notebook shipments for the remainder of the year are expected to be affected by the COVID-19 pandemic and the shifting demand from businesses. Trendforce said that interest for ChromeOS-powered laptops within the last year had primarily been driven by remote learning. The analyst pointed to rising vaccination rates in North America, Europe, and Japan throughout the second half of 2021 as recently slowing demand for Chromebooks. After being a "primary driver" of overall laptop shipments in the first half of 2021, Chromebook shipments dropped by over 50 percent during one month in the second half of the year. And because Chromebooks represent a "relatively high share" of HP's and Samsung's overall laptop shipments, the OEMs' shipments are predicted to fall by 10 to 20 percent from the first half of the year to the second half. Still, it's not all downhill from here for Chromebooks -- Trendforce still expects a total of 36 million devices shipped in 2021. "The US FCC released the Emergency Connectivity Fund, which totals US$7.17 billion, in July in order to facilitate the purchase of such equipment as notebooks, tablets, and network connectivity devices by schools and libraries," Trendforce said. "This fund will likely sustain the demand for Chromebooks for the next year."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin "gambled" with its Moon lander proposal last year by hoping NASA would be willing to negotiate its $5.9 billion price tag, agency attorneys argued in blunt legal filings obtained by The Verge. From a report: NASA, cash-strapped with a tight budget from Congress, declined to negotiate and turned down Blue Origin's lunar lander in April and picked SpaceX's instead, sparking ongoing protests from Bezos' space company. NASA officials haven't talked much about Blue Origin's legal quarrels beyond occasional acknowledgements that the company's protesting -- first at a watchdog agency and now in federal court -- is holding up the agency's effort to land humans on the Moon by 2024. But in hundreds of pages of legal filings The Verge obtained in a Freedom of Information Act request, agency attorneys exhaustively laid out NASA's defense of its Artemis Moon program and doubled down on its decision to pick one company, SpaceX, for the first crewed mission to the lunar surface since 1972. In NASA's main response to Blue Origin's protest, filed in late May, senior agency attorneys accused the company of employing a sort of door-in-the-face bidding tactic with its $5.9 billion proposal for Blue Moon, the lunar lander Blue Origin is building with a "National Team" that includes Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman. Blue Origin was "able and willing" to offer NASA a lower price for its lunar lander but chose not to because it expected NASA to ask and negotiate for a lower price first, the attorneys allege, citing a six-page declaration written by the company's senior vice president Brent Sherwood in April.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

It turns out school reopenings are disrupting the cash flow of industrious teenagers who spent the pandemic scooping up in-demand products via bots and reselling them for a hefty profit. From a report: "Yes, I am back in school. Yea, it's very annoying," said one US high school student named Dillon, who regularly buys video game consoles and graphics cards with automated bots. "I am sitting in math class and drawing class with my computer open, and I get told to shut it down during a [product] drop sometimes," he told PCMag in an interview. Dillon may be young, but he's among the legion of online scalpers who spent the pandemic at home buying and reselling the tech world's most-wanted products. "I would say around $10,000 to $12,500 average a month," he told PCMag. "Some months it would be exponentially higher, some would be lower." Using automated bots he purchased and installed on his computer, and intel from other online resellers, Dillon scooped up products like the PlayStation 5 ahead of other consumers and sold them off at inflated pricing. But lately, Dillon's reselling hit a snag. After months away from high school because of the pandemic, he's now back in the classroom, where computer use can be strictly controlled. "When everything closed [during the pandemic], I could do whatever I wanted because I was doing my school from home," he said. But with the return of in-classroom teaching, Dillon says his profits have now fallen by about 25%.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

In a new milestone for the US government's anti-robocall efforts, phone companies are now prohibited from accepting calls from providers that did not comply with a Federal Communications Commission deadline that passed this week. From a report: "Beginning today, if a voice service provider's certification and other required information does not appear in the FCC's Robocall Mitigation Database, intermediate providers and voice service providers will be prohibited from directly accepting that provider's traffic," the FCC said yesterday. Specifically, phone companies must block traffic from other "voice service providers that have neither certified to implementation of STIR/SHAKEN caller ID authentication standards nor filed a detailed robocall mitigation plan with the FCC." As we've written, the STIR (Secure Telephone Identity Revisited) and SHAKEN (Signature-based Handling of Asserted Information Using toKENs) protocols verify the accuracy of Caller ID by using digital certificates based on public-key cryptography. STIR/SHAKEN is now widely deployed on IP networks because large phone companies were required to implement it by June 30 this year, but it isn't a cure-all. Because of technology limitations, there was no requirement to implement STIR/SHAKEN on older TDM-based networks used with copper landlines, for instance. The FCC has said that "providers using older forms of network technology [must] either upgrade their networks to IP or actively work to develop a caller ID authentication solution that is operational on non-IP networks." The FCC also gave carriers with 100,000 or fewer customers until June 30, 2023, to comply with the STIR/SHAKEN requirement, though the commission is seeking comment on a plan to make that deadline June 30, 2022, instead because "evidence demonstrates that a subset of small voice service providers appear to be originating a high number of calls relative to their subscriber base and are also generating a high and increasing share of illegal robocalls compared to larger providers."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

At its Search On event today, Google introduced several new features that, taken together, are its strongest attempts yet to get people to do more than type a few words into a search box. From a report: By leveraging its new Multitask Unified Model (MUM) machine learning technology in small ways, the company hopes to kick off a virtuous cycle: it will provide more detail and context-rich answers, and in return it hopes users will ask more detailed and context-rich questions. The end result, the company hopes, will be a richer and deeper search experience. Google SVP Prabhakar Raghavan oversees search alongside Assistant, ads, and other products. He likes to say -- and repeated in an interview this past Sunday -- that "search is not a solved problem." That may be true, but the problems he and his team are trying to solve now have less to do with wrangling the web and more to do with adding context to what they find there. For its part, Google is going to begin flexing its ability to recognize constellations of related topics using machine learning and present them to you in an organized way. A coming redesign to Google search will begin showing "Things to know" boxes that send you off to different subtopics. When there's a section of a video that's relevant to the general topic -- even when the video as a whole is not -- it will send you there. Shopping results will begin to show inventory available in nearby stores, and even clothing in different styles associated with your search. For your part, Google is offering new ways to search that go beyond the text box. It's making an aggressive push to get its image recognition software Google Lens into more places. It will be built into the Google app on iOS and also the Chrome web browser on desktops. And with MUM, Google is hoping to get users to do more than just identify flowers or landmarks, but instead use Lens directly to ask questions and shop.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Leading UK researchers, vets and farmers have urged ministers to free livestock science of unnecessary legal curbs as the country prepares, post-Brexit, to ease gene-editing rules. Such a move would allow the creation of new breeds of animals resistant to disease, heat and drought, they argue. From a report: The government is expected to propose easing gene-editing restrictions in the near future to enable the creation of new generations of crops. However, the group -- which has written to the environment secretary, George Eustice -- worries there is less interest in using the technology to create new breeds of pigs, cows and poultry. "It is every bit as important that we use the enormous power of gene editing to create breeds of animals that are resistant to disease, droughts and heatwaves as it is to fashion new crop varieties," said Professor Bruce Whitelaw of Edinburgh's Roslin Institute. "This is particularly important as global warming intensifies and we strive to ensure we are protected against future outbreaks of zoonotic diseases." The value of gene editing in this latter field is shown by work carried out at Roslin and Imperial College London, where scientists have identified a gene that may confer resistance to influenza. "We can now think about using gene editing to create breeds resistant to avian and swine flu, and so curb outbreaks on farms, while also reducing the risk of triggering future pandemics in humans," added Whitelaw, one of the letter's signatories.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Russian authorities have arrested and detained Ilya Sachkov, the co-founder and chief executive of Group-IB -- one of the biggest cybersecurity companies in the country -- on charges of treason. From a report: Details about Sachkov's detention remain unclear but it was reported by Russian media as authorities searched the company's offices, reports Reuters. State news agency Tass said Sachkov, who was arrested on Tuesday, was charged with allegedly transferring classified information to an unnamed foreign government, claims that Sachkov denied, according to the report. Group-IB confirmed the arrest of its CEO, but a spokesperson for Group-IB did not comment beyond a statement on the company's website, which said the company is examining the Moscow court's decision and that it is "confident" in Sachkov's innocence. Sachkov, 35, founded Group-IB in 2003. The company, now headquartered in Singapore, helps companies and governments investigate cyberattacks and online fraud, and has customers ranging from Interpol to Russian banks and defense companies.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

What's in the future for VR headsets made by Valve, which launched the pricey, bulky, and impressive Valve Index in August 2019? The best information in the wild right now seems to be coming from Valve itself: data-mining discoveries and patent applications are adding up to something that looks like a brand-new Valve VR system with some form of built-in wireless functionality. From a report: Sources familiar with matters at Valve have confirmed to Ars that information in the wild is legitimate -- at least in terms of products being made within Valve's headquarters, even if those products don't ultimately see retail launches. A new, unclear "ism" This week's information roundup comes courtesy of VR industry reporter and YouTube channel host Brad Lynch, who received a tip after tracking months of Valve patent applications. The tip came in the form of a device code-named "Deckard," which is mentioned in SteamVR's publicly available branches from as far back as January. Ars can confirm the legitimacy of "Deckard" as a code-named device worked on inside of Valve's headquarters. The information gleaned by Lynch points to multiple iterations of this new code-named headset, including an updated "proof of concept" version referenced this June, along with the ability to activate a "Valve internal menu" that brings up two new SteamVR menu options. These options, dubbed "prism" and "standalone system layer," have yet to be activated in meaningful ways, so their names and meaning remain a matter of speculation. The latter term, "standalone," implies that the hardware might work all by itself -- as opposed to, say, being plugged into a computer or tracked by Valve's unwieldy SteamVR Tracking Boxes.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

YouTube will begin removing content questioning any approved medical vaccine, not just those for Covid-19, a departure from the video site's historically hands-off approach. From a report: The division of Alphabet's Google announced Wednesday that it will extend its policy against misinformation to cover all vaccines that health authorities consider effective. The ban will include any media that claims vaccines are dangerous or lead to chronic health outcomes such as autism, said Matt Halprin, YouTube's vice president for trust and safety. A year ago, YouTube banned certain videos critical of Covid-19 vaccines. The company said it has since pulled more than 130,000 videos for violating that rule. But many videos got around the rule by making dubious claims about vaccines without mentioning Covid-19. YouTube determined its policy was too limited. "We can imagine viewers then potentially extrapolating to Covid-19," Halprin said in an interview. "We wanted to make sure that we're covering the whole gamut."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Russia's Foreign Ministry has threatened harsh retaliatory measures against YouTube after the video sharing service suspended two German-language accounts run by Russian state media, according to a report from Russia's TASS news outlet. Russia went so far as to call the suspensions "information warfare." From a report: The YouTube accounts, RT Germany and Der Fehlende Part, were reportedly deleted after spreading misinformation about the covid-19 pandemic and had a combined subscriber count of roughly 700,000 before being deleted. RT Germany was initially suspended from posting new videos for a week after breaching YouTube's covid-19 misinformation rules, but the account was deleted completely after RT allegedly uploaded the content again to another channel called Der Fehlende Part, or "The Missing Part," in English. "Considering the nature of the incident, which is fully in line with the logic of the information warfare unleashed against Russia, taking retaliatory symmetrical measures against the German media in Russia would seem not just an appropriate, but also a necessary thing to do, especially taking into account that [the German media] were caught interfering into our country's domestic affairs on several occasions in the past," the Russian Foreign Ministry said in a statement to TASS on Tuesday.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The Federal Trade Commission is considering strengthening online privacy protections, including for children, in an effort to bypass legislative logjams in Congress. WSJ: The rules under consideration could impose significant new obligations on businesses across the economy related to how they handle consumer data, people familiar with the matter said. The early talks are the latest indication of the five-member commission's more aggressive posture under its new chairwoman, Lina Khan, a Democrat who has been a vocal critic of big business, particularly large technology companies. Congressional efforts to assist the FTC in tackling perceived online privacy problems will also be the focus of a Senate Commerce Committee hearing Wednesday. If the agency chooses to move forward with an initiative, any broad new rule would likely take years to implement. In writing new privacy rules, the FTC could follow several paths, the people said: It could look to declare certain business practices unfair or deceptive, using its authority to police such conduct. It could also tap a less-used legal authority that empowers the agency to go after what it considers unfair methods of competition, perhaps by viewing certain businesses' data-collection practices as exclusionary. The agency could also address privacy protections for children by updating its rules under the 1998 Children's Online Privacy Protection Act. And it could use its enforcement powers to target individual companies, as some privacy advocates urge.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from War Is Boring: An OPSEC violation has once again made a case for why using TikTok should be a punishable offense in the military, this time after someone revealed some US stealth technology testing going on and posted it to the Chinese government-affiliated platform. The stealthy object -possibly a component of a new drone or plane- was filmed on a tractor-trailer platform at Helendale Radar Cross Section Facility. After making their debut on a social media platform tied to America's top adversary, images of the object quickly made their way to the internet, gracing everything from 4chan to Reddit. It is unknown what project the object is tied to, though speculation has ranged from a new Boeing product to even the famed "TicTac" UFO sighted by Naval Aviators in recent years. Steve Trimble of Aviation Week wrote in a tweet: "I showed this to Gen Mark Kelly, Air Combat Command chief. His immediate reply was that he had no idea what it was. And then he took my laptop and stared at it for about 20 seconds. His expression was (WARNING: my impression) somewhere between confused and impressed."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Eero and Ring -- two Amazon-owned companies -- have teamed up to produce a home security system that incorporates an Eero router inside. Engadget reports: Ring COO Mike Harris said that the decision to work with Eero was not one foisted down from upon high by Amazon. Instead, Harris said that both companies saw the opportunity to work together to help leverage their individual skills in tandem. To take advantage of the technology, you'll need to sign up to Ring's new subscription product, dubbed Protect Pro. The package offers cloud video storage, professional monitoring, Alexa Guard Plus, 24/7 backup internet for your security devices (via an LTE module in the Ring Pro base station) and Eero's cybersecurity subscription product for network protection. This, at least in the US as it launches, will set you back $20 a month, or $200 per year per location up front. At the same time, Ring is launching a system dubbed "Virtual Security Guard," which connects users to third-party security guards. You'll need to pay for that separately, but you can hand over access to select Ring camera feeds to those companies who can keep a watch over your property. It is only when motion is detected that an operator can access your feed, and can speak to whoever is there to determine their intentions. Ring adds that third parties can't view motion events when the camera is disarmed, and can't download, share or save the clips of what's going on in your front yard. The first company to sign up for the program is Rapid Response, with others expected to join in the near future. The Virtual Security Guard service will require you to apply for early access, but the Ring Alarm Pro can be pre-ordered today for $250. (Since this isn't a Slashvertisement, we won't include a link to the product; you'll have to search for it yourself. Sorry not sorry.)Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Thomas Macaulay writes via The Next Web: Samson and Delilah is among the most famous works by Peter Paul Rubens, one of the most influential artists of the 17th century. The painting depicts an Old Testament story in which the warrior Samson is betrayed by his lover Delilah. When London's National Gallery bought the masterpiece in 1980, it became the third most expensive artwork (PDF) ever purchased at auction. But the buyers may now be searching for their receipt. According to a new AI analysis, their prized possession is almost certainly a fake. The tests were conducted by Art Recognition, a Swiss company that uses algorithms to authenticate artworks. The firm's tool is based on a deep convolutional neuronal network. The system learns to identify an artist's characteristics by training the algorithm on images of their real works. The training dataset is then augmented by splitting the images into smaller patches, which are zoomed into to capture the finer details. Once the training is complete, the algorithm is fed a new image to assess. It then analyzes the picture's features to evaluate the likelihood of it being genuine. After comparing Samson and Delilah with 148 genuine Rubens paintings, the system gave the artwork a 91% probability of being inauthentic. Carina Popovici, the cofounder of Art Recognition, was shocked by the results: "We repeated the experiments to be really sure that we were not making a mistake, and the result was always the same. Every patch, every single square, came out as fake, with more than 90% probability."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from BleepingComputer: A new script allows you to install Windows 11 on devices with incompatible hardware, such as missing TPM 2.0, incompatible CPUs, or the lack of Secure Boot. Even better, the script also works on virtual machines, allowing you to upgrade to the latest Windows Insider build. This new script was released as part of the extremely useful Universal MediaCreationTool wrapper, a batch file that allows you to create an ISO for any version of Windows 10, with Windows 11 support added last week. While the main script of this open-source project is the 'MediaCreationTool.bat' used to create Windows ISOs, it also includes a script named 'Skip_TPM_Check_on_Dynamic_Update.cmd,' which configures the device to bypass compatible hardware checks. When Windows 11 was first announced, Microsoft released the operating system's new system requirements, which included a TPM 2.0 security processor, Secure Boot, newer CPUs, and at least 64 GB of hard drive space. As Microsoft realized that many people, especially those in the enterprise, would be testing Windows 11 preview builds on virtual machines, they exempted them from the system requirements (PDF). However, Microsoft is now requiring compatible hardware even on virtual machines and taking a firm stance on its system requirement, going as far as to say that people who install Windows 11 on incompatible hardware may not get security updates.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

sciencehabit shares a report from Science.org: Identical twins are living proof of how genetics shapes our looks and traits. Now, researchers have found they carry a molecular signature on their DNA that no one else has -- one that becomes fixed in their cells early in development and stays with them into adulthood. This signature doesn't seem to influence a twin's health, but it could offer insights into how identical twinning happens. "It is a starting point" for solving "what is really an enigma," says Jenny van Dongen, a twin genetics researcher at Free University (VU), Amsterdam. The signature could also be used to test whether a person had a "vanishing twin," an identical twin that died in the womb. An international team led by van Dongen and VU twin genetics researcher Dorret Boomsma looked for clues in what's known as the epigenome. Patterns of chemical tags called methyl groups glom onto genes, turning them on or off. (Such epigenetic changes are responsible for everything from enabling Peruvians to live at high altitudes to helping the placenta develop.) Using blood and cheek cell samples, the researchers scanned the epigenomes of more than 3000 identical twins, as well as a comparable number of fraternal twins and some twins' parents. They looked at 400,000 different places on each person's genome. About 800 locations had differences in methylation that set identical twins apart from everyone else, the team reports today in Nature Communications. "It's likely something established very early on that is propagated to subsequent cells," van Dongen says. Some of the methylated or unmethylated spots made sense, such as tags on genes involved in cell adhesion that might influence how easily a fertilized egg splits into two embryos. But changes in other locations, such as the ends of chromosomes, don't have an obvious explanation. These regions have been associated with aging, yet identical twins' life spans are similar to other people's. An epigenetic test might also be useful to determine whether a person once had an identical twin that vanished in the uterus, perhaps because it didn't have enough room or nutrients to grow. Sometimes a twin fetus appears in an ultrasound before vanishing, but other times it may be absorbed without leaving a trace. As many as 12% of pregnancies start out as multiples (including fraternal twins), according to some estimates, but only 2% of twin pairs survive. Using a separate data set, the epigenetic signature could predict whether someone was an identical twin in 70% to 80% of cases, van Dongen says. With data from a large enough group of people, the test would get even better, she says, and it could also help "predict the exact rate" of vanishing twins. That figure would be useful not only for researchers, but also "of broad interest" to twins themselves and to families who are mourning the loss of an identical twin, Boomsma says.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Stack Overflow's copy-paste keyboard, an April Fools' Day prank that ribbed lazy programmers, is now actually for sale. CNET reports: It's been a joke in programming circles for years: Instead of writing your code from scratch, just head over to the Stack Overflow forums and copy the way another programmer already solved your problem. The meme is such a fixture that Stack Overflow turned it into an April Fools' Day prank this year, saying it would limit free access to its site unless people bought The Key, a device with buttons for opening Stack Overflow, copying and pasting. Enough people said they'd actually buy one that Stack Overflow, with help from keyboard aficionado Cassidy Williams and custom keyboard maker Drop, designed one for real and began selling it for $29. A portion of the keyboard sales' proceeds will go to Digitalundivided, a nonprofit set up to help Black and Latinx women succeed as technology entrepreneurs. Further reading: How Often Do People Actually Copy and Paste From Stack Overflow?Read more of this story at Slashdot.

em1ly shares a report from Motherboard: Amazon's new robot called Astro is designed to track the behavior of everyone in your home to help it perform its surveillance and helper duties, according to leaked internal development documents and video recordings of Astro software development meetings obtained by Motherboard. The system's person recognition system is heavily flawed, according to two sources who worked on the project. The documents, which largely use Astro's internal codename "Vesta" for the device, give extensive insight into the robot's design, Amazon's philosophy, how the device tracks customer behavior as well as flow charts of how it determines who a "stranger" is and whether it should take any sort of "investigation activity" against them. The meeting document spells out the process in a much blunter way than Amazon's cutesy marketing suggests. "[Astro] slowly and intelligently patrols the home when unfamiliar person are around, moving from scan point to scan point (the best location and pose in any given space to look around) looking and listening for unusual activity," one of the files reads. "Vesta moves to a predetermined scan point and pose to scan any given room, looking past and over obstacles in its way. Vesta completes one complete patrol when it completes scanning all the scan point on the floorplan." [...] Developers who worked on Astro say the versions of the robot they worked on did not work well. "Astro is terrible and will almost certainly throw itself down a flight of stairs if presented the opportunity. The person detection is unreliable at best, making the in-home security proposition laughable," a source who worked on the project said. "The device feels fragile for something with an absurd cost. The mast has broken on several devices, locking itself in the extended or retracted position, and there's no way to ship it to Amazon when that happens." "They're also pushing it as an accessibility device but with the masts breaking and the possibility that at any given moment it'll commit suicide on a flight of stairs, it's, at best, absurdist nonsense and marketing and, at worst, potentially dangerous for anyone who'd actually rely on it for accessibility purposes," the source said.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Wall Street Journal: Facebook has come under increasing fire in recent days for its effect on young users and its efforts to create products for them. Inside the company, teams of employees have for years been laying plans to attract preteens that go beyond what is publicly known, spurred by fear that Facebook could lose a new generation of users critical to its future. Internal Facebook documents reviewed by The Wall Street Journal show the company formed a team to study preteens, set a three-year goal to create more products for them and commissioned strategy papers about the long-term business opportunities presented by these potential users. In one presentation, it contemplated whether there might be a way to engage children during play dates. "Why do we care about tweens?" said one document from 2020. "They are a valuable but untapped audience." The Facebook documents show that competition from rivals, in particular Snap Inc.'s Snapchat and TikTok, is a motivating factor behind its work. [...] Over the past five years, Facebook has made what it called "big bets" on designing products that would appeal to preteens across its services, according to a document from earlier this year. In more than a dozen studies over that period, the documents show, Facebook has tried to understand which products might resonate with children and "tweens" (ages 10 through 12), how these young people view competitors' apps and what concerns their parents. "With the ubiquity of tablets and phones, kids are getting on the internet as young as six years old. We can't ignore this and we have a responsibility to figure it out," said a 2018 document labeled confidential. "Imagine a Facebook experience designed for youth." Earlier this year, a senior researcher at Facebook presented to colleagues a new approach to how the company should think about designing products for children. It provided a blueprint for how to introduce the company's products to younger children. Rather than offer just two types of products -- those for users 13 and older, and a messenger app for kids -- Facebook should tailor its features to six age brackets, said a slide titled "where we've been, and where we're going." The age brackets included: adults, late teens ages 16 to maturity, teens ages 13 to 15, tweens ages 10 to 12, children ages 5 to 9 and young kids ages zero to four. [...] "Our ultimate goal is messaging primacy with U.S. tweens, which may also lead to winning with teens," one of the documents said. Yesterday, Facebook paused its plans to develop a version of Instagram for kids under 13 after facing pressure from lawmakers.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

According to new research published this week in American Heart Association Journal, Apple Watch can detect arrhythmias other than Atrial Fibrillation (AFib). The Apple watch irregular pulse detection algorithm was found to have a positive predictive value of 0.84 for the identification of atrial fibrillation (AFib). MyHealthyApple reports: The Apple Heart Study investigated a smartwatch-based irregular pulse notification algorithm to identify AFib. For this secondary analysis, the researchers analyzed participants who received an ambulatory ECG patch after index irregular pulse notification. Among 419,297 participants enrolled in the Apple Heart Study, 450 participant ECG patches were analyzed, with no AF on 297 ECG patches (66%). Non-AF arrhythmias (excluding supraventricular tachycardias [less than] 30 beats and pauses [less than] 3 seconds) were detected in 119 participants (40.1%) with ECG patches without AFib. 76 participants (30.5%) reported subsequent AF diagnoses. In participants with an irregular pulse notification on the Apple Watch and no AF observed on ECG patch, atrial and ventricular arrhythmias, mostly PACs and PVCs, were detected in 40% of participants.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Thomas Claburn writes via The Register: Microsoft Exchange clients like Outlook have been supplying unprotected user credentials if you ask in a particular way since at least 2016. Though aware of this, Microsoft's advice continues to be that customers should communicate only with servers they trust. On August 10, 2016, Marco van Beek, managing director at UK-based IT consultancy Supporting Role, emailed the Microsoft Security Response Center to disclose an Autodiscover exploit that worked with multiple email clients, including Microsoft Outlook. "Basically, I have discovered that it is extremely easy to get access to Exchange (and therefore Active Directory) user passwords in plain text," he wrote. "It doesn't necessarily require any breach of corporate security, and at its most secure, is only as secure as file level access to the corporate website." His proof-of-concept exploit code, which affected Outlook (both Mac and PC), default email apps for Android and iOS, Apple Mail for Mac OS X, and others, consisted of 11 lines of PHP, though he insisted the exploit probably could have been reduced to three lines. Microsoft acknowledged on August 11, 2016, that it had reproduced the issue in van Beek's report. Then on August 30, 2016, the Windows titan responded to van Beek by saying the report doesn't describe a genuine vulnerability: "Our security engineers and product team have reviewed this report and determined that it is not a security issue to be serviced as part of our monthly Patch Tuesday process. 'Never accept an SSL certificate without a matching host name' is already recommended for clients in the doc cited by your report: [link]. Before you send a request to a candidate, make sure it is trustworthy. Remember that you're sending the user's credentials, so it's important to make sure that you're only sharing them with a server you can trust. At a minimum, you should verify: That the endpoint is an HTTPS endpoint. Client applications should not authenticate or send data to a non-SSL endpoint. That the SSL certificate presented by the server is valid and from a trusted authority." "This response casually forgets to consider that a hacked web server still retains a perfectly valid certificate -- it just happens to use that trusted tunnel to serve up problems," said van Beek. "Also, I have only found one Exchange client so far which actually checks the hostname against the certificate, which is Microsoft's own test tool." Van Beek said he thought it was incredible that Microsoft confirmed the behavior he reported within hours but does not consider it to be a problem. He suggested three mitigations: changing the order of operations so that DNS gets checked first; never accepting an SSL certificate without a matching host name; and reviewing why and when clients respond to authentication requests. When asked if the company plans to take any steps to address credential exposure and whether it believes its guidance adequately addresses the problem, a Microsoft spokesperson said: "We are continuing to investigate the specific scenario shared by the researcher."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: How about paying for your Taco Bell order with Dogecoin? Or some of Whole Food's avocado ice cream with Bitcoin. That's the goal of a new partnership between crypto payment processor BitPay and Verifone, one of the world's largest providers of those little machines you use to pay via a credit card or Venmo at a checkout line. Later this year, the newest Verifone terminals will start accepting payments for U.S. merchants from a range of cryptocurrency wallets and tokens, the companies said in a statement Tuesday. Terms of the agreement weren't disclosed. Widespread use of tokens for purchases has been a goal that has long eluded the crypto industry, with most users focusing on speculation and merchants scared off by the price volatility of the digital assets. BitPay said it will provide greater protection from price swings since the funds will be settled promptly into the merchant's bank account in traditional currency once a transaction is completed. BitPay already processes more than 60,000 transactions a month, more than half of them in Bitcoin, according to the company. By comparison, Visa handles an average of 150 million transactions a day. While the companies didn't say which merchants will be included, some brands that Verifone works with already include American Eagle Outfitters, Macy's, Williams Sonoma, Taco Bell and Whole Foods.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The National Security Agency (NSA) and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) have published today technical guidance on properly securing VPN servers used by organizations to allow employees remote access to internal networks. From a report: The NSA said it put together the nine-page guide [PDF] after "multiple nation-state advanced persistent threat (APT) actors" weaponized vulnerabilities in common VPN servers as a way to breach organizations. "Exploitation of these CVEs [vulnerabilities] can enable a malicious actor to steal credentials, remotely execute code, weaken encrypted traffic's cryptography, hijack encrypted traffic sessions, and read sensitive data from the device," the NSA said today in a press release announcing the guide's publication. "If successful, these effects usually lead to further malicious access and could result in a large-scale compromise to the corporate network," the agency added.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

GW Ori is a star system 1,300 light years from Earth in the constellation of Orion. It is surrounded by a huge disk of dust and gas, a common feature of young star systems that are forming planets. But fascinatingly, it is a system with not one star, but three. From a report: As if that were not intriguing enough, GW Ori's disk is split in two, almost like Saturn's rings if they had a massive gap in between. And to make it even more bizarre, the outer ring is tilted at about 38 degrees. Scientists have been trying to explain what is going on there. Some hypothesized that the gap in the disk could be the result of one or more planets forming in the system. If so, this would be the first known planet that orbits three stars at once, also known as a circumtriple planet. Now the GW Ori system has been modeled in greater detail, and researchers say a planet -- a gassy world as massive as Jupiter -- is the best explanation for the gap in the dust cloud. Although the planet itself cannot be seen, astronomers may be witnessing it carve out its orbit in its first million years of its existence. A paper on the finding was published in September in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. The scientists say it disproves an alternative explanation -- that the gravitational torque of the stars cleared the space in the disk. Their paper suggests there is not enough turbulence in the disk, known as its viscosity, for this explanation to suffice The finding also highlights how much more there is to learn about the unexpected ways in which planets can form.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Amazon has been successful in nearly every industry it has entered, from books and grocery shopping to cloud computing and movie streaming. So it has been puzzling to many that success in the lucrative video game business has eluded the tech giant. On Tuesday, Amazon gave producing its own video games another try. From a report: After more than a year of delays, it released New World, an online multiplayer game in which players join factions, fight monsters, fight one another and colonize a fictional island in the Atlantic Ocean. The $40 computer game, which received generally positive reviews as players tested early versions over the past few months, arrives at a crucial time for the tech giant's disappointing gaming efforts. After spending by some estimates hundreds of millions of dollars, neither of the other two big-budget games that Amazon announced it was producing in 2016 alongside New World exists today. Some of its top gaming hires have departed over the years without putting out any notable titles. Last year, the company also removed another game from storefronts after a poor reception. New World "has to be our breakthrough game -- there's no doubt about it," said Christoph Hartmann, the vice president of Amazon Games. "Just for morale of people, at some point you want to see some success." Amazon's biggest accomplishment in the gaming industry so far has been the acquisition of Twitch, the livestreaming video site, which the company bought in 2014 for about $1 billion. Amazon has also forged ahead with a new gaming subscription service, Luna, and recently announced a new development studio in Montreal.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Air pollution is likely to have been responsible for up to 6 million premature births and 3 million underweight babies worldwide every year, research shows. From a report: The analysis, which combines the results of multiple scientific studies, is the first to calculate the total global burden of outdoor and indoor air pollution combined. Indoor pollution, mostly from cooking stoves burning solid fuel such as coal or wood, made up almost two-thirds of the total pollution burden on pregnancies in 2019, according to the latest findings. This is especially true in developing areas, such as in some parts of south-east Asia and sub-Saharan Africa. "At an individual level, indoor air pollution exposure appears to carry a much higher burden compared to outdoor levels," said Rakesh Ghosh, an epidemiologist at University of California, San Francisco and lead researcher on the paper, published in the journal Plos Medicine. "So, minimising household pollution exposure, to the extent possible, should be part of the message during prenatal care, especially where household pollution is prevalent." Air pollution is usually measured according to exposure to particulate matter smaller than 2.5 microns: once inhaled, the minuscule size of these particles allows them to be absorbed deep into the bloodstream, potentially causing far-reaching health problems.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

To slow the speed at which high temperatures and warm waters bleach the corals of the Great Barrier Reef, Australian scientists are spraying droplets of ocean water into the sky to form clouds to protect the environmental treasure. From a report: Researchers working on the so-called Cloud Brightening project said they use a turbine to spray microscopic sea particles to thicken existing clouds and reduce sunlight on the world's largest coral reef ecosystem located off Australia's northeast coast. The water droplets evaporate leaving only tiny salt crystals which float up into the atmosphere allowing water vapour to condense around them, forming clouds, said Daniel Harrison, a senior lecturer at Southern Cross University, who runs the project. "If we do it over an extended period of time for a few weeks to a couple of months when the corals are experiencing a marine heatwave we can actually start to lower the water temperature over the Reef," said Harrison. The project had its second trial in March, the end of the Southern Hemisphere summer when the Reef off Australia's northeast is at its hottest, gathering valuable data on the atmosphere when corals are at most risk of bleaching. A combination of light and warm water causes coral bleaching. By cutting light over the reef by 6% in summer, "bleaching stress" would be cut by 50% to 60% on the undersea ecosystem, Harrison said.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Amazon announced its long-rumored $999 Astro home robot on Tuesday. CNBC: I had a chance to check it out in a demo with Amazon last week and wanted to share a few thoughts on what Astro is, what it can and can't do and why Amazon decided to build a home robot. Astro seems like a strange gadget for Amazon to launch. The company is best known as an online store. And most of its operating profit comes from its AWS cloud business. Notably, Astro is a "Day 1 Edition" product, which means it won't be sold to everyone at first. [...] Astro is about the size of a small dog. It roams around your house on three wheels, including two big ones that prevent it from getting stuck and a smaller one for rotating. It has a camera that rises up on a 42-inch arm that can keep an eye on your home as Astro patrols while you're away. It can follow you around and play music or display TV shows on its 10-inch touchscreen. It can recognize faces (if you want it to) so you can load up two sodas in the back storage compartment and tell Astro to go to someone in the living room. Astro is like a combo of lots of Amazon's other gadgets placed on wheels. The cameras can be used for home security or for video chat, sort of combining Amazon's Ring cameras with its Echo Show smart screens. The cameras are also used to create a map of your house when you set Astro up for the first time. You can talk to Astro much like you'd talk to an Echo or Alexa (you can change the name to Alexa if you want) to get sports scores or the weather. And you can play movies or TV shows like you would on an Amazon tablet or Fire TV.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A computerized neural network has spoken: central banker Elvira Nabiullina needs to use simpler language if she wants more Russians to believe she can really reduce inflation. From a report: A study conducted by a pair of the Bank of Russia's own researchers came to the perhaps less-than-shocking conclusion that figuring out central bank statements takes a degree in economics. "All the main communication on monetary policy is accessible to only a professional audience right now," Alina Evstigneeva and Mark Sidorovsky, researchers at the bank's monetary-policy department wrote in an article published on a bank-sponsored website. "The potential for qualitative improvement in the language of communication is vast." The communications breakdown has important real-world implications, they argued. Ordinary Russians continue to be deeply skeptical of the central bank's commitment to keep inflation to its 4% target, with polls showing most expect price growth over the next year to be about triple that. That doubt helps keep inflation high, according to the central bank. Market professionals, who presumably have the economics education needed to understand the bank's words, are much more likely to expect inflation to be closer to target.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Microsoft is opening up its own app store in Windows even further today, inviting third-party app stores to integrate into the Microsoft Store. It's a significant change that will see both Amazon and Epic Games Store discoverable in the Microsoft Store in the coming months. From a report: "Just like any other app, third-party storefront apps will have a product detail page -- which can be found via search or by browsing -- so that users can easily find and install it with the same confidence as any other app in the Microsoft Store on Windows," explains Giorgio Sardo, general manager of the Microsoft Store. "Today, we are sharing that Amazon and Epic Games will bring their storefront apps to the Microsoft Store over the next few months, and we look forward to welcoming other stores as well in the future." The news comes months after Microsoft announced some major changes to the Microsoft Store. Not only is the store being overhauled for Windows 11 and eventually Windows 10, but Microsoft will also let developers keep 100 percent of the revenue from apps if they use alternative payment platforms. The only exception is that this doesn't apply to games.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

1Password is launching a new feature to let users create unique email aliases for logins, much like Apple's iCloud Plus Hide My Email function. From a report: 1Password is partnering with Fastmail to bring its masked email feature to the password manager, giving all users the option of hiding their email addresses from apps and services. "Your email address is your online identity," explains Bron Gondwana, CEO of Fastmail. "If your credentials are compromised in a data breach, having a randomly generated email address adds a second line of defense because it can't be associated with your primary email address, and therefore, your identity." This new masked email feature will be ideal for registering accounts for temporary purposes, like a free Wi-Fi network. But they can also be used to hide your personal email address from any app or service as the aliases don't expire unless a 1Password user manually deletes them.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Hmmmmmm writes: A growing power supply crunch in China is triggering blackouts for households and forcing factories to cut production, threatening to slow the country's vast economy and place even more strain on global supply chains. Companies in the country's industrial heartlands have been told to limit their energy consumption in order to reduce demand for power, state media has reported. And supply has been cut to some homes, reportedly even trapping people in elevators. An "unexpected and unprecedented" power cut hit three northeastern provinces on Monday, according to the Global Times, a state-run tabloid. The newspaper reported Tuesday that power rationing in Heilongjiang, Jilin and Liaoning provinces has "resulted in major disruptions to the daily lives of people and business operations." Power shortages have also hit the southern province of Guangdong, a major industrial and shipping hub. Local officials said Monday that many firms are trying to reduce demand by working two or three days per week. China's State Grid Corporation said Monday that it would "go all out to fight the tough battle of power supply," making every effort to secure residential consumption. China was hit by a similar power crunch in June, but the situation is getting worse because of a perfect storm. Its industries are facing huge pressure from soaring energy prices, and from Beijing to tackle carbon emissions. The world's biggest polluter is trying to meet a pledge that its carbon emissions will peak before 2030. That requires its provinces to use less fossil fuel for each unit of economic output, for example by burning less coal to generate power. At the same time, demand for Chinese-made goods has surged as the global economy emerges from the pandemic. The result: not enough power to go round. The shock is even prompting economists to cut growth expectations this year for the world's second largest economy.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The Wall Street Journal: More than 130 federal judges have violated U.S. law and judicial ethics by overseeing court cases involving companies in which they or their family owned stock. A Wall Street Journal investigation found that judges have improperly failed to disqualify themselves from 685 court cases around the nation since 2010. The jurists were appointed by nearly every president from Lyndon Johnson to Donald Trump. About two-thirds of federal district judges disclosed holdings of individual stocks, and nearly one of every five who did heard at least one case involving those stocks. Alerted to the violations by the Journal, 56 of the judges have directed court clerks to notify parties in 329 lawsuits that they should have recused themselves. That means new judges might be assigned, potentially upending rulings. When judges participated in such cases, about two-thirds of their rulings on motions that were contested came down in favor of their or their family's financial interests.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Google is so successful that it's the most searched for term on Microsoft's Bing search engine, the company's lawyer told a European Union court on Tuesday. From a report: "We have submitted evidence showing that the most common search query on Bing is by far Google," Alfonso Lamadrid, a lawyer for the Alphabet unit, said at the EU's General Court in Luxembourg. The tech giant has asked EU judges to overturn a record $5 billion fine and strike down a 2018 antitrust order that said Google unfairly pushed its search app on mobile phones running its Android software.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: LiquidVPN's business model was a fierce one, thriving on the fence of the law. In webpages seen by Ars, the VPN company boasted itself as "the best VPN for torrenting" that would also let you "unblock ISP banned streams," otherwise restricted due to copyright takedown requests. Furthermore, LiquidVPN customers were really in for a treat with "High Quality Popcorn Time Streams" thrown into the mix. And, of course, this was all a "DMCA Free Zone," since, much like any logless VPN provider, Liquid did not have the ability to forward DMCA notices to users downloading infringing content. Except, Liquid listed all of these features on its website explicitly and glamorized all of the possibilities. And imagine doing all these things seven days of the week without the risk of getting caught by your ISP or anyone else, reassured the VPN provider with a "full-refund" guarantee. Transparency can be a good thing when presenting your product, except when your marketing claims surpass the legal gray area. Unsurprisingly, in March this year, several filmmakers filed a lawsuit with the Florida District Court against LiquidVPN. This month, these plaintiffs are asking the court to issue a default judgment against LiquidVPN for the defendant's failure to plead or show up at the most recent court hearing. According to court documents (PDF), movie production firms argue LiquidVPN should not be extended "safe harbor" protections, as the defendant didn't establish a repeat-infringer policy or appoint a registered DMCA agent. The ask for $9,900,000 comprises the maximum statutory damage amount of $150,000 for each of the 66 works listed in the complaint. Additionally, $1,650,000 has been sought against LiquidVPN for "secondary liability as to DMCA violations." The asks don't stop there, however. The list of demands extends for LiquidVPN to permanently suspend accounts of repeat infringers, dismissing their "no log" policy. But the face of the LiquidVPN website is already nowhere to be seen. For weeks, the homepage has been unreachable, although the client area remains accessible.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Electric car inquiries are soaring as petrol stations in parts of the UK have started running out of fuel on Friday. The Guardian reports: While scenes of chaos play out at petrol stations across the country amid shortages, for many electric vehicle (EV) dealers the fuel crisis has led to an unexpected surge in inquiries and sales. EVA England, a non-profit representing new and prospective EV drivers, reports a rise in electric car inquiries and in interest at EV dealers, particularly in the last week. Along with existing factors such as the expansion of London's ultra-low emission zone, the fuel crisis has proved to be another trigger point, he said. "People were using it as 'this is the moment where I'm not going to put this off any longer,'" [said Martin Miller, owner of an electric car dealership in Guildford, Surrey]. The EV market is no longer the preserve of innovators and early adopters, he said, with the most popular models the Nissan Leaf, Volkswagen ID 3 and Jaguar I-Pace. Ben Strzalko, the owner of Electric Cars UK in Leyland, Lancashire, said that as a small business it would take a few months to feel the knock-on effect of the fuel crisis on sales. But every time there are problems with petrol or diesel, he said they acted as "one more tick for people making that transition to electric cars." Matt Cleevely, the owner of Cleevely Electric Vehicles in Cheltenham, Gloucestershire, which specialises in used EVs, had a surge of inquiries over the weekend and on Monday morning from customers citing the fuel crisis as a reason for switching to electric. He expects enthusiasm to continue rising, with petrol shortages adding "fuel to the fire." Further reading: Europe's Energy Crisis Is About To Go Global As Gas Prices Soar (Bloomberg)Read more of this story at Slashdot.

schwit1 shares a report from GPS Daily: Engineering researchers have developed a method to use signals broadcast by Starlink internet service satellites to accurately locate a position here on Earth, much like GPS does. It is the first time the Starlink system has been harnessed by researchers outside SpaceX for navigation. The researchers used signals from six Starlink satellites to pinpoint a location on Earth within 8 meters of accuracy. The researchers did not need assistance from SpaceX to use the satellite signals, and they emphasized that they had no access to the actual data being sent through the satellites -- only to information related to the satellite's location and movement. For this research, [Zak Kassas, director of the Center for Automated Vehicles Research with Multimodal Assured Navigation (CARMEN), a multi-institution transportation center housed at The Ohio State University] and his research team studied the Starlink system and analyzed signals being sent by the satellites. They developed an algorithm that could use the signals of multiple satellites to locate a position on Earth. Then, they set up an antenna on the campus of UCI and tried to use the network to pinpoint the antenna's location. Using Starlink, they identified the antenna's location within about 7.7 meters. GPS, by comparison, generally identifies a device's location within 0.3 and 5 meters. The team has used similar techniques with other low Earth orbit satellite constellations, but with less accuracy, pinpointing locations within about 23 meters, Kassas said. The team has also been working with the U.S. Air Force to pinpoint locations of high-altitude aircraft; they were able to come within 5 meters using land-based cellular signals, Kassas said. The research paper has been published in the journal IEEE Xplore.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader shares a report from Daring Fireball, written by John Gruber: Chaim Gartenberg, writing for The Verge, "The Lightning Port Isn't About Convenience; It's About Control": "Notably absent from Apple's argument, though, is the fact that cutting out a Lightning port on an iPhone wouldn't just create more e-waste (if you buy Apple's logic) or inconvenience its customers. It also means that Apple would lose out on the revenue it makes from every Lightning cable and accessory that works with the iPhone, Apple-made or not -- along with the control it has over what kinds of hardware does (or doesn't) get to exist for the iPhone and which companies get to make them. Apple's MFi program means that if you want to plug anything into an iPhone, be it charger or adapter or accessory, you have to go through Apple. And Apple takes a cut of every one of those devices, too." Gartenberg summarizes a commonly-held theory here: that Apple is sticking with its proprietary Lightning port on iPhones because they profit from MFi peripherals. That it's a money grab. I don't think this is the case at all. Apple is happy to keep the money it earns from MFi, of course. And they're glad to have control over all iPhone peripherals. But I don't think there's serious money in that. It's loose-change-under-the-couch-cushion revenue by Apple's astonishingly high standards. How many normal people do you know who ever buy anything that plugs into a Lightning port other than a USB cable? And Apple doesn't make more money selling their own (admittedly overpriced) Lightning cables to iPhone owners than they do selling their own (also overpriced) USB-C cables to iPad Pro and MacBook owners. My theory is that Apple carefully weighs the pros and cons for each port on each device it makes, and chooses the technologies for those ports that it thinks makes for the best product for the most people. "What makes sense for the goals of this product that we will ship in three years? And then the subsequent models for the years after that?" Those are the questions Apple product designers ask. The sub-head on Gartenberg's piece is "The iPhone doesn't have USB-C for a reason". Putting that in the singular does not do justice to the complexity of such decisions. There are numerous reasons that the iPhones 13 still use Lightning -- and there are numerous reasons why switching to USB-C would make sense. The pro-USB-C crowd, to me, often comes across as ideological. I'm not accusing Gartenberg of this -- though it is his piece with the sub-head claiming there's "a" singular reason -- but many iPhones-should-definitely-use-USB-C proponents argue as though there are no good reasons for the iPhone to continue using Lightning. That's nonsense. To be clear, I'm neither pro-Lightning nor pro-USB-C. I see the trade-offs. If the iPhones 13 had switched to USB-C, I wouldn't have complained. But I didn't complain about them not switching, either. You'll note that in none of my reviews of iPad models that have switched from Lightning to USB-C in recent years have I complained about the switch. Apple, to my eyes, has been managing this well. But, if the iPhones 13 had switched to USB-C, you know who would have complained? Hundreds of millions of existing iPhone users who have no interest in replacing the Lightning cables and docks they already own. "In 15 generations of iPhones, Apple has changed the connector once. And that one time was a clear win in every single regard," adds Gruber. "Changing from Lightning to USB-C is not so clearly an upgrade at all. It's a sidestep." Regardless of which side you take on this debate, it's inevitable that Apple iPhones will adopt USB-C. Last week, the executive arm of the European Union, the European Commission, announced plans to force smartphone and other electronics manufacturers to fit a common USB-C charging port on their devices. The rules are intended to cut down on electronic waste by allowing people to re-use existing chargers and cables when they buy new electronics. Unless Apple plans to skip out on the European market or pay a potentially steep fine for refusing to adopt the port, they'll likely give into the pressure and release a USB-C-equipped iPhone by the time this law goes into effect in late 2023 or 2024.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Ford has issued a recall of 5,000 Mustang Mach-E electric SUVs in Canada over a risk of the glass roof and windshield potentially coming loose and falling off. Ironically, the automaker mocked Tesla for the same problem just a year ago. Electrek reports: The automaker just issued two recalls in Canada, and one of them is specifically about the risk of the glass roof coming off: "On certain vehicles, the glass panel of the panoramic sunroof may not be properly attached. Over time, the glass could become loose and separate from the vehicle." Ford says that it affects 1,812 2021 Mustang Mach-E vehicles in Canada. On another 3,178 Mach-Es, Ford says that there's a similar problem that could result in the windshield coming off: "On certain vehicles, the windshield may not be properly attached. As a result, the glass can become loose and could separate from the vehicle in a crash." In both cases, Ford plans to notify the affected owners, check the roof and windshield, and reassemble them with more adhesive if needed. For now, it looks like the recalls are limited to Canadian Mach-Es, even though Ford produces all its electric SUVs at the same factory in Mexico.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

YouTube Chief Executive Officer Susan Wojcicki said Google's video platform is beneficial to adolescents' mental health, amid growing concern that rival Instagram may be "toxic" for teenage girls. From a report: "We certainly do see for a lot of really tough issues that YouTube can be a really valuable resource," Wojcicki said in a Bloomberg Television interview. "So body positivity, mental health, we see a lot of creators actually talk about mental health and that, for a lot of kids, really it destigmatizes, and enables people to talk about what's happening and what's going on with them. So we do take it very seriously."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Tesla's Big Battery, located in southern Australia, just got hit with a federal lawsuit for failing to provide the crucial grid support it once promised it could. Motherboard reports: Built by Tesla in 2017, the 150-megawatt battery supplies 189 megawatt-hours of storage and was designed to support the grid when it becomes overloaded. Now operated by French renewable energy producer Neoen, it supplies storage for the adjacent Hornsdale wind farm, using clean energy to fill gaps that coal power leaves behind. It made waves at the time of its construction for being the largest lithium-ion battery in the world -- though it's now been superseded by another Tesla battery, the 300-megawatt Victorian Big Battery, also in Australia, which caught fire in July. On Wednesday, the Australian Energy Regulator (AER), the body that oversees the country's wholesale electricity and gas markets, announced it had filed a federal lawsuit against the Hornsdale Power Reserve (HPR) -- the energy storage system that owns the Tesla battery -- for failing to provide "frequency control ancillary services" numerous times over the course of four months in the summer and fall of 2019. In other words, the battery was supposed to supply grid backup when a primary power source, like a coal plant, fails. The HPR's alleged pattern of failures was first brought to light during a disruption to a nearby coal plant in 2019, according to the regulator. When the nearby Queensland's Kogan Creek power station tripped on October 9, 2019, the HPR was called on to offer grid backup, having made offers to the Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO) to do so. But the power reserve failed to provide the level of grid support that AEMO expected, and, in fact, was never able to do so in the first place, the lawsuit alleges, despite making money off of offering them. Though HPR did step in eventually, and no outages were recorded, the incident spurred investigation into a number of similar failures over the course of July to November 2019. The reserve's failure to support the grid in the way it promised created "a risk to power system security and stability," a press release on the lawsuit says.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: The U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) on Monday said it would open a $1.9 billion program to reimburse mostly rural U.S. telecom carriers for removing network equipment made by Chinese companies deemed national security threats like Huawei and ZTE. The program, which was finalized in July, will open Oct. 29 for applications through Jan. 14, 2022. Last year, the FCC designated Huawei and ZTE as national security threats to communications networks -- a declaration that barred U.S. firms from tapping an $8.3 billion government fund to purchase equipment from the companies. The FCC in December adopted rules requiring carriers with ZTE or Huawei equipment to "rip and replace" that equipment. The issue is a big one for rural carriers that face high costs and difficulty finding workers to remove and replace equipment. The FCC's final order expanded the companies eligible for reimbursement from those with 2 million or fewer customers to those with 10 million or fewer customers. The FCC in September 2020 estimated it would cost $1.837 billion to remove and replace Huawei and ZTE equipment from networks. [...] The affected companies included the previously designated Huawei and ZTE, as well as Hytera, Hangzhou Hikvision Digital Technology Co and Zhejiang Dahua Technology Co.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Technologist, physicist, and virtual reality professional Paul Tomlinson shares what it's like to spend 4,500+ hours "banging away at real work on virtual screens." Slashdot reader Keighvin shares an excerpt from his report, with the caption: "Portions of the 'metaverse' have leaked into 2021 from the future." Tomlinson writes: I float in space, surrounded on all sides by a grand view of the Milky Way Galaxy. A movie-theater-sized screen hangs before me, gently curved, everything at the perfect viewing distance. Eight different panes glitter with code, facets of a technological jewel granting views into the brain of a system responsible for moving tens of millions of dollars a day. A communications console canted like a drafting table at my fingertips holds a workshop of quick-fire exchanges with my colleagues, my meeting calendar, various API references, and camera feeds of the 'real' world. To my left, abutting the mammoth array of code, a two-story tall portrait display shows the specifications for the task at hand atop an ever-present Spotify playlist. I crank the tunes and get into my flow. But this isn't an excerpt from some Ernest Cline novel -- this is my every-day experience. I'll spend 40-50 hours in Virtual Reality this week, like I did last week and every (work) week for the last 2 1/2 years. It's not just fun and games -- there are plenty of those, along with exercise, meditation, creativity, socializing, etc. -- but for this article, I'm only focusing on (and counting) the work. [...] It's not a stretch to say I'm in the top few percent of VR users on the planet; I've spent much time watching developments in the field and extrapolating future possibilities. I don't insist on my version of the future, but I hope what I've seen is worth sharing. Keighvin asks: "How close are we to ditching screens? What would it take for you to work in VR or AR? What are the deal breakers?"Read more of this story at Slashdot.

University students in courses from engineering to physics are having to be taught what files and folders are, The Verge reports, because that's not how they've grown up using computers. Whenever they need a file, they just search for it. PCGamer summarizes the findings: "I tend to think an item lives in a particular folder. It lives in one place, and I have to go to that folder to find it," astrophysicist Catherine Garland said. "They see it like one bucket, and everything's in the bucket." Strange as it may seem to older generations of computer users who grew up maintaining an elaborate collection of nested subfolders, thanks to powerful search functions now being the default in operating systems, as well as the way phones and tablets obfuscate their file structure, and cloud storage, high school graduates don't see their hard drives the same way. "Students have had these computers in my lab; they'll have a thousand files on their desktop completely unorganized," Peter Plavchan, an associate professor of physics and astronomy at George Mason University, told The Verge. "I'm kind of an obsessive organizer ... but they have no problem having 1,000 files in the same directory. And I think that is fundamentally because of a shift in how we access files." As The Verge points out, "The first internet search engines were used around 1990, but features like Windows Search and Spotlight on macOS are both products of the early 2000s [...] While many of today's professors grew up without search functions on their phones and computers, today's students increasingly don't remember a world without them." This isn't necessarily a bad thing, or a reason to recoil in horror because how dare the youth of today do things differently, why the very idea. "When I was a student, I'm sure there was a professor that said, 'Oh my god, I don't understand how this person doesn't know how to solder a chip on a motherboard,'" Plavachan said. "This kind of generational issue has always been around." And Garland, the astrophysicist teaching an engineering course, has started using her PC's search function to find files in the same way her students do. "I'm like, huh ... I don't even need these subfolders," she said.Read more of this story at Slashdot.