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According to the SEC, Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev unwittingly inspired brokerages to engage in a scheme involving illegal wash trading, or trading with yourself. An anonymous reader shares the report from Bloomberg: The SEC accused Suyun Gu and Yong Lee of improperly pocketing more than $1 million of rebates from stock exchanges from February through April, after placing thousands of options trades for hot shares like GameStop, AMC , BlackBerry and Nokia. The U.S. equity market, including the related options business, is built atop a system known as maker-taker. Traders who submit orders that sit on an exchange's public order book are, in many cases, paid a "maker" rebate -- an incentive designed to attract more liquidity. Those who trade against those resting orders are charged a "taker" fee. Gu, who lives in Miami, and Lee, a resident of Torrance, California, placed the first part of their trades through a broker based in Greenwich, Connecticut and another in Morristown, New Jersey, that pass along the maker rebates to their clients, according to the SEC's complaint. They targeted out-of-the-money puts for their resting orders, investments that others were unlikely to trade against because the holdings offered little opportunity to make money -- barring something nefarious. Gu, 35, and Lee, 37, then traded against their own orders through accounts they opened at brokers including Robinhood, which doesn't pass along "taker" fees to customers. In summary, their profits came from collecting maker rebates without having to pay taker fees. Gu executed approximately 11,430 wash trades, pocketing $668,671, according to the SEC. For Lee, it was 2,360 wash trades and $51,334 of profits, the regulator said. The SEC didn't name Tenev or Robinhood. Instead, the agency refers to a "Broker-dealer B" based in Menlo Park, California. The SEC complaint adds that the firm's CEO appeared before the House Financial Services Committee on Feb. 18, where he said the firm "pioneered commission free and zero contract fee options trading." For Tenev, that day was a grueling five-hour ordeal. He faced dozens of probing questions from lawmakers, who accused Robinhood of turning the stock market into a casino while failing to protect retail investors amid the frenzied run-up of GameStop and other stocks. But Gu heard opportunity, according to the SEC. The former trade-system developer who had worked at several financial firms concluded from Tenev's testimony that Robinhood didn't charge its customers "take fees," the agency said. Gu's friend, Lee, joined in the scheme, according to the SEC. While Gu is contesting the regulator's claims, Lee agreed to pay a $25,000 fine and about $52,000 in disgorgement and interest without admitting or denying wrongdoing. The SEC added that its investigation didn't initially prompt Gu to stop breaking the law.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

In a blog post, Imgur announced that it has been acquired by a company called MediaLab. "It's the beginning of a new chapter, and we're excited to share the news with you," writes the Imgur team. From the post: We've been acquired by MediaLab! MediaLab, based in Santa Monica, CA, is a company that owns great internet brands like Whisper, Kik, WorldStarHipHop, Amino, Genius and others. They're a team of technologists, product managers, designers, and community builders who geek out over building cool stuff for large scale audiences. We made the choice to join the MediaLab portfolio because their resources and shared services can help accelerate us closer toward our goal and keep the main Imgur team focused on what we do best: creating the best place for community-powered entertainment online. MediaLab has committed to investing more resources in engineering and community to continue adding new features, new tools for creators, and growing Imgur. Terms of the acquisition weren't disclosed. You can read the full post here.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Alphabet unit Google on Monday blasted EU antitrust regulators for ignoring rival Apple as it launched a bid to get Europe's second-highest court to annul a record 4.34-billion euro ($5.1 billion) fine related to its Android operating system. From a report: Far from holding back rivals and harming users, Android has been a massive success story of competition at work, representatives of Google told a panel of five judges at the General Court at the start of a five-day hearing. The European Commission fined Google in 2018, saying that it had used Android since 2011 to thwart rivals and cement its dominance in general internet search. Regardless of how the court rules, Google, Apple, Amazon and Facebook will have to change their business models in the coming years to ensure a level playing field for rivals following tough new rules proposed by European Union antitrust chief Margrethe Vestager. "The Commission shut its eyes to the real competitive dynamic in this industry, that between Apple and Android," Google's lawyer Meredith Pickford told the court. "By defining markets too narrowly and downplaying the potent constraint imposed by the highly powerful Apple, the Commission has mistakenly found Google to be dominant in mobile operating systems and app stores, when it was in fact a vigorous market disrupter," he said. Pickford said Android "is an exceptional success story of the power of competition in action."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Mexico's scientific community has reacted with outrage after the country's chief prosecutor requested arrest warrants for 31 scientists, researchers and academics on accusations of organised crime, money laundering and embezzlement -- charges that could land them alongside drug cartel kingpins in one of the country's most notorious lockups. From a report: A judge at the maximum security Altiplano prison -- from which Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman escaped in 2015 -- denied granting the arrest warrants on Wednesday. But the federal prosecutor immediately announced plans to pursue arrest warrants for the third time. The university professors have been accused of violating a law that prevents members of an advisory board from receiving money from a government science fund. But that law was passed in 2019, and the scientists got the $2.5m years earlier when it was apparently legal. Those involved have denied the funds were illegal or misused. The National Council on Science and Technology (Conacyt) has described the reaction to the arrest warrant applications as "a concerted wave of disinformation," which was spreading "terror" in the scientific community.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Cryptocurrency company Coinbase is announcing a handful of new features. While the company is better known for its exchange that lets you convert USD into various cryptocurrencies, Coinbase wants to expand its consumer services so that you use the platform for different use cases with more financial services. From a report: First, the company will soon launch direct deposit in the U.S. This way, customers will be able to deposit a portion of their paycheck into Coinbase. Coinbase app users can find their current payroll company or employer and update paycheck allocation from there. The most extreme users will probably choose to deposit 100% of their paycheck into their Coinbase account. Once the money hits your Coinbase account, you can choose what the company is supposed to do with your dollars. You can just keep everything in USD or you can choose to convert everything to a cryptocurrency. Users can choose any of the crypto assets available on the platform. This feature alone is particularly useful if you want to set up recurring buys without even having to think about it. But direct deposit makes more sense when you realize that Coinbase also has its own debit card powered by Marqeta. It's a Visa debit card that works with Apple Pay and Google Pay. It's all about getting money in and out of your Coinbase account. From the Coinbase app, you can choose the source wallet for your card transactions. Every time you make a purchase, Coinbase converts your crypto assets to USD with a 2.49% transaction fee.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Eftpos has become Australia's first accredited non-government operator of a digital identity exchange under the federal government's Trusted Digital Identity Framework (TDIF). From a report: By becoming an accredited operator, Eftpos connectID can now facilitate online transactions requiring a digital identity from Australians. Eftpos sent connectID live in June as a fully-owned subsidiary of the organisation and as a standalone fintech company. It's been set up to act as "broker" between identity service providers and merchants or government agencies that require identity verification, such as proof of age, address details, or bank account information. It has been designed to work within the federal government's Trusted Digital Identity Framework (TDIF) and the banking industry's TrustID framework. Although the Australian government has its own digital identity solution with myGovID, Eftpos has previously said its solution could provide a "smoother, faster, and more secure onboarding experience, including for government services." Eftpos has also assured that connectID does not store any identity data.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Facebook has announced a $50 million fund that it says will help it develop the metaverse more responsibly. From a report: It's officially called the XR Programs and Research Fund, and the company says it'll be invested into "programs and external research" over the course of two years. Facebook has previously funded academic research into the social impact of AR wearables and solicited VR hardware proposals. Facebook's announcement blog calls the metaverse the "next computing platform" and says that the company will be working with policymakers, researchers, and industry partners while building it. The announcement also gives us Facebook's definition of the sometimes nebulous word "metaverse." The company describes it as "virtual spaces where you can create and explore with other people" that you're not physically with, spread out over a variety of products and services.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Huawei CFO Meng Wanzhou would appear in a Brooklyn federal courtroom today via streaming video and enter a plea regarding US charges against her. From a report: Canadian authorities arrested the Chinese executive in December 2018 on suspicion of violating US sanctions, and she has remained there on house arrest ever since, fighting US attempts at extradition. Hearings in her extradition case ended in August, with the ruling scheduled for October 21st. Meng was indicted on fraud charges claiming the Chinese technology and telecommunications company misrepresented its relationship with an Iranian affiliate, along with accusations it stole intellectual property from T-Mobile. The 13-count indictment named Meng, Huawei, and two of its subsidiaries -- Huawei USA and Skycom. On Friday afternoon, Meng pleaded not guilty. Prosecutors submitted a statement of facts asserting that in 2013 she told financial institutions the Iranian company Skycom was a partner of Huawei while knowing that Skycom was owned and controlled by a Huawei subsidiary to act as its agent in the region. As part of the deal in making this admission, the prosecution says "Meng has agreed to the accuracy of a four-page statement of facts that details the knowingly false statements she made to Financial Institution 1."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Instagram is pressing pause on plans to develop a version of its service for kids under 13 after facing pressure from lawmakers to back down on the effort and new questions about the impact the photo-sharing service has on teen girls. From a report: "While we stand by the need to develop this experience, we've decided to pause this project," Adam Mosseri, head of Instagram, wrote in a blog post published Monday. "This will give us time to work with parents, experts, policymakers and regulators, to listen to their concerns, and to demonstrate the value and importance of this project for younger teens online today." The move comes just days before the US Senate was set to hold a hearing entitled "Protecting Kids Online: Facebook, Instagram, and Mental Health Harms" to discuss the pressure today's youth face on social media. That hearing comes after a Wall Street Journal investigation around what Facebook knows about how Instagram affects teen users, including their mental health. In the blog post Monday, Mosseri acknowledged that the Journal's reporting "has raised a lot of questions for people."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

TikTok announced in a blog post today that 1 billion people use TikTok every month. From a report: That means that on this big rock in space that we call home, about one in seven-and-a-half people are regularly watching short-form videos of dancing, dangerous "milk crate challenges" and even actual educational content. For context, Facebook said that in June it had 2.9 billion monthly active users, up 7% year over year. But TikTok's growth is rapid -- this new user data marks a 45% increase in monthly active users since July 2020, when it had 689 million users. Plus, this July, TikTok became the first non-Facebook app to reach 3 billion global downloads, per app analytics firm SensorTower. The competition that TikTok poses to Western tech giants is palpable -- Instagram, owned by Facebook, has radically shifted its focus, declaring that it's no longer a photo-sharing app. Instagram is heavily promoting Reels, its TikTok clone, and even discussion forums like Reddit are enticed by the promise of short-form video feeds. Instagram even advised creators that if they recycle watermarked TikToks as posts on Reels, the content will be less discoverable.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The U.S. Space Force, the military branch spun out of the Air Force in December 2019, has announced its next batch of awards for projects related to next-gen rocket engine testing and upper stage improvements. From a report: The awards were granted by the Space Enterprise Consortium (SpEC), a program managed by the Space Force's Space Systems Command. SpEC facilitates engagement between the U.S. Department and Defense and the space industry, by allowing its nearly 600 members to compete for contracts. The awards, which total $87.5 million, were granted to four launch companies:Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Cloudflare, the internet infrastructure company, already has its fingers in a lot of customer security pots, from DDoS protection to browser isolation to a mobile VPN. Now the company is taking on a classic web foe: email. From a report: On Monday, Cloudflare is announcing a pair of email safety and security offerings that it views as a first step toward catching more targeted phishing attacks, reducing the effectiveness of address spoofing, and mitigating the fallout if a user does click a malicious link. The features, which the company will offer for free, are mainly geared toward small business and corporate customers. And they're made for use on top of any email hosting a customer already has, whether it's provided by Google's Gmail, Microsoft 365, Yahoo, or even relics like AOL. Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince says that from its founding in 2009, the company very intentionally avoided going anywhere near the thorny problem of email. But he adds that email security issues are unrelenting, so it has become necessary. "I think what I had assumed is that hosting providers like Google and Microsoft and Yahoo were going to solve this issue, so we weren't sure there was anything for us to do in the space," Prince says. "But what's become clear over the course of the last two years is that email security is still not a solved issue." Prince says that Cloudflare employees have been "astonished by how many targeted threats were getting through Google Workspace," the company's email provider. That's not for lack of progress by Google or the other big providers on anti-spam and anti-malware efforts, he adds. But with so many types of email threats to deal with at once, strategically crafted phishing messages still slip through. So Cloudflare decided to build additional defense tools that both the company itself as well as its customers could use.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

After failing its first attempt to re-create the Mayflower's voyage across the Atlantic Ocean, a crewless ocean vessel, powered by artificial intelligence, has returned to sea. From a report: Propelled by IBM's AI software, the autonomous ship set out in June for a month-long excursion through rough waters with no humans aboard. However, three days into what was supposed to be a monumental journey from Plymouth, England, to Plymouth, Mass., where pilgrim travelers settled in 1620, the robot ship suffered "a minor mechanical issue" according to ProMare, a nonprofit promoting marine research that is behind the project. Researchers pushed out a software update, signaling for the ship to reverse course. The boat abided by its orders and headed to shore. Yet according to Brett Phaneuf, co-director of the Mayflower Autonomous Ship Project, the organizers quickly began planning another voyage. "We've had a setback, but one that will put us further ahead than if we did nothing," he said. Earlier this month, researchers sent the ship back out for a shorter trip: This time it'll focus on the waters around the United Kingdom, where crews can attend to it sooner if something unforeseen happens. "At some point, you have to go for it and take the risk or never improve," Phaneuf said.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

"Bitcoin miners, under fire for their sizable environmental footprint, are forging partnerships with owners of struggling nuclear-power plants with electricity to spare," reports the Wall Street Journal:The matchups have the potential to solve key issues facing each industry, executives and analysts say: Electricity-hungry bitcoin miners want stable and carbon-free power, while nuclear plants facing competition from cheaper power sources need new customers. Talen Energy Corp. has entered into a joint venture with bitcoin-mining company TeraWulf Inc., which has started land development for a mining facility the size of four football fields next to its Pennsylvania nuclear plant. Nuclear generator Energy Harbor Corp. will provide power to a Standard Power mining center in Ohio starting in December... New nuclear projects are eyeing cryptocurrency miners as well: Startup Oklo Inc., which plans to build a small-scale fission power plant that can run on used nuclear fuel, has signed a 20-year supply deal with hardware and hosting firm Compass Mining. "Both industry's challenges are the other industry's positives," said Sean Lawrie, partner at consulting firm ScottMadden Inc.... "At the core of bitcoin mining is energy and energy infrastructure," said Paul Prager, chief executive of TeraWulf.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The Guardian looks at a billionaire's plan to build a $400 billion "city of the future" in a U.S. desert. The city — to be named Telosa — "doesn't exist yet, nor is it clear which state will house the experiment, but the architects of the proposed 150,000-acre project are scouting the American south-west."They're already predicting the first residents can move in by 2030. Telosa will eventually house 5 million people, according to its website, and benefit from a halo of utopian promises: avant-garde architecture, drought resistance, minimal environmental impact, communal resources. This hypothetical metropolis promises to take some of the most cutting-edge ideas about sustainability and urban design and make them reality. The plan combines ideas about urban farming (the "beacon" tower of the project will house aeroponic farms) and quality of life (a city where everyone can live and work and play within a 15-minute commute) alongside new green technologies and a model of land ownership proposed, but never executed, by the 19th-century economist Henry George. These are ideas that have remained in the abstract or only attempted on a small scale; now they will have a whole American metropolis to experiment with, brought to life by the creative ambitions of one very rich man. Telosa certainly is a city of the future, but not in, like, a great way. Yes, it probably will have a very shiny public transportation system, but it seems futuristic more in the sense that, as the world deteriorates, the ultra-rich seem increasingly interested in telling the rest of us how to live. No longer content to just sneer down at us from their private jets, they take over our homes, our towns, our society... As anyone who has an adult relative who rules over their basement miniature train set with an iron fist, or who has spent any time on social media listening to 22-year-old leftists talk about what life will be like after "the revolution", knows, a lot of people have ideas about the way cities, countries and societies should work. We are usually protected from seeing those ideas realized, and dealing with the consequences of their megalomania, simply by preventing any one person from building enough wealth or power. But I have something to tell you about the tax policy of the last couple decades and the way a small number of people have benefited, and you're not going to like it... The ideas of this fake little town are grand! Green architecture, environmental technology, "transparent governance", innovative urban planning ideas — if this works, it could advance our thinking on how humans can exist in a changing world and live harmonious lives during the coming environmental and economic calamities. But it won't work. It won't work because one guy doesn't get to decide how the world, or even a city, should work. Even if he's collaborating with the greatest "thinkers" and architects and scientists of our time, just a glance through Lore's portfolio will reveal that all of his big ideas and fancy language about the betterment and advancement of society are pretty hollow... What would make society better? Is it skyscrapers in the desert? Or would it actually benefit the world more if billionaires had less influence over the way society operates?Read more of this story at Slashdot.

When America's law enforcement investigators serve tech companies with subpoenas or search warrants,"the target of the investigation has no idea their data is being seized," the Washington Post pointed out this weekend. It's becoming surprisingly common in the U.S. "And if investigators obtain a gag order, the records must be handed over without the person's knowledge or consent — depriving the person of an opportunity to challenge the seizure in court."Every year, Facebook, Google and other technology companies receive hundreds of thousands of orders from law enforcement agencies seeking data people stash online: private messages, photos, search histories, calendar items — a potentially rich trove for criminal investigators. Often, those requests are accompanied by secrecy orders, also known as nondisclosure or gag orders, that require the tech companies to keep their customers in the dark, potentially for years... In the last six months of 2020, Facebook received 61,262 government requests for user data in the United States, said spokesman Andy Stone. Most — 69 percent — came with secrecy orders. Meanwhile, Microsoft has received between 2,400 and 3,500 secrecy orders from federal law enforcement each year since 2016 — or seven to 10 per day — according to congressional testimony by vice president of customer security and trust Tom Burt. Google and Apple declined to disclose the number of gag orders they've received. But in the first half of 2020, Google said U.S. law enforcement made 39,536 requests for information about 84,662 accounts — with many of the requests targeting multiple accounts. Apple said it received 11,363 requests... Under the 1986 Electronic Communications Privacy Act, federal prosecutors are required to seek digital information from tech companies, not their customers. Since then, prosecutors have routinely used gag orders to prevent the companies from spilling the beans to suspects who might destroy evidence, go into hiding or threaten someone's life. But the practice has mushroomed over the past two decades, part of a broader surveillance ramp-up following the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, lawyers said. As the orders have proliferated, privacy advocates and the tech companies themselves have become increasingly concerned. Some tech company officials have accused prosecutors of reflexively requesting gag orders for routine investigations, regardless of whether the cases actually require such secrecy. And an array of company officials and legal experts argue that the practice robs tech company customers of their constitutional protections against unreasonable search and seizure. "Across all the rest of society, it's understood that government doesn't get to take your stuff, doesn't get to come in and into your house, doesn't get to break into your file folders or your lock box at the bank without a warrant. And you get to know about that warrant and you get to exercise your legal rights," Microsoft's Burt said in an interview. "Someone cannot exercise their Fourth Amendment rights when their data has been taken in secret." U.S. lawmakers are considering changes, the article points out. One idea? Require tech companies "to preserve digital files that are the subject of court orders and permit customers to challenge the orders in court before the information is turned over to prosecutors." Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon points out that's how wiretaps currently work — and is also drafting a measure that would finally require federal courts to publish statistics on the number of surveillance and secrecy orders they've issued.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

"Microsoft has joined forces with LF Energy, a Linux Foundation nonprofit working to accelerate the energy transition of the world's grids and transportation systems through open source," reports ZDNet:Microsoft has become a strategic member of the foundation and Audrey Lee, senior director of energy strategy at Microsoft, was elected to serve on the LF Energy Foundation Governing Board. Dr. Shuli Goodman, executive director of LF Energy, told ZDNet that the foundation believes Microsoft will play an important role in helping to advance their mission of decarbonization of the power grid, transportation and the built environment. "LF Energy Foundation is thrilled to have Microsoft join our organization as a General member. Through Microsoft's commitment to a carbon negative position they are directly encouraging the tech sector to look for more efficient ways to purchase and consume power," Goodman said. "LF Energy nurtures the most cutting edge of all open source projects focused on improving automation, control, security, virtualization, and interoperability of power systems. Our members contribute valuable code, tooling, resources and expertise to increase the velocity of these projects...." Goodman called Microsoft a "force multiplier" and said having the company backing LF Energy will help propel their projects forward at a rapid pace.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The Record reports:The Electronic Frontier Foundation said it is preparing to retire the famous HTTPS Everywhere browser extension after HTTPS adoption has picked up and after several web browsers have introduced HTTPS-only modes." "After the end of this year, the extension will be in 'maintenance mode' for 2022," said Alexis Hancock, Director of Engineering at the EFF. Maintenance mode means the extension will receive minor bug fixes next year but no new features or further development. No official end-of-life date has been decided, a date after which no updates will be provided for the extension whatsoever. Launched in June 2010, the HTTPS Everywhere browser extension is one of the most successful browser extensions ever released. The extension worked by automatically switching web connections from HTTP to HTTPS if websites had an HTTPS option available. At the time it was released, it helped upgrade site connections to HTTPS when users clicked on HTTP links or typed domains in their browser without specifying the "https://" prefix. The extension reached cult status among privacy advocates and was integrated into the Tor Browser and, after that, in many other privacy-conscious browsers. But since 2010, HTTPS is not a fringe technology anymore. Currently, around 86.6% of all internet sites support HTTPS connections. Browser makers such as Chrome and Mozilla previously reported that HTTPS traffic usually accounts for 90% to 95% of their daily connections. From EFF's announcement:The goal of HTTPS Everywhere was always to become redundant. That would mean we'd achieved our larger goal: a world where HTTPS is so broadly available and accessible that users no longer need an extra browser extension to get it. Now that world is closer than ever, with mainstream browsers offering native support for an HTTPS-only mode. With these simple settings available, EFF is preparing to deprecate the HTTPS Everywhere web extension as we look to new frontiers of secure protocols like SSL/TLS... We know many different kinds of users have this tool installed, and want to give our partners and users the needed time to transition. The announcement also promises to inform users of browser-native HTTPS-only options before the day when the extension reaches its final sunsetting — and ends with instructions for how to activate the native HTTPS-only features in Firefox, Chrome, Edge, and Safari, "and celebrate with us that HTTPS is truly everywhere for users."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

America's Department of Defense "is taking input on its plan to build an advanced mobile nuclear microreactor prototype at the Idaho National Laboratory in eastern Idaho," reports the Associated Press:The department began a 45-day comment period on Friday with the release of a draft environmental impact study evaluating alternatives for building and operating the microreactor that could produce 1 to 5 megawatts of power. The department's energy needs are expected to increase, it said. "A safe, small, transportable nuclear reactor would address this growing demand with a resilient, carbon-free energy source that would not add to the DoD's fuel needs, while supporting mission-critical operations in remote and austere environments," the Defense Department said. The draft environmental impact statement cites President Joe Biden's January 27 executive order prioritizing climate change considerations in national security as another reason for pursuing microreactors. The draft document said alternative energy sources such as wind and solar were problematic because they are limited by location, weather and available land area, and would require redundant power supplies. The department said it uses 30 terawatt-hours of electricity per year and more than 10 million gallons (37.9 million liters) of fuel per day. Powering bases using diesel generators strains operations and planning, the department said, and need is expected to grow during a transition to an electrical, non-tactical vehicle fleet. Thirty terawatt-hours is more energy than many small countries use in a year. The department in the 314-page draft environmental impact statement said it wants to reduce reliance on local electric grids, which are highly vulnerable to prolonged outages from natural disasters, cyberattacks, domestic terrorism and failure from lack of maintenance. The department also said new technologies such as drones and radar systems increase energy demands... The Defense Department said a final environmental impact statement and decision about how or whether to move forward is expected in early 2022. If approved, preparing testing sites at the Idaho National Lab and then building and testing of the microreactor would take about three years.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Samsung has proposed a way to build brain-like computer chips by "copying and pasting" a brain's neuron wiring map onto 3D neuromorphic chips. Engadget reports:The approach would rely on a nanoelectrode array that enters a large volumes of neurons to record both where the neurons connect and the strength of those connections. You could copy that data and 'paste' it to a 3D network of solid-state memory, whether it's off-the-shelf flash storage or cutting-edge memory like resistive RAM. Each memory unit would have a conductance that reflects the strength of each neuron connection in the map. The result would be an effective return to "reverse engineering the brain" like scientists originally wanted, Samsung said. The move could serve as a 'shortcut' to artificial intelligence systems that behave like real brains, including the flexibility to learn new concepts and adapt to changing conditions. You might even see fully autonomous machines with true cognition, according to the researchers. "Envisioned by the leading engineers and scholars from Samsung and Harvard University, the insight was published as a Perspective paper, titled 'Neuromorphic electronics based on copying and pasting the brain'..." Samsung said in a statement. In short, they're proposing a method that "directly downloads the brain's neuronal connection map onto the memory chip."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

"What if we told you there was a hamster who has been trading cryptocurrencies since June — and recently was doing better than Warren Buffett and the S&P 500?" asks NPR:Meet Mr. Goxx, a hamster who works out of what is possibly the most high-tech hamster cage in existence. It's designed so that when Mr. Goxx runs on the hamster wheel, he can select among dozens of cryptocurrencies. Then, deciding between two tunnels, he chooses whether to buy or sell. According to the Twitch account for the hamster, his decision is sent over to a real trading platform — and yes, real money is involved. Last Monday, after 100 days the hamster's portfolio was up 48%, reports one site, "before Bitcoin tumbled, which brought the rest of the crypto market down with it." But the hamster's portfolio is still up nearly 30% since he started trading in June, the article points out, "outperforming Bitcoin, the S&P 500, and even Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway." The hamster's business partner adds that profits aren't yet enough to cover the initial investment on Mr. Goxx's cage. And there's other issues... "Since Mr. Goxx is an honorable business rodent, he must calculate with about 35% tax being subtracted on all his returns, so there is still some work left before he can really talk about making money."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Federal prosecutors allege that Elizabeth Holmes and the No. 2 at Theranos, Ramesh "Sunny" Balwani, "broke the law by deceiving investors about how well the business was doing and the capabilities of its testing machines, in addition to allegedly providing false or flawed test results to patients," reports NPR. But they add that in Silicon Valley, the trial has launched this debate. "Since Holmes was following a playbook used by dozens of tech CEOs, why is she the only one to face prosecution when a company becomes engulfed in a scandal?"To Ellen Pao, the former CEO of Reddit, who is a vocal critic of gender discrimination in tech, sexism is partially to blame. "When you see which CEOs get to continue to wreak havoc on consumers and the market, it's people who look like the venture capitalists, who are mostly white men," Pao said. She points to Adam Neumann, who drove WeWork into the ground; former Uber CEO Travis Kalanick, who resigned after a sexual harassment scandal; and Juul's Kevin Burns, who stepped down amid questions over the company's role in stoking the youth vaping epidemic. There were lawsuits, settlements and more fallout — but notably, Pao points out, no criminal prosecutions. "That all these people continue to lead their lives and not be held accountable for all the harm that they've caused, it does send a message," she said. Former prosecutors who have tried white-collar crime say there are several reasons why Holmes stands out among disgraced tech CEOs. First, the allegedly fraudulent behavior was egregious: Holmes told the world she had a miracle machine that would upend laboratory science. Prosecutors say, compared with her claims, the technology barely did anything at all. Mark MacDougall, a former federal prosecutor who focused on fraud cases in the U.S. Justice Department, said Theranos' being a biotech company raised the stakes. "It allows the government to contend, with some evidence, that the health of private citizens, the health of innocent people, was put at risk," MacDougall said. Another reason Holmes was charged, according to former prosecutors, was that the government says it obtained evidence that she acted intentionally, which can be difficult to establish in fraud cases. Prosecutors now plan to show Holmes "knowingly and intentionally" defrauded investors and patients, "something her defense team says is false," the article points out. "Proving that Holmes is guilty will turn on demonstrating her intent, since exaggerating a product's potential, missing financial forecasts and running a secretive company do not constitute federal crimes." Pao's argument is that Holmes "was encouraged by the high-risk, high-reward culture of venture capital. That said, Pao said she is not defending Holmes, saying her behavior warranted prosecution." "At the same time, Pao wants a broader discussion in Silicon Valley about why other CEOs accused of wrongdoing have not faced criminal consequences."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

"In 2017, as Julian Assange began his fifth year holed up in Ecuador's embassy in London, the CIA plotted to kidnap the WikiLeaks founder," reports Yahoo News, "spurring heated debate among Trump administration officials over the legality and practicality of such an operation." The report is based on conversations with more than 30 former U.S. officials, "eight of whom described details of the CIA's proposals to abduct Assange."Some senior officials inside the CIA and the Trump administration even discussed killing Assange, going so far as to request "sketches" or "options" for how to assassinate him. Discussions over kidnapping or killing Assange occurred "at the highest levels" of the Trump administration, said a former senior counterintelligence official. "There seemed to be no boundaries...." While Assange had been on the radar of U.S. intelligence agencies for years, these plans for an all-out war against him were sparked by WikiLeaks' ongoing publication of extraordinarily sensitive CIA hacking tools, known collectively as "Vault 7," which the agency ultimately concluded represented "the largest data loss in CIA history." President Trump's newly installed CIA director, Mike Pompeo, was seeking revenge on WikiLeaks and Assange, who had sought refuge in the Ecuadorian Embassy since 2012 to avoid extradition to Sweden on rape allegations he denied... The CIA's fury at WikiLeaks led Pompeo to publicly describe the group in 2017 as a "non-state hostile intelligence service." More than just a provocative talking point, the designation opened the door for agency operatives to take far more aggressive actions, treating the organization as it does adversary spy services, former intelligence officials told Yahoo News. Within months, U.S. spies were monitoring the communications and movements of numerous WikiLeaks personnel, including audio and visual surveillance of Assange himself, according to former officials... There is no indication that the most extreme measures targeting Assange were ever approved, in part because of objections from White House lawyers, but the agency's WikiLeaks proposals so worried some administration officials that they quietly reached out to staffers and members of Congress on the House and Senate intelligence committees to alert them to what Pompeo was suggesting... In late 2017, in the midst of the debate over kidnapping and other extreme measures, the agency's plans were upended when U.S. officials picked up what they viewed as alarming reports that Russian intelligence operatives were preparing to sneak Assange out of the United Kingdom and spirit him away to Moscow... In response, the CIA and the White House began preparing for a number of scenarios to foil Assange's Russian departure plans, according to three former officials. Those included potential gun battles with Kremlin operatives on the streets of London, crashing a car into a Russian diplomatic vehicle transporting Assange and then grabbing him, and shooting out the tires of a Russian plane carrying Assange before it could take off for Moscow. (U.S. officials asked their British counterparts to do the shooting if gunfire was required, and the British agreed, according to a former senior administration official.) One former senior official told Yahoo News that "It got to the point where every human being in a three-block radius was working for one of the intelligence services — whether they were street sweepers or police officers or security guards."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

schwit1 shared this report from LiveScience: The world's longest known cave system just set a new record after surveyors spent hours mapping an additional 8 miles (13 kilometers) of the passageways at Mammoth Cave National Park in Kentucky. The corridors at Mammoth Cave now measure a whopping 420 miles (676 km) in length, according to the National Park Service (NPS). That's about the distance between New York City and Raleigh, North Carolina. Mapping the cave system was a huge undertaking, carried out by volunteers at the Cave Research Foundation (CRF), a Kentucky-based nonprofit group, and other locals, including those from the Central Kentucky Karst Coalition."Many of the cave trips are long and arduous, involving climbing, vertical exposure, squeezes, crawlways, water and mud," Karen Willmes, the eastern operations manager with CRF, said in an NPS statement... "After the trip, cartographers turn the data collected on the cave trip into a map. Other volunteers provide surface support.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Long-time Slashdot reader BoredStiff shares this report from Fortune:Moore's law of ever-increasing miniaturization seemingly never reached the automotive industry. Dozens of chips found in everything from electronic brake systems to airbag control units tend to rely on obsolete technology often well over a decade old. These employ comparatively simple transistors that can be anywhere from 45 nanometers to as much as 90 nanometers in size, far too large — and too primitive — to be suitable for today's smartphones. When the pandemic hit, replacement demand for big-ticket items like new cars was pushed back while sales of all kinds of home devices soared. When the car market roared back months later, chipmakers had already reallocated their capacity. Now these processors are in short supply, and chipmakers are telling car companies to wake up and finally join the 2010s. "I'll make them as many Intel 16 [nanometer] chips as they want," Intel chief executive Pat Gelsinger told Fortune last week during his visit to an auto industry trade show in Germany. Carmakers have bombarded him with requests to invest in brand-new production capacity for semiconductors featuring designs that, at best, were state of the art when the first Apple iPhone launched. "It just makes no economic or strategic sense," said Gelsinger, who came to the auto show to convince carmakers they need to let go of the distant past. "Rather than spending billions on new 'old' fabs, let's spend millions to help migrate designs to modern ones...." Reliability plays a major concern. Most systems in cars are safety-critical and need to perform in practically every situation regardless of temperature, humidity, vibrations, and even minor road debris. With so much at stake, tried and true is better than new and improved.... If semiconductor suppliers like Intel and Qualcomm have their way, however, the days of the auto industry relying on these cheap commodity chips are numbered. The article cites a prediction that 10% of pre-pandemic car production could be eliminated due to chip shortages — and includes this quote from a press briefing by the Volkswagen Group's head of procurement. "Because of a 50-cent chip, we are unable to build a car that sells for $50,000."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Slashdot reader StellarThoughts shares an announcement from the University of California, Riverside. (Alternate URL):Plants have the ability to perceive drought. When they do, they emit a hormone that helps them hold on to water. This same hormone, ABA, sends a message to seeds that it isn't a good time to germinate, leading to lower crop yields and less food in places where it's hot — an increasingly long list as a result of climate change. "If you block ABA, you mess with the chemical pathway that plants use to prevent seed germination," said Aditya Vaidya, UC Riverside project scientist and study author. "Our new chemical, Antabactin, does exactly this. If we apply it, we have shown that dormant seeds will sprout." Demonstrations of Antabactin's effectiveness are described in a new paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. This work builds on the same team's creation of a chemical that mimics the effects of the ABA hormone, produced by plants in response to drought stress. That chemical, Opabactin, slows a plant's growth so it conserves water and doesn't wilt. It works by inducing plants to close tiny pores in their leaves and stems, which prevents water from escaping. Next, the team wanted to find a molecule that would have the opposite effect, opening the pores, encouraging germination and increasing plant growth. Though seed dormancy has largely been removed through breeding, it is still a problem in some crops like lettuce. Sean Cutler, a UC Riverside plant cell biology professor and study co-author, said accelerating and slowing plant growth are important tools for farmers. "Our research is all about managing both of these needs," he said... In their paper, the team members showed that applying Antabactin to barley and tomato seeds accelerated germination. Conceivably, both Antabactin and Opabactin could work together to help crops flourish in a world becoming drier and hotter. Once Antabactin has helped seeds sprout into healthy plants, a farmer might start saving water early in the growing season by spraying Opabactin. This way, enough water is "banked" for when the plants start flowering.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

America's federally-owned electric utility, the Tennessee Valley Authority, has spent billions of dollars with nothing to show for it, reports the Chattanooga Times Free Press. "Nearly 47 years after construction began on the Bellefonte Nuclear Power Plant in Northeast Alabama, the Tennessee Valley Authority is giving up its construction permit for America's biggest unfinished nuclear plant and abandoning any plans to complete the twin-reactor facility..."Giving up the construction permit at Bellefonte signals the end of any new nuclear plant construction at TVA with only seven of the 17 nuclear reactors the utility once planned to build ever completed.... Since the 1970s, a total of 95 nuclear reactors proposed to be built by U.S. utilities have been canceled due to rising construction costs, slowing power demand and cheapening power alternatives. The NRC now regulates 93 remaining commercial nuclear reactors at 56 nuclear power plants, including TVA's Sequoyah and Watts Bar nuclear plants in East Tennessee and the Browns Ferry nuclear plant in Athens, Alabama. Collectively, those nuclear plants provide more than 40% of TVA's power and over 20% of the nation's electricity supply... TVA spokesman Jim Hopson said in the past two decades, the growth in power demand in the Tennessee Valley has continued to slow as more energy efficiency measures have been adopted and the price of natural gas, solar power and additional hydroelectric generation has declined in competition with nuclear. Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader The Real Dr John for sharing the story. And today the Chattanooga Times Free Press opinions editor offered this suggestion:TVA still owns the 1,600-acre site, as well as the plant that has never — and likely now will never — generate the first spark of nuclear-produced electricity. But that doesn't mean it can't make power some other way. A gas plant? Uggh. A wind field? Seems unlikely given the stillness of North Alabama. A solar plant? That could be more of a possibility. All of the transmission equipment and the electrical grid is at the ready... By now — after siting, building, scrapping, building again, abandoning, putting up for sale, agreeing to sell for pennies on the dollar and finally going to court to defend not selling the Bellefonte Nuclear Plant — TVA ratepayers and taxpayers have lost somewhere between $6 billion (according to TVA) and $9 billion (according to a 2018 letter from five congressmen)... TVA spokesman Jim Hopson said Wednesday that TVA is making no decisions immediately. "But we're not taking anything off the table," he added... Hopson said TVA's May 2021 "strategic intent and guiding principles" notes the utility has solar commitments to date of more than 2,300 megawatts of solar capacity expected to come online by the end of 2023. Including those projects, TVA expects to add 10,000 megawatts of solar power by 2035 — a 24-fold increase from today. That 10,000 megawatts of solar power would be equal to more than eight would-be Bellefonte reactors.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Slashdot reader AleRunner tipped us off to some excitement in the UK:The British government said on Friday it may draft in the army to help deliver gas after shortages caused by a scarcity of truck drivers forced the closure of stations across the country. The haulage industry said there was a shortfall of some 100,000 drivers, and that could also lead to shortages of turkeys and toys this Christmas. Some 25,000 drivers returned to Europe after Brexit, and the pandemic halted the qualification process for new workers... Gas is just the latest thing that people in the U.K. are finding hard to come by after its departure from the European Union. Previously McDonald's has been forced to take milkshakes off the menu, KFC has run short on chicken and supermarket shelves have been left bare. The crisis is already beginning to bite in other areas of life, with 18 percent of adults saying they have been unable to buy essential food items in the past two weeks, according to the U.K.'s Office for National Statistics. The pandemic means that many countries are facing supply chain problems, as manufacturing centers in Asia are hit by continuing cases and restrictions. Now the Associated Press reports the government has decided to issue thousands of emergency visas to foreign truck drivers:Post-Brexit immigration rules mean newly arrived EU citizens can no longer work visa-free in Britain, as they could when the U.K. was a member of the trade bloc. Trucking companies have been urging the British government to loosen immigration rules so drivers can more easily be recruited from across Europe... One cause of the trucker shortage is a backlog caused by the suspension of driver testing for months during Britain's coronavirus lockdowns. The government has already increased testing capacity, as well as extending the number of hours that drivers can work each week, prompting safety concerns. The government said military driving examiners would be pulled in to further boost civilian testing capacity.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The cryptocurrency-ATM company Coinmover has over 100 machines in stores in Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Connecticut, and Washington state — and plans to have 1,250 machines in 18 states by the end of the year, reports the Boston Globe. Right now each machine is selling "an average of about $40,000 in cryptocurrency each month."There's a nationwide surge in easier ways to buy cryptocurrencies, with bitcoin ATMs leading the way. According to the industry tracking site Coin ATM Radar, there were about 6,000 such machines in the U.S. at this time last year, but over 26,000 today, with hundreds more installed every week. And that only counts "pure" bitcoin ATMs, the ones that only sell cryptocurrency. In addition, thousands of traditional cash-vending ATMs have been modified to support crypto purchases as well. Then there's Coinstar, which makes the coin-counting machines found in many US supermarkets. About 7,500 of these machines now sell bitcoin, and that number is expected to reach 10,000 by year's end. Researchers at a different site, How Many Bitcoin ATMs, have added these hybrid machines to the mix, and estimate there are over 42,000 bitcoin vending machines in the US today.... Financial technology giant NCR has entered the game. Last month NCR acquired Boston-based LibertyX, one of the first bitcoin ATM companies. These days, LibertyX mainly makes software to add crypto vending capabilities to standard ATMs and retail point-of-sale devices — the modern equivalent of cash registers. NCR is one of the world's leading makers of ATMs and point-of-sale devices. The LibertyX acquisition doesn't just mean thousands more crypto-capable ATMs. It could also mean that thousands of retail stores could sell crypto just like candy bars. It's already happening. LibertyX has deals with retailers CVS, Rite Aid, and 7-Eleven to enable bitcoin purchases at selected stores. A customer uses a LibertyX smartphone app to punch in the amount he or she wants to buy, up to $500 per day. A barcode appears on the phone's screen. A clerk scans the barcode and the customer hands over the cash. It's instantly added to the customer's bitcoin account, less a $4.95 transaction fee. LibertyX claims this service is now available at over 20,000 retail stores... According to a survey from the University of Chicago, 13 percent of US adults bought or sold cryptocurrency during the past year. That's nearly 33 million people. How many more will buy in, when thousands of retail stores and ATMs become bitcoin trading posts? We're about to find out.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Slashdot reader Striek writes: VoIP.ms, a Canadian VoIP provider [also serving the US], has been under a sustained, and presumably massive DDoS attack which started on the September 16th, 2021. The attack has been disruptive enough to be covered by major media outlets, including Hacker News, ZDNet, Ars Technica, BleepingComputer, CTV News, and The Toronto Star. They have so far refused to pay a ransom demand, which has grown from 1 bitcoin at the outset ($45,000 USD at that time), to 100 bitcoin now, or $45 million. Similar attacks have occurred recently on several UK based VOiP providers. With DDoS attacks against VOiP infrastructure difficult to defend against — or at least more difficult than your bog-standard denial of service, this may be setting a worrying trend. Bleeping Computer reported Monday that the attack was "severely disrupting the company's operation:As customers configured their VoIP equipment to connect to the company's domain name, the DDoS attack disrupted telephony services, preventing them from receiving or making phone calls. As DNS was no longer working, the company advised customers to modify their HOSTS file to point the domain at their IP address to bypass DNS resolution. However, this just led the threat actors to perform DDoS attacks directly at that IP address as well. To mitigate the attacks, VoIP.ms moved their website and DNS servers to Cloudflare, and while they reported some success, the company's site and VoIP infrastructure still have issues due to the continued denial-of-service attack. ZDNet has been following the story:In an update on Wednesday, VoIP.ms apologized to customers and confirmed it was still being targeted by what it described as a 'ransom DDoS attack' . VoIP.ms says it has over 80,000 customers in 125 countries. And in addition, this afternoon the company's Twitter account announced that "Our main U.S. upstream carrier is currently experiencing major issues on their network affecting inbound and outbound calls and messaging to US numbers. We have already been in contact with their senior leadership team and they are on it along with their whole NOC."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Epik's massive data breach is already affecting lives. Today the Washington Post describes a real estate agent in Pompano Beach who urged buyers on Facebook to move to "the most beautiful State." His name and personal details "were found on invoices suggesting he had once paid for websites with names such as racisminc.com, whitesencyclopedia.com, christiansagainstisrael.com and theholocaustisfake.com". The real estate brokerage where he worked then dropped him as an agent. The brokerage's owner told the Post they didn't "want to be involved with anyone with thoughts or motives like that." "Some users appear to have relied on Epik to lead a double life," the Post reports, "with several revelations so far involving people with innocuous day jobs who were purportedly purveyors of hate online." (Alternate URL here.)Epik, based outside Seattle, said in a data-breach notice filed with Maine's attorney general this week that 110,000 people had been affected nationwide by having their financial account and credit card numbers, passwords and security codes exposed.... Heidi Beirich, a veteran researcher of hate and extremism, said she is used to spending weeks or months doing "the detective work" trying to decipher who is behind a single extremist domain. The Epik data set, she said, "is like somebody has just handed you all the detective work — the names, the people behind the accounts..." Many website owners who trusted Epik to keep their identities hidden were exposed, but some who took additional precautions, such as paying in bitcoin and using fake names, remain anonymous.... Aubrey "Kirtaner" Cottle, a security researcher and co-founder of Anonymous, declined to share information about the hack's origins but said it was fueled by hackers' frustrations over Epik serving as a refuge for far-right extremists. "Everyone is tired of hate," Cottle said. "There hasn't been enough pushback, and these far-right players, they play dirty. Nothing is out of bounds for them. And now ... the tide is turning, and there's a swell moving back in their direction." Earlier in the week, the Post reported:Since the hack, Epik's security protocols have been the target of ridicule among researchers, who've marveled at the site's apparent failure to take basic security precautions, such as routine encryption that could have protected data about its customers from becoming public... The hack even exposed the personal records from Anonymize, a privacy service Epik offered to customers wanting to conceal their identity.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

"An international team of physicists have come up with a way to generate antimatter in the lab," reports Popular Mechanics, theoretically "allowing them to recreate conditions that are similar to those near a neutron star."This setup, at Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf (HZDR) research laboratory in Germany, involves two high-intensity laser beams that can generate a jet of antimatter, as outlined in a paper published earlier this summer in the journal Communications Physics. That could make antimatter-based research far more accessible for scientists around the world... it's tremendously difficult to recreate a neutron star's extreme conditions in terms of the science and logistics — imagine if a sugar cube weighed as much as Mount Everest in your laboratory! Two, scientists want to make antimatter for further analysis in the lab... So how did the researchers at Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf figure out how to generate antimatter? They're using opposing lasers in a setup they're referring to as a laser pincer... There's a tiny piece of plastic that both lasers shoot toward. As the lasers destroy the plastic, they send clouds of electrons toward each other... By smashing particles together between two lasers, scientists can begin to approach the intensely concentrated gravity and matter of a neutron star... In this case, scientists are still speculating that the laser pincers will work, with support from a computer simulation that has helped them test and confirm their theory. Now, the next step is to begin building the rig that will really fire the lasers. "[C]olleagues are developing a platform that can be used to experimentally test whether the magnetic fields actually form as our simulations predict," HZDR physicist Toma Toncian says. Thanks to Slashdot reader Third Position for submitting the article!Read more of this story at Slashdot.

On Monday RockDoctor (Slashdot reader #15,477) wrote: Regular readers may remember recurring concerns over the instability of the island of La Palma, in the Canaries archipelago [population: 85,000]. Estimates of the threat ranged from 100 megadeaths (from tsunami impacts on the coasts of about a dozen countries bordering the Atlantic — including the eastern seaboard of America) down to a 10- to 30- metre tsunami with a few thousand deaths in the Canaries and other Atlantic islands (Madeira, Azores). To bring relaxation and good cheer, today we have the news that the volcano at the centre of these concerns is erupting for the first time in 50 years. While a hundred or so houses have so far been destroyed and around 5000 people evacuated from the path of the lava flow, some people are more sanguine — Spain's Tourism Minister considers the eruption a "great attraction", and indeed recent eruptions in Hawaii did see a significant amount of "Volcano tourism". To be honest, I'm rather tempted myself — Etna studiously did not erupt during my last holiday there. Or should I wait for Vesuvius to go off again? Here's an update. "Seven days after a volcano on La Palma erupted, lava flow and ash continue to spread shutting down the local airport and leaving hundreds without a home," according to one newspaper report (with several photos of the aftermath). "As of Friday, almost 6,000 people have evacuated. "The government is working to locate emergency housing for the affected families as researchers are unsure when the ash and lava flow will stop." Meanwhile, the Associated Press reports, "scientists said another volcanic vent opened up, exposing islanders to possible new dangers."The intensity of the eruption that began Sept. 19 has increased in recent days, prompting the evacuation of three additional villages on the island, part of Spain's Canary Islands archipelago in the Atlantic Ocean off northwest Africa... Emergency crews pulled back from the volcano Friday as explosions sent molten rock and ash over a wide area...Read more of this story at Slashdot.

"Harassment and abuse are all too common on the modern internet," writes the New York Times. "Yet it was supposed to be different in Germany."In 2017, the country enacted one of the world's toughest laws against online hate speech. It requires Facebook, Twitter and YouTube to remove illegal comments, pictures or videos within 24 hours of being notified about them or risk fines of up to 50 million euros, or $59 million. Supporters hailed it as a watershed moment for internet regulation and a model for other countries. But an influx of hate speech and harassment in the run-up to the German election, in which the country will choose a new leader to replace Angela Merkel, its longtime chancellor, has exposed some of the law's weaknesses... Some critics of the law say it is too weak, with limited enforcement and oversight. They also maintain that many forms of abuse are deemed legal by the platforms, such as certain kinds of harassment of women and public officials. And when companies do remove illegal material, critics say, they often do not alert the authorities or share information about the posts, making prosecutions of the people publishing the material far more difficult. Another loophole, they say, is that smaller platforms like the messaging app Telegram, popular among far-right groups, are not subject to the law. Free-expression groups criticize the law on other grounds. They argue that the law should be abolished not only because it fails to protect victims of online abuse and harassment, but also because it sets a dangerous precedent for government censorship of the internet. To address concerns that companies were not alerting the authorities to illegal posts, German policymakers this year passed amendments to the law. They require Facebook, Twitter and YouTube to turn over data to the police about accounts that post material that German law would consider illegal speech. The Justice Ministry was also given more powers to enforce the law... Facebook and Google have filed a legal challenge to block the new rules, arguing that providing the police with personal information about users violates their privacy. An activist for the Electronic Frontier Foundation in Berlin tells the Times the law could encourage companies to remove offensive-but-legal speech. And Twitter shared a statement with additional concerns. "Threats, abusive content and harassment all have the potential to silence individuals. However, regulation and legislation such as this also has the potential to chill free speech by emboldening regimes around the world to legislate as a way to stifle dissent and legitimate speech." Yet Germany's experience may ultimately influence policy across Europe, the Times points out, since German officials "are playing a key role in drafting one of the world's most anticipated new internet regulations, a European Union law called the Digital Services Act, which will require Facebook and other online platforms to do more to address the vitriol, misinformation and illicit content on their sites."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

While it's been argued that Linux has four different "birthdays," last Friday saw the 30th anniversary of Linux's very, very first release — version 0.01. That special first release "was never publicly announced, and I only emailed a handful of people in private about the upload," Torvalds remembered on the Linux kernel mailing list. He no longer has copies of those announcement emails, "so there's no real record of that. The only record of the date is in the Linux-0.01 tar-file itself, I suspect.""Alas, the dates in that tar-file are for the last modification dates, not the actual creation of the tar-file," Torvalds wrote, "but it does seem to have happened around 7:30pm (Finnish time), so the exact anniversary was technically a couple of hours ago." So when the exact moment arrived for its 30th anniversary, Torvalds couldn't resist sharing the moment on the Linux kernel mailing list. "Just thought I'd mention it, since while unannounced, in many ways this is the true 30th anniversary date of the actual code."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Google used its "huge financial muscle" to illegally hurt competitors, the Competition Commission of India found after an antitrust investigation. But now Reuters says Google is suing the commission — for leaking the results of that investigation to the press:"We cooperated fully and maintained confidentiality throughout the investigative process, and we hope and expect the same level of confidentiality from the institutions we engage with," Google's statement added... India's antitrust authority ordered a probe in 2019, saying Google appeared to have leveraged its dominance to reduce device makers' ability to opt for alternate versions of its mobile operating system and force them to pre-install Google apps. Its 750-page report subsequently found the mandatory pre-installation of apps "amounts to imposition of unfair condition on the device manufacturers" in violation of India's competition law. The report, which has been seen by Reuters but which is not public, also found the company leveraged the position of its Play Store app store to protect its dominance.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

"The global semiconductor shortage that has paralyzed automakers for nearly a year shows signs of worsening," reports the Washington Post, "as new coronavirus infections halt chip assembly lines in Southeast Asia, forcing more car companies and electronics manufacturers to suspend production."A wave of delta-variant cases in Malaysia, Vietnam and the Philippines is causing production delays at factories that cut and package semiconductors, creating new bottlenecks on top of those caused by soaring demand for chips... Demand for the components is soaring as more consumer goods become computerized, but supply is scarce because semiconductor factories are extremely expensive and time-consuming to build... The debacle is likely to cost the auto industry $450 billion in global sales from the start of the crisis through the end of 2022, according to Seraph Consulting. Martin Daum, chief executive of the Daimler AG division that makes trucks and buses, described the problem as intensifying. "Until the second quarter we were able to manage the situation quite well at Daimler Truck," Daum said Wednesday. "But since summer the semiconductor situation has worsened for us. Our production in Germany and the U.S. was affected, which led to a situation in which we could deliver fewer vehicles to our customers." Even automakers such as Toyota and Hyundai, which planned for potential shortages and initially managed to avoid crippling shutdowns, are starting to encounter problems. Toyota this month was forced to slash production at 14 factories in Japan over a lack of semiconductors. Some of the cuts will continue into October due to a lack of components from Southeast Asia, Toyota has said. Ford and General Motors in recent months have been suspending production for weeks at a time at more than a dozen North American factories... [T]he problem is hurting industries beyond autos. "This is having an impact all across the economy, with automobiles, yes, but even beyond that, into medical devices, networking equipment — we're hearing regularly from companies that cannot get the supply they need," one of the Biden administration officials said... Some chipmakers have taken steps to help auto manufacturers. Taiwan's TSMC, which produces a type of chip called a microcontroller that is widely used by automakers, said it is increasing output of the components by 60 percent this year compared with 2020. GlobalFoundries is adding manufacturing equipment to a factory near Albany, N.Y., to increase output for all types of chips, and recently broke ground on a $4 billion expansion of its factory in Singapore, with financial support from the Singaporean government. Globally, chip factories have increased their production capacity by 8 percent since early 2020 and plan to boost it by over 16 percent by the end of 2022, according to the U.S.-based Semiconductor Industry Association. Global spending on semiconductor manufacturing equipment is likely to grow by more than 30 percent this year to $85 billion, showing that chipmakers are expanding production, according to C.J. Muse, a semiconductor analyst at Evercore ISI. But that comes after chip companies had "underinvested over the last five years," he said... Intel on Friday will break ground on two new chip factories in Arizona, on which it plans to spend $20 billion.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

EFF.org has the story:For the last month, civil liberties and human rights organizations, researchers, and customers have demanded that Apple cancel its plan to install photo-scanning software onto devices. This software poses an enormous danger to privacy and security. Apple has heard the message, and announced that it would delay the system while consulting with various groups about its impact. But in order to trust Apple again, we need the company to commit to canceling this mass surveillance system. The delay may well be a diversionary tactic. Every September, Apple holds one of its big product announcement events, where Apple executives detail the new devices and features coming out. Apple likely didn't want concerns about the phone-scanning features to steal the spotlight. But we can't let Apple's disastrous phone-scanning idea fade into the background, only to be announced with minimal changes down the road. To make sure Apple is listening to our concerns, EFF turned to an old-school messaging system: aerial advertising. During Apple's event, a plane circled the company's headquarters carrying an impossible-to-miss message: "Apple, don't scan our phones!" The evening before Apple's event, protestors also rallied nationwide in front of Apple stores. The company needs to hear us, and not just dismiss the serious problems with its scanning plan. A delay is not a cancellation, and the company has also been dismissive of some concerns, referring to them as "confusion" about the new features. Apple's iMessage is one of the preeminent end-to-end encrypted chat clients. End-to-end encryption is what allows users to exchange messages without having them intercepted and read by repressive governments, corporations, and other bad actors. We don't support encryption for its own sake: we fight for it because encryption is one of the most powerful tools individuals have for maintaining their digital privacy and security in an increasingly insecure world. Now that Apple's September event is over, Apple must reach out to groups that have criticized it and seek a wider range of suggestions on how to deal with difficult problems, like protecting children online... The world, thankfully, has moved towards encrypted communications over the last two decades, not away from them, and that's a good thing. If Apple wants to maintain its reputation as a pro-privacy company, it must continue to choose real end-to-end encryption over government demands to read user's communication. Privacy matters now more than ever. It will continue to be a selling point and a distinguishing feature of some products and companies. For now, it's an open question whether Apple will continue to be one of them.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Newsweek reports:Chris Pratt is in a celebratory mood, following the announcement that he's set to voice lead character Mario in an animated movie adaptation of the enduring video game Super Mario Bros. The Guardians of the Galaxy star joins a star-studded cast in the movie, which includes Charlie Day as his brother Luigi, Anya Taylor-Joy [from The Queen's Gambit] as Princess Peach, Keegan-Michael Key [co-creator of Key & Peele] as Toad, and Jack Black as villainous turtle Bowser... Also included in the cast are Seth Rogen as Donkey Kong and Fred Armisen [from SNL and Portlandia], who will take on the role of his grandfather, Cranky Kong.... The producers said that the actors were selected for their ability to capture the spirit of each of their characters, per Variety. Kotaku adds that future-voice-of-Mario Chris Pratt "isn't exactly instilling confidence right now.""It's ah me, ah Mario," he said in an Instagram video posted last night in the exact same voice I would use if I were pretending to be Chris Pratt pretending to be Mario. "That's not the voice, you'll have to wait to hear the voice, but we've been working hard at it and I'm really excited to announce that I'm the voice of that video game that I dreamed of playing as a kid." For decades, Mario has been voiced in the games by Charles Martinet who is also not Italian but is an theatrically trained and experienced voice actor who specializes in accents and dialects. He will be involved in the new movie in some way, but at this point just as another avenue for Nintendo to troll longtime fans, it seems.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Google Photos' Locked Folder feature, which lets you hide sensitive photos and videos from your main library and secure them in a passcode- or biometric-protected folder, is coming to all devices running Android 6 and above. The Verge reports: The feature was released exclusively on newer Pixel phones in June. Google hasn't provided an exact date for when the feature is releasing more widely, noting only that it's "rolling out soon." When it announced the feature onstage at Google I/O in May, Google gave the wholesome example of the feature being used by parents hiding photos of a newly purchased puppy from their children. But I think it's fair to say that most people are going to have very different photos stored in their Locked Folder. I don't know about you, but in all the times I've had to wrench my phone out of someone's hand to stop them scrolling through my photos, it's never been because of a puppy picture.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Paul Ratner writes via Interesting Engineering: Theoretical inventions known as the "UFO patents" have been inflaming worldwide curiosity. A product of the American engineer Dr. Salvatore Cezar Pais, the patents were filed during his work for the U.S. Navy and are so ambitious in their scope and imagination that they continue to draw interest despite any clear evidence that they are feasible. The patents include designs for a futuristic hybrid vehicle with a radical propulsion system that would work equally well in the air, underwater, and in space, as well as a compact fusion reactor, a gravitational wave generator, and even a "spacetime modification weapon." The technology involved could impact reality itself, claims its inventor, whose maverick audacity rivals that of Nikola Tesla. How real are these ideas? While you can read the patents for yourself, it's evident that the tech necessary to actually create the devices described is beyond our current capabilities. Yet research into many of these fields has gone on for years, which may explain why the Navy expressed an interest. Another likely influence is the fact that the Chinese government seems to be working to develop similar technology. The fantastical inventions devised by Dr. Pais largely build upon an idea that he calls "The Pais Effect." In his patent write-ups and in an interview with The Drive, he described it as "the generation of extremely high electromagnetic energy fluxes (and hence high local energy densities) generated by controlled motion of electrically charged matter (from solid to plasma states) subjected to accelerated vibration and/or accelerated spin, via rapid acceleration transients." This effect amounts to the ability to spin electromagnetic fields to contain a fusion reaction. The electromagnetic energy fields would be so powerful that they could "engineer the fabric of our reality at the most fundamental level," writes Pais. In practical terms, this invention could lead to a veritable revolution in propulsion, quantum communications, and create an abundance of cheaply-produced energy. Certainly, an extraordinary claim that requires extraordinary evidence, as posits the Sagan standard. Despite the well-founded unease at Dr. Pais's inventions, the Navy took them seriously enough to run experiments for three years and even found some of them "operable," although the extent of that alleged operability is under debate. In the patent documents, two Navy officials seemed to assert the operability of the inventions. Furthermore, in correspondence with The Drive's "War Zone," Timothy Boulay of NAWCAD, stated that Pais's High Energy Electromagnetic Field Generator was, in fact, tested from 2016 until 2019, at a cost of $508,000. The team working on the project consisted of at least 10 technicians and engineers and put in some 1,600 hours of work. But upon the conclusion of the testing, the Pais Effect "could not be proven," shared Boulay. What happened subsequently with the tested device and further investigations is not known at this point. There are indications in documents obtained by The Drive's WarZone through the Freedom of Information Act that the inventions could be moved to another research department in the Navy or the Air Force, or possibly even to NASA or DARPA, but whether that really happened is not clear. "One of the most attention-grabbing designs by Dr. Pais is the 2018 patent for a cone-shaped craft of unprecedented range and speed," writes Ratner. "Another futuristic patent with far-reaching ramifications is Pais' Plasma Compression Fusion Device. [...] Notes from researchers who worked on vetting Pais' ideas indicate that a possible outcome of the plasma fusion device and the high energy levels it may generate is the 'Spacetime Modification Weapon' (SMW). Research documents refer to it as 'a weapon that can make the Hydrogen bomb seem more like a firecracker, in comparison.'" Pais also has a patent for an electromagnetic field generator, which could create "an impenetrable defensive shield to sea and land as well as space-based military and civilian assets." Another device conceived by Pais that could deflect asteroids is the high-frequency gravitational wave generator.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

spaceman375 shares a report from the BBC: Screenwriter Russell T Davies is to take charge again of Doctor Who, the sci-fi show he helped revive in 2005. Davies, who was the fantasy drama's showrunner until 2009, will take over when Chris Chibnall departs next year. "I'm beyond excited to be back on my favourite show," said Davies, who resumes his role as the show prepares to mark its 60th anniversary in 2023. One of his first responsibilities will be to decide who takes over the Tardis following Jodie Whittaker's exit. The actress is set to hang up her Sonic Screwdriver after one more six-part series and three 2022 specials. Davies revived Doctor Who in its current incarnation with Christopher Eccleston as the Doctor and remained for David Tennant's time as the Doctor. Steven Moffatt took over when Matt Smith took on the role, staying to supervise Peter Capaldi's stint as TV's indefatigable Time Lord. The success of Doctor Who's relaunch led Davies to create two spin-off shows, Torchwood and The Sarah Jane Adventures.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Bitcoin's massive power consumption is the cryptocurrency's dirty secret. To mine bitcoin, computers across the globe chew through enough electricity to power a medium size country, somewhere on the order of the Netherlands or Poland depending on the estimate. In fact, electricity has become such a significant factor that one private equity firm owns a power plant to mine bitcoin. The company, Greenidge Generation, said at one point that they could mine one bitcoin for less than $3,000. Even today -- at $40,000 per bitcoin, some 30 percent off its peak -- the potential for profit is real. Which is why an investor-owned utility has dropped a containerized data center outside a coal-fired power plant 10 miles north of St. Louis. Ameren, the utility, was struggling to keep the 1,099 MW power plant running profitably when wholesale electricity prices dropped. But it wasn't well suited to running only when demand was high, so-called peaker duty. Instead, they're experimenting with running it full-time and using the excess electricity to mine bitcoin. Ameren executives reportedly blame wind and solar power for the load variability that taxes the 55-year-old power plant. The utility claims that mining bitcoin could reduce its carbon footprint by allowing it to run its plants more consistently rather than ramping them up and down, which they say can increase emissions. "We have pretty dramatic changes in load minute by minute, second by second at times," Warren Wood, the utility's vice president of regulatory and legislative affairs, told E&E News. But when it's running full-time, they only have to take power away from the mining operations. Wood said it takes about 20 seconds to divert power back to the grid. Ameren attempted to get rate payers to foot a portion of the bill for its experiment, but Missouri's consumer advocate pushed back. "If Ameren Missouri wants to enter into speculative commodities, like virtual currencies, then it should do so as a non-regulated service where ratepayers are unexposed to the economics of them," Geoff Marke, chief economist for the Missouri Office of the Public Counsel, wrote in a filing. "This endeavor is beyond the scope of intended electric utility regulation, and, if allowed, creates a slippery slope where ratepayers could be asked to put up capital for virtually anything." The utility says that if its bitcoin experiment pans out, it could attach similar containerized data centers to wind and solar farms to soak up excess electricity profitably in times of high supply or low demand. The coal-fired power plant that's being used in the experiment is scheduled to be shut down in 2028. Ameren says that so far it's pleased with the project, which has mined 20 coins and mints a new one at a rate of one every 15 days or so. Whether the math continues to work depends largely on the cost of running the plant and the price of bitcoin, which is highly volatile. Based on today's prices, the company has made about $800,000 since it switched on the miners in April.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

AltMachine shares a report from Phys.Org: Chinese scientists recently reported a de novo route for artificial starch synthesis from carbon dioxide (CO2) for the first time. Relevant results were published in Science on Sept. 24. The new route makes it possible to produce starch, a major component of grains, by industrial manufacturing instead of traditional agricultural planting and opens up a new technical route for synthesizing complex molecules from CO2. The artificial route can produce starch from CO2 with an efficiency 8.5-fold higher than starch biosynthesis in maize, suggesting a big step towards going beyond nature. It provides a new scientific basis for creating biological systems with unprecedented functions. "If the overall cost of the process can be reduced to a level economically comparable with agricultural planting in the future, it is expected to save more than 90% of cultivated land and freshwater resources," said MA Yanhe, corresponding author of the study. In addition, it would also help to avoid the negative environmental impact of using pesticides and fertilizers, improve human food security, facilitate a carbon-neutral bioeconomy, and eventually promote the formation of a sustainable bio-based society.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Microsoft is rushing to register Internet domains used to steal Windows credentials sent from faulty implementations of the Microsoft Exchange Autodiscover protocol. BleepingComputer reports: On Monday, Guardicore's Amit Serper released new research about how the issue caused the exposure of close to 100,000 unique Windows and email credentials. When users configure their Exchange accounts on email clients, the app will attempt to authenticate to various Autodiscover URLs associated with Microsoft Exchange servers for their organization. If a successful authentication occurs, the Exchange server will send back settings that the mail client should use. However, many mail clients, including some versions of Microsoft Outlook and Office 365, incorrectly implement the Autodiscover protocol causing them to try and authenticate to third-party autodiscover.[tld] URLs that are not related to a user's organization. Examples of such domains include autodiscover.com, autodiscover.uk, and autodiscover.de. Threat actors could register autodiscover.[tld] domains and begin collecting the leaked Windows and email credentials for attacks against the organization. In response to Serper's report, Microsoft issued the following statement: "We are actively investigating and will take appropriate steps to protect customers. We are committed to coordinated vulnerability disclosure, an industry standard, collaborative approach that reduces unnecessary risk for customers before issues are made public. Unfortunately, this issue was not reported to us before the researcher marketing team presented it to the media, so we learned of the claims today." "Since then, Microsoft has been rushing to register any autodiscover.[tld] domains it can find to prevent them from being used to steal Windows credentials," adds BleepingComputer. "At the time of this writing, [...] Microsoft registered at least 68 domains related to Autodiscover."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: For the past 10 years, Sonia Grego has been thinking about toilets -- and more specifically what we deposit into them. "We are laser-focused on the analysis of stool," says the Duke University research professor, with all the unselfconsciousness of someone used to talking about bodily functions. "We think there is an incredible untapped opportunity for health data. And this information is not tapped because of the universal aversion to having anything to do with your stool." As the co-founder of Coprata, Grego is working on a toilet that uses sensors and artificial intelligence to analyze waste; she hopes to have an early model for a pilot study ready within nine months. "The toilet that you have in your home has not functionally changed in its design since it was first introduced," she says, in the second half of the 19th century. There are, of course, now loos with genital-washing capabilities, or heated seats, but this is basic compared with what Grego is envisaging. "All other aspects of your life -- your electricity, your communication, even your doorbell -- have enhanced capabilities." Smart toilet innovators believe the loo could become the ultimate health monitoring tool. Grego believes her product -- which analyses and tracks stool samples and sends the data to an app -- will provide "information related to cancer and many chronic diseases." For general consumers, it will provide peace of mind, she says, by establishing "a healthy baseline": "Having technology that tracks what is normal for an individual could provide an early warning that a checkup is needed." For people with specific conditions, such as inflammatory bowel disease, the device could provide helpful monitoring for doctors. "It's very difficult to know when to escalate or de-escalate treatment," she says. "Stool-based biomarkers can provide that information." At some point, she thinks, a smart toilet could make lifestyle suggestions -- it could tell you to eat more fibre or certain nutrients, for instance, or work out what kind of food triggered an uncomfortable gastric episode. "The science of nutrition is really moving in the direction of personalized nutrition," says Grego. "Our technology will be an enabler of this, because you have information of what you eat, but we can make seamless the obtaining of information of what comes out." Researchers at the Stanford School of Medicine have been working on technology that can analyze feces (including "stool dropping time") and track the velocity and color of urine, as well as test it. According to the Wall Street Journal, the researchers have partnered with Izen, a Korean toilet manufacturer that's developed a scanner that can recognize the physical characteristics of whoever is sitting on the toilet -- or, in the words of the researchers, "the distinctive features of their anoderm" (the skin of the anal canal). While many people are ready for the smart toilet era, Stanford's study of user acceptance found that the "least favored module is analprint." The Guardian article continues: Is all this -- your analprint out in the world, the makeup of your bowel movements analyzed -- a privacy breach too far? "Can it be kept secure?" asks Eerke Boiten, a professor of cybersecurity at De Montfort University in Leicester. [...] Many people "wouldn't, for very good reasons, like cameras pointing up their bottoms," says Phil Booth, the coordinator of MedConfidential, which campaigns for the confidentiality of medical records. That said, under the guidance of a medical professional, "there are not necessarily inherent privacy risks" in using a smart toilet as a medical device, he says. However, it might get interesting if the data created by general consumer use was owned by a company: "You may trust that particular company, but every company is pretty much buyable by Google or Facebook or Amazon. Then, what I thought was something for my own health monitoring has become fodder to business models I really know nothing about." Where does it end? Could the police or others involved in surveillance track you by analprint, via the public and home smart lavatories you visit? Might you be asked to provide a print at a police station? [...] "Once you start to measure something that is of the body, the privacy line is stepped over," says Booth. "If you don't measure what's going on with someone's bowel movements, the bowel movement is private." This is an alarming thought -- but, says Booth with a laugh, it is not as though governments will mandate smart toilets. He says there will always be people -- those into the "quantified self" movement -- who are happy to measure and track themselves. If smart loos are considered clinical devices collecting medical data, "then it's a straight medical breach risk -- not special to toilets, but because you've turned the toilet into a medical data-generating experience. Are they managing those risks correctly?"Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Facebook announced a new project on Thursday that will bring broadband service to thousands of households in Virginia this fall, in partnership with a local ISP and utility company. The Verge reports: The project began with fiber networks Facebook was already building to connect its data centers in Virginia, Ohio, and North Carolina. With that fiber already laid, Facebook partnered with Appalachian Power and GigaBeam Networks to extend the networks to roughly 6,000 households in Grayson County, VA. The homes are projected to have high-speed broadband access by the end of this fall. "These are really complicated problems that we're trying to solve. If they weren't complicated, then we still wouldn't have 19 million people that were unserved or underserved," Michele Kohler, Facebook's network investments team manager, told The Verge in an interview Wednesday. "We're trying to figure out how can we play in the equation, with these complex partnerships, to figure out how we can help people get connected faster." Kohler also said that Facebook is providing "engineering and technical resources" to the partnering companies. The proposed network would leverage a new law approved by the Virginia legislature last year that allows electric and communications companies to string fiber along existing poles and conduits. Still, the future of these networks is unclear as utility companies like Rappahannock Electric Cooperative have been sued by property owners for infringing on their property rights when they've sought to invoke the new provisions.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader shares a report: If you've ever tried searching on Google for one of those TikTok or Instagram videos all your friends are gushing about -- such as sea shanties or the Renegade dance -- you'll notice something. The videos don't show up. Google is trying to fix that -- but there's no guarantee its efforts will succeed. Google executives have been quietly negotiating with their counterparts at the video apps' parent companies, ByteDance for TikTok and Facebook for Instagram, to get the data it needs to index and rank videos, according to three people who were briefed about the discussions. Right now, the best results users typically see when they search are previews of videos from Google-owned YouTube, which at times hosts lower-quality copies or ripoffs of TikTok and Instagram videos. The talks show how Google is trying to keep its search engine relevant with more users as it faces new competition and regulatory threats.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The chief financial officer of Chinese tech firm Huawei will be released and allowed to return to China after reaching an agreement with the U.S. government on fraud charges, prosecutors said Friday in a Brooklyn federal court. CNBC reports: A U.S. district judge accepted the deferred prosecution agreement, which will last until Dec. 1, 2022. Under the deal, the executive, Meng Wanzhou, affirmed the accuracy of a statement of facts and agreed not to commit other crimes, or risk prosecution. Meng, the daughter of Huawei's founder, was arrested in Canada in December 2018. The U.S. sought to extradite her on bank and wire fraud charges, claiming she was misled a financial institution to violate American sanctions on Iran. The U.S. said Friday it plans to withdraw its extradition request. Meng pleaded not guilty to the charges on Friday. As part of the agreement, however, she took "responsibility for her principal role in perpetrating a scheme to defraud a global financial institution," acting U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of New York Nicole Boeckmann said in a statement. According to Boeckmann, Meng admitted to making "multiple material misrepresentations" while CFO of Huawei about the company's business in Iran, in conversations with the senior executive of a financial institution. The government claimed she did this to continue Huawei's business relationship with the firm. Boeckmann said the admission confirms the core allegations against Meng.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: When a senior executive at virtual private network company ExpressVPN admitted to working on behalf of a foreign intelligence service to hack American machines last week, it stunned employees at his new company, according to interviews and electronic records. What ExpressVPN said after the U.S. Justice Department's deferred prosecution agreement disturbed some employees further. The company had known about Dan Gericke's history as a mercenary hacker for the United Arab Emirates. The VPN provider said it had no problem with the former intelligence operative protecting the privacy of its customers. In fact, the company had repeatedly given Gericke more responsibility at ExpressVPN even as the FBI investigation of his conduct pressed toward its conclusion. Gericke was named chief technology officer in August, according to an internal email at the time, and remains in the post. Shortly after the court filings showed Gericke and two other former U.S. intelligence operators agreeing to pay a fine and give up any future classified work, he emailed his colleagues at ExpressVPN. "I can imagine that this kind of news is surprising or even uncomfortable," Gericke wrote in the message obtained by Reuters, then assured them that he had used his skills to protect consumers from threats to their security and privacy. When senior company executives during a regular online question-and-answer session last Friday with employees accepted queries about Gericke's deal and then discussed the sale announced days earlier of the company to British-Israeli digital security software provider Kape Technologies PLC, the workforce vented its anger. One employee wrote anonymously on an internal chat board: "This episode has eroded consumer's trust in our brand, regardless of the facts. How do we intend to rebuild our reputation?" Asked about the controversy, ExpressVPN said in a statement that the exchange was part of a regular monthly session between management and employees. "As a company, we value openness, dialogue and transparency -which includes robust debate and incisive questioning," the company said. It said it had not known of the federal investigation or the details of Gericke's work in UAE, and it said that country's surveillance campaign was "completely antithetical to our mission." At ExpressVPN's session with leaders Friday, the second-most supported question also concerned him. "As an individual I have a problem accepting that Dan was hired despite disclosing past actions. These actions are not small thing we can easily forget or accept. Don't they go against all the things XV stands for?" that person asked. To Reuters, the company responded: "It's only through clear commitment and contributions to our mission that Daniel has been able to earn senior leadership roles within the company and the full confidence of our co-founders."Read more of this story at Slashdot.