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New submitter iarlakd writes: The U.K. government on Wednesday released its 10-year plan to make the country a global "artificial intelligence superpower," seeking to rival the likes of the U.S. and China. The so-called "National Artificial Intelligence Strategy" is designed to boost the use of AI among the nation's businesses, attract international investment into British AI companies and develop the next generation of homegrown tech talent. "Today we're laying the foundations for the next ten years' growth with a strategy to help us seize the potential of artificial intelligence and play a leading role in shaping the way the world governs it," Chris Philp, a minister of the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, said in a statement. The National AI Strategy includes a number of programs, reports and initiatives. Among them, a new National AI Research and Innovation program will be launched as part of an effort to improve coordination and collaboration between the country's researchers. Elsewhere, another program will specifically aim to support AI development outside London and Southeast England, where much of the nation's AI efforts are currently concentrated.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

One of the largest providers of HTTPS certificates, Let's Encrypt, will stop using an older root certificate next week -- meaning you might need to upgrade your devices to prevent them from breaking. From a report: Let's Encrypt, a free-to-use nonprofit, issues certificates that encrypt the connections between your devices and the wider internet, ensuring that nobody can intercept and steal your data in transit. Millions of websites alone rely on Let's Encrypt. But, as warned by security researcher Scott Helme, the root certificate that Let's Encrypt currently uses -- the IdentTrust DST Root CA X3 -- will expire on September 30. After this, computers, devices and web clients -- such as browsers -- will no longer trust certificates that have been issued by this certificate authority. For the overwhelming majority of website users, there is nothing to worry about and September 30 will be business as usual. Older devices, however, could run into some trouble, much like they did when the AddTrust External CA Root expired back in May. Stripe, Red Hat and Roku all suffered outages as a result.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Apple plans to keep Fortnite off of its App Store until appeals are exhausted in its legal battle with Epic Games, the maker of the popular battle-royale game. From a report: Apple sent a letter to Epic Tuesday saying that it "will not consider any further requests for reinstatement until the district court's judgment becomes final and nonappealable." The letter, sent to Epic's lawyers from a firm representing Apple, was published on Twitter by Epic Chief Executive Officer Tim Sweeney. That process could take five years, he said. Epic sued Apple in August 2020 after the iPhone-maker removed Fortnite from its App Store, citing a workaround that circumvented Apple's commission on purchases.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Lithuania's Defense Ministry recommended that consumers avoid buying Chinese mobile phones and advised people to throw away the ones they have now after a government report found the devices had built-in censorship capabilities. From a report: Flagship phones sold in Europe by China's smartphone giant Xiaomi have a built-in ability to detect and censor terms such as "Free Tibet", "Long live Taiwan independence" or "democracy movement", Lithuania's state-run cybersecurity body said on Tuesday. The capability in Xiaomi's Mi 10T 5G phone software had been turned off for the "European Union region", but can be turned on remotely at any time, the Defence Ministry's National Cyber Security Centre said in the report. "Our recommendation is to not buy new Chinese phones, and to get rid of those already purchased as fast as reasonably possible," Defence Deputy Minister Margiris Abukevicius told reporters in introducing the report.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Microsoft is announcing the Surface Laptop Studio today, a successor to the Surface Book line of powerful laptops. It presents a total redesign for Microsoft's flagship laptop, ditching the removable display in favor of one that pulls forward to transform from laptop into tablet (or what Microsoft calls studio mode). From a report: "Surface Laptop Studio is the most powerful Surface we've ever built," says Pete Kyriacou, vice president of devices at Microsoft. "It is the culmination of years of Surface innovation -- on hinges, display, silicon, and more -- and brings the best of the Surface heritage together in one powerhouse device." The most immediate and obvious change to this Surface Book successor is the display and hinge. The 14.4-inch PixelSense Flow display (2400 x 1600) supports up to 120Hz and Dolby Vision. Microsoft is using a new flexible Dynamic Woven Hinge, which it says is durable and allows this laptop to transition between modes much like the larger Surface Studio. The Surface Laptop Studio supports three modes: laptop, stage, and studio. The laptop mode arranges the display just like a regular laptop, with a full keyboard and a new touchpad with haptics. The stage mode is where things get interesting, as you can pull the display forward to an angle that's designed for gaming, streaming, or presenting. This will cover the keyboard, and the angle is more suited toward watching Netflix or playing games, touching the display, or using the new Surface Slim Pen 2 for digital inking.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Microsoft has unveiled the Surface Pro 8. Engadget: Microsoft's new Surface Pro 8 tablet can actually go toe-to-toe with most ultraportables. It features a 13-inch PixelSense screen, a significant upgrade from the previous 12.3-inch display. Even better, it's one of the first non-gaming notebooks we've seen that supports a 120Hz refresh rate, which makes scrolling through web pages and jotting down notes a lot smoother. And of course, it's built with Windows 11 in mind. Together with some of Intel's latest 11th-gen processors, as well as long-awaited support for Thunderbolt 4, the Surface Pro 8 could tempt over potential buyers who were turned off by the limitations of previous models. Thankfully, the Surface Pro 8 finally supports Thunderbolt 4 on its two USB-C ports. That means you'll be able to connect fast external hard drives, several 4K external monitors or even an external GPU. As for other updates, the rear camera is now 10MP instead of 8MP, and it also supports 4K video. The front-facing camera is still 5MP with 1080p video, but it should offer better low-light performance.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Mark Zuckerberg, the chief executive, has signed off on an effort to show users pro-Facebook stories and to distance himself from scandals. From a report: Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook's chief executive, signed off last month on a new initiative code-named Project Amplify. The effort, which was hatched at an internal meeting in January, had a specific purpose: to use Facebook's News Feed, the site's most important digital real estate, to show people positive stories about the social network. The idea was that pushing pro-Facebook news items -- some of them written by the company -- would improve its image in the eyes of its users, three people with knowledge of the effort said. But the move was sensitive because Facebook had not previously positioned the News Feed as a place where it burnished its own reputation. Several executives at the meeting were shocked by the proposal, one attendee said. Project Amplify punctuated a series of decisions that Facebook has made this year to aggressively reshape its image. Since that January meeting, the company has begun a multipronged effort to change its narrative by distancing Mr. Zuckerberg from scandals, reducing outsiders' access to internal data, burying a potentially negative report about its content and increasing its own advertising to showcase its brand. [...] So Facebook executives, concluding that their methods had done little to quell criticism or win supporters, decided early this year to go on the offensive, said six current and former employees, who declined to be identified for fear of reprisal. "They're realizing that no one else is going to come to their defense, so they need to do it and say it themselves," said Katie Harbath, a former Facebook public policy director. The changes have involved Facebook executives from its marketing, communications, policy and integrity teams. Alex Schultz, a 14-year company veteran who was named chief marketing officer last year, has also been influential in the image reshaping effort, said five people who worked with him. But at least one of the decisions was driven by Mr. Zuckerberg, and all were approved by him, three of the people said.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Repeated human errors made for years were to blame for a scandal which led to more than 1bn pound of state pensions not being paid, a report has concluded. BBC: The National Audit Office (NAO) said 134,000 pensioners, mostly women, were underpaid pensions because outdated computer systems led to mistakes. Among them was 74-year-old Irene Wise, who said women like her were "short-changed" for years. The government said everyone would receive what they were owed. However, the report raises huge questions for the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) over the way the state pension system functions and the mistakes that led to such a massive shortfall in payments. Reacting to the report, Meg Hillier, who chairs the Public Accounts Committee, said: "This is not the first widespread error we have seen in the DWP in recent years. Correcting these errors comes at great cost to the taxpayer. "The DWP must provide urgent redress to those affected and take real action to prevent similar errors in future." The problem relates to the "old" state pension system where married women who had a poor pension in their own right could claim a 60% basic state pension based on their husband's record of contributions. A review is taking place to trace those affected by systemic failures to award these pension rises, stretching back to 1985. But only some women are being fully paid. Others will only be able to claim for 12 months of missed payments. The DWP is expecting to pay the affected pensioners it can trace a total of 1.05bn pound, at an average of 8,900 pound per pensioner affected. That exercise will cost the taxpayer 25m pound in staff costs and will not be completed until the end of 2023. An estimated 40,000 affected women have already died.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Vice: If you live near a freshwater river or lake, odds are good that you have seen warning signs about harmful algal and bacterial blooms posted on its shores. Alarmingly, a new study reports that these blooms may be early indicators of an ongoing ecological disaster, caused by humans, that eerily parallels the worst extinction event in Earth's history. Some 251 million years ago, the end-Permian event (EPE), popularly known as the "Great Dying," wiped out nearly 90 percent of species on Earth, making it the most severe loss of life in our planet's history. Ominous parallels of that upheaval are now showing up on Earth, according to a team led by Chris Mays, a postdoctoral researcher and palaeobotanist at the Swedish Museum of Natural History in Stockholm. The researchers found that toxic algal and bacterial blooms during the Great Dying are similar to a recent microbial proliferation in modern lakes and rivers -- a trend that has been linked to human activities such as greenhouse gas emissions (especially carbon dioxide), deforestation, and soil loss. The repeated correlation of these blooms with mass extinction events is "a disconcerting signal for future environmental change," report the researchers in a study published on Friday in the journal Nature Communications. Indeed, there's a lot of evidence to suggest we are currently in the midst of yet another mass extinction event, caused by humans. Not only do microbial blooms transform freshwater habitats into "dead zones" that can both choke out other species, thereby increasing the severity of extinction events, they can also delay the recovery of ecosystems by millions of years, the team noted. Mays and his colleagues reached this troubling conclusion by analyzing fossil records near Sydney, Australia, that were laid down before, during, and after the end-Permian extinction. Though the exact mechanisms behind the Great Dying are a matter of debate, it was driven in part by an intense bout of volcanic eruptions that sparked a dramatic uptick in global temperatures and greenhouse gases emissions. Wildfires, droughts, and other disruptions swept across the woodlands, causing a collapse of plant life and widespread deforestation. The sudden loss of forests, which act as a sink for carbon, created a noticeable "coal gap" during the end-Permian that exposes this long-term interruption in carbon sequestration. Nutrients and soils that had once been metabolized by these botanical ecosystems instead seeped into nearby freshwater habitats, bolstering microbial blooms that were already thriving as a result of higher temperature and atmospheric carbon.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

According to a report from The Wall Street Journal, "Securities and Exchange Commission Chair Gary Gensler said Tuesday he doesn't see much long-term viability for cryptocurrencies (Warning: source paywalled; alternative source), underscoring the importance of protecting investors in the market and bringing it under regulatory oversight. CoinDesk reports: Gensler also discussed stablecoins, which have become a growing area of concern among federal regulators. Gensler told the Washington Post that the SEC is currently putting together a report about stablecoins under the guidance of Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen. He also said the SEC is working with banking regulators in order to get expanded authority from Congress to regulate stablecoins. Gensler has previously compared the crypto industry to the Wild West, an analogy he expanded on during Tuesday's interview. "We've got a lot of casinos here in the Wild West," Gensler said. "And the poker chip is these stablecoins." Gensler stressed the importance of proactive crypto regulation. "I don't think it's a good idea to wait until there's a spill in aisle three," Gensler joked. "If we don't do anything and there's never a spill in aisle three, great ... I think there's just a lot of warning signs and flashing lights that we might have a spill on aisle three and I'd rather get ahead of it." Gensler also said several times during the interview that he doesn't see private forms of money as viable in the long term, comparing crypto to the Wildcat banking era of the 19th century when banks in remote areas of the U.S. distributed nearly worthless paper currency backed by bonds and other securities. "History tells us that private forms of money don't last long," Gensler told the Washington Post. "I don't think there's a long-term viability for 5,000 or 6,000 private forms of money."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Jeff Bezos on Monday pledged to give away $1 billion in grants this year with a focus on conservation efforts. "Nature is our life support system and it's fragile," Bezos said Monday at an event in New York City. "I was reminded of this just this July when I went into space with Blue Origin. I'd heard that seeing the Earth from space changes one's point of view of the world, but I was not prepared for just how much that would be true." CNBC reports: The pledge comes through the Bezos Earth Fund, which the Amazon founder and chairman started in 2020 to execute his $10 billion commitment to fight climate change. The Bezos Earth Fund has pledged to donate about $1 billion a year to activists, scientists and other groups working to address the globe's climate crisis, with a goal of spending $10 billion by 2030. Following this year's focus on conservation, the fund said that in the coming years it intends to support efforts around landscape restoration and food system transportation. The latest round of grants will be used to "create, expand, manage and monitor protected and conserved areas," the Bezos Earth Fund said in a release. To start, the fund plans to focus on Central Africa's Congo Basin, the tropical Andes region and the tropical Pacific Ocean, all of which are key areas for biodiversity and carbon stocks, or the amount of carbon stored in things such as vegetation, soils and oceans. "The natural world is not better today than it was 500 years ago, when we enjoyed unspoiled forests, clean rivers and the pristine air of the pre-industrial age," Bezos said in a statement. "We can and must reverse this anomaly." It is not yet known which organizations will receive the grants. The gifts will be prioritized in areas where local communities and Indigenous peoples are a main focus of conservation programs, among other considerations, the Bezos Earth Fund said.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Phys.Org: A relatively new type of computing that mimics the way the human brain works was already transforming how scientists could tackle some of the most difficult information processing problems. Now, researchers have found a way to make what is called reservoir computing work between 33 and a million times faster, with significantly fewer computing resources and less data input needed. In fact, in one test of this next-generation reservoir computing, researchers solved a complex computing problem in less than a second on a desktop computer. Using the now current state-of-the-art technology, the same problem requires a supercomputer to solve and still takes much longer, said Daniel Gauthier, lead author of the study and professor of physics at The Ohio State University. The study was published today in the journal Nature Communications. Reservoir computing is a machine learning algorithm developed in the early 2000s and used to solve the "hardest of the hard" computing problems, such as forecasting the evolution of dynamical systems that change over time, Gauthier said. Previous research has shown that reservoir computing is well-suited for learning dynamical systems and can provide accurate forecasts about how they will behave in the future, Gauthier said. It does that through the use of an artificial neural network, somewhat like a human brain. Scientists feed data on a dynamical network into a "reservoir" of randomly connected artificial neurons in a network. The network produces useful output that the scientists can interpret and feed back into the network, building a more and more accurate forecast of how the system will evolve in the future. The larger and more complex the system and the more accurate that the scientists want the forecast to be, the bigger the network of artificial neurons has to be and the more computing resources and time that are needed to complete the task. In this study, Gauthier and his colleagues [...] found that the whole reservoir computing system could be greatly simplified, dramatically reducing the need for computing resources and saving significant time. They tested their concept on a forecasting task involving a weather system developed by Edward Lorenz, whose work led to our understanding of the butterfly effect. Their next-generation reservoir computing was a clear winner over today's state-of-the-art on this Lorenz forecasting task. In one relatively simple simulation done on a desktop computer, the new system was 33 to 163 times faster than the current model. But when the aim was for great accuracy in the forecast, the next-generation reservoir computing was about 1 million times faster. And the new-generation computing achieved the same accuracy with the equivalent of just 28 neurons, compared to the 4,000 needed by the current-generation model, Gauthier said. An important reason for the speed-up is that the "brain" behind this next generation of reservoir computing needs a lot less warmup and training compared to the current generation to produce the same results. Warmup is training data that needs to be added as input into the reservoir computer to prepare it for its actual task.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Chinese President Xi Jinping told the United Nations General Assembly Tuesday that his country "will not build new coal-fired power projects abroad" and plans to boost support for clean energy in developing nations. Axios reports: The pledge, if maintained, would mark a breakthrough in efforts to transition global power away from the most carbon-emitting fuel. Nations, including the U.S., have been urging China -- historically a key source of coal-plant finance -- to make such a commitment. Xi's pledge on coal financing comes just weeks before a critical United Nations climate summit. However, his remarks did not provide any details on the commitment or its implementation timeline. China is by far the world's largest coal producer and consumer, and is still building new coal-fired power generation domestically. Xi reiterated China's pledge to have it's greenhouse gas emissions peak before 2030 and to achieve carbon neutrality by 2060, but did not offer strengthened domestic commitments.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A U.S. government committee is reviewing Zoom's agreement to acquire cloud contact center software company Five9 for $14.7 billion on national-security grounds. CNBC reports: According to a letter dated Aug. 27, the Federal Communications Commission was asked to refer the case to the Committee for the Assessment of Foreign Participation in the United States Telecommunications Service Sector. Attorney General Merrick Garland is chair of the committee. Zoom announced the deal with Five9 in July, marking the video-chat company's first billion-dollar-plus acquisition. Zoom ballooned in value during the pandemic and, with Five9's technology, is trying to expand into adjacent markets. Zoom is based in San Jose, California, and founder and CEO Eric Yuan, a native of China, is a U.S. citizen. The company has a significant research and development hub in China, and last year House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California referred to Zoom as "a Chinese entity" during an MSNBC interview. "USDOJ believes that such risk may be raised by the foreign participation (including the foreign relationships and ownership) associated with the application, and a review by the Committee is necessary to assess and make an appropriate recommendation as to how the Commission should adjudicate this application," David Plotinsky of the Justice Department wrote in the letter to the FCC. Zoom still expects the acquisition to close in the first half of 2022, a company spokesperson told CNBC in an email. "We have made filings with the various applicable regulatory agencies, and these approval processes are proceeding as expected," the representative said.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The iOS 15.1 beta that was introduced today allows iPhone users to upload their COVID-19 vaccination status to the Health app and then generate a vaccination card in Apple Wallet. MacRumors reports: The Apple Wallet vaccination card can be shown to businesses, venues, restaurants, and more that are requiring vaccines for entry. As outlined in an announcement to developers, verifiable health records are based on the SMART Health Cards specification. California is using SMART Health Cards, so users in California can add their vaccination records to the Wallet app after installing iOS 15.1. Other states and health organizations that use the SMART Health Cards will be able to use a button to let users know that they can download and store their vaccination information in the Health app and in the Wallet app. California, Louisiana, New York, Virginia, Hawaii, and some Maryland counties support Smart Health Cards, as do Walmart, Sam's Club, and CVS Health. So those in the specific supported states should be able to look up their information in state databases, but those who were vaccinated through companies like Walmart and CVS will also be able to add their information to the Health and Wallet apps because it's the same system.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Washington Post: The FBI refrained for almost three weeks from helping to unlock the computers of hundreds of businesses and institutions hobbled by a major ransomware attack this summer, even though the bureau had secretly obtained the digital key needed to do so, according to several current and former U.S. officials. The key was obtained through access to the servers of the Russia-based criminal gang behind the July attack. Deploying it immediately could have helped the victims, including schools and hospitals, avoid what analysts estimate was millions of dollars in recovery costs. But the FBI held on to the key, with the agreement of other agencies, in part because it was planning to carry out an operation to disrupt the hackers, a group known as REvil, and the bureau did not want to tip them off. Also, a government assessment found the harm was not as severe as initially feared. The planned takedown never occurred because in mid-July REvil's platform went offline -- without U.S. government intervention -- and the hackers disappeared before the FBI had a chance to execute its plan, according to the current and former officials. The previously unreported episode highlights the trade-offs law enforcement officials face between trying to damage cyber criminal networks and promptly helping the victims of ransomware -- malware that encrypts data on computers, rendering them unusable.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Comcast appears to be planning to offer TVs running its own software across at least two territories, according to recent reports from Protocol and The Financial Times. It comes a little more than a week after Amazon announced that it too will be getting into the TV set business. The Verge reports: In the US, the TVs will reportedly be branded as XClass TVs. Originally manufactured by Hisense, the 43 and 50-inch sets will run Comcast's X1 operating system, which is already found on its set-top boxes and Xfinity Flex streaming box. An Xfinity landing site confirms the "XClass TV" branding, while an FAQ spotted by Protocol says they'll aggregate "your favorite apps, live channels, and On Demand movies and shows together in one place." Meanwhile in the UK, Comcast subsidiary Sky is reportedly planning to launch smart TVs of its own. The FT's report doesn't mention what operating system these TVs are likely to run. Sky already operates its Sky Q platform in the country, which currently runs on set-top boxes and shows satellite broadcasts alongside video streamed from services like Netflix and Disney Plus. As Protocol notes, the initiatives appear to be Comcast's attempt to insulate itself as customers turn away from traditional cable and satellite plans in favor of streaming services. By offering a platform that competes with the likes of Roku, Comcast would be able to maintain its direct relationship with customers. It could then aggregate content from other streaming providers alongside its own Peacock and Xumo streaming services. Controlling the viewing platform also gives Comcast and its subsidiaries the ability to negotiate with streaming providers to offer them better prominence on its platforms, the FT notes.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The New York Times: Angry home buyers are waiting on as many as 1.6 million apartments. Suppliers that sold cement, paint, rebar and copper pipes are owed more than $100 billion in payments. Employees who were strong-armed into lending are panicking now that the company cannot repay them on time. China's Evergrande Group, the embattled property developer whose towering debt has set off panic in global markets, is buckling under the weight of more than $300 billion in debt. The company's billionaire chairman told employees on Tuesday that they would "walk out of darkness as soon as possible." But the question for many is whether the company can stumble out of its current crisis on its own without being led by Beijing. And experts are making increasingly grim predictions about Evergrande's ability to hold on without a government bailout, and the consequences of a possible collapse. Matt Levine, writing at Bloomberg: Much of the writing about Evergrande has been about "is this China's Lehman moment?" The main lesson of Lehman was that the collapse of a big levered interconnected firm could cause serious economic damage, and since Lehman, financial regulators in the U.S. and Europe have done a lot of work on reducing leverage and interconnection and damage. But another lesson, one that I think about a lot around here, is that the way to reduce systemic risk and potential bailouts is for everyone to know how much risk they are taking, for risks to come with clear warnings and accurate labels, and for the risks to be taken by people who can handle them. If you must have big interconnected companies, it is good to know in advance whose claims are senior and safe and who is taking a big gamble in the hope of a high return. It is fine for a company to fund itself by selling speculative investments to retail gamblers, and it is fine for a company to fund itself by selling safe-as-houses investments to retail retirement savers, but either way it is important for people to know which one they're buying. Much post-Lehman financial regulation is about this sort of labeling: The way to prevent after-the-fact government bailouts is by making sure that risk is borne by people who bear it knowingly and can afford to. When companies fail, people will lose money, and you want to be able to say to whoever loses money, "well, you knew what you were getting into." Here that seems hard! Evergrande got its financing from absolutely everyone -- banks, investors, suppliers, customers, employees -- and it seems unlikely that they all knew what they were getting into. Its capital structure branches out everywhere; there are all sorts of sympathetic people who might lose money, and it is not obvious who should be rescued and who shouldn't be. Do you give the apartments to the people who put their hard-earned money into apartment deposits, or the ones who put their hard-earned money into wealth management products? Eventually either Evergrande will muddle through, or it will get a bailout, or it won't and people will lose money. But the long-term work of making sure this doesn't happen again is mostly about transparency, about allocating risks clearly in advance so you don't have to sort them out in hindsight.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

FallOutBoyTonto shares a report from Ars Technica: A US intelligence officer traveling in India earlier this month with CIA director William Burns reported experiencing a mysterious health incident and symptoms consistent with so-called Havana syndrome, according to a report by CNN. The officer received immediate medical care upon returning to the US. The case raises fears that such incidents are not only increasing, but potentially escalating, unnamed officials told CNN and The New York Times. The new incident within Burns' own team reportedly left the CIA chief "fuming" with anger. The director's schedule is tightly guarded, and officials do not know if the affected intelligence officer was targeted because the officer was traveling with the director. If the health incident was an attack carried out by an adversarial intelligence agency -- as feared -- it's unclear how the adversarial agency learned of the trip and was able to prepare an attack. It's also possible, however, that the officer was targeted for other reasons and without knowledge that the officer was traveling with the director. The report notes that this incident is the second high-profile case in less than a month. "On August 24, another so-called 'anomalous health incident' affecting US embassy staff in Hanoi, Vietnam, came to light," reports Ars Technica. "It is still unclear how many staff members were affected in that incident, but NBC News reported that two US personnel were medevaced out of the country."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from CNBC: Amazon is further relaxing its screening policies for marijuana, as it ramps up support for federal legislation to legalize the drug. In a blog post Tuesday, Amazon HR boss Beth Galetti wrote that the company has "reinstated the employment eligibility" for former employees and applicants who were fired or deferred during random or pre-employment marijuana screenings. "Pre-employment marijuana testing has disproportionately affected communities of color by stalling job placement and, by extension, economic growth, and we believe this inequitable treatment is unacceptable," Galetti said. Amazon first announced in June it would no longer screen some of its workers for marijuana. The only job candidates Amazon will screen for the drug are those applying for positions regulated by the Department of Transportation, such as truck drivers and heavy equipment operators. Amazon also said it would still do impairment checks on the job and will test for drugs and alcohol after any incident. The company relaxed its marijuana standards after recognizing that a growing number of U.S. states are legalizing cannabis, Galetti said. It also realized that doing so would help it lure more job applicants in an increasingly tight labor market. "Amazon's pace of growth means that we are always looking to hire great new team members, and we've found that eliminating pre-employment testing for cannabis allows us to expand our applicant pool," Galetti said. Amazon is also lobbying the federal government to legalize marijuana. The company in June said it supports the Marijuana Opportunity Reinvestment and Expungement Act, which aims to decriminalize cannabis at the federal level, expunge criminal records and invest in impacted communities. On Tuesday, Galetti said Amazon recently endorsed a similar bill, called the Cannabis Administration and Opportunity Act. In a letter to lawmakers about the bill this month, Amazon urged Congress to expunge federal nonviolent marijuana crimes and allow for resentencing of any person serving time in federal prison for those crimes, while pushing states to take similar steps.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Apple is working on ways to help detect and diagnose conditions such as depression, anxiety and cognitive decline using an iPhone, WSJ is reporting. Techcrunch: Researchers hope that analysis of data such as mobility, sleep patterns and how people type could spot behaviors associated with those conditions, according to The Wall Street Journal. ther measurements could include facial expression analysis and heart and respiration rates. All of the processing would take place on the device, with no data sent to Apple servers. The company is working on research projects that could lead to the development of these features. The University of California, Los Angeles, is studying stress, anxiety and depression, with Apple Watch and iPhone data for 3,000 volunteers being tracked in a study that starts this year. A pilot phase that began in 2020 recorded data from 150 participants.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The European Commission will on Thursday present a legislative proposal for a common charger for mobile phones, tablets and headphones, a move likely to affect iPhone maker Apple more than its rivals, Reuters reported on Tuesday, citing a person familiar with the matter. From the report: The European Union executive and EU lawmakers have been pushing for a common charger for over a decade, saying it would be better for the environment and more convenient for users. The Commission wants the sale of chargers to be decoupled from devices, and also propose a harmonised charging port, the person said. Apple, whose iPhones are charged from its Lightning cable, has said rules forcing connectors to conform to one type could deter innovation, create a mountain of electronic waste and irk consumers.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

More than 60 endangered African penguins were recently found dead, all with multiple bee stings and no other external injuries, according to officials in a coastal city in South Africa where the birds regularly migrate. From a report: Sixty-three dead African penguins were found Friday at the Boulders Penguin Colony, in Simon's Town, about 25 miles south of Cape Town, in the southwest of the country. All the penguins had multiple bee stings, and "many dead bees were found at the site where the birds had died," according to a statement from the South African National Parks. "Therefore preliminary investigations suggest that the penguins died because of being stung by a swarm of Cape honey bees." No external physical injuries were observed on any of the dead penguins, the statement said. The penguins migrate to the area annually. The bees found near the dead birds are native to the area, "usually coexist with wildlife" and "don't sting unless provoked," according to Dr. Alison Kock, a marine biologist at the South African National Parks. "We have never had a problem like this before," she said. The penguins had been stung around the eyes and on their flippers, areas not covered by feathers, Dr. Kock said.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

PayPal has been talking about its "super app" plans for some time, having recently told investors its upcoming digital wallet and payments app had been given a go for launch. Today, the first version of that app is officially being introduced, offering a combination of financial tools including direct deposit, bill pay, a digital wallet, peer-to-peer payments, shopping tools, crypto capabilities and more. From a report: The company is also announcing its partnership with Synchrony Bank for its new high-yield savings account, PayPal Savings. These changes shift PayPal from being largely a payments utility that's tacked on other offerings here and there, to being a more fully fleshed out finance app. Though PayPal itself doesn't aim to be a "bank," the new app offers a range of competitive features for those considering shifting their finances to neobanks, like Chime or Varo, as it will now also include support for paycheck Direct Deposits through PayPal's bank partners with two-day early access, bill pay and more.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The Biden administration plans a fresh campaign against ransomware attacks through sanctions to cut off criminals' cryptocurrency pipelines, and it urged companies to report extortion attempts and better protect themselves from them. From a report: Deputy Treasury Secretary Wally Adeyemo told reporters that the sanctions would be imposed on Suex, a cryptocurrency transferring service that's registered in the Czech Republic. He said Suex had "facilitated transactions involving illicit proceeds for at least eight ransomware variants. He said "exchanges like Suex are critical to attackers' ability to extract profits," pointing out that this was the first such action by the Office of Foreign Assets Control against a virtual currency exchange. Both Adeyemo and Deputy National Security Adviser Anne Neuberger, who also briefed reporters in a conference call on Monday evening, underscored the importance of ransomware victims coming forward and vulnerable businesses and organizations taking steps to bolster their security. Adeyemo announced new Treasury Department guidance that makes "an express statement that the U.S. government strongly discourages the payment of cyber ransoms or extortion demands."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

On the day Apple released iOS 15, a Spanish security researcher disclosed an iPhone lock screen bypass that can be exploited to grant attackers access to a user's notes. From a report: In an interview with The Record, Jose Rodriguez said he published details about the lock screen bypass after Apple downplayed similar lock screen bypass issues he reported to the company earlier this year. "Apple values reports of issues like this with up to $25,000 but for reporting a more serious issue, I was awarded with $5,000," the researcher wrote on Twitter last week. [...] Because of the unprofessional way Apple handled his bug report, the researcher published today a variation of the same bypass, but this time one that uses the Apple Siri and VoiceOver services to access the Notes app from behind the screen lock. Further reading: Apple Pays Hackers Six Figures To Find Bugs in Its Software. Then It Sits On their Findings.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Netflix said on Monday it is launching a free mobile plan in Kenya as the global streaming giant looks to tap the East African nation that is home to over 20 million internet users. From a report: The free plan, which will be rolled out to all users in Kenya in the coming weeks, won't require them to provide any payment information during the sign-up, the company said. The new plan is available to any user aged 18 or above with an Android phone, the company said. It will also not include ads. The company told Reuters that it is making about one quarter of its movies and television shows catalog available to users in the free plan in the East African nation.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Facebook has begun rolling out an update that is interfering with watchdogs monitoring the platform. From a report: The Markup has found evidence that Facebook is adding changes to its website code that foils automated data collection of news feed posts -- a technique that groups like NYU's Ad Observatory, The Markup, and other researchers and journalists use to audit what's happening on the platform on a large scale. The changes, which attach junk code to HTML features meant to improve accessibility for visually impaired users, also impact browser-based ad blocking services on the platform. The new code risks damaging the user experience for people who are visually impaired, a group that has struggled to use the platform in the past. The updates add superfluous text to news feed posts in the form of ARIA tags, an element of HTML code that is not rendered visually by a standard web browser but is used by screen reader software to map the structure and read aloud the contents of a page. Such code is also used by organizations like NYU's Ad Observatory to identify sponsored posts on the platform and weed them out for further scrutiny. Facebook did not respond to a request for comment before press time. Following the changes, the Citizen Browser project experienced a drop in data collection rates from early September, prompting the investigation that uncovered these changes to the code. At around the same time, users of certain ad blockers noticed a decrease in their effectiveness.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Google employees have joined the slew of politicians and activists blasting the internet giant for pulling a voting app from Russia's opposition leader, a move critics say showed the company was caving in to the Kremlin. From a report: Staff members complained over the weekend about the Google's decision in internal forums and on memegen, a messaging board that has served as a breeding ground for protests within the company. Images circulating inside Google, which were viewed by Bloomberg News, spoofed its corporate creed about prioritizing users. One picture depicts a man reading a magazine below the slogan, "Putin the user first." These internal frustrations are the latest in a series of blows to Alphabet's Google operations in Russia, where the company is facing increased political pressure, fines and aggressive demands to police its influential internet services. So far, Google has decided those pressures are still worth operating in the multibillion dollar advertising market. Google and Apple on Friday removed a smart-voting app from Alexey Navalny, an imprisoned critic of Russian president Vladimir Putin. Google made the decision to remove the app from its online store in Russia after officials threatened to imprison local employees, according to a person close to the company.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

em1ly shares a report from Motherboard, which obtained leaked training videos Apple made for its authorized repair partners, showing how the company trains repair technicians to undermine third party companies and talk customers into buying more expensive first party repairs. From the report: "I cracked the glass on my phone and I'm comparing costs. How much for just that part?" One man acting the part of the customer asks in one of the videos."I can show you the cost for just the part before we begin," another man, playing the part of repair technician says."Whoa," the customer says, holding out his hands. "That's way more than the shop down the street. Why is it so expensive here?""This quote's for a genuine Apple part," the technician says."What do you mean by genuine?" the customer asks, his hands making scare quotes. "I'd like to save some money. Aren't they really the same part?" After this, the technician launches into an explanation of why it's best for people to replace broken iPhone parts with genuine Apple products. "A genuine Apple part has to pass AppleCare engineering criteria," the technician says, explaining that a screen from Apple will be tested as if it had just come off the factory floor. "With a genuine Apple display, all the features you've come to rely on behave seamlessly...that's not the case with third party displays." Six of the eight videos are dedicated to training repair techs on how to deal with customers worried about the huge costs of repairing an Apple device. One three-minute video is dedicated to helping customers understand why a genuine Apple screen is often better than one from a third party.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Canonical has announced that it is extending the life of Ubuntu 14.04 and 16.04 to a decade. BetaNews: In other words, Ubuntu 14.04 and 16.04 are getting longer Extended Security Maintenance (ESM) periods as Canonical pushes back their End of Life (EoL) dates. The former will now get security updates until 2024, while the latter will receive them until 2026. "This lifecycle extension enables organizations to balance their infrastructure upgrade costs, by giving them additional time to implement their upgrade plan. The prolonged Extended Security Maintenance (ESM) phase of Ubuntu 14.04 LTS and 16.04 LTS enables a secure and low-maintenance infrastructure with security updates and kernel livepatches provided by Canonical. The announcement represents a significant opportunity for the organizations currently implementing their transition to new applications and technologies," says Canonical.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Google is buying a new office building on Manhattan's West Side for $2.1 billion, the most expensive sale of a U.S. office building since the pandemic started. From a report: The tech giant is already leasing a 1.3 million-square-foot building in Hudson Yards, also on the West Side, which it has an option to buy. New York City is the company's second largest office location. The move highlights a long-term push for a return to office work, even as companies across the industry delay their reopenings due to the delta variant.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TorrentFreak: Virgin Media subscribers receiving letters accusing them of movie piracy may find that settling their cases will be a costly affair. TorrentFreak understands that settlement demands run to several thousand pounds, a massive uplift on the several hundred usually requested in similar cases. Interestingly, however, some subscribers could be immune from being sued. [...] At this stage it's too early to definitively say what factors are being considered when assessing the settlement amount. However, if earlier methodology is deployed it's possible that Voltage's anti-piracy monitoring company (believed to be MaverickEye) will take the BitTorrent swarm size (the number of people sharing the movie at the same time) and multiply that by the price of the Ava movie. As previously reported, this system has serious flaws. However, for people who simply want to settle and move on, paying Voltage a few thousand pounds should make the whole thing go away -- at least in respect of this particular accusation. But what about those who wish to contest the claims being made? At the core of the letters is the assumption that the person who pays the Virgin Media bill is the person who downloaded and shared the movie 'Ava' without permission. 'Assumption' is key here since Voltage acknowledges that may not be the case and someone else in a household could be liable. If the bill payer did not carry out the infringement and did not authorize/allow someone else to do so, under the Copyright Designs and Patent Act they are not liable. This means that they can issue a direct denial to Voltage but that would not prevent the company from filing a claim if it believes it has a case. At this point it's important to note that any claim by Voltage would be actioned in a civil court where cases are decided on the balance of probabilities -- 51% confidence of infringement could tip a case in the company's favor, resulting in a damages award. That's in addition to the associated legal costs of a failed defense. Given that Voltage is setting the bar so high with demands for multi-thousand-pound settlements, it seems likely that defendants who can afford to mount a defense will do so. [T]he High Court states that Voltage may not initiate legal proceedings against a minor, which means anyone under the age of 18 in England, Wales or Northern Ireland. This means that if a parent pays the bill and a 17-year-old illegally downloaded and shared the movie, Voltage cannot bring a case against them. Furthermore, the High Court says that Voltage cannot pursue cases against an infringer who is a pensioner. The retirement age in the UK is currently 66 and according to the High Court's instructions, "anyone over the age of 65" can not have proceedings brought against them. In addition, anyone who is considered "vulnerable' will not have to face proceedings either.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

em1ly shares a report from Motherboard: Amazon delivery drivers say surveillance cameras installed in their vans have made them lose income for reasons beyond their control. In February, Amazon announced that it would install cameras made by the AI-tech startup Netradyne in its Amazon-branded delivery vans as an "innovation" to "keep drivers safe." As of this month, Amazon had fitted more than half of its delivery fleet nationwide with this technology, an Amazon spokesperson told Motherboard. Motherboard spoke to six Amazon delivery drivers in California, Texas, Kansas, Alabama, and Oklahoma, and the owner of an Amazon delivery company in Washington who said that rather than encourage safe driving, Netradyne cameras regularly punish drivers for so-called "events" that are beyond their control or don't constitute unsafe driving. The cameras will punish them for looking at a side mirror or fiddling with the radio, stopping ahead of a stop sign at a blind intersection, or getting cut off by another car in dense traffic, they said. The Netradyne camera, which requires Amazon drivers to sign consent forms to release their biometric data, has four lenses that record drivers when they detect "events" such as following another vehicle too closely, stop sign and street light violations, and distracted driving. When the camera detects an "event," it uploads the footage to a Netradyne interface accessible to Amazon and its delivery companies, and in some instances, a robotic voice speaks out to the driver: "distracted driving" or "maintain safe distance." Each time the camera registers an event, footage is uploaded into a system, recorded, and affects a score drivers receive at the end of the week for safe driving. Amazon drivers believe that AI-powered surveillance cameras have served as a cost-saving measure for the company. Amazon delivery drivers and delivery companies, known as "delivery service partners," which contract with Amazon and employ drivers, have reported losing income from erroneous citations registered by Netradyne.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration plans to retire the International Space Station by the end of this decade, so the U.S. space agency is turning to private companies to build new space stations in orbit -- and expects to save more than $1 billion annually as a result. CNBC reports: NASA earlier this year unveiled the Commercial LEO Destinations project, with plans to award up to $400 million in total contracts to as many as four companies to begin development on private space stations. In response to NASA's request, director of commercial spaceflight Phil McAlister told CNBC that the agency "received roughly about a dozen proposals" from a variety of companies for contracts under the project. "We got an incredibly strong response from industry to our announcement for proposals for commercial, free fliers that go directly to orbit," McAlister said. "I can't remember the last time we got that many proposals [in response] to a [human spaceflight] contract announcement." The ISS is more than 20 years old and costs NASA about $4 billion a year to operate. The space station is approved to operate through the end of 2024, with a likely lifespan extension to the end of 2028. But, moving forward, McAlister says that NASA wants "to be just one of many users instead of the primary sponsor and infrastructure supporter" for stations in low Earth orbit. "This strong industry response shows that our plan to retire the International Space Station in the latter part of this decade and transition to commercial space destinations is a viable, strong plan," McAlister said. "We are making tangible progress on developing commercial space destinations where people can work, play, and live," McAlister added. NASA is now evaluating the proposals, and McAlister said the agency hopes to announce the contract winners "before the end of the year," although he is "pushing for earlier." NASA "will not need anything near as big and as capable" as the ISS moving forward, said McAlister. He said the private space stations "could be very large, but NASA will only be paying for the part that we need."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: TSMC announced last week that it would flatten its emissions growth by 2025 and reach net-zero carbon by 2050. That'll be a tall order for a company that produced over 15 million tons of carbon pollution last year across the entire scope of its operations, about the same as the country of Ghana. Though the amount of carbon pollution per wafer produced by TSMC has declined in recent years, surging demand for semiconductors has driven overall emissions up, and years of rising energy use, likely from the introduction of EUV lithography, has slowed progress. "TSMC is deeply aware that climate change has a severe impact on the environment and humanity. As a world-leading semiconductor company, TSMC must shoulder its corporate responsibility to face the challenge of climate change," Chairman Mark Liu said in a statement. Semiconductor manufacturing is both energy intensive and heavily reliant on potent greenhouse gases. Fabs use enormous amounts of power -- TSMC estimates that its 3 nm fabs will draw 7.7 billion kWh annually, or about the same as 723,000 American households. The company says that today about 62 percent of its total emissions come from energy. To achieve the net-zero goal, TSMC will have to work hand in hand with the Taiwanese government. The company uses 4.8 percent of the island's power today, a figure that's expected to rise to 7.2 percent by 2022 when the 3 nm fabs are turned on, according to Greenpeace Taiwan. Currently, Taiwan is heavily reliant on coal and natural gas, with less than 20 percent of electricity produced by nuclear and renewables. TSMC has started taking steps to address the issue, saying in July it was buying all of the power produced over 20 years by a 920 MW wind farm being built in the Taiwan Strait. It's expected to be completed by 2026. While significant, the company will have to make many more deals like that to eliminate its energy-related emissions.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The Chinese version of TikTok is introducing a "teenage mode" that will limit the amount of time children under the age of 14 spend on the short-form video app to 40 minutes a day. CNN reports: The measure will apply to all Douyin users under the age of 14 who have registered for the app using their real names, Beijing-based ByteDance announced in a statement on Saturday. Douyin will also be unavailable to those users between 10 p.m. and 6 a.m., the owner of TikTok and Douyin added. The company also urged parents to help their children register with real names, or otherwise manually enable "teenage mode." The app also said it would introduce new content -- ranging from science experiments and museums to art gallery exhibition and natural scenery -- to "inspire" younger teens. Limiting usage of Douyin is a "proactive measure" by ByteDance to get ahead of potential regulation, analysts at Citigroup Global Markets wrote in a Monday research note. They suggested that the decision could push other internet platforms with short video content to look at implementing similar restrictions.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Senate Democrats are calling on the Federal Trade Commission to write new rules to protect consumer data privacy in a new letter to the agency authored on Monday. From a report: The letter, led by Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) and signed by eight other Democratic senators, was sent to FTC Chair Lina Khan Monday, calling on the agency to "begin a rulemaking process" on privacy. Specifically, the senators are requesting that the FTC pen new rules addressing privacy, civil rights, and the collection of consumer data. "Consumer privacy has become a consumer crisis," the lawmakers wrote. "Tech companies have routinely broken their promises to consumers and neglected their legal obligations, only to receive wrist-slap punishments after long delay, providing little relief to consumers, and with minimal deterrent effect."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The Data Protection Commission in Ireland, Facebook's lead privacy regulator in Europe, has asked Facebook to demonstrate than an LED indicator light on its pair of "smart" Ray-Ban sunglasses -- which lights up when the user is taking a video -- is an effective way of putting other people on notice that they are being recorded by the wearer. TechCrunch reports: Italy's privacy watchdog, the Garante, already raised concerns about Facebook's smart glasses -- but Ireland has an outsized role as a regulator for the tech giant owing to where the company's regional base is located. The first Facebook Ray-Ban-branded specs went on sale earlier this month â" looking mostly like a standard pair of sunglasses but containing two 5 MP cameras mounted on the front that enable the user to take video of whatever they're looking at and upload it to a new Facebook app called View. (The sunglasses also contain in-frame speakers so the user can listen to music and take phone calls.) [...] The specs also include a front-mounted LED light which is supposed to switch on to indicate when a video is being recorded. However European regulators are concerned that what the DPC describes as a "very small" indicator is an inadequate mechanism for alerting people to the risk they are being recorded. Facebook has not demonstrated it conducted comprehensive field testing of the device with a view to assessing the privacy risk it may pose, it added. "While it is accepted that many devices including smart phones can record third party individuals, it is generally the case that the camera or the phone is visible as the device by which recording is happening, thereby putting those captured in the recordings on notice. With the glasses, there is a very small indicator light that comes on when recording is occurring. It has not been demonstrated to the DPC and Garante that comprehensive testing in the field was done by Facebook or Ray-Ban to ensure the indicator LED light is an effective means of giving notice," the DPC wrote. Facebook's lead EU data protection regulator goes on to say it is calling on the tech giant to "confirm and demonstrate that the LED indicator light is effective for its purpose and to run an information campaign to alert the public as to how this new consumer product may give rise to less obvious recording of their images."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from ZDNet: At the Open Source Summit in Seattle, The Linux Foundation, and edX, the leading massive open online course (MOOC) provider released the 2021 Open Source Jobs Report. In this survey of 200 technical hiring managers and 750 open-source pros, the organizations found more demand for top open-source workers than ever. On top of that, 92% of managers are having trouble finding enough talent and many of them are also having fits holding on to their existing senior open-source staffers. In short, if you've got open-source skills, whether you're a developer, a sysadmin, a DevOps expert, or a cloud-native pro, there's a good-paying job waiting for you out there. And, where before the Covid-19 pandemic, you might have been stuck with only jobs in your area, these days, thanks to the rise of working from home, you can still live at the old homestead instead of moving to Silicon Valley or Manhattan. On top of this 50% of employers surveyed stated they are increasing hires this year. The jobs are out there. The difficulty for companies is, as 92% of managers report, finding enough talent and hanging onto existing talent in the face of fierce competition. This is especially true for cloud-native application development and operations skills. Cloud-native tops the list of skills needed with over 46% of hiring managers looking for people with Kubernetes smarts. Indeed, for the first time in the survey's history, cloud and container technology skills are more in demand by hiring managers than Linux. Indeed, cloud and container skills rank far above Linux in this go around with 41% over 32%. [T]he survey also found that DevOps has become the standard method for developing software: Virtually all open-source professionals (88%) report using DevOps practices in their work, a 50% increase from three years ago. In other words, it's all DevOps all the time. "The survey also revealed that a majority of employers, 88%, now say that hiring certified professionals is a priority," the report adds. "That's an 87% increase in only three years, 57% in 2020, and 47% in 2018." Sadly, discrimination has also become more of an issue. "18% of open-source professionals now report they have been discriminated against or made to feel unwelcome in the community," the report says. "That's a 125% increase over the past three years."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

ytene writes: Danika Fears over at The Daily Beast carries some pretty explosive reporting, describing how Peter Thiel -- of Palantir infamy -- claims in a new biography by Max Chafkin that Mark Zuckerberg agreed to push "State-Sanctioned Conservatism" in return for the Trump administration steering clear of any "heavy-handed regulations." This could well be one of those situations where it doesn't matter if the core claim is true or false -- because either way this is going to get ugly. The claims were made in the book "The Contrarian: Peter Thiel and Silicon Valley's Pursuit of Power." Zuckerberg denied the existence of a deal, saying that was "pretty ridiculous."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Small doses of Pfizer's COVID-19 mRNA vaccine in children ages 5 to 11 appeared to produce strong antibody responses and comparable side effects to those seen in older age groups, according to the first top-line results from a Phase 2/3 clinical trial released by Pfizer and its partner BioNTech early Monday. The trial data involved 2,268 children ages 5 to 11 years, and these children were given a series of two 10-microgram doses of the vaccine, 21 days apart. The dosage is just a third of the 30-microgram doses given to people ages 12 and above. One month after the second dose, researchers measured the children's levels of antibodies able to neutralize the SARS-CoV-2 virus in a lab experiment. The geometric mean titer of antibody in the 5 to 11 year olds was 1,197.6 (95 percent confidence interval of 1,106.1 to 1,296.6), which is comparable to the geometric mean titer of 1,146.5 seen in people ages 16 to 25. Pfizer described the vaccine as being well tolerated in children, with side effects generally comparable to what's seen in people ages 16 to 25. But the company did not provide further data on the side effects. It also did not provide any further data on vaccine efficacy, though experts expect that comparable neutralizing antibody levels will provide comparable levels of protection against infection, hospitalization, and death. The company said it plans to submit the data to the FDA as soon as possible. It also aims to submit the data for emergency use authorization to the FDA by the end of the month. "Once data is submitted to the FDA, it will take regulators several weeks to review the data and make a decision," the report adds. "That places the earliest estimates for vaccine authorization and availability for the 5-to-11 group at the end of October."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Twitter on Monday said it has agreed to pay $809.5 million to settle a class action lawsuit that accused the social network of violating securities laws by misleading investors about its prospects for growth. CNET reports: The settlement stems from a 2016 lawsuit that alleged Twitter and its executives misled shareholders in November 2014 about user growth, promising an increase in monthly active users to 550 million in the "intermediate" term and more than a billion "over the longer term." But Twitter's user growth remained flat, causing steep declines in its stock price, according to the lawsuit. Twitter stopped reporting monthly active users in April 2019 (at last count it reported 330 million). The company now looks at daily users who see ads as its key metric. In July, Twitter reported that its mDAU, or monetized daily active users, grew to 206 million for the quarter that ended in June. The user growth helped the company, which makes most of its revenue from ads, post a 74% increase in quarterly revenue, to $1.19 billion. The settlement agreement, which doesn't include any admission of wrongdoing by Twitter, is subject to court approval.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The U.S. death toll from COVID-19 has surpassed that of the 1918 flu pandemic, according to a tracker from Johns Hopkins University. The Hill reports: The U.S. has passed 675,000 deaths, the estimated toll from the 1918 pandemic, which for a century had been the worst pandemic to hit the country. "The number of reported deaths from Covid in the US will surpass the toll of the 1918 flu pandemic this month," Tom Frieden, the former head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, tweeted earlier this month. "We cannot become hardened to the continuing, and largely preventable, tragedy." Deaths from COVID-19 are also far from over. The U.S. is averaging about 2,000 more deaths from the virus every day, according to a New York Times tracker. Those deaths are overwhelmingly among the unvaccinated, though, highlighting that the continuing toll of COVID-19 is now largely preventable now that vaccines are widely available in the U.S. In 1918, there was no vaccine to help stop the flu pandemic. Still, the U.S. population was far smaller a century ago, meaning that the death rate from the 1918 pandemic is still higher than for COVID-19. E. Thomas Ewing, a Virginia Tech history professor, wrote in Health Affairs earlier this year that the death rate from the 1918 pandemic was about six in every 1,000 people, given the U.S. population at the time of around 100 million. The death rate from COVID-19 in the U.S. is about two in every 1,000 people. A disproportionate share of COVID-19 deaths are also in the United States. Worldwide, the 1918 flu killed far more people than COVID-19 has so far, at about 50 million compared to about 5 million.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Luke Plunkett, writing for Kotaku: A few days ago Eurogamer closed their forums, bringing to an end over 20 years of community discussion. The site explained the move like sites and companies always do (only a few are still using them), and it made sense the way it always does (that's a lot of money for not much gain), but that doesn't mean the process itself isn't something that sucks. [...] Readers are then urged to move to the site's Discord, because of course they would be. Now, I don't want to pick on Eurogamer here, as like I said up top, in every individual case companies and sites have their reasons for doing this. The most frequently cited are the fact that forums need to be maintained (true!) and that people's conversational habits have changed, with forum use dwindling (also true!). But I simply do not care, because a) I don't work for these companies, and b) I'm more interested in looking at the long-term damage this is doing to the internet. Forums and Discord are apples and oranges. Users aren't being moved from one similar thing to another, they're being shifted to platforms with fundamentally different ways of approaching discussions. Discord is great for talking in the moment. [...] Forums aren't the same though. They're nothing like it. Forums are more deliberate, more considered, and while they're far from perfect -- I'm sure you can post a billion examples of people being neither deliberate nor considered on forums -- the point is that they're more permanent. Forums create a record, an archive we can search through, so that whenever we want to revisit issues, or find help with a problem, or see what was happening during a certain time, we can do that. There's a paper trail, and while sometimes that leads to embarrassing takes on tv shows and game reveals, other times it's providing an enormous help with technical issues or parts of a game you're stuck on.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The average American's workweek has gotten 10% longer during the pandemic, according to a new Microsoft study published in Nature Human Behaviour. From a report: These longer hours are a key part of the pandemic-induced crisis of burnout at U.S. firms -- and workers are quitting in droves. Microsoft calculated the length of the workday based on the time between Teams users' first email, message or work call and their last. So the longer workweeks don't necessarily mean we're working more, the study says. People may be spending more time logged on because they are distracted with other obligations while working from home and so are less productive. This contributes to burnout because the lines between work life and home life are increasingly blurred, experts say. Further reading: Study of 61,000 Microsoft Employees Finds Remote Work Threatened Productivity and Innovation.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader shares a report: Search for "toothpaste" on Amazon, and the top of the web page will show you a mix of popular brands like Colgate, Crest and Sensodyne. Try a separate search for "deodorant" and you'll first see products from Secret, Dove and Native. Look a little closer, though, and you'll notice that those listings are advertisements with the "sponsored" label affixed to them. Amazon is generating hefty revenue from the top consumer brands because getting valuable placement on the biggest e-commerce site comes with a rising price tag. "There's fewer organic search results on the page, so that increasingly means the only way to get on the page is to buy your way on there," said Jason Goldberg, chief commerce strategy officer at advertising firm Publicis. For consumers looking for toothpaste on Amazon, getting to unpaid results requires two full swipes up on the mobile app. ntil recently, Amazon put two or three sponsored products at the top of search results. Now, there may be as many as six sponsored products that appear ahead of any organic results, with more promotions elsewhere on the page, said Juozas Kaziukenas, who runs e-commerce research firm Marketplace Pulse. The number of ads that appear differs depending on the exact search term and other factors such as whether users are shopping on desktop, mobile or in the Amazon app, Amazon says.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Apple today released iOS 15 and iPadOS 15, the newest operating system updates designed for the iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch. From a report: As with all of Apple's software updates, iOS and iPadOS 15 can be downloaded at no cost. iOS 15 is available on the iPhone 6s and later while iPadOS 15 is available on the iPad Air 2 and later. The new software can be downloaded on eligible devices over-the-air by going to Settings - General - Software Update. It may take a few minutes for the updates to propagate to all users due to high demand. A new Focus mode cuts down on distractions by limiting what's accessible and who can contact you, and notifications can now be grouped up in daily summaries. There's an option for a new Safari design that moves the tab bar to the bottom of the interface, and Tab Groups keep all of your tabs organized. Maps has been overhauled with even more detail, a 3D view in major cities, a globe view, improved transit, a close-up driving view when navigating complicated routes, and AR walking directions. Across the operating system, there's a new Live Text feature that detects text in any image and lets you copy, paste, and translate it, plus there's a system-wide translation feature. In Photos, plants, pets, landmarks, and more can be identified, and there's a system-wide translation feature that goes well with Live Text. iCloud+ with iCloud Private Relay protects your IP address and obscures your location to prevent websites from tracking you, and a Hide My Email feature lets you create temporary email addresses. You can even use your personal domain with iCloud in iOS 15. Further reading: 19 Things You Can Do in iOS 15 That You Couldn't Do Before.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase has canceled plans to launch Lend, a product designed to deliver high-interest returns on USDC stablecoin holdings. From a report: A Coinbase representative confirmed the news to Decrypt this morning, referring us to a quietly updated recent blog post about the planned initiative, which was first announced in June but put on hold following the threat of legal action from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) "Our goal is to create great products for our customers and to advance our mission to increase economic freedom in the world," the update reads. "As we continue our work to seek regulatory clarity for the crypto industry as a whole, we've made the difficult decision not to launch the USDC APY program announced below." Coinbase wrote that it had hundreds of thousands of people signed up to its waitlist, which has now been discontinued. "We will not stop looking for ways to bring innovative, trusted programs and products to our customers," the update concludes. Further reading: Is Lending Your Bitcoins a Security?Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Iowa-based grain cooperative New Cooperative was struck by ransomware in recent days and has shut down its computer systems as it tries to mitigate the attack. From a report: The attack occurred on or around Friday, according to Allan Liska, senior threat analyst at the cybersecurity firm Recorded Future. The ransomware gang, which goes by the name BlackMatter, is demanding a $5.9 million ransom, Liska said. New Cooperative confirmed that they had been attacked and said they had contacted law enforcement and were working with data security experts to investigate and remediate the situation. "New Cooperative recently identified a cybersecurity incident that is impacting some of our company's devices and systems," according to a statement from the cooperative. "Out of an abundance of caution, we have proactively taken our systems offline to contain the threat, and we can confirm it has been successfully contained." New Cooperative has communicated with its feed customers and is working to create workarounds to get feed to animals while its systems are down, a person familiar with the matter said.Read more of this story at Slashdot.