The North Dakota state senate voted 36-11 on Tuesday not to pass a bill that would have required app stores to enable software developers to use their own payment processing software and avoid fees charged by Apple and Google. From a report: The vote is a victory for Apple, which says that the App Store is a core part of its product and that its tight control over its rules keeps iPhone users safe from malware and scams. North Dakota's bill is the first major U.S. state-level legislation to address the Apple and Google app stores, which take fees from app store sales up to 30%, including in-app purchases of digital items. If the state senate had passed it, it would still have been debated and voted on in the North Dakota house. The North Dakota bill targeted Apple's fees by requiring companies that make more than $10 million per year in the state through app stores -- essentially, just Apple and Google -- would be required to offer alternative payment processors for purchases through the app store, allowing developers to avoid Apple or Google's cut. It would only apply to companies based in North Dakota. Further reading, from last week: Apple Privacy Chief: North Dakota Bill 'Threatens To Destroy the iPhone As You Know It' Epic CEO Tim Sweeney said: "The Coalition for App Fairness organized the outreach, lobbying, and developer participation. Can't take credit for it, but Epic is proud to be a part of it!"Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Myanmar's new military government has enforced a "near-total internet shutdown" in the country for the third night in a row, and fifth such communication blackout of this kind this month. NetBlocks, which tracks internet outages globally, reports: Myanmar is in the midst of a near-total internet shutdown for the third night in a row ; real-time network data show national connectivity collapsing to 19% of ordinary levels from 1 am local; incident ongoing.Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Developers at Google's recently formed game studios were shocked February 1 when they were notified that the studios would be shut down, Kotaku reported Tuesday, citing four sources with knowledge of what transpired. From the report: Just the week prior, Google Stadia vice president and general manager Phil Harrison sent an email to staff lauding the "great progress" its studios had made so far. Mass layoffs were announced a few days later, part of an apparent pattern of Stadia leadership not being honest and upfront with the company's developers, many of which had upended their lives and careers to join the team. "[Stadia Games and Entertainment] has made great progress building a diverse and talented team and establishing a strong lineup of Stadia exclusive games," Harrison's January 27 email read, according to sources. "We will confirm the SG&E investment envelope shortly, which will, in turn, inform the SG&E strategy and 2021 [objectives and key results]." Five days later, Harrison appeared to reverse course completely, announcing in a public blog post that the head of Stadia Games and Entertainment, Jade Raymond, left the company, and Google would "not be investing further in bringing exclusive content from our internal development team SG&E." Stadia developers learned the news, first reported by Kotaku, at almost the same time as everyone else via an internal email and conference call with Harrison. The messy rollout came after an already grueling year working through the pandemic. It was reminiscent of Stadia's own launch, which appeared rushed and left out many features promoted during the service's reveal, only to be added months later. In this case, however, Stadia's own developers were the ones impacted by the botched planning. Released in November 2019, Stadia initially struggled due to its monetization model and a lack of games.Read more of this story at Slashdot.
The European Space Agency is on the hunt for a new, more diverse group of astronauts. From a report: This is the first time ESA has put out the call for more astronauts since 2008. Applications open March 31, and there are a few basic requirements for people hoping to make it as an ESA astronaut. Applicants must be citizens of a state associated with ESA and have a master's degree in a STEM field or have an experimental test pilot degree or test engineer, according to the space agency. "Candidates must have at least three years of relevant professional experience after graduation and be fluent in English," ESA said in a statement. "Good knowledge of another foreign language and any other additional language is a plus."Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Ghana plans to broaden the scope of its telecommunications licenses so mobile operators can have more spectrum available for internet use, lowering data costs for consumers. From a report: Ghana currently sells licenses that are spectrum-specific "and the technology is tied to the spectrum that you can use," said Communications Minister-Designate Ursula Owusu-Ekuful, who took questions from lawmakers Monday as part of her reappointment process. After the change, it won't "matter whether its 2G, 3G or 4G spectrum that you have, you can use whatever available technology there is on (your available spectrum) to deliver the service that you want," she said, referring to the technologies used for voice calls and Internet services. The West African nation's move follows an industry push to get more governments to make spectrum licenses technology- and service-neutral so mobile operators can be flexible, without paying high charges to change the use of their spectrum.Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Fake reviews for products sold on Amazon's Marketplace are being sold online "in bulk", according to Which? The consumer group found 10 websites selling fake reviews from $7 each and incentivising positive reviews in exchange for payment or free products. From a report: It suggested the firm was facing an "uphill struggle" against a "widespread fake reviews industry". An Amazon spokesman said: "We remove fake reviews and take action against anyone involved in abuse." The retail giant's Marketplace allows other retailers to sell their goods via the Amazon website. Which? identified websites offering review services for goods for sale on Amazon Marketplace that violated the firm's terms and conditions. These included "packages" of fake reviews available for sellers to buy for about $21 individually, as well as bulk packages starting at $862 for 50 reviews and going up to $11,130 for 1,000. The group also suggested that five of the businesses it looked at had more than 702,000 "product reviewers" on their books. Product reviewers are offered small payments ranging from a few pounds up to more than $14, alongside free or discounted products. They can even take part in "loyalty schemes" and earn themselves premium goods, from children's toys to exercise equipment.Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Sennheiser announced on Tuesday it's looking for a new partner to buy its consumer audio business, which consists of headphones and soundbars. From a report: It's going to shift its focus entirely to professional audio, including its Neumann microphone division and what Sennheiser calls business communications. In a press release, Sennheiser says it wants to increase visibility in the competitive headphone and soundbar markets, and it thinks its products can be popular amid "strong competitive pressure." But it needs an investor to make that happen. It also says that talks with potential partners will start soon. "To be best able to exploit the potential in each of these markets, we are concentrating our own resources on the three business areas in the Professional division and are looking for a strong partner to invest in our Consumer business," Daniel Sennheiser, co-CEO of Sennheiser, says in the press release.Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Not content anymore with just streaming Hollywood's old shows and movies, Roku is looking to produce originals: The company published a job listing for a lead production attorney, which spells out plans to build out an "expanding slate of original content." From a report: This renewed push into originals comes just weeks after Roku acquired Quibi's content library, for which the company reportedly shelled out less than $100 million. The job listing was first spotted by Revealera, a data provider for job openings. A Roku spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Roku's job listing is the clearest evidence yet that the Quibi deal doesn't represent a one-off. The listing tells potential applicants that they would "serve as lead production attorney for Roku's original episodic and feature length productions." The listing also makes it clear that Roku may be looking beyond simply acquiring existing shows and films on an exclusive basis. The attorney would be interacting with guilds and unions, and part of the job would entail working on "option purchase agreements, script acquisition agreements, life rights agreements, agreements to hire writers, actors, directors and individual producers, production services agreements, below-the-line agreements including for department heads, location agreements, clearances, prop rental agreements, likeness releases and credit memos," according to the listing.Read more of this story at Slashdot.
LastPass is adding new restrictions to its free subscription tier starting March 16th that'll only allow users to view and manage passwords on one category of devices: mobile or computer. From a report: Mobile users will be limited to iOS and Android phones, iPads, Android tablets, and smartwatches. Computer subscribers will be able to use their passwords from Windows, macOS, and Linux desktops and laptops, the LastPass browser extension, and Windows tablets. Users on LastPass' free tier will be asked to pick between the two options the first time they log in after March 16th, and the company says they'll be able to switch between categories up to three times after they've picked. Although customers are restricted to a single category of devices on the free tier, they'll still be able view and manage passwords from an unlimited number of devices within either the mobile or computer category. LastPass says no users will be locked out of their accounts or lose access to their passwords as a result of the changes. As well as restricting its device types, LastPass is also changing the kinds of customer support free tier users will be able to access. From May 17th, free users will lose access to email support, the company announced.Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Bitcoin blew through another milestone, surging past $50,000 for the first time as the blistering rally in the largest cryptocurrency continues to captivate investors worldwide. From a report: The world's largest cryptocurrency jumped as much as 4.9% to $50,548 and is now up about 70% so far this year. Bitcoin pared its gain after setting the record high. Ether, a rival crypto, hit a record on Friday and is up about 140% year-to-date. After ending last year with a fourth-quarter surge of 170% to around $29,000, Bitcoin token jumped to $40,000 seven days later. It took just nearly six weeks to breach the latest threshold, buoyed by endorsements from the likes of Paul Tudor Jones, Stan Druckenmiller and Elon Musk. Bitcoin traded for a few cents for several years after its debut more than a decade ago.Read more of this story at Slashdot.
TikTok is facing a fresh round of regulatory complaints in Europe where consumer protection groups have filed a series of coordinated complaints alleging multiple breaches of EU law. From a report: The European Consumer Organisation (BEUC) has lodged a complaint against the video sharing site with the European Commission and the bloc's network of consumer protection authorities, while consumer organisations in 15 countries have alerted their national authorities and urged them to investigate the social media giant's conduct, BEUC said today. The complaints include claims of unfair terms, including in relation to copyright and TikTok's virtual currency; concerns around the type of content children are being exposed to on the platform; and accusations of misleading data processing and privacy practices. Details of the alleged breaches are set out in two reports associated with the complaints: One covering issues with TikTok's approach to consumer protection, and another focused on data protection and privacy.Read more of this story at Slashdot.
A significant portion of Cuba's available drinking water is lost through its leaky and antiquated pipelines -- more than 50 percent, by some estimates. From a report: In recent years, infrastructure problems have been compounded by droughts and rising temperatures. For much of the population, running water is available only sporadically -- in some cases, for one or two hours a day, every few days. While it flows, residents store the available water in cisterns or tanks, which then serve as potential breeding environments for mosquitoes.Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Apple commentator Jason Snell writes: Why does this product still exist, and is there anywhere for it to go next? Gruber and Thompson [two other columnists] suggest that perhaps the way forward is to lean into an identity as a low-end gaming console. Maybe amp up the processor power, bundle a controller, and try to use Apple Arcade to emphasize that this is a box that is for more than watching video. The thing is, that's really been the story of the Apple TV for the last few years, and so far as I can tell, it's basically gone nowhere. Apple isn't Nintendo or Sony or Microsoft when it comes to gaming. Apple's track record with gaming products isn't solid, to say the least. It's hard for me to see this succeeding -- but it doesn't mean Apple won't try. The other possibility that I've come up with is to merge the Apple TV with some other technologies in order to make something more than just a simple TV streamer. Gaming can be a part of that, yes, but there needs to be more. Broader HomeKit support, perhaps with support for other wireless home standards, would help, as would a much more sophisticated set of home automations. And if Apple really wants to continue to play in the home-theater space, I've been saying for years that there's room for an Apple SoundBar, that could integrate the big sound of HomePod with the Apple TV software to create a solid music and video experience. Then there's the final possibility: No more Apple TV. Removing it simplifies Apple's product naming scheme (Apple TV is a hardware box, an app, and a streaming service, but not yet a dessert topping), and allows the company to focus on other things -- perhaps including other home-themed products that might be more up its alley. I don't think Apple is going to kill the Apple TV, even though I might recommend that it do so. If I had to predict a next step, I'd go with Gruber and Thompson: Apple TV Arcade, an updated, premium-priced box that will lean into games and other features that competing TV boxes don't offer. I'm not optimistic that it'll be successful, but it does seem like something Apple would try.Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Volkswagen's CEO Herbert Diess isn't intimidated by Apple, even though the tech company potentially has an electric car on the way. From a report: "The car industry is not a typical tech sector that you could take over at a single stroke," Diess said in an interview with German newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. "Apple will not manage that overnight." For years, industry observers have speculated that Apple will release its own electric, self-driving car. That conversation was reignited in December 2020, when Reuters, citing unnamed sources, reported that Apple planned to produce a passenger vehicle by 2024. In April 2017, Apple received a permit from the California Department of Motor Vehicles to test self-driving vehicles there. "There's just so much going on in [electric and autonomous vehicles] and connected tech," Morgan Stanley analysts wrote in a note to investors in December 2020. "It is perhaps a fitting time of the world's most valuable company to play its hand in the $10 trillion global mobility market." Volkswagen is also aiming to be a dominant force in the electric car field. The car company sold 231,600 battery electric vehicles in 2020, according to figures published by the company in January.Read more of this story at Slashdot.
France's cyber-security agency said that a group of Russian military hackers, known as the Sandworm group, have been behind a three-years-long operation during which they breached the internal networks of several French entities running the Centreon IT monitoring software. From a report: The attacks were detailed in a technical report released today by Agence Nationale de la Securite des Systemes d'Information, also known as ANSSI, the country's main cyber-security agency. "This campaign mostly affected information technology providers, especially web hosting providers," ANSSI officials said today. "The first victim seems to have been compromised from late 2017. The campaign lasted until 2020." The point of entry into victim networks was linked to Centreon, an IT resource monitoring platform developed by French company CENTREON, and a product similar in functionality to SolarWinds' Orion platform. ANSSI said the attackers targeted Centreon systems that were left connected to the internet. The French agency couldn't say at the time of writing if the attacks exploited a vulnerability in the Centreon software or if the attackers guessed passwords for admin accounts. However, in the case of a successful intrusion, the attackers installed a version of the P.A.S. web shell and the Exaramel backdoor trojan, two malware strains that when used together allowed hackers full control over the compromised system and its adjacent network.Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Parler is back online following several weeks of darkness after the social media site popular with supporters of former president Donald Trump was knocked offline. From a reportL: Parler effectively fell off the Internet in January when Amazon refused to provide technical cloud computing support to the site after the tech giant determined Parler was not doing enough to moderate and remove incitements to violence. The site was not fully functional on Monday, and some users reported technical glitches as they tried to log in and refresh feeds. Private messaging was disabled, but the basic outline of the site was live. "We're in for a little bit of a bumpy ride for the next day or two, there's been a ton of backend work we've completed over the last couple of weeks," Parler Chief Technology Officer Alexander Blair posted on the site Monday morning. [...] Parler appeared to be using a Los Angeles-based cloud hosting company called SkySilk to return online. Hackers on Twitter, including the user who orchestrated a large-scale scrape of Parler's public data as it fell offline, identified SkySilk as the host. John Jackson, founder of hacking group Sakura Samurai, confirmed the technical footprint points to SkySilk via public records.Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Before anyone outside her hometown knew her name, Disha Ravi spent four years raising awareness among young people in Bangalore about the effects of climate change. Now the 21-year-old activist is jailed in New Delhi. The allegation: She distributed a "tool kit" in the form of a Google Doc containing talking points and contact information for influential groups to drum up support for farmers who have been protesting against the Indian government for months. The New York Times: The document -- which the police say she shared with Greta Thunberg, the 18-year-old Swedish climate activist -- resembles the kind that grass-roots organizations around the world have used for years to campaign for their causes. But Ms. Ravi, the police contend, was using it to "spread disaffection against the Indian State." The arrest, the latest in a series of broader crackdown on activists, has triggered anger and disbelief among opposition politicians, student groups and lawyers, who say the government is using its law enforcement agencies to increasingly stifle dissent, in line with a broader deterioration of free speech in India. Ms. Ravi's arrest, they said, has raised the crackdown to a new level. "There is a method to this madness," said Manshi Asher, a researcher with the nonprofit group Environmental Justice, "and a pattern that is so clearly telling us that those asking critical questions would be silenced." Ms. Ravi is being held under a stringent sedition law that has been used to criminalize everything from leading rallies to posting political messages on social media. Although she has not been formally charged, she is to spend five days in police custody. In its response to other contentious policies -- including citizenship laws that worked against Muslims, a clampdown on the disputed Kashmir region and the farmers' protests -- Prime Minister Narendra Modi's government has resorted to arrests, stifling dissenting voices and blocking access to the internet. Groups that track internet freedom say India's has declined for a third consecutive year. For months, thousands of farmers, many of them Sikhs from the agricultural heartland state of Punjab, have camped out on the outskirts of New Delhi, protesting a slate of new laws that will dismantle a subsidy system that has for decades protected them from the vagaries of the free market.Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Morgan Housel, on the art and power of storytelling: C. R. Hallpike is a respected anthropologist who once wrote a review of a young author's recent book on the history of humans. It states: "It would be fair to say that whenever his facts are broadly correct they are not new, and whenever he tries to strike out on his own he often gets things wrong, sometimes seriously ... [It is not] a contribution to knowledge." Two things are notable here. One is that the book's author doesn't seem to disagree with the assessment. Another is that the author, Yuval Noah Harari, has sold over 27 million books, making him one of the bestselling contemporary authors in any field, and his book Sapiens -- which Hallpike was reviewing -- the most successful anthropology book of all time. Harari recently said about writing Sapiens: "I thought, 'This is so banal!' ... There is absolutely nothing there that is new. I'm not an archeologist. I'm not a primatologist. I mean, I did zero new research... It was really reading the kind of common knowledge and just presenting it in a new way. What Sapiens does have is excellent writing. Beautiful writing. The stories are captivating, the flow is effortless. Harari took what was already known and wrote it better than anyone had done before. The result was fame greater than anyone before him could imagine. Best story wins. It's nothing to be ashamed of, because so many successes work this way. The Civil War is probably the most well-documented period in American history. There are thousands of books analyzing every conceivable angle, chronicling every possible detail. But in 1990 Ken Burns' Civil War documentary became an instant phenomenon, with 39 million viewers and winning 40 major film awards. As many Americans watched Ken Burns' Civil War in 1990 as watched the Super Bowl that year. And all he did -- not to minimize it, because it's such a feat -- is take 130-year-old existing information and wove it into a (very) good story. Bill Bryson is the same. His books fly off the shelves, which I understand drives the little-known academics who uncovered the things he writes about crazy. His latest work is basically an anatomy textbook. It has no new information, no discoveries. But it's so well written -- he tells such a good story -- that it became an instant New York Times bestseller and the Washington Post's Book of the Year. Charles Darwin didn't discover evolution, he just wrote the first and most compelling book about it. John Burr Williams had more profound insight on the topic of valuing companies than Benjamin Graham. But Graham knew how to write a good paragraph, so he became the legend.Read more of this story at Slashdot.
India said on Monday local firms will no longer need a license or other permission to collect, generate, store and share geospatial data of the country, bringing sweeping changes to its earlier stance that it admitted hindered innovation. From a report: Until now, New Delhi required Indian firms to seek licenses and additional approvals to create and publish topographical data. India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi said today's "deregulation" step will help the country become more self-reliant and reach its $5 trillion GDP goal. "The regulations that apply to geospatial data and maps henceforth stand radically liberalised. The Department of Science and Technology is announcing sweeping changes to India's mapping policy, specifically for Indian companies. What is readily available globally does not need to be restricted in India and therefore geospatial data that used to be restricted will now be freely available in India," New Delhi said in a statement.Read more of this story at Slashdot.
A workplace has its own informal cardinal directions: elevatorward, kitchenward, bathroomward. It's a map we share. From an essay: I love visiting offices, listening to their hum. Literally: I sometimes went to a giant financial firm where they traded different kinds of securities on different floors, and if it was a big day in bonds the fourth floor would be loud, loud; the fifth floor, though, focused on shorter-term investments, would be almost silent. You could hear the economy. I enjoy the rituals of visiting. First, there is security: How long will I wait? Who will greet me in the lobby, should I ever gain access -- a human whose job is to handle ingress and egress, or is each person expected to greet their own visitors? Will I get a VISITOR sticker, and will the sticker change color in a day, for security purposes? Is the coffee brought to me or may I get it myself? Sometimes you learn that people have had sex in a given office, which is hard to forget. There are cardinal directions -- elevatorward, kitchenward, bathroomward. Favored stalls. Better sinks. Teensy little geographies shared between humans. I have a friend who worked at the White House, back in calmer times, and he told me about some of his workplace battles. I said to him one of the dumbest things I've ever said in my life: "The White House seems like a really political place to work." I still cringe to think of it. Yet it's a place where power is absolutely explicit and geography means everything. And "place," as Tuan points out, is really a proxy for time. The president might summon anyone any moment of the day, from anywhere in the nation. If you work in one of the rare offices in the West Wing, instead of across the alley at the enormous Executive Office Building, you can be in the Oval Office in a minute. It's purely about time, measured in the count of footsteps between you and power. Everyone knows that. The West Wing offices themselves absolutely suck. The whole place smells weird.Read more of this story at Slashdot.
The World Health Organization (WHO) on Monday listed AstraZeneca and Oxford University's COVID-19 vaccine for emergency use, widening access to the relatively inexpensive shot in the developing world. From a report: A WHO statement said it had approved the vaccine as produced by AstraZeneca-SKBio (Republic of Korea) and the Serum Institute of India. "We now have all the pieces in place for the rapid distribution of vaccines. But we still need to scale up production," said Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, WHO Director-General. The listing by the UN health agency comes days after a WHO panel provided interim recommendations on the vaccine, saying two doses with an interval of around 8 to 12 weeks must be given to all adults, and can be used in countries with the South African variant of the coronavirus as well. The AstraZeneca/Oxford shot has been hailed because it is cheaper and easier to distribute than some rivals, including Pfizer/BioNTech's, which was listed for emergency use by the WHO late in December.Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Criminals who keep their funds in cryptocurrency tend to launder funds through a small cluster of online services, blockchain investigations firm Chainalysis said in a report last week. From a report: This includes services like high-risk (low-reputation) crypto-exchange portals, online gambling platforms, cryptocurrency mixing services, and financial services that support cryptocurrency operations headquartered in high-risk jurisdictions. Criminal activity studied in this report included cryptocurrency addresses linked to online scams, ransomware attacks, terrorist funding, hacks, transactions linked to child abuse materials, and funds linked to payments made to dark web marketplaces offering illegal services like drugs, weapons, and stolen data. But while you'd expect that the money laundering resulting from such a broad spectrum of illegal activity to have taken place across a large number of services, Chainalysis reports that just a small group of 270 blockchain addresses have laundered around 55% of cryptocurrency associated with criminal activity.Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Nissan Motor said on Monday it is not in talks with Apple, following a report that the iPhone maker approached the Japanese company in recent months about a tie-up for its autonomous car project. From a report: The Financial Times said the companies had had brief discussions that faltered over Nissan's reluctance to become an assembler for Apple-branded cars, adding that the talks had not advanced to senior management level. "We are not in talks with Apple," a Nissan spokeswoman said. "However, Nissan is always open to exploring collaborations and partnerships to accelerate industry transformation." Hyundai and Kia also said earlier this month that they were not engaging with Apple on any car project.Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Uber called on the European Union to introduce a framework for gig economy workers, floating a model similar to that adopted by California after a contentious fight over the employment status of its drivers. From a report: The U.S. ride-hailing giant shared a "white paper" with EU competition chief Margrethe Vestager, jobs commissioner Nicolas Schmit and other officials. It urged policymakers to implement reforms that protect drivers and couriers operating through an app, without reclassifying them as employees. It's a thorny issue for Uber and other companies in the so-called gig economy that encourage temporary, flexible working models in favor of full-time employment. Last year, Uber, Lyft and other firms successfully fought against proposals in California which would have given their drivers the status of employees rather than independent contractors. Californian voters approved Proposition 22, a measure that would allow drivers for app-based transportation and delivery companies to be classified as independent contractors while still entitling them to new benefits like minimum earnings and vehicle insurance. "We're calling on policymakers, other platforms and social representatives to move quickly to build a framework for flexible earning opportunities, with industry-wide standards that all platform companies must provide for independent workers," Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi said in a blog post Monday. "This could include introducing new laws such as the legislation recently enacted in California," he added. Uber said the EU could alternatively set new principles through a "European model of social dialogue" between platform workers, policy makers and industry representatives.Read more of this story at Slashdot.
A hacking campaign that used a U.S. tech company as a springboard to compromise a raft of U.S. government agencies is "the largest and most sophisticated attack the world has ever seen," Microsoft Corp President Brad Smith said. From a report: The operation, which was identified in December and that the U.S. government has said was likely orchestrated by Russia, breached software made by SolarWinds Corp, giving hackers access to thousands of companies and government offices that used its products. The hackers got access to emails at the U.S. Treasury, Justice and Commerce departments and other agencies. Cybersecurity experts have said it could take months to identify the compromised systems and expel the hackers. "I think from a software engineering perspective, it's probably fair to say that this is the largest and most sophisticated attack the world has ever seen," Smith said during an interview that aired on Sunday on the CBS program "60 Minutes." The breach could have compromised up to 18,000 SolarWinds customers that used the company's Orion network monitoring software, and likely relied on hundreds of engineers.Read more of this story at Slashdot.
"The developers of audio chat room app Clubhouse plan to add additional encryption to prevent it from transmitting pings to servers in China," reports The Verge, "after Stanford researchers said they found vulnerabilities in its infrastructure."In a new report, the Stanford Internet Observatory (SIO) said it confirmed that Shanghai-based company Agora Inc., which makes real-time engagement software, "supplies back-end infrastructure to the Clubhouse App." The SIO further discovered that users' unique Clubhouse ID numbers — not usernames — and chatroom IDs are transmitted in plaintext, which would likely give Agora access to raw Clubhouse audio. So anyone observing internet traffic could match the IDs on shared chatrooms to see who's talking to each other, the SIO tweeted, noting "For mainland Chinese users, this is troubling." The SIO researchers said they found metadata from a Clubhouse room "being relayed to servers we believe to be hosted in" the People's Republic of China, and found that audio was being sent to "to servers managed by Chinese entities and distributed around the world." Since Agora is a Chinese company, it would be legally required to assist the Chinese government locate and store audio messages if authorities there said the messages posed a national security threat, the researchers surmised... The company told SIO that it was going to roll out changes "to add additional encryption and blocks to prevent Clubhouse clients from ever transmitting pings to Chinese servers" and said it would hire an external security firm to review and validate the updates.Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Bill Gates was interviewed tonight on the CBS News show 60 Minutes about his efforts to combat climate change:The good news is Gates believes it's possible to prevent a catastrophic rise in temperatures. The bad news? He says in the next 30 years we need scientific breakthroughs, technological innovations and global cooperation on a scale the world has never seen. "I got to participate in the miracle of the personal computer and the internet," Gates tells them at one point. "And so, yes, I have a bias to believe innovation can do these things." CBS points out that Gates has already invested $2 billion of his own money into green technologies, plans to spend several billion more, and in 2016 recruited Jeff Bezos, Mike Bloomberg and nearly two dozen other rich investors for the billion-dollar "breakthrough energy ventures" investment fund. But the newscast clarifies the scope of the task. "He is talking about innovations in every aspect of modern life — manufacturing, agriculture, transportation, because nearly everything we now do releases earth warming greenhouse gases, mainly carbon dioxide, into the atmosphere..." Quoting some of the highlights from CBS's report:No one thinks much about cement and steel, but making it accounts for 16% of all carbon dioxide emissions... So one innovative company Gates has been pouring money into is CarbonCure. They inject captured carbon dioxide into concrete...Because cows account for around 4% of all greenhouse gases, Gates has invested in two companies making plant based meat substitutes, impossible foods and beyond meat. But farming the vegetables used to make many meat alternatives emits gases as well, so Gates is also backing a company that's created an entirely new food source. "This company, Nature's Fynd, is using fungis. And then they turn them into sausage and yogurt. Pretty amazing..."Gates isn't just looking to cut future carbon emissions, he is also investing in direct air capture, an experimental process to remove existing CO2 from the atmosphere. Some companies are now using these giant fans to capture CO2 directly out of the air. Gates has become one of the world's largest funders of this kind of technology. But of all his green investments, Gates has spent the most time and money pursuing a breakthrough in nuclear energy — arguing it's key to a zero carbon future.Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Peter Daszak is part of the World Health Organization's 14-member team investigating the origins of the coronavirus. This weekend on Twitter he described "explaining key findings of our exhausting month-long work in China" to journalists — only to see team members "selectively misquoted to fit a narrative that was prescribed before the work began." Daszak was responding to a New York Times article which painted China as uncooperative for failing to hand over some raw data. But ironically, the next day the Times published a longer interview they'd done with Daszak, which acknowledges that Daszak "said that the visit had provided some new clues..." The Times had even specifically asked him if China's attitude made their work difficult, to which Daszak had explicitly answered: no."You've got a task to do. You've volunteered. You know what it's going to be like. You get caught up in the historical importance. I don't know if we were the first foreigners to walk around the Huanan seafood market, which is blocked off even to Chinese citizens. The only people that have been in there have been the Chinese disease investigators. We met with the doctors that treated the first known Covid patients." The Times also asked if they'd learned anything they didn't know before. Daszak's response:From Day 1, the data we were seeing were new that had never been seen outside China. Who were the vendors in the Huanan seafood market? Where did they get their supply chains? And what were the contacts of the first cases? How real were the first cases? What other clusters were there? When you asked for more, the Chinese scientists would go off, and a couple of days later, they've done the analysis, and we've got new information. It was extremely useful. The team also learned how extensively China's disease-control center had investigated the Wuhan market:They'd actually done over 900 swabs in the end, a huge amount of work. They had been through the sewage system. They'd been into the air ventilation shaft to look for bats. They'd caught animals around the market. They'd caught cats, stray cats, rats, they even caught one weasel. They'd sampled snakes. People had live snakes at the market, live turtles, live frogs. Rabbits were there, rabbit carcasses... Animals were coming into that market that could have carried the coronavirus. They could have been infected by bats somewhere else in China and brought it in. So that's clue No. 1... Some of these are coming from places where we know the nearest relatives of the virus are found. So there's the real red flag... There were other markets. And we do know that some of the patients had links to other markets. We need to do some further work, and then the Chinese colleagues need to do some further work... What is the next step? For the animals chain, it's straightforward. The suppliers are known. They know the farm name; they know the owner of the farm. You've got to go down to the farm and interview the farmer and the family. You've got to test them. You've got to test the community. You've got to go and look and see if there are any animals left at any farms nearby and see if they've got evidence of infection, and see if there is any cross-border movement. The Times' interview begins by specifically acknowledging Daszak's statement about new information obtained on the visit, "which all of the scientists, Chinese and international, agreed most likely pointed to an animal origin within China or Southeast Asia. "The scientists have largely discounted claims that the virus originated in a lab, saying that possibility was so unlikely that it was not worth further investigation."Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Friday the New York Times (following up on reports from the Wall Street Journal) wrote that China had "refused to hand over" important raw data to a 14-member World Health Organization team investigating the origins of the coronavirus, reporting that "their Chinese counterparts were frustrated by the team's persistent questioning and demands for data." But Saturday two of those 14 team members disputed that characterization, posting on Twitter that "This was NOT my experience" — even though the Times had quoted both of them to support its article. First Peter Daszak, president of the U.S. national science academy's microbial threats forum, weighed in. "As lead of animal/environment working group I found trust and openness with my China counterparts. We DID get access to critical new data throughout. We DID increase our understanding of likely spillover pathways. New data included env. & animal carcass testing, names of suppliers to Huanan Market, analyses of excess mortality in Hubei, range of covid-like symptoms for months prior, sequence data linked to early cases & site visits w/ unvetted live Q&A etc. All in report coming soon!" Then Thea Kølsen Fischer, a Danish epidemiologist on the team, tweeted that the Times hadn't accurately described her experience either. "We DID build up a good relationship in the Chinese/Int Epi-team! Allowing for heated arguments reflects a deep level of engagement in the room. Our quotes are intendedly twisted casting shadows over important scientific work." Daszak reappeared to respond to her tweet, writing "Hear! Hear! It's disappointing to spend time with journalists explaining key findings of our exhausting month-long work in China, to see our colleagues selectively misquoted to fit a narrative that was prescribed before the work began. Shame on you @nytimes!" Ironically, the next day the Times published a longer interview they'd done with Daszak, which acknowledges that Daszak "said that the visit had provided some new clues..." The Times had even specifically asked him if China's attitude made their work difficult, to which Daszak explicitly had answered: no.Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Slashdot reader DevNull127 writes: The U.S. Cyber Command, headed by the National Security Agency's director, has been a part of America's Department of Defense since 2009. Today this unified combatant command wished its followers on Twitter a happy Valentine's Day, adding "As our gift to you, we present 12 crypto challenges designed by the information security community. "Love is in the air, find it if you can. #BeOurValentine #cryptochallenge #VDayGifts." They shared a link to the official U.S. Cyber Command Valentine's Day 2021 Cryptography Challenge Puzzles. There are 12 tricky puzzles in all — 3 .jpgs, 6 .pngs, 2 .mp3s and a .bmp file — and I couldn't solve a single one of 'em. Each one has a hint — though that hint is just the number of words in the answer, as well as its number of characters.Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Amazon is using AI cameras to monitor drivers of its delivery vans for safety issues — but also a second driver safety app on their phones. Though it's named Mentor, Mashable reports that "it doesn't seem to be helping..." CNBC talked to drivers who said the app mostly invades their privacy or miscalculates dangerous driving behavior. One driver said even though he didn't answer a ringing phone, the app docked points for using a phone while driving. Another worker was flagged for distracted driving at every delivery stop she made. The incorrect tracking has real consequences, ranging from restricted payouts and bonuses to job loss. The app gives a safety score which is used to rank drivers and compare them to colleagues. The App Store description calls this "a little friendly competition!" CNBC reports that one driver even created a YouTube video showing how Amazon's delivery van drivers could appease the app: by wrapping their cellphone in a sweater and then shoving it in their glovebox. Otherwise, "If your device moves at all, it's going to count against you."Read more of this story at Slashdot.
"A cryptocurrency company that owns 67,000 acres in rural northern Nevada wants state government to grant technology companies power to form local governments on land they own," reports the Associated Press. Jeffrey Berns, CEO of Nevada-based Blockchains LLC, ultimately envisions "a city where people not only purchase goods and services with digital currency but also log their entire online footprint — financial statements, medical records and personal data — on blockchain." The Associated Press calls him "a cryptocurrency magnate" who "hopes to turn dreams of a futuristic "smart city" into reality."To do that, he's asking the state to let companies like his form local governments on land they own, which would grant them power over everything from schools to law enforcement... The company wants to break ground by 2022 in rural Storey County, 12 miles east of Reno. It's proposing to build 15,000 homes and 33 million square feet of commercial and industrial space within 75 years. Berns, whose idea is the basis for draft legislation that some lawmakers saw behind closed doors last week, said traditional government doesn't offer enough flexibility to create a community where people can invent new uses for his technology. "There's got to be a place somewhere on this planet where people are willing to just start from scratch and say, 'We're not going to do things this way just because it's the way we've done it,'" Berns said. He wants Nevada to change its laws to allow "innovation zones," where companies would have powers like those of a county government, including creating court systems, imposing taxes and building infrastructure while making land and water management decisions... If lawmakers back the proposal, technology companies with 50,000 acres of land that promise a $1 billion investment could create zones governed by three people like county commissioners. The draft legislation says two of them initially would be from the company itself... The former consumer protection attorney said the idea was born from how he sees government as an unnecessary middleman between people and ideas. "For us to be able to take risks and be limber, nimble and figure things out like you do when you're designing new products, that's not how government works. So why not let us just create a government that lets us do those things?" Berns said. The article notes that "innovation zones" and Blockchains LLC were both a key part of the governor's annual "State of the State" address last month. And that both the governor's campaign and an affiliated political action committee "received a combined $60,000 from the company."Read more of this story at Slashdot.
How does the trendy new audio-chatroom app Clubhouse handle user privacy? Recode reports:What if you didn't give Clubhouse access to your contacts, specifically because you didn't want all or any of them to know you were there? I regret to inform you that Clubhouse has made it possible for them to know anyway, encourages them to follow you, and there isn't much you can do about it. When I joined, I didn't give Clubhouse access to my contacts; as has been my policy since childhood, only I may decide who enters my clubhouse. Nevertheless, a few minutes later, I had a bunch of followers from my contacts. Even worse: I got followers who weren't in my contacts at all — but I was in theirs. It turns out that your privacy on Clubhouse depends not just on what you do but also on what those who have your information in their contacts do. For now, you can only get invited to Clubhouse through your phone number, which is attached to your account and can't be removed. So if someone has your phone number in their contacts, and they've given Clubhouse access to those contacts, they'll get a notification when you join the app and a recommendation to follow you... It's not clear why Clubhouse doesn't have better options for users to manage their privacy or more information for users about how their data might be used or linked to them. The company is reportedly operating with a small staff, but it also has millions of users and millions of dollars worth of funding from major Silicon Valley venture capital firms, including Andreessen Horowitz, and a valuation of $1 billion. It's not the first well-funded social media app to push the boundaries of data privacy. But you'd at least think Clubhouse would have learned from the unicorns that came before it.Read more of this story at Slashdot.
According to Phoronix, AMD currently has several interesting job openings on the Linux front. From the report: While AMD has been delivering reliable Linux support with their recent launches, there is room for improvement in areas like more timely compiler support for new processors, better alignment of their new hardware enablement for getting the code not only upstreamed but into distributions for launch-day, and similar areas. Based on recent job postings, it looks like AMD is working to make such strides. Here is a look at some of the new and currently active Linux-related job openings at AMD: [Manager Linux Kernel Development, Linux Technical Lead, Linux Engineer, and Linux Systems Architect, among other traditional software/hardware engineering roles]. Several of these new job descriptions do begin with, "step up into a new organization built to engage more strategically and deeply with the technical teams of our commercial customers." Interestingly, I only see that opening line on their current Linux job postings. When asking AMD if there is a "new (Linux) organization" at AMD, the comment was there is no organization to announce but this is part of the overall expansion at AMD. So for now it's back to dreaming about a new unit akin to the defunct AMD Operating System Research Center that previously drove their Linux support or Intel's former Open-Source Technology Center.Read more of this story at Slashdot.
The hackers behind this week's ransomware attack on Cyberpunk 2077 studio CD Projekt Red appear to have found a buyer for the stolen data. Engadget reports: They ran an auction on a hacking forum but, as The Verge notes, they shut it down after reportedly accepting an offer from elsewhere. The starting price for the auction was said to be $1 million and there was the option for an interested party with a spare $7 million to buy the data outright. It's not clear who has acquired the data, how much they paid for it or what they're planning to do with the information.Read more of this story at Slashdot.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from ZDNet: Google is rolling out its virtual private network (VPN) service for subscribers of its Fi network that should help people when they're using online services on public Wi-Fi. "We plan to roll out the VPN to iPhone starting this spring," Google notes. Google is also bringing its privacy and security hub to Android devices, offering users a shortcut to features available to Android users, such as its VPN. Finally, Fi users can expect free spam call warnings and blocking to stop identified robocalls and scams and the company is stepping up its game to protect users from SIM swapping scams. "Your Fi number is tied to your Google Account and comes with security features that protect your phone number from threats like SIM swaps -- that's when bad actors try to take someone's phone number and assign it to another SIM card without their consent," Google said. "On Fi, you receive extra layers of protection by default, including a robust account recovery process and notifications for suspicious activity. You can also enable 2-step verification for more protection."Read more of this story at Slashdot.
As grizzly bears expand their range in Montana, Idaho, and Wyoming into places where they haven't been seen in a century or more, they're increasingly encountering humans. From a report: Things intensified last summer as trails and campgrounds across the region flooded with inexperienced tourists seeking refuge in the outdoors during the coronavirus pandemic. Grizzly attacks spiked. Bear managers were inundated with calls about grizzlies getting into garbage, chickens, and other draws. Dispersing grizzlies even came unexpectedly close to neighboring states -- a remote camera in Wyoming captured a grizzly only 20 miles from the Utah border and a radio collared bear in Idaho nearly roamed into Oregon and Washington. Ultimately, 2020 offered a nerve-jangling look at the challenges and complex future of grizzly bears in America. Grizzly bears occupy a conflicted, toothy corner of the American psyche -- we revere them even as they haunt our nightmares. You can buy food at Grizzly Grocery before climbing Grizzly Peak or hiking Grizzly Gulch. You can have your furnace serviced by Grizzly Plumbing and Heating. Here in the Northern Rockies, and everywhere grizzlies are found, people erect statues of them, frame pictures on their walls, and, if they see a grizzly in the wild, tell breathless stories around campfires and dinner tables for the rest of their lives. Ask the tourists from around the world that flood into Yellowstone and Glacier National Parks what they most hope to see, and their answer is often the same: a grizzly bear. The western half of the U.S. teemed with grizzlies at the time of European contact, with an estimated 50,000 or more living alongside Native Americans, from the Pacific to the midwestern prairies and into the mountains of Mexico. By the early 1970s, after centuries of relentless shooting, trapping, and poisoning by settlers, 600 to 800 grizzlies remained on a mere 2 percent of their former range in the alpine fastness of the Northern Rockies. Their slide into oblivion was stemmed in 1975 with their listing under the Endangered Species Act and the legal protections it afforded. Today, in a testament to the power of wildlife populations to rebound when given room to do so, there are an estimated 2,000 or more grizzly bears in the contiguous U.S. (and approximately 25,000 in Canada and 30,000 in Alaska). Their recovery has been so successful that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has twice in the past 13 years attempted to de-list the species, most recently in 2017, which would loosen legal protections and allow them to be hunted. Both efforts were overturned in federal court due to lawsuits from conservation groups. For now, grizzlies remain listed. In the lower 48, grizzlies are anchored by two populations in Glacier and Yellowstone National Parks and surrounding ecosystems. Glacier bears represent the southern edge of the great, uninterrupted mass of grizzlies that inhabit wildlands from Montana to Alaska.Read more of this story at Slashdot.
The U.S. Postal Service on Thursday unveiled a new postage stamp honoring Chien-Shiung Wu, a trailblazing Chinese American nuclear physicist whose myriad accomplishments earned her the nickname "the First Lady of Physics." From a report: The stamp's release was timed to coincide with the International Day of Women and Girls in Science, an annual event that was established by the United Nations General Assembly in 2015 to celebrate female scientists and promote equal access for women and girls in science and technology. Kristin Seaver, executive vice president of the Postal Service, called Wu "one of the most influential nuclear physicists of the 20th century." Wu "made enormous contributions to our understanding of radioactivity and the structure of the universe," Seaver said Thursday in a taped virtual ceremony to mark the stamp's first day of issue. Wu was born in China in 1912 and moved to the United States at the age of 24. She received a doctorate from the University of California, Berkeley. Wu is best known for her experiments in the 1950s on a quirky but fundamental property in physics known as parity symmetry. Physicists at the time thought that processes in the real world -- basic interactions such as electromagnetism, for instance -- should be indistinguishable when those same processes are viewed in a mirror. In other words, while a mirror may interchange left and right, it was thought that nature did not distinguish between the two.Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Twitter's finance chief said the social-media company has thought about how it might pay employees or vendors using the popular cryptocurrency bitcoin. From a report: Chief Financial Officer Ned Segal, in speaking Wednesday with Andrew Ross Sorkin on CNBC's "Squawk Box," said the company continues to review potential uses of the digital currency. "We've done a lot of the upfront thinking to consider how we might pay employees should they ask to be paid in bitcoin, how we might pay a vendor if they ask to be [paid] in bitcoin and whether we need to have bitcoin on our balance sheet should that happen," Mr. Segal said. "It's something we continue to study and look at, we want to be thoughtful about over time, but we haven't made any changes yet." Twitter Chief Executive Jack Dorsey is a bitcoin advocate. Payment company Square, which Mr. Dorsey also leads, recently acquired about $50 million worth of bitcoin for its corporate treasury. Mr. Segal's comments came days after electric-vehicle maker Tesla said it had purchased $1.5 billion in bitcoin. Tesla also said Monday that it expects to start accepting the cryptocurrency as payment from customers soon. The Twitter CFO said the company is weighing a number of factors in considering what role, if any, the cryptocurrency might play in its business.Read more of this story at Slashdot.
The Biden administration is working to address the global semiconductor shortage that has caused production halts in U.S. industries including autos, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said. From a report: The administration is identifying choke points in supply chains and discussing an immediate path forward with businesses and trading partners, Psaki told reporters at the White House on Thursday. In the longer term, policy makers are looking for a comprehensive strategy to avoid bottlenecks and other issues the semiconductor industry has been facing for years. President Joe Biden is expected to sign an executive order directing a government-wide supply chain review for critical goods in the coming weeks, with the chip shortage a central concern behind the probe. The order will compel a 100-day review led by the National Economic Council and National Security Council focused on semiconductor manufacturing and advanced packaging, critical minerals, medical supplies and high-capacity batteries, such as those used in electric vehicles, two people familiar with the draft said. Additional supply-chain assessments are expected within a year, focused on critical products -- materials, technology and infrastructure -- and other materials tied to defense, public health, telecommunications, energy and transportation.Read more of this story at Slashdot.
An anonymous reader shares a report: Eui Jeong Lee and three of her friends sit in an otherwise empty 200-seat cinema auditorium and play a video game on the giant screen. As Ms Lee blasts her gaming opponents with her wireless controller, the sound whips loudly around the dark room from the numerous cinema speakers. "The sound quality is particularly amazing," says the 25-year-old student. "The sound of the gunshots is just so vivid, and when something flew directly at me from the screen I even screamed." Ms Lee and her mates had hired the screen for two hours at a branch of South Korea's largest cinema chain, CGV. With many cinemas across the country closed due to coronavirus restrictions meaning that they can only open with 50% capacity, and far fewer movies being released to tempt cinemagoers, CGV came up with the idea of renting out its auditoriums to gamers to bring in a new revenue stream. Before 6pm up to four people can hire a screen for two hours for around $90. This then rises to $135 in the evening. Users have to bring their consoles, games and controllers with them.The auditoriums being hired out have between 100 and 200 seats, and by comparison CGV movie tickets cost around $12 each. So a 100-seat screen half filled for a film would bring in revenues of $600, rising to $1,200 for a 200-seat one at 50% capacity. And that is before the filmgoers buy their drinks and popcorn. Yet while CGV isn't making anywhere as much money from the gamers, it is bringing in some additional income. The scheme is called Azit-X after "azit", the Korean word for hideout. CGV employee Seung Woo Han came up with the idea after he realised that films and video games share many similarities.Read more of this story at Slashdot.
The European Union is considering building an advanced semiconductor factory in Europe in an attempt to avoid relying on the U.S. and Asia for technology at the heart of some of its major industries. From a report: The EU is exploring how to produce semiconductors with features smaller than 10 nanometers, and eventually down to 2 nanometer chips, according to people familiar with the project. The aim is to curtail dependence on countries such as Taiwan for chips to power 5G wireless systems, connected cars, high-performance computing, and more. Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. and Samsung Electronics Co. of South Korea, the two leaders making the most innovative processors in the sector, could be involved in the EU project, but nothing has been decided, a French Finance Ministry official said in a press briefing on Thursday, following the report from Bloomberg.Read more of this story at Slashdot.
British television channel BBC World News has been barred from airing in China, the National Radio and Television Administration said, a week after Britain's media regulator revoked Chinese state television's broadcast licence. From a report: In a statement issued on the stroke of the Lunar New Year, the administration said an investigation found BBC World News' China-related reports had "seriously violated" regulations, including that news should be "truthful and fair," had harmed China's national interests and undermined national unity.Read more of this story at Slashdot.
A Reddit user claiming to be a Tesla insider appeared to announce the carmaker's purchase of bitcoin a month ago, according to a January post on the platform that said the electric carmaker had bought $800 million worth of Bitcoin. Reuters reports: The post here received little attention when it appeared, with the date on it reading Jan. 2, but it is getting a second look now, a day after the electric carmaker, led by Elon Musk, disclosed a $1.5-billion investment in the cryptocurrency, sending Bitcoin to fresh highs. "I am a software dev working at R&D at Tesla in California, over the past 72 hours our company bought 24701 BTC at an average price of 33142$," a user with the handle TSLAinsider posted in the bitcoin subreddit. "I have no idea what will happen once this reaches the newspapers but I think the price will explode even more," the user wrote. Moderators in r/Tesla, a subreddit dedicated to posts on the electric carmaker, appeared to remove the post here. It was left up in r/bitcoin, where the cryptocurrency is discussed. Reuters could not verify the user's identity, whether the user is a Tesla employee or whether the post was modified from the original. Tesla did not immediately respond to an email to its press office. [...] As the post was focused on bitcoin, the tipper may benefit from a gray area in oversight and enforcement, as the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) does not treat the cryptocurrency as a security, one expert said.Read more of this story at Slashdot.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Bad news for lovers of smaller phones: the iPhone 12 mini has sold poorly compared to other phones in the iPhone 12 lineup -- poorly enough that analysts wonder whether Apple will remain committed to the smaller phone design moving forward. A data firm called Counterpoint Research found that the iPhone 12 mini accounted for just 5 percent of overall sales from the company's smartphone lineup in early January. And J.P. Morgan analyst William Yang told Reuters that screens under 6 inches now account for only 10 percent of smartphones sold industry-wide. The data from Counterpoint is not the first to tell this story. Consumer Intelligence Research Partners (CIRP) broke down iPhone 12 lineup sales in detail last month. They found that the iPhone 12 Pro and 12 Pro Max made up about 20 percent of sales from the larger iPhone 12 lineup during the launch window, while the non-Pro, 6.1-inch iPhone 12 accounted for 27 percent. But they also said the iPhone 12 mini "likely disappointed Apple" with only 6 percent of sales during the period measured -- pretty close to the number Counterpoint shared a couple of months later. While all this data shows that the iPhone 12 mini has underperformed, it doesn't tell us why. According to CIRP's data, the also-small iPhone SE performed a little better (likely due to its significantly lower price) but it still didn't make up a huge chunk of sales. So while it's possible that the iPhone 12 mini's slow sales are partially a result of cannibalization by the cheaper SE, small phones are clearly not doing well in general. There are a lot of reasons small phones are less popular now. For one thing, users are consuming more rich media content. Many people watch as much TV and film on their phones as they do on their TVs now, and some social media platforms like TikTok and Snapchat are focused on rich media that may be more enjoyable to some on a larger display. But if anything, these sales numbers make the future of one-handed smartphones look even dimmer than before.Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Intel sued a former Oregon employee last week, alleging he took trade secrets with him when he bolted for Microsoft and used the information to gain an advantage in subsequent business negotiations with Intel. From a report: The engineer, Varun Gupta, worked for Intel for a decade before leaving for Microsoft in January 2020, according to the suit. He allegedly loaded Intel trade secrets onto two USB drives before quitting and later accessed them on his Microsoft-issued laptop. Gupta could not immediately be reached for comment. Intel and Microsoft are longtime partners and, increasingly, rivals as Microsoft develops its own chip engineering capabilities. Microsoft is preparing to open a big new engineering hub in Hillsboro, near Intel's Oregon research factories, and has hired a former Intel vice president to help lead it. In this case, though, the litigation indicates Intel and Microsoft worked together to investigate the incident. Intel's complaint claims that Gupta had denied knowing where the one of the USB drives was, but later turned it over to Microsoft for analysis. He claimed to have discarded a second USB drive that allegedly contained Intel secrets, according to the litigation. The suit asserts that Microsoft determined Gupta had plugged the USB drives into his Microsoft-issued laptop. "In his new role at Microsoft, Gupta used the confidential information and trade secrets he misappropriated from Intel, deploying that information in head-to-head negotiations with Intel concerning customized product design and pricing for significant volumes of Xeon processors," Intel alleged in Friday's filing.Read more of this story at Slashdot.
A web hosting company named No Support Linux Hosting announced today it was shutting down after a hacker breached its internal systems and compromised its entire operation. From a report: According to a message posted on its official site, the company said it was breached on Monday, February 8. The hacker appears to have "compromised" the company's entire operation, including its official website, admin section, and customer database. A No Support Linux Hosting (NSLH) spokesperson did not return a request for comment seeking details about the attack. But while details about the intrusion are unclear, the attack appears to have been destructive in its nature. "We can no longer operate the No Support Linux Hosting business," the company flatly acknowledged today. "All customers should immediately download backups of their websites and databases through cPanel," NSLH said, urging clients to do so before servers go down for good. At the time of writing, the nature of the NSLH attack is unclear, and we don't know if the hacker downloaded & wiped the company's database and backups or if we're talking about a classic ransomware attack where the intruder encrypted files and demanded a ransom for the decryption key.Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Air pollution caused by the burning of fossil fuels such as coal and oil was responsible for 8.7 million deaths globally in 2018, a staggering one in five of all people who died that year, new research has found. From a report: Countries with the most prodigious consumption of fossil fuels to power factories, homes and vehicles are suffering the highest death tolls, with the study finding more than one in 10 deaths in both the US and Europe were caused by the resulting pollution, along with nearly a third of deaths in eastern Asia, which includes China. Death rates in South America and Africa were significantly lower. The enormous death toll is higher than previous estimates and surprised even the study's researchers. "We were initially very hesitant when we obtained the results because they are astounding, but we are discovering more and more about the impact of this pollution," said Eloise Marais, a geographer at University College London and a study co-author. "It's pervasive. The more we look for impacts, the more we find." The 8.7 million deaths in 2018 represent a "key contributor to the global burden of mortality and disease," states the study, which is the result of collaboration between scientists at Harvard University, the University of Birmingham, the University of Leicester and University College London. The death toll exceeds the combined total of people who die globally each year from smoking tobacco plus those who die of malaria.Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Facebook is being sued for "losing control" of the data of about a million users in England and Wales. From a report: The alleged failings were revealed in the Cambridge Analytica scandal, where harvested data was used for advertising during elections. Journalist Peter Jukes, leading the action, claims his data was compromised. Facebook told BBC News there was "no evidence" UK or EU users' data had been transferred to Cambridge Analytica. But the case against the technology giant, expected to last for at least three years, will argue a "loss of control" over users' personal data warrants individual compensation. The harvesting of Facebook users' personal information by third-party apps was at the centre of the Cambridge Analytica privacy scandal, exposed in 2018. Cambridge Analytica's app on Facebook had harvested the data of people who interacted with it -- and that of friends who had not given consent.Read more of this story at Slashdot.
According to a researcher, favicons can be a security vulnerability that could let websites track your movement and bypass VPNs, incognito browsing status, and other traditional methods of cloaking your movement online. From a report: The tracking method is called a Supercookie, and it's the work of German software designer Jonas Strehle. "Supercookie uses favicons to assign a unique identifier to website visitors. Unlike traditional tracking methods, this ID can be stored almost persistently and cannot be easily cleared by the user," Strehle said on his Github. "The tracking method works even in the browser's incognito mode and is not cleared by flushing the cache, closing the browser or restarting the system, using a VPN or installing AdBlockers." Strehle's Github explained that he became interested in the idea of using favicons to track users after reading a research paper [PDF] on the topic from the University of Illinois at Chicago. "The complexity and feature-rich nature of modern browsers often lead to the deployment of seemingly innocuous functionality that can be readily abused by adversaries," the paper explained. "In this paper we introduce a novel tracking mechanism that misuses a simple yet ubiquitous browser feature: favicons." To be clear, this is a proof-of-concept and not something that Strehle has found out in the wild.Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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