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Britain's competition watchdog has launched an investigation into the $40 billion takeover of the UK-based chip designer Arm by the US company Nvidia. From a report: The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) has called for interested parties to submit views on the contentious deal before the launch of a formal investigation later this year. Arm Holdings, which employs 6,500 staff including 3,000 in the UK, is a global leader in designing chips for smartphones, computers and tablets. California-based Nvidia, a graphics chip specialist, announced its plan to buy the British tech group from Japan's SoftBank in September. SoftBank had acquired Arm for $32 billion in 2016, when the Japanese company took advantage of the fall in value of the pound after the Brexit vote. Arm is based in Cambridge but has operations in a number of UK towns and cities, including Manchester, Belfast and Warwick. Its chief executive, Simon Segars, acknowledged at the time of the Nvidia deal that it could take up to 18 months to win approval from regulators around the world.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Hackers who tapped into government networks through SolarWinds software potentially accessed about 3% of the Justice Department's email accounts, but there's no indication they accessed classified systems, a DOJ spokesperson said in a statement Wednesday. From a report: The DOJ Office of the Chief Information Officer learned of the hack the day of Christmas Eve, according to the statement, where agents accessed the Department's Microsoft Office 365 email environment. "As part of the ongoing technical analysis, the department has determined that the activity constitutes a major incident under the Federal Information Security Modernization Act, and is taking the steps consistent with that determination," the spokesperson said. "The department will continue to notify the appropriate federal agencies, Congress, and the public as warranted."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Elon Musk, the outspoken entrepreneur behind Tesla and SpaceX, kicked off the new year by homing in on a characteristically audacious title: the richest person on the planet. From a report: A 4.9% rally in the electric carmaker's share price Wednesday boosted Musk to within $3 billion of Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos, who currently occupies the top spot on the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, a ranking of the world's 500 wealthiest people. The South Africa-born engineer's net worth was $184.5 billion at 11:40 a.m. in New York, just shy of Bezos, who has held the top spot since October 2017. As chief executive officer of Space Exploration Technologies, or SpaceX, Musk is also a rival to Bezos, owner of Blue Origin, in the private space race. The milestone caps an extraordinary 12 months for Musk. Over the past year his net worth soared by more than $146 billion in possibly the fastest bout of wealth creation in history.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The machine learning company OpenAI is developing models that improve computer vision and can produce original images from a text prompt. From a report: The new models are the latest steps in ongoing efforts to create machine learning systems that exhibit elements of general intelligence, while performing tasks that are actually useful in the real world -- without breaking the bank on computing power. OpenAI this week is announcing two new systems that attempt to do for images what its landmark GPT-3 model did last year for text generation. DALL-E is a neural network that can "take any text and make an image out of it," says Ilya Sutskever, OpenAI co-founder and chief scientist. That includes concepts it would never have encountered in training, like the drawing of an anthropomorphic daikon radish walking a dog. DALL-E operates somewhat similarly to GPT-3, the huge transformer model that can generate original passages of text based on a short prompt. CLIP, the other new neural network, "can take any set of visual categories and instantly create very strong and reliable visually classifiable text descriptions," says Sutskever, improving on existing computer vision techniques with less training and expensive computational power.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Facebook's planned smart glasses will arrive "sooner than later" in 2021, but won't feature the kind of digital overlay technology that is associated with augmented reality, according to hardware chief Andrew Bosworth. From a report: The glasses, which are being built in partnership with Ray-Ban and parent Luxottica Group SpA, will connect to a device -- though users won't be able to overlay digital objects onto their real-world view, a foundational element of AR. "These are certainly connected glasses, they are certainly providing a lot of functionality, [but] we're being quite coy about which functionality precisely we are providing," Bosworth said. "We're excited about it but we don't want to over-hype it. We're not even calling it augmented reality, we're just calling it 'smart glasses,'" he added.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Every day in the United States, 17 people die waiting for a lifesaving organ transplant. To address this crisis, one biotech company is turning to an unlikely source: pigs. Maryland-based United Therapeutics says it plans to begin transplanting organs from genetically modified pigs into people as soon as this year. From a report: "We're right on that cusp. We're looking to get into humans within the next year or two," said David Ayares, PhD, in an exclusive interview with Future Human. Ayares is the chief scientific officer of Revivicor, a subsidiary of United Therapeutics that's developing the pigs. "We think we have the pig that is going to be what we bring forward into humans in 2021 or 2022."For decades, scientists have been hopeful that organs from other species could be used to replace faulty ones in humans, known as xenotransplantation. But animal organs trigger immediate and severe immune reactions when transplanted into humans.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An algorithm used by the popular European food delivery app Deliveroo to rank and offer shifts to riders is discriminatory, an Italian court ruled late last week, in what some experts are calling a historic decision for the gig economy. The case was brought by a group of Deliveroo riders backed by CGIL, Italy's largest trade union. From a report: A markedly detailed ordinance written by presiding judge Chiara Zompi gives an intimate look at one of many often secretive algorithms used by gig platforms to micromanage workers and which can have profound impacts on their livelihoods. While machine-learning algorithms are central to Deliveroo's entire business model, the particular algorithm examined by the court allegedly was used to determine the "reliability" of a rider. According to the ordinance, if a rider failed to cancel a shift pre-booked through the app at least 24 hours before its start, their "reliability index" would be negatively affected. Since riders deemed more reliable by the algorithm were first to be offered shifts in busier timeblocks, this effectively meant that riders who can't make their shifts -- even if it's because of a serious emergency or illness -- would have fewer job opportunities in the future. According to the court, the algorithm's failure to take into account the reasons behind a cancellation amounts to discrimation and unjustly penalizes riders with legally legitimate reasons for not working. Deliveroo was ordered to pay ~$61,400 to the suing parties.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

WhatsApp's latest terms and privacy policy allows the popular messaging app to share a significant amount of user data with Facebook. From a report: WhatsApp users are today receiving an in-app notice informing them about the app's updated terms of service and privacy policy. The notice gives an overview of the main three updates, covering how WhatsApp processes user data, how businesses can use Facebook-hosted services to store and manage their WhatsApp chats, and how WhatsApp will soon partner with Facebook to offer deeper integrations across all of the parent company's products. The changes, which are set to take effect on February 8, 2021, are mandatory and users will not be able to continue using WhatsApp unless they accept the terms.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from ZDNet: Security firm Intezer Labs said it discovered a covert year-long malware operation where cybercriminals created fake cryptocurrency apps in order to trick users into installing a new strain of malware on their systems, with the obvious end goal of stealing victims' funds. The campaign was discovered last month in December 2020, but researchers said they believe the group began spreading their malware as early as January 8, 2020. Intezer Labs said the hackers relied on three cryptocurrency-related apps for their scheme. The fake apps were named Jamm, eTrade/Kintum, and DaoPoker, and were hosted on dedicated websites at jamm[.]to, kintum[.]io, and daopker[.]com, respectively. The first two apps claimed to provide a simple platform to trade cryptocurrency, while the third was a cryptocurrency poker app. All three apps came in versions for Windows, Mac, and Linux, and were built on top of Electron, an app-building framework. But Intezer researchers say the apps also came with a little surprise in the form of a new malware strain that was hidden inside, which the company's researchers named ElectroRAT. Intezer researchers believe the malware was being used to collect cryptocurrency wallet keys and then drain victims' accounts. To spread the trojanized applications, Intezer says the hackers posted ads for the three apps and their websites on niche cryptocurrency forums, or they used social media accounts. Because of a quirk in the malware's design, which retrieved the address of its command and control server from a Pastebin URL, Intezer believes this operation infected around 6,500 users -- the total number of times the Pastebin URLs were accessed.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Verizon has backtracked on its plan to turn off its 3G network by the end of 2020. Light Reading reports: In response to questions from Light Reading, Verizon spokesperson Kevin King said "our 3G network is operational and we don't have a plan to shut it down at this time. We'll work with customers to move them to newer technology." That's a decided change from Verizon's plans from roughly a year ago. In July 2019, Verizon spokesperson Howie Waterman confirmed to Light Reading that the operator had delayed the shuttering of its 3G network from the end of 2019 to the end of 2020. He said the action would give impacted customers "an extra year to decide what they want to do." Verizon's decision to keep its 3G network up and running means the service provider will continue to operate three separate wireless network technologies -- 3G, 4G and 5G -- for the foreseeable future. As for the other carriers, AT&T plans to shutter its own 3G network in "early" 2022 and T-Mobile has said it will shut down its 3G network "over the next several years" but "we haven't shared timing."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Telegram has no plans to fix a vulnerability that makes it easy for hackers to find your precise location. The problem stems from a feature called People Nearby, which is disabled by default, but allows users who are geographically close to you to connect. Ars Technica reports: Independent researcher Ahmed Hassan, however, has shown how the feature can be abused to divulge exactly where you are. Using readily available software and a rooted Android device, he's able to spoof the location his device reports to Telegram servers. By using just three different locations and measuring the corresponding distance reported by People Nearby, he is able to pinpoint a user's precise location. Telegram lets users create local groups within a geographical area. Hassan said that scammers often spoof their location to crash such groups and then peddle fake bitcoin investments, hacking tools, stolen social security numbers, and other scams. Telegram lets users create local groups within a geographical area. Hassan said that scammers often spoof their location to crash such groups and then peddle fake bitcoin investments, hacking tools, stolen social security numbers, and other scams. A proof-of-concept video the researcher sent to Telegram showed how he could discern the address of a People Nearby user when he used a free GPS spoofing app to make his phone report just three different locations. He then drew a circle around each of the three locations with a radius of the distance reported by Telegram. The user's precise location was where all three intersected. In a blog post, Hassan included an email from Telegram in response to the report he had sent them. It noted that People Nearby isn't enabled by default and that "it's expected that determining the exact location is possible under certain conditions." People Nearby poses the biggest threat to people using Android devices, since they report a user's location with enough granularity to make Hassan's attack work. The recently released iOS 14, by contrast, allows users to divulge only a rough approximation of their location. People who use this feature aren't as exposed. Fixing the problem -- or at least making it much harder to exploit it -- wouldn't be hard from a technical perspective. Rounding locations to the nearest mile and adding some random bits generally suffices. When the Tinder app had a similar disclosure vulnerability, developers used this kind of technique to fix it.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: In one of its last strikes against the American wilderness, Donald Trump's administration will on Wednesday auction off portions of the Arctic national wildlife refuge to oil drillers. The lease sales are the climax to one of the nation's highest-profile environmental battles. The lands on the northern coastal plain of Alaska are home to denning polar bears and migrating herds of Porcupine caribou that indigenous communities depend on and consider sacred. But the oil industry has long suspected that the ground beneath the plain holds billions of barrels of petroleum. Once the leases in the refuge, known as ANWR, are sold to energy companies, they would be difficult to claw back. The incoming president, Joe Biden, could, however, discourage development in the refuge by putting regulatory hurdles in the way of drillers. The refuge has become central to America's debate over how quickly to stop drilling for and burning fossil fuels as the climate crisis accelerates. Climate experts say there should be no new oil and gas extraction, as the world is already more than 1C hotter than pre-industrial times. Even if humans stopped using fossil fuels today, the planet would continue to heat. [...] On Monday, the Trump administration also dramatically expanded the area where the government can lease public land for oil drilling to the west of ANWR. The plan would allow drilling in 82% of the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska, an area bigger than the state of West Virginia, according to environmental groups, though the Biden administration could reverse that decision more easily than it could hold off drilling in ANWR.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Top national security agencies in a rare joint statement Tuesday confirmed that Russia was likely responsible for a massive hack of U.S. government departments and corporations, rejecting President Donald Trump's claim that China might be to blame. The Associated Press reports: The statement represented the U.S. government's first formal attempt to assign responsibility for the breaches at multiple agencies and to assign a possible motive for the operation. It said the hacks appeared to be part of an "intelligence-gathering," suggesting the evidence so far pointed to a Russian spying effort rather than an attempt to damage or disrupt U.S. government operations. "This is a serious compromise that will require a sustained and dedicated effort to remediate," said the statement, distributed by a cyber working group comprised of the FBI and other investigative agencies. Russia has denied involvement in the hack.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Last July, GitHub prevented users in Iran and several other nations from accessing portions of the service due to U.S. sanction laws. Today, the world's largest host of source code announced that it has secured a license from the U.S. government to operate in Iran. It's also working to secure similar licenses for developers in Crimea and Syria as well. MSPoweruser reports: "Over the course of two years, we were able to demonstrate how developer use of GitHub advances human progress, international communication, and the enduring U.S. foreign policy of promoting free speech and the free flow of information. We are grateful to OFAC for the engagement which has led to this great result for developers. We are in the process of rolling back all restrictions on developers in Iran, and reinstating full access to affected accounts," wrote Nat Friedman, CEO of GitHub. GitHub is also working with the U.S. government to secure similar licenses for developers in Crimea and Syria as well.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Ever since Nvidia's GeForce RTX 30-series and AMD's Radeon RX 6000-series graphics cards launched last fall, the overwhelming demand and tight supply, exacerbated by a cryptocurrency boom, has caused prices for all graphics cards to go nuts. Brace yourself: It looks like it's about to get even worse. From a report: In the Asus DIY PC Facebook group, Asus technical marketing manager Juan Jose Guerrero III warned that prices for the company's components will increase in the new year. "We have an announcement in regards to MSRP price changes that are effective in early 2021 for our award-winning series of graphic cards and motherboards," Guerrero wrote, though he warned that "additional models" may also wind up receiving price increases as well. "Our new MSRP reflects increases in cost for components. operating costs, and logistical activities plus a continuation of import tariffs. We worked closely with our supply and logistic partners to minimize price increases. ASUS greatly appreciates your continued business and support as we navigate through this time of unprecedented market change."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Dell is launching three new monitors next month, and all of them come with a dedicated Microsoft Teams button. The Verge reports: Dell claims it has created the "world's first video conferencing monitors certified for Microsoft Teams," after Microsoft started certifying displays, webcams, and headsets last year. Three monitors will be available next month, all offering quick access to Microsoft Teams. The button will let Microsoft Teams users quickly launch the app to make and receive video calls. Hands-free commands will also be supported through Cortana and the built-in microphone. The Teams button is the main surprise with these displays, but Dell's trio of videoconferencing monitors also have some useful specs designed for an era where remote work and video calling is key. Each includes a 5-megapixel pop-up infrared camera, which supports facial recognition with Windows Hello. Dell also bundles a noise-canceling microphone and dual 5-watt integrated speakers. There's even a built-in mode to reduce blue light emissions. Dell is launching a 24-inch (FHD) version for $519.99, a 27-inch (QHD) model for $719.99, and a curved 34-inch (WQHD) variant for $1,149.99. All three will launch on February 16th. In other Dell-related news, the company has announced new versions of its Latitude laptops with Intel's new 11th Gen vPro chips and new features like an automated, integrated webcam shutter to physically block your camera when it's not in use.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Internet shutdowns cost India $2.8 billion, putting the South Asian nation at the top of a list of 21 countries that curbed citizens' web access in 2020. From a report: India -- the second-worst-hit nation by the Covid-19 pandemic in terms of overall confirmed infections -- accounted for about three-quarters of the $4 billion lost worldwide to internet curbs. Its losses more than doubled compared to 2019, a report from a U.K.-based digital privacy and security research group showed. Some countries known to limit Internet access or censor material like China and North Korea were not included in the report because researchers relied on publicly available open source information and documented internet and social media shutdowns. With 8,927 hours of blacked out or curbed bandwidth access, India restricted internet use more than any other nation, as restrictions originally imposed in 2019 continued throughout 2020, according to the Global Cost of Internet Shutdowns report released by Top10VPN.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Microsoft is building a universal Outlook client for Windows and Mac that will also replace the default Mail & Calendar apps on Windows 10 when ready. This new client is codenamed Monarch and is based on the already available Outlook Web app available in a browser today. From a report: Project Monarch is the end-goal for Microsoft's "One Outlook" vision, which aims to build a single Outlook client that works across PC, Mac, and the Web. Right now, Microsoft has a number of different Outlook clients for desktop, including Outlook Web, Outlook (Win32) for Windows, Outlook for Mac, and Mail & Calendar on Windows 10. Microsoft wants to replace the existing desktop clients with one app built with web technologies. The project will deliver Outlook as a single product, with the same user experience and codebase whether that be on Windows or Mac. It'll also have a much smaller footprint and be accessible to all users whether they're free Outlook consumers or commercial business customers. I'm told the app will feature native OS integrations with support for things like offline storage, share targets, notifications, and more. I understand that it's one of Microsoft's goals to make the new Monarch client feel as native to the OS as possible while remaining universal across platforms by basing the app on the Outlook website.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Torrent Freak: On December 21, 2020, Elsevier, Wiley, and American Chemical Society, filed a lawsuit hoping to have the court compel Indian ISPs to block both Sci-Hub and Libgen. Accusing the platforms of blatantly infringing their rights on a massive scale, the publishers said that due to the defiant nature of the platforms, ISP blocking is the only effective solution to hand. The massive complaint, which runs to 2,169 pages, was received by Sci-Hub with little time to review its contents. This not-insignificant issue was quickly pointed out to the Court, with counsel for Sci-Hub asking for an extension. After Sci-Hub assured the Court (pdf) that "no new articles or publications, in which the plaintiffs have copyright" would be uploaded to the site in advance of the next hearing, more time was granted to respond. The case is set for a hearing tomorrow but in advance of that, interested parties are attempting to put the government under pressure to intervene by preventing a blockade that, according to them, would cause damage to education and society in India. Speaking on behalf of thousands of scientists, academics, teachers and students, the Breakthrough Science Society (BSS) is expressing dismay at the publishers' efforts to prevent the "free flow of information" between those who produce it and those who seek it. [...] Instead of demonizing Sci-Hub founder Alexandra Elbakyan, the group describes her work as an effective solution to make research papers available to all for the benefit of humanity. As a result, the Breakthrough Science Society says it actually supports the work of Sci-Hub and Libgen, arguing that their work is not illegal and should continue unhindered. In an effort to pressure the Indian government to intervene on behalf of the people, the Breakthrough Science Society has launched a petition, calling on everyone from scientists and academics to teachers and students, to declare that knowledge should be accessible to all, not just those who can afford to pay the publishers' rates. Dr. Ashwani Mahajan, an Associate Professor at the University of Delhi, who among other things describes himself as a policy interventionist, says that if the ISPs are compelled to block Sci-Hub and Libgen, Indian researchers' access to information will be seriously undermined. While acknowledging that the government spends large sums of money to subscribe to journals, Mahajan says that researchers and students are heavily reliant on Sci-Hub and Libgen for information that the publishing industry itself does not pay for.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Qualcomm is getting a new CEO: Cristiano Amon, who already serves as president for the company, will replace Steve Mollenkopf, who took over as CEO in 2014. The Verge reports: Amon has already served as the public face of the company for some time, presiding over introductions of new products like the Snapdragon 888, making him an obvious choice to succeed Mollenkopf at the helm. Mollenkopf's tenure as CEO saw Qualcomm face numerous challenges: antitrust accusations, allegations of anticompetitive behavior, and a massive fight with Apple that saw the two companies sever their relationship (before patching things up in a settlement). But he also oversaw Qualcomm's growth into the juggernaut it is today, one that nearly completely dominates the industry for mobile processors. [...] Amon is set to take the reins on June 30th, with Mollenkopf set to stick around as a "strategic advisor" for an unspecified amount of time.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A little over a year after bringing Minecraft Earth in the US, Microsoft announced this week it will shut down the game later this year. Engadget reports: Minecraft Earth players have until June 30th, 2021, to play the augmented reality title before Microsoft shuts down its servers and it's no longer available to download from app marketplaces. Developer Mojang Studios blamed the coronavirus pandemic and all the changes to day-to-day life that have come with it for the shutdown. "Minecraft Earth was designed around free movement and collaborative play -- two things that have become near impossible in the current global situation," the studio said. Like Niantic with Pokemon Go, Mojang had tweaked the game to make it easier to play at home. Those changes clearly weren't enough. But if there's a silver lining in today's news, it's that Mojang plans to send off Minecraft Earth in style. The studio is rolling out one last update for the game it says contains changes "to make your time in Minecraft Earth as fun as possible." Among other tweaks, the update does away with real-money transactions and drastically reduces the time it will take for players to craft and build things within the game. It also offers players a chance to see all the content that Mojang was working on before today's announcement. "We hope these adjustments will allow you to explore, craft, and build more -- while staying safe indoors," the studio said. Once June 30th comes and goes, Microsoft will delete player data on July 1st. If you spent money in Minecraft Earth at any point during the life of the game, you'll get a token that will allow you to download the Bedrock edition of Minecraft to your mobile device. You can find more details on the shutdown on the Minecraft website.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from ZDNet: Tens of thousands of website owners who are based in the UK might have started the year with an unpleasant surprise: Eurid, the registry manager of .eu domain names, has suspended .eu domain names registered by UK citizens as a result of the regulatory changes caused by Brexit. Suspended domain names can no longer support a website or service like email, and owners now have three months to prove their right to run a .eu domain. This means updating contact data to transfer the .eu domain to an EU-subsidiary outside the UK; or declaring citizenship or residence of an EU member state. Domain names will be re-instated as soon as contact data is updated, said Eurid -- but only for the next few months. Those who, after 31st March 2021, still haven't demonstrated their eligibility will see their domain name withdrawn, and made available again for general registration from January 2022 if no action is taken by then. Eurid said 81,000 domains, from 50,000 users, have been suspended. Eurid's suspension of UK domains comes after a series of mixed signals from the European Commission, which decides on the rules that guide the registration of .eu domains. EU regulations currently stipulate that .eu websites can only be allocated to EU citizens -- regardless of their place of residence -- as well as non-EU citizens and organizations established in a member state. In other words, once Brexit happened, UK-based .eu domains owned by UK citizens suddenly became non-EU websites hosted in a non-EU country.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The New York Stock Exchange has abruptly reversed plans to delist three major Chinese telecommunications companies after consulting regulators about an investment ban ordered by President Donald Trump. From a report: Coming days before the companies were to be delisted -- and just over two weeks before Trump is to leave the White House -- the U-turn avoids a step that threatened to heighten U.S.-China tensions further. The Big Board gave no reason for its decision in a statement released during Asian hours, saying only that it had consulted "relevant regulatory authorities" about Trump's executive order, signed in November as part of his administration's push to check China's growing economic power. The move came as a surprise and sparked confusion among officials at the U.S. Treasury and State departments, and National Security Council, according to people familiar with the matter, who asked not to be identified because the conversations were confidential. The about-face, described as "bizarre" by a Jefferies Financial Group Inc. analyst, also whipsawed investors who on Monday had sold shares of the Chinese telecom companies and raced to bet on which stocks might be delisted next. China Mobile Ltd., China Telecom and China Unicom Hong Kong all rallied on Tuesday.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Ho Mobile, an Italian mobile operator, owned by Vodafone, has confirmed a massive data breach on Monday and is now taking the rare step of offering to replace the SIM cards of all affected customers. From a report: The breach is believed to have impacted roughly 2.5 million customers. It first came to light last month on December 28 when a security analyst spotted the telco's database being offered for sale on a dark web forum. While the company initially played down these initial reports, Ho confirmed the incident on Monday, in a message posted on its official website and via SMS messages sent to all impacted customers. Ho's statement confirms the security researcher's assessment that hackers broke into Ho's servers and stole details on Ho customers, including full names, telephone numbers, social security numbers, email addresses, dates and places of birth, nationality, and home addresses. While the telco said no financial data or call details were stolen in the intrusion, Ho admitted that hackers got their hands on details related to customers' SIM cards.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Not a single one of Google's iOS apps have been updated in almost a month -- an unusually long period for a tech behemoth not to release, at the very least, even a minor bug fix or stability update for one of its dozens of insanely popular iPhone and iPad apps. From a report: And after reviewing the latest release dates for all of Google's iOS apps, one reason for this lack of updates seems more likely than others: It could be related to Apple's new App Store privacy labels. The last time any Google iOS app was updated was on December 7. This includes updates to major Google apps like Google Drive, YouTube, Google Docs, Google Sheets, YouTube Music, Google Duo, Google Authenticator, and Gboard. Why is December 7 a significant date? Because starting on December 8, Apple mandated that any new apps or app updates submitted to the App Store would require the developer to fill out the privacy label information for the app it was submitting. This privacy label reveals exactly what data the app is collecting about the user and how that user data is being used. The label can then be viewed on an app's App Store listing page. The feature is part of Apple's push to make developers be more transparent in the ways they collect and use user data, so users can make more informed choices about the apps they choose to download.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Amazon.com is buying 11 used Boeing 767-300 planes, the first time the online retail giant has purchased, rather than leased, aircraft for its fast-growing air cargo operation. From a report: The company on Tuesday said it was buying seven aircraft from Delta Air Lines and four from WestJet Airlines. The WestJet aircraft are currently being converted from passenger to cargo use and will join Amazon's fleet this year. The Delta jets will start flying routes in 2022. By the end of next year, Amazon expects to have more than 85 planes in service, a spokesperson said. Seattle-based Amazon has rapidly expanded its air cargo operations in recent years, part of an effort to speed up delivery of packages to customers and supplement capacity from such carriers as United Parcel Service.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader shares a report: As Georgians head to the polls to vote on their two U.S. Senators -- and effectively, partisan control of Congress -- on Tuesday, voters face an online landscape far different from what they saw in the weeks surrounding November's general election. In the fall, Facebook -- by far the most popular social network -- clamped down on sponsored posts about politics in order to ensure that misinformation would not spread the way that it had during the 2016 presidential election. But a few weeks before the Georgia race, Facebook turned off this safeguard in Georgia. The Markup decided to take a look behind the curtain to see if we could determine the impact on Georgia voters' news feeds. We recruited a panel of 58 Facebook users in the state and paid them to allow us to monitor their feeds, starting in late November, using custom software we built for our Citizen Browser project. The Citizen Browser project is a data-driven initiative to examine what content social media companies choose to amplify to their users. While Facebook's controls were in place, we found that links to traditional news sites were present in almost all election-related posts that appeared on our Georgia panelists' feeds. After Dec. 16, however, when Facebook flipped the switch to turn on political advertising for the Georgia election, we noticed that partisan content quickly elbowed out news sites, replacing a significant proportion of mentions of the election in our users' feeds. The Markup defined election-related content as anything containing mentions of Trump or Biden, the names of the four major-party senate candidates, or the terms "senate," "vote," "election," or "ballot." We looked at the URLs attached to those election-related posts and tabulated the most common domains. For the first half of the month, the most commonly appearing election-related content came primarily from news outlets such as The Wall Street Journal, CNN, and the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. But after Dec. 16, just over one third of the most commonly appearing domains were partisan campaign sites buying ads, including WrongForGeorgia.com, an attack site targeting the Democratic candidates; and DeserveBetter.org, an attack site targeting the incumbent Republican senators. We discarded any domains that only appeared on a single panelist's feed.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The Environmental Protection Agency has finalized a rule that limits scientific research used in the crafting of public health and environmental policy. From a report: Researchers argue the rule that prioritizes studies with all data available publicly "essentially blocks" research that uses personal information and confidential medical records that can't be released because of privacy conditions, per the New York Times, which first reported the news Monday. A requirement to disclose raw data would have prevented past major studies from going ahead. "Such studies have served as the scientific underpinnings of some of the most important clean air and water regulations of the past half century," the Times notes. The EPA declined a request for comment, but referred Axios to an op-ed by Administrator Andrew Wheeler in the Wall Street Journal published Monday evening headlined, "Why We're Ending the EPA's Reliance on Secret Science." Wheeler is expected to officially announce the rule Tuesday. In the op-ed, Wheeler insists the rule is "not a stick for forcing scientists to choose between respecting the privacy and rights of their study participants and submitting their work for consideration."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

UK scientists have expressed concern that COVID-19 vaccines being rolled out in Britain may not be able to protect against a new variant of the coronavirus that emerged in South Africa and has spread internationally. From a report: Both Britain and South Africa have detected new, more transmissible variants of the COVID-19-causing virus in recent weeks that have driven a surge in cases. British Health Secretary Matt Hancock said on Monday he was now very worried about the variant identified in South Africa. Simon Clarke, an associate professor in cellular microbiology at the University of Reading, said that while both variants had some new features in common, the one found in South Africa "has a number additional mutations ... which are concerning." He said these included more extensive alterations to a key part of the virus known as the spike protein -- which the virus uses to infect human cells -- and "may make the virus less susceptible to the immune response triggered by the vaccines." Lawrence Young, a virologist and professor of molecular oncology at Warwick University, also noted that the South African variant has "multiple spike mutations."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Whole Foods CEO John Mackey says the key to keeping people healthy in the United States is for people to eat better and live healthier lives. From a report: "I mean, honestly, we talk about health care. The best solution is not to need health care," Mackey told Freakonomics Radio host Stephen Dubner in an episode. "The best solution is to change the way people eat, the way they live, the lifestyle, and diet," Mackey says. "There's no reason why people shouldn't be healthy and have a longer health span. A bunch of drugs is not going to solve the problem." Americans are not taking as good care of their own bodies as they ought to be, Mackey says: "71% of Americans are overweight and 42.5% are obese. Clearly, we're making bad choices in the way we eat," he says. "It's not a sustainable path. And so, I'm calling it out."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Register: Linux creator Linus Torvalds has accused Intel of preventing widespread use of error-correcting memory and being "instrumental in killing the whole ECC industry with its horribly bad market segmentation." ECC stands for error-correcting code. ECC memory uses additional parity bits to verify that the data read from memory is the same as the data that was written. Without this check, memory is vulnerable to occasional corruption where a bit is flipped spontaneously, for example, by background radiation. Memory can also be attacked using a technique called Rowhammer, where rapid repeated reads of the same memory locations can cause adjacent locations to change their state. ECC memory solves these problems and has been available for over 50 years yet most personal computers do not use it. Cost is a factor but what riles Torvalds is that Intel has made ECC support a feature of its Xeon range, aimed at servers and high-end workstations, and does not support it in other ranges such as the Core series. The topic came up in a discussion about AMD's new Zen 3 Ryzen 9 5000 series processors on the Real World Tech forum site. AMD has semi-official ECC support in most of its processors. "I don't really see AMD's unofficial ECC support being a big deal," said an unwary contributor. "ECC absolutely matters," retorted Torvalds. "Intel has been detrimental to the whole industry and to users because of their bad and misguided policies wrt ECC. Seriously. And if you don't believe me, then just look at multiple generations of rowhammer, where each time Intel and memory manufacturers bleated about how it's going to be fixed next time... And yes, that was -- again -- entirely about the misguided and arse-backwards policy of 'consumers don't need ECC', which made the market for ECC memory go away." The accusation is significant particularly at a time when security issues are high on the agenda. The suggestion is that Intel's marketing decisions have held back adoption of a technology that makes users more secure -- though rowhammer is only one of many potential attack mechanisms -- as well as making PCs more stable. "The arguments against ECC were always complete and utter garbage. Now even the memory manufacturers are starting to do ECC internally because they finally owned up to the fact that they absolutely have to," said Torvalds. Torvalds said that Xeon prices deterred usage. "I used to look at the Xeon CPU's, and I could never really make the math work. The Intel math was basically that you get twice the CPU for five times the price. So for my personal workstations, I ended up using Intel consumer CPU's." Prices, he said, dropped last year "because of Ryzen and Threadripper... but it was a 'too little, much too late' situation." By way of mitigation, he added that "apart from their ECC stance I was perfectly happy with [Intel's] consumer offerings."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

It might have taken more than 20 years, but a game intended for the original PlayStation has at last made its way into the world. Engadget reports: A group of Japanese developers worked on Magic Castle for eight months in the late '90s. They used Sony's Net Yaroze, a system with which hobbyists could make games for the console. The team sent the RPG to several publishers, but most didn't bite. Sony showed interest, but it wanted the developers to ditch their game and move to a different project. The team rejected the offer and later disbanded. And so the unfinished Magic Castle stayed on the shelf for over 20 years. Until now. One of the developers, who goes by PIROWO, rediscovered the Magic Castle source code a while back. They decided to finish and release it, four console generations later. Magic Castle has some interesting tricks up its sleeve, as EuroGamer notes. It features dynamic music and you can customize the position of the user interface. There are four character classes to choose from and 20 floors with randomized elements to make your way through. You can download the game from the Internet Archive and play it with an emulator.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Astronomers have taken a new look at the oldest light in the universe, which suggests that the universe is 13.77 billion years old -- give or take 40 million years. Phys.Org reports: The new estimate, using data gathered at the National Science Foundation's Atacama Cosmology Telescope (ACT), matches the one provided by the standard model of the universe, as well as measurements of the same light made by the European Space Agency's Planck satellite, which measured remnants of the Big Bang from 2009 to '13. The research was published in the Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics. The lead author of "The Atacama Cosmology Telescope: A Measurement of the Cosmic Microwave Background Power Spectra at 98 and 150 GHz" is Steve Choi, NSF Astronomy and Astrophysics Postdoctoral Fellow at the Cornell Center for Astrophysics and Planetary Science, in the College of Arts and Sciences. In 2019, a research team measuring the movements of galaxies calculated that the universe is hundreds of millions of years younger than the Planck team predicted. That discrepancy suggested a new model for the universe might be needed and sparked concerns that one of the sets of measurements might be incorrect. "Now we've come up with an answer where Planck and ACT agree," said Simone Aiola, a researcher at the Flatiron Institute's Center for Computational Astrophysics and first author of one of two papers. "It speaks to the fact that these difficult measurements are reliable."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from CoinDesk: Ukraine's government has chosen the Stellar blockchain network as a platform to build a central bank digital currency (CBDC). Announced Monday, the Ministry of Digital Transformation of Ukraine and the Stellar Development Foundation (SDF) signed a Memorandum of Understanding to build out a "virtual assets ecosystem and national digital currency of Ukraine." The National Bank of Ukraine has been researching the possibility of CBDC implementation since 2017, and the Stellar partnership will now be the basis of its virtual currency development, according to Digital Transformation and IT Deputy Minister Oleksandr Bornyakov. "The Ministry of Digital Transformation is working on creating the legal environment for the development of virtual assets in Ukraine," Bornyakov said in a statement. "We believe our cooperation with the Stellar Development Foundation will contribute to development of the virtual asset industry and its integration into the global financial ecosystem." Stellar Development Foundation CEO Denelle Dixon said the partnership with Ukraine's government and other stakeholders to digitize the hryvnia will officially launch this month. "We've been in conversations with governments and institutions all over the world about the key considerations for issuing CBDCs. It's important to remember many, if not all, of these organizations weren't designed to be technology companies and that they have many audiences that they are supporting," Dixon said via an email. "That makes a public-private partnership so essential to getting this right."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Uber apparently squandered an estimated $100 million on third-party digital advertising campaigns. Input Mag reports: Former Sleeping Giants alum and co-founder of Check My Ads, Nandini Jammi, caught most of us up on the whole situation yesterday in a lengthy Twitter thread detailing just how Uber, the poster child of startup capitalism's unethical robber baron mentality, managed to recently waste a mind-boggling $100 million in pointless digital advertising campaigns through a host of blatantly shady ad networks. One such instance involved launching "'battery saver' style apps in Google Play, giving them root access to your phone." Upon typing "Uber" into Google Play, the service "auto-fires a click to make it look like you clicked on an Uber ad and attribute the install to themselves." It's a comprehensive rundown worth reading in its entirety, but to make a long story short: after getting publicly roasted for continually advertising on Breitbart -- Stephen Miller's racist, chauvinistic fever dream billing itself as a "news" outlet -- Uber's former Head of Acquisition, Kevin Frisch, realized the company could trim roughly 3/4 of its entire online advertising budget and see next to no change in consumer engagement. No, seriously. Over $100 million that could have been reallocated towards such "costly" investments like sick leave, overtime, health insurance, or any number of the other bare minimum workforce benefits Uber routinely denies its gig employees.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Discovery+, the new streaming channel from Discovery, is officially available in the U.S.. "The list of places where you can download Discovery+ is extensive, with almost every popular platform but the PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5 included in the company's launch slate," reports Engadget. From the report: Most notably, you can access the app through Amazon Fire TV streaming devices and Fire Edition TVs -- with support for Prime Video Channels coming at a later date. At launch, Discovery also supports Roku devices and 2017 and later Samsung Smart TVs. Typically, Amazon Fire TV and Roku are left out of streaming launches. Of course, you can also access Discovery+ through Apple TV and Android TV if you have those instead. Discovery+ will set you back $5 per month for the base tier. It's an extra $2 every month if you don't want to see any ads. At launch, you'll find content from channels like HGTV, Food Network, Animal Planet, TLC and of course Discovery. The $5 and $7 price tags put Discovery+ in competition with other specialty services like Peacock and Disney+, which may make it a tough sell for some people.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

According to The Wall Street Journal, failed mobile-first streaming service Quibi is in advanced talks to sell the rights to its content library to Roku for an undisclosed price. The Verge reports: If it were to happen, the deal could give the Roku Channel exclusive access to Quibi's slate of programming. None of Quibi's shows ever really took off, but Roku may feel that the content would stand a better chance when available on the best-selling streaming devices in the US. Quibi announced it was shutting down back in October, just six months after its much-hyped launch. The service was headed by former HP CEO Meg Whitman and former Disney chairman and movie producer Jeffrey Katzenberg, who managed to raise almost $2 billion in funding before the app was released. Katzenberg had already tried to get companies including Facebook and NBCUniversal to pick up Quibi programming ahead of its demise, according to The Information.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from ZDNet: Singapore has confirmed its law enforcers will be able to access the country's COVID-19 contact tracing data to aid in their criminal investigations. To date, more than 4.2 million residents or 78% of the local population have adopted the TraceTogether contact tracing app and wearable token, which is one of the world's highest penetration rates. [...] In its efforts to ease privacy concerns, the Singapore government had stressed repeatedly that COVID-19 data would "never be accessed unless the user tests positive" for the virus and was contacted by the contact tracing team. Personal data such as unique identification number and mobile number also would be substituted by a random permanent ID and stored on a secured server. However, the Singapore government now has confirmed local law enforcement will be able to access the data for criminal investigations. Under the Criminal Procedure Code, the Singapore Police Force can obtain any data and this includes TraceTogether data, according to Minister of State for Home Affairs, Desmond Tan. He was responding to a question posed during parliament Monday on whether the TraceTogether data would be used for criminal probes and the safeguards governing the use of such data. Tan said the Singapore government was the "custodian" of the contact tracing data and "stringent measures" had been established to safeguard the personal data. "Examples of these measures include only allowing authorized officers to access the data, using such data only for authorized purposes, and storing the data on a secured data platform," he said. He added that public officers who knowingly disclose the data without authorization or misuse the data may be fined up to SG$5,000 or jailed up to two years, or both. Asked if police use of the data violated the TraceTogether privacy pledge, Tan said: "We do not preclude the use of TraceTogether data in circumstances where citizens' safety and security is or has been affected, and this applies to all other data as well." He noted that "authorized police officers" may invoke the Criminal Procedure Code to access TraceTogether data for such purposes as well as for criminal investigation, but this data would, otherwise, be used only for contact tracing and to combat the spread of COVID-19.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The reason why the Windows UI has a 32GB limit on the formatting of FAT32 volumes is because retired Microsoft engineer Dave Plummer "said so." The confession comes "in the latest of a series of anecdotes hosted on his YouTube channel Dave's Garage," reports The Register. From the report: In the closing years of the last century, Plummer was involved in porting the Windows 95 shell to Windows NT. Part of that was a redo of Windows Format ("it had to be a replacement and complete rewrite since the Win95 system was so markedly different") and, as well as the grungy lower-level bits going down to the API, he also knocked together the classic, stacked Format dialog over the course of an hour of UI creativity. As he admired his design genius, he pondered what cluster sizes to offer the potential army of future Windows NT 4.0 users. The options would define the size of the volume; FAT32 has a set maximum number of clusters in a volume. Making those clusters huge would make for an equally huge volume, but at a horrifying cost in terms of wasted space: select a 32-kilobyte cluster size and even the few bytes needed by a "Hello World" file would snaffle the full 32k. "We call it 'Cluster Slack'," explained Plummer, "and it is the unavoidable waste of using FAT32 on large volumes." "How large is too large? At what point do you say, 'No, it's too inefficient, it would be folly to let you do that'? That is the decision I was faced with." At the time, the largest memory card Plummer could lay his hands on for testing had an impossibly large 16-megabyte capacity. "Perhaps I multiplied its size by a thousand," he said, "and then doubled it again for good measure, and figured that would more than suffice for the lifetime of NT 4.0. I picked the number 32G as the limit and went on with my day." While Microsoft's former leader may have struggled to put clear water between himself and the infamous "640K" quote of decades past, Plummer was clear that his decision process was aimed at NT 4.0 and would just be a temporary thing until the UI was revised. "That, however, is a fatal mistake on my part that no one should be excused for making. With the perfect being the enemy of the good, 'good enough' has persisted for 25 years and no one seems to have made any substantial changes to Format since then..." ... However, as Plummer put it: "At the end of the day, it was a simple lack of foresight combined with the age-old problem of the temporary solution becoming de-facto permanent."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Wikileaks founder Julian Assange cannot be extradited to the United States, a court in London has ruled. The BBC reports: The judge blocked the request because of concerns over Mr Assange's mental health and risk of suicide in the U.S. Mr Assange, who is wanted over the publication of thousands of classified documents in 2010 and 2011, says the case is politically motivated. Expressing disappointment at the ruling, the U.S. justice department noted that its legal arguments had prevailed. Its position is that the leaks broke the law and endangered lives. "While we are extremely disappointed in the court's ultimate decision, we are gratified that the United States prevailed on every point of law raised," the justice department said. The U.S. authorities have 14 days in which to lodge an appeal and are expected to do so. Mr Assange will now be taken back to Belmarsh Prison -- where he is being held -- and a full application for his bail will be made on Wednesday. His lawyer Ed Fitzgerald QC told the court there would be evidence to show Mr Assange would not abscond. [...] If convicted in the U.S., Mr Assange faces a possible penalty of up to 175 years in jail, his lawyers have said. However the U.S. government said the sentence was more likely to be between four and six years. Mr Assange faces an 18-count indictment from the U.S. government, accusing him of conspiring to hack into U.S. military databases to acquire sensitive secret information relating to the Afghanistan and Iraq wars, which was then published on the Wikileaks website. He says the information exposed abuses by the U.S. military. But U.S. prosecutors say the leaks of classified material endangered lives, and so the U.S. sought his extradition from the UK.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Ether, the native currency of the Ethereum network and the second most valuable cryptocurrency, has soared above $1,000 for the first time since 2018. The rise is part of a broad cryptocurrency boom inspired by the continued rise in bitcoin's price. Last month, bitcoin rose above $20,000, smashing its previous all-time record of around $19,500. Since then, it has continued to rise, breaking above $30,000 in recent days. As I write this, one bitcoin is worth around $31,000. Cryptocurrencies tend to rise and fall together. So it's not surprising that other virtual currencies are also on the rise. Ether has seen dramatic gains over the last year. At the start of 2020, one ether was worth around $140. The price rose to around $600 in late November, the same month bitcoin started flirting with a new record. In the last few days, ether has been on a tear, rising from $600 on Christmas Day to more than $1,000 today. It isn't just ether. Litecoin, one of the oldest "altcoins," has seen its value triple over the last three months to $150. Bitcoin Cash, a variant of bitcoin that's optimized for high transaction volumes, has nearly doubled over the same period and is now worth $400. Polkadot and Tether have also seen continued growth in recent months. The one exception is XRP, the currency of the Ripple network. "Just before Christmas, the Securities and Exchange Commission charged two Ripple executives with selling unregistered securities," reports Ars. "The announcement has caused some US cryptocurrency exchanges to stop offering trades in XRP. XRP has lost two-thirds of its value since a November peak." Coinbase, the largest cryptocurrency exchange in the U.S., also suspended trading in XRP.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader shares a report: Malware operators who want to know the location of the victims they infect usually rely on a simple technique where they grab the victim's IP address and check it against an IP-to-geo database like MaxMind's GeoIP to get a victim's approximate geographical location. While the technique isn't very accurate, it is still the most reliable method of determining a user's actual physical location based on data found on their computer. However, in a blog post last month, Xavier Mertens, a security researcher with the SANS Internet Storm Center, said he discovered a new malware strain that is using a second technique on top of the first. This second technique relies on grabbing the infected user's BSSID. Known as a "Basic Service Set Identifier," the BSSID is basically the MAC physical address of the wireless router or access point the user is using to connect via WiFi. You can see the BSSID on Windows systems by running the command: netsh wlan show interfaces | find "BSSID" Mertens said the malware he discovered was collecting the BSSID and then checking it against a free BSSID-to-geo database maintained by Alexander Mylnikov.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Epic Games is buying an old shopping mall -- with nearly one million square feet of space -- and plans to convert it into its new global headquarters by 2024. From a report: The deal gives Epic the 980,000 square foot Cary Towne Center for $95 million. Cary Towne Center is about 2 miles from Epic's current HQ. Epic Games has been based in Cary, North Carolina since 1999, and has 2,200 employees in its global workforce. The company, best known for developing the Unreal Engine and Fortnite, has about two dozen subsidiaries and studios in other locations around the world, acquiring or establishing more than half of them since Fortnite Battle Royale launched at the end of 2017. Sitting on 87 acres, Cary Towne Center, like many shopping malls in the United States, has struggled to remain open as anchor tenants have left or closed altogether thanks to shopping trends moving online. WRAL-TV of Raleigh noted that only a few stores remain open there, and much of the mall is blocked off. Its current owners picked it up in 2019 for $31 million, then got the Cary Town Council to approve its rezoning, which would permit office use, hotel rooms, and multi-family housing in addition to commercial space.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Alibaba founder Jack Ma's absence from public view in the past two months, including missing the final episode of a TV show on which he was to appear as a judge, has fueled social media speculation over his whereabouts amid a Chinese regulatory clampdown on his sprawling business empire. From a report: China's highest-profile entrepreneur has not appeared in a public setting since a late October forum in Shanghai where he blasted China's regulatory system in a speech that put him on a collision course with officials, resulting in the suspension of a $37 billion IPO of Alibaba's Ant Group fintech arm. The Financial Times reported on Friday that Ma was replaced as a judge in the final episode in November of a game show for entrepreneurs called Africa's Business Heroes. An Alibaba spokeswoman told Reuters on Monday that the change was due to a scheduling conflict, declining further comment. While news coverage of Ma's absence from public view triggered speculation on Twitter, which is blocked in China, it was not a significant trending topic on social media in mainland China, where sensitive topics are subject to censorship. Chinese regulators have zeroed in on Ma's businesses since his October speech including launching an antitrust probe into Alibaba and ordering Ant to shake up its lending and other consumer finance businesses including the creation of a separate holding company to meet capital requirements.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Microsoft is planning a "sweeping visual rejuvenation of Windows" that is designed to signal to users of the operating system that "Windows is BACK." From a report: That's according to a job listing posted by Microsoft recently, advertising for a software engineering role in the Windows Core User Experiences team: "On this team, you'll work with our key platform, Surface, and OEM partners to orchestrate and deliver a sweeping visual rejuvenation of Windows experiences to signal to our customers that Windows is BACK and ensure that Windows is considered the best user OS experience for customers." Microsoft quietly removed references to this "sweeping visual rejuvenation" this morning, after several Windows enthusiasts spotted the job listing over the weekend.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Haven, the joint venture formed by three of America's most powerful companies to lower costs and improve outcomes in health care, is disbanding after three years, CNBC has learned exclusively. From a report: The company began informing employees Monday that it will shut down by the end of next month, according to people with direct knowledge of the matter. Many of the Boston-based firm's 57 workers are expected to be placed at Amazon, Berkshire Hathaway or JPMorgan Chase as the firms each individually push forward in their efforts, and the three companies are still expected to collaborate informally on healthcare projects, the people said. The announcement three years ago that the CEOs of Amazon, Berkshire Hathaway and JPMorgan Chase had teamed up to tackle one of the biggest problems facing corporate America -- high and rising costs for employee health care -- sent shock waves throughout the world of medicine. Shares of healthcare companies tumbled on fears about how the combined might of leaders in technology and finance could wring costs out of the system. Brooke Thurston, a spokeswoman for Haven, confirmed the company's plans to close.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Apple appears to be moving along in its development of a foldable iPhone, according to new rumors. The company has apparently asked its Foxconn, its biggest iPhone supplier, to create two prototype foldable shells with displays. From a report: As reported by Tom's Guide on Sunday, which cites Taiwanese website United Daily News, Apple's two prototypes reflect two very different approaches to foldable phones in the industry. Tom's Guide states that one of the designs is similar to the Samsung Galaxy Z Flip, which let us remember has a flexible screen with crease in the middle and can be folded. The other is closer to Microsoft's Surface Duo, the outlet notes, a device with two screens that resembles a book and is held together by a hinge. It's not clear whether Apple is working on two separate foldable phones or whether it's testing various ideas for the final new type of iPhone, per Tom's Guide.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Slack is down on the first full work day of 2021. From a report: The company said Monday morning "customers may have trouble loading channels or connecting to Slack at this time. Our team is investigating and we will follow up with more information as soon as we have it. We apologize for any disruption caused." The company is reporting issues with connecting to the service and messaging.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Wikileaks founder Julian Assange cannot be extradited to the United States, a court in London has ruled. From a report: The judge blocked the request because of concerns over Mr Assange's mental health and risk of suicide in the US. The 49-year-old is wanted over the publication of thousands of classified documents in 2010 and 2011. The US claims the leaks broke the law and endangered lives. Mr Assange has fought the extradition and says the case is politically motivated. The US authorities have 14 days in which to lodge an appeal and are expected to do so. Mr Assange will now be taken back to Belmarsh Prison -- where he is being held -- and a full application for his bail will be made on Wednesday. His lawyer Ed Fitzgerald QC told the court there will be evidence to show Mr Assange will not abscond. District Judge Vanessa Baraitser ruled that while US prosecutors met the tests for Mr Assange to be extradited for trial, the US was incapable of preventing him from attempting to take his own life.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Supply issues have hamstrung the rollout of the latest generation of video game consoles. Even now, nearly two months after the Xbox Series X and Xbox Series S released, Microsoft is still scrambling to meet demand and has reportedly reached out to chipmaker AMD to fast-track production on its end. From a report: AMD manufactures the GPU and CPU for both consoles, so if it's able to push out its chips faster, Microsoft could, in theory, churn out more consoles by extension. As spotted by VGC, Microsoft is "working as hard as we can" to pump out more systems and has even contacted AMD for help, according to Xbox head Phil Spencer in a recent appearance on the Major Nelson Radio podcast hosted by Xbox Live director of programming Larry Hyrb "I get some people [asking], 'why didn't you build more? Why didn't you start earlier? Why didn't you ship them earlier?' I mean, all of those things," Spencer said. "It's really just down to physics and engineering. We're not holding them back: We're building them as fast as we can. We have all the assembly lines going. I was on the phone last week with [CEO and president] Lisa Su at AMD [asking], 'How do we get more? How do we get more?' So it's something that we're constantly working on."Read more of this story at Slashdot.