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The Federal Communication Commission ordered carriers to remove network equipment that poses a security risk, taking another step aimed at China's Huawei and ZTE. From a report: The agency in a 5-0 vote also said it would establish a list of proscribed equipment, and it set up a program to reimburse carriers for replacing suspect gear that will start once Congress devotes an estimated $1.6 billion. The agency said the actions, which affect providers that take federal subsidies, implement a law Congress passed in March. The FCC, Congress and President Donald Trump's administration are confronting China on a range of issues including trade and the novel coronavirus. The FCC accuses Huawei and ZTE of posing a risk of espionage, an allegation each denies. Last year the agency said subsidies can't be used to buy gear from Huawei or ZTE.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The iPhone's original -- and unofficial -- app store has sued Apple, accusing the company of having a monopoly on the distribution of apps. Cydia, an app store created and launched in 2007 by Jay "Saurik" Freeman, one of the original jailbreakers filed the lawsuit against Apple on Thursday. From a report: "Were it not for Apple's anti competitive acquisition and maintenance of an illegal monopoly over iOS app distribution, users today would actually be able to choose how and where to locate and obtain iOS apps, and developers would be able to use the iOS app distributor of their choice," the lawsuit reads. Before Apple created the App Store, Freeman and a group of iPhone hackers created an unofficial app store where users that were willing to jailbreak -- a technique to exploit one or more bug to disable the iPhone security mechanism called code-signing enforcement that allows for only Apple-approved code to run on the phone -- could download and install apps. In 2010, according to Freeman, Cydia had around 4.5 million users.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

For the past decade, the National Weather Service has been plagued by failures in disseminating critical forecast and warning information that is aimed at protecting lives and saving property. In some cases, its websites have gone down during severe weather events, unable to handle the demand. From a report: Other agency systems, including information and data streams that deliver vital weather modeling data to broadcast meteorologists and commercial users, have also suffered periodic outages. Now, during a year that featured record California wildfires and the busiest Atlantic hurricane season on record, the Weather Service says it has an Internet bandwidth problem and is seeking to throttle back the amount of data its most demanding users can access. The Weather Service, which is part of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), announced the proposed limits in a memo dated Nov. 18. "As demand for data continues to grow across NCEP websites, we are proposing to put new limits into place to safeguard our web services," the memo stated, referring to the Weather Service's National Centers for Environmental Prediction. "The frequency of how often these websites are accessed by the public has created limitations and infrastructure constraints."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Google, Dell, Intel and a handful of other major tech companies in the IT and cloud computing industries have banded together to tackle joint problems around security, remote work, and other enterprise issues that have only become more important during the coronavirus pandemic. From a report: The consortium these companies have formed is called the Modern Computing Alliance, and its founding members also include Box, Cirtrix, Imprivata, Okta, RingCentral, Slack, VMWare, and Zoom. The Modern Computing Alliance will initially be focused on four areas: performance; security and identity; remote work, productivity, and collaboration; and health care. The goal is to pool knowledge and resources toward solving shared problems around how companies perform work in the cloud and the tools they use to do so. The alliance will focus on developing new standards and interoperable technologies that can be used by any company that relies on one of the partners' platforms or products. In particular, Google is engaged in the effort with its Chrome browser and Chrome OS teams, as well as the division responsible for Google Workplace. "Today, we're excited to announce Google's membership in the Modern Computing Alliance -- to address the biggest IT challenges facing companies today with integration from silicon to cloud," says John Solomon, Google's vice president of Chrome OS. "Working with a group of forward-thinking industry leaders, we're aligning standards and technologies to provide companies with the choice of high-performance, cloud-first computing solutions from the vendor of their choice who provide modern solutions for the modern era of business."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

France's data protection agency, the CNIL, has slapped Google and Amazon with fines for dropping tracking cookies without consent. From a report: Google has been hit with a total of $120M for dropping cookies on Google.fr and Amazon ~$42M for doing so on the Amazon .fr domain under the penalty notices issued today. The regulator carried out investigations of the websites over the past year and found tracking cookies were automatically dropped when a user visited the domains in breach of the country's Data Protection Act. In Google's case the CNIL has found three consent violations related to dropping non-essential cookies.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader shares a report: Numerous glitches reported by players as the long-awaited Cyberpunk 2077 game went live robbed creator CD Projekt of a stock surge on the back of encouraging advance-order sales figures. Poland's biggest computer-games studio sold more than eight million copies of the futuristic title prior to its official release, mainly using higher-margin digital distribution. Excitement around Wednesday's launch saw player numbers peak at more than one million, the most ever for a premier night on the Steam platform, and an industry record for a single-player production. Less positively, in excess of 17,000 Steam users gave Cyberpunk a rating of just 71%, with their complaints of bugs in the game pushing CD Projekt's shares as much as 7.5% lower. Before the release, Cyberpunk's average rating was 91% on Metacritic, a website that aggregated journalists reviews. That less-than-perfect verdict also weighed on the stock earlier this week, paring its gains of almost 60% in 2020 as of last Friday. The stakes are high for CD Projekt as, after eight years of developing Cyberpunk, the game is the studio's only new franchise. The company said Thursday it's already working on fixes and is confident they will be resolved and that it wants to publish initial sales data before Christmas.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Wall Street has begun trading water as a commodity, like gold or oil. The country's first water market launched on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange this week with $1.1 billion in contracts tied to water prices in California, Bloomberg News reported. From a report: The market allows farmers, hedge funds, and municipalities to hedge bets on the future price of water and water availability in the American West. The new trading scheme was announced in September, prompted by the region's worsening heat, drought, and wildfires fueled by climate change. There were two trades when the market went live Monday. "Climate change, droughts, population growth, and pollution are likely to make water scarcity issues and pricing a hot topic for years to come," RBC Capital Markets managing director and analyst Deane Dray told Bloomberg. "We are definitely going to watch how this new water futures contract develops." Proponents argue the new market will clear up some of the uncertainty around water prices for farmers and municipalities, helping them budget for the resource. But some experts say treating water as a tradable commodity puts a basic human right into the hands of financial institutions and investors, a dangerous arrangement as climate change alters precipitation patterns and increases water scarcity.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Phys.Org: Researchers have found a way to protect highly fragile quantum systems from noise, which could aid in the design and development of new quantum devices, such as ultra-powerful quantum computers. The researchers, from the University of Cambridge, have shown that microscopic particles can remain intrinsically linked, or entangled, over long distances even if there are random disruptions between them. Using the mathematics of quantum theory, they discovered a simple setup where entangled particles can be prepared and stabilized even in the presence of noise by taking advantage of a previously unknown symmetry in quantum systems. Their results, reported in the journal Physical Review Letters, open a new window into the mysterious quantum world that could revolutionize future technology by preserving quantum effects in noisy environments, which is the single biggest hurdle for developing such technology. Harnessing this capability will be at the heart of ultrafast quantum computers. [...] Now, Dutta and his co-author Professor Nigel Cooper have discovered a robust quantum system where multiple pairs of qubits remain entangled even with a lot of noise. They modeled an atomic system in a lattice formation, where atoms strongly interact with each other, hopping from one site of the lattice to another. The authors found if noise were added in the middle of the lattice, it didn't affect entangled particles between left and right sides. This surprising feature results from a special type of symmetry that conserves the number of such entangled pairs. They showed this hidden symmetry protects the entangled pairs and allows their number to be controlled from zero to a large maximum value. Similar conclusions can be applied to a broad class of physical systems and can be realized with already existing ingredients in experimental platforms, paving the way to controllable entanglement in a noisy environment. The researchers are hoping to confirm their theoretical findings with experiments within the next year.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Cruise Automation, the autonomous vehicle subsidiary of GM that also has backing from SoftBank Vision Fund, Honda and T. Rowe Price & Associates, has started testing what it describes as fully driverless vehicles on public roads in San Francisco, the first milestone required to secure a permit to launch a shared, commercial service that can charge for rides. TechCrunch reports: The company released Wednesday a video of its first ride -- with no human safety driver behind the wheel -- in the Sunset neighborhood in San Francisco. There was a human safety operator in the vehicle, sitting in the passenger seat, the video shows. Cruise's testing of fully autonomous vehicles is in limited geographic area and in arguably one of San Francisco's simpler environments; the video below shows the testing was conducted at night in a less congested part of San Francisco. However, it still marks progress by the company that had once aimed to launch a commercial service by the end of 2019. For some in the industry, the caveats of having a safety operator in the passenger seat and launching in an "easier" and small geofenced area matter. Cruise says this is just the beginning and that it will eventually expand its driverless testing area, adding in more complicated environments over time, as well as removing the safety operator from the vehicle. "We recognize this is both a trust race as well as a tech race," Cruise spokesperson Milin Mehta said in an email. "Given that, during the beginning of our use of this permit, we will maintain a safety operator in the passenger seat. The safety operator has the ability to bring the vehicle to a stop in the event of an emergency, but does not have access to standard driver controls. Eventually, this safety operator will be fully removed."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The French armed forces now have permission to develop "augmented soldiers" following a report from a military ethics committee. CNN reports: The report, released to the public on Tuesday, considers medical treatments, prosthetics and implants that improve "physical, cognitive, perceptive and psychological capacities," and could allow for location tracking or connectivity with weapons systems and other soldiers. Other possible interventions considered by the armed forces ethics committee include medical treatments to prevent pain, stress and fatigue, and substances that would improve mental resilience if a soldier were taken prisoner. The committee said that France needs to maintain "operational superiority of its armed forces in a challenging strategic context" while respecting the rules governing the military, humanitarian law and the "fundamental values of our society." As a result, it has forbidden any modification that would affect a soldier's ability to manage the use of force or affect their sense of "humanity." Further examples of banned modifications include cognitive implants that would affect the exercise of a soldier's free will, or changes that would affect their reintegration into civilian life.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: It's a long time coming for Tesla's Full Self-Driving feature, and it hasn't been a cheap journey. The price for the self-driving feature has increased multiple times and is currently available for supported Teslas for $10,000.While Tesla's Full Self-Driving (FSD) beta continues to expand to more Tesla owners ahead of a planned end-of-year launch, the actual settings for the system have been uncovered and published on Twitter by a well-known Tesla hacker named Green. Not only are there dozens of settings and available adjustments, but there's also a way to show a detailed vehicle view of the world while a Tesla is driving down the road. In a Twitter thread, Green shares the status of internal states within the system while taking us on a tour of dozens of settings ranging from controls for FSD and Enhanced Summon to information about the Camera and Ultrasonics. The system also shows sliders for GPS, speed threshold, and other items that no one outside of Tesla should ever mess with. There's also an Augmented Vision area where developers can toggle what's seen on a Tesla display while driving. It includes toggles for Pretty, Developer, and Camera Image. Once Developer is enabled, it shows options for a whole host of data that can be shown on the infotainment system. This all may be information overload for the average Tesla owner, but it's a fun way to get more details on how a Tesla sees the world. Tesla being Tesla, the developer settings also have fun settings including California Stop (which generally means you don't bring the car to a halt but just slow down at a stop sign) and something called Chiropractor Adjust Skeleton, which is filed under the City Streets settings. What that means is a mystery, but both items are part of the FSD defaults in the developer controls.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A new study, published in the European Journal of Psychotraumatology, is the first to explore the effects of MDMA therapy in couples where one member is suffering from PTSD. New Atlas reports: This preliminary study investigated the feasibility of incorporating two MDMA sessions into a previously established PTSD therapeutic regime known as CBCT, or cognitive-behavioral conjoint therapy. As opposed to traditional PTSD therapies focusing on the individual, CBCT is designed to help improve relationship functioning for couples, while still improving PTSD symptoms in the individual patient. The new trial recruited six couples, in which one member of the couple had a pre-existing PTSD diagnosis, and explored the feasibility of incorporating two MDMA sessions into the CBCT protocol, which traditionally involves around 15 therapy sessions conducted over several months. The new study reports the addition of MDMA to the couples therapy protocol resulted in effects that were, "on par with, or greater than, those achieved with CBCT alone." Improvements were detected in both relationship outcomes and individual PTSD symptoms. The effects were most significant at the six-month follow up implying the MDMA therapy confers compelling long-term benefits. It is important to note the study was uncontrolled, so any efficacy comparisons to CBCT alone can only be garnered by examining prior CBCT studies. However, this feasibility study does establish the addition of MDMA to the pre-existing therapeutic protocol is safe and it does not negatively interfere with other PTSD treatments.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Thelasko shares a report from Engadget: After a successful launch, the Starship rose and successfully maneuvered its way to the landing area. However, it appeared that the spacecraft didn't slow down enough for a proper landing, and it exploded in thrilling fashion. On the live feed, SpaceX said the test was successful and noted it would be moving on to testing the SN9 prototype next. Elon Musk tweeted "Successful ascent, switchover to header tanks & precise flap control to landing point!" In a follow-up, he explained the landing, saying that low fuel header tank pressure during the landing burn contributed to the high touchdown velocity and the massive explosion. The good news, is that the team got âoeall the data we neededâ and it appears everything is in order for future tests. You can view the full test flight here.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Adobe has released the final scheduled update to its Flash Player plugin, weeks before Flash's official retirement. The Verge reports: As noted on Adobe's site, yesterday marked the last update for Flash outside mainland China, which has a separate version of the software. Adobe will stop supporting Flash on December 31st, 2020, and it will block Flash content from running on January 12th, 2021. Adobe offered a brief farewell in its release notes. "We want to take a moment to thank all of our customers and developers who have used and created amazing Flash Player content over the last two decades," the note says. "We are proud that Flash had a crucial role in evolving web content across animation, interactivity, audio, and video. We are excited to help lead the next era of digital experiences."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Britain's medicine regulator warned people with significant allergies not to get Pfizer-BioNTech's COVID-19 vaccine after two people suffered adverse reactions, but was set to give more detailed guidance on Wednesday based on reviews of those cases. Reuters reports: Starting with the elderly and frontline workers, Britain began mass vaccinating its population on Tuesday, part of a global drive that poses one of the biggest logistical challenges in peacetime history. National Health Service medical director Stephen Powis said the advice had been changed as a precaution after two NHS workers reported anaphylactoid reactions from the vaccine. "Two people with a history of significant allergic reactions responded adversely yesterday," Powis said. "Both are recovering well." The Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) initially advised anyone with "a history of a significant allergic reaction to a vaccine, medicine or food" to avoid taking the vaccine. However, by the end of Wednesday that guidance was set to be refined after discussions with experts on the nature of the reactions. "We're tweaking advice to make it very clear that if you've got a food allergy, you're not more at risk," Imperial College London's Paul Turner, an expert in allergy and immunology who has been advising the MHRA on their revised guidance, told Reuters. Pfizer and BioNTech said they were supporting the MHRA's investigation. In other vaccine-related news, the European Medicines Agency (EMA), the EU regulatory body in charge of approving COVID-19 vaccines, said today it was the victim of a cyberattack.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Google CEO Sundar Pichai apologized Wednesday for the company's handling of the departure of AI ethics researcher Timnit Gebru and said he would investigate the events and work to restore trust, according to an internal memo sent companywide and obtained by Axios. From the report: Gebru's exit has provoked anger and consternation within Google as well as in academic circles, with thousands of people signing an open letter urging Google to reexamine its practices. In the note, Pichai acknowledged the depth of the damage done by the company's actions and said the company would look at all aspects of the situation, but stopped short of saying the company made a mistake in removing Gebru. "I've heard the reaction to Dr. Gebru's departure loud and clear: it seeded doubts and led some in our community to question their place at Google," Pichai said in the memo. " I want to say how sorry I am for that, and I accept the responsibility of working to restore your trust." While Pichai's memo strikes a contrite tone, it's unclear how far it will go to addressing the significant upset within Google's ranks, especially among those concerned with its commitments to diversity and academic freedom.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

According to The Robot Report, citing The Korea Economic Daily, Hyndai will finalize its acquisition of Boston Dynamics on December 10th. A source familiar with the deal said the acquisition is for about $1 billion. From the report: Robotics has become a bigger focus for Hyundai since Chung Euisun was named chairman in October. The company has since said robotics will account for 20% of its future business. Hyundai Robotics was founded in 2017, but it officially launched earlier in 2020. The company's automotive group invested in autonomous vehicle startup 42dot and Realtime Robotics in 2019. Hyundai has also created a $4 billion autonomous vehicle joint venture with Aptiv. It is not yet clear how Boston Dynamics will fit into Hyundai, which becomes the third owner of Boston Dynamics in seven years. It was acquired by Google in 2013 and sold to Softbank Group in 2017. The RBR50 company has mainly operated as an R&D organization since it was founded. But a new emphasis on commercialization was evident after it was acquired by Softbank.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica, written by Ron Amadeo: Google and Samsung want to work together on smart home compatibility. The two companies put out dueling press releases today, saying that Google Nest devices would work better with Samsung SmartThings, ending a war between the SmartThings community and Nest/Google/Alphabet that has been going on for years. Samsung says that "Google Nest devices, including thermostats, cameras and doorbells, will be "Works With SmartThings" (WWST) certified, allowing users to seamlessly control their smart homes through SmartThings." Nest has long been the most insular smart home company, and now it sounds like Nest devices are finally going to start playing nice with your other smart home devices. As a user of the Google and SmartThings ecosystem, there are a few things missing from the announcement that I would like to see. SmartThings is supporting Nest and Google, but I don't see anything about Google reciprocating and supporting SmartThings better. Like I complained about in the Android 11 review (which included a Google Assistant-powered smart home control panel), Google's smart home support is exclusionary toward devices that compete with Nest products. Google supports controlling SmartThings-compatible lights (and, really, every light imaginable), because Nest doesn't make a light bulb or switch, but it doesn't work with door locks, because Nest makes a door lock (Google and Samsung both seem to have forgotten about the Yale x Nest Lock in today's announcement). Google's "Nest Hub" smart display can show camera feeds, but only Nest camera feeds. The Nest exclusivity here isn't doing Google any favors, and more open hardware support would really improve the appeal of the Nest Hub smart display.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The European Medicines Agency (EMA), the EU regulatory body in charge of approving COVID-19 vaccines, said today it was the victim of a cyber-attack. From a report: In a short two-paragraph statement posted on its website today, the agency discloses the security breach but said it couldn't disclose any details about the intrusion due to an ongoing investigation. EMA is currently in the process of reviewing applications for two COVID-19 vaccines, one from US pharma giant Moderna, and a second developed in a collaboration between BioNTech and Pfizer. An EMA spokesperson did not return a request for comment seeking information if the attack targeted its vaccine approval process or if it was a financially-motivated attack like ransomware. Nonetheless, in a follow-up statement released on its own website, BioNTech said that "some documents relating to the regulatory submission for Pfizer and BioNTech's COVID-19 vaccine candidate, BNT162b2, which has been stored on an EMA server, had been unlawfully accessed" during the attack, confirming that COVID-19 research was most likely the target of the attack.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

How people spend their time is similar in many ways across countries: we all sleep, work, eat, and enjoy leisure. But there are also important differences in the freedom people have to spend time on the things they value most. Studying how people across the world spend their time provides an important perspective for understanding living conditions, economic opportunities, and general well-being. A study by Our World in Data: Consider sleeping, for example. From this sample of countries, South Koreans sleep the least -- averaging 7 hours and 51 minutes of sleep every day. In India and the US, at the other end of the spectrum, people sleep an hour more on average. Work is another important activity where we see large differences. Countries are sorted by paid work hours in the chart (check the source link) -- from highest to lowest. In China and Mexico people spend, on an average day, almost twice as much time on paid work as people in Italy and France do. This is a general pattern: People in richer countries can afford to work less. Keep in mind that this chart shows the average for all people in the working age bracket, from 15 to 64 years, whether they are actually employed or not. Differences in demographics, education and economic prosperity all contribute to these inequalities in work and time use. But what's clear in the chart here (check the source link) is that there are also some differences in time use that are not well explained by economic or demographic differences. In the UK, for example, people spend more time working than in France; but in both countries people report spending a similar amount of time on leisure activities. Cultural differences are likely to play a role here. The French seem to spend much more time eating than the British -- and in this respect the data actually goes in line with stereotypes about food culture. People in France, Greece, Italy and Spain report spending more time eating than people in most other European countries. The country where people spend the least time eating and drinking is the USA (63 minutes).Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The Federal Trade Commission today sued Facebook, alleging that the company is illegally maintaining its personal social networking monopoly through a years-long course of anticompetitive conduct. FTC: Following a lengthy investigation in cooperation with a coalition of attorneys general of 46 states, the District of Columbia, and Guam, the complaint alleges that Facebook has engaged in a systematic strategy -- including its 2012 acquisition of up-and-coming rival Instagram, its 2014 acquisition of the mobile messaging app WhatsApp, and the imposition of anticompetitive conditions on software developers -- to eliminate threats to its monopoly. This course of conduct harms competition, leaves consumers with few choices for personal social networking, and deprives advertisers of the benefits of competition. The FTC is seeking a permanent injunction in federal court that could, among other things: require divestitures of assets, including Instagram and WhatsApp; prohibit Facebook from imposing anticompetitive conditions on software developers; and require Facebook to seek prior notice and approval for future mergers and acquisitions. "Personal social networking is central to the lives of millions of Americans," said Ian Conner, Director of the FTC's Bureau of Competition. "Facebook's actions to entrench and maintain its monopoly deny consumers the benefits of competition. Our aim is to roll back Facebook's anticompetitive conduct and restore competition so that innovation and free competition can thrive."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

At Chrome Dev Summit 2020 today, Google announced it will change how extensions access data and how extension permissions work in 2021. On January 18, a day before the release of Chrome 88, Google will require that every extension publicly display its privacy practices and will limit what developers can do with the data they collect. From a report: The first change means that Chrome users next year will determine which websites an extension can access when they browse the web. Once you grant an extension permission to access a website's data, that preference can be saved for that domain. Today, the extension makes that call. In 2021, you will still be able to grant an extension access to all the websites you visit, but that won't be the default. Google outlined the second change last month: "each extension's detail page in the Chrome Web Store will show developer-provided information about the data collected by the extension, in clear and easy to understand language." The company also updated its user data privacy policy with an addition to how extension developers use data they collect.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Wayne Ma, reporting for The Information [Editor's note: the link may be paywalled; alternative source]: In 2014, Apple executives became alarmed when China enacted a new labor law meant to protect workers' rights. The law required that no more than 10% of a factory's workforce be temporary workers. Typically these employees have fewer benefits and legal protections than permanent ones, but Apple's suppliers increasingly relied on them in China's tightening labor market. Apple surveyed 362 of its supplier factories in China that year and discovered that nearly half were over the quota for temporary workers. Eighty factories used temporary workers for more than half their labor force, according to an internal Apple presentation reviewed by The Information. Apple asked its suppliers to come up with plans to reduce their use of temporary workers by a March 2016 deadline, when a two-year grace period for the law expired. However, by the time the law went into effect, little progress had been made. According to four former Apple employees familiar with its labor issues, Apple for years took no major action against its suppliers for violating the temp-worker labor law out of concerns it would create costs, drain resources and delay product launches. Three of the ex-Apple employees were members of its supplier responsibility team, which is in charge of monitoring violations and enforcing penalties, while the fourth was a senior manager familiar with its operations in China. The former employees, as well as a review of internal Apple presentations and the company's own data on factory hiring between 2013 and 2018, suggests that Apple's strategy for managing its supply chain made it difficult for its three biggest contract manufacturers -- Foxconn Technology, Quanta Computer and Pegatron -- to remain compliant with the labor restrictions. The issue surfaced again publicly last year when Apple admitted that Foxconn had broken the law at its massive iPhone factory in Zhengzhou, which can employ as many as 300,000 workers. Apple says it requires suppliers to abide by local laws and pledges to remove those that won't comply.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

YouTube is taking belated action on election misinformation: The company said it would now remove misleading videos that claim widespread fraud or other errors changed the outcome of the US presidential election. From a report: Google-owned YouTube announced that it would begin enforcing against this content on Wednesday, citing Tuesday's safe harbor deadline for the US election, which is the date after which state election results cannot effectively be challenged. YouTube said that enough states have certified their election results to determine a President-elect. National news outlets have universally projected that Joe Biden will be the next President. As an example of content that would be banned, YouTube said it would take down videos claiming that a presidential candidate won the election due to widespread software glitches or errors in counting votes. It will begin enforcing the policy starting Wednesday, and said it would "ramp up" efforts in the weeks to come. It will still allow videos including news coverage and commentary to remain on the platform if they have enough context. Any videos in violation of the policy that were posted prior to Wednesday, will remain up even though they now break YouTube's rules. They will feature an information panel that says election results have been certified.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

sciencehabit writes: It's not just your storage unit that's packed to the gills. According to a new study, the mass of all our stuff -- buildings, roads, cars, and everything else we manufacture -- now exceeds the weight of all living things on the planet. And the amount of new material added every week equals the total weight of Earth's nearly 8 billion people. "If you weren't convinced before that humans are dominating the planet, then you should be convinced now," says Timon McPhearson, an urban ecologist at the New School who was not involved with the research. "This is an eye-catching comparison," adds Fridolin Krausmann, a social ecologist at the University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences, Vienna, who also was not involved in the work. There are many measures of humanity's impact on the planet. Fossil fuels have sent greenhouse gases soaring to levels not seen in at least 800,000 years. Agriculture and dwellings have altered 70% of land. And humans have wiped out untold numbers of species in an emerging great extinction. The transformations are so great that researchers have declared we're living in a new human-dominated age: the Anthropocene.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

theodp writes: As the 8th annual Hour of Code kicked off this week, the College Board released 2020 AP national and state score breakouts for AP CS program participants. As in past years, this year's results still showed striking gaps in performance and participation across gender and ethnicity segments. Passing rates across major ethnic group segments ranged from 39.8%-78.6% for the Java-based AP CS A course, and 52%-83% for the newer "language agnostic" AP Computer Science Principles (CSP) course. Across gender segments, females accounted for 25% of AP CS A scores (16.2K of 64.9K total students) and 33.9% of AP CSP scores (38.6K of 113.9K students). Asian students accounted for 47% of all passing female AP CS A students. Due to pandemic-related school closures, the overall number of students completing AP STEM-related courses in 2020 declined for all subjects except CS. AP CS A, which had an abbreviated taken-at-home final exam, saw a modest 1.5% YOY increase in completions, while AP CSP saw a whopping 21.5% YOY increase in completions, no doubt helped by the cancellation of its end-of-course exam, which was to have counted for 60% of scores (students were instead assessed only by their portfolio submissions).Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Amazon.com has added a competitor to its year-old coalition of companies pledging to reduce their contribution to climate change: Microsoft. From a report: The two technology giants, neighbors in the Seattle area and rivals in cloud computing and business software, have each spent much of the last two years announcing increasingly aggressive climate targets, including dueling umbrella organizations for companies willing to do their part to avert the catastrophic warming of the planet. On Wednesday, Microsoft said it had signed onto Amazon's pact, alongside consumer products giant Unilever and several other new signatories. Amazon, long a laggard among its peers in publicly addressing its impact on the environment, reversed course in recent years, bolstering an internal sustainability team and vowing to reach net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2040. The company also invited others interested in matching that commitment to sign on to what it calls the Climate Pledge, a forum for comparing notes on best practices and climate-friendly investment opportunities.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Microsoft has shared some details about the roadmap for its cloud gaming service. In addition to Android devices, the company confirms that it plans to add support for more platforms. In Spring 2021, Microsoft will launch its cloud gaming service on iOS and on computers. From a report: Originally called Project xCloud, Microsoft's cloud gaming service lets you play Xbox games on non-Xbox devices. The games run on a server in a data center near you. The video is streamed to your device, and your interactions are relayed to the server in real time. Xbox cloud gaming isn't a separate subscription. People who subscribe to the Xbox Game Pass Ultimate for $14.99 per month can access cloud gaming as part of their subscription. The plan also includes access to a library of games, EA Play and Xbox Live Gold. When it comes to new devices, you'll soon be able to launch a game on Xbox cloud gaming from a PC. The service will be available in the Xbox app and using a web browser.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Twitter's timeline is currently overrun with ads for some users, in what at first appeared to be a glitch involving the distribution of Promoted Tweets. From a report: Typically, a Promoted Tweet -- which is just a regular tweet an advertiser has paid to promote more broadly -- will appear just once at the top of a user's timeline, then scroll through the timeline like any other tweet. Now, however, Promoted Tweets are popping up with increased frequency. Some users report seeing them as often as every four to six tweets, in fact. Others are reporting seeing the same Promoted Tweet more than once. This seemed to have indicated some sort of issue with Twitter's ad system, as the company generally intends for Promoted Tweets to be targeted and relevant to the end user, without being an overly frequent part of users' timelines. As Twitter's Business website explains, "we're thoughtful in how we display Promoted Tweets, and are conservative about the number of Promoted Tweets that people see in a single day." That's obviously not the case when it seems like nearly every other tweet is now an ad -- and often, a repeated ad. Twitter says the change is not a glitch, however -- it's intentional.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Singapore is set to host the world's first electric-powered air taxi service by the end of 2023, according to Volocopter GmbH, which is developing the vertical-takeoff craft. From a report: The German manufacturer is committed to starting operations within three years once it completes flight trials, evaluation and certification in collaboration with the city-state, it said in a statement Wednesday. Tickets for a 15-minute trip costing 300 euros ($364) are already on sale. Volocopter completed a demonstration flight over Singapore's Marina Bay area in October last year, and the first commercial route is likely to fly tourists over the same district, offering spectacular views of the skyline, the company said. Later services could including cross-border journeys. Singapore is at the forefront of plans to introduce flying taxis thanks to a more welcoming regulatory regime than in some other countries. While the craft could replace helicopters and light aircraft on some routes, they'd also be small and nimble enough to fly deep within cities and land with minimal space. "Singapore is renowned for its leading role in adapting and living new technologies," Volocopter Chief Executive Officer Florian Reuter said, adding that local capabilities in battery research, material science and route validation for autonomous operations will be central to the project.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: Germany, France, Spain and ten other EU countries have joined forces to invest in processors and semiconductor technologies, key to internet-connected devices and data processing, in a push to catch up with the United States and Asia. Europe's share of the 440-billion-euro ($533 billion) global semiconductor market is around 10%, with the EU currently relying on chips made abroad. The 13 countries said they would work together to bolster Europe's electronics and embedded systems value chain. The group will reach out to companies to form industrial alliances for research and investment into designing and making processors and look into funding for such projects. It will also come up with a European-wide scheme known as an Important Project of Common European Interest which allows for funding under looser EU state aid rules. The group will seek to set up common standards and certification for electronics. The signatories include Belgium, Croatia, Estonia, Finland, Greece, Italy, Malta, the Netherlands, Portugal and Slovenia.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Right after the Apple event in October, Samsung mocked the company for not including the power adapter in the iPhone 12 box and also removing it from the older models. Now, as some rumors have predicted, the Galaxy S21's documentation suggests that it will also not come with a charger included in the box. 9to5Mac reports: As reported by Brazilian website Tecnoblog, the new Galaxy S21, Galaxy S21+, and Galaxy S21 Ultra have just been approved by ANATEL in Brazil, which is the equivalent agency to the FCC in the United States. The new devices have the codenames SM-G991B/DS, SM-G996B/DS, and SM-G998B/DS, respectively. While the documentation filed at ANATEL doesn't reveal much detail about upcoming Galaxy smartphones, it does reveal a noteworthy change in the lineup of Samsung's phones for the next year. ANATEL says that all three new Galaxy S21 models will not have a charger included in the box. Headphones will not be included either.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

China and Nepal say they have determined the "most accurate height of Everest that we have ever had," calculating it to be about 8,848.86 meters (29,031.7 feet) high. That's almost a meter taller than the mountain's previous recognized height. CNET reports: The two countries, which border each other at the mountain's summit, shared the news in a joint virtual briefing Tuesday that was streamed live online. Nepal began remeasuring the mountain in 2017, and China began its own work after Chinese President Xi Jinping visited Nepal in 2019. As part of the complicated measurement, researchers placed signal receivers on the mountain and measured the amount of time it took signals to travel between the receiver and satellites to figure out the new height. Global positioning devices and ground-penetrating radar were also used. Nepal's lead surveyor Khimlal Gautam ended up with damaged toes due to frostbite he suffered while installing the measuring equipment. A 2015 earthquake in Nepal helped inspire the re-measurement of Everest. The BBC notes that some geologists thought that quake could've shrunk the mountain's snow cap, while others note that Himalayan peaks can actually grow taller over time as shifting tectonic plates push them upward.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from CNN: In a high-stakes mission that could take five years to complete, NASA wants to land astronauts on Mars in the 2030s. Transporting enough oxygen and fuel on a spacecraft to sustain the mission for anywhere near that length of time, however, isn't currently viable. The way NASA plans to address this problem is by deploying MOXIE, or the Mars Oxygen in Situ Resource Utilization Experiment. This system is in the testing phase on the Mars Perseverance rover, which launched in July. The apparatus will convert the carbon dioxide that makes up 96% of the gas in the red planet's' atmosphere into oxygen. On Mars, oxygen is only 0.13% of the atmosphere, compared to 21% of the Earth's atmosphere. The MOXIE system essentially produces oxygen like a tree -- pulling in the Martian air with a pump and using an electrochemical process to separate two oxygen atoms from each molecule of carbon dioxide, or CO2. The experimental technique proposed by Vijay Ramani and his colleagues uses a completely different resource -- salty water in lakes beneath the Martian surface. "The presence of the brine is fortuitous because it lowers freezing point of the water. You take the salty, brackish water and electrolyze that. Our process takes the water and splits it into hydrogen and oxygen," Ramani said. The method proposed in the new paper, however, assumes that these brines are readily available on Mars, said Michael Hecht, NASA's principal investigator for MOXIE and associate director for research management at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Haystack Observatory. The study has been published in the journal PNAS.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

France will build a new, nuclear-powered aircraft carrier to replace its Charles de Gaulle carrier by 2038, French President Emmanuel Macron announced Tuesday. The Associated Press reports: Macron framed the decision to use nuclear reactors to propel the future warship as part of France's climate strategy, stressing its lower emissions compared to diesel fuel. Speaking at a nuclear facility in the Burgundy town of Le Creusot, he called France's nuclear weapons and atomic energy industry "the cornerstone of our strategic autonomy," and said the nuclear sector plays a role in France's "status as a great power." One of his advisers noted that having an aircraft carrier also helps France project its global influence. Only a few countries in the world maintain the huge, costly vessels. The new French aircraft carrier will be about 70,000 tons and 300 meters long, roughly 1.5 times the size of the Charles de Gaulle, which has been deployed for international military operations in Iraq and Syria in recent years, according to French presidential advisers. Its catapults will be electro-magnetic, and American-made, and the ship will be designed to accommodate next-generation warplanes and serve until around 2080, the advisers said. They didn't provide a price tag but French media estimate it will cost around 7 billion euros ($8.5 billion).Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Toyota announced today that they will be unveiling a new all-electric SUV in the coming months. Electrek reports: The automaker, which has been seen as a lagger when it comes to all-electric vehicles, says that it's their 'first step' for battery-electric vehicles. Toyota has yet to launch an all-electric vehicle outside of China. Toyota announced a new midsize electric SUV today: "Toyota announced today that it will preview a brand-new model for its European Battery Electric line-up -- a mid-sized battery-electric SUV based on the forthcoming the e-TNGA platform." For now, they are only showing the silhouette (pictured above), but the automaker says that more details are coming in the next few months. The un-named preview model will be based on Toyota's new e-TNGA platform. Thanks to its clever design the new platform is both highly versatile and easily adaptable for a range of product types. They unveiled this image with the announcement -- showing a dual motor all-wheel-drive powertrain and modular battery pack. The automaker confirmed that the vehicle is already being readied for production.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Macthorpe writes: Game Informer journalist Liana Ruppert has recounted her experiences with "braindances" (abbreviated as "BD's) in Cyberpunk 2077 that led to her experiencing a grand mal epileptic seizure. From her article and PSA: "When 'suiting up' for a BD, especially with Judy, V will be given a headset that is meant to onset the instance. The headset fits over both eyes and features a rapid onslaught of white and red blinking LEDs, much like the actual device neurologists use in real life to trigger a seizure when they need to trigger one for diagnosis purposes. If not modeled off of the IRL design, it's a very spot-on coincidence and because of that this is one aspect that I would personally advise you to avoid altogether. When you notice the headset come into play, look away completely or close your eyes. This is a pattern of lights designed to trigger an epileptic episode and it very much did that in my own personal playthrough." Cyberpunk 2077 does not include a standard boilerplate epilepsy warning on launch, and instead places this in the games EULA. Regardless, one wonders why a game of this nature needs to simulate an IPS diagnostic device this accurately when the average player won't know the difference, and when it will cause severe harm to some players without warning? UPDATE: Developer CD Projekt Red has responded with its plans on addressing the concerns. In a tweet, CDPR wrote that it's "working on adding a separate warning in the game." The development team is also looking into a permanent solution it will implement "as soon as possible." Hopefully, that will include a way to turn off strobing effects.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Pornhub is making major changes to its service following a New York Times article that highlighted how the site's lax enforcement of its policies has enabled child exploitation. Engadget reports: Among the changes: Pornhub is ending uploads from unverified users and banning the ability of users' to download much of the site's content. The company is also implementing new moderation policies and will release a transparency report in 2021. The changes come a day after Visa and Mastercard pledged to "investigate" their relationship with Pornhub parent company MindGeek. Developing...Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The New York Times : For years, the cybersecurity firm FireEye has been the first call for government agencies and companies around the world who have been hacked by the most sophisticated attackers, or fear they might be. Now it looks like the hackers -- in this case, evidence points to Russia's intelligence agencies -- may be exacting their revenge. FireEye revealed on Tuesday that its own systems were pierced by what it called "a nation with top-tier offensive capabilities." The company said hackers used "novel techniques" to make off with its own tool kit, which could be useful in mounting new attacks around the world. It was a stunning theft, akin to bank robbers who, having cleaned out local vaults, then turned around and stole the F.B.I.'s investigative tools. In fact, FireEye said on Tuesday, moments after the stock market closed, that it had called in the F.B.I. The $3.5 billion company, which partly makes a living by identifying the culprits in some of the world's boldest breaches -- its clients have included Sony and Equifax -- declined to say explicitly who was responsible. But its description, and the fact that the F.B.I. has turned the case over to its Russia specialists, left little doubt who the lead suspects were and that they were after what the company calls "Red Team tools." These are essentially digital tools that replicate the most sophisticated hacking tools in the world. FireEye uses the tools — with the permission of a client company or government agency -- to look for vulnerabilities in their systems. Most of the tools are based in a digital vault that FireEye closely guards. The hack raises the possibility that Russian intelligence agencies saw an advantage in mounting the attack while American attention -- including FireEye's -- was focused on securing the presidential election system. At a moment that the nation's public and private intelligence systems were seeking out breaches of voter registration systems or voting machines, it may have a been a good time for those Russian agencies, which were involved in the 2016 election breaches, to turn their sights on other targets. The hack was the biggest known theft of cybersecurity tools since those of the National Security Agency were purloined in 2016 by a still-unidentified group that calls itself theShadowBrokers. [...] The N.S.A.'s tools were most likely more useful than FireEye's since the U.S. government builds purpose-made digital weapons. FireEye's Red Team tools are essentially built from malware that the company has seen used in a wide range of attacks. Still, the advantage of using stolen weapons is that nation-states can hide their own tracks when they launch attacks.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

New submitter RealNeoMorpheus shares a Google blogpost about Fuchsia -- a new open source operating system that has been in the works for several years: Fuchsia is a long-term project to create a general-purpose, open source operating system, and today we are expanding Fuchsia's open source model to welcome contributions from the public. Fuchsia is designed to prioritize security, updatability, and performance, and is currently under active development by the Fuchsia team. We have been developing Fuchsia in the open, in our git repository for the last four years. You can browse the repository history at fuchsia.googlesource.com to see how Fuchsia has evolved over time. We are laying this foundation from the kernel up to make it easier to create long-lasting, secure products and experiences. Starting today, we are expanding Fuchsia's open source model to make it easier for the public to engage with the project. We have created new public mailing lists for project discussions, added a governance model to clarify how strategic decisions are made, and opened up the issue tracker for public contributors to see what's being worked on. As an open source effort, we welcome high-quality, well-tested contributions from all. There is now a process to become a member to submit patches, or a committer with full write access. In addition, we are also publishing a technical roadmap for Fuchsia to provide better insights for project direction and priorities. Some of the highlights of the roadmap are working on a driver framework for updating the kernel independently of the drivers, improving file systems for performance, and expanding the input pipeline for accessibility.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

jowifi shares a report from NPR: One of the world's most famous aviators has died: Chuck Yeager -- best known as the first to break the sound barrier -- has died at the age of 97. Yeager started from humble beginnings in Myra, W.Va., and many people didn't really learn about him until decades after he broke the sound barrier -- all because of a book and popular 1983 movie called The Right Stuff. He accomplished the feat in a Bell X-1, a wild, high-flying rocket-propelled orange airplane that he nicknamed "Glamorous Glennis," after his first wife who died in 1990. It was a dangerous quest -- one that had killed other pilots in other planes. And the X-1 buffeted like a bucking horse as it approached the speed of sound -- Mach 1 -- about 700 miles per hour at altitude. But Yeager was more than a pilot: In several test flights before breaking the sound barrier, he studied his machine, analyzing the way it handled as it went faster and faster. He even lobbied to change one of the plane's control surfaces so that it could safely exceed Mach 1. As popularized in The Right Stuff, Yeager broke the sound barrier on Oct. 14, 1947, at Edwards Air Force Base in California. But there were no news broadcasts that day, no newspaper headlines. The aviation feat was kept secret for months. In 2011, Yeager told NPR that the lack of publicity never much mattered to him. "I was at the right place at the right time. And duty enters into it. It's not, you know, you don't do it for the -- to get your damn picture on the front page of the newspaper. You do it because it's duty. It's your job." Yeager never sought the spotlight and was always a bit gruff. After his famous flight in the X-1, he continued testing newer, faster and more dangerous aircraft. The X-1A came along six years later, and it flew at twice the speed of sound. On Dec. 12, 1953, Chuck Yeager set two more altitude and speed records in the X-1A: 74,700 feet and Mach 2.44. [...] Today, the plane Yeager first broke the sound barrier in, the X-1, hangs inside the air and space museum. [...] Chuck Yeager spent the last years of his life doing what he truly loved: flying airplanes, speaking to aviation groups and fishing for golden trout in California's Sierra Nevada mountains.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Dozens of radiology products from GE Healthcare contain a critical vulnerability that threatens the networks of hospitals and other health providers that use the devices, officials from the US government and a private security firm said on Tuesday. The devices -- used for CT scans, MRIs, X-Rays, mammograms, ultrasounds, and positron emission tomography -- use a default password to receive regular maintenance. The passwords are available to anyone who knows where on the Internet to look. A lack of proper access restrictions allows the devices to connect to malicious servers rather than only those designated by GE Healthcare. Attackers can exploit these shortcomings by abusing the maintenance protocols to access the devices. From there, the attackers can execute malicious code or view or modify patient data stored on the device or the hospital or healthcare provider servers. Aggravating matters, customers can't fix the vulnerability themselves. Instead, they must request that the GE Healthcare support team change the credentials. Customers who don't make such a request will continue to rely on the default password. Eventually, the device manufacturer will provide patches and additional information. The flaw has a CVSS severity rating of 9.8 out of 10 because of the impact of the vulnerability combined with the ease of exploiting it. Security firm CyberMDX discovered the vulnerability and privately reported it to the manufacturer in May. The US Cyber Security and Infrastructure Security Agency is advising affected healthcare providers to take mitigation steps as soon as possible. In a statement, GE Healthcare officials wrote: "We are not aware of any unauthorized access to data or incident where this potential vulnerability has been exploited in a clinical situation. We have conducted a full risk assessment and concluded that there is no patient safety concern. Maintaining the safety, quality, and security of our devices is our highest priority. We are providing on-site assistance to ensure credentials are changed properly and confirm proper configuration of the product firewall. Additionally, we are advising the facilities where these devices are located to follow network management and security best practices."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Well here is a surprise for those that have long used CentOS as the community-supported rebuild of Red Hat Enterprise Linux... CentOS 8 will end in 2021 and moving forward CentOS 7 will remain supported until the end of its lifecycle but CentOS Stream will be the focus as the future upstream of RHEL. From a report: For those relying on CentOS 8 to enjoy the reliability and features of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 but without the licensing costs, etc, that will end in 2021. At the end of 2021, CentOS 8 will no longer be maintained but CentOS 7 will stick around in a supported maintenance state until 2024. The CentOS Project will be focused moving forward just on CentOS Stream as the upstream/development branch of Red Hat Enterprise Linux. CentOS 8 users are encouraged to begin transitioning to CentOS Stream 8. The CentOS Project announced this shift in focus today via the CentOS Blog. Red Hat's announcement meanwhile is promoting the change as beneficial to CentOS Stream.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The U.S. Senate voted Tuesday by a 49 to 47 vote to advance the nomination of a senior Trump administration official who has helped lead an effort seeking social media regulations to a seat on the Federal Communications Commission. From a report: The Senate is set to vote later on the nomination of Nathan Simington, a Commerce Department official, after U.S. President Donald Trump repeatedly urged lawmakers to take action. If Simington is confirmed, the FCC could initially be deadlocked 2-2 between Democrats and Republicans when Democratic President-elect Joe Biden takes office next month.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Google today launched an experimental app for Android that leverages AI to make communication more accessible for people with speech and motor impairments. Called Look to Speak, it tracks eye movements to let people use their eyes to select prewritten, customizable phrases and have them spoken aloud. From a report: Approximately 18.5 million people in the U.S. have a speech, voice, or language impairment. Eye gaze-tracking devices can provide a semblance of independence, but they're often not portable and tend to be expensive. The entry-level Tobii 4C eye tracker starts at $150, for instance. To address this need, speech and language therapist Richard Cave began collaborating with a small group at Google to develop Look to Speak. The app, which is available for free and compatible with Android 9.0 and above, enables users to glance left, right, or up to select what they wish to say from a phrase list. With Look to Speak, people can personalize the words and sentences on their list and adjust eye gaze sensitivity settings. Google says the app's data remains private and never leaves the phone on which it's installed.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Amazon.com, American Express, Daimler AG and Stripe are among those joining a new GitHub program that will let companies directly fund open-source projects and software developers that are key to their businesses. From a report: It's an expansion of GitHub's Sponsors program, which previously let individuals support software projects and the millions of developers who use the digital platform to collaborate on, share and store code. GitHub, whose parent company Microsoft will also participate in the new service announced Tuesday, expects the change to dramatically increase the number of contributions. The year-old sponsors service has already generated enough money for some developers to rely on it as full-time work, said Devon Zuegel, GitHub's director of product for the communities department.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Despite several efforts from carriers, telecom regulators, mobile operating system developers, smartphone makers, and a global pandemic, spam calls continued to pester and scam people around the globe this year -- and they only got worse. From a report: Users worldwide received 31.3 billion spam calls between January and October this year, up from 26 billion during the same period last year, and 17.7 billion the year prior, according to Stockholm-headquartered firm Truecaller. The firm, best known for its caller ID app, estimated that an average American received 28.4 spam calls a month this year, up from 18.2 last year. As a result, And with 49.9 spam calls per user a month, up from an already alarming 45.6 figure last year, Brazil remained the worst impacted nation to spam calls, the firm said in its yearly report on the subject. The coronavirus pandemic, however, lowered the volume of spam calls users had to field in several markets, including India, which topped Truecaller's chart for the worst nation affected three years ago. The nation, the biggest market of Truecaller, dropped to the 9th position on the chart this year with 16.8 monthly spam calls per user, down from 25.6 last year.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A French judge has sentenced the founder of the now-defunct BTC-e cryptocurrency exchange to five years in prison and a fine of $121,000 for laundering funds for cybercriminals, including ransomware gangs, ZDNet France reported today. From the report: Alexander Vinnik, 41, a Russian national, dodged a bigger sentence after French prosecutors failed to prove that the BTC-e founder was directly involved in the creation and the distribution of Locky, a ransomware strain that was active in 2016 and 2017. "Mr. Vinnik, the court acquitted you of the offenses relating to the cyber-attacks linked to Locky, as well as the offenses of extortion and association to criminal activities, but finds you guilty of organized money laundering," the judge said when reading the sentence. innik was trialed in Paris this fall after a long and complicated legal battle. He was initially arrested in July 2017 while vacationing in a summer resort in northern Greece. He was taken into custody by Greek police under an international warrant issued by the US for his involvement in running BTC-e, a cryptocurrency exchange that Vinnik founded in 2011, together with fellow Russian national Aleksandr Bilyuchenko. US authorities said Vinnik operated BTC-e as a front company for a money-laundering operation, knowingly receiving funds from hacks and other forms of cybercrime and helping crooks cash out stolen funds into fiat currency.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

China says it has pulled Tripadvisor (TRIP) from mobile app stores in the country as the government embarks on a fresh bid to "clean up" the internet. From a report: In a statement Tuesday, the Cyberspace Administration of China said it had removed 105 apps it considered to be "illegal," including that of the US travel giant. Most of the platforms belonged to local Chinese firms, and it was not immediately clear why Tripadvisor -- which features reviews of hotels and holiday destinations -- was caught up in the crackdown. The Massachusetts-based company did not immediately respond to a request for comment. As of Tuesday afternoon, Tripadvisor's website was still accessible in China. Chinese regulators said the apps they removed were the first of many that would be taken down in a wide-ranging "clean-up" of online content that started last month. The campaign is being held in accordance with several Chinese laws, and is intended to wipe out content related to illegal activity, including obscenity, pornography, prostitution, violence, fraud or gambling, according to authorities. "The Cyberspace Administration of China will continue to ... strengthen the supervision and inspection of mobile apps' information services, promptly clean up and dispose of illegal mobile applications and application stores, and strive to create a clear cyberspace," the agency said in a statement.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The coronavirus vaccine made by Pfizer and BioNTech provides strong protection against Covid-19 within about 10 days of the first dose, according to documents published on Tuesday by the Food and Drug Administration before a meeting of its vaccine advisory group. From a report: The finding is one of several significant new results featured in the briefing materials, which include more than 100 pages of data analyses from the agency and from Pfizer. Last month, Pfizer and BioNTech announced that their two-dose vaccine had an efficacy rate of 95 percent after two doses administered three weeks apart. The new analyses show that the protection starts kicking in far earlier. What's more, the vaccine worked well regardless of a volunteer's race, weight or age. While the trial did not find any serious adverse events caused by the vaccine, many participants did experience aches, fevers and other side effects. "This is what an A+ report card looks like for a vaccine," said Akiko Iwasaki, an immunologist at Yale University. On Thursday, F.D.A.'s vaccine advisory panel will discuss these materials in advance of a vote on whether to recommend authorization of Pfizer and BioNTech's vaccine. Pfizer and BioNTech began a large-scale clinical trial in July, recruiting 44,000 people in the United States, Brazil and Argentina. Half of the volunteers got the vaccine, and half got the placebo. New coronavirus cases quickly tapered off in the vaccinated group of volunteers about 10 days after the first dose, according to one graph in the briefing materials. In the placebo group, cases kept steadily increasing.Read more of this story at Slashdot.