schwit1 quotes a report from Bloomberg: A plan by California's biggest utility to cut power on high-wind days during the onrushing wildfire season could plunge millions of residents into darkness. And most people aren't ready. The plan by PG&E comes after the bankrupt utility said a transmission line that snapped in windy weather probably started last year's Camp Fire, the deadliest in state history. While the plan may end one problem, it creates another as Californians seek ways to deal with what some fear could be days and days of blackouts. Some residents are turning to other power sources, a boon for home battery systems marketed by Sunrun, Tesla and Vivint Solar. But the numbers of those systems in use are relatively small when compared with PG&E's 5.4 million customers. Meanwhile, Governor Gavin Newsom said he's budgeting $75 million to help communities deal with the threat. PG&E said the city of Calistoga could have its service cut as many as 15 times this fire season, depending on how extreme the weather is. The utility also plans to set up dozens of so-called "resiliency centers," where backup generators can be brought in to run essential services.

"The utility aims to give at least two days warning about a shutoff and has embarked on a public awareness campaign including mailing letters to customers and is working to identify vulnerable residents," reports Bloomberg. "It also will be working to get power restored in a day after a shutoff, though its customers could be out for as many as five days."

Boost Mobile is informing customers of a data breach nearly two months after it happened. "Boost.com experienced unauthorized online account activity in which an unauthorized person accessed your account through your Boost phone number and Boost.com PIN code," said the notification. "The Boost Mobile fraud team discovered the incident and was able to implement a permanent solution to prevent similar unauthorized account activity." TechCrunch reports: It's not known exactly how the hackers obtained customer PINs -- or how many Boost customers are affected. The company also notified the California attorney general, which companies are required to do if more than 500 people in the state are affected by the same security incident. Boost Mobile reportedly had 15 million customers in 2018.

The hackers used those phone numbers and account PINs to break into customer accounts using the company's website Boost.com, said the notification. These codes can be used to alter account settings. Hackers can automate account logins using lists of exposed usernames and passwords -- or in this case phone numbers and PIN codes -- in what's known as a credential stuffing attack. Boost said it has sent to affected customers a text with a temporary PIN.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: On Monday, a U.S.-based company named Hermeus announced plans to develop an aircraft that will travel at speeds of up to Mach 5. Such an aircraft would cut travel time from New York to Paris from more than 7 hours to 1.5 hours. Hermeus said it has raised an initial round of funding led by Khosla Ventures, but it declined to specify the amount. This funding will allow Hermeus to develop a propulsion demonstrator and other initial technologies needed to make its supersonic aircraft a reality, Skyler Shuford, the company's chief operating officer, told Ars.

The announcement follows three years after another company, Boom Supersonic, declared its own intentions to develop faster-than-sound aircraft. As of January 2019, Boom had raised more than $140 million toward development of its Overture airliner, envisioned to travel at Mach 2.2, which is about 10 percent faster than the Concorde traveled. Officials with Boom Supersonic have said its planes could be ready for commercial service in the mid-2020s, and they added that Virgin Group and Japan Airlines have preordered a combined 30 airplanes.

Apple's VP of Apple Pay, Jennifer Bailey, announced new NFC tags that will let iPhone users make purchases simply by tapping their phones against the stickers, without the need to download a special app first. "The company is partnering with Bird scooters, Bonobos clothing store, and PayByPhone parking meters for the initial rollout," reports 9to5Mac. From the report: Apple also announced that inside the Wallet app, users will soon be able to sign up for loyalty cards in one tap, presumably presented to users as recommendations when they make eligible purchases. Right now, physical Apple Pay transactions require bulky terminals like those you find at retail store checkouts. With the new support, an iPhone will know how to read a specially-encoded NFC tag (that can be as inert as a sticker) and automatically show the Apple Pay purchase interface when a user holds their device near it. No third-party apps or other set up required.

The obvious example is a user can ad-hoc top up their miles on a hired electric scooter simply by tapping their phone or watch to a NFC sticker on the bike. For Bonobos, it will enable simpler self-service shopping with the ability to place NFC tags directly onto clothing rails. The new Apple Pay features will be rolling out later this year, presumably with more partners onboard now that the news is public. This is yet another step towards Apple's goal of replacing the wallet.

Facebook will increase the hourly pay rate for thousands of contract workers across the United States, the company said today. From a report: Its base rate for contractors will rise from $15 an hour to $18, with slightly higher raises in cities with higher costs of living. The changes will go into effect by the middle of next year, the company said, and it will explore bringing similar raises to other sites around the world. The move comes after reporting from The Verge and others on the long-term impact of working as a contract moderator for Facebook, which has left some workers with symptoms of post-traumatic stress. Workers in larger metropolitan areas will get raises as well: from $18 to $20 an hour in Seattle and from $20 to $22 an hour in the Bay Area, New York City, and Washington, DC.

Carl Malamud believes in open access to government records, and he has spent more than a decade putting them online. You might think states would welcome the help. From a report: But when Mr. Malamud's group posted the Official Code of Georgia Annotated, the state sued for copyright infringement. Providing public access to the state's laws and related legal materials, Georgia's lawyers said, was part of a "strategy of terrorism." A federal appeals court ruled against the state, which has asked the Supreme Court to step in. On Friday, in an unusual move, Mr. Malamud's group, Public.Resource.Org, also urged the court to hear the dispute, saying that the question of who owns the law is an urgent one, as about 20 other states have claimed that parts of similar annotated codes are copyrighted.

The issue, the group said, is whether citizens can have access to "the raw materials of our democracy." The case, Georgia v. Public.Resource.Org, No. 18-1150, concerns the 54 volumes of the Official Code of Georgia Annotated, which contain state statutes and related materials. The state, through a legal publisher, makes the statutes themselves available online, and it has said it does not object to Mr. Malamud doing the same thing. But people who want to see other materials in the books, the state says, must pay the publisher.

China is known for its censorship of certain websites. The country went the extra mile by blocking Wikipedia in April. From a report: Multiple reports confirm China blocked Wikipedia across all language URLs sometime in late April. The country is using DNS injections to prevent its citizens from accessing the online encyclopedia, according to a report from the Open Observatory of Network Interference on May 4.

A group of iPhone owners accusing Apple of violating US antitrust rules because of its App Store monopoly can sue the company, the Supreme Court ruled Monday. From a report: The Supreme Court upheld the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals' decision in Apple v. Pepper, agreeing in a 5-4 decision that Apple app buyers could sue the company for allegedly driving up prices. "Apple's line-drawing does not make a lot of sense, other than as a way to gerrymander Apple out of this and similar lawsuits," wrote Justice Brett Kavanaugh. Apple had claimed that iOS users were technically buying apps from developers, while developers themselves were Apple's App Store customers. According to an earlier legal doctrine known as Illinois Brick, "indirect purchasers" of a product don't have the standing to file antitrust cases. But in today's decision, the Supreme Court determined that this logic doesn't apply to Apple.

According to data from the Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaii, the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere is over 415 parts per million (ppm), far higher than at any point in the last 800,000 years, since before the evolution of homo sapiens. From a report: Holthaus spotted the new high on Sunday when it was tweeted out by the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, which measures daily CO2 rates at Mauna Loa along with scientists from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Measurements have been ongoing since the program was started in 1958 by the late Charles David Keeling, for whom the Keeling Curve, a graph of increasing CO2 concentration in the atmosphere, is named. "This is the first time in human history our planet's atmosphere has had more than 415ppm CO2," Holthaus said in a widely shared tweet. "Not just in recorded history, not just since the invention of agriculture 10,000 years ago. Since before modern humans existed millions of years ago," added Holthaus.

Indian video streaming giant Hotstar, owned by Disney, today set a new global benchmark for the number of people an OTT service can draw to a live event. From a report: Some 18.6 million users simultaneously tuned into Hotstar's website and app to watch the deciding game of the 12th edition of the Indian Premier League (IPL) cricket tournament. The streaming giant, which competes with Netflix and Amazon in India, broke its own "global best" 10.3 million concurrent views milestone that it had set last year. Hotstar topped the 10 million concurrent viewership mark a number of times during this year's 51-day IPL season. More than 12.7 million viewers huddled to watch an earlier game in the tournament, a spokesperson for the four-year-old service said. In mid-April, Hotstar said that the cricket series had already garnered a 267 million overall viewership, creating a new record for the streamer. (Last year's IPL had clocked a 202 million overall viewership.) These figures coming out of India, the fastest-growing internet market, are astounding to say the least. In comparison, a 2012 live stream of skydiver Felix Baumgartner jumping from near-space to the Earth's surface, remains the most concurrently viewed video on YouTube. It amassed about 8 million concurrent viewers.

Business messaging service Slack briefed investors on Monday, as the company expects to go public with a direct listing on the New York Stock Exchange later this year. From a report: The service, which primarily caters to businesses, said it has more than 10 million users as of January. Stewart Butterfield, co-founder and CEO of Slack, made the case to investors that replacing email with Slack changes the way employees of a company communicate. "This shift is inevitable. We believe every organization will switch to Slack or something like it," Butterfield said in a presentation. He also pitched Slack as a software-focused company that believes the world is "only at the beginning" of its reliance on software. In that essence, Butterfield likened Slack as eventually becoming a utility, similar to the internet or electricity.