An anonymous reader quotes a report from BuzzFeed News: A government inquiry into federal agencies' deployment of facial recognition may have overlooked some organizations' use of popular biometric identification software Clearview AI, calling into question whether authorities can understand the extent to which the emerging technology has been used by taxpayer-funded entities. In a 92-page report published by the Government Accountability Office on Tuesday, five agencies -- the US Capitol Police, the US Probation Office, the Pentagon Force Protection Agency, Transportation Security Administration, and the Criminal Investigation Division at the Internal Revenue Service -- said they didn't use Clearview AI between April 2018 and March 2020. This, however, contradicts internal Clearview data previously reviewed by BuzzFeed News.

In April, BuzzFeed News revealed that those five agencies were among more than 1,800 US taxpayer-funded entities that had employees who tried or used Clearview AI, based on internal company data. As part of that story, BuzzFeed News published a searchable table disclosing all the federal, state, and city government organizations whose employees are listed in the data as having used the facial recognition software as of February 2020. While the GAO was tasked with "review[ing] federal law enforcement use of facial recognition technology," the discrepancies between the report, which was based on survey responses and BuzzFeed News' past reporting, suggest that even the US government may not be equipped to track how its own agencies access to surveillance tools like Clearview. The GAO report surveyed 42 federal agencies in total, 20 of which reported that they either owned their own facial recognition system or used one developed by a third party between April 2018 and March 2020. Ten federal agencies -- including Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection -- said they specifically used Clearview AI.

The state of Maine now has the most stringent laws regulating government use of facial recognition in the country. The Verge reports: The new law prohibits government use of facial recognition except in specifically outlined situations, with the most broad exception being if police have probable cause that an unidentified person in an image committed a serious crime, or for proactive fraud prevention. Since Maine police will not have access to facial recognition, they will be able to ask the FBI and Maine Bureau of Motor Vehicles (BMV) to run these searches.

Crucially, the law plugs loopholes that police have used in the past to gain access to the technology, like informally asking other agencies or third parties to run backchannel searches for them. Logs of all facial recognition searches by the BMV must be created and are designated as public records. The only other state-wide facial recognition law was enacted by Washington in 2020, but many privacy advocates were dissatisfied with the specifics of the law. Maine's new law also gives citizens the ability to sue the state if they've been unlawfully targeted by facial recognition, which was notably absent from Washington's regulation. If facial recognition searches are performed illegally, they must be deleted and cannot be used as evidence. In response to this new law, the ACLU said: "Maine is showing the rest of the country what it looks like when we the people are in control of our civil rights and civil liberties, not tech companies that stand to profit from widespread government use of face surveillance technology."

AltMachine shares a report from Reuters: "Lawyers fighting the extradition of Huawei's chief financial officer to the United States on Tuesday presented internal emails from British bank HSBC that they said disproved U.S. claims that Huawei misled the bank," reports Reuters. "CFO Meng Wanzhou's legal team said the emails and documents submitted to a Canadian court showed at least two senior HSBC leaders were aware of connections between Huawei and its Iranian subsidiary, Skycom. Meng's lawyers are trying to add the documents to evidence. They are meant to counter U.S. charges that only junior employees of the British bank knew about the true nature of relationship between Huawei and Skycom. U.S. prosecutors have alleged that Meng misled HSBC about Huawei's business dealings in Iran and may have caused the bank to break U.S. sanctions."

Business dealings with Iran was not illegal under Canada laws as the sanction was not a UN resolution and had no legal basis internationally. The only way for the extradition to proceed would be to show Huawei misled HSBC which operates in the U.S. Amid intensifying US-China technology and economic rivalry, it is not the first time the U.S. law enforcement fabricating false accusation against Chinese or China-linked persons. Earlier in April, U.S. court trial reveals federal agents falsely accused a UT professor born in China of spying and three Congressmen are asking the Department of Justice Office of the Inspector General to "review whether the China Initiative puts untoward pressure on DOJ personnel to engage in racial or ethnic profiling." Federal agents falsely accused Hu of spying for China based solely on a Google search, testimony revealed. After Hu refused to work as a spy for the U.S. government, agents stalked and harassed him for more than two years, leading to the destruction of his reputation and internationally renowned career.

Suppliers that want to land Amazon as a client for their goods and services can find that its business comes with a catch: the right for Amazon to buy big stakes in their companies at potentially steep discounts to market value. The Wall Street Journal: The technology-and-retail giant has struck at least a dozen deals with publicly traded companies in which it gets rights, called warrants, to buy the vendors' stock in the future at what could be below-market prices, according to corporate filings and interviews with people involved with the deals. Amazon over the past decade also has done more than 75 such deals with privately held companies, according to a person familiar with the matter. In all, the tech titan's stakes and potential stakes amount to billions of dollars across companies that provide everything from call-center services to natural gas, and in some cases position Amazon among the top shareholders in those businesses.

The unusual arrangements offer another window into how Amazon uses its market heft to increase its wealth and clout. The company has been under growing scrutiny from regulators and lawmakers over its competitive practices, including with companies it partners with. While the deals can benefit the suppliers by locking in big contracts, which can also boost their share prices, executives at several of the companies said they felt they couldn't refuse Amazon's push for the right to buy the stock without risking a major contract. The deals in some cases also give Amazon rights such as board representation and the ability to top any acquisition offers from other companies. For Amazon, the arrangements give it a piece of the potential upside the vendors can get from doing business with one of the world's biggest companies.

The heat is expected to continue for several days in some parts of British Columbia, according to weather warnings from the government. From a report: Vancouverites were frying eggs on pans placed on their terraces. One man checked into an air-conditioned five-star hotel, after the five fans aimed at his bed at home and the seventh cold shower failed to bring relief. Lettuce plants shriveled in the Okanagan Valley, British Columbia's picturesque wine region. Flowers wilted. People wilted. The heat wave across western Canada has much of a country known for its sweater weather sweating. Canada broke a national heat record on Sunday when the temperature in a small town in British Columbia reached almost 116 degrees Fahrenheit, breaking an 84-year-old record by nearly 3 degrees, with dangerously hot weather expected to continue for several more days.

"This is a complete shock to a Canadian -- this feels like Las Vegas or India -- not Vancouver," said Chris Johnson, a criminal lawyer who on Monday was heading to an air-conditioned hotel room as temperatures inside his home reached 90 degrees Fahrenheit. Tying any one weather event to climate change requires extensive attribution analysis, but heat waves around the world are growing more frequent, longer-lasting and more dangerous, experts say. David Phillips, a senior climatologist at Environment Canada, a government agency, said the early timing of this one, its intensity and its duration, could all be attributable to rising global temperatures.

The original source code for the world wide web has been sold as a non-fungible token, making $5.4m. From a report: NFTs are certificates of ownership for digital assets, which often do not have a physical representation. They do not necessarily include copyright control -- and critics say they are get-rich-quick schemes that are bad for the environment. World-wide-web creator Sir Tim Berners-Lee sold the NFT to an unidentified buyer, through auction house Sotheby's. The highest bid stood at $3.5m for most of the last day of the auction -- but there were a flurry of bids in the closing 15 minutes. The auction began on 23 June, with an opening bid of $1,000. Further reading: Tim Berners-Lee Defends Auction of NFT Representing Web's Source Code.

Federal law enforcement agencies secretly seek the data of Microsoft customers thousands of times a year, according to congressional testimony Wednesday by a senior executive at the technology company. From a report: Tom Burt, Microsoft's corporate vice president for customer security and trust, told members of the House Judiciary Committee that federal law enforcement in recent years has been presenting the company with between 2,400 to 3,500 secrecy orders a year, or about seven to 10 a day. "Most shocking is just how routine secrecy orders have become when law enforcement targets an American's email, text messages or other sensitive data stored in the cloud," said Burt, describing the widespread clandestine surveillance as a major shift from historical norms.

The relationship between law enforcement and Big Tech has attracted fresh scrutiny in recent weeks with the revelation that Trump-era Justice Department prosecutors obtained as part of leak investigations phone records belonging not only to journalists but also to members of Congress and their staffers. Microsoft, for instance, was among the companies that turned over records under a court order, and because of a gag order, had to then wait more than two years before disclosing it.

Amazon.com filed a request with the Federal Trade Commission seeking the recusal of new Chairwoman Lina Khan from antitrust investigations of the company, in light of her extensive past criticisms of the company. From a report: "Given her long track record of detailed pronouncements about Amazon, and her repeated proclamations that Amazon has violated the antitrust laws, a reasonable observer would conclude that she no longer can consider the company's antitrust defenses with an open mind," Amazon said in a 25-page recusal motion filed with the FTC.

Britain's proposed new internet law entails a government power grab with worrying implications for freedom of speech, according to civil liberties groups, academics and the tech industry. From a report: The groups are concerned the proposed Online Safety Bill would hand to Culture Secretary Oliver Dowden disproportionate powers in the name of protecting users from "harmful" content. The Bill allow him to "modify" a code of practice -- the blueprint created by the regulator Ofcom for how tech companies should protect users -- to ensure it "reflects government policy." Critics say such powers, which were set out in a draft of the proposed law published in May and due for imminent scrutiny by MPs and peers, could undermine the regulator's independence and potentially politicize the regulation of the internet.

"The notion that a political appointee will have the unilateral power to alter the legal boundaries of free speech based on the political whims of the moment frankly makes the blood run cold," said Heather Burns, policy manager at the Open Rights Group. The draft bill -- which hasn't yet begun its formal passage through parliament -- is due to be checked line-by-line by legislators before being brought back to parliament later this year, where it will then pass through the stages it needs to end up on the statute books. The U.K. government and opposition parties are currently finalizing which lawmakers will sit on the pre-legislative committee.

The US government has filed a superseding indictment against Paige A. Thompson, a former Amazon engineer accused of hacking Capital One and stealing the personal data of more than 100 million Americans. From a report: According to court documents filed earlier this month and obtained by The Record, the US Department of Justice has added seven new charges on top of the original two it filed in August 2019. The new charges -- six counts of computer fraud and abuse, and one count of access device fraud -- come as investigators have made headway in analyzing data seized from Thompson's computers and servers.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: After coming close to imposing a near-total ban on municipal broadband networks, Ohio's Republican-controlled legislature has reportedly dropped the proposed law in final negotiations over the state budget. The final budget agreement "axed a proposal to limit local governments from offering broadband services," The Columbus Dispatch wrote. With a June 30 deadline looming, Ohio's House and Senate approved the budget and sent it to Gov. Mike DeWine for final approval on Monday night, the Dispatch wrote.

As we wrote earlier this month, the Ohio Senate approved a version of the budget containing an amendment (PDF) that would have forced existing municipal broadband services to shut down and prevented the formation of new public networks. The proposed law was reportedly "inserted without prior public discussion," and no state senator publicly sponsored the amendment. It was approved in a party-line vote as Democrats opposed the restrictions in municipal broadband. The House version did not contain the amendment, and it was dropped during negotiations between the House and Senate.

Lawmakers apparently relented to public pressure from supporters of municipal broadband and cities and towns that operate the networks. People and businesses from Fairlawn, where the city-run FairlawnGig network offers fiber Internet, played a significant role in the protests. FairlawnGig itself asked users to put pressure on lawmakers, and the subscribers did so in great numbers. "We had a real grassroots movement here in Fairlawn. We are thrilled our residents, subscribers, and businesses came together and helped us defeat this amendment," Fairlawn Service Director Ernie Staten said yesterday, according to an article by the Community Networks team at the Institute for Local Self-Reliance (ILSR). "We appreciate that the State of Ohio recognizes that municipal broadband has a place in this state and we hope to continue this great endeavor." Fairlawn subscribers sent more than 700 emails telling lawmakers, "Don't take this (municipal broadband) away!" Staten said. The report notes that while Ohio's legislature isn't banning public networks, at least for now, it "is apparently not letting municipal networks apply for a new round of funding."

"While Staten celebrated the removal of the budget amendment, he called the victory 'bittersweet,' as municipalities and electric cooperatives in the state do not have access to the proposed $250 million broadband expansion grant program that will be established when, and if, Gov. Dewine signs the budget into law," the ILSR wrote. The outcome of that isn't certain yet. "We have been asking for a small definition change to add municipalities and electric coops, but unless they changed the language, I believe the House version stands," Staten told the ILSR.

The U.S. government's highway safety agency has ordered automakers to report any crashes involving fully autonomous vehicles or partially automated driver assist systems. The Associated Press reports: The move Tuesday by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration indicates the agency is taking a tougher stance on automated vehicle safety than in the past. It has been reluctant to issue any regulations of the new technology for fear of hampering adoption of the potentially life-saving systems. The order requires vehicle and equipment manufacturers and companies that operate the vehicles to report crashes on public roads involving fully autonomous vehicles, or those in which driver assist systems were operating immediately before or during a crash.

"By mandating crash reporting, the agency will have access to critical data that will help quickly identify safety issues that could emerge in these automated systems," NHTSA Acting Administrator Steven Cliff said in a statement. The agency says it will look for potential safety defects, and the information could cause it to send out a crash investigation team or open a defect investigation. Companies have to report crashes involving fully autonomous or partially automated vehicles within one day of learning about them, if they involve a hospital-treated injury, a death, air bag deployment, pedestrians or bicyclists, or were serious enough for a vehicle to be towed away. Other crashes involving vehicles equipped with the systems involving injury or property damage have to be reported every month. The requirement does not apply to consumers who own vehicles or auto dealers. NHTSA says in a statement that the data can show if there are common patterns in crashes involving the systems.

Canada will ban the sale of fuel-burning new cars and light-duty trucks from 2035 in an effort to reach net-zero emissions across the country by 2050, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's government said on Tuesday. Reuters reports: Only zero-emissions cars and trucks can be sold from 2035, according to a statement, adding that a mixture of investments and regulations will help industry transition toward that goal. The government also said it will set interim targets for 2025 and 2030. "We are committed to aligning Canada's zero-emission vehicles sales targets with those of the most ambitious North American jurisdictions," Environment Minister Jonathan Wilkinson said in the statement. "We will work with the United States to harmonize fuel efficiency regulations and we're investing in consumer rebates, charging stations, business tax breaks and industry transition costs," Wilkinson added.

"Canada cannot reach our greenhouse gas targets if emissions from cars, SUVs and pickups, which are currently growing, are not curtailed," said Keith Brooks, programs director at advocacy group Environmental Defence, who welcomed the move. Brooks said only 3.5% of vehicles now sold in Canada are electric and that the government needs to do more to support the market for zero-emissions vehicles.

When MIT and Harvard University started edX nearly a decade ago, it was touted as a nonprofit alternative to for-profit online course providers. Today, the universities announced that they are selling edX to one of those for-profit providers for $800 million. From a report: edX had fallen behind rivals like Coursera, a similar platform founded by Stanford University professors, in fundraising and reach, though it still boasts 35 million users and more than 3,000 courses. Leaders of edX cited the pandemic as a factor that led to the sale. "Covid drove an explosion in remote learning, which spurred huge investments into edX's commercial competitors," wrote MIT's president L. Rafael Reif, in an open letter today. "This put edX, as a nonprofit, at a financial disadvantage. This new path recognizes this reality and offers a solution that allows edX to continue to support and maintain the key aspects of its mission."

What happens now is a bit complicated. 2U, a so-called Online Program Management company that helps traditional colleges start and run online degree programs, says it will operate edX as a separate subsidiary that will be structured as a public benefit corporation. That means it will be for profit.

John McAfee's death last week in a Spanish prison complicates the U.S. government's intent to recover millions of dollars it says the software tycoon owed in taxes and allegedly ill-gotten gains from promoting cryptocurrencies. From a report: McAfee, who decades ago founded the anti-virus company that bears his name, was found dead in his cell just hours after Spanish courts approved his extradition to the U.S. to face charges of tax evasion. U.S. prosecutors accused McAfee of not filing tax returns from 2014 to 2018 even as he earned millions from "promoting cryptocurrencies, consulting work, speaking engagements and selling the rights to his life story for a documentary," according to an indictment last June in a U.S. court in Tennessee, where he once lived.

Spanish court documents released last week alleged he owed the U.S. government more than $4.2 million in taxes. Separately, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission claimed McAfee promoted investments in initial coin offerings without disclosing he was paid more than $23 million to do so. The U.S. Department of Justice has a similar case against him. According to the indictment, McAfee managed to avoid paying taxes by routing his payments through bank accounts and cryptocurrency accounts set up in other people's names and hiding assets like real estate, a vehicle and a yacht also under the names of others. Such a complex money trail could keep lawyers busy for years.

Olivia Colman, John Nettles and Joanne Harris are among dozens of high-profile artists calling for a portion of gadget sales revenue in the UK to go into a fund for performers and creators. From a report: In a letter in Tuesday's Times newspaper, they claim a centralised "Smart Fund" could generate up to $415m per year for the UK's creative sector. The levy would be between 1% and 3% of the overall price of a device. However, critics say it would amount to "a new tax" on consumers. It would apply to everything that can "store and download creative content."

This includes laptops, PCs and smartphones, said a group of artist industry organisations behind the idea. There are no official proposals for such a scheme, but the artist Yinka Shonibare described it as "a no-brainer. " "Currently there isn't any effective way for creators to be recompensed when their work is downloaded and stored by audiences," he said. However, Tech UK, a network for the country's tech sector, said it sounded like a "new tax" on consumers. "It is an arbitrary tax on consumers that is hugely bureaucratic to manage, and with no transparency on how funds are disbursed and spent," said a spokeswoman.

The price of SafeDollar (SDO), an algorithmic decentralized finance (DeFi) stablecoin based on the Polygon (MATIC) blockchain, has plummeted to literally zero as a result of what appears to be an exploit today. CryptoSlate reports: While details are yet scarce, block explorer Polygonscan shows that 202,000 USDC and 46,000 USDT stablecoins were suddenly drained from SDO's smart contract today -- worth around $248,000 in total. As a result, SafeDollar's price -- which was supposed to always be equal to $1 since it's a stablecoin -- has plummeted to zero, according to the protocol's own website. The attack was also confirmed in a Telegram channel called "SafeDollar Announcements" today, with developers urging users to stop all operations with SDO and ostensibly promising to come up with a compensation plan in the future. Notably, this is not even the first time SDO was exploited. Just a week ago, SafeDollar developers published a "Postmortem Analysis" about an exploit that resulted in the loss of the protocol's 9,959 SDS tokens -- worth around $95,000 at the time.

As covered earlier today, the Pacific Northwest is experiencing the most severe heat wave in its history, with all-time record temperatures being set in Portland, Seattle, and Lytton, B.C, which just broke the record for hottest temperature ever recorded in Canada at 116 degrees. CBS News says this heat wave "is of an intensity never recorded by modern humans," and by one measure it's "more rare than a once in a 1,000 year event." Meteorologist Jeff Berardelli explains what's causing this "heat dome" and why events like this "are bound to become more common, more extreme and more deadly in the coming years": The heat is being caused by a combination of a significant atmospheric blocking pattern on top of a human-caused climate changed world where baseline temperatures are already a couple to a few degrees higher than nature intended. [...] In the case of this specific heat dome, which is a mountain of hot air stacked vertically through the atmosphere, it is a once in a 1,000 or even 10,000-year event for this particular area. How do we know? It's actually quite simple to explain. The intensity of a heat dome is measured by how "thick" the atmosphere is at a given spot. The hotter the air in that column, the larger the thickness of air in that column, because heat expands. In our historical record of North America's Pacific Northwest this heat dome registers a statistical standard deviation from the average of greater than 4. In layman terms, that means it falls more than 4 deviations to the right of the center of a typical bell curve (shown below) and that equates to values with less than a 99.99% chance of happening. In other words, statistically speaking, there is a 1 in 10,000 chance of experiencing this value. So, if you could possibly live in that spot for 10,000 years, you'd likely only experience that kind of heat dome once, if ever. It is worth noting that our historical record is limited and statistics like this are very sensitive to small changes. But if it seems like an overstatement to say there is a 1 in 10,000 chance of having a heat dome like this, it is certainly not an overstatement to say this is the kind of event you would expect to experience once in 1000 years.

So what is causing this heat wave? Like any heat wave, it is being caused by a highly amplified jet stream pattern. These extreme jet stream perturbations are a natural, normal part of the atmosphere. But the climate science community is split as to whether these extreme jet stream perturbations are becoming even more likely because of climate change -- a phenomena known as the wavy jet stream. Along with a more wavy, buckling and slow-moving jet stream, comes a phenomena called "blocking". This is when waves in the jet stream become so elongated that they break off, sit and spin. In this case there is a textbook type of block called an Omega block over the Pacific Northwest because it looks like the Greek letter Omega. Inside this Omega, the heat pools and intensifies. There is a faction of climate scientists who believe that a warming climate -- specifically the Arctic -- results in a more wandering jet stream at certain times of the year. But it is hotly debated; there is an equal amount of research that does not arrive at this conclusion.

Mann and his colleagues have been involved in some of this research, in which he finds that a specific type of Northern Hemisphere blocking -- what he calls Quasi Resonant Amplification -- will increase by 50% this century under business as usual human-forced climate warming. "I do indeed believe that the phenomenon we describe in our work played a very important role in the record heat wave," Mann said. As for the lack of consensus in the climate research on the wavy jet stream and blocking, Mann thinks it has more to do with the current state of climate modeling "This is an area where current generation models are NOT capturing a real-world climate connection," Mann explained. Whatever the cause, the result of an extreme jet stream pattern is extreme weather across many parts of the nation and globe. Over the past few days, the central U.S. has seen over a foot of rain with flash flooding along a stalled front. And, starting on Sunday and continuing through most of the upcoming week, the major East Coast cities will also sweat through a heat wave -- although not nearly as intense as the one in the West -- with feels-like temperatures near 100 degrees from Washington D.C. to Philadelphia and New York City.

Today, YouTube TV announced a 4K Plus add-on package with offline downloads, 5.1 Dolby audio, and features that make it easier to watch live sports. From a report: YouTube TV is already one of the pricier streaming services out there -- at $64.99 per month, you might not save much money by choosing YouTube in lieu of your cable service. Hulu + Live TV is priced the same, but offers a Disney+ and ESPN+ add-on for a total of $72.99 per month. But if you want to kick your video quality (and your monthly bill) up a notch, you can now enable 4K streaming for an extra $19.99 per month, bringing your grand total to $84.98 monthly.

The 4K Plus add-on package will also allow subscribers to download shows from DVR to watch offline -- currently, that's not possible on the standard $64.99 per month package. Meanwhile, the 5.1 Dolby audio capabilities will be a free addition for all YouTube TV members -- in a blog post, the company says this has been one of users' "biggest requests." The sports upgrades also come at no additional cost -- one new feature will let viewers jump to key plays and specific highlight moments when watching a DVR recording or trying to catch up live.

Billionaire bitcoin owner Mircea Popescu has reportedly died, leaving behind a cache of virtual currency and a controversial crypto legacy. MarketWatch reports: The bitcoin pioneer, who was believed to own over $1 billion in the world's No. 1 crypto, making him, at the time, one of the asset's larger single-holders, died off the coast of Costa Rica, according to a Spanish-language publication, Teletica.com, which reported last week that a foreigner had drowned at Playa Hermosa de Garabito, Puntarenas in Costa Rica, describing him as a 41-year old of Polish origin. Popescu was viewed as a pioneer in digital assets and one of the earliest adopters. An article in Bitcoin Magazine written by Pete Rizzo said that Popescu was known for starting MPEx, a Bitcoin securities exchange, around the same time as the Coinbase Global launched. At its mid-April peak this year, Popescu's bitcoin holdings would have been worth nearly $2 billion. Further reading: Bitcoin Magazine, Coinspeaker

"Organizations are beginning to develop, design, and manage their own AI-powered voice assistant systems independent of platforms such as Siri and Alexa," reports VentureBeat: The transition is being driven by the desire to manage the entirety of the user experience and integrate voice assistance into multiple business processes and brand environments, from call centers to stores. In a recent survey of 500 IT and business decision-makers in the U.S., France, Germany, and the U.K., 28% of respondents said they were using voice technologies and 84% expect to be using them in the next year.

To support the evolution, the Linux Foundation launched the Open Voice Network (OVN), an alliance advocating for the adoption of open standards across voice assistant apps in automobiles, smartphones, smart home devices, and more. With founding members Target, Schwarz Gruppe, Wegmans Food Markets, Microsoft, Veritone, Deutsche Telekom, and others, the OVN's goal — much like Amazon's Voice Interoperability Initiative — is to standardize the development and use of voice assistant systems and conversational agents that use technologies including automatic speech recognition, natural language processing, advanced dialog management, and machine learning... It was first announced as the Open Voice Initiative in 2019, but expanded significantly as the COVID-19 pandemic spurred enterprises to embrace digital transformation.

"Voice is expected to be a primary interface to the digital world, connecting users to billions of sites, smart environments and AI bots ... Key to enabling enterprise adoption of these capabilities and consumer comfort and familiarity is the implementation of open standards," Mike Dolan, SVP and general manager of projects at the Linux Foundation, said in a statement. "The potential impact of voice on industries including commerce, transportation, healthcare, and entertainment is staggering and we're excited to bring it under the open governance model of the Linux foundation to grow the community and pave a way forward."
Besides a focus on standards and technology-sharing, the group plans to collaborate with existing industry associations on regulatory/legislative issues — including data privacy."

"Linus Torvalds has just released the Linux 5.13 kernel as stable," reports Phoronix: Linux 5.13 brings initial but still early support for the Apple M1 with basic support but not yet accelerated graphics and a lot more to iron out moving ahead. There are also new Linux 5.13 security features like the Landlock security module, Clang control flow integrity support, and optionally randomizing the kernel stack offset at each system call. There is also AMD fun this cycle around FreeSync HDMI support, initial Aldebaran bring-up, and more. Intel has more work on Alder Lake, a new cooling driver, and more discrete graphics bring-up. There are also other changes for Linux 5.13 around faster IO_uring, a generic USB display driver, and other new hardware enablement.
"5.13 overall is actually fairly large," Linus Torvalds posted on the Linux Kernel Mailing List, calling it "one of the bigger 5.x releases, with over 16,000 commits (over 17k if you count merges), from over 2,000 developers. But it's a "big all over" kind of thing, not something particular that stands out as particularly unusual..."

The Wall Street Journal reports: Authorities in the U.K. and Japan took aim at affiliates of Binance Holdings Ltd., the world's largest cryptocurrency exchange network, in the latest regulatory crackdown on the wildly popular trade in bitcoin and other digital assets. The U.K. Financial Conduct Authority, the country's lead financial regulator, told consumers Saturday that Binance's local unit wasn't permitted to conduct operations related to regulated financial activities...

Binance Markets Ltd., the company's U.K. arm, applied to be registered with the Financial Conduct Authority and withdrew its application on May 17. "A significantly high number of cryptoasset businesses are not meeting the required standards" under money-laundering regulations, said a spokesperson for the FCA in an email. "Of the firms we've assessed to date, over 90% have withdrawn applications following our intervention."

Japan's financial watchdog issued a statement on June 25, saying that Binance isn't registered to do business in the country...

As of April, Binance operated the largest cryptocurrency exchange in the world by trading volume, allowing tens of billions of dollars of trades to pass through its networks, according to data provider CryptoCompare. It was founded in 2017 and initially based in China, later moving offices to Japan and Malta. It recently said it is a decentralized organization with no headquarters... The FCA move doesn't ban customers from using Binance completely; U.K. customers can continue to use Binance's non-U.K. operations for activities the FCA doesn't directly regulate, such as buying and selling direct holdings in bitcoin.
The Financial Times called the move "one of the most significant moves any global regulator has made against Binance" and "a sign of how regulators are cracking down on the cryptocurrency industry over concerns relating to its potential role in illicit activities such as money laundering and fraud, and over often weak consumer protection." But more countries are also taking action, Reuters reports: Last month, Bloomberg reported that officials from the U.S. Justice Department and Internal Revenue Service who probe money laundering and tax offences had sought information from individuals with insight into Binance's business. In April, Germany's financial regulator BaFin warned the exchange risked being fined for offering digital tokens without an investor prospectus.
And CoinDesk adds: Binance is no longer open for business in Canada's most populous province, apparently choosing to close shop rather than meet the fate of other cryptocurrency exchanges that have had actions filed against them for allegedly failing to comply with Ontario securities laws.

Long-time Slashdot reader schwit1 shares an interesting report from Science Alert: Thunderstorms that roil across the Southern Great Plains of the US are amongst the strongest of such storms on Earth... Their intensity and frequency have been increasing, yet our best climate models still struggle to predict just how and when they'll arise.

To help refine climate models for the Southern Great Plains, paleoclimatologist Christopher Maupin from Texas A&M University and colleagues used oxygen and hydrogen isotopes to track the ferocity of past storms. Water molecules based on elements wielding an additional neutron or two tend to require a little more energy to vaporize, and release more energy as they condense. This leaves a clear signature in the ratios of isotopes separated by rainfall under various conditions. By comparing the results of analyses taken today with historic ratios of hydrogen and oxygen isotopes found trapped by stalactites in Texan caves, the researchers developed an accurate picture of weather events in the past...

Using another set of isotopes, this time measuring those of uranium and thorium, the team dated the stalactites and stalagmites to around the last Ice Age, 30-50 thousand years ago. Measuring the shifts in oxygen and hydrogen isotopes down their lengths allowed the researchers to see the storms cycled from weakly to strongly organized, roughly every thousand years. The more strongly organized the complex of storms becomes, the more intense and damaging they are. They discovered these changes in thunderstorm intensities coincided with well-known, abrupt shifts in global climate, known as Dansgaard-Oeschger events.

The researchers also found these intensity increases coincide with a reduction in rain in southwestern US and greater atmospheric upwelling in the Santa Barbara Basin area. They believe the observed pattern suggests an increased frequency or intensity of the giant global atmospheric waves that drive the weather, called Rossby waves, may be providing the extra lift needed to fuel these greater storms. "Modern anthropogenic climate forcing has increasingly favored an amplification of these synoptic factors," the team wrote in their paper.

"This work will help predict trends of storms in the future," explained geoscientist Courtney Schumacher.

The Record reports: The Wikimedia Foundation has banned the administrator of the Croatian version of Wikipedia after an investigation revealed that together with other admins, they edited and distorted content on the site with radical right views. This group had de-facto control of the website between 2011 and 2020, the Wikimedia Foundation said in a report published earlier this month... This included:

- Claiming that Hitler attacked Poland and started World War II after the Poles committed genocide against Germans.
- Redefining a World War II concentration camp as a labor camp...
- Pushing opinions that EU decision-making endangers Croatia's sovereignty.
- Claiming that the EU had used propaganda to trick Croatian citizens into joining the European Union...
Since 2013 the dubious edits had been spotted by users and the Croatian press, according to the article — but other Croatian Wikipedia editors failed, multiple times, to wrest away control of the site's moderation.

"The Wikimedia Foundation got involved last year after it was discovered that the administrator of Croatian Wikipedia had been using sockpuppet accounts to manipulate discussions and staff elections on the site..." The Wikimedia Foundation's report on the abuses of this team also points to possibly similar far-right-based editing on Wikipedia's Serbian version as well. This is the second major Wikipedia scandal in the past year. In September 2020, the Wikimedia Foundation said it found and banned a public relations firm that had created and used a network of sockpuppet accounts to edit the site on behalf of some of its customers.

"When Red Hat killed off CentOS Linux in a highly controversial December 2020 announcement, Gregory Kurtzer immediately announced his intention to recreate CentOS with a new distribution named after his deceased mentor," Ars Technica reported in February.

And this week, "The Rocky Enterprise Software Foundation has announced general availability (GA) of Rocky Linux 8.4," reports ZDNet. "It's an important milestone because it's the first Rocky Linux general availability release ever." Huge companies, including Disney, GoDaddy, Rackspace, Toyota and Verizon, relied on CentOS, and they were reportedly not happy about RedHat's decision... It turns out that Kurtzer's decision has been a popular one. Besides quickly building up an army of hundreds of contributors for the project, Rocky Linux 8.4 - which follows the May 18 release of Red Hat's RHEL 8.4 - was downloaded at least 10,000 times within half a day of its release... "If we extrapolate the count to include our other mirrors we are probably at least 3-4x that (if not even way more)!" boasts Kurtzer in a LinkedIn post. "Lots of reports coming in of people and organizations already replacing their CentOS systems (and even other Linux distributions) with Rocky. The media is flying off the hook and business analysts also validating to me personally that Rocky Linux might soon be the most utilized Linux operating system used in enterprise and cloud!"

Rocky Linux 8.4 took seven months for the newly formed community to release, and is available for x86_64 and ARM64 (aarch64) architecture hardware in various ISOs.
"Sufficient testing has been performed such that we have confidence in its stability for production systems," explains a blog post at RockyLinux.org, adding that free community support is available through the forums as well as live chat avaiable through IRC and Rocky Linux Mattermost. "Paid commercial support is currently available through CIQ..."

"Corporations come and go, their interests as transient as they are self-serving. But a community persists, and that's who we dedicate Rocky Linux to: you." Rocky is more than the next free and open, community enterprise operating system. It's a community. A commitment to an ideal bigger than the sum of its parts, and a promise that our principles — embedded even within our repositories and ISOs — are immutable...

This is just the beginning, and the Rocky Enterprise Software Foundation is more than just Rocky Linux — it's a home for those that believe that open source isn't just a switch that can be toggled at will, and that projects that many rely on not be subject to the whims of a few. To this point, you can easily find all of our sources, our build infrastructure, Git repositories, and everything else anyone would need to fork our work and ensure that it continues if need be...

When we announced our release candidate, we asked you to come build the next free, open, community enterprise operating system with us. Now we're asking you for more: join us as we build our community.
They also thanked 11 sponsors and partners for contributing "resources, financial backing, software, and infrastructure."

Writing on CNN, an American historian looks at the Supreme Court's recent 8-1 ruling in favor of the free-speech rights of Brandi Levy, who as a 14-year-old cheerleader had posted a photo to Snapchat cursing out her school and its cheerleading program. But the historian also suggests where this ruling came up short: In recent decades the Court has sought to widen public schools' parental and paternalist reach, shrinking the sphere of students' free speech rights... In Levy's case, she was using social media off-campus, outside of school hours, to express a criticism of an extracurricular activity. If her school could control that speech, then there would be very little space left for Levy to express herself.

Yet the Court took too modest an approach to students' rights. The Mahanoy decision was much narrower than the lower court's. The Third Circuit had ruled that the school had no right to interfere with off-campus speech, a decision that would have significantly expanded students' rights. In Mahanoy, the Court ruled that schools may still regulate student speech off-campus, depending on the circumstances (though did not lay out a framework for those circumstances, leaving that to future court decisions)...

[P]ublic schools are more properly (if less creatively) understood as, well, the schools of democracy, where students are taught and guided and given an opportunity to test out the rights of citizenship. Social media have become an integral part of students' public identity — indeed, of many adults' public identity. Students should be taught about the inevitable permanence of ephemeral speech. A Snapchat snap, an Instagram story, a Twitter fleet, all designed to disappear, can easily be made permanent. Levy thought she was making a relatively private, fleeting statement, only to find it memorialized in Supreme Court jurisprudence.

But students should also have more speech protections, be allowed to criticize the institutions in which they spend so much of their time — and be largely free of their school's oversight when they are beyond the schoolhouse gates.

Remember when ProPublica said they'd obtained the tax returns of some of America's richest people?

Now they're reporting that Peter Thiel turned a small retirement account — the kind meant to help middle class investors — "into a $5 billion tax-free piggy bank." Billionaire Peter Thiel, a founder of PayPal, has publicly condemned "confiscatory taxes." He's been a major funder of one of the most prominent anti-tax political action committees in the country. And he's bankrolled a group that promotes building floating nations that would impose no compulsory income taxes. But Thiel doesn't need a man-made island to avoid paying taxes. He has something just as effective: a Roth individual retirement account.

Over the last 20 years, Thiel has quietly turned his Roth IRA — a humdrum retirement vehicle intended to spur Americans to save for their golden years — into a gargantuan tax-exempt piggy bank, confidential Internal Revenue Service data shows. Using stock deals unavailable to most people, Thiel has taken a retirement account worth less than $2,000 in 1999 and spun it into a $5 billion windfall. To put that into perspective, here's how much the average Roth was worth at the end of 2018: $39,108... What's more, as long as Thiel waits to withdraw his money until April 2027, when he is six months shy of his 60th birthday, he will never have to pay a penny of tax on those billions....

While most Americans are dutifully paying taxes — chipping in their part to fund the military, highways and safety-net programs — the country's richest citizens are finding ways to sidestep the tax system. One of the most surprising of these techniques involves the Roth IRA, which limits most people to contributing just $6,000 each year... Yet, from the start, a small number of entrepreneurs, like Thiel, made an end run around the rules: Open a Roth with $2,000 or less. Get a sweetheart deal to buy a stake in a startup that has a good chance of one day exploding in value. Pay just fractions of a penny per share, a price low enough to buy huge numbers of shares. Watch as all the gains on that stock — no matter how giant — are shielded from taxes forever, as long as the IRA remains untouched until age 59 and a half. Then use the proceeds, still inside the Roth, to make other investments.
ProPublica argues Thiel's move alone "deprived the U.S. government of untold millions in tax revenue. Perhaps billions." But he's not the only multi-millionaire they found stashing vast sums into untaxed accounts:

• Ted Weschler, a deputy of Warren Buffett at Berkshire Hathaway had $264.4 million at the end of 2018.
• Hedge fund manager Randall Smith, whose Alden Global Capital has gutted newspapers around the country, had $252.6 million in his.
• Warren Buffett, one of the richest men in the world and a vocal supporter of higher taxes on the rich: $20.2 million
• Former Renaissance Technologies hedge fund manager Robert Mercer: $31.5 million

Slashdot reader Thelasko quotes the BBC: A project to preserve endangered Tasmanian devils on a small island has backfired after the predators killed seabirds in large numbers, a conservation group says.

A small number of devils were shipped to Maria Island east of Tasmania, Australia, in 2012. The move aimed to protect the mammals from a deadly facial cancer that had driven them towards extinction. The devils have recovered since, but the island project has come at a cost... Citing a government survey, BirdLife Tasmania said a population of little penguins that numbered 3,000 breeding pairs in 2012 had disappeared from the island.

"Losing 3,000 pairs of penguins from an island that is a national park that should be a refuge for this species basically is a major blow," said Dr Eric Woehler, a researcher for the group.

The New York Times notes that "record numbers of shareholder votes" are "pressing major, publicly traded petroleum companies to prepare for a zero-carbon world." And then they tell the story of two activist investors who attempted to pack Exxon Mobil's board of directors with a slate of climate-friendly nominees at its annual shareholder's meeting:

It had been a bruising year for the industry, with oil prices trading negative last spring and record numbers of shareholder votes pressing major, publicly traded petroleum companies to prepare for a zero-carbon world. Just that morning, as the meeting was starting, the news broke that a Dutch court had declared that Shell must accelerate its emissions-reduction efforts. As Exxon Mobil's meeting was underway, so was Chevron's, and shareholders there voted in favor of a proposal to reduce the emissions generated by the company's product, which would call for a re-evaluation of the core business...

[T]he core of [activist investor Charlie Penner's] argument rested on mobilizing shareholders with classic activist tactics: focusing on the company's financials, underscoring its flagging profitability and setting out an argument for how to raise the value of the company's stock by making smarter expenditures. He didn't aim to undercut the core business necessarily; rather than urging Exxon Mobil to give up all oil and gas, he wanted the company to practice what finance people like to call "capital discipline," which basically just means not spending prodigiously. He also reasoned that, given mounting pressure from society and governments to decarbonize the global economy, it would be strategically smarter for Exxon Mobil to be part of an energy transition, rather than letting itself be outstripped by other companies innovating to meet demand for low-carbon power...

With plans to increase oil-and-gas production by 25 percent over the next five years, the company seemed out of step with the market. Profitability had already been slipping for a decade. Exxon Mobil earned the largest annual profit in U.S. history in 2008 and nearly eclipsed that record in 2012; last year it lost $22 billion. In part, the loss was due to a historic $19 billion write-down on the value of its assets. That assessment may still be too rosy; a whistle-blower reportedly told the Securities Exchange Commission in January that Exxon Mobil had overvalued its assets by at least $56 billion, in part by pressuring employees to inflate expectations about the drilling timelines in the Permian Basin in Texas and New Mexico, which remains the company's U.S. cash cow. (Exxon Mobil called the claims "demonstrably false....") Penner already sensed that Exxon Mobil was an industry outlier, more reluctant than others to recognize that if the world enacted the emissions reductions that its governments had committed to, there would be no viable business for a publicly traded oil company in 30 years...

[Exxon Mobile] spent more than $35 million blanketing shareholders with appeals to reject the activists and stick with management... Just days before the proxy votes would be tallied, Exxon Mobil announced that it would add two more yet-unnamed directors, one with "climate experience" and one with experience in the energy industry. But the company's efforts at placating the activists fell short, and a week after the annual meeting, it became clear by how much; the company announced that Andy Karsner, the energy entrepreneur, had also been elected to the board, giving Engine No. 1's candidates a quarter of the seats.
The small activist hedge fund Engine No. 1 holds just 0.02 percent of ExxonMobil's stock, points out the Washington Post, "but marshaled commanding support from investment managers, pensions funds and individual shareholders."

The Times called their victory "shocking," and dubbed them "the little hedge fund taking down big oil."

According to The New York Times, citing a highly anticipated UFO report released on Friday, "The government still has no explanation for nearly all of the scores of unidentified aerial phenomena reported over almost two decades and investigated by a Pentagon task force, [...] a result that is likely to fuel theories of otherworldly visitations." From the report: A total of 143 reports gathered since 2004 remain unexplained, the document released by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence said. Of those, 21 reports of unknown phenomena, involving 18 episodes, possibly demonstrate technological capabilities that are unknown to the United States: objects moving without observable propulsion or with rapid acceleration that is believed to be beyond the capabilities of Russia, China or other terrestrial nations. But, the report said, more rigorous analysis of those episodes is needed. There is no evidence that any of the episodes involve secret American weapons programs, unknown technology from Russia or China or extraterrestrial visitations. But the government report did not rule out those explanations.

The nine-page document essentially declines to draw conclusions, announcing that the available reporting is "largely inconclusive" and noting that limited and inconsistent data created a challenge in evaluating the phenomena. The report said the number of sightings was too limited for a detailed pattern analysis. While they clustered around military training or testing grounds, the report found that that could be the result of collection bias or the presence of cutting-edge sensors in those areas. Government officials outlined a plan to develop, if additional funding is available, a better program to observe and collect data on future unexplained phenomena. [...] The government intends to update Congress within 90 days on efforts to develop an improved collection strategy and what officials are calling a technical road map to develop technology to better observe the phenomena, senior government officials told reporters on Friday. Officials said they would provide lawmakers with periodical updates beyond that.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: For years, security researchers and cybercriminals have hacked ATMs by using all possible avenues to their innards, from opening a front panel and sticking a thumb drive into a USB port to drilling a hole that exposes internal wiring. Now, one researcher has found a collection of bugs that allow him to hack ATMs -- along with a wide variety of point-of-sale terminals -- in a new way: with a wave of his phone over a contactless credit card reader. Josep Rodriguez, a researcher and consultant at security firm IOActive, has spent the last year digging up and reporting vulnerabilities in the so-called near-field communications reader chips used in millions of ATMs and point-of-sale systems worldwide. NFC systems are what let you wave a credit card over a reader -- rather than swipe or insert it -- to make a payment or extract money from a cash machine. You can find them on countless retail store and restaurant counters, vending machines, taxis, and parking meters around the globe.

Now Rodriguez has built an Android app that allows his smartphone to mimic those credit card radio communications and exploit flaws in the NFC systems' firmware. With a wave of his phone, he can exploit a variety of bugs to crash point-of-sale devices, hack them to collect and transmit credit card data, invisibly change the value of transactions, and even lock the devices while displaying a ransomware message. Rodriguez says he can even force at least one brand of ATMs to dispense cash -- though that "jackpotting" hack only works in combination with additional bugs he says he has found in the ATMs' software. He declined to specify or disclose those flaws publicly due to nondisclosure agreements with the ATM vendors. "You can modify the firmware and change the price to one dollar, for instance, even when the screen shows that you're paying 50 dollars. You can make the device useless, or install a kind of ransomware. There are a lot of possibilities here," says Rodriguez of the point-of-sale attacks he discovered. "If you chain the attack and also send a special payload to an ATM's computer, you can jackpot the ATM -- like cash out, just by tapping your phone."

Rodriguez says he alerted the affected vendors -- which include ID Tech, Ingenico, Verifone, Crane Payment Innovations, BBPOS, Nexgo, and the unnamed ATM vendor -- to his findings between seven months and a year ago. Even so, he warns that the sheer number of affected systems and the fact that many point-of-sale terminals and ATMs don't regularly receive software updates -- and in many cases require physical access to update -- mean that many of those devices likely remain vulnerable. "Patching so many hundreds of thousands of ATMs physically, it's something that would require a lot of time," Rodriguez says.

ABC News reports: A highly anticipated UFO report prepared by the U.S. intelligence community is expected to be presented to congressional committees on Friday, according to a U.S. official, but officials have told ABC News the report will not provide definitive explanations for the dozens of encounters reported by the U.S. military with unidentified aerial phenomena, or UAPs. And in a development certain to disappoint UFO enthusiasts who have hoped that the report may have found links to alien spacecraft, the report has not found any evidence to suggest any links to such theories, according to three officials. The report prepared by the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) was required by the Intelligence Authorization Act passed by Congress late last year. The U.S. intelligence community was given 180 days to prepare an unclassified and classified report on what the U.S. government knew about UAP's.

AmiMoJo shares a report from TorrentFreak: Police in Japan have arrested three individuals who uploaded so-called "fast movies" to YouTube. These edits of mainstream movie titles, that use copyrighted content to reveal entire plotlines in around 10 minutes, are said to discourage people from watching the originals, costing the industry hundreds of millions in lost revenue. According to Content Overseas Distribution Association (CODA), there are channels with hundreds of uploads being viewed tens of millions of times, often with a for-profit motive. This means that they may fall outside traditional "fair use" style exceptions.

Miyagi Prefectural Police Life Safety Division and the Shiogama Police Station arrested three suspects under suspicion of uploading "fast movies" to YouTube without the rightsholders' consent. The arrests were reportedly carried out under the Copyright Act, which was boosted with new amendments on January 1, 2021. "From June to July 2020, the suspects edited 'I Am a Hero' and two other motion pictures owned by Toho Co., Ltd. as well as 'Cold Fish' and one other motion picture owned by Nikkatsu Corporation down to about 10 minutes without the permission of the right holders. Further, the suspects added narration and uploaded the videos to YouTube to earn advertising revenue," CODA explains. All of the channels shared by CODA appear to be operated from Japan but there is no shortage of YouTube channels operated from the US too.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the BBC: A large facility capable of extracting significant amounts of carbon dioxide from the air is being planned for north east Scotland. The proposed plant would remove up to one million tonnes of CO2 every year -- the same amount taken up by around 40 million trees. The extracted gas could be stored permanently deep under the seabed off the Scottish coast. This Direct Air Capture (DAC) plan is a joint project between UK firm Storegga and Canadian company Carbon Engineering. It's at a very early stage of development -- today's announcement is the beginning of the engineering and design of the plant. A feasibility study has already been carried out and if everything goes well, the facility would be operational by 2026. Storegga say up to 300 jobs would be created in the construction phase. However there are many hurdles, including planning and finance -- and a site for the plant won't be selected until next year. If it does go ahead it would be the biggest DAC facility in Europe and depending on the final configuration, could be the biggest in the world. Why Scotland? The companies cite the country's skilled workforce needed to operate a DAC facility, given their abundant renewable energy sources. The country also has pipelines going out under the sea to allow the permanent burial of the captured carbon.

An array of tiny fossils suggests dinosaurs not only roamed the Arctic, but hatched and raised their young there too. The Guardian reports: While dinosaur fossils have previously been found in the Arctic, it was unclear whether they lived there year-round or were seasonal visitors. Now experts say hundreds of fossils from very young dinosaurs recovered from northern Alaska indicates the creatures reproduced in the region, suggesting it was their permanent home. Prof Gregory Erickson, a palaeobiologist at Florida State University and a co-author of the research, said the discovery was akin to a prehistoric maternity ward, adding it was very rare to find remains of such young dinosaurs because they are so small and delicate.

Writing in the journal Current Biology, Erickson and colleagues reported how they analysed fossils recovered from the Upper Cretaceous Prince Creek Formation in a series of expeditions spanning a decade and involved the use of fine mesh screens to sift sediments. Though remains from dinosaurs have previously been found in the formation, none showed evidence of reproduction. But the new research has revealed the discovery of tiny teeth and bones from young dinosaurs, including those who were just about to hatch or had recently done so. The fossils, dating to around 70m years ago, came from large and small-bodied dinosaurs covering at least seven different types -- including duck-billed and horned dinosaurs. Teeth were also found from a young tyrannosaur, said Erickson, possibly just six months old.

While the findings rule out the idea that dinosaurs only moved north after reproduction, Erickson added that young hatched in the Arctic would have been too small to travel south for the winter. "Given long incubation periods, small hatching sizes, and the short Arctic summer, it is very unlikely the dinosaurs were migrating," he said. The team said the conclusion that the dinosaurs likely lived in the Arctic year-round is backed up by other evidence, including that many of the species have not been found in rocks of a similar age at lower latitudes. At the time that dinosaurs roamed the Arctic, the region would have lacked big polar ice caps and had conifer forests, but the researchers say the creatures still faced harsh conditions, with up to 120 days of continuous darkness in the winter and an average annual temperature of just above 6C.

The House Judiciary Committee advanced a bill to prevent companies like Amazon.com, Apple, Facebook and Alphabet's Google from favoring their own products, a measure that critics warned could complicate the use of Apple's own apps on its iPhone or shopping on Amazon. From a report: The legislation was the fifth bill out of six being taken up by the committee in a session that ran for nearly 20 hours into early Thursday morning, before breaking until later in the day. The measure, sponsored by antitrust subcommittee Chair David Cicilline, advanced on a narrowly bipartisan 24-20 vote. The marathon session featured recurring clashes over whether software giant Microsoft would be subject to the committee's four bills focused on the biggest tech companies. The criteria for a "covered platform" in those proposals are based on market capitalization, monthly users and whether other businesses depend on the company's services. The extensive back and forth featured debate about antitrust principles, content moderation, freedom of speech and even how legislation should define a foreign adversary. These discussions didn't fall along party lines, and in some cases showed disagreement among Democrats and found Republicans pitted against each other.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from VentureBeat: Blockchain.com will let people use human-readable usernames in blockchain transactions thanks to a partnership with Unstoppable Domains. San Francisco-based Blockchain.com now supports Unstoppable Domains, a domain name provider for blockchains, which are the secure and transparent digital ledgers behind cryptocurrencies. That's a big deal because Blockchain.com is the world's largest crypto wallet provider, and people have been stumbling around with encoded names that are impossible to remember. And when people lose these names for their wallets or the passwords that go with them, they are often unable to recover their names. This particular deal won't help you with your passwords, but it does help with usernames. And that helps people send money to each other more easily, with fewer mistakes. Traditionally, sending Bitcoin, Ethereum, Doge, and other cryptocurrencies requires entering the recipient's 25- to 42-digit alphanumeric wallet address, said Matthew Gould, CEO of Unstoppable Domains, said in an interview with VentureBeat. If a person mistypes or miscopies a wallet address, those funds can be lost forever. Now, instead of "156i6HJfMWb1h2BEsKpfvZ2tQugqo4vs2w," users can simply type "[YourName].crypto" to send money to others or transfer it between accounts. "What is funny is this is a case of history repeating itself because we did the exact same thing with computer networks in the 90s, where the very first way to look up websites was actually using IP addresses," Gould said. "You actually had to remember long strings of numbers in order to find the very first content on the internet. And then they invented a naming service for those so that you could use .com names. It's a very similar thing."

CNET News: President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris on Thursday agreed to a $1.2 trillion bipartisan infrastructure plan that includes building out high-speed universal broadband across the nation. The infrastructure framework will use two-thirds of the resources from Biden's proposed American Jobs Plan, and also includes clean transportation, clean water infrastructure, renewable energy infrastructure and climate change resilience. Under the plan, $65 billion will be invested in broadband for all. It proposes state and local investment in broadband infrastructure as well as using the proceeds from 5G spectrum auctions. It's a step backwards from the $2.25 trillion infrastructure plan previously proposed by Biden in March, which included $100 billion for broadband infrastructure. In March, Biden spoke about the digital divide, and how more than 30 million Americans have no access to broadband while those living in urban and suburban markets face broadband bills that are too expensive.

A code repository used by the New York state government's IT department was left exposed on the internet, allowing anyone to access the projects inside, some of which contained secret keys and passwords associated with state government systems. From a report: The exposed GitLab server was discovered on Saturday by Dubai-based SpiderSilk, a cybersecurity company credited with discovering data spills at Samsung, Clearview AI and MoviePass. Organizations use GitLab to collaboratively develop and store their source code -- as well as the secret keys, tokens and passwords needed for the projects to work -- on servers that they control. But the exposed server was accessible from the internet and configured so that anyone from outside the organization could create a user account and log in unimpeded, SpiderSilk's chief security officer Mossab Hussin told TechCrunch. When TechCrunch visited the GitLab server, the login page showed it was accepting new user accounts. It's not known exactly how long the GitLab server was accessible in this way, but historic records from Shodan, a search engine for exposed devices and databases, shows the GitLab was first detected on the internet on March 18.

In a blog post today, Google announced a series of new security enhancements that will make many publicly accessible Google Drive links no longer accessible. The enhancements are being brought to Google Drive on September 23rd, 2021. XDA Developers reports: Once this change goes live, Google says that users will need a "resource key" to access a publicly shared link. However, users won't need an updated link with said resource key appended if they've already accessed that file before in the past. As a result of this change, we can imagine that lots of Google Drive links shared online on forums and other sites will no longer work as their owners neglect to update them, leaving them only accessible to the people that have already clicked the links before.

According to the post made on the Google Workspace blog, this won't affect all files. Users who have shared a file that is affected by this change will get an email from Google informing them of this change and how to opt out of needing those files from being updated. These emails will be sent out to users starting on July 26th. Google shared a copy of a sample email to show end-users what the message they'll get will look like. The company doesn't recommend opting out all files and says that only the files that you want publicly accessible should be opted out. Users have until September 13th to decide if they want the update applied, so if you have no files that are publicly accessible, then you won't need to do anything. YouTube is also making similar changes. "Starting on July 23, Unlisted videos uploaded before the January 1, 2017, system change will be automatically made private," reports 9to5Google. "That said, YouTube creators can decide to opt out of this change. Filling out this form will let you 'keep your Unlisted videos uploaded before 2017 in their current Unlisted state.' Other options include making Unlisted pre-2017 videos public or re-uploading as a new Unlisted video at the expense of stats."

Warren Buffett, the chairman and chief executive of Berkshire Hathaway, announced his resignation as a trustee of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation on Wednesday, according to a press release. Interesting Engineering reports: Bill and Melinda Gates announced that they were getting divorced in May of 2021. For many, it was an earth-shattering announcement, one that raises a host of questions about the future of their foundation and its quest to end disease worldwide. This latest announcement adds to the growing number of questions about what's in store for the many enterprises currently being managed by the Gates Foundation. The foundation supplies grants to researchers studying polio, nutrition, agriculture, global education, sanitation, HIV, malaria, tobacco control, vaccines, gender inequality...and we're just getting started.

At the age of 90, Buffet has donated $41 billion worth of Berkshire stock to the five foundations. In today's announcement, he added that he has donated an extra $4.1 billion, but he didn't give a reason for his decision. "Today is a milestone for me," Buffett wrote in a statement. "In 2006, I pledged to distribute all of my Berkshire Hathaway shares -- more than 99% of my net worth -- to philanthropy. With today's $4.1 billion distribution, I'm halfway there."

"For years I have been a trustee -- an inactive trustee at that -- of only one recipient of my funds, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (BMG). I am now resigning from that post, just as I have done at all corporate boards other than Berkshire's," Buffett said. "The CEO of BMG is Mark Suzman, an outstanding recent selection who has my full support. My goals are 100% in sync with those of the foundation, and my physical participation is in no way needed to achieve these goals."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Motherboard: Peloton's Treadmills cost between $2,500 and $4,000. They've also injured 70 people and killed one child. Peloton issued a recall on the treadmills after an investigation by the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC). Those who kept the Tread+ got a nasty shock in their inbox recently: After the treadmill downloaded an update Peloton said was designed to make the device safer, users reported they could no longer run on it without paying Peloton a $39.99 per month subscription fee. "We care deeply about the safety and well being of our Members and we created Tread Lock to secure your Tread+ against unauthorized access," Peloton said in an email it sent to customers. "Unfortunately at this time 'Just Runn' is no longer accessible without a Peloton Membership." It offered to waive the subscription fee for the first three months and apologized for the inconvenience.

Peloton's subscription ecosystem provides users with live classes, crafted playlists, and customized tracks. For people who just want to run or bike, they can select the "Just Bike" or "Just Run" feature and use their devices like normal exercise equipment. Unless, of course, the user has updated the Tread+ to get the safety update. [...] The new Tread Lock update adds another layer of safety to the Tread+. "Tread Lock is a safety feature that automatically locks the Peloton Tread+ after you put your Tread+ to sleep or after 45 seconds of inactivity outside of a class," Peloton said on its website. For now, the cost of using that new feature is, apparently, about $40 a month, though Peloton claimed it would not always be so. "Unfortunately due to current technical limitations, Tread Lock is not yet available without a Peloton Membership," Peloton told Motherboard in an email. "We understand that this is an inconvenience for some and are working on updates to Tread Lock that will allow us to make Tread Lock and Just Run available without a Peloton Membership."

schwit1 shares a report from CNN: The Supreme Court ruled in favor of a former high school cheerleader who argued that she could not be punished by her public school for posting a profanity-laced caption on Snapchat when she was off school grounds. The case involving a Pennsylvania teenager was closely watched to see how the court would handle the free speech rights of some 50 million public school children and the concerns of schools over off-campus and online speech that could amount to a disruption of the school's mission or rise to the level of bullying or threats.

The 8-1 majority opinion was penned by Justice Stephen Breyer. "It might be tempting to dismiss (the student's) words as unworthy of the robust First Amendment protections discussed herein. But sometimes it is necessary to protect the superfluous in order to preserve the necessary," Breyer wrote. Breyer said that the court has made clear that students "do not shed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech or expression even 'at the school house gate.'" "But," he said, "we have also made clear that courts must apply the First Amendment in light of the special characteristics of the school environment." "The school itself has an interest in protecting a student's unpopular expression, especially when the expression takes place off campus. America's public schools are the nurseries of democracy," the opinion read.

Breyer disagreed with the reasoning of a lower court opinion that held that a school could never regulate speech that takes place off campus, but at the same time he declined to set forth what he called "a broad, highly general First Amendment rules stating just what counts as 'off-campus speech." Instead, he allowed that while the cheerleader's post were "crude" they "did not amount to fighting words." He said that while she used "vulgarity" her speech was not "obscene." In addition, her post appeared "outside of school hours from a location outside of school" and they did not target any member of the school community with "abusive" language. He added that she used her own personal cellphone and her audience consisted of a private circle of Snapchat friends. Breyer said "these features of her speech" diminish the school's interest in punishing her. Justice Clarence Thomas dissented. He wrote that students like the former cheerleader "who are active in extracurricular programs have a greater potential, by virtue of their participation, to harm those programs." He added: "For example, a profanity-laced screed delivered on social media or at the mall has a much different effect on a football program when done by a regular student than when done by the captain of the football team. So, too, here."

An anonymous reader shares a report: Blender is one of the most important open source projects, as the 3D graphics application suite is used by countless people at home, for business, and in education. The software can be used on many platforms, such as Windows, Mac, and of course, Linux. Today, Ubuntu-maker Canonical announces it will offer paid enterprise support for Blender LTS. Surprisingly, this support will not only be for Ubuntu users. Heck, it isn't even limited to Linux installations. Actually, Canonical will offer this support to Blender LTS users on Windows, Mac, and Linux.

Reuters: Antivirus creator John McAfee, 75, was found dead in his prison cell in Barcelona after the Spanish high court had authorised his extradition to the US, the Catalan justice department said, confirming an earlier report from El Mundo newspaper. Everything points it could be a death by suicide, the department said in a statement. The high court had agreed to extradite him back to the US where he faces tax evasion charges. Spanish newspaper El Mundo's story. AFP has corroborated the news.

For billions of years, Earth has been playing a cosmic game of hide-and-seek. New research published today in Nature posits that roughly 1,700 stars are in the right position to have spotted life on Earth as early as 5,000 years ago. From a report: These stars, within 100 parsecs (or about 326 light-years) of the sun, were found using data from NASA's Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite and the European Space Agency's Gaia mission. And with thousands of exoplanets already found orbiting other stars in our universe, could we have already seen life on other planets come and go? Might they have seen us? "The universe is dynamic," says Lisa Kaltenegger, director of the Carl Sagan Institute at Cornell, and lead author of the study. "Stars move, we move. First the Earth moves around the sun, but the sun moves around the center of our galaxy."

About 70% of exoplanets are found using the transit method: when a planet passes between a star and an observer, the star dims enough to confirm the presence of a previously unseen celestial body. Kaltenegger and coauthor Jackie Faherty of the American Museum of Natural History compiled a list of stars that either will see or already have seen Earth transit in their lifetimes. Of these, they found seven stars with orbiting exoplanets that could potentially be habitable. Statistically, one out of four stars has a planet that exists in the "Goldilocks zone" -- not too hot, not too cold, and just far away from a star to support life. But how do we determine whether faraway exoplanets meet these criteria? When transiting exoplanets block stellar light, part of that light filters through the atmosphere. Energy and light interact with the molecules and atoms of that planet, and by the time that light reaches an astronomer's telescope, scientists can determine whether it has interacted with chemicals like oxygen or methane. A combination of those two, Kaltenegger says, is the fingerprint for life.

MojoKid writes: AMD's FidelityFX Super Resolution (FSR) PC graphics up-scaling technology is ready for prime-time and the company has allowed members of the press to showcase performance and visuals of the tech in action with a number of game engines. AMD FidelityFX Super Resolution is vendor-agnostic and doesn't require specialized hardware to function like NVIDIA DLSS, which relies on Tensor cores on-board NVIDIA Turing or Ampere GPUs to accelerate neural network models that have been specifically trained on game engines. In contrast, AMD FSR utilizes more traditional spatial upscaling to create a super resolution image from a single input frame, not multiple frames. AMD FSR then employs a library of open-source algorithms that work on sharpening both image edge and texture detail. In game testing at HotHardware, frame rates can jump dramatically with little to no perceptible reduction in image quality, and the technology even works on many NVIDIA GPUs as well. There are currently 19 titles that are available or planned with support for AMD FSR, but with the open nature of the technology and cross-GPU compatibility, game developers theoretically should have significant incentive for adoption to breath new performance into their game titles.

Microsoft's market capitalization hit $2 trillion for the first time. GeekWire reports: The Redmond, Wash.-based tech giant trails only Apple among the world's most valuable companies. Apple became the first publicly traded U.S. company to reach the $2 trillion mark in August. Fellow Seattle-area giant Amazon, valued Tuesday at $1.77 trillion, is also approaching the $2 trillion club. Microsoft stock was up 1.1% Tuesday and is up more than 20% this year.

The company continues to see growing demand for its cloud services as the pandemic has accelerated technology adoption. It beat quarterly expectations with $41.7 billion in revenue for the March quarter, up 19% year-over-year -- its biggest revenue growth since 2018 -- and profits of $15.5 billion, up 44%. A Wedbush report last month projected more growth ahead for Microsoft, with Azure's cloud momentum "still in its early days" and the company "firmly positioned to gain more market share vs. AWS in this cloud arms race." Microsoft also continues to invest heavily in its gaming business; add new features to its Teams collaboration software; and is staying active in the M&A arena with its $19.7 billion acquisition of Nuance Communications and reported interest in Discord and Pinterest.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: While bitcoin leaves a visible trail of transactions on its underlying blockchain, the niche "privacy coin" monero was designed to obscure the sender and receiver, as well as the amount exchanged. As a result, it has become an increasingly sought-after tool for criminals such as ransomware gangs, posing new problems for law enforcement. "We've seen ransomware groups specifically shifting to monero," said Bryce Webster-Jacobsen, director of intelligence at GroupSense, a cyber security group that has helped a growing number of victims pay out ransoms in monero. "[Cyber criminals] have recognized the ability for mistakes to be made using bitcoin that allow blockchain transactions to reveal their identity."

Russia-linked REvil, the notorious ransomware group believed to be behind the attack this month on meatpacker JBS, has removed the option of paying in bitcoin this year, demanding monero only, according to Brett Callow, threat analyst at Emsisoft. Meanwhile, both DarkSide, the group blamed for the Colonial Pipeline hack, and Babuk, which was behind the attack on Washington DC police this year, allow payments in either cryptocurrency but charge a 10 to 20 percent premium to victims paying in riskier bitcoin, experts say. Justin Ehrenhofer, a cryptocurrency compliance expert and member of the monero developer community, said that at the beginning of 2020, its use by ransomware gangs was "a rounding error." Today he estimates that about 10 to 20 percent of ransoms are paid in monero and that the figure will probably rise to 50 percent by the end of the year.