According to analysts at Canalys, the PC market in the United States is booming. Sales in Q2 2021 have grown 17% with 36.8 million units shipped. "Notebooks and desktops led the way with a growth in shipments of 27% and 23% respectively compared to last year," reports ZDNet. From the report: HP was the leading company in the US, delivering more than 8 million devices to customers and dominating the Chromebook sector with a 42% market share. Apple suffered a 3% decline in devices shipped but still held on to the second place slot behind HP. Canalys noted that Apple was the only major PC manufacturer to see negative growth in Q2, due in no small part to waning consumer interest in iPads, according to the report. The company did see a 24% increase in notebook shipments thanks to recent success with the M1 chip.

The rest of the list is rounded out by Samsung, which saw a 51% growth in shipments year over year while Lenovo and Dell posted 25% and 11% growth respectively in Q2. Canalys attributed Lenovo's success to its growing influence over the Chromebook market while Samsung solidified its place in the tablet market, seeing a growth of 19% in the US for Q2 even as the overall tablet market shrank. [Tablet shipments were down 1% in Q2.] Following a spike in tablet interest in Q2 2020, there has been a slowdown as the COVID-19 pandemic has waned and more people spent the summer outdoors.

An anonymous reader writes: Software used by the Department of Homeland Security to scan the records of millions of immigrants can automatically flag naturalized Americans to potentially have their citizenship revoked based on secret criteria, according to documents reviewed by The Intercept. The software, known as ATLAS, takes information from immigrants' case files and runs it though various federal databases. ATLAS looks for indicators that someone is dangerous or dishonest and is ostensibly designed to detect fraud among people who come into contact with the U.S. immigration system. But advocates for immigrants believe that the real purpose of the computer program is to create a pretext to strip people of citizenship. Whatever the motivation, ATLAS's intended outcome is ultimately deportation, judging from the documents, which originate within DHS and were obtained by the Open Society Justice Initiative and Muslim Advocates through Freedom of Information Act lawsuits.

ATLAS helps DHS investigate immigrants' personal relationships and backgrounds, examining biometric information like fingerprints and, in certain circumstances, considering an immigrant's race, ethnicity, and national origin. It draws information from a variety of unknown sources, plus two that have been criticized as being poorly managed: the FBI's Terrorist Screening Database, also known as the terrorist watchlist, and the National Crime Information Center. Powered by servers at tech giant Amazon, the system in 2019 alone conducted 16.5 million screenings and flagged more than 120,000 cases of potential fraud or threats to national security and public safety. Ultimately, humans at DHS are involved in determining how to handle immigrants flagged by ATLAS. But the software threatens to amplify the harm caused by bureaucratic mistakes within the immigration system, mistakes that already drive many denaturalization and deportation cases. "ATLAS should be considered as suspect until it is shown not to generate unfair, arbitrary, and discriminatory results," said Laura Bingham, a lawyer with the Open Society Justice Initiative. "From what we are able to scrutinize in terms of the end results -- like the disparate impact of denaturalization based on national origin -- there is ample reason to consider ATLAS a threat to naturalized citizens."

Facebook is considering building products and features related to nonfungible tokens, or NFTs, the digital assets that have taken off with the rise of blockchain technology. From a report: "We're definitely looking at the number of ways to get involved in the space because we think we're in a really good position to do so," Facebook executive David Marcus said Tuesday in an interview on Bloomberg Television. Marcus leads F2, or Facebook Financial, the internal group developing the company's Novi digital wallet. That wallet could be used to hold NFTs, he said. "When you have a good crypto wallet like Novi will be, you also have to think about how to help consumers support NFTs," he added. "We're definitely thinking about this." He wasn't more specific about what kinds of NFT-related products Facebook might build.

Facebook's digital wallet is "ready now," Marcus said, but the company has been waiting to launch it until it can do so alongside Diem, the digital currency previously known as Libra, which Marcus co-founded from within Facebook in 2019. Plans are for Diem to offer a so-called stablecoin backed by the U.S. dollar, but it's unclear when the coin will be introduced. The project faced immense pushback from lawmakers and regulators when it was unveiled, and while Facebook is still a partner on the project, Diem is now run independently.

The Federal Communications Commission has proposed a $5 million fine against right-wing activists Jacob Wohl and Jack Burkman for allegedly making illegal robocalls discouraging mail voting ahead of the 2020 election. From a report: The record-setting penalty from the FCC comes as the pair faces criminal charges of voter suppression in Michigan and a federal lawsuit in New York accusing them of making 85,000 robocalls to Black Americans in an attempt to keep them from voting. The FCC says Wohl and Burkman made over 1,000 pre-recorded calls to wireless phones without receiving consent for those calls, in violation of the Telephone Consumer Protection Act. The messages said if the voters cast their ballot by mail, their "personal information will be part of a public database that will be used by police departments to track down old warrants and be used by credit card companies to collect outstanding debts," according to an FCC news release.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from CNBC: Interviews with Coinbase customers around the country and a review of thousands of complaints reveal a pattern of account takeovers, where users see money suddenly vanish from their account, followed by poor customer service from Coinbase that made those users feel left hanging and angry. Making the issue even worse, cryptocurrency transactions cannot be reversed, according to the FBI. Experts say once criminals access an account, funds can be drained in minutes. Coinbase, which went public in April, has a market cap of about $65 billion, has more than 68 million users in 100-plus countries, more than 2,100 full-time employees and $223 billion in held assets, according to the company. While the cryptocurrency exchange company has grown rapidly, complaints have continued to arise. Since 2016, Coinbase users have filed more than 11,000 complaints against Coinbase with the Federal Trade Commission and Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, mostly related to customer service. Former employees told CNBC the company's customer service practices shifted over time, with representatives struggling to keep up with demand.

After a review of Coinbase's complaints, the Better Business Bureau in March determined the company has a "pattern of complaints from customers who state they are locked out of their accounts, even after providing required information or updates." The organization has received 1,128 complaints in the past three years, according to its website. BBB said it sent a letter to Coinbase in order to address the customers' complaints and receive feedback from any implemented improvements. The group has "not heard a response from this business, about the situation, pattern of complaints for the last three years," Alma Galvan, a marketing and communication manager with the organization, said in an email to CNBC. In an email to CNBC, Coinbase said: "Over the years, we've consistently updated our customer support offerings to help us scale. In early 2020, we moved to email as our primary channel of support. Many of our customer inquiries require our agents to conduct a significant amount of research to resolve the issue. And, to avoid long wait times, communicating asynchronously via email was the preferred method. However, we recognize that customers want real-time support, and that's why we're rolling out phone support for ATOs this month and live messaging for all customers later this year."

Asked about the number of customer service complaints, the company said: "Over the past several years, our customer base grew exponentially. We grew from 43+ million users at the end of 2020 to 68+ million registered users, as of June 30, 2021. Through all this growth, some of our customers unfortunately experienced challenges and delays reaching our support team, which resulted in a negative impact for some of our customers. Improving our customer experience remains a top priority for Coinbase." They declined to disclose how many customers' accounts have been hacked or the total amount it has refunded customers as a result of the hacks.