California is in the process of approving new guidelines for math education in public schools that "pushes Algebra 1 back to 9th grade, de-emphasizes calculus, and applies social justice principles to math lessons," writes Joe Hong via the San Francisco Standard. The new approach would have been approved earlier this month but has been delayed due to the attention and controversy it has received. Here's an excerpt from the report: When Rebecca Pariso agreed to join a team of educators tasked in late 2019 with California's new mathematics framework, she said she expected some controversy. But she didn't expect her work would be in the national spotlight. [...] Every eight years (PDF), a group of educators comes together to update the state's math curriculum framework. This particular update has attracted extra attention, and controversy, because of perceived changes it makes to how "gifted" students progress -- and because it pushes Algebra 1 back to 9th grade, de-emphasizes calculus, and applies social justice principles to math lessons. San Francisco pioneered key aspects of the new approach, opting in 2014 to delay algebra instruction until 9th grade and to push advanced mathematics courses until at least after 10th grade as a means of promoting equity.

San Francisco Unified School District touted the effort as a success, asserting that algebra failure rates fell and the number of students taking advanced math rose as a result of the change. The California Department of Education cited those results in drafting the statewide framework. But critics have accused the district of using cherry-picked and misleading assertions to bolster the case for the changes. The intent of the state mathematics framework, its designers say, is to maintain rigor while also helping remedy California's achievement gaps for Black, Latino and low-income students, which remain some of the largest in the nation. At the heart of the wrangling lies a broad agreement about at least one thing: The way California public schools teach math isn't working. On national standardized tests, California ranks in the bottom quartile among all states and U.S. territories for 8th grade math scores.

Yet for all the sound and fury, the proposed framework, about 800-pages long, is little more than a set of suggestions. Its designers are revising it now and will subject it to 60 more days of public review. Once it's approved in July, districts may adopt as much or as little of the framework as they choose -- and can disregard it completely without any penalty. "It's not mandated that you use the framework," said framework team member Dianne Wilson, a program specialist at Elk Grove Unified. "There's a concern that it will be implemented unequally."

Mozilla announced last week via a support article that its Firefox Lockwise password manager app will reach end-of-life on December 13th. The final release versions are 1.8.1 (iOS) and 4.0.3 (Android) and will no longer be available to download or reinstall after that date. The Verge reports: What started in 2018 as a small experimental mobile app called Lockbox ended up bringing a way to access saved passwords and perform autofills on iOS, Android, and desktop devices to a small but enthusiastic following of Firefox fans. The app was also later adapted as a Firefox extension. It seemed like it was apt to stick around for the long run.

The support article recommends that users continue accessing passwords using the native Firefox browsers on desktop and mobile. In an added note on the support site, Mozilla suggests that later in December, the Firefox iOS app will gain the ability to manage Firefox passwords systemwide. The note alludes to Mozilla adopting the features of Lockwise and eventually integrating them into the Firefox browser apps natively on all platforms.

Japan is allocating about $5.2 billion of its fiscal 2021 supplementary budget to support advanced semiconductor manufacturers, Nikkei has learned. From the report: The government plans to invest about 400 billion yen in a new factory set up by the world's largest contract chipmaker Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. in Kumamoto prefecture, southwest Japan. The remaining 200 billion yen will go toward setting up other new factories, with projects under consideration including by U.S. memory chipmaker Micron Technology and Japan's Kioxia Holdings. The Japanese government is considering making semiconductors a new area of focus under a law targeting companies developing high-speed 5G technologies, meaning it would approve investment plans for their factories under the revised law. [...] The 600 billion yen fund would cover subsidies over several years. Companies would receive support under the condition that they would increase production when there is supply shortage, as the Japanese government hopes to ensure a stable domestic chip supply.

The online bank Atom Bank has introduced a four-day work week for its 430 staff without cutting their pay. The BBC reports: Employees now work 34 hours over four days and get Monday or Friday off, when previously they clocked up 37.5 hours across the whole week. Boss Mark Mullen told the BBC it was inspired by the pandemic and would help improve wellbeing and retain staff. However, employees will have to work longer hours on the days that they are in.

Atom was one of the UK's first digital challenger banks and had 2.7 billion pounds of loans on its books in the last financial year. Its new working arrangements kicked in on 1 November after a review found they would not affect customer service or productivity. Mr Mullen said the new arrangement was voluntary, but strongly reflected his staff's preferences for more flexible working. "Everyone is expected to stick to it," he added. "I can't be sending my staff emails on a Friday, I can't expect to them to respond to them."

Not a single scientist has applied to a UK government visa scheme for Nobel prize laureates and other award winners since its launch six months ago, New Scientist reported Tuesday. From a report: The scheme has come under criticism from scientists and has been described as "a joke." In May, the government launched a fast-track visa route for award-winners in the fields of science, engineering, the humanities and medicine who want to work in the UK. This prestigious prize route makes it easier for some academics to apply for a Global Talent visa -- it requires only one application, with no need to meet conditions such as a grant from the UK Research and Innovation funding body or a job offer at a UK organisation.

The number of prizes that qualify academics for this route currently stands at over 70, and includes the Turing Award, the L'Oreal-UNESCO for Women in Science International Awards, and various gongs awarded by professional or membership bodies both in the UK and elsewhere. "Winners of these awards have reached the pinnacle of their career and they have so much to offer the UK," said home secretary Priti Patel when the prestigious prize scheme launched in May. "This is exactly what our new point-based immigration system was designed for -- attracting the best and brightest based on the skills and talent they have, not where they've come from." But a freedom of information request by New Scientist has revealed that in the six months since the scheme was launched, no one working in science, engineering, the humanities or medicine has actually applied for a visa through this route.

U.S. banking agencies provided more insight into their plans for regulating cryptocurrencies on Tuesday, issuing a to-do list of their priorities for next year and announcing a new policy that would require banks to seek permission before offering digital currency products. From a report: The Federal Reserve and other banking agencies released an agenda outlining areas of focus, including how they plan to weigh custody, crypto-backed loans and the possibility of capital standards, according to a joint statement. Separately, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency said that banks must get an additional sign-off from the regulator before engaging with digital coins. "Throughout 2022, the agencies plan to provide greater clarity on whether certain activities related to crypto-assets conducted by banking organizations are legally permissible," the Fed, Office of the Comptroller of the Currency and Federal Deposit Insurance said in the statement.

Russia has demanded that 13 foreign and mostly U.S. technology companies be officially represented on Russian soil by the end of 2021 or face possible restrictions or outright bans. From a report: The demand, from state communications regulator Roskomnadzor late on Monday, gave few details of what exactly the companies were required to do and targeted some firms that already have Russian offices. Foreign social media giants with more than 500,000 daily usershave been obliged to open offices in Russia since a new law took effect on July 1. The list published on Monday names the companies for the first time.

It lists Alphabet's Google, Facebook, Twitter, TikTok and messaging app Telegram, all of which Russia has fined this year for failing to delete content it deems illegal. Apple, which Russia has targeted for alleged abuse of its dominant position in the mobile applications market, was also on the list. None of those companies responded to requests for comment. Roskomnadzor said firms that violate the legislation could face advertising, data collection and money transfer restrictions, or outright bans.

Samsung Electronics has decided to build an advanced U.S. chip plant in Texas, a win for the Biden administration as it prioritizes supply chain security and greater semiconductor capacity on American soil. From a report: South Korea's largest company has decided on the city of Taylor, roughly 30 miles (48 kilometers) from its giant manufacturing hub in Austin, a person familiar with the matter said. Samsung and Texas officials will announce the decision Tuesday afternoon, according to people familiar with the matter, asking not to be identified because the news hasn't been made public. A Samsung representative said it hadn't made a final decision and declined further comment. Samsung is hoping to win more American clients and narrow the gap with Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. Its decision, which came months after de facto leader Jay Y. Lee was released from prison on parole, follows plans by TSMC and Intel Corp. to spend billions on cutting-edge facilities globally. The industry triumvirate is racing to meet a post-pandemic surge in demand that has stretched global capacity to the max, while anticipating more and more connected devices from cars to homes will require chips in future. The plant will cost Samsung $17 billion to set up, according to WSJ.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: Niantic, the augmented reality platform that's developing games like Pokemon GO, raised $300 million from Coatue, valuing the company at $9 billion. The San Fransisco-based startup, which initially spun out of Google, will use this money to build what it calls the "real-world metaverse." As early as August, Niantic founder and CEO John Hanke has referred to the metaverse -- at least, the one that renders us bound to VR headsets, like in "Ready Player One" -- as a "dystopian nightmare."

Unlike Facebook, which changed its company name to Meta to signal its investment in VR technology, Niantic wants to develop technology that brings people closer to the outside world. Earlier this month, Niantic unveiled its Lightship AR Developer Kit (ARDK), which makes tools to develop AR games publicly available for free to anyone who has a basic knowledge of the Unity game engine. "At Niantic, we believe humans are the happiest when their virtual world leads them to a physical one," Hanke said at the time. "Unlike a sci-fi metaverse, a real-world metaverse will use technology to improve our experience of the world as we've known it for thousands of years." The funding will help expand the ARDK, which has already been used by companies like Coachella, Historic Royal Palaces, Universal Pictures, SoftBank, Warner Music Group and the PGA of America to create augmented reality experiences.

A rare manuscript by theoretical physicist Albert Einstein goes under the hammer in Paris on Tuesday, with auctioneers aiming for a stratospheric price tag. Phys.Org reports: The manuscript, containing preparatory work for Einstein's key achievement the theory of relativity, is estimated at between two and three million euros (2.3-3.4 million), according to Christie's which is hosting the sale on behalf of the Aguttes auction house. "This is without a doubt the most valuable Einstein manuscript ever to come to auction," Christie's said in a statement.

The 54-page document was handwritten in 1913 and 1914 in Zurich, Switzerland, by Einstein and his colleague and confidant, Swiss engineer Michele Besso. Christie's said it was thanks to Besso that the manuscript was preserved for posterity. This was "almost like a miracle" since the German-born genius himself would have been unlikely to hold on to what he considered to be a simple working document, Christie's said. Today, the paper offers "a fascinating plunge into the the mind of the 20th century's greatest scientist," it said.

Five members of Congress called for federal consumer-privacy legislation after a Reuters report published Friday revealed how Amazon has led an under-the-radar campaign to gut privacy protections in 25 states while amassing a valuable trove of personal data on American consumers. From a report: "Amazon shamefully launched a campaign to squash privacy legislation while its devices listen to and watch our lives," U.S. Senator Richard Blumenthal, a Connecticut Democrat who has been involved in bipartisan negotiations on privacy legislation, wrote Friday on Twitter. "This is now the classic Big Tech move: deploy money and armies of lobbyists to fight meaningful reforms in the shadows but claim to support them publicly."

The revelations underscored the need for bipartisan action on stronger privacy protections, he wrote. No major federal privacy legislation has passed Congress in years because members have been deadlocked on the issue. U.S. Senator Ron Wyden, an Oregon Democrat who has introduced several privacy bills in recent years, said in a statement that the Reuters story showed how companies including Amazon are "spending millions to weaken state laws," and hoping Congress will also water down federal legislation "until it's worthless."

Three years ago Strella Biotechnology launched to "try to reduce waste in the U.S. food system — a problem that by some estimates creates as much emissions as 33 million passenger vehicles," reports the Washington Post. Alternate URL here and here.)

And today the founder's warehouse-monitoring device — about half the size of a shoebox — watches over about 15% of all the apples grown in America: Already, agriculture contributes more to greenhouse gas emissions than the total of all the cars, planes, trains and trucks in the world. The pressure to grow more food is leading to deforestation in the Amazon, the drying up of rivers and a greater demand for fossil fuel-based fertilizer. Anything that can be done to reduce waste and increase the productivity of existing agricultural land is a big win for the climate. [Strella CEO and founder] Sizov, 24, wants to eliminate food waste one fruit at a time...

Sizov chanced upon a website that described the climate impact of food waste — up to 4% of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions, according to analyses from ReFed, a nonprofit organization that works to reduce food waste... The problem will only intensify as the global population grows, experts say. By 2050, the United Nations expects there will be another 2 billion mouths to feed around the world, an increase of more than 25% in just three decades. And as countries such as China and India grow richer, their populations are gradually changing their eating habits: more meat, more eggs — and a bigger carbon footprint tied to raising all of those animals and clearing off land to grow more food. "If you reduce food loss and waste by 50%, you can save a lot of production emissions, but you can also avoid a heck of a lot of deforestation," said Tim Searchinger, a senior research scholar at Princeton University's Center for Policy Research on Energy and the Environment. Searchinger explained that after accounting for the fact that an acre of farmland could otherwise be an acre of forest, the carbon footprint of food skyrockets as trees soak up so much carbon dioxide.

Eliminating waste also happens to be a way to help farmers and grocery stores earn more money, since the more efficiently food makes it to consumers, the more cash ends up with the people who've done the selling... [T]hat's where Strella's sensors come in. They monitor ethylene, a gas key to the ripening of fruits and vegetables. Apples accelerate their production of ethylene as they grow sweeter inside the storerooms. Once they're ready, the gas levels off, telling Strella's monitors that they're ready to be sent to supermarkets. Wait too long and the apples turn brown or grow mealy. If producers are lucky, they can try to break even by turning those apples into juice or applesauce. If they're unlucky, the overripe apples end up in compost or landfills.
Ultimately one out of every five apples doesn't make it from the warehouse to the supermarket, the Post points out (while some others lose their crunch). So Sizov hopes their waste-reducing technology will catch on because it's also a way to reduce business losses. "There's a direct alignment of a sustainable goal with a profitability incentive."

MIT's Technology Review shares data from a Facebook-run tool called CrowdTangle. It shows that by 2018 in the nation of Myanmar (population: 53 million), " All the engagement had instead gone to fake news and clickbait websites.

"In a country where Facebook is synonymous with the internet, the low-grade content overwhelmed other information sources." [T]he sheer volume of fake news and clickbait acted like fuel on the flames of already dangerously high ethnic and religious tensions. It shifted public opinion and escalated the conflict, which ultimately led to the death of 10,000 Rohingya, by conservative estimates, and the displacement of 700,000 more. In 2018, a United Nations investigation determined that the violence against the Rohingya constituted a genocide and that Facebook had played a "determining role" in the atrocities. Months later, Facebook admitted it hadn't done enough "to help prevent our platform from being used to foment division and incite offline violence." Over the last few weeks, the revelations from the Facebook Papers, a collection of internal documents provided to Congress and a consortium of news organizations by whistleblower Frances Haugen, have reaffirmed what civil society groups have been saying for years: Facebook's algorithmic amplification of inflammatory content, combined with its failure to prioritize content moderation outside the US and Europe, has fueled the spread of hate speech and misinformation, dangerously destabilizing countries around the world.

But there's a crucial piece missing from the story. Facebook isn't just amplifying misinformation.

The company is also funding it.

An MIT Technology Review investigation, based on expert interviews, data analyses, and documents that were not included in the Facebook Papers, has found that Facebook and Google are paying millions of ad dollars to bankroll clickbait actors, fueling the deterioration of information ecosystems around the world.
Facebook pays them for permission to open their content within Facebook's app (where Facebook controls the advertising) rather than having users clickthrough to the publisher's own web site, reports Technology Review: Early on, Facebook performed little quality control on the types of publishers joining the program. The platform's design also didn't sufficiently penalize users for posting identical content across Facebook pages — in fact, it rewarded the behavior. Posting the same article on multiple pages could as much as double the number of users who clicked on it and generated ad revenue. Clickbait farms around the world seized on this flaw as a strategy — one they still use today... Clickbait actors cropped up in Myanmar overnight. With the right recipe for producing engaging and evocative content, they could generate thousands of U.S. dollars a month in ad revenue, or 10 times the average monthly salary — paid to them directly by Facebook. An internal company document, first reported by MIT Technology Review in October, shows that Facebook was aware of the problem as early as 2019... At one point, as many as 60% of the domains enrolled in Instant Articles were using the spammy writing tactics employed by clickbait farms, the report said...

75% of users who were exposed to clickbait content from farms run in Macedonia and Kosovo had never followed any of the pages. Facebook's content-recommendation system had instead pushed it into their news feeds.
Technology Review notes that Facebook now pays billions of dollars to the publishers in their program. It's a long and detailed article, which ultimately concludes that the problem "is now happening on a global scale." Thousands of clickbait operations have sprung up, primarily in countries where Facebook's payouts provide a larger and steadier source of income than other forms of available work. Some are teams of people while others are individuals, abetted by cheap automated tools that help them create and distribute articles at mass scale...

Google is also culpable. Its AdSense program fueled the Macedonia- and Kosovo-based farms that targeted American audiences in the lead-up to the 2016 presidential election. And it's AdSense that is incentivizing new clickbait actors on YouTube to post outrageous content and viral misinformation.
Reached for comment, a Facebook spokesperson told Technology Review that they'd misunderstood the issue. And the spokesperson also said "we've invested in building new expert-driven and scalable solutions to these complex issues for many years, and will continue doing so."

Google's spokesperson confirmed examples in the article violated their own policies and removed the content, adding "We work hard to protect viewers from clickbait or misleading content across our platforms and have invested heavily in systems that are designed to elevate authoritative information."

Long-time Slashdot reader destinyland writes: This week Marvel released an epic three-minute trailer hyping December's releases of Spider-Man: No Way Home. "It comes after the initial trailer, which focused on the movie's multiversal villains, broke YouTube records over the summer," CNET reported Tuesday (racking up 355.5 million views in its first 24 hours).

But then one more universe collided...

Basically, some internet wise guys re-edited the trailer, splicing its audio over clips from the Fox Kids' 1994 cartoon series Spider-Man. (Opening credits here.) "This has no right being this good," argues CNET — especially since the actual movie's trailer arrived "amidst a ludicrous amount of fanfare and hype."

But it's all oddly appropriate, since CNET notes the upcoming movie features five sinister villains from nearly 20 years of Spider-Man movies, reaching back to the Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield era ("likely spurred on by the events of the Disney Plus Loki series.")

So maybe it's fitting that it was also invaded by the television cartoon universe...

America's push to manufacturer more products domestically gets an in-depth look from CNET — including a new Intel chip factory outside of Phoenix.

CNET calls it a fork in the road "after squandering its lead because of a half decade of problems modernizing its manufacturing..." With "a decade of bad decisions, this doesn't get fixed overnight," says Pat Gelsinger, Intel's new chief executive, in an interview. "But the bottom is behind us and the slope is starting to feel increasingly strong...." More fabs are on the way, too. In an enormous empty patch of dirt at its existing Arizona site, Intel has just begun building fabs 52 and 62 at a total cost of $20 billion, set to make Intel's most advanced chips, starting in 2024. Later this year, it hopes to announce the U.S. location for its third major manufacturing complex, a 1,000-acre site costing about $100 billion. The spending commitment makes this year's $3.5 billion upgrade to its New Mexico fab look cheap. The goal is to restore the U.S. share of chip manufacturing, which has slid from 37% in 1990 to 12% today. "Over the decade in front of us, we should be striving to bring the U.S. to 30% of worldwide semiconductor manufacturing," Gelsinger says...

But returning Intel to its glory days — and anchoring a resurgent U.S. electronics business in the process — is much easier said than done. Making chips profitably means running fabs at maximum capacity to pay off the gargantuan investments required to stay at the leading edge. A company that can't keep pace gets squeezed out, like IBM in 2014 or Global Foundries in 2018. To catch up after its delays, Intel now plans to upgrade its manufacturing five times in the next four years, a breakneck pace by industry standards. "This new roadmap that they announced is really aggressive," says Linley Group analyst Linley Gwennap. "I don't have any idea how they are going to accomplish all of that...."

Gelsinger has a tech-first recovery plan. He's pledged to accelerate manufacturing upgrades to match the technology of TSMC and Samsung by 2024 and surpass them in 2025. He's opening Intel's fabs to other companies that need chips built through its new Intel Foundry Services (IFS). And he's relying on other foundries, including TSMC, for about a quarter of Intel's near-term chipmaking needs to keep its chips more competitive during the upgrades. This three-pronged strategy is called IDM (integrated design and manufacturing) 2.0. That's a new take on Intel's philosophy of both designing and making chips. It's more ambitious than the future some had expected, in which Intel would sell its factories and join the ranks of "fabless" chip designers like Nvidia, AMD and Qualcomm that rely on others for manufacturing...

Shareholders may not like Gelsinger's spending-heavy strategy, but one community really does: Intel's engineers... Gelsigner told the board that Intel is done with stock buybacks, a financial move in which a company uses its cash to buy stock and thereby increase its price. "We're investing in factories," he told me. "That's going to be the use of our cash...."

"We cannot recall the last time Intel put so many stakes in the ground," said BMO Capital Markets analyst Ambrish Srivastava in a July research report after Intel announced its schedule.
Intel will even outpace Moore's law, Gelsinger tells CNET — more than doubling the transistor count on processors every two years. "I believe that you're going to see from 2025 to 2035 a very healthy period for Moore's Law-like behavior."

Although that still brings some risk to Intel's investments if they have to pass the costs on to customer, a Linley Group analyst points out to CNET. "Moore's Law is not going to end when we can't build smaller transistors. It's going to end when somebody says I don't want to pay for smaller transistors."

Cryptographers are upset that "crypto" sometimes now refers to cryptocurrency, reports the Guardian: This lexical shift has weighed heavily on cryptographers, who, over the past few years, have repeated the rallying cry "Crypto means cryptography" on social media. T-shirts and hoodies trumpet the phrase and variations on it; there's a website dedicated solely to clarifying the issue. "'Crypto' for decades has been used as shorthand and as a prefix for things related to cryptography," said Amie Stepanovich, executive director of Silicon Flatirons Center at the University of Colorado Law School and creator of the pro-cryptography T-shirts, which have become a hit at conferences. "In fact, in the term cryptocurrency, the prefix crypto refers back to cryptography...."

[T]here remains an internecine feud among the tech savvy about the word. As Parker Higgins of the Freedom of the Press Foundation, who has spent years involved in cryptography activism, pointed out, the cryptography crowd is by nature deeply invested in precision — after all, designing and cracking codes is an endeavor in which, if you get things "a little wrong, it can blow the whole thing up...."

"Strong cryptography is a cornerstone of the way that people talk about privacy and security, and it has been under attack for decades" by governments, law enforcement, and "all sorts of bad actors", Higgins said. For its defenders, confusion over terminology creates yet another challenge.

Stepanovich acknowledged the challenge of opposing the trend, but said the weight of history is on her side. "The study of crypto has been around for ever," she said. "The most famous code is known as the Caesar cipher, referring to Julius Caesar. This is not new." Cryptocurrency, on the other hand, is a relatively recent development, and she is not ready to concede to "a concept that may or may not survive government regulation".

The president emeritus of the Great Lakes College Association writes that "nearly all colleges have re-adopted in-person education this fall, in spite of delta variant risks...

"As it turns out, student enthusiasm for remote learning is mixed at best, and in some cases students have sued their colleges for refunds. But it is not simply student opinion that has driven this reversion to face-to-face education." Indeed, students are far better off with in-person learning than with online approaches. Recent research indicates that the effects of remote learning have been negative. As the Brookings Institution Stephanie Riegg reports, "bachelor's degree students in online programs perform worse on nearly all test score measures — including math, reading, writing, and English — relative to their counterparts in similar on-campus programs...."

[R]esearch on human learning consistently finds that the social context of learning is critical, and the emotions involved in effective human relations play an essential role in learning. Think of a teacher who had a great impact on you — the one who made you excited, interested, intrigued, and motivated to learn. Was this teacher a calm and cool transmitter of facts, or a person who was passionate about the subject and excited to talk about it...? Research tells us the most effective teachers — those who are most successful in having their students learn — are those who establish an emotional relationship with their students in an environment of care and trust. As former teacher and now neuroscientist Mary Helen Immordino-Yang tells us, emotion is necessary for learning to occur: "Emotion is where learning begins, or, as is often the case, where it ends. Put simply, it is literally neurobiologically impossible to think deeply about things that you don't care about.... Even in academic subjects that are traditionally considered unemotional, such as physics, engineering or math, deep understanding depends on making emotional connections between concepts...."

Today we have the benefit of extensive research documenting the short-term and long-term importance of these social-educational practices. Research based on the widely used National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE) consistently finds that having meaningful outside-of-class relationships with faculty and advisors increases not only learning but graduation from college and employment after graduation. It is also worth noting that Gallup-Purdue University public opinion research affirms the idea that people believe these personal relationships in college matter. A study of 30,000 graduates reports that they believe "what students are doing in college and how they are experiencing it... has a profound relationship to life and career." Specifically, "if graduates had a professor who cared about them as a person, made them excited about learning, and encouraged them to pursue their dreams, their odds of being engaged at work more than doubled, as did their odds of thriving in their well-being."

Since empirical research documents the powerful impact of meaningful human relationships on learning while in college as well as on graduate's adult lives, and people believe it matters, do we dare replace it with technology?

The U.S. city of Carmel, Indiana (population: 102,000) has 140 roundabouts, "with over a dozen still to come," reports the New York Times. (Alternate URL here.) "No American city has more. The main reason is safety; compared with regular intersections, roundabouts significantly reduce injuries and deaths.

"But there's also a climate benefit." Because modern roundabouts don't have red lights where cars sit and idle, they don't burn as much gasoline. While there are few studies, the former city engineer for Carmel, Mike McBride, estimates that each roundabout saves about 20,000 gallons of fuel annually, which means the cars of Carmel emit many fewer tons of planet-heating carbon emissions each year. And U.S. highway officials broadly agree that roundabouts reduce tailpipe emissions. They also don't need electricity, and, unlike stoplights, keep functioning after bad storms — a bonus in these meteorologically turbulent times.

"Modern roundabouts are the most sustainable and resilient intersections around," said Ken Sides, chairman of the roundabout committee at the Institute of Transportation Engineers...

A recent study of Carmel's roundabouts by the Insurance Institute of Highway Safety found that injury crashes were reduced by nearly half at 64 roundabouts in Carmel, and even more at the more elaborate, dogbone-shaped interchanges... [V]ehicular fatalities in Carmel, according to a city study, are strikingly low; the city logged 1.9 traffic deaths per 100,000 people in 2020. In Columbus, Indiana, an hour or so south, it was 20.8. (In 2019, the national average was 11.)
The Times points out other advantages — they can also be more friendly to pedestrians and cyclists, and alleviate rush-hour backups. But Carmel's former city engineer just argues it's an improvement over an older roadway system which "doesn't put a lot of faith in the driver to make choices.

"They're used to being told what to do at every turn."

"E-commerce sales jumped nearly 32 percent in 2020 compared to the prior year, according to U.S. Census Bureau data," reports Politico — and this year "online sales are on track to outpace that record..."

"Now, cities, climate scientists and companies are trying to figure out the consequences for the planet." The most recent research is starting to incorporate more of the complexities of retail. In January, MIT's Real Estate Innovation Lab published a study that simulated hundreds of thousands of those kinds of scenarios and found online shopping to be more sustainable than traditional retail 75 percent of the time... Most research suggests that ordering goods for delivery is more beneficial for the environment because it means people are making fewer individual shopping trips. The average U.S. consumer goes to the grocery store at least 300 times a year. If they drove there, it was likely in a gas-powered vehicle. Plus, there tends to be higher energy demands at storefronts compared to warehouses. But that scale "could easily tip in the other direction," according to a study of the U.S. market published last spring by the sustainable investment firm Generation. The firm's researchers found that e-commerce is 17 percent more carbon efficient than traditional retail, but could change with a few tweaks to their assumptions, such as the number of items purchased in a single visit, the amount of packaging and the efficiency of last-mile delivery...

In an email, Amazon spokesperson Luis Davila pointed to findings by company scientists that suggest online shopping produces fewer emissions than driving to shop at a store; for instance, the company estimates that a single delivery van trip can take 100 round-trip car journeys off the road, on average. During the pandemic, customers made fewer trips to Whole Foods Market stores and other brick-and-mortar Amazon locations and shifted to home delivery, which also lowered emissions. But take a step back, and a bigger, more complex picture emerges. From 2019 to 2020, Amazon's U.S. sales jumped 36 percent to $263.5 billion. By the company's own account, its overall emissions spiked 19 percent, equivalent to running 15 coal plants for one year. More fossil fuel use and investments in buildings, data servers and transportation were key drivers.

That figure reflects its response to consumer demand during Covid-19, but doesn't capture progress Amazon made, Davila said. He said the company tracks the amount of carbon per dollar of gross merchandise sales — a concept known as carbon intensity — and by that measure, Amazon decreased the amount of carbon per purchase last year by 16 percent. In a blog post in June, a company scientist argued that this metric allows high-growth companies like Amazon to identify efficiencies. Amazon also reduced emissions from the electricity it bought by 4 percent due to new investments in clean energy, despite expanding its buildings' square footage. The company is about two-thirds of the way toward 100 percent renewable energy — a key pillar of the company's plan to reach net-zero emissions by 2040.

Emissions from deliveries are expected to decrease as Amazon deploys 100,000 electric vans in the coming decade. Davila did not disclose what portion of the company's fleet that accounts for today.
The director of MIT's Real Estate Innovation Lab also warns that cardboard boxes are some of the largest carbon pollutants in the system regardless of the method of delivery. (Politico points out most packaging ultimately "ends up in a landfill or is burned to produce energy, generating 105.5 million metric tons of carbon dioxide last year, according to federal data.") That data also shows only 9% of plastic gets recycled, "because flexible plastic films and pouches and many take out containers still aren't recyclable. Neither are plastic bags, unless consumers bring them to the grocery store."

One recycler tells the site that many companies are now promising to use more recycled materials in their packaging, including Amazon, PepsiCo, Coca Cola and Target — but urges "extended producer responsibility," in which companies (not taxpayers) cover the costs of cleaning up their packaging.

In what's being referred to as the largest-ever cryptocurrency theft involving one person, police in Canada say they recently arrested a teen who allegedly stole $36.5 million worth of cryptocurrency from a single individual in the U.S. Engadget reports: The owner of the currency was the victim of a SIM swap attack. Their cellphone number was hijacked and used to intercept two-factor authentication requests, thereby allowing access to their protected accounts. Some of the stolen money was used to purchase a "rare" online gaming username, which eventually allowed the Hamilton Police Service, as well as FBI and US Secret Service Electronic Crimes Task Force, to identify the account holder. Police seized approximately $7 million CAD ($5.5 million) in stolen cryptocurrency when they arrested the teen.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from CNBC: The CDC's independent panel of vaccine scientists unanimously endorsed Pfizer and Moderna's boosters for all adults, one of the final regulatory steps before the U.S. can officially start distributing the doses. The Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices voted to recommend the shots. The Food and Drug Administration authorized both company's vaccine boosters for everyone 18 and over earlier on Friday, and CDC Director Rochelle Walensky is expected to clear the doses soon after. The panel's recommendation would open up eligibility to everyone 18 and over in the U.S., but the group more strongly endorsed shots for older Americans by saying everyone 50 and over should get a booster. It previously said people over 65 and some other high-risk people should get a third shot. Once Walensky signs off, tens of millions of Americans who've received their two initial shots at least six months ago will be eligible to get a third shot as soon as early as this weekend. "Pfizer said its booster dose was 95% effective at preventing symptomatic infection in people who had no evidence of prior infection in a clinical trial of 10,000 participants 16 years and older," notes CNBC. "Moderna didn't submit its efficacy data for its booster, telling the panel it was still gathering the data."

The U.S. General Services Administration said Friday that the Defense Department has solicited bids from Amazon, Google, Microsoft and Oracle for cloud contracts. From a report: The outreach comes after the Pentagon set aside a highly contested $10 billion contract that Microsoft had won and Amazon had challenged. The value of the new contracts is not known, but the Defense Department estimates it could run into the multiple billions of dollars. The new effort, known as Joint Warfighting Cloud Capability, or JWCC, appears like it will bolster the top global cloud infrastructure providers, Amazon and Microsoft, although it could also provide more credibility to two smaller entities.

"The Government anticipates awarding two IDIQ contracts -- one to Amazon Web Services (AWS) and one to Microsoft Corporation (Microsoft) -- but intends to award to all Cloud Service Providers (CSPs) that demonstrate the capability to meet DoD's requirements," the GSA said in its announcement. An indefinite delivery, indefinite quantity, or IDIQ, contract includes an indefinite amount of services for a specific period of time.

In recent years, Amazon has killed or undermined privacy protections in more than three dozen bills across 25 states, as the e-commerce giant amassed a lucrative trove of personal data on millions of American consumers. From a report: Amazon executives and staffers detail these lobbying victories in confidential documents reviewed by Reuters. In Virginia, the company boosted political donations tenfold over four years before persuading lawmakers this year to pass an industry-friendly privacy bill that Amazon itself drafted. In California, the company stifled proposed restrictions on the industry's collection and sharing of consumer voice recordings gathered by tech devices. And in its home state of Washington, Amazon won so many exemptions and amendments to a bill regulating biometric data, such as voice recordings or facial scans, that the resulting 2017 law had "little, if any" impact on its practices, according to an internal Amazon document.

The architect of this under-the-radar campaign to smother privacy protections has been Jay Carney, who previously served as communications director for Joe Biden, when Biden was vice president, and as press secretary for President Barack Obama. Hired by Amazon in 2015, Carney reported to founder Jeff Bezos and built a lobbying and public-policy juggernaut that has grown from two dozen employees to about 250, according to Amazon documents and two former employees with knowledge of recent staffing. One 2018 document reviewing executives' goals for the prior year listed privacy regulation as a primary target for Carney. One objective: "Change or block US and EU regulation/legislation that would impede growth for Alexa-powered devices," referring to Amazon's popular voice-assistant technology. The mission included defeating restrictions on artificial intelligence and biometric technologies, along with blocking efforts to make companies disclose the data they keep on consumers.

The document listed Carney as the goal's "primary owner" and celebrated killing or amending privacy bills in "over 20 states." This story is based on a Reuters review of hundreds of internal Amazon documents and interviews with more than 70 lobbyists, advocates, policymakers and their staffers involved in legislation Amazon targeted, along with 10 former Amazon public-policy and legal employees. It is the third in a series of reports revealing how the company has pursued business practices that harm small businesses or put its own interests above those of consumers. The previous articles showed how Amazon has circumvented e-commerce regulations meant to protect Indian retailers, and how it copied products and rigged search results to promote its own brands over those of other vendors on its India platform.

Many local governments see a silver lining in the shortage of semiconductor chips that has contributed to a slowdown in the global economy. From a report: The shortage of computer chips has zapped energy from the global economy, punishing industries as varied as automakers and medical device manufacturers and contributing to fears about high inflation. But many states and cities in America are starting to see a silver lining: the possibility that efforts to sharply increase chip production in the United States will lead to a busy chip factory in their backyard. And they are racing to get a piece of the potential boom. One of those towns is Taylor, a Texas city of about 17,000 about a 40-minute drive northeast of Austin. Leaders here are pulling out all the stops to get a $17 billion Samsung plant that the company plans to build in the United States starting early next year.

The city, its school district and the county plan to offer Samsung hundreds of millions of dollars in financial incentives, including tax rebates. The community also has arranged for water to be piped in from an adjacent county to be used by the plant. But Taylor is not alone. Officials in Arizona and in Genesee County in upstate New York are also trying to woo the company. So, too, are politicians in nearby Travis County, home to Austin, where Samsung already has a plant. Locations in all three states "offered robust property tax abatement" and funds to build out infrastructure for the plant, Samsung said in a filing. Congress is considering whether to offer its own subsidies to chip makers that build in the United States.

Where Samsung's plant will land remains anyone's guess. The company says it is still weighing where to put it. A decision is expected to be announced any day. The federal government has urged companies like Samsung, one of the world's largest makers of the high-tech components, to build new plants in the United States, calling it an economic and national security imperative. Intel broke ground on two plants in Arizona in September and could announce the location for a planned manufacturing campus by the end of the year. This could just be a warm-up act. The Senate passed a bill to provide chip makers $52 billion in subsidies this year, a plan supported by the Biden administration that would be Washington's biggest investment in industrial policy in decades. The House has yet to consider it. Nine governors said in a letter to congressional leaders that the funding would "provide a new, powerful tool in our states' economic development toolboxes."

The art market wasn't ready for revolution. A rare, first-edition copy of the U.S. Constitution sold for $43.2 million at Sotheby's Thursday, but it appears the winner is a private collector rather than an online group of cryptocurrency investors. From a report: The group, called ConstitutionDAO, caused a stir in art and crypto circles this week by pooling more than $40 million to bid, but an anonymous phone bidder pledged even more and will take home one of the 13 surviving official copies of the Constitution.

Sotheby's sale on Thursday transforms the governing document into the priciest six pages in auction history, surpassing Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates's $30.8 million copy of Leonardo da Vinci's scientific notebook known as the Codex Leicester. The Constitution also exceeded the $21.3 million paid for a copy of the 1297 Magna Carta by Carlyle Group co-founder David Rubenstein in 2007. The winner remains anonymous, but the group pledging the second-highest price was ConstitutionDAO, an online organization that its founders say was formed as a lark last week and wound up pooling donations from 17,437 people to try to win the historic artifact. "What we tried to do was make the Constitution more accessible to the public," said core organizer Anisha Sunkerneni of San Francisco. "Although we might have not completely accomplished doing just that, I think we've raised enough awareness to illustrate that a DAO is another option."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from BleepingComputer: Winamp is getting closer to release with a redesigned website, logo, and a new beta signup allowing users to soon test the upcoming version of the media player. Before we streamed our music, users would rip their albums or download MP3s to listen on their computer using media players. One of the most popular media players to play MP3s was Winamp, with its retro skins and animated visualizers that moved along with the music you were playing. However, Winamp had not seen any further development after its version 5.5 release in 2007.

In October 2018, after Winamp 5.8 was leaked online, the developers decided to publish the leaked version on their website Winamp.com to allow everyone to use it in all its nostalgic glory. Unfortunately, while Radionomy, the owners of Winamp, said they had big plans for Winamp, no further versions have been released since then. The only new Winamp development we have seen has been by the Winamp Community Update Project (WACUP) who released Preview version 1.0.20.7236 with bug fixes and improvements. You can sign up for a Winamp beta test here.

Thousands of Firefox cookie databases containing sensitive data are available on request from GitHub repositories, data potentially usable for hijacking authenticated sessions. The Register reports: These cookies.sqlite databases normally reside in the Firefox profiles folder. They're used to store cookies between browsing sessions. And they're findable by searching GitHub with specific query parameters, what's known as a search "dork." Aidan Marlin, a security engineer at London-based rail travel service Trainline, alerted The Register to the public availability of these files after reporting his findings through HackerOne and being told by a GitHub representative that "credentials exposed by our users are not in scope for our Bug Bounty program."

Marlin then asked whether he could make his findings public and was told he's free to do so. "I'm frustrated that GitHub isn't taking its users' security and privacy seriously," Marlin told The Register in an email. "The least it could do is prevent results coming up for this GitHub dork. If the individuals who uploaded these cookie databases were made aware of what they'd done, they'd s*** their pants."

Marlin acknowledges that affected GitHub users deserve some blame for failing to prevent their cookies.sqlite databases from being included when they committed code and pushed it to their public repositories. "But there are nearly 4.5k hits for this dork, so I think GitHub has a duty of care as well," he said, adding that he's alerted the UK Information Commissioner's Office because personal information is at stake. Marlin speculates that the oversight is a consequence of committing code from one's Linux home directory. "I imagine in most of the cases, the individuals aren't aware that they've uploaded their cookie databases," he explained. "A common reason users do this is for a common environment across multiple machines."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Next Web: YouTube's decision to hide dislike counts on videos has sparked anger and derision. One inventive programmer has attempted to restore the feature in a browser extension. The plugin currently uses the Google API to generate the dislike count. However, this functionality will be removed from December 13. "I'll try to scrape as much data as possible until then," the extension's creator said on Reddit. "After that -- total dislikes will be estimated using extension users as a sample."

The alpha version isn't perfect. It currently only works on videos for which the Youtube API returns a valid dislike count. The calculations could also be skewed by the userbase, which is unlikely to represent the average YouTube viewer. The developer said they're exploring ways to mitigate this, such as comparing the downvotes collected through the public of extension users to a cache of real downvotes. The results should also improve as uptake grows. The plugin could provide a useful service, but its greatest value may be as a potent symbol of protest. You can try it out here -- but proceed at your own risk. If you want to check out the code, it's been published on GitHub. Further reading: YouTube Co-Founder Predicts 'Decline' of the Platform Following Removal of Dislikes

Starbucks has partnered with Amazon Go, the e-commerce giant's brick-and-mortar convenience store, to open its first ever cashierless cafe. "[C]ustomers can sit at a table with a latte or grab a sandwich from a shelf and walk out," reports Reuters. From the report: Hit by a U.S. labor crunch, Starbucks and other companies are expanding labor-saving technology like artificial intelligence, robotics and digital touch screens. [...] The pandemic pushed people to place more orders online for carry out, delivery and drive-thru. To keep up, Starbucks shifted its development strategy to new store formats, adding pickup-only locations in urban areas, as well as traditional cafes and suburban drive-thrus. Starbucks and Amazon plan to open at least two more U.S. locations together in 2022, said Kathryn Young, Starbucks' senior vice president of global growth and development.

Starbucks baristas will make drinks and the rest of the chain's menu at the new location in New York City, which will have the same staffing level as any other Starbucks, she said. Customers can order through the Starbucks app and grab coffee to go from a counter near the door. Or they can use a credit card, Amazon app or Amazon One palm reader to enter the rest of the space, take snacks from shelves, or sit at tables.

GoJays shares a report from Yahoo Finance: Nvidia's (NVDA) stock closed out the trading day Thursday with gusto, following its impressive Q3 earnings report on Wednesday. Shares of the chip maker ended the day up 8.25%, after jumping more than 10% at the open. The stock's performance comes after the company reported quarterly revenue jumped 50% year-over-year on the back of strong performances by its data center and gaming businesses in Q3.

Nvidia's data center arm has been a boon for the firm, helping to power its stock price up 124% year-over-year at the close of trading on Wednesday. And the company's earnings report only buoyed investor confidence in the business, which saw record revenue of $2.94 billion in the prior quarter, a 55% year-over-year increase. Not to be out done, Nvidia's gaming business also brought in record revenue of $3.22 billion, a 42% year-over-year increase. Needham analysts said Nvidia could become the "first trillion dollar semiconductor company." As Bloomberg notes, $60 billion was added to the company's market capitalization on Thursday, which is near the $800 billion threshold. "Since early October, Nvidia has added nearly $300 billion in market value, about the equivalent of the market cap of Disney, Netflix or Pfizer."

In a follow-up to Monday's story, "a crowdfunded effort to buy a rare 1787 copy of the U.S. constitution at auction claims to have received more than [$31 million] worth of cryptocurrency donations," reports the BBC. And this figure is only going to increase as there's more than 24 hours to go. From the report: The group, ConstitutionDAO, says it plans "to put the constitution in the hands of the people," and hopes to raise at least $20 million. But it is not clear how ownership will be arranged if the bid succeeds. There are 13 known copies to have survived from a run of 500 originally printed after the text was settled at the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The copy for sale is one of only two not held in the collection of an institution, Sotheby's says. The group wants to put the document on public display.

DAO stands for "decentralized autonomous organization." The idea is to enable individuals to come together to make purchases and share ownership, with their transactions and operating rules recorded on the blockchain - the same underlying technology on which cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and Ethereum run. ConstitutionDAO launched just a week before the auction, and is soliciting money with which to buy the constitution document in Ethereum. On its website, the group says it is "pooling together money to win this auction."

At first, the website told contributors they were buying "fractional ownership and governance. You will own a piece of the constitution based on how much you contribute." That has since been changed to say those who contribute will not get a share in owning the constitution. The question "Am I receiving ownership of the constitution in exchange for my donation?" is answered: "No, you are receiving a governance token, not fractionalized ownership." The "governance token," the website says, could be used to "advise" on "where the constitution should be displayed, how it should be exhibited, and the mission and values of ConstitutionDAO."

According to Amazon and Blue Origin founder Jeff Bezos, future generations "will visit Earth the way you visit Yellowstone National Park." Gizmodo reports: The remarks came last week at an event held at the National Cathedral in Washington, DC, with NASA Administrator Bill Nelson and others talking about space policy. Bezos sat down for a one-on-one chat with Adi Ignatius, the editor-in-chief of the Harvard Business Review. He brought up themes we've heard before, including his vision that all polluting industries will exist in space one day and that we'll all live on space colonies that could, in his estimation, support 1 trillion people. But he expanded on his vision in greater detail about what, exactly, will happen to the planet we'll all leave behind for Blue Origin-branded space colonies.

"This is the most precious planet in the world and we have to preserve it and conserve it and make sure that our children and their children and so on have this beauty in their lives," Bezos said. "We need to conserve what we have, restore what we've lost," he said. "This planet is so small, if we want to keep growing as a civilization, using energy as a civilization, most of that needs to be done off-planet. ... This place is special. You can't ruin it." To do that will require us all to live in space colonies. That would leave Earth to eventually be, in Bezos' vision, a place for future folks to visit but not live. "They may visit Earth the way you visit Yellowstone National Park," Bezos said. Ignatius asked a follow-up about who gets to live on Earth in this vision, which Bezos did not answer. "It's extremely telling that Bezos' vision for the future of Earth is Yellowstone National Park," comments Gizmodo's Brian Kahn, a former park ranger. "Bezos' big idea of turning Earth into Yellowstone elides the fact that humans are as much a part of this planet as they were part of Yellowstone before Americans showed up. He's pitching a very Western solution to the very Western problem of climate change and environmental degradation, problems that Bezos' very own businesses have played a major role in while enriching him to the point where he now has a huge sway on humanity's next step."

Last week, YouTube announced a controversial decision to make the "dislike" count on videos private across its platform. Not only did the move upset many Slashdotters, but it upset the third co-founder of YouTube, Jawed Karim, too. According to The Verge, Karim suggests that the move "will lead to YouTube's decline." From the report: "Why would YouTube make this universally disliked change? There is a reason, but it's not a good one, and not one that will be publicly disclosed," writes Karim. "The ability to easily and quickly identify bad content is an essential feature of a user-generated content platform. Why? Because not all user-generated content is good."

Karim has been getting his own message out in an unusual way: by editing the description to the first video ever uploaded to YouTube, a banal clip titled "Me at the zoo" which stars the 25-year-old Karim himself. Karim originally edited the description of the video a few days ago to read: "When every YouTuber agrees that removing dislikes is a stupid idea, it probably is. Try again, YouTube [face palm emoji]." But this morning he changed this description once again to give a more detailed condemnation: "The ability to easily and quickly identify bad content is an essential feature of a user-generated content platform," writes Karim. "Why? Because not all user-generated content is good. It can't be. In fact, most of it is not good. And that's OK. [...] The process works, and there's a name for it: the wisdom of the crowds. The process breaks when the platform interferes with it. Then, the platform invariably declines. Does YouTube want to become a place where everything is mediocre?"

In his statement today, Karim compares the video in which Matt Koval, YouTube's "creator liason," announced the removal of dislikes to infamous footage of US soldier Jeremiah Denton, who was captured during the Vietnam War. In 1966, Denton was forced to give a television interview by his captors, during which he blinked in Morse code to spell out the word "torture." You can read Karim's full statement in the description of this video.

The U.S. government, along with counterparts in Australia and the U.K, have warned that Iranian state-backed hackers are targeting U.S. organizations in critical infrastructure sectors -- in some cases with ransomware. From a report: The rare warning linking Iran with ransomware landed in a joint advisory Wednesday, issued by the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the Australian Cyber Security Centre (ACSC), and the U.K's National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC). The advisory said that Iran-backed attackers have been exploiting Fortinet vulnerabilities since at least March and a Microsoft Exchange ProxyShell vulnerability since October to gain access to U.S. critical infrastructure organizations in the transport and public health sectors, as well as organizations in Australia. The aim of the hackers is ultimately to leverage this access for follow-on operations such as data exfiltration, extortion and ransomware deployment. In May this year, for example, the hackers abused Fortigate gear to access a web server hosting the domain for a U.S. municipal government. The following month, CISA and the FBI observed the hackers exploiting Fortinet vulnerabilities to access the networks of a U.S.-based hospital specializing in healthcare for children. The joint advisory has been released alongside a separate report from Microsoft on the evolution of Iranian APTs, which are "increasingly utilizing ransomware to either collect funds or disrupt their targets." In the report, Microsoft said it has been tracking six Iranian threat groups that have been deploying ransomware and exfiltrating data in attacks that started in September 2020.

An anonymous reader shares a report: Discovering they had to get on the phone to cancel a subscription they signed up for online rankled several respondents in our survey looking at why people canceled their news subscriptions. The reaction to the call-to-cancel policy ranged from "an annoyance" and "ridiculous" to "shady" and "oppressive." Publishers tend to think of this as "retention." A study of 526 news organizations in the United States found that only 41% make it easy for people to cancel subscriptions online, and more than half trained customer service reps in tactics to dissuade customers who call to unsubscribe. The Federal Trade Commission, meanwhile, recently made it clear that it sees the practice as 1) one of several "dark patterns that trick or trap consumers into subscriptions" and 2) straight-up illegal. The FTC vowed to ramp up enforcement on companies that fail to provide an "easy and simple" cancellation process, including an option that's "at least as easy" as the one to subscribe. Translation? If you can subscribe online, you should be able to cancel your subscription online.

China is accelerating plans to replace American and foreign technology, quietly empowering a secretive government-backed organization to vet and approve local suppliers in sensitive areas from cloud to semiconductors, Bloomberg reported Wednesday, citing people familiar with the matter said. From a report: Formed in 2016 to advise the government, the Information Technology Application Innovation Working Committee has now been entrusted by Beijing to help set industry standards and train personnel to operate trusted software. The quasi-government body will devise and execute the so-called "IT Application Innovation" plan, better known as Xinchuang in Chinese. It will choose from a basket of suppliers vetted under the plan to provide technology for sensitive sectors from banking to data centers storing government data, a market that could be worth $125 billion by 2025.

So far, 1,800 Chinese suppliers of PCs, chips, networking and software have been invited to join the committee, the people said, asking not to be identified discussing private information. The organization has so far certified hundreds of local companies this year as committee members, the fastest pace in years, one of the people said. The existence of the Xinchuang white-list, whose members and over-arching goals haven't been previously reported, is likely to inflame tensions just as Presidents Joe Biden and Xi Jinping wrapped up their first face-to-face virtual summit. It gives Beijing more leverage to replace foreign tech firms in sensitive sectors and quickens a push to help local champions achieve tech self-sufficiency and overcome sanctions first imposed by the Trump administration in fields like networking and chips.

Amazon plans to stop accepting payments made via Visa credit cards issued in the U.K. starting next year. From a report: The e-commerce giant has told some customers that, from Jan. 19 onward, the company will no longer accept Visa credit cards issued in Britain "due to the high fees Visa charges for processing credit card transactions." Visa earlier this year hiked the interchange fees it charges merchants for processing digital transactions between the U.K. and the European Union. After Brexit, an EU cap on interchange fees no longer applies in the U.K., allowing card networks to raise their charges. Mastercard has also increased its U.K.-EU interchange fees. Amazon customers were told they will still be able to use debit cards -- including those issued by Visa -- and non-Visa credit cards like Mastercard and American Express. Users are being encouraged to update their default payment method ahead of the changes.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from ZDNet: Bilibili has joined other Chinese technology powerhouses such as ByteDance, TikTok's parent company, and its rival Kuaishou, in joining the Open Invention Network (OIN). The OIN is the world's largest patent non-aggression consortium. It protects Linux and related open source software and the companies behind them from patent attacks and patent trolls. The OIN recently broadened its scope from core Linux programs and adjacent open source code by expanding its Linux System Definition to other patents such as the Android Open Source Project (AOSP) and the Extended File Allocation Table exFAT file system. The OIN does this by practicing patent non-aggression in core Linux and related open source technologies by cross-licensing Linux System patents to one another on a royalty-free basis. Patents owned by OIN are similarly licensed royalty-free to any organization that agrees not to assert its patents against the Linux System. Any company can do this by simply signing the OIN license online.

As Wang Hao, Bilibili's VP, explained, "We are committed to opening and sharing technologies and providing positive motivation in the innovation field of playback transmission, interactive entertainment, and cloud-native ecology through open source projects. Linux and open source are important software infrastructures that promote business developments. Our participation in the OIN community demonstrates our consistent and ongoing commitment to shared innovation. In the future, we will also firmly support Linux's open source innovation."

U.S. aviation regulators are having "very productive discussions" with the Federal Communications Commission and the telecommunications industry over concerns that 5G technology could interfere with aircraft equipment, an official said. From a report: At the same time, Federal Aviation Administration chief Steve Dickson on Tuesday said that the agency is considering safety measures including possible flight restrictions if necessary. Aviation industry officials have said that it's possible that the signals could disturb safety equipment on airliners and helicopters, while the FCC and the telecommunications industry has said there is no evidence of a problem.

Mozilla launched Firefox Relay as a free product that gives you five email aliases you can use every time you need to sign up for a random account online. From a report: Now, the organization has introduced a paid Premium tier for the service that will give you access to even more aliases. You'll get your own subdomain (yourdomain.mozmail.com) when you subscribe, and you'll be able to create an unlimited number of emails. The tier will also give you access to a summary dashboard with the emails you make, the option to use your aliases when you reply to messages and a 150 kb attachment allowance. After you sign up for Relay, you'll have to install its Firefox extension to be able to take advantage of its features. Every time you visit a website that asks for an email address, the Relay icon will appear on your browser, and you can click it to generate a random address.The service will forward messages you get using your aliases to your primary email account, and you can block all messages from coming in or even delete the alias when it starts getting spam. Mozilla didn't say how much a Premium subscription will cost in the future, but it's offering the tier at an introductory price of $1/EUR1 per month for a limited time.

Nvidia's bid for British chipmaker Arm faces a national security review in the U.K., in another potential pitfall for a deal under intense scrutiny from antitrust regulators across the world. From a report: The Competition and Markets Authority has been instructed to carry out the review alongside a closer look at whether there are competition concerns, Nadine Dorries, Secretary of State for Culture and Digital said in a statement Tuesday. The U.K. has been amping up oversight of deals that may affect defense and has weighed a potential veto of Nvidia's takeover bid. The minister's decision is separate to the nation's antitrust review of how the deal may affect rivals and customers. Companies can allay security and antitrust concerns by selling off units or making binding pledges. "Arm has a unique place in the global technology supply chain and we must make sure the implications of this transaction are fully considered," Dorries said.

The Environmental Protection Agency announced a new national recycling strategy today, the agency's first ever such commitment, according to the Washington Post. The Verge reports: It's a roadmap for the US to achieve a goal of recycling at least half of its municipal waste by the end of the decade. That's a steep rise considering the US' recycling rate has actually declined since 2015, and was only at about 32 percent of all municipal waste in 2018 (the most recent year for which there's EPA data). The recycling plans the EPA announced today are just the first piece in "a series" of forthcoming documents the agency plans to release to work towards a "circular economy," or an economy where resources are recovered and reused to make new products rather than allowed to wind up in landfills. It's a sort of tacit acknowledgement that recycling alone doesn't make a huge dent in the world's trash problems.

There are several key tactics the EPA plans to employ to meet its new recycling goal. For starters, the US will have to do a better job of collecting recyclable materials. The uptick in online shopping has changed where packaging waste winds up. There's less cardboard for instance, coming from shopping malls and grocery stores because of the popularity of home deliveries. That has posed problems for recycling companies because cardboard coming from peoples' homes tends to be dirtier than retailers' trash, experts tell The Verge. Often times, cardboard or plastic that's too contaminated with food or other items can't be recycled. So the EPA intends to do more public outreach and education to ensure more of the stuff people throw out actually gets recycled.

The EPA also wants to develop new markets for recycled materials so that it's worth it for companies to recycle. That means there could be new policies or financial incentives on the way to boost demand for recycled materials. The strategy document mentions, for example, a "Demand Challenge partnership program" that would recognize companies for using more recycled materials in their products. Notably, the EPA says it might finally "explore" ratification of the Basel Convention, a 1989 international treaty aimed at reducing the flow of e-waste and other hazardous trash from wealthy to lower income nations. The new strategy also marks the first time, the EPA says, that the agency's recycling plans will connect the dots between waste, environmental injustice, and the climate crisis.

An anonymous reader shares an excerpt from a Bloomberg report: In Togo, a nation of about 8 million people where the average income is below $2 a day, it took the government less than two weeks to design and launch an all-digital system for delivering monthly payments to about a quarter of the adult population. People [...] with no tax or payroll records, were identified as in need, enrolled in the program, and paid without any in-person contact. According to Anit Mukherjee, a policy fellow at the Center for Global Development, "the U.S. program looks like a dinosaur" in comparison.

[The program called Novissi], which means "solidarity" in the local Ewe language, is the brainchild of Cina Lawson, who heads the Ministry of Digital Economy and Digital Transformation. [...] Togo had run some cash transfer programs in the past, but they were small-scale and typically involved registering households one at a time and distributing physical money by hand. According to [Shegun Bakari, a close adviser to the president], other cabinet members objected to the idea of using mobile technology, arguing that many in rural areas didn't have access to phones or identification, and even those who did might lack the wherewithal to navigate a digital system. Yet in fact, Togolese -- like people across Africa -- had for years been using "mobile money," stored on and transferred from their mobile phones. The president quickly embraced the proposal. [....] Covid pushed countries to move quickly beyond age-old debates over who is deserving of government aid and whether transfers should be unconditional. The sheer breadth of suffering undercut the paternalistic attitude that the poor brought their suffering upon themselves.

Even with the president's support, Lawson's team faced big challenges. For starters they didn't know which Togolese were most in need: Tax rolls were no help in a country where four out of five working-age people toil in the informal economy. The last national census, conducted almost a decade earlier, hadn't gathered information about households' wealth or income. To ensure payments were made only to verified individuals, the team sought to build the platform off an existing database. Few Togolese possessed a driver's license or national ID card, but 3.6 million adults are registered to vote, according to the country's electoral commission, which requires potential voters to indicate their occupation and address. This electoral database was thought to represent somewhere between 83% and 98% of the adult population. Lawson and other members of the cabinet decided to focus the first round of support on anyone with an address in greater Lome who had listed an informal occupation, including shopkeepers, seamstresses, maids, hairdressers, and drivers. With the funding allocated by the government, they could provide each beneficiary one-third of the minimum wage, about $20 per month. Lawson insisted that the platform be able to offer an instantaneous payoff; otherwise, she warned, Togolese would doubt the promise of "free money" and fail to enroll. "You register, the platform determines you're eligible -- because once you enter your voter ID, the platform knows your profession and your geographic position -- and bam! You receive an SMS with the money," she says. The program wasn't without hiccups, however. When Novissi first began on April 8th, there were millions of registration attempts and tens of thousands of people calling for troubleshooting help, causing the platform to briefly buckle. But, as the report notes, it "largely worked," with more than 567,000 people receiving payments in the first round of disbursements.

"In part because Novissi proved so successful, the ministry teamed up with GiveDirectly and researchers at the University of California at Berkeley to fund a round of payments for the 200 poorest cantons," adds Bloomberg. "To find them, the researchers trained an algorithm to identify impoverished communities based on their urban layout and housing materials, using satellite images. The researchers couldn't pick individual beneficiaries by occupation because many rural residents didn't have differentiated professions; instead, they created a second algorithm that used data from mobile phones -- including the frequency and timing of calls, texts, and data use -- to identify the poorest users. Over the next few months, this round pushed funds out to 138,000 more beneficiaries."

An "achievable, replicable" plan for a city that's embracing public space as never before. Curbed: New York and Curbed recruited a team of designers and consultants, led by the architecture firm WXY, to approach the streets as a matrix of overlapping, interrelated networks. The allure of more humane cities has generated an entire library's worth of plans and pilot projects, both top-down and grassroots, for areas like Downtown Brooklyn and Soho. A few years ago, a consortium of Harlem business and organizations collaborated on a plan to redesign East 125th Street. In 2019, the City Council passed a law requiring the Department of Transportation to develop a five-year citywide plan. But this torrent of good intentions and expertise has fragmented the issue further by producing more schemes to ignore, postpone, and gripe about. Most New Yorkers' concerns are exquisitely parochial: The only time a Bronxite is likely to care about, say, the width of Soho's sidewalks is if it makes parking there even worse.

So we tried to imagine what a comprehensive transformation would produce on a generic Manhattan block, to the extent that one exists. We chose Third Avenue between East 33rd and 34th Streets because of its concentration of terriblenesses and virtues. It is congested, dense, torn up, noisy, and lively. Lined by towers and tenements, plied by trucks and fed by tunnels, it's a short walk from offices, hospitals, and trains. Yet we also embraced its frenzy. Our goal was not to impose the serenity of a provincial Dutch city or to streamline the block into anodyne efficiency. New York without friction wouldn't be New York. We aspired to pack all the measures we already knew we should be taking into one vivid frame. An aerial photograph became a platform on which to overlay a possible future city. The result is a real-life I Spy book, filled with details that accumulate into a livable, equitable, safer, and more pleasant place to live. This is no futuristic fantasy of self-sweeping sidewalks or robot-controlled Tesla taxis gliding up at the touch of an app. Instead, we imagined a makeover that could happen now, given urgency and determination. To execute it in permanent, handsome materials would be slow and expensive; a recent project to renovate a stretch of Atlantic Avenue in Brooklyn cost $2.2 million per block. But the DOT has already shown many times that some of this work can be achieved with paint, planters, and boulders. Getting the first draft done matters more than making it perfect and perennial.

Our efforts yielded two big lessons. The first is that every improvement is a trade-off. Protecting bus lanes with concrete barriers, for example, would keep cars out, but it would also keep limited-stop buses from passing local ones. Our street incorporates a possible set of compromises. The second is that even simple tweaks imply a far-reaching organizational overhaul. Enclosed trash bins would push the Department of Sanitation to update some of its trucks and pickup procedures. New regulations and speed limits mean enforcement, and thus money, manpower, and -- most important -- a sense of common purpose.

The following sentence may sound like the logline for an as-yet unmade National Treasure 3, but it's very much real: A large group of crypto maximalists is banding together in an effort to obtain the actual U.S. Constitution. From a report: Unlike the antagonists in the previous Nicolas Cage movies, this crew might actually succeed. Or kind of, anyway. On Thursday, November 18, Sotheby's is auctioning off "an exceptionally rare and extraordinarily historic" first printing of the U.S. Constitution. Only thirteen copies remain, besides the one located in Washington D.C.'s National Archives museum, from the original printing of 500 that the founders issued for submission to the Continental Congress. It's the first time in 30 years that this one has become available for purchase, following the 1997 death of its last winner, New York real estate developer S. Howard Goldman. It's expected to fetch between $15 million and $20 million in the auction -- unless, of course, it instead fetches the equivalent in Ethereum.

Roblox plans to help bring educational videogames to classrooms world-wide, part of its strategy to expand its mostly teen and preteen user base and play a role in the next evolution of the internet known as the metaverse. From a report: Roblox, based in San Mateo, Calif., is expected to announce Monday that it has invested $10 million to help develop three games for middle-school, high-school and college students. Roblox, which is on mobile devices, computers and Microsoft's Xbox system, had more than 47 million daily users in the third quarter, about half of whom are under the age of 13.

"It's been a vision since we started the company over 16 years ago to have these types of experiences," Roblox Chief Executive David Baszucki told The Wall Street Journal. "We've always had that educational background in mind." One of the games the company is funding will teach robotics, another will focus on space exploration, and the third will help students explore careers and concepts in computer science, engineering and biomedical science. They were developed by nonprofits including Boston's Museum of Science, and one was made in partnership with a small educational game studio. Roblox's platform already features millions of games and other activities, all of which are made by its own users, though only a few were designed for classrooms. The three games it is funding, due out next year, won't offer any virtual goods for sale.

Huawei, whose smartphone business has been devastated by U.S. sanctions, is planning to license its handset designs to third parties as a way to gain access to critical components, Bloomberg is reporting, citing people with knowledge of the matter. From the report: The Shenzhen-based tech giant is considering licensing its designs to a unit of state-owned China Postal and Telecommunications Appliances Co, or PTAC, which will then seek to buy parts barred under the Trump-era blacklisting, said one of the people, asking not to be identified discussing internal matters. The unit, known as Xnova, is already selling Huawei-branded Nova phones on its e-commerce site and the partnership will see it offer self-branded devices based on the larger company's designs.

Chinese telecom equipment maker TD Tech Ltd. will also sell some phones featuring Huawei's designs under its own brand, another person said. The partnerships are subject to change as negotiations are still ongoing. The move may be Huawei's best chance at salvaging its smartphone business after U.S. sanctions cut off its access to key chipmaker Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co, Google's Android apps and Qualcomm's 5G wireless modems. Since Huawei first came under fire from the Trump administration, its shrinking consumer business has seen sales fall for four straight quarters.

Heavy rain and flooding in Aswan, Egypt, have driven drifts of scorpions to seek shelter in people's homes. From a report: Three people died and more than 400 were hospitalised across the governorate to receive anti-venom treatment after being stung by the panicking arachnids, according to state-run media. However, acting Health Minister Khalid Abdel-Ghafar said in a statement that no deaths were reported from the stings. The Ministry of Health has reassured the public that it holds a large enough stock of anti-venom, noting that 3,350 doses were available in Aswan. The downpours and subsequent floods have also forced local authorities to suspend schools on Sunday, Governor Ashraf Attia said.

The UK's digital and cultural secretary will instruct the country's Competition & Markets Authority to conduct "an in-depth inquiry into antitrust concerns" over NVIDIA's purchase of ARM, reports the Sunday Times, "as well as scrutinise national security fears raised by the takeover...."

Engadget reports: A second investigation would reportedly last about six months. After that, officials could either block the deal, approve it as-is or require concessions...

The tech firm has focused its energy so far on downplaying concerns about ARM's neutrality if the deal closes, promising an open licensing model that treats customers fairly.

Any second investigation wouldn't necessarily spell doom for NVIDIA's acquisition. It would suggest the government has some qualms, however, and that NVIDIA might have to make some sacrifices. At the least, the company would have to be patient — it wouldn't get UK approval until 2022 at the earliest, and it would still have to wait for other regulators before finalizing the merger.
In other news, ARM has joined the Rust Foundation.

Tonight CNBC interviewed science fiction luminary Neal Stephenson about his new "geoengineering climate change thriller" — and about his coining of the original term "metaverse." Author Neal Stephenson shot to fame almost 30 years ago with the science-fiction novel "Snow Crash," which envisioned a future dominated by mega-corporations and organized crime, competing for dominance in both the real world and the "metaverse," a computer-generated world accessible through virtual reality headsets. Since then, he's written several more novels encompassing technology and history, including a trilogy set at the dawn of the scientific revolution, and has done work for various technology companies including Jeff Bezos' space travel company, Blue Origin, and augmented reality company Magic Leap.

His new novel, "Termination Shock," out November 16, focuses on the looming issue of our age — human-generated climate change, projecting a near future of extreme weather and social chaos. Against this setting, a maverick oilman decides to take matters into his own hands and builds the world's biggest gun to shoot canisters of sulfur dioxide into the air, echoing the effects of a volcanic eruption and temporarily cooling parts of the globe. Geopolitics, social media and Dutch royalty all play a part.

Stephenson acknowledges that geoengineering is a radical step, but suggests as the effects of climate change grow more destructive, the demand for radical solutions will grow.
In the interview Stephenson suggests one factor that might increase popular support for climate-change action: rising sea levels. "You can be as ideological as you want. But you can't argue with the fact that your house is full of water."

The interview also touches on how it was 1992 when Stephenson coined the word "metaverse," and now it's being claimed by major tech companies. "All I can do is kind of sit back and watch it in amazement," Stephenson tells CNBC: But, as many have noticed, "There's a pretty big gap between what Facebook is actually doing, like running Facebook and WhatsApp and Instagram, and the visions that they're talking about for the metaverse."
Neil Stephenson answered questions from Slashdot readers back in 2004...