An anonymous reader shared this report from the Associated Press: An investigation into a ransomware attack earlier this month on London hospitals by the Russian group Qilin could take weeks to complete, the country's state-run National Health Service said Friday, as concerns grow over a reported data dump of patient records. Hundreds of operations and appointments are still being canceled more than two weeks after the June 3 attack on NHS provider Synnovis, which provides pathology services primarily in southeast London...

NHS England said Friday that it has been "made aware" that data connected to the attack have been published online. According to the BBC, Qilin shared almost 400GB of data, including patient names, dates of birth and descriptions of blood tests, on their darknet site and Telegram channel... According to Saturday's edition of the Guardian newspaper, records covering 300 million patient interactions, including the results of blood tests for HIV and cancer, were stolen during the attack.

A website and helpline has been set up for patients affected.

In 2022, Red Hat announced plans to extend RHEL to the automotive industry through Red Hat In-Vehicle Operating System (providing automakers with an open and functionally-safe platform). And this week Red Hat announced it achieved ISO 26262 ASIL-B certification from exida for the Linux math library (libm.so glibc) — a fundamental component of that Red Hat In-Vehicle Operating System.

From Red Hat's announcement: This milestone underscores Red Hat's pioneering role in obtaining continuous and comprehensive Safety Element out of Context certification for Linux in automotive... This certification demonstrates that the engineering of the math library components individually and as a whole meet or exceed stringent functional safety standards, ensuring substantial reliability and performance for the automotive industry. The certification of the math library is a significant milestone that strengthens the confidence in Linux as a viable platform of choice for safety related automotive applications of the future...

By working with the broader open source community, Red Hat can make use of the rigorous testing and analysis performed by Linux maintainers, collaborating across upstream communities to deliver open standards-based solutions. This approach enhances long-term maintainability and limits vendor lock-in, providing greater transparency and performance. Red Hat In-Vehicle Operating System is poised to offer a safety certified Linux-based operating system capable of concurrently supporting multiple safety and non-safety related applications in a single instance. These applications include advanced driver-assistance systems (ADAS), digital cockpit, infotainment, body control, telematics, artificial intelligence (AI) models and more. Red Hat is also working with key industry leaders to deliver pre-tested, pre-integrated software solutions, accelerating the route to market for SDV concepts.
"Red Hat is fully committed to attaining continuous and comprehensive safety certification of Linux natively for automotive applications," according to the announcement, "and has the industry's largest pool of Linux maintainers and contributors committed to this initiative..."

Or, as Network World puts it, "The phrase 'open source for the open road' is now being used to describe the inevitable fit between the character of Linux and the need for highly customizable code in all sorts of automotive equipment."

The Linux Foundation's "Open Source Security Foundation" (or OpenSSF) is a cross-industry forum to "secure the development, maintenance, and consumption of the open source software". And now the OpenSSF has launched a new mailing list "which aims to monitor the threat landscape of open-source project vulnerabilities," reports I Programmer, "in order to provide real time alerts to anyone subscribed."

The Record explains its origins: OpenSSF General Manager Omkhar Arasaratnam said that at a recent open source event, members of the community ran a tabletop exercise where they simulated a security incident involving the discovery of a zero-day vulnerability. They worked their way through the open source ecosystem — from cloud providers to maintainers to end users — clearly defining how the discovery of a vulnerability would be dealt with from top to bottom. But one of the places where they found a gap is in the dissemination of information widely.

"What we lack within the open source community is a place in which we can convene to distribute indicators of compromise (IOCs) and threats, tactics and procedures (TTPs) in a way that will allow the community to identify threats when our packages are under attack," Arasaratnam said... "[W]e're going to be standing up a mailing list for which we can share this information throughout the community and there can be discussion of things that are being seen. And that's one of the ways that we're responding to this gap that we saw...." The Siren mailing list will encourage public discussions on security flaws, concepts, and practices in the open source community with individuals who are not typically engaged in traditional upstream communication channels...

Members of the Siren email list will get real-time updates about emerging threats that may be relevant to their projects... OpenSSF has created a signup page for those interested and urged others to share the email list to other open source community members...
OpenSSF ecyosystem strategist Christopher Robinson (also security communications director for Intel) told the site he expects government agencies and security researchers to be involved in the effort. And he issued this joint statement with OpenSSF ecosystem strategist Bennett Pursell: By leveraging the collective knowledge and expertise of the open source community and other security experts, the OpenSSF Siren empowers projects of all sizes to bolster their cybersecurity defenses and increase their overall awareness of malicious activities. Whether you're a developer, maintainer, or security enthusiast, your participation is vital in safeguarding the integrity of open source software.
In less than a month, the mailing list has already grown to over 800 members...

An anonymous reader shared this report from Computer Weekly: Microsoft has admitted to Scottish policing bodies that it cannot guarantee the sovereignty of UK policing data hosted on its hyperscale public cloud infrastructure, despite its systems being deployed throughout the criminal justice sector.

According to correspondence released by the Scottish Police Authority (SPA) under freedom of information (FOI) rules, Microsoft is unable to guarantee that data uploaded to a key Police Scotland IT system — the Digital Evidence Sharing Capability (DESC) — will remain in the UK as required by law. While the correspondence has not been released in full, the disclosure reveals that data hosted in Microsoft's hyperscale public cloud infrastructure is regularly transferred and processed overseas; that the data processing agreement in place for the DESC did not cover UK-specific data protection requirements; and that while the company has the ability to make technical changes to ensure data protection compliance, it is only making these changes for DESC partners and not other policing bodies because "no one else had asked".

The correspondence also contains acknowledgements from Microsoft that international data transfers are inherent to its public cloud architecture. As a result, the issues identified with the Scottish Police will equally apply to all UK government users, many of whom face similar regulatory limitations on the offshoring of data. The recipient of the FOI disclosures, Owen Sayers — an independent security consultant and enterprise architect with over 20 years' experience in delivering national policing systems — concluded it is now clear that UK policing data has been travelling overseas and "the statements from Microsoft make clear that they 100% cannot comply with UK data protection law".

Slashdot reader DevNull127 writes: A free and open source ChatGPT clone — named LibreChat — lets its users choose which AI model to use, "to harness the capabilities of cutting-edge language models from multiple providers in a unified interface". This means LibreChat includes OpenAI's models, but also others — both open-source and closed-source — and its website promises "seamless integration" with AI services from OpenAI, Azure, Anthropic, and Google — as well as GPT-4, Gemini Vision, and many others. ("Every AI in one place," explains LibreChat's home page.) Plugins even let you make requests to DALL-E or Stable Diffusion for image generations. (LibreChat also offers a database that tracks "conversation state" — making it possible to switch to a different AI model in mid-conversation...)

Released under the MIT License, LibreChat has become "an open source success story," according to this article, representing "the passionate community that's actively creating an ecosystem of open source AI tools." And its creator, Danny Avila, says in some cases it finally lets users own their own data, "which is a dying human right, a luxury in the internet age and even more so with the age of LLM's." Avila says he was inspired by the day ChatGPT leaked the chat history of some of its users back in March of 2023 — and LibreChat is "inherently completely private". From the article:

With locally-hosted LLMs, Avila sees users finally getting "an opportunity to withhold training data from Big Tech, which many trade at the cost of convenience." In this world, LibreChat "is naturally attractive as it can run exclusively on open-source technologies, database and all, completely 'air-gapped.'" Even with remote AI services insisting they won't use transient data for training, "local models are already quite capable" Avila notes, "and will become more capable in general over time."

And they're also compatible with LibreChat...

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Cord Cutters News: Earlier this week, Chicken Soup For The Soul, the parent company behind Redbox, Crackel, and the streaming service by the same name, announced that the entire board of directors and board of managers of each subsidiary of the Company other than William J. Rouhana, Jr., have been fired. This comes as a holder of more than 75% of the voting power of the company used his stock holdings to lay off the Company's board of directors. Now, it has come out that the company missed a $4 million payment to NBCUniversal as a part of its settlement over unpaid royalties. Now it faces a possible order to pay all of $16.7 million it owes NBCUniversal as questions about the future of the company grows. This comes after NBCUniversal sued saying Redbox had not been paying royalties. It agreed to a payment plan but now has missed the first payment of the plan.

Recently the company has been hit hard by the decline in ad revenue on its free streaming services and the drop in DVD rentals at its Redbox locations. This has led to the company seeing its revenues drop 75% in the 1st quarter of 2024 compared to the same period of 2023, according to a SEC filing first spotted by NextTV. Chicken Soup For The Soul is in a tough situation after acquiring Redbox in 2022 for $50 million in stock and an assumption of $325 million in debt. Add on top of that a shaky media environment with cratering ad revenue and quarterly losses, and the company's future is very much in the air. In August, CEO William J. Rouhana said that the company was holding a strategic review to evaluate its opportunities, which is business speak for putting itself up for sale. Chicken Soup for The Soul last year announced that it was in active discussions for a potential sale back in October of this year but so far nothing has come from these talks.

Justine Calma writes via The Verge: A group of young plaintiffs reached a historic climate settlement with the state of Hawaii and Hawaii Department of Transportation in a deal that will push the state to clean up tailpipe pollution. The 13 youth plaintiffs filed suit in 2022 when they were all between the ages of 9 and 18. In the suit, Navahine F. v. Hawaii Department of Transportation (HDOT), they alleged that the state and HDOT had violated their right to "a clean and healthful environment," which is enshrined in Hawaii's constitution.

The settlement (PDF), reached on Thursday, affirms that right and commits the DOT to creating a plan to reach zero greenhouse gas emissions from transportation by 2045. To hit that goal, the state will have to dedicate at least $40 million to building out its EV charging network by the end of the decade and complete new pedestrian, bicycle, and transit networks over the next five years. The settlement also creates a new unit within HDOT tasked with coordinating CO2 emission reductions and a volunteer youth council to advise HDOT.

This is the first settlement agreement in which "government defendants have decided to resolve a constitutional climate case in partnership with youth plaintiffs," according to nonprofit legal groups Our Children's Trust and Earthjustice, which represent the plaintiffs. Back in 2018, Hawaii committed to reaching net-zero carbon dioxide emissions by 2045 -- in line with what climate research determined was necessary to meet the Paris climate accord goal of stopping global warming. But the state wasn't doing enough to reach that goal, the plaintiffs alleged. Transportation makes up the biggest chunk of the state's greenhouse gas pollution. Justine Calma is a senior science reporter covering energy and the environment with more than a decade of experience. She is also the host of Hell or High Water: When Disaster Hits Home, a podcast from Vox Media and Audible Originals.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Fortune: Ellen Bagley was delighted when she made her first sale on a popular second-hand clothing app, but just a few minutes later, the thrill turned to shock as the 20-year-old from Linkoping in Sweden discovered she'd been robbed. Everything seemed normal when Bagley received a direct message on the platform, which asked her to verify personal details to complete the deal. She clicked the link, which fired up BankID -- the ubiquitous digital authorization system used by nearly all Swedish adults.After receiving a couple of error messages, she started thinking something was wrong, but it was already too late. Over 10,000 Swedish kronor ($1,000) had been siphoned from her account and the thieves disappeared into the digital shadows. "The fraudsters are so skilled at making things look legitimate," said Bagley, who was born after BankID was created. "It's not easy" to identify scams. Although financial crime has garnered fewer headlines than a surge in gang-related gun violence, it's become a growing risk for the country. Beyond its borders, Sweden is an important test case on fighting cashless crime because it's gone further on ditching paper money than almost any other country in Europe.

Online fraud and digital crime in Sweden have surged, with criminals taking 1.2 billion kronor in 2023 through scams like the one Bagley fell for, doubling from 2021. Law-enforcement agencies estimate that the size of Sweden's criminal economy could amount to as high as 2.5% of the country's gross domestic product. To counter the digital crime spree, Swedish authorities have put pressure on banks to tighten security measures and make it harder on tech-savvy criminals, but it's a delicate balancing act. Going too far could slow down the economy, while doing too little erodes trust and damages legitimate businesses in the process.Using complex webs of fake companies and forging documents to gain access to Sweden's welfare system, sophisticated fraudsters have made Sweden a "Silicon Valley for criminal entrepreneurship," said Daniel Larson, a senior economic crime prosecutor. While the shock of armed violence has grabbed public attention -- the nation's gun-homicide rate tripled between 2012 and 2022 -- economic crime underlies gang activity and needs to be tackled as aggressively, he added. "That has been a strategic mistake," Larson said. "This profit-generating crime is what's fueling organized crime and, in some cases, leads to these conflicts."

Sweden's switch to electronic cash started after a surge of armed robberies in the 1990s, and by 2022, only 8% of Swedes said they had used cash for their latest purchase, according to a central bank survey. Along with neighboring Norway, Sweden has Europe's lowest number of ATMs per capita, according to the IMF. The prevalence of BankID play a role in Sweden's vulnerability. The system works like an online signature. If used, it's considered a done deal and the transaction gets executed immediately. It was designed by Sweden's banks to make electronic payments even quicker and easier than handing over a stack of bills. Since it's original rollout in 2001, it's become part of the everyday Swedish life. On average, the service -- which requires a six-digit code, a fingerprint or a face scan for authentication -- is used more than twice a day by every adult Swede and is involved in everything from filing tax returns to paying for bus tickets.Originally intended as a product by banks for their customers, its use exploded in 2005 after Sweden's tax agency adopted the technology as an identification for tax returns, giving it the government's official seal of approval. The launch of BankID on mobile phones in 2010 increased usage even further, along with public perception that associated cash with criminality.The country's central bank has acknowledged that some of those connotations may have gone too far. "We have to be very clear that there are still honest people using cash," Riksbank Governor Erik Thedeen told Bloomberg.

The Ontario Science Center, a world-class science and cultural institution in Toronto, is shutting down immediately due to the risk that the building's roof could collapse, the province announced Friday. CBC News: The abrupt closure, which the province says could last years, comes after the government's controversial announcement in 2023 that the popular landmark and attraction would be moved to the Ontario Place site -- a move it says will save costs. "The actions taken today will protect the health and safety of visitors and staff," said Infrastructure Minister Kinga Surma in a news release. "We are making every effort to avoid disruption to the public and help the Ontario Science Centre continue delivering on its mandate."

An engineering report this week by Rimkus Consulting Group showed each of the centre's three buildings contain roof panels in a "distressed, high-risk" condition, the Ministry of Infrastructure said in a news release. The panels require fixing by Oct. 31, 2024 to "avoid further stress due to potential snow load which could lead to roof panel failure," the release said. Fixing the roof will cost between $22 million and $40 million, the ministry said, requiring the centre be closed for up to two years. "These estimates are incomplete and subject to change," said the ministry, noting the costs make up only a "small portion" of the funding needed to keep the science centre open. The government says the centre needs $478 million to tackle its "failing infrastructure" and sustain programming.

TikTok revealed it offered the U.S. government a "kill switch" in 2022 to address data protection and national security concerns, allowing the government to shut down the platform if it violated certain rules. The disclosure was made as it began its legal fight against legislation that will require ByteDance to divest TikTok's U.S. assets or face a ban. The BBC reports: "This law is a radical departure from this country's tradition of championing an open Internet, and sets a dangerous precedent allowing the political branches to target a disfavored speech platform and force it to sell or be shut down," they argued in their legal submission. They also claimed the US government refused to engage in any serious settlement talks after 2022, and pointed to the "kill switch" offer as evidence of the lengths they had been prepared to go.

TikTok says the mechanism would have allowed the government the "explicit authority to suspend the platform in the United States at the US government's sole discretion" if it did not follow certain rules. A draft "National Security Agreement", proposed by TikTok in August 2022, would have seen the company having to follow rules such as properly funding its data protection units and making sure that ByteDance did not have access to US users' data. The "kill switch" could have been triggered by the government if it broke this agreement, it claimed.

In a letter - first reported by the Washington Post - addressed to the US Department of Justice, TikTok's lawyer alleges that the government "ceased any substantive negotiations" after the proposal of the new rules. The letter, dated 1 April 2024, says the US government ignored requests to meet for further negotiations. It also alleges the government did not respond to TikTok's invitation to "visit and inspect its Dedicated Transparency Center in Maryland." Further reading: TikTok Says US Ban Inevitable Without a Court Order Blocking Law

Millions of mosquitoes are being released from helicopters in Hawaii in a last-ditch attempt to save rare birds slipping into extinction. From a report: The archipelago's endemic, brightly coloured honeycreeper birds are dying of malaria carried by mosquitoes first introduced by European and American ships in the 1800s. Having evolved with no immunity to the disease, the birds can die after just a single bite. Thirty-three species of honeycreeper have become extinct and many of the 17 that remain are highly endangered, with concerns some could be extinct within a year if no action is taken. Now conservationists are urgently trying to save them with an unusual strategy: releasing more mosquitoes.

Every week a helicopter drops 250,000 male mosquitoes with a naturally occurring bacterium that acts as birth control on to the islands of the remote archipelago. Already, 10 million have been released. "The only thing that's more tragic is if [the birds] went extinct and we didn't try. You can't not try," said Chris Warren, the forest bird programme coordinator for Haleakala national park on the island of Maui. The population of one honeycreeper, the Kaua'i creeper, or 'akikiki, has dropped from 450 in 2018 to five in 2023, with just one single bird known to be left in the wild on Kaua'i island, according to the national park service.

The Kremlin said on Friday that a U.S. decision to ban sales of Kaspersky's software was a typical move by Washington to stifle foreign competition with American products. From a report: The Biden administration on Thursday said it would ban the sale of antivirus software made by Russia's Kaspersky Lab in the United States, citing what it said was the Kremlin's influence over the company which poses a significant security risk. [...] Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that Kaspersky was a "very competitive" company on international markets and that Washington's decision to restrict its sales was a "favourite technique of unfair competition from the United States."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from CBC News: A device federal public servants call "the little robot" began appearing in Gatineau office buildings in March. It travels through the workplace to collect data using about 20 sensors and a 360-degree camera, according to Yahya Saad, co-founder of GlobalDWS, which created the robot. "Using AI on the robot, the camera takes the picture, analyzes and counts the number of people and then discards the image," he said. Part of a platform known as VirBrix, the robot also gathers information on air quality, light levels, noise, humidity, temperature and even measures CO2, methane and radon gas. The aim is to create a better work environment for humans -- one that isn't too hot, humid or dim. Saad said that means more comfortable and productive employees. The technology can also help reduce heating, cooling and hydro costs, he said. "All these measures are done to save on energy and reduce the carbon footprint," Saad explained. After the pilot program in March, VirBrix is set to return in July and October, and the government hasn't ruled out extending its use. It's paying $39,663 to lease the robot for two years.

Bruce Roy, national president of the Government Services Union, called the robot's presence in federal workplaces "intrusive" and "insulting." "People feel observed all the time," he said in French. "It's a spy. The robot is a spy for management." Roy, whose union represents more than 12,000 federal workers across several departments, said the robot is unnecessary because the employer already has ways of monitoring employee attendance and performance. "We believe that one of the robot's tasks is to monitor who is there and who is not," he said. "Folks say, why is there a robot here? Doesn't my employer trust that I'm here and doing my work properly?" [...] Jean-Yves Duclos, the minister of public services and procurement, said the government is instead using the technology as it looks to cut its office space footprint in half over the coming years. "These robots, as we call them, these sensors observe the utilization of office space and will be able to give us information over the next few years to better provide the kind of workplace employees need to do their job," Duclos said in French. "These are totally anonymous methods that allow us to evaluate which spaces are the most used and which spaces are not used, so we can better arrange them." "In those cases we keep the images, but the whole body, not just the face, the whole body of the person is blurred," said Saad. "These are exceptional cases where we need to keep images and then the images would be handed over to the client."

The data is then stored on a server on Canadian soil, according to GlobalDWS.

The Internet Archive's Open Library, which operates similarly to traditional libraries by lending out digital copies of purchased or donated physical books, has been forced to remove 500,000 books due to a lawsuit by big publishers. Mike Masnick reports via Techdirt: As we've discussed at great length, the Internet Archive's Open Library system is indistinguishable from the economics of how a regular library works. The Archive either purchases physical books or has them donated (just like a physical library). It then lends them out on a one-to-one basis (leaving aside a brief moment where it took down that barrier when basically all libraries were shut down due to pandemic lockdowns), such that when someone "borrows" a digital copy of a book, no one else can borrow that same copy. And yet, for all of the benefits of such a system in enabling more people to be able to access information, without changing the basic economics of how libraries have always worked, the big publishers all sued the Internet Archive. The publishers won the first round of that lawsuit. And while the court (somewhat surprisingly!) did not order the immediate closure of the Open Library, it did require the Internet Archive to remove any books upon request from publishers (though only if the publishers made those books available as eBooks elsewhere).

As the case has moved into the appeals stage (where we have filed an amicus brief), the Archive has revealed that around 500,000 books have been removed from the open library. The Archive has put together an open letter to publishers, requesting that they restore access to this knowledge and information -- a request that will almost certainly fall on extremely deaf ears: "We purchase and acquire books -- yes, physical, paper books -- and make them available for one person at a time to check out and read online. This work is important for readers and authors alike, as many younger and low-income readers can only read if books are free to borrow, and many authors' books will only be discovered or preserved through the work of librarians. We use industry-standard technology to prevent our books from being downloaded and redistributed -- the same technology used by corporate publishers. But the publishers suing our library say we shouldn't be allowed to lend the books we own. They have forced us to remove more than half a million books from our library, and that's why we are appealing."

Amazon aims to completely remove plastic air pillows from its packaging in North America by year-end. Going forward, they will be replaced with paper fillers made from 100% recycled content. CNBC reports: It marks Amazon's largest plastic-packaging reduction effort and will help it remove nearly 15 billion plastic pillows annually. "We are working towards full removal in North America by end of year and will continue to innovate, test, and scale in order to prioritize curbside recyclable materials," VP of Mechatronics and Sustainable Packaging Pat Lindner said in the announcement.

New York Governor Kathy Hochul (D) signed two bills into law on Thursday that aim to protect kids and teens from social media harms, making it the latest state to take action as federal proposals still await votes. From a report: One of the bills, the Stop Addictive Feeds Exploitation (SAFE) for Kids Act, will require parental consent for social media companies to use "addictive feeds" powered by recommendation algorithms on kids and teens under 18. The other, the New York Child Data Protection Act, would limit data collection on minors without consent and restrict the sale of such information but does not require age verification. That law will take effect in a year.

States across the country have taken the lead on enacting legislation to protect kids on the internet -- and it's one area where both Republicans and Democrats seem to agree. While the approaches differ somewhat by party, policymakers on both sides have signaled urgent interest in similar regulations to protect kids on the internet. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis (R), for example, signed into law in March a bill requiring parents' consent for kids under 16 to hold social media accounts. And in May, Maryland Governor Wes Moore (D) signed a broad privacy bill into law, as well as the Maryland Kids Code banning the use of features meant to keep minors on social media for extended periods, like autoplay or spammy notifications.

TikTok and Chinese parent ByteDance on Thursday urged a U.S. court to strike down a law they say will ban the popular short app in the United States on Jan. 19, saying the U.S. government refused to engage in any serious settlement talks after 2022. From a report: Legislation signed in April by President Joe Biden gives ByteDance until Jan. 19 of next year to divest TikTok's U.S. assets or face a ban on the app used by 170 million Americans. ByteDance says a divestiture is "not possible technologically, commercially, or legally."

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia will hold oral arguments on lawsuits filed by TikTok and ByteDance along with TikTok users on Sept. 16. TikTok's future in the United States may rest on the outcome of the case which could impact how the U.S. government uses its new authority to clamp down on foreign-owned apps. "This law is a radical departure from this country's tradition of championing an open Internet, and sets a dangerous precedent allowing the political branches to target a disfavored speech platform and force it to sell or be shut down," ByteDance and TikTok argue in asking the court to strike down the law.

An anonymous reader shares a report: YouTube Premium subscribers who use VPNs are reporting that their plans are being automatically canceled by the Google-owned company, according to multiple subscribers who have posted screenshots and descriptions of the issue on Reddit.

A Google support representative confirmed to PCMag that YouTube has started a crackdown. "YouTube has initiated the cancellation of premium memberships for accounts identified as having falsified signup country information," the Google support agent said via chat message. "Due to violating YouTube's Paid Terms of Service, these users will receive an email and an in-app notification informing them of the cancellation."

The Biden administration on Thursday will announce plans to bar the sale of Kaspersky Lab's antivirus software in the United States, citing the firm's large U.S. customers including critical infrastructure providers and state and local governments, according to Reuters. From the report: The company's close ties to the Russian government were found to pose a critical risk, the person said, adding that the software's privileged access to a computer's systems could allow it to steal sensitive information from American computers, install malware or withhold critical updates. The sweeping new rule, using broad powers created by the Trump administration, will be coupled with another move to add the company to a trade restriction list, according to two other people familiar with the matter, dealing a blow to the firm's reputation that could hammer its overseas sales.

The plan to add the cybersecurity company to the entity list, which effectively bars a company's U.S. suppliers from selling to it, and the timing and details of the software sales curb, have not been previously reported. Previously, Kaspersky has said that it is a privately managed company with no ties to the Russian government. The moves show the administration is trying to stamp out any risks of Russian cyberattacks stemming from Kaspersky software and keep squeezing Moscow as its war effort in Ukraine has regained momentum and as the United States has run low on fresh sanctions it can impose on Russia.

An anonymous reader shares a report: Punishing heat waves gripped three continents on Tuesday, breaking records in cities around the Northern Hemisphere less than two weeks after the Earth recorded what scientists said were likely its hottest days in modern history. Firefighters in Greece scrambled to put out wildfires, as parched conditions raised the risk of more blazes throughout Europe. Beijing logged another day of 95-degree heat, and people in Hangzhou, another Chinese city, compared the choking conditions to a sauna. From the Middle East to the American Southwest, delivery drivers, airport workers and construction crews labored under blistering skies. Those who could stay indoors did.

The temperatures, afflicting so much of the world all at once, were a withering reminder that climate change is a global crisis, driven by human-made forces: the emissions of heat-trapping gases, mainly caused by the burning of fossil fuels. John Kerry, the U.S. special envoy for climate change, sought to coordinate some of the global response with the Chinese premier in Beijing, as a heat wave clutched a huge swath of China. "The world really is looking to us for that leadership, particularly on the climate issue," Mr. Kerry told Chinese officials. "Climate, as you know, is a global issue, not a bilateral issue. It's a threat to all of humankind."

The planet has warmed about 2 degrees Fahrenheit since the 19th century and will continue to grow hotter until humans essentially stop burning coal, oil and gas, scientists say. The warmer temperatures contribute to extreme weather events and help make periods of extreme heat more frequent, longer and more intense. Also affecting this year's conditions is the return of El Nino, a cyclical weather pattern that, depending on the sea surface temperature and the pressure of the air above it, can originate in the Pacific and have wide-ranging effects on weather around the world.

Pornhub plans to block access to its website in Indiana, Idaho, Kansas, Kentucky, and Nebraska in response to age verification laws designed to prevent children from accessing adult websites. From a report: The website has now cut off access in more than half a dozen states in protest of similar age verification laws that have quickly spread across conservative-leaning US states. Indiana, Idaho, and Kansas will lose access on June 27th, according to alerts on Pornhub's website that were seen by local news sources and Reddit users; Kentucky will lose access on July 10th, according to Kentucky Public Radio.

The U.S. Senate has passed a bill to accelerate the deployment of nuclear energy capacity, including by speeding permitting and creating new incentives for advanced nuclear reactor technologies. From a report: Expanding nuclear power has broad bipartisan support, with Democrats seeing it as critical to decarbonizing the power sector to fight climate change and Republicans viewing it as a way to ensure reliable electricity supply and create jobs. A version of the bill had already passed in the House of Representatives and it will now go to President Joe Biden for a signature to become law. It passed the Senate 88-2 votes.

"In a major victory for our climate and American energy security, the U.S. Senate has passed the ADVANCE Act with overwhelming, bipartisan support," said Senator Tom Carper, a Democrat, who is Chairman of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee. "Today, we sent the ADVANCE Act to the president's desk because Congress worked together to recognize the importance of nuclear energy to America's future and got the job done," said Republican Shelley Moore Capito, a ranking member of the committee.

Officials are asking if this month's UK hospital hack resulted in fatalities. From a report: As the fallout from a cyberattack affecting hospitals in London enters its third week, doctors have been asked to report any deaths or other serious harms directly linked to the incident. On June 3, a group of ransomware hackers compromised a lab services provider, Synnovis, and locked down the company's systems, triggering major disruptions at hospitals and clinics in South East London. In the first week, doctors delayed 800 planned operations and 700 outpatient appointments and resorted to handwritten records, while a hospital solicited blood from its own clinical workers after the hack. Some of the worst interruptions have been resolved, but many services still haven't been restored.

[...] But amid the recovery, health officials last week circulated a so-called "harms monitoring" form to doctors and clinicians, asking them to record the human toll of the cyberattack. The form, which I have seen, seeks to categorize the damage through a series of questions ranging from minor to major, including "patient died as a DIRECT result of the incident."

Britain's university sector, a key contributor to the country's economy and global standing, is facing an unprecedented crisis that threatens its very existence, according to an analysis by Glen O'Hara, a professor of modern and contemporary history at Oxford Brookes University. Despite collectively generating over $61.1 billion in annual income and $28 billion in export earnings, universities across the UK are grappling with declining funding, widespread cuts, and internal divisions. The sector's annual losses stand at $2.55 billion, with one in four universities in the red.

Job cuts have become a daily occurrence, with institutions such as Coventry, Goldsmith's, Kent, and Lincoln slashing staff numbers. The downsizing is primarily occurring through retirements and voluntary severance schemes, but the long-term outlook remains bleak. Experts cited in an analysis by Prospect magazine warn that without fundamental re-engineering and strategic direction, the sector risks a gradual decline, with some universities potentially facing bankruptcy. The government's focus on the "culture wars" has further divided the public from their local campuses, while the real crisis lies in the finance and organization of the sector.

The frozen tuition fees for home students, coupled with unpredictable inflation, have left universities struggling to cover costs. Attempts to offset losses by recruiting more students in cheaper-to-teach subjects and attracting international students have reached their limits, with the latter now in decline. As the next government grapples with this crisis, stopgap measures such as small funding injections, slight fee increases, and encouraging university mergers may provide temporary relief.

Shubham Sharma reports via VentureBeat: Chinese AI startup DeepSeek, which previously made headlines with a ChatGPT competitor trained on 2 trillion English and Chinese tokens, has announced the release of DeepSeek Coder V2, an open-source mixture of experts (MoE) code language model. Built upon DeepSeek-V2, an MoE model that debuted last month, DeepSeek Coder V2 excels at both coding and math tasks. It supports more than 300 programming languages and outperforms state-of-the-art closed-source models, including GPT-4 Turbo, Claude 3 Opus and Gemini 1.5 Pro. The company claims this is the first time an open model has achieved this feat, sitting way ahead of Llama 3-70B and other models in the category. It also notes that DeepSeek Coder V2 maintains comparable performance in terms of general reasoning and language capabilities.

Founded last year with a mission to "unravel the mystery of AGI with curiosity," DeepSeek has been a notable Chinese player in the AI race, joining the likes of Qwen, 01.AI and Baidu. In fact, within a year of its launch, the company has already open-sourced a bunch of models, including the DeepSeek Coder family. The original DeepSeek Coder, with up to 33 billion parameters, did decently on benchmarks with capabilities like project-level code completion and infilling, but only supported 86 programming languages and a context window of 16K. The new V2 offering builds on that work, expanding language support to 338 and context window to 128K -- enabling it to handle more complex and extensive coding tasks. When tested on MBPP+, HumanEval, and Aider benchmarks, designed to evaluate code generation, editing and problem-solving capabilities of LLMs, DeepSeek Coder V2 scored 76.2, 90.2, and 73.7, respectively -- sitting ahead of most closed and open-source models, including GPT-4 Turbo, Claude 3 Opus, Gemini 1.5 Pro, Codestral and Llama-3 70B. Similar performance was seen across benchmarks designed to assess the model's mathematical capabilities (MATH and GSM8K). The only model that managed to outperform DeepSeek's offering across multiple benchmarks was GPT-4o, which obtained marginally higher scores in HumanEval, LiveCode Bench, MATH and GSM8K. [...]

As of now, DeepSeek Coder V2 is being offered under a MIT license, which allows for both research and unrestricted commercial use. Users can download both 16B and 236B sizes in instruct and base avatars via Hugging Face. Alternatively, the company is also providing access to the models via API through its platform under a pay-as-you-go model. For those who want to test out the capabilities of the models first, the company is offering the option to interact. with Deepseek Coder V2 via chatbot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Phys.Org: When old satellites fall into Earth's atmosphere and burn up, they leave behind tiny particles of aluminum oxide, which eat away at Earth's protective ozone layer. A new study finds that these oxides have increased 8-fold between 2016 and 2022 and will continue to accumulate as the number of low-Earth-orbit satellites skyrockets. The 1987 Montreal Protocol successfully regulated ozone-damaging CFCs to protect the ozone layer, shrinking the ozone hole over Antarctica with recovery expected within fifty years. But the unanticipated growth of aluminum oxides may push pause on the ozone success story in decades to come. Of the 8,100 objects in low Earth orbit, 6,000 are Starlink satellites launched in the last few years. Demand for global internet coverage is driving a rapid ramp up of launches of small communication satellite swarms. SpaceX is the frontrunner in this enterprise, with permission to launch another 12,000 Starlink satellites and as many as 42,000 planned. Amazon and other companies around the globe are also planning constellations ranging from 3,000 to 13,000 satellites, the authors of the study said. Internet satellites in low Earth orbit are short-lived, at about five years. Companies must then launch replacement satellites to maintain internet service, continuing a cycle of planned obsolescence and unplanned pollution.

Aluminum oxides spark chemical reactions that destroy stratospheric ozone, which protects Earth from harmful UV radiation. The oxides don't react chemically with ozone molecules, instead triggering destructive reactions between ozone and chlorine that deplete the ozone layer. Because aluminum oxides are not consumed by these chemical reactions, they can continue to destroy molecule after molecule of ozone for decades as they drift down through the stratosphere. Yet little attention has yet been paid to pollutants formed when satellites fall into the upper atmosphere and burn. Earlier studies of satellite pollution largely focused on the consequences of propelling a launch vehicle into space, such as the release of rocket fuel. The new study, by a research team from the University of Southern California Viterbi School of Engineering, is the first realistic estimate of the extent of this long-lived pollution in the upper atmosphere, the authors said. [...]

In 2022, reentering satellites increased aluminum in the atmosphere by 29.5% over natural levels, the researchers found. The modeling showed that a typical 250-kilogram (550-pound) satellite with 30% of its mass being aluminum will generate about 30 kilograms (66 pounds) of aluminum oxide nanoparticles (1-100 nanometers in size) during its reentry plunge. Most of these particles are created in the mesosphere, 50-85 kilometers (30-50 miles) above Earth's surface. The team then calculated that based on particle size, it would take up to 30 years for the aluminum oxides to drift down to stratospheric altitudes, where 90% of Earth's ozone is located. The researchers estimated that by the time the currently planned satellite constellations are complete, every year, 912 metric tons of aluminum (1,005 U.S. tons) will fall to Earth. That will release around 360 metric tons (397 U.S. tons) of aluminum oxides per year to the atmosphere, an increase of 646% over natural levels. The study is published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters.

Bipartisan agreement on government internet subsidies seems unlikely as Democrats and Republicans propose conflicting bills to reauthorize the FCC's spectrum auctions. The Democratic bill aims to fund the now-defunct Affordable Connectivity Program, while the Republican version does not. "While some Republicans supported earlier efforts to extend the subsidy program, those efforts did not go through in time to keep it from ending," notes The Verge. From the report: The Senate Commerce Committee canceled a Tuesday morning markup meeting in which it was set to consider the Spectrum and National Security Act, led by committee chair Maria Cantwell (D-WA). When she introduced it in April, Cantwell said the bill would provide $7 billion to continue funding the Affordable Connectivity Program (ACP), the pandemic-era internet subsidy for low-income Americans that officially ran out of money and ended at the end of May. The main purpose of the bill is to reauthorize the Federal Communications Commission's authority to run auctions for spectrum. The proceeds from spectrum auctions are often used to fund other programs. In addition to the ACP, Cantwell's bill would also fund programs including incentives for domestic chip manufacturing and a program that seeks to replace telecommunications systems that have been deemed national security concerns. The markup was already postponed several times before.

Cantwell blamed Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), the top Republican on the Senate Commerce Committee, for standing in the way of the legislation. "We had a chance to secure affordable broadband for millions of Americans, but Senator Cruz said 'no,'" Cantwell said in a statement late Monday. "He said 'no' to securing a lifeline for millions of Americans who rely on the Affordable Connectivity Program to speak to their doctors, do their homework, connect to their jobs, and stay in touch with loved ones -- including more than one million Texas families." In remarks on the Senate floor on Tuesday, Cantwell said her Republican colleagues on the committee offered amendments to limit the ACP funding in the bill. She said the ACP shouldn't be a partisan issue and stressed the wide range of Americans who've relied on the program for high-speed connections, including elderly people living on fixed incomes and many military families. "I hope my colleagues will stop with obstructing and get back to negotiating on important legislation that will deliver these national security priorities and help Americans continue to have access to something as essential as affordable broadband," she said.

Cruz has his own spectrum legislation with Sen. John Thune (R-SD) that would reauthorize the FCC's spectrum auction authority, with a focus on expanding commercial access to mid-band spectrum, commonly used for 5G. But it doesn't have the same ACP funding mechanism. Some large telecom industry players prefer Cruz's bill, in part because it allows for exclusive licensing. Wireless communications trade group CTIA's SVP of government affairs, Kelly Cole, told Fierce Network that the Cruz bill "is a better approach because it follows the historical precedent set by prior bipartisan legislation to extend the FCC's auction authority." But other tech groups like the Internet Technology Industry Council (ITI), which represents companies including Amazon, Apple, Google, and Meta, support Cantwell's bill, in part because of the programs it seeks to fund.

An anonymous reader shares a report: Texas A&M University held the largest engineering research portfolio of any academic institution in the country last year, nearing half a billion dollars and surpassing Massachusetts Institute of Technology for the top spot, according to U.S. News & World Report. The state flagship's College of Engineering recorded $444.7 million in research expenditures in the 2023 fiscal year, university officials said.

A mix of federal, state and private grants funds those efforts, so more expenditures means more partnerships and a larger engineering footprint than ever, Texas A&M University System Chancellor John Sharp said. "An awful lot of people in Washington, a lot of people in Austin, a lot of people in the private sector now rely on Texas A&M to do their engineering research," Sharp said. "Of all the places in the country now, the No. 1 place people go to research engineering problems is Texas A&M University."

A new Gallup survey released Tuesday found cost and work conflicts are the top reasons Americans choose to discontinue their higher education. From a report: In the poll, 87 percent said cost was a "very" or "moderately" important reason for pursuing further institutional study, while 81 percent pointed to work conflicts. The other two leading reasons were the time it takes to complete a degree at 73 percent and lack of remote options at 70 percent. Cost tops the list among all demographic groups, including across racial and ethnic lines.

"For many of these Americans, their time enrolled in these courses represents significant opportunity costs and financial investment. Given that they lack a degree or credential to show for their time enrolled, they are often worse off than if they never enrolled to begin with," Gallup said. Colleges prices have been surging for decades, with some estimating a 180 percent increase between 1980 and 2020. The cost of Ivy League schools is nearing $90,000 a year, and the average student debt held in the U.S. sits around $30,000. "Today, approximately 41.9 million Americans have some college experience but no degree or credential. The percentage of Americans who have taken some college courses, but who have stopped out and not completed their degree or credential, has increased significantly over the past five years," Gallup found.

The Los Angeles Unified School District on Tuesday will consider banning smartphones for its 429,000 students in an attempt to insulate a generation of kids from distractions and social media that undermine learning and hurt mental health. From a report: The proposal was being formulated before U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy on Monday called for a warning label on social media platforms, akin to those on cigarette packages, due to what he considers a mental health emergency. The board of the second-largest school district in the United States is scheduled to vote on a proposal to within 120 days develop a policy that would prohibit student use of cellphones and social media platforms and be in place by January 2025.

The L.A. schools will consider whether phones should be stored in pouches or lockers during school hours, according to the meeting's agenda and what exceptions should be made for students with learning or physical disabilities. Nick Melvoin, a board member and former middle school teacher who proposed the resolution, said cell phones were already a problem when he left the classroom in 2011, and since then the constant texting and liking has grown far worse.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: Dr Joseph Cotter takes some unusual pieces of luggage on his trips on the London underground. They include a stainless steel vacuum chamber, a few billion atoms of rubidium and an array of lasers that are used to cool his equipment to a temperature just above absolute zero. While not the average kit you would expect to find being dragged into carriages on the District Line, this is the gear that Cotter -- who works at Imperial College London's Centre for Cold Matter -- uses on his underground travels. Though the baggage may be bizarre, it has an ambitious purpose. It is being used to develop a quantum compass -- an instrument that will exploit the behavior of subatomic matter in order to develop devices that can accurately pinpoint their locations no matter where they are placed, paving the way for the creation of a new generation of underground and underwater sensors. The ideal place to test it is the London underground, Cotter and his team have discovered. "We are developing very precise new sensors using quantum mechanics, and these are showing great promise in the laboratory," he told the Observer last week. "However, they are less accurate in real-life settings. That is why we are taking our equipment to the London underground. It's the perfect place for smoothing out the rough edges and getting our equipment to work in real life." [...]

At the heart of the quantum compass -- which could be ready for widespread use in a few years -- is a device known as an accelerometer that can measure how an object's velocity changes over time. This information, combined with the starting point of that object, allows its future positions to be calculated. Mobile phones and laptops possess accelerometers but these versions cannot maintain their accuracy over lengthy periods. However, quantum mechanics offers scientists a way to provide new precision and accuracy by measuring properties of supercool atoms. At extremely low temperatures, atoms behave in a "quantum" way. They act like matter and like waves. "When atoms are ultra-cold, we can use quantum mechanics to describe how they move, and this allows us to make accurate measurements that tell us how our device is changing its position," said Cotter. In the devices -- which have been carried on board London underground track-testing trains and not on commuter services -- rubidium is inserted into the vacuum chamber that lies at the machine's heart. Powerful lasers are then used to cool these atoms to a fraction of a degree above absolute zero (-273.15C). In these conditions, the wave properties of the rubidium atoms are affected by the acceleration of the vehicle that is carrying the equipment, and these minute changes can be measured accurately. The system has been found to work well in a stable laboratory but needs to be tested in more extreme conditions if it is to be turned into a transportable, standalone device that can be used in remote or complex locations, added Cotter.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: Kilifi County's white sandy beaches have made it one of Kenya's most popular tourist destinations. Hotels and beach bars line the 165 mile-long (265km) coast; fishers supply the district's restaurants with fresh seafood; and visitors spend their days boating, snorkelling around coral reefs or bird watching in dense mangrove forests. Soon, this idyllic coastline will host Kenya's first nuclear plant, as the country, like its east African neighbour Uganda, pushes forward with atomic energy plans. The proposals have sparked fierce opposition in Kilifi. In a building by Mida Creek, a swampy bayou known for its birdlife and mangrove forests, more than a dozen conservation and rights groups meet regularly to discuss the proposed plant.

"Kana nuclear!" Phyllis Omido, an award-winning environmentalist who is leading the protests, tells one such meeting. The Swahili slogan means "reject nuclear", and encompasses the acronym for the Kenya Anti-Nuclear Alliance who say the plant will deepen Kenya's debt and are calling for broader public awareness of the cost. Construction on the power station is expected to start in 2027, with it due to be operational in 2034. "It is the worst economic decision we could make for our country," says Omido, who began her campaign last year. A lawsuit filed in the environmental court by lawyers Collins Sang and Cecilia Ndeti in July 2023 on behalf of Kilifi residents, seeks to stop the plant, arguing that the process has been "rushed" and was "illegal", and that public participation meetings were "clandestine". They argue the Nuclear Power and Energy Agency (Nupea) should not proceed with fixing any site for the plant before laws and adequate safeguards are in place. Nupea said construction would not begin for years, that laws were under discussion and that adequate public participation was being carried out. Hearings are continuing to take place.

In November, people in Kilifi filed a petition with parliament calling for an inquiry. The petition, sponsored by the Centre for Justice Governance and Environmental Action (CJGEA), a non-profit founded by Omido in 2009, also claimed that locals had limited information on the proposed plant and the criteria for selecting preferred sites. It raised concerns over the risks to health, the environment and tourism in the event of a nuclear spill, saying the country was undertaking a "high-risk venture" without proper legal and disaster response measures in place. The petition also flagged concerns over security and the handling of radioactive waste in a nation prone to floods and drought. The senate suspended (PDF) the inquiry until the lawsuit was heard. "If we really have to invest in nuclear, why can't [the government] put it in a place that does not cause so much risk to our ecological assets?" says Omido. "Why don't they choose an area that would not mean that if there was a nuclear leak we would lose so much as a country?" Peter Musila, a marine scientist who monitors the impacts of global heating on coral reefs, fears that a nuclear power station will threaten aquatic life. The coral cover in Watamu marine national reserve, a protected area near Kilifi's coast, has improved over the last decade and Musila fears progress could be reversed by thermal pollution from the plant, whose cooling system would suck large amounts of water from the ocean and return it a few degrees warmer, potentially killing fish and the micro-organisms such as plankton, which are essential for a thriving aquatic ecosystem. "It's terrifying," says Musila, who works with the conservation organisation A Rocha Kenya. "It could wreak havoc." Nupea, for its part, "published an impact assessment report last year that recommended policies be put in place to ensure environmental protections, including detailed plans for the handling of radioactive waste; measures to mitigate environmental harm, such as setting up a nuclear unit in the national environment management authority; and emergency response teams," notes the Guardian. "It also proposed social and economic protections for affected communities, including clear guidelines on compensation for those who lose their livelihoods, or are displaced from their land, when the plant is set up."

"Nupea said a power station could create thousands of jobs for Kenyans and said it had partnered with Kilifi universities to start nuclear training programs that would enable more residents to take up jobs at the plant. Wilfred Baya, assistant director for energy for Kilifi county, says the plant could also bring infrastructural development and greater electricity access to a region which suffers frequent power cuts."

"Over at Fast Company, where we're celebrating 1994 Week, I wrote about the year of Peak CD-ROM, when excitement over the medium's potential was sky-high and the World Wide Web's audience still numbered in the extremely low millions," writes Slashdot reader and Fast Company technology editor Harry McCracken (harrymcc). "I cover once-famous products such as Microsoft's Encarta encyclopedia, the curse of shovelware, the rise of a San Francisco neighborhood known as 'Multimedia Gulch,' and why the whole dream soon came crashing down." Here's an excerpt from the article: Thirty years ago, a breakthrough technology was poised to transform how people stayed informed, entertained themselves, and maybe even shopped. I'm not talking about the World Wide Web. True, it was already getting good buzz among early adopter types. But even three years after going online, Tim Berners-Lee's creation was "still relatively slow and crude" and "limited to perhaps two million Internet users who have the proper software to gain access to it," wrote The New York Times' Peter H. Lewis in November 1994. At the time, it was the CD-ROM that had captured the imagination of consumers and the entire publishing industry. The high-capacity optical discs enabled mass distribution of multimedia for the first time, giving software developers the ability to create new kinds of experiences. Some of the largest companies in America saw them as media's next frontier, as did throngs of startups. In terms of pure mindshare, 1994 might have been the year of Peak CD, with 17.5 million CD-ROM drives and $590 million in discs sold, according to research firms Dataquest and Link Resources.

You already know that the frenzy didn't last. As the web got faster, slicker, and more readily accessible, CD-ROMs came to look pretty mundane, and eventually faded from memory. Myst, once the best-selling PC game of all time, might be the only 1990s disc that retains a prominent spot in our shared cultural consciousness. (Full disclosure: I do have a friend who can be relied upon to fondly bring up Microsoft's Cinemania movie guide about once a year for no apparent reason.) Revisiting the discs that defined the mid-1990s -- all of which are incompatible with modern operating systems -- isn't easy. To get some of them up and running again, I downloaded virtual CD-ROM files from the Internet Archive and used them with Windows 3.1 on my iPad Pro, courtesy of a piece of software Apple removed from the App Store in 2021. Spending time with titles such as Compton's Interactive Encyclopedia and It's a Wonderful Life Multi-Media Edition, three decades after they last commanded my attention, was a Proustian rush. You may not want to go to similar extremes. But would you indulge me as I wallow in enough CD-ROM nostalgia to get it out of my system?

The U.S. government on Monday sued Adobe, accusing the maker of Photoshop and Acrobat of harming consumers by enrolling them in its most lucrative subscription plans without clearly disclosing important terms. From a report: In a complaint filed in the San Jose, California, federal court, the government said Adobe failed to adequately disclose hefty early termination fees, sometimes reaching hundreds of dollars, when customers sign up for "annual, paid monthly" subscription plans.

The government said Adobe hides important terms in fine print and behind textboxes and hyperlinks, clearly discloses the fees only when subscribers try to cancel, and makes canceling an onerous and complicated process.

Wells Fargo's co-branded credit card partnership with fintech startup Bilt Technologies is causing the bank to lose up as much as $10 million monthly, according to a WSJ report. The bank agreed to a co-branded program with the fintech startup that most other big banks -- including JPMorgan Chase -- passed on, incorrectly modeled key assumptions and sees no path to profitability. The card, which allows users to pay rent without fees while earning rewards, has attracted many young customers. From the report: There is a reason why credit cards hadn't gained traction in the rent sector until Bilt came along. Most landlords didn't accept them because they refuse to pay card fees that get pocketed by the banks issuing them and often run between 2% and 3%.

Bilt structured the card so landlords won't incur the fees. Wells instead eats much of that. About six months after the credit card was launched, Wells began paying Bilt a fee of about 0.80% of each rent transaction, even though the bank isn't collecting interchange fees from landlords. It appears that the problem for Wells Fargo is that Bilt customers are savvy. They are making the rent payments, but not carrying balances or doing any other transactions through the card.

YouTube is piloting a new feature called "Notes" that allows viewers to add context and information under videos. The move comes as YouTube aims to minimize the spread of misinformation on its platform, particularly during the pivotal 2024 U.S. election year. The feature, similar to Community Notes on X (formerly Twitter), will initially be available on mobile in the U.S. in English.

"At the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, the U.S. military launched a secret campaign to counter what it perceived as China's growing influence in the Philippines..." reports Reuters.

"It aimed to sow doubt about the safety and efficacy of vaccines and other life-saving aid that was being supplied by China, a Reuters investigation found."

Reuters interviewed "more than two dozen current and former U.S officials, military contractors, social media analysts and academic researchers," and also reviewed posts on social media, technical data and documents about "a set of fake social media accounts used by the U.S. military" — some active for more than five years. Friday they reported the results of their investigation: Through phony internet accounts meant to impersonate Filipinos, the military's propaganda efforts morphed into an anti-vax campaign. Social media posts decried the quality of face masks, test kits and the first vaccine that would become available in the Philippines — China's Sinovac inoculation. Reuters identified at least 300 accounts on X, formerly Twitter, that matched descriptions shared by former U.S. military officials familiar with the Philippines operation. Almost all were created in the summer of 2020 and centered on the slogan #Chinaangvirus — Tagalog for China is the virus.

"COVID came from China and the VACCINE also came from China, don't trust China!" one typical tweet from July 2020 read in Tagalog. The words were next to a photo of a syringe beside a Chinese flag and a soaring chart of infections. Another post read: "From China — PPE, Face Mask, Vaccine: FAKE. But the Coronavirus is real." After Reuters asked X about the accounts, the social media company removed the profiles, determining they were part of a coordinated bot campaign based on activity patterns and internal data.

The U.S. military's anti-vax effort began in the spring of 2020 and expanded beyond Southeast Asia before it was terminated in mid-2021, Reuters determined. Tailoring the propaganda campaign to local audiences across Central Asia and the Middle East, the Pentagon used a combination of fake social media accounts on multiple platforms to spread fear of China's vaccines among Muslims at a time when the virus was killing tens of thousands of people each day. A key part of the strategy: amplify the disputed contention that, because vaccines sometimes contain pork gelatin, China's shots could be considered forbidden under Islamic law...

A senior Defense Department official acknowledged the U.S. military engaged in secret propaganda to disparage China's vaccine in the developing world, but the official declined to provide details. A Pentagon spokeswoman... also noted that China had started a "disinformation campaign to falsely blame the United States for the spread of COVID-19."
A senior U.S. military officer directly involved in the campaign told Reuters that "We didn't do a good job sharing vaccines with partners. So what was left to us was to throw shade on China's."

At least six senior State Department officials for the region objected, according to the article. But in 2019 U.S. Defense Secretary Mark Esper signed "a secret order" that "elevated the Pentagon's competition with China and Russia to the priority of active combat, enabling commanders to sidestep the StateDepartment when conducting psyops against those adversaries."

[A senior defense official] said the Pentagon has rescinded parts of Esper's 2019 order that allowed military commanders to bypass the approval of U.S. ambassadors when waging psychological operations. The rules now mandate that military commanders work closely with U.S. diplomats in the country where they seek to have an impact. The policy also restricts psychological operations aimed at "broad population messaging," such as those used to promote vaccine hesitancy during COVID...

Nevertheless, the Pentagon's clandestine propaganda efforts are set to continue. In an unclassified strategy document last year, top Pentagon generals wrote that the U.S. military could undermine adversaries such as China and Russia using "disinformation spread across social media, false narratives disguised as news, and similar subversive activities [to] weaken societal trust by undermining the foundations of government."

And in February, the contractor that worked on the anti-vax campaign — General Dynamics IT — won a $493 million contract. Its mission: to continue providing clandestine influence services for the military.

The Energy Information Administration (EIA) expects Americans' monthly electricity bills to average $173 between June through August, compared to $168 last summer. "The slight bump in costs comes from consumers cranking up their air conditioning more to cope with a warmer season than last year," writes The Verge's Justine Calma. "Bills would have jumped higher, if not for lower residential electricity prices helping to balance out some of the increased energy use from air conditioning." From the report: Some regions are likely to be harder hit by the weather than others. Because of heat and humidity along the Gulf Coast, residents in Southern states typically use the most electricity in the summer to cool their homes. The Pacific Coast, meanwhile, faces the biggest potential percentage increase in retail electricity prices in the nation -- a 7 percent jump since last year. Wholesale electricity costs there have risen since 2022, in part because of a heat and drought-induced shortfall in hydroelectricity generation. Households along the Pacific could see their electricity bills go up an average of $11 per month this summer, according to the EIA.

To be sure, the EIA says that weather is "the main source of uncertainty" in its forecasts for folks' utility bills. If this summer winds up being hotter than expected, households could wind up paying even more. Residential electricity use typically peaks in the summer for most of the US because of air conditioning. Extreme heat can even trigger power outages if demand suddenly rises too sharply. California, the Southwest, the Midwest, Texas, and New England are at "elevated risk" of electricity supply shortages during any extreme weather this summer, according to an assessment (PDF) by the North American Electric Reliability Corporation.

An artificial intelligence candidate is on the ballot for the United Kingdom's general election next month. From a report: "AI Steve," represented by Sussex businessman Steve Endacott, will appear on the ballot alongside non-AI candidates running to represent constituents in the Brighton Pavilion area of Brighton and Hove, a city on England's southern coast. "AI Steve is the AI co-pilot," Endacott said in an interview. "I'm the real politician going into Parliament, but I'm controlled by my co-pilot." Endacott is the chairman of Neural Voice, a company that creates personalized voice assistants for businesses in the form of an AI avatar. Neural Voice's technology is behind AI Steve, one of the seven characters the company created to showcase its technology.

He said the idea is to use AI to create a politician who is always around to talk with constituents and who can take their views into consideration. People can ask AI Steve questions or share their opinions on Endacott's policies on its website, during which a large language model will give answers in voice and text based on a database of information about his party's policies. If he doesn't have a policy for a particular issue raised, the AI will conduct some internet research before engaging the voter and pushing them to suggest a policy.

Mozilla has reinstated certain add-ons for Firefox that earlier this week had been banned in Russia by the Kremlin. From a report: The browser extensions, which are hosted on the Mozilla store, were made unavailable in the Land of Putin on or around June 8 after a request by the Russian government and its internet censorship agency, Roskomnadzor. Among those extensions were three pieces of code that were explicitly designed to circumvent state censorship -- including a VPN and Censor Tracker, a multi-purpose add-on that allowed users to see what websites shared user data, and a tool to access Tor websites. The day the ban went into effect, Roskomsvoboda -- the developer of Censor Tracker -- took to the official Mozilla forums and asked why his extension was suddenly banned in Russia with no warning.

The iconic recycling symbol, invented 20 years before Earth Day 1990, has become omnipresent on products, often misleading consumers about what can be recycled, according to experts cited in a story explored by Grist. The chasing arrows logo, which promises rebirth for discarded materials, is frequently plastered on items that are not recyclable, particularly plastic products. Confusion over recycling rules has led to contamination at recycling facilities, driving up costs for cities. Only around 5 percent of plastic waste in the United States gets recycled, with much of the rest ending up in landfills or incinerators.

Environmental groups have called plastic recycling a "false solution." The trouble began in the 1970s when corporations, facing pressure to address litter, embraced recycling as a way to shift responsibility for waste onto individuals and local governments. The plastics industry introduced a resin code system in 1988, surrounding numbers with the chasing arrows logo, giving the impression that all plastics could be recycled. Despite industry efforts to promote recycling, experts say fulfilling the "urgent need to recycle" has proven difficult and unprofitable. The result is a lack of markets for most recycled plastics, with only 9 percent of all plastics ever produced having been recycled.

An anonymous reader shares a report: It's been a rocky couple of months for Sonos -- so much so that CEO Patrick Spence now has a canned autoreply for customers emailing him to vent about the redesigned app. But as the company works to right the ship, restore trust, and get the new Sonos Ace headphones off to a strong start, it finds itself in the middle of yet another controversy.

As highlighted by repair technician and consumer privacy advocate Louis Rossmann, Sonos has made a significant change to its privacy policy, at least in the United States, with the removal of one key line. The updated policy no longer contains a sentence that previously said, "Sonos does not and will not sell personal information about our customers." That pledge is still present in other countries, but it's nowhere to be found in the updated US policy, which went into effect earlier this month.

Visa's and Mastercard's proposed $30 billion antitrust settlement to limit credit and debit card fees for merchants is in peril, after a New York judge signaled she was preparing to reject the accord. From a report: U.S. District Judge Margo Brodie in Brooklyn told lawyers for the card networks and objectors at a hearing on Thursday that she will "likely not approve the settlement," according to court records.

She plans to write an opinion explaining her decision and reasoning. Both card networks said they were disappointed. Mastercard called the settlement a "fair resolution" that gave businesses more flexibility in managing card transactions, and Visa called it an "appropriate resolution" to the nearly 19-year-old case.

An anonymous reader shares a report: After five years of pioneering research into the abuse of social platforms, the Stanford Internet Observatory is winding down. Its founding director, Alex Stamos, left his position in November. Renee DiResta, its research director, left last week after her contract was not renewed. One other staff member's contract expired this month, while others have been told to look for jobs elsewhere, sources say.

Some members of the eight-person team might find other jobs at Stanford, and it's possible that the university will retain the Stanford Internet Observatory branding, according to sources familiar with the matter. But the lab will not conduct research into the 2024 election or other elections in the future.

New submitter wgoodman writes: A Boeing 737 Max 8 jet experienced a rare but potentially serious problem recently known as a Dutch roll before landing safely. The Federal Aviation Administration is investigating the cause of the incident during a Southwest Airlines flight last month. Less than an hour after taking off from Phoenix on May 25th, the plane experienced an uncontrolled side-to-side yawing motion known as a Dutch roll while cruising at 32,000 feet. The pilots of Southwest flight 746 were able to regain control and the plane landed safely in Oakland, according to a preliminary report from the FAA.

[...] The Boeing 737 Max 8 jet involved in the Dutch roll incident is less than two years old. According to the FAA, a post-flight inspection revealed damage to a backup power control unit, known as a PCU. That system controls rudder movements on the plane's tail. The plane remained in Oakland until June 6th, when it flew to Everett, Wash., where one of Southwest's maintenance vendors is based. Boeing has been working to rebuild the trust of federal regulators and the flying public since a pair of Boeing 737 Max 8 jets crashed in 2018 and 2019, killing 346 people. Earlier versions of the 737 were involved in several accidents and crashes during the 1990s that were ultimately blamed on problems with the tail rudder.

According to a new survey from the Pew Research Center, TikTok is the second most popular source of news for Americans after X, "though most TikTok users don't primarily think of the shortform video app as a news source," notes The Verge. The survey looked at how Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and X play a role in Americans' news diets. From the report: Among TikTok users, only 15 percent say keeping up with the news is a major reason they use the app. Still, 35 percent of those surveyed said they wouldn't have seen the news they get on TikTok elsewhere. And unlike other apps, the news users see on TikTok is just as likely to come from influencers or celebrities as it is from journalists -- and it's far more likely to come from total strangers. (Meanwhile, most Facebook and Instagram users say the news that pops up on their feeds is posted by friends, relatives, or other people they know; on X, users are more likely to see news posted by media outlets or reporters.)

Steven Vaughan-Nichols reports via ZDNet: While Linux and open-source software (OSS) are no longer constantly under intellectual property (IP) attacks, the Open Invention Network (OIN) patent consortium still stands guard over its patents. Now, OIN, the largest patent non-aggression community, has expanded its protection once again by updating its Linux System definition. Covering more than just Linux, the Linux System definition also protects adjacent open-source technologies. In the past, protection was expanded to Android, Kubernetes, and OpenStack. The OIN accomplishes this by providing a shared defensive patent pool of over 3 million patents from over 3,900 community members. OIN members include Amazon, Google, Microsoft, and essentially all Linux-based companies.

This latest update extends OIN's existing patent risk mitigation efforts to cloud-native computing and enterprise software. In the cloud computing realm, OIN has added patent coverage for projects such as Istio, Falco, Argo, Grafana, and Spire. For enterprise computing, packages such as Apache Atlas and Apache Solr -- used for data management and search at scale, respectively -- are now protected. The update also enhances patent protection for the Internet of Things (IoT), networking, and automotive technologies. OpenThread and packages such as agl-compositor and kukusa.val have been added to the Linux System definition. In the embedded systems space, OIN has supplemented its coverage of technologies like OpenEmbedded by adding the OpenAMP and Matter, the home IoT standard. OIN has included open hardware development tools such as Edalize, cocotb, Amaranth, and Migen, building upon its existing coverage of hardware design tools like Verilator and FuseSoc.

Keith Bergelt, OIN's CEO, emphasized the importance of this update, stating, "Linux and other open-source software projects continue to accelerate the pace of innovation across a growing number of industries. By design, periodic expansion of OIN's Linux System definition enables OIN to keep pace with OSS's growth." [...] Looking ahead, Bergelt said, "We made this conscious decision not to include AI. It's so dynamic. We wait until we see what AI programs have significant usage and adoption levels." This is how the OIN has always worked. The consortium takes its time to ensure it extends its protection to projects that will be around for the long haul. The OIN practices patent non-aggression in core Linux and adjacent open-source technologies by cross-licensing their Linux System patents to one another on a royalty-free basis. When OIN signees are attacked because of their patents, the OIN can spring into action.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: Amazon says that it will commit up to $230 million to startups building generative AI-powered applications. The investment, roughly $80 million of which will fund Amazon's second AWS Generative AI Accelerator program, aims to position AWS as an attractive cloud infrastructure choice for startups developing generative AI models to power their products, apps and services. Much of the new tranche -- including the entire portion set aside for the accelerator program -- comes in the form of compute credits for AWS infrastructure, meaning that it can't be transferred to other cloud service providers like Google Cloud and Microsoft Azure.

To sweeten the pot, Amazon is pledging that startups in this year's Generative AI Accelerator cohort will gain access to experts and tech from Nvidia, the program's presenting partner. They will also be invited to join the Nvidia Inception program, which provides companies opportunities to connect with potential investors and additional consulting resources. The Generative AI Accelerator program has also grown substantially. Last year's cohort, which had 21 startups, received only up to $300,000 in AWS compute credits, amounting to around a combined $6.3 million investment. "With this new effort, we will help startups launch and scale world-class businesses, providing the building blocks they need to unleash new AI applications that will impact all facets of how the world learns, connects, and does business," Matt Wood, VP of AI products at AWS, said in a statement. Further reading: How Amazon Blew Alexa's Shot To Dominate AI

Turkish authorities have arrested a student for cheating during a university entrance exam by using a makeshift device linked to AI software to answer questions. From a report: The student was spotted behaving in a suspicious way during the exam at the weekend and was detained by police, before being formally arrested and sent to jail pending trial. Another person, who was helping the student, was also detained.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the New York Times: Chemical and manufacturing groups sued the federal government late Monday (Warning: source paywalled; alternative source) over a landmark drinking-water standard that would require cleanup of so-called forever chemicals linked to cancer and other health risks. The industry groups said that the government was exceeding its authority under the Safe Drinking Water Act by requiring that municipal water systems all but remove six synthetic chemicals, known by the acronym PFAS, that are present in the tap water of hundreds of millions of Americans. The Environmental Protection Agency has said that the new standard, put in place in April, will prevent thousands of deaths and reduce tens of thousands of serious illnesses. The E.P.A.'s cleanup standard was also expected to prompt a wave of litigation against chemical manufacturers by water utilities nationwide trying to recoup their cleanup costs. Utilities have also challenged the stringent new standard, questioning the underlying science and citing the cost of filtering the toxic chemicals out of drinking water.

In a joint filing late Monday, the American Chemistry Council and National Association of Manufacturers said the E.P.A. rule was "arbitrary, capricious and an abuse of discretion." The petition was filed in the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia. In a separate petition, the American Water Works Association and the Association of Metropolitan Water Agencies said the E.P.A. had "significantly underestimated the costs" of the rule. Taxpayers could ultimately foot the bill in the form of increased water rates, they said. PFAS, a vast class of chemicals also called per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, are widespread in the environment. They are commonly found in people's blood, and a 2023 government study of private wells and public water systems detected PFAS chemicals in nearly half the tap water in the country. Exposure to PFAS has been associated with developmental delays in children, decreased fertility in women and increased risk of some cancers, according to the E.P.A. [...] The E.P.A. estimates that it would cost water utilities about $1.5 billion annually to comply with the rule, though utilities have said the costs could be twice that amount. Further reading: Lawyers To Plastic Makers: Prepare For 'Astronomical' PFAS Lawsuits