An anonymous reader quotes a report from VentureBeat: SEO consultant Gagan Ghotra observed that Google Search had begun to index shared Bard conversational links into its search results pages, potentially exposing information users meant to be kept contained or confidential. This means that if a person used Bard to ask it a question -- possibly even a question related to the contents of their private emails -- then shared the link with a designated third-party, say, their spouse, friend or business partner, the conversation accessible at that link could in turn be scraped by Google's crawler and show up publicly, to the entire world, in its Search Results.

Google Brain research scientist Peter J. Liu replied to Ghotra on X by noting that the Google Search indexing only occurred for those conversations that users had elected to click the share link on, not all Bard conversations, to which Ghotra patiently explained: "Most users wouldn't be aware of the fact that shared conversation mean it would be indexed by Google and then show up in SERP, most people even I was thinking of it as a feature to share conversation with some friend or colleague & it being just visible to people who have conversation URL."

Ultimately, Google's Search Liaison account on X, which provides "insights on how Google Search works," wrote back to Ghotra to say "Bard allows people to share chats, if they choose. We also don't intend for these shared chats to be indexed by Google Search. We're working on blocking them from being indexed now."

Israel's prime minister on Sunday floated the idea of building infrastructure projects such as a fiber optic cable linking countries in Asia and the Arabian Peninsula with Europe through Israel and Cyprus. From a report: Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he's "quite confident" such an infrastructure "corridor" linking Asia to Europe through Israel and Cyprus is feasible. He said such projects could happen if Israel normalizes relations with other countries in the region. The 2020 U.S.-brokered Abraham Accords normalized relations between Israel and the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain, and the Biden administration is trying to establish official ties between Israel and Saudi Arabia.

"An example and the most obvious one is a fiber optic connection. That's the shortest route. It's the safest route. It's the most economic route," Netanyahu said after talks with Cypriot President Nikos Christodoulides. The Israeli leader's pitch is itself an extension of proposed energy links with Cyprus and Greece as part of growing collaboration on energy in the wake of discoveries of significant natural gas deposits in the economic zones of both Israel and Cyprus.

Microsoft will finally stop forcing Windows 11 users in Europe into Edge if they click a link from the Windows Widgets panel or from search results. From a report: The software giant has started testing the changes to Windows 11 in recent test builds of the operating system, but the changes are restricted to countries within the European Economic Area (EEA). "In the European Economic Area (EEA), Windows system components use the default browser to open links," reads a change note from a Windows 11 test build released to Dev Channel testers last month. Microsoft has been ignoring default browser choices in its search experience in Windows 10 and the taskbar widget that forces users into Edge if they click a link instead of their default browser. Windows 11 continued this trend, with search still forcing users into Edge and a new dedicated widgets area that also ignores the default browser setting.

Slashdot reader martiniturbide writes: ArcaOS 5.1.0 is an OEM distribution of IBM's discontinued OS/2 Warp operating system. This new version of ArcaOS offers UEFI compatibility allowing it to run in modern x86 hardware and also includes the ability to install to GPT-based disk layouts.

At OS2World the OS/2 community has been called upon to report supported hardware, open source any OS/2 software, make public as much OS/2 documentation as possible and post the important platform links. OS2World insists that open source has helped OS/2 in the past years and it is time to look under the hood to try to clone internal components like Control Program, Presentation Manager, SOM and Workplace Shell.

The Verge argues we're seeing "the end of the Googleverse. For two decades, Google Search was the invisible force that determined the ebb and flow of online content.

"Now, for the first time, its cultural relevance is in question... all around us are signs that the era of 'peak Google' is ending or, possibly, already over." There is a growing chorus of complaints that Google is not as accurate, as competent, as dedicated to search as it once was. The rise of massive closed algorithmic social networks like Meta's Facebook and Instagram began eating the web in the 2010s. More recently, there's been a shift to entertainment-based video feeds like TikTok — which is now being used as a primary search engine by a new generation of internet users...

Google Reader shut down in 2013, taking with it the last vestiges of the blogosphere. Search inside of Google Groups has repeatedly broken over the years. Blogger still works, but without Google Reader as a hub for aggregating it, most publishers started making native content on platforms like Facebook and Instagram and, more recently, TikTok. Discoverability of the open web has suffered. Pinterest has been accused of eating Google Image Search results. And the recent protests over third-party API access at Reddit revealed how popular Google has become as a search engine not for Google's results but for Reddit content. Google's place in the hierarchy of Big Tech is slipping enough that some are even admitting that Apple Maps is worth giving another chance, something unthinkable even a few years ago. On top of it all, OpenAI's massively successful ChatGPT has dragged Google into a race against Microsoft to build a completely different kind of search, one that uses a chatbot interface supported by generative AI.
Their article quotes the founder of the long-ago Google-watching blog, "Google Blogoscoped," who remembers that when Google first came along, "they were ad-free with actually relevant results in a minimalistic kind of design. If we fast-forward to now, it's kind of inverted now. The results are kind of spammy and keyword-built and SEO stuff. And so it might be hard to understand for people looking at Google now how useful it was back then."

The question, of course, is when did it all go wrong? How did a site that captured the imagination of the internet and fundamentally changed the way we communicate turn into a burned-out Walmart at the edge of town? Well, if you ask Anil Dash, it was all the way back in 2003 — when the company turned on its AdSense program. "Prior to 2003-2004, you could have an open comment box on the internet. And nobody would pretty much type in it unless they wanted to leave a comment. No authentication. Nothing. And the reason why was because who the fuck cares what you comment on there. And then instantly, overnight, what happened?" Dash said. "Every single comment thread on the internet was instantly spammed. And it happened overnight...."

As he sees it, Google's advertising tools gave links a monetary value, killing anything organic on the platform. From that moment forward, Google cared more about the health of its own network than the health of the wider internet. "At that point it was really clear where the next 20 years were going to go," he said.

The U.S. Department of Defense has launched a website collecting publicly available, declassified information on unidentified anomalous phenomena (UAPs). "For now, the general public will be able to read through the posted information," reports CNET. "Soon, US government employees, contractors, and service members with knowledge of US programs can report their own sightings, and later, others will be able to submit reports." From the report: "This website will provide information, including photos and videos, on resolved UAP cases as they are declassified and approved for public release," the department said in a release posted on Thursday. "The website's other content includes reporting trends and a frequently asked questions section as well as links to official reports, transcripts, press releases, and other resources that the public may find useful, such as applicable statutes and aircraft, balloon and satellite tracking sites."

For now, one of the most interesting parts of the site is its trends section. Apparently, most reported UAPs are round, either white, silver or translucent, spotted at around 10,000 to 30,000 feet, 1-4 meters in size, and do not emit thermal exhaust. Hotspots for sightings include both the US East and West coasts. There's also a small section of videos with names such as "DVIDS Video - Unresolved Case: Navy 2021 Flyby," and "UAP Video: Middle East Object." Readers are able to leave comments on the videos. Of the "Middle East Object" video, one person writes,"Noticed I never saw it cast a shadow. But other objects have shadows."

To date, Google has processed more than seven billion copyright takedown requests for its search engine. The majority of the reported links are purged from Google's search index, as required by the DMCA. Recently, however, Google appears to gone a step further, using search takedowns to "moderate" users' privately saved links collections. TorrentFreak: A few hours ago, Eddie Roosenmaallen shared an email from Google, notifying him that a link had been removed from his Google Saved collection because it violates Google's policy. The reason cited for the removal is the "downstream impact," as the URL in question is "blocked by Google Search."

"The following saved item in one of your collections was determined to violate Google's policy. As a result, the item will be moderated..," Google writes, pointing out a defunct KickassTorrents domain as the problem. Initially, it was suggested that this removal impacted Google's synched Chrome bookmarks but further research reveals that's not the case. Instead, the removals apply to Google's saved feature. This Google service allows users to save and organize links, similar to what Pinterest does. These link collections can be private or shared with third parties.

Meta's decision to block news links in Canada this month has had almost no impact on Canadians' usage of Facebook, data from independent tracking firms indicated on Tuesday, as the company faces scorching criticism from the Canadian government over the move. From a report: Daily active users of Facebook and time spent on the app in Canada have stayed roughly unchanged since parent company Meta started blocking news there at the start of August, according to data shared by Similarweb, a digital analytics company that tracks traffic on websites and apps, at Reuters' request. Another analytics firm, Data.ai, likewise told Reuters that its data was not showing any meaningful change to usage of the platform in Canada in August. The estimates, while early, appear to support Meta's contention that news holds little value for the company as it remains locked in a tense standoff in Canada over a new law requiring internet giants to pay publishers for the news articles shared on their platforms.

Microsoft has made some of its certification exams open book affairs, allowing access to its learning portal while candidates sit tests. From a report: "On August 22, we will begin updating our exams so that you will be able to access Microsoft Learn as you complete your exam," wrote Liberty Munson, director of psychometrics at Microsoft's Worldwide Learning organization. Microsoft Learn is a portal that links to product documentation, tutorials, code fragments, and other technical material.

Much of that content will be available during exams, although a technical Q&A service will remain hidden. The open book exams will be offered to candidates sitting exams for the role-based certifications Microsoft offers for job titles including Azure Administrator, Developer, Solutions Architect, DevOps Engineer; Microsoft 365 Modern Desktop Administrator, and Enterprise Administrator. Exams at Associate, Expert, and Specialty levels of competency will all offer access to the Learn portal. The material will become available for all role-based and specialty exams, in all languages, by mid-September 2023. Looking up material on Learn won't stop the clock during an exam, and the experience of taking the test will remain unchanged -- other than allowing candidates to open a window in which to view the educational portal.

In July "Safe Street Rebels" launched the "Week of Cone" pranks (which went viral on TikTok and Twitter). TechCrunch called it "a bid to raise awareness and invite more pissed-off San Franciscans to submit public comments" to regulatory agencies.

But NPR sees a larger context: Coning driverless cars fits in line with a long history of protests against the impact of the tech industry on San Francisco. Throughout the years, activists have blockaded Google's private commuter buses from picking up employees in the city. And when scooter companies flooded the sidewalks with electric scooters, people threw them into San Francisco Bay. "Then there was the burning of Lime scooters in front of a Google bus," says Manissa Maharawal, an assistant professor at American University who has studied these protests.

She points out that when tech companies test their products in the city, residents don't have much say in those decisions: "There's been various iterations of this where it's like, 'Oh, yep, let's try that out in San Francisco again,' with very little input from anyone who lives here...." Waymo is already giving rides in Phoenix and is testing with human safety drivers in Los Angeles and Austin. And Cruise is offering rides in Phoenix and Austin and testing in Dallas, Houston, Miami, Nashville and Charlotte.

Meanwhile, in San Francisco, members of Safe Street Rebel continue to go out at night and stalk the vehicles one cone at a time.
They're apparently bicycling activists, judging by their web site, advocating "for car-free spaces, transit equity, and the end of car dominance." ("We regularly protest the city's thoughtless reopening of the Upper Great Highway to cars by slowing traffic to show just how unnecessary of a route this road is.") Their long-term goal is to expand the group "to the point where we can make a city for people to safely walk, bike and take public transit, not a city dominated by cars..." The last half-century has been a failed experiment with car dominance. They bankrupt our cities, ruin our environment, and force working people to sacrifice an unacceptable amount of their income to pay for basic transpiration. It is time to end car dependence and rethink our streets around public transit, walking and bikes.
Their demands include unredacted data from self-driving car companies about safety incidents (and a better reporting system) — plus a mechanism for actually citing robotaxis for traffic violations. But they also raise concerns about surveillance, noting the possibility of "a city-wide, moving network observing and analyzing everything."

Their web page says they also want to see studies on the pollution impact of self-driving cars — and whether or not AVs will increase car usage. They support the concerns of San Francisco's Taxi Workers Alliance about the possibility of lost jobs and increased traffic congestion.

And they raise one more concern: Their cars are not wheelchair accessible and do not pull up to the curb. Profit-driven robotaxi companies see accessibility as an afterthought. Without enforcement, their promises for the future will likely never materialize. Paratransit and transit are accountable to the public, but Cruise and Waymo are only accountable to shareholders.
But their list of concerns is followed by an exhaustive list of 266 robotaxi incidents documented with links to news articles and social media reports. ("The cars have run red lights, rear-ended a bus and blocked crosswalks and bike paths," writes NPR. "In one incident, dozens of confused cars congregated in a residential cul-de-sac, clogging the street. In another, a Waymo ran over and killed a dog.")

NPR's article adds one final note. "Neither Cruise nor Waymo responded to questions about why the cars can be disabled by traffic cones."

Thanks to Slashdot reader Tony Isaac for sharing the news.

Amid growing discontent among Reddit's moderators, the company has launched a "Mod Helper Program" to reward moderators who offer helpful advice to other moderators. TechCrunch reports: The Mod Helper Program is a tiered system that awards helpful moderators with trophies and flairs. Reddit users accrue karma by receiving upvotes and awards, and lose karma if they receive downvotes. The program rewards moderators who receive upvotes on comments in r/ModSupport. Comment karma earned in r/ModSupport will be rewarded with trophies that will "signal to other mods that you are a source of valuable information," the moderator support team announced on Thursday. Each rank awards unique trophies and flairs, ranging from "Helper" to "Expert Helper." Reddit launched a similar program in r/help earlier this year, which rewards users who accrue karma by responding to other users' requests.

Reddit also launched the Modmail Answer Bot, which automatically responds with relevant links to the site's Help Center. If the recommended articles don't answer a specific request, it will create a ticket that will be handled by a human admin. The bot is designed to streamline moderator requests so the admin team can focus on more complex issues. Additionally, Reddit is merging the moderator-specific Help Center with its sitewide one to ensure that support resources are "easy to find and accessible from the same location."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: The Canadian government on Friday demanded that Meta lift a "reckless" ban on domestic news from its platforms to allow people to share information about wildfires in the west of the country. Meta started blocking news on its Facebook and Instagram platforms for all users in Canada this month in response to a new law requiring internet giants to pay for news articles. Some people fleeing wildfires in the remote northern town of Yellowknife have complained to domestic media that the ban prevented them from sharing important data about the fires.

"Meta's reckless choice to block news ... is hurting access to vital information on Facebook and Instagram," Heritage Minister Pascale St-Onge said in a social media post. "We are calling on them to reinstate news sharing today for the safety of Canadians facing this emergency. We need more news right now, not less," she said. Transport Minister Pablo Rodriguez earlier said the ban meant people did not have access to crucial information. Chris Bittle, a legislator for the ruling Liberal Party, complained on Thursday that "Meta's actions to block news are reckless and irresponsible." Ollie Williams, who runs Yellowknife's Cabin Radio digital radio station, told the Canadian Broadcasting Corp. that people were posting screen shots of information on Facebook since they could not share links to news feeds. A Meta spokesperson responded by saying that the company had activated the "Safety Check" feature on Facebook that allows users to mark that they are safe in the wake of a natural disaster or a crisis.

A phishing campaign has targeted a notable energy company in the U.S., bypassing email security filters to slip malicious QR codes into inboxes. BleepingComputer reports: Roughly one-third (29%) of the 1,000 emails attributed to this campaign targeted a large US energy company, while the remaining attempts were made against firms in manufacturing (15%), insurance (9%), technology (7%), and financial services (6%). According to Cofense, who spotted this campaign, this is the first time that QR codes have been used at this scale, indicating that more phishing actors may be testing their effectiveness as an attack vector. Cofense did not name the energy company targeted in this campaign but categorized them as a "major" US-based company.

Cofense says the attack begins with a phishing email that claims the recipient must take action to update their Microsoft 365 account settings. The emails carry PNG or PDF attachments featuring a QR code the recipient is prompted to scan to verify their account. The emails also state that the target must complete this step in 2-3 days to add a sense of urgency. The threat actors use QR codes embedded in images to bypass email security tools that scan a message for known malicious links, allowing the phishing messages to reach the target's inbox.

To evade security, the QR codes in this campaign also use redirects in Bing, Salesforce, and Cloudflare's Web3 services to redirect the targets to a Microsoft 365 phishing page. Hiding the redirection URL in the QR code, abusing legitimate services, and using base64 encoding for the phishing link all help evade detection and get through email protection filters.

YouTube knows that it has a spam problem, particularly when it comes to its two-year-old Shorts feature. In an attempt to do something about it, the streamer has announced it's deactivating links in Shorts descriptions, comments and the vertical live feed. From a report: YouTube is also taking away the ability to click on social media icons on any desktop channel banners. The new changes will start to roll out on August 31st. Though YouTube claims it won't continue its "unclickable" crusade, but it adds, "Because abuse tactics evolve quickly, we have to take preventative measures to make it harder for scammers and spammers to mislead or scam users via links."

At the same time, YouTube is adding new links on creators' channels, with a big clickable link appearing by the Subscribe button starting August 23rd. The link can bring users to anything from merchandise sites to social media accounts. The platform also recently introduced more creator tools for Shorts, like voiceovers. However, it won't be until at least the end of September that the streamer introduces "safer" ways to guide people from their Shorts back to the rest of their content.

Hackers with apparent links to the Belarusian government have been targeting foreign diplomats in the country for nearly 10 years, according to security researchers. From a report: On Thursday, antivirus firm ESET published a report that details the activities of a newly discovered government hacking group that the company has dubbed MoustachedBouncer. The group has likely been hacking or at least targeting diplomats by intercepting their connections at the internet service provider (ISP) level, suggesting close collaboration with Belarus' government, according to ESET.

Since 2014, MoustachedBouncer has targeted at least four foreign embassies in Belarus: two European nations, one from South Asia, and another from Africa. "The operators were trained to find some confidential documents, but we're not sure exactly what they were looking for," ESET researcher Matthieu Faou told TechCrunch in an interview ahead of his talk at the Black Hat cybersecurity conference in Las Vegas. "They are operating only inside Belarus against foreign diplomats. So we have never seen any attack by MustachedBouncer outside of Belarus."

In a period of less than nine months, Google received requests to remove over a billion links to pirate sites from its search engine. This is a significant increase compared to recent years, but not necessarily a new trend. More than a quarter of all reported links, relating to a single website, were sent by MindGeek, the parent company of PornHub. TorrentFreak reports: Google first started to keep track of these takedown notices at the beginning of the last decade. In the spring of 2012, Google launched its Transparency Report which publishes all DMCA requests the company receives, including the targeted links and their senders. This provided fuel for hundreds of news reports as well as academic research. A few days ago, Google reached a new milestone when it processed the seven billionth removal request. It's a mind-boggling number that comes less than a year after the six billionth takedown was recorded.

Looking more closely at the timeline, we see that a billion URLs were reported to Google search in less than nine months. For comparison, it took twice as long to go from five to six billion, suggesting that the takedown volume picked up again after a previously reported decline. There's no denying the recent surge in reported links but much of the increase was generated by a single rightsholder in an effort to remove a particular pirate operation from Google search.

Around the start of the year MG Premium began to increase its takedown efforts. The company is an intellectual property vehicle of the MindGeek conglomerate, known for popular adult sites such as PornHub. One of MG Premium's main goals is to shut down âunlicensed' sites or at least make when unfindable. [...] The surge is clearly visible in the graph above and at times the company was averaging more than two million takedown requests per day. More recently the volume has come down a bit, but it's been a major contributor to Google's takedown uptick.

Recently Ars Technica reported on "another application for SpaceX's Starship architecture that the company is studying," adding that NASA "is on board to lend expertise.

"Though still in a nascent phase of tech development, the effort could result in repurposing Starship into a commercial space station, something NASA has a keen interest in because there are no plans for a government-owned research lab in low-Earth orbit after the International Space Station is decommissioned after 2030." NASA announced last month a new round of agreements with seven commercial companies, including SpaceX. The Collaborations for Commercial Space Capabilities (CCSC) program is an effort established to advance private sector development of emerging products and services that could be available to customers — including NASA — in approximately five to seven years... NASA passed over SpaceX's bid for a funded space station development agreement in 2021, identifying concerns about SpaceX's plans for scaling its life-support system to enable long-duration missions and SpaceX's plan for a single docking port, among other issues. The space agency isn't providing any funding for the new CCSC effort, which includes the Starship space station concept, but the government will support the industry with technical expertise, including expert assessments, lessons learned, technologies, and data.

Apart from the SpaceX agreement, NASA said it will provide non-financial support to Blue Origin's initiative to develop a crew spacecraft for orbital missions that would launch on the company's New Glenn rocket. The agency also supports Northrop Grumman's development of a human-tended research platform in low-Earth orbit to work alongside the company's planned space station. The other companies NASA picked for unfunded agreements were: Sierra Space's proposal for a crewed version of its Dream Chaser spacecraft, Vast's concept for a privately owned space station, ThinkOrbital's plan to develop welding, cutting, inspection, and additive manufacturing technology for construction work in space, and Special Aerospace Services for collaboration on an autonomous maneuvering unit to assist, or potentially replace, spacewalkers working outside a space station.

Despite the lack of NASA funding, the new collaboration announcement with SpaceX laid out — in broad strokes, at least — one of the directions SpaceX may want to take Starship. NASA said it will work with SpaceX on an "integrated low-Earth orbit architecture" that includes the Starship vehicle and other SpaceX programs, including the Dragon crew capsule and Starlink broadband network.
The artice links to a recent NASA document detailing SpaceX's space station concept. Phil McAlister, who heads NASA's commercial spaceflight division, says its size and reduced cost "could have a far-reaching impact on the sustainable development of the low-Earth orbit) economy...

"Adding increased confidence is the company's plan to self-fund Starship development from its launch and satellite enterprises."

Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader Amiga Trombone for sharing the article.

Google's AI-powered Search Generative Experience is getting a big new feature: images and video. From a report: If you've enabled the AI-based SGE feature in Search Labs, you'll now start to see more multimedia in the colorful summary box at the top of your search results. Google's also working on making that summary box appear faster and adding more context to the links it puts in the box. SGE may still be in the "experiment" phase, but it's very clearly the future of Google Search.

"It really gives us a chance to, now, not always be constrained in the way search was working before," CEO Sundar Pichai said on Alphabet's most recent earnings call. "It allows us to think outside the box." He then said that "over time, this will just be how search works." The SGE takeover raises huge, thorny questions about the very future of the web, but it's also just a tricky product to get right. Google is no longer simply trying to find good links for you every time you search -- it's trying to synthesize and generate relevant, true, helpful information. Video in particular could go a long way here: Google has integrated YouTube more and more into search results over the years, linking to a specific chapter or moment inside a video that might help you with that "why is my dryer making that noise" query.

Starting today, Facebook and Instagram users in Canada will no longer be able to view or share news links or see videos and photos published by publishers and broadcasters. Engadget reports: Meta made the decision in response to Canadian legislators passing the Online News Act. The law requires certain platforms to negotiate revenue-sharing agreements with news organizations. The aim is to address the collapse in advertising revenue that news outlets have struggled with over the last two decades amid the growth of online services.

"News links and content posted by news publishers and broadcasters in Canada will no longer be viewable by people in Canada," Meta said. "We are identifying news outlets based on legislative definitions and guidance from the Online News Act." Any content shared by international news organizations won't be visible on Facebook and Instagram in Canada either.

Saleforce's chief impact officer, writing in Forbes: Code and computer programming — the backbone of modern business — has a long way to go before it can be called "green..." According to a recent report from the science journal Patterns, the information and communication technology sector accounts for up to 3.9% of global emissions... So far, the focus has been on reducing energy consumption in data centers and moving electrical grids away from fossil fuels. Now, coders and designers are ready for a similar push in software, crypto proof of work and AI compute power...

Our research revealed that 75% of UX designers, software developers and IT operations managers want software to do less damage to the environment. Yet nearly one in two don't know how to take action. Half of these technologists admit to not knowing how to mitigate environmental harm in their work, leading to 34% acknowledging that they "rarely or never" consider carbon emissions while typing a new line of code... Earlier this year, Salesforce launched a sustainability guide for technology that provides practical recommendations for aligning climate goals with software development.
In the article the Salesforce executive makes four recommendations, urging coders to design sites in ways that reduce the energy needed to display them. ("Even small changes to image size, color and type options can scale to large impacts.") They also recommend writing application code that uses less energy, which "can lead to significant emissions reductions, particularly when deployed at scale. Leaders can seek out apps that are coded to run natively in browsers which can lead to improvement in performance and a reduction in energy use."

Their article includes links to the energy-saving hackathon GreenHack and the non-profit Green Software Foundation. (Their site recently described how the IT company AVEVA used a Raspberry Pi in back of a hardware cluster as part of a system to measure software's energy consumption.)

But their first recommendation for fighting the climate crisis is "Adopt new technology like AI" to "make the software development cycle more energy efficient." ("At Salesforce, we're starting to see tremendous potential in using generative AI to optimize code and are excited to release this to customers in the future.")