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Submission + - Tennessee Senate passes bill based on 'chemtrails' conspiracy theory (tennessean.com) 3

Submitted by ArchieBunker
ArchieBunker writes: The Tennessee Senate has passed a bill targeting "chemtrails."

SB 2691/HB 2063, sponsored by Rep. Monty Fritts, R-Kingston, and Sen. Steve Southerland, R-Morristown, passed in the Senate on Monday. The bill has yet to advance in the House.

The bill claims it is "documented the federal government or other entities acting on the federal government's behalf or at the federal government's request may conduct geoengineering experiments by intentionally dispersing chemicals into the atmosphere, and those activities may occur within the State of Tennessee," according to the bill.

The legislation would ban the practice in Tennessee.

Submission + - VMware Sandbox Escape Bugs Are So Critical, Patches Are Released For End-of-Life (arstechnica.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: VMware is urging customers to patch critical vulnerabilities that make it possible for hackers to break out of sandbox and hypervisor protections in all versions, including out-of-support ones, of VMware ESXi, Workstation, Fusion, and Cloud Foundation products. A constellation of four vulnerabilities—two carrying severity ratings of 9.3 out of a possible 10—are serious because they undermine the fundamental purpose of the VMware products, which is to run sensitive operations inside a virtual machine that’s segmented from the host machine. VMware officials said that the prospect of a hypervisor escape warranted an immediate response under the company’s IT Infrastructure Library, a process usually abbreviated as ITIL.

“In ITIL terms, this situation qualifies as an emergency change, necessitating prompt action from your organization,” the officials wrote in a post. “However, the appropriate security response varies depending on specific circumstances.” Among the specific circumstances, one concerns which vulnerable product a customer is using, and another is whether and how it may be positioned behind a firewall. A VMware advisory included the following matrix showing how the vulnerabilities—tracked as CVE-2024-22252, CVE-2024-22253, CVE-2024-22254, CVE-2024-22255—affect each of the vulnerable products [...]. Three of the vulnerabilities affect the USB controller the products use to support peripheral devices such as keyboards and mice.

Broadcom, the VMware parent company, is urging customers to patch vulnerable products. As a workaround, users can remove USB controllers from vulnerable virtual machines, but Broadcom stressed that this measure could degrade virtual console functionality and should be viewed as only a temporary solution.

Submission + - Oregon OKs Right-To-Repair Bill That Bans the Blocking of Aftermarket Parts (arstechnica.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Oregon has joined the small but growing list of states that have passed right-to-repair legislation. Oregon's bill stands out for a provision that would prevent companies from requiring that official parts be unlocked with encrypted software checks before they will fully function. Bill SB 1596 passed Oregon's House by a 42 to 13 margin. Gov. Tina Kotek has five days to sign the bill into law. Consumer groups and right-to-repair advocates praised the bill as "the best bill yet," while the bill's chief sponsor, state Sen. Janeen Sollman (D), pointed to potential waste reductions and an improved second-hand market for closing a digital divide.

"Oregon improves on Right to Repair laws in California, Minnesota and New York by making sure that consumers have the choice of buying new parts, used parts, or third-party parts for the gadgets and gizmos," said Gay Gordon-Byrne, executive director of Repair.org, in a statement. Like bills passed in New York, California, and Minnesota, Oregon's bill requires companies to offer the same parts, tools, and documentation to individual and independent repair shops that are already offered to authorized repair technicians. Unlike other states' bills, however, Oregon's bill doesn't demand a set number of years after device manufacture for such repair implements to be produced. That suggests companies could effectively close their repair channels entirely rather than comply with the new requirements. California's bill mandated seven years of availability.

If signed, the law's requirements for parts, tools, and documentation would apply to devices sold after 2015, except for phones, which are covered after July 2021. The prohibition against parts pairing only covers devices sold in 2025 and later. Like other repair bills, a number of device categories are exempted, including video game consoles, HVAC and medical gear, solar systems, vehicles, and, very specifically, "Electric toothbrushes."

Comment Higher cognitive cost. (Score 1) 50

by geekprime (#63817912) Attached to: Ask Slashdot: Do Streamers Waste More Time Deciding What to Watch?
I have found I feel more obligated to actually watch something I thought about and picked out than whatever random show happens to be on broadcast tv right now. Which in all honestly feels extra stupid when I stop and think about being able to pause, rewind and even re-play the show at will.

Comment As the owner of 3 different versions of them, (Score 2) 36

by geekprime (#63779518) Attached to: Blue-Blocking Glasses Might Not Do Much of Anything, Says New Review
As the owner of 3 different versions of them, I can personally say that none of the three of them (all blocking larger or smaller parts of the "blue spectrum") none of them do a damned thing for or against my sleep cycle when worn (even for +5 hours) before going to bed.

Submission + - Amazon shuts down smart home when driver falsely accuses homeowner of racism (medium.com)

Submitted by bryanandaimee
bryanandaimee writes: A homeowner was locked out of his smart home devices after an Amazon driver complained that he had heard a racist remark from someone in the house. Fortunately the homeowner was able to prove that no one was home at the time. Most likely the driver had misheard the Eufy doorbell's automated response.

Submission + - Thousands of Reddit communities 'go dark' in protest of new developer fees (npr.org) 7

Submitted by koavf
koavf writes: Thousands of sections of the popular online message board Reddit are "going dark" for two days starting Monday to protest controversial new fees the site is charging third-party developers.

Some of the largest communities on Reddit are being set to private for 48 hours, meaning they will not be publicly available. By doing this, Redditers aim to pressure company executives to reverse their decision to charge developers for access to the site, which until now has been free.

In a Reddit post about the boycott, organizers wrote that the charges are "a step toward killing other ways of customizing Reddit."

Submission + - Court: Feds Need Warrant for Device Searches at Border (eff.org) 1

Submitted by SonicSpike
SonicSpike writes: With United States v. Smith (S.D.N.Y. May 11, 2023), a district court judge in New York made history by being the first court to rule that a warrant is required for a cell phone search at the border, “absent exigent circumstances” (although other district courts have wanted to do so).

U.S. Customs & Border Protection (CBP) asserts broad authority to conduct warrantless, and often suspicionless, device searches at the border, which includes ports of entry at the land borders, international airports, and seaports.

For a century, the Supreme Court has recognized a border search exception to the Fourth Amendment’s warrant requirement, allowing not only warrantless but also often suspicionless searches of luggage and other items crossing the border.

The number of warrantless device searches at the border and the significant invasion of privacy they represent is only increasing. In Fiscal Year 2022, CBP conducted an all-time high of 45,499 device searches.

The Supreme Court has not yet considered the application of the border search exception to smartphones, laptops, and other electronic devices that contain the equivalent of millions of pages of information detailing the most intimate details of our lives—even though we asked them to back in 2021.

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