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Facebook

'Facebook Is What's Wrong With America' (cnn.com)

Posted by BeauHD from the one-billionaire-to-another dept.
The Salesforce CEO and owner of Time Magazine, Marc Benioff, sees a common thread for what ails America today: deception that is allowed to spread like wildfire on Facebook. "This digital revolution really kind of has the world in its grip. And in that grip, you can see the amount of mistrust and misinformation that is happening," Benioff told CNN. From a report: "Look at how it is affecting the world. You can talk about the political process. You can talk about climate. You can talk about the pandemic," Benioff said. "In each and every major topic, it gets connected back to the mistrust that is happening and especially the amount of it being seeded by the social networks. It must stop now."

"Some of these social media companies, especially Facebook, you can see that they don't really care that their platform is filled with all of this disinformation," Benioff said. The tech billionaire called for Congress to crack down on Facebook's disinformation problem. "I own Time and I am held accountable for what is produced on my platform," Benioff said, adding that CNN and other media outlets are also held accountable. "In regards to Facebook, they are not held accountable. So they do not have an incentive from the government. That has to change." Benioff urged Congress to review existing laws to try to stop the "level of deceit" happening on social networks.
United States

New York Passes Sweeping Bills To Improve Conditions for Delivery Workers (nytimes.com) 5

Posted by msmash from the moving-forward dept.
The New York City Council overwhelmingly approved a groundbreaking package of legislation on Thursday that will set minimum pay and improve working conditions for couriers employed by app-based food delivery services like Grubhub, DoorDash and Uber Eats. From a report: The bills, which have the support of Mayor Bill de Blasio, are the latest and most broad example of the city's continuing effort to regulate the multimillion dollar industry. While other cities have taken steps to restrict the food delivery apps, no city has gone as far as New York, which is home to the largest and most competitive food delivery market in the country.

The legislation prevents the food delivery apps and courier services from charging workers fees to receive their pay; makes the apps disclose their gratuity policies; prohibits the apps from charging delivery workers for insulated food bags, which can cost up to $50; and requires restaurant owners to make bathrooms available to delivery workers. Under the legislation, delivery workers would also be able to set parameters on the trips they take without fear of retribution. Workers -- who have been targeted by robbers intent on stealing their money or their e-bikes -- would be able to determine the maximum distance they want to travel from a restaurant or specify that they are not willing to go over bridges to make a delivery, for example.
Security

2021 Has Broken the Record For Zero-Day Hacking Attacks (technologyreview.com) 5

Posted by BeauHD from the it's-not-as-bad-as-it-sounds dept.
According to multiple databases, researchers, and cybersecurity companies who spoke to MIT Technology Review, 2021 has had the highest number of zero-day exploits on record. "At least 66 zero-days have been found in use this year, according to databases such as the 0-day tracking project -- almost double the total for 2020, and more than in any other year on record," the report says. From the report: One contributing factor in the higher rate of reported zero-days is the rapid global proliferation of hacking tools. Powerful groups are all pouring heaps of cash into zero-days to use for themselves -- and they're reaping the rewards. At the top of the food chain are the government-sponsored hackers. China alone is suspected to be responsible for nine zero-days this year, says Jared Semrau, a director of vulnerability and exploitation at the American cybersecurity firm FireEye Mandiant. The US and its allies clearly possess some of the most sophisticated hacking capabilities, and there is rising talk of using those tools more aggressively.

Attackers are exploiting the same types of software vulnerabilities over and over again, because companies often miss the forest for the trees. And cybercriminals, too, have used zero-day attacks to make money in recent years, finding flaws in software that allow them to run valuable ransomware schemes. "Financially motivated actors are more sophisticated than ever," Semrau says. "One-third of the zero-days we've tracked recently can be traced directly back to financially motivated actors. So they're playing a significant role in this increase which I don't think many people are giving credit for."

While there may be an increasing number of people developing or buying zero-days, the record number reported isn't necessarily a bad thing. In fact, some experts say it might be mostly good news. No one we spoke to believes that the total number of zero-day attacks more than doubled in such a short period of time -- just the number that have been caught. That suggests defenders are becoming better at catching hackers in the act. You can look at the data, such as Google's zero-day spreadsheet, which tracks nearly a decade of significant hacks that were caught in the wild. One change the trend may reflect is that there's more money available for defense, not least from larger bug bounties and rewards put forward by tech companies for the discovery of new zero-day vulnerabilities. But there are also better tools. Defenders have clearly gone from being able to catch only relatively simple attacks to detecting more complex hacks, says Mark Dowd, founder of Azimuth Security. "I think this denotes an escalation in the ability to detect more sophisticated attacks," he says. Further reading: Emergency Software Patches Are on the Rise
Privacy

Hackers Leak LinkedIn 700 Million Data Scrape (therecord.media) 17

Posted by msmash from the PSA dept.
A collection containing data about more than 700 million users, believed to have been scraped from LinkedIn, was leaked online this week after hackers previously tried to sell it earlier this year in June. From a report: The collection, obtained by The Record from a source, is currently being shared in private Telegram channels in the form of a torrent file containing approximately 187 GB of archived data. The Record analyzed files from this collection and found the data to be authentic, with data points such as: LinkedIn profile names, LinkedIn ID, LinkedIn profile URL, location information (town, city, country), and email addresses. While the vast majority of the data points contained in the leak are already public information and pose no threat to LinkedIn users, the leak also contains email addresses that are not normally viewable to the public on the official LinkedIn site.
Transportation

The Imaginary Rocket Driving a Small-Town Spaceport (theverge.com) 16

Posted by msmash from the closer-look dept.
Is the FAA licensing spaceports that are doomed to fail? From a report: The latest launch attempt out of Kodiak, Alaska's spaceport shows in vivid detail just how quickly things can go sideways. In the video, rocket maker Astra's 3.3 skids horizontally for hundreds of yards, then shoots some 20 miles upwards, listing off course. Ground crew terminates the flight, and the craft free falls back to Earth in pieces, landing in a fireball. None of Astra's six test flights from Kodiak's Pacific Spaceport Complex have made it into orbit, and five have exploded. But, as Jeff Bezos says, failure and innovation are inseparable twins.

Analysts expect the commercial space industry to be worth $1 trillion by 2040, and increasingly, small towns are angling to get in on the action. One such community is Camden County, Georgia, where a group of county commissioners is longing for their own spaceport -- and the economic growth and diversification they hope will come with it. There's one caveat: Spaceport Camden's sole proposed launch trajectory would, in an unprecedented move, cross two populated islands, as well as a federally protected marshland and wilderness, just a few miles from the toxic brownfield set to become the launch site.

To some residents, this seems like an astronomically bad idea. But failures -- even explosive ones -- don't faze Camden County: according to spaceport planners, Astra is a prime launch tenant candidate, and Alaska Aerospace Corporation, which runs Kodiak's spaceport, could become an operation partner. All they need to get this plan off the ground is an operation license from the Federal Aviation Administration. And to secure that, they aren't basing their proposal on rockets like the one that blew up in Alaska -- instead, they're using models of rockets that don't exist.
Medicine

CDC Panel Endorses Pfizer COVID-19 Booster Shots For People 65 and Older (cnbc.com) 42

Posted by BeauHD from the vaccines-save-lives dept.
A key Centers for Disease Control and Prevention advisory group unanimously voted Thursday to recommend distributing Pfizer and BioNTech's Covid-19 booster shots to older Americans and nursing home residents, clearing the way for the agency to give the final OK as early as this evening. CNBC reports: The agency's Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices specifically endorsed giving third Pfizer shots to people 65 and older in the first of four votes. The panel will also vote on whether to recommend the shots for adults with medical conditions that put them at risk of severe disease and those who are more frequently exposed to the virus -- possibly including people in nursing homes and prisons, teachers, front-line health employees and other essential workers. The elderly were among the first groups to get the initial shots in December and January.

The vote is seen as mostly a win for President Joe Biden, whose administration has said it wants to give booster shots to all eligible Americans 16 and older as early as this week. While the CDC panel's recommendation doesn't give the Biden administration everything it wanted, boosters will still be on the way for millions of Americans. The endorsement comes a day after the Food and Drug Administration granted emergency use authorization to administer third Pfizer shots to many Americans six months after they complete their first two doses. While the CDC's panel's recommendation isn't binding, Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky is expected to accept the panel's endorsement shortly.
Hardware

Smallest-Ever Human-Made Flying Structure Is a Winged Microchip, Scientists Say (npr.org) 32

Posted by BeauHD from the out-engineering-nature dept.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from NPR: It's neither a bird nor a plane, but a winged microchip as small as a grain of sand that can be carried by the wind as it monitors such things as pollution levels or the spread of airborne diseases. The tiny microfliers, whose development by engineers at Northwestern University was detailed in an article published by Nature this week, are being billed as the smallest-ever human-made flying structures.

The devices don't have a motor; engineers were instead inspired by the maple tree's free-falling propeller seeds -- technically known as samara fruit. The engineers optimized the aerodynamics of the microfliers so that "as these structures fall through the air, the interaction between the air and those wings cause a rotational motion that creates a very stable, slow falling velocity," said John A. Rogers, who led the development of the devices. "That allows these structures to interact for extended periods with ambient wind that really enhances the dispersal process," said the Northwestern professor of materials science and engineering, biomedical engineering and neurological surgery.

The wind would scatter the tiny microchips, which could sense their surrounding environments and collect information. The scientists say they could potentially be used to monitor for contamination, surveil populations or even track diseases. Their creators foresee microfliers becoming part of "large, distributed collections of miniaturized, wireless electronic devices." In other words, they could look like a swarm. "We think that we beat nature," Rogers said. "At least in the narrow sense that we have been able to build structures that fall with more stable trajectories and at slower terminal velocities than equivalent seeds that you would see from plants or trees."
Businesses

Why Deliveries Are So Slow (theatlantic.com) 37

Posted by msmash from the closer-look dept.
Americans are habitually unattuned to the massive and profoundly human apparatus that brings us basically everything in our lives. Much of the country's pandemic response has treated us as somehow separate from the rest of the world and the challenges it endures, but unpredictably empty shelves, rising prices, and long waits are just more proof of how foolish that belief has always been. The Atlantic: When I called up Dan Hearsch, a managing director at the consulting firm AlixPartners who specializes in supply-chain management, I described the current state of the industry to him as a little wonky. He laughed. "'A little wonky' is one way to say it," he said. "'Everything's broken' is another way." Hearsch told me about a friend whose company imports consumer goods -- stuff that's normally available in abundance at any Walmart or Target -- from China. Before the pandemic, according to the friend, shipping a container of that merchandise to the U.S. would have cost the company $2,000 to $5,000. Recently, though, the number is more like $30,000, at least for anything shipped on a predictable timeline. You can get it down to $20,000 if you're willing to deal with the possibility of your stuff arriving in a few months, or whenever space on a ship eventually opens up that's not already accounted for by companies willing to pay more.

Such severe price hikes aren't supposed to happen. Wealthy Western countries offloaded much of their manufacturing to Asia and Latin America precisely because container shipping has made moving goods between hemispheres so inexpensive. When that math tips into unprofitability, either companies stop shipping goods and wait for better rates, or they start charging you a lot more for the things they ship. Both options constrain supply further and raise prices on what's available. "You look at the price of cars, you look at the price of food -- the price of practically anything is up significantly from one year ago, from two years ago," Hearsch told me. "The differences are really, really quite shocking." The Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates that as of July, consumer prices had grown almost 5 percent since before the pandemic, with some types of goods showing much larger increases.

Overseas shipping is currently slow and expensive for lots of very complicated reasons and one big, important, relatively uncomplicated one: The countries trying to meet the huge demands of wealthy markets such as the United States are also trying to prevent mass-casualty events. Infection-prevention measures have recently closed high-volume shipping ports in China, the country that supplies the largest share of goods imported to the United States. In Vietnam and Malaysia, where workers churn out products as varied as a third of all shoes imported to the U.S. and chip components that are crucial to auto manufacturing, controlling the far more transmissible [...] Domestically, things aren't a whole lot better. Offshoring has systematically decimated America's capacity to manufacture most things at home, and even products that are made in the United States likely use at least some raw materials or components that need to be imported or are in short supply for other reasons.
Privacy

A Stalkerware Firm Is Leaking Real-Time Screenshots of People's Phones Online (vice.com) 8

Posted by msmash from the privacy-woes dept.
A stalkerware company that's designed to let customers spy on their spouses's, children's, or employees' devices is exposing victims' data, allowing anyone on the internet to see screenshots of phones simply by visiting a specific URL. From a report: The news highlights the continuing lax security practices that many stalkerware companies use; not only do these companies sometimes market their tools specifically for illegal surveillance, but the targets are re-victimized by these breaches. In recent years the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has acted against stalkerware companies for exposing victim data. The stalkerware company, called pcTattleTale, offers the malware for Windows computers and Android phones. "Discover their secret online lives right from your phone or computer," a Facebook post from pcTattleTale reads. "pcTattletale is a popular keylogger and montoring [sic] app that you can use to see what you [sic] kids, spouse, or employees are doing online." Security researcher Jo Coscia showed Motherboard that pcTattleTale uploads victim data to an AWS server that requires no authentication to view specific images.
Twitter

Twitter Adds Bitcoin Tipping, Pushes Further Into NFTs (bloomberg.com) 14

Posted by msmash from the how-about-that dept.
Twitter will let users send and receive tips using Bitcoin as part of a broader push to help users make money from the service. From a report: Twitter also said Thursday that it's looking into authenticating users' nonfungible tokens -- digital goods ranging from high art to pictures of digital apes. Some users already showcase NFTs on their profiles, but there's no easy way to authenticate if the person displaying a picture actually owns it. "There's this growing interest among creators to use apps that run on the blockchain," said Esther Crawford, a product executive building Twitter's creator features. "We want to help creators participate in the promise of an evolving decentralized internet directly on Twitter." The updates are part of a strategy at Twitter to court creators by giving them more ways to share their work on the service, and more ways to make money. Twitter has offered a tipping feature for months, but it has been in a limited test. On Thursday, the company said it's rolling out tipping globally. The company also offers some creators a subscription tool, called Super Follows, which lets them charge others on the service for exclusive content.
Technology

Tracking Stolen Crypto is a Booming Business (washingtonpost.com) 11

Posted by msmash from the closer-look dept.
Crypto heists are becoming increasingly common, but forensic investigators are getting savvier at figuring out who is behind specific accounts. From a report: Paolo Ardoino was on the front lines of one of the largest cryptocurrency heists of all time. He was flooded with calls and messages in August alerting him to a breach at Poly Network, a platform where users swap tokens among popular cryptocurrencies like Ethereum, Binance and Dogecoin. Hackers had made off with $610 million in crypto, belonging to tens of thousands of people. Roughly $33 million of the funds were swiftly converted into Tether, a "stable coin" with a value that mirrors the U.S. dollar. Ardoino, Tether's chief technology officer, took note. Typically, when savvy cybercriminals make off with cryptocurrency, they transfer the assets among online wallets through difficult-to-trace transactions. And poof -- the money is lost. Ardoino sprang into action and minutes later froze the assets.

"We were really lucky," he said. "Minutes after we issued the freezing transaction, we saw the hacker attempt to move out his Tether. If we had waited five minutes more, all the Tether would be gone." Two weeks later, Tether released the money to its rightful owners. And after threats from Poly Network, the online bandit gave up the rest. The seizure pokes a hole in the long-held belief that cryptocurrency is impossible to trace. Cryptocurrency is computer code that allows people to send and receive funds, recording the transactions on a public ledger known as a blockchain, rather than retaining account holder info. Because of the lack of user data, cryptocurrencies like bitcoin have been hailed as a safe haven for criminal activity. Fueled by anonymity, the shadowy industry allows hackers, tax evaders and other bad actors to launder money secretively, outside of the traditional banking system. Online scammers made off with $2.6 billion in 2020, according to a Chainalysis report. That year, ransomware attacks more than quadrupled.

But forensics investigators are getting savvier at scrupulously mapping activity on blockchains and figuring out who is behind specific accounts. This has sparked a "novel cottage industry of data providers" who are able to track cryptocurrency accounts flagged for illicit activity, said Zachary Goldman, a lawyer at WilmerHale specializing in novel payment technologies. "That's never really been available before." Through tracking, agents have recouped stolen crypto funds in a handful of high-profile cases. In June, the Federal Bureau of Investigation seized the $2.3 million in bitcoin ransom Colonial Pipeline paid to hackers who infiltrated the company's computer network. Investigators used the blockchain to follow the flow of the ransom payment to track the perpetrators. In 2020, the crypto exchange KuCoin recovered almost all of the $281 million stolen by suspected North Korean hackers and refunded customers.
Businesses

Tech Firms' Nightmare: Vanishing Green Cards (axios.com) 87

Posted by msmash from the closer-look dept.
Thousands of green cards are about to go to waste, leaving Google, Microsoft and other tech companies fuming -- and pushing the Biden administration to ensure it doesn't happen again. Axios: Tech workers have waited years for green cards that will grant them permanent legal status in the U.S. -- but because of pandemic-related processing delays, they will have to wait even longer. The U.S. makes a certain number of family-based and employment-based green cards available each fiscal year. [...] Google and Microsoft are among the companies that have been urging federal officials to find a way to save the roughly 80,000 remaining employment-based green cards set to expire Sept. 30. Google says only 13% of its candidate applications filed since last October have been approved.

"The idea that we will leave tens of thousands of these applications unfilled at a time when businesses around the country are having a hard time finding qualified workers seems illogical," Google senior vice president of global affairs Kent Walker told Axios. "So we're really trying to encourage people to come together to fix this issue." What they're saying: Google and Microsoft say they have thousands of employees and their families awaiting green cards. "We have congressionally authorized numbers available right now that can help a significant number of people trapped in the backlog move to permanent residence," Jack Chen, associate general counsel at Microsoft, told Axios. "But without a fix, those numbers go into the shredder at the end of the month. It's a huge missed opportunity." Meanwhile, Apple CEO Tim Cook last week wrote to Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas on behalf of the Business Roundtable to press the issue.
Education

Today's Students Don't Understand the Basics of Computer Operations (theverge.com) 337

Posted by msmash from the closer-look dept.
DesScorp writes:

A new article in The Verge reports that professors are increasingly seeing the rise of a generation that can't understand even the basic fundamentals of how computers and operating systems work. The very concept of things like directories, folders, and even what a file is seem to baffle a generation that was raised on Google and smartphones, and have no concept of what storage is or how it works. To this generation, all your "stuff" just goes someplace where stuff is kept. Physics professor Catherine Garland was stunned to find that her students couldn't grasp the concept of organized file storage:

"She asked each student where they'd saved their project. Could they be on the desktop? Perhaps in the shared drive? But over and over, she was met with confusion. "What are you talking about?" multiple students inquired. Not only did they not know where their files were saved -- they didn't understand the question.

Gradually, Garland came to the same realization that many of her fellow educators have reached in the past four years: the concept of file folders and directories, essential to previous generations' understanding of computers, is gibberish to many modern students.

The new generation of students sees storage as a "giant laundry basket", where everything is just thrown in, and you go get what you need when you need it. One professor now incorporates an additional two hour lecture and demo in their subject just to teach new students how things like directories work in computer systems. Teachers worry that students will be ill-prepared for professional environments, especially STEM fields, that require rigid organization to keep volumes of data organized. But some professors seem to think that they'll eventually have to surrender to how the young do things.
Google

How Google Spies on Its Employees (theinformation.com) 30

Posted by msmash from the closer-look dept.
At Google, a seemingly innocuous action can earn an employee the attention of the company's corporate security department. The Information: For example, when Google wants to find out who has been accessing or leaking sensitive corporate information, the company often homes in on employees who are thinking about leaving it. In the past, its security teams have flagged employees who search an internal website listing the cost of COBRA health insurance -- which gives workers a way to continue their coverage after leaving their employer -- for further investigation, according to a person with direct knowledge of its tactics. Employees who draft resignation letters or seek out internal checklists that help workers plan their departures from Google have also faced similar scrutiny, the person said. It has even looked at who has taken screenshots on work devices while running encrypted messaging services at the same time, according to current and former employees with knowledge of the practices. Bulk transfers of data onto USB storage devices and use of third-party online storage services can also raise eyebrows among Google's security staff.
Earth

Spain To Ban Sale of Fruit and Vegetables in Plastic Wrapping From 2023 (elpais.com) 85

Posted by msmash from the up-next dept.
The sale of fruit and vegetables in plastic wrapping will be prohibited in Spain's supermarkets and grocery stores starting in 2023. From a report: This is one of the measures in a decree being drafted by the Ministry for Ecological Transition, according to sources familiar with the initiative. The new regulation also contains measures to encourage the purchase of loose, unpackaged produce and use of non-bottled water. The ban on fruit and vegetable packaging will apply to produce weighing under 1.5 kilograms, following similar legislation in France, where it will go into effect next year. The Spanish executive wants to "fight the overuse of packaging in the most effective way," said a ministry spokesperson. The same source said that plastic pollution "has exceeded all limits." Environmental groups in Spain and abroad, including Greenpeace, have been campaigning for years to stop greengrocers and large supermarkets alike from wrapping fresh produce in layers of plastic.

The ministry headed by Teresa Ribera has held meetings with leading business associations and environmental groups to share some of the main guidelines contained in the draft decree, which seeks to incorporate European Union norms to Spain's legislation. The list of products included in the new regulations will be set by the Spanish Food Safety and Nutrition Agency. Those "at risk of deteriorating when sold loose" will be left out of the list, according to available information. Julio Barea of Greenpeace said he agrees with the ban but added that it is important to see "how it will be applied" in the end. Barea feels the government, led by a center-left coalition of the Socialist Party (PSOE) and leftist Unidas Podemos, is not moving fast enough "to radically end the flow of plastic pollution."

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