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Power

Barcelona Installs Spain's First Solar Energy Pavement (theguardian.com) 3

Barcelona city council has installed Spain's first photovoltaic pavement as part of the city's drive to become carbon neutral by 2050. The Guardian reports: The 50 sq meters of non-slip solar panels, installed in a small park in the Glories area of the city, will generate 7,560kWh a year, enough to supply three households. The city has contributed 30,000 euros towards the cost, the remainder being met by the manufacturer. The viability of the scheme will be assessed after six months. "We'll have to assess the wear and tear because obviously it's not the same as putting panels on a roof, although they are highly resistant," says Eloi Badia, who is responsible for climate emergency and ecological transition at Barcelona city council.

"As for cost benefits, with a pilot scheme like this it's difficult to know yet how much cheaper it would be if it were scaled up. We're keen to install more on roofs and, if this scheme is successful, on the ground, to power lighting and other public facilities." However, he points out that Barcelona's high population density means it would be difficult to generate enough electricity within the city limits to become self-sufficient. "If we're going to reach a target of zero emissions, we're going to have to think about supplying electricity to blocks of flats, but we'll also have to think of using wind and solar parks outside the city," Badia says. "But installations on the ground like this open up new possibilities, and not just for Barcelona."

NASA

NASA Suspends SpaceX's $2.9 Billion Moon Lander Contract After Rivals Protest (theverge.com) 24

NASA has suspended work on SpaceX's new $2.9 billion lunar lander contract while a federal watchdog agency adjudicates two protests over the award, the agency said Friday. The Verge reports: Putting the Human Landing System (or HLS) work on hold until the GAO makes a decision on the two protests means SpaceX won't immediately receive its first chunk of the $2.9 billion award, nor will it commence the initial talks with NASA that would normally take place at the onset of a major contract. Elon Musk's SpaceX was picked by NASA on April 16th to build the agency's first human lunar lander since the Apollo program, as the agency opted to rely on just one company for a high-profile contract that many in the space industry expected to go to two companies.

As a result, two companies that were in the running for the contract, Blue Origin and Dynetics, protested NASA's decision to the Government Accountability Office, which adjudicates bidding disputes. Blue Origin alleges the agency unfairly "moved the goalposts at the last minute" and endangered NASA's speedy 2024 timeline by only picking SpaceX. "Pursuant to the GAO protests, NASA instructed SpaceX that progress on the HLS contract has been suspended until GAO resolves all outstanding litigation related to this procurement," NASA spokeswoman Monica Witt said in a statement.

United States

US Investigating Possible Mysterious Directed Energy Attack Near White House 51

An anonymous reader quotes a report from CNN: Federal agencies are investigating at least two possible incidents on US soil, including one near the White House in November of last year, that appear similar to mysterious, invisible attacks that have led to debilitating symptoms for dozens of US personnel abroad. Multiple sources familiar with the matter tell CNN that while the Pentagon and other agencies probing the matter have reached no clear conclusions on what happened, the fact that such an attack might have taken place so close to the White House is particularly alarming. Defense officials briefed lawmakers on the Senate and House Armed Services Committees on the matter earlier this month, including on the incident near the White House. That incident, which occurred near the Ellipse, the large oval lawn on the south side of the White House, sickened one National Security Council official, according to multiple current and former US officials and sources familiar with the matter. In a separate 2019 episode, a White House official reported a similar attack while walking her dog in a Virginia suburb just outside Washington, GQ reported last year.

Those sickened reported similar symptoms to CIA and State Department personnel impacted overseas, and officials quickly began to investigate the incident as a possible "Havana syndrome" attack. That name refers to unexplained symptoms that US personnel in Cuba began experiencing in late 2016 -- a varying set of complaints that includes ear popping, vertigo, pounding headaches and nausea, sometimes accompanied by an unidentified "piercing directional noise." Rumors have long swirled around Washington about similar incidents within the United States. While the recent episodes around Washington appear similar to the previous apparent attacks affecting diplomats, CIA officers and other US personnel serving in Cuba, Russia and China, investigators have not determined whether the puzzling incidents at home are connected to those that have occurred abroad or who may be behind them, sources tell CNN.
The Courts

Humble Bundle Creator Brings Antitrust Lawsuit Against Valve Over Steam (arstechnica.com) 38

Indie developer (and Humble Indie Bundle originator) Wolfire Games has filed a proposed class-action lawsuit against Steam creator Valve, saying that the company is wielding Steam's monopoly power over the PC gaming market to extract "an extraordinarily high cut from nearly every sale that passes through its storeâ"30%." Ars Technica reports: The lawsuit, filed in a Washington state federal court, centers on what it considers an illegal tying of the Steam gaming platform (which provides game library management, social networking, achievement tracking, Steam Workshop mods, etc.) and the Steam game store (which processes online payments and delivers a copy of the game). After years of growth, the vast majority of PC gamers are locked into the Steam platform thanks to "immense network effects" and the high switching costs to move to a new PC platform, the suit argues. That makes the platform "a must-have for game publishers," who need access to the players on Steam to succeed. But games that use the Steam platform also have to be sold on the Steam Store, where Valve takes its 30 percent cut of all sales. By leveraging its monopoly platform power into a "gatekeeper role" for the store, Valve "wield[s] extreme power over publishers of PC Desktop Games" that leads to a "small but significant and non-transitory increase in price" for developers compared to a truly competitive market, the suit argues.

The suit includes a laundry list of competitors that have tried to create their own platforms to take on Steam's monopoly, including CD Projekt Red, EA, Microsoft, Amazon, and Epic (not to mention "pure distributors" with platform-free stores like GameStop, Green Man Gaming, Impulse, and Direct2Drive). But the lawsuit argues that Steam's lock-in effects mean none of these stores have been able to make much of a dent in Valve's monopoly position, despite plenty of well-funded attempts. Even the Epic Games Store, which has spent hundreds of millions of dollars securing exclusives and free game giveaways, has a market share of only "a little above 2 percent," according to one cited analysis (in an interview last June, Epic's Tim Sweeney estimated a more robust 15 percent market share for EGS).

"The failure of these companies to meaningfully compete against the Steam Gaming Platform shows it is virtually impossible as an economic matter to compete against the Steam Gaming Platform," the suit argues. "The Steam Gaming Platform has well-cemented dominance in the PC Desktop Gaming Platform Market, and given its unique and strong network effects, that is unlikely to change." The only meaningful way to avoid [Valve's] anticompetitive measures, the suit argues, is "to avoid using the Steam Gaming Platform at all." But Valve's monopoly position means that "there are no economically viable alternatives to the Steam Gaming Platform" for most PC games. While the suit acknowledges a few counterexamples (Riot's League of Legends is cited by name), such titles "typically require a long history of recognition and success before they can attempt to thrive without the Steam Gaming Platform," the suit says.

Security

Click Studios Asks Customers To Stop Tweeting About Its Passwordstate Data Breach (techcrunch.com) 9

Australian security software house Click Studios has told customers not to post emails sent by the company about its data breach, which allowed malicious hackers to push a malicious update to its flagship enterprise password manager Passwordstate to steal customer passwords. TechCrunch reports: Last week, the company told customers to "commence resetting all passwords" stored in its flagship password manager after the hackers pushed the malicious update to customers over a 28-hour window between April 20-22. The malicious update was designed to contact the attacker's servers to retrieve malware designed to steal and send the password manager's contents back to the attackers. In an email to customers, Click Studios did not say how the attackers compromised the password manager's update feature, but included a link to a security fix.

But news of the breach only became public after Danish cybersecurity firm CSIS Group published a blog post with details of the attack hours after Click Studios emailed its customers. Click Studios claims Passwordstate is used by "more than 29,000 customers," including in the Fortune 500, government, banking, defense and aerospace, and most major industries.

In an update on its website, Click Studios said in a Wednesday advisory that customers are "requested not to post Click Studios correspondence on Social Media." The email adds: "It is expected that the bad actor is actively monitoring Social Media, looking for information they can use to their advantage, for related attacks." "It is expected the bad actor is actively monitoring social media for information on the compromise and exploit. It is important customers do not post information on Social Media that can be used by the bad actor. This has happened with phishing emails being sent that replicate Click Studios email content," the company said.
The report says Click Studios has remained extremely tightlipped about the situation. The company has refused to comment or respond to questions; it's also unclear if the company has disclosed the breach to U.S. and EU authorities, which require companies to disclose data breach incidents or face hefty fines.
United Kingdom

Boris Johnson's Personal Mobile Phone Number Available Online For 15 Years (bbc.com) 19

Boris Johnson's personal mobile phone number has been freely available on the internet for the past 15 years, it has been revealed. The BBC reports: It was published in a think tank press release in 2006, but never deleted -- and appears to be the one the PM uses. Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer said it was "a serious situation [that] carries a security risk." But Chancellor Rishi Sunak said that, as far as he was aware, "all security protocols have been followed." It appears the number has been switched off but Downing Street still has not confirmed if the number will now be changed.

The think tank press release with the PM's number on it was related to Mr Johnson's then-job as a shadow higher education minister - and MP for Henley - and invited journalists to contact him for further comment. Two years later, he successfully stood to become mayor of London. Former national security adviser Lord Ricketts warned hostile states with "sophisticated cyber capabilities" or criminal gangs could now have access to Mr Johnson's digits. The crossbench peer also told BBC Radio 4's Today program that he would have thought changing your mobile number when becoming PM would be an "elementary security precaution these days."

Businesses

Amazon Launches Another Union-Busting Campaign (vice.com) 49

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Motherboard: Amazon has embarked on a campaign to derail a nascent union drive at its warehouses in Staten Island on the heels of a historic union election at an Amazon facility in Bessemer, Alabama, which the union lost in early April. On Monday, Amazon began displaying anti-union messaging on TV screens at one of its Staten Island warehouses, known as JFK8, which employs more than 5,000 workers. "KNOW THE FACTS BEFORE YOU SIGN A UNION CARD," one of the screens in the warehouse reads, according to a photo obtained by Motherboard. "If someone asks you to provide your personal information or sign a union card, do not release your personal information without knowing all the facts."

Unions must collect signed union authorization cards from at least a third of workers who are eligible to vote in a union election to qualify for an election with the National Labor Relations Board. In recent days, Amazon has also sent out notifications to warehouse workers on its internal portal, known as Amazon A to Z, with a list of reasons for not signing union authorization cards. "Speak For Yourself: Union authorization cards are legally binding and authorize the union to act as your exclusive representative. This means you give up the right to speak for yourself," the message reads. "Don't Sign Away Your Choices: Signing a union authorization card may also obligate you to pay the union a monthly fee," it continued.
"We've only been out there for five days and they're already posting this stuff," Christian Smalls, one of the lead organizers of TCOEW, told Motherboard. "This is a union state," Smalls said. "There are husbands, wives, and brothers and sisters who are in unions. Workers know this is a bunch of B.S. and it's upsetting them."
Microsoft

Microsoft Teams Usage Jumps To 145 Million Daily Active Users 20

Earlier this week, The Verge reported that Microsoft now has 145 million people using its Microsoft Teams communications app, an increase of 26 percent over last year's reported 115 million daily active users. From the report: To put the 145 million figure in perspective, at the beginning of the pandemic, Microsoft had around 32 million daily active users of Microsoft Teams. That jumped to 75 million in a matter of weeks, and these numbers have more than doubled since even the early days of the pandemic. It's an impressive amount of growth, just as Microsoft has been aggressively pushing businesses to move to the cloud and adopt Teams over the past year.

As always, it's difficult to compare to rival services. Google and Zoom don't reveal daily active users and opt for a more vague daily active participants. This means a single user could be counted multiple times if they participate in different meetings during a day. Zoom revealed it had 300 million daily active participants last year, and Google said last year it had 100 million daily active participants. Slack revealed it had 12.5 million concurrent users during the beginning of the pandemic last year, but the company has shied away from daily active user counts ever since.
Mars

NASA Mars Helicopter Goes Farther and Faster For Dramatic Fourth Flight (cnet.com) 8

NASA's Ingenuity helicopter completed its fourth and most ambitious test flight across Mars on Friday. CNET reports: NASA JPL tweeted "Success," saying Ingenuity went father and faster than ever before. NASA also shared a nifty image from one of the Perseverance rover's cameras showing the helicopter in flight in the distance. Ingenuity had originally been scheduled for a fourth flight on Thursday, but a known glitch prevented the rotorcraft from switching into flight mode. The chopper remained safe and healthy and ready for the redo.

The plan for the latest test was to fly the helicopter to an altitude of 16 feet (5 meters), collect images of the landscape below, hover and then head back to its takeoff spot. The flight path was set to take it 436 feet (133 meters) downrange and last 117 seconds. It takes time to send the data back from Mars, but NASA is expecting to receive a bounty of photos snapped by the helicopter during the flight. This will help prove the rotorcraft's potential for use as a scout that can assist surface vehicles like rovers as they explore from the ground. NASA said the plucky chopper already "has met or surpassed all of its technical objectives." That gave the helicopter team license to try the more daring fourth flight to push its capabilities in the thin atmosphere of Mars.

Businesses

Basecamp Sees Mass Employee Exodus After CEO Bans Political Discussions (techcrunch.com) 166

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: Following a controversial ban on political discussions earlier this week, Basecamp employees are heading for the exits. The company employs around 60 people, and roughly a third of the company appears to have accepted buyouts to leave, many citing new company policies. On Monday, Basecamp CEO Jason Fried announced in a blog post that employees would no longer be allowed to openly share their "societal and political discussions" at work. "Every discussion remotely related to politics, advocacy or society at large quickly spins away from pleasant," Fried wrote. "You shouldn't have to wonder if staying out of it means you're complicit, or wading into it means you're a target."

Basecamp's departures are significant. According to Twitter posts, Basecamp's head of design, head of marketing and head of customer support will all depart. The company's iOS team also appears to have quit en masse and many departing employees have been with the company for years. [...] According to Platformer, Fried's missive didn't tell the whole story. Basecamp employees instead said the tension arose from internal conversations about the company itself and its commitment to DEI work, not free-floating arguments about political candidates. Fried's blog post does mention one particular source of tension in a roundabout way, referencing an employee-led DEI initiative that would be disbanded. "We make project management, team communication, and email software," Fried wrote. "We are not a social impact company."

Space

A 22-Million-Year Journey From the Asteroid Belt To Botswana 4

Astronomers reconstructed a space rock's path before it exploded over southern Africa in 2018 and sprinkled the Kalahari with meteorites. From a report: On the morning of June 2, 2018, an asteroid was seen careening toward us at 38,000 miles per hour. It was going to impact Earth, and there was nothing anyone could do to stop it. Astronomers were beside themselves with excitement. Five feet long and weighing about the same as an adult African elephant, this space rock posed no threat. But the early detection of this asteroid, only the second to be spotted in space before hitting land, was a good test of our ability to spot larger, more dangerous asteroids. Moreover, it afforded scientists the chance to study the asteroid before its obliteration, quickly narrow down the impact site and obtain some of the most pristine, least weathered meteorite samples around. Later that day, a fireball almost as bright as the sun illuminated Botswana's darkened sky before exploding 17 miles above ground with the force of 200 tons of TNT. Fragments fell like extraterrestrial buckshot into a national park larger than the Netherlands.

Immediately, Botswanan scientists and guides joined with international meteorite experts to hunt for the asteroid's wreckage. As of November 2020, the team has found 24 individual meteorites. And thanks to the telltale geology of these rocky leftovers, observations of their path to Earth and the memories of a dead NASA spacecraft, scientists were able to unspool the history of this asteroid with breathtaking detail. As reported earlier this month in the journal Meteoritics & Planetary Science, Botswana's off-world visitor was once part of Vesta, a gigantic ramshackle asteroid forged at the dawn of the solar system. About 22 million years ago, another asteroid crashed into one of its lonely hills, leaving a modest crater and sending countless shards of Vesta on a space odyssey. One of them was the object that fell over southern Africa in 2018, an explosive end to a lonely journey. 'It is such an amazing thing to be in possession of such a rare specimen with so much history attached to it," said Mohutsiwa Gabadirwe, a geologist and curator at the Botswana Geoscience Institute who is a co-author.

Named 2018 LA, the asteroid was first seen by the Catalina Sky Survey, a trio of telescopes north of Tucson, Ariz. Additional telescopes, like the SkyMapper Southern Sky Survey, saw it too, allowing scientists to tentatively map out an impact site in southern Africa. Peter Jenniskens, a meteorite expert at the SETI Institute and study author, said that the initial search area was a 1,400-square-mile patch in Botswana. Hoping to shrink it down, he visited local businesses with Oliver Moses of the Okavango Research Institute. They located security camera footage at a hotel and gas stations that had recorded the fireball, allowing them to more precisely pinpoint the fall site: a (still-sizable) spot within the Central Kalahari Game Reserve. This was a surreal place to go meteorite hunting. Bat-eared foxes and warthogs strolled past, lions stealthily stalked and slaughtered giraffes while leopards lounged in trees. Wardens from Botswana's Department of Wildlife and National Parks protected the search party in case a fanged predator got too close for comfort. The meteorites also looked a lot like animal poop, meaning the team were frequently bamboozled by coprological impostors. 'It was a totally unusual experience for all of us,' said Mr. Gabadirwe.
Businesses

Taiwan Bans Recruitment for Jobs in China To Combat Brain Drain (nikkei.com) 33

Taiwan has told staffing companies to remove all listings for jobs in China, a drastic move to prevent the outflow of vital tech talent to the mainland amid rising tensions between Taipei and Beijing. From a report: The Labor Ministry said that all Taiwanese and foreign staffing companies on the island as a general rule may no longer post openings for jobs located in China, especially those involving critical industries such as integrated circuits and semiconductors, according to a notice seen by Nikkei Asia. The move comes as Beijing seeks to build up the mainland's semiconductor industry -- a goal that has intensified demand for Taiwanese engineers. "Due to geopolitical tension between the U.S. and China, China's semiconductor development has suffered some setbacks and as a result China has become more aggressive in poaching and targeting top Taiwanese chip talent to help build a self-sufficient supply chain," the ministry said in the notice.

Recruitment platforms and headhunters are barred from helping or representing any company in efforts to hire individuals for work in mainland China. Violators face fines from the ministry. "If the recruitment involves semiconductors and integrated circuits, the penalty will be even higher," the notice said. Taiwan's biggest recruitment platform, 104 Job Bank, told clients in a letter Wednesday to "please close your job vacancies in China as soon as possible to avoid violating the regulation," citing the ministry notice.

Windows

Windows 10 Now Active on 1.3 Billion Devices, Says Microsoft (extremetech.com) 67

It's been just over a year since Microsoft announced it had hit its goal of 1 billion monthly active Windows 10 devices. It took a while to get there, but Microsoft now says Windows 10 is growing even faster, reaching a whopping 1.3 billion active installs in the last quarter. From a report: Like a number of other technology firms, Microsoft has the global pandemic to thank for its windfall. It turns out people buy more computers when they're stuck at home. "Over a year into the pandemic, digital adoption curves aren't slowing down. They're accelerating, and it's just the beginning," said CEO Satya Nadella. The latest device count comes from Microsoft's earnings report, which featured a stunning $41.7 billion in revenue for the quarter.
Security

Scammers Are Hacking Target's Gig Workers and Stealing Their Money (vice.com) 31

Scammers have been spoofing Target's delivery company Shipt's phone number in order to steal its gig workers' earnings by phishing their credentials from them. From a report: On the morning of March 28, a gig worker near Tampa, Florida, was shopping an order for Shipt, Target's delivery platform, when he received an email from "Shipt Support" asking him to reset his password. The worker says he didn't request to reset his password, but didn't think much of the email and went on with this day. Later that evening, the worker says he was sitting at home on his couch when he received a phone call from Shipt's corporate headquarters' phone number. Someone identifying themselves as a Shipt employee and addressing the worker by his first name said there had been unusual activity on his account regarding his password and asked him to read back a code that had been emailed to him to verify his identity.

Remembering the password reset email from earlier that day, the worker provided an authentication code that he'd received via email from Shipt. Shortly after, he received an email notifying him that someone had added a debit card to his account. When the worker checked his account again, he realized someone had logged in and cashed out his entire paycheck -- $499.51. "I noticed my withdrawal balance was zero," he said in a public video uploaded to Facebook. "At that point, I'm livid. I'm pissed." In recent weeks, personal shoppers on Target's delivery app, which boasts roughly 300,000 personal shoppers in the United States, have been repeatedly targeted by scammers hoping to steal their earnings by phishing gig workers' credentials from them. Since March 28, more than 30 gig workers have posted in private, unofficial Facebook groups for Shipt's personal shoppers saying scammers have targeted them using phishing schemes that include spoofing Shipt's corporate phone numbers and asking for passwords over the phone. In at least some cases, the strategy used by scammers is different from other phishing campaigns: Scammers trigger password reset emails sent to personal shoppers by clicking the "forgot password" button below the Shipt login. Then they follow up via phone, asking personal shoppers to "verify" their passwords in order to look into "unusual activity" or requests to update info on their accounts.

Facebook

English Soccer Teams Have Started a Four-Day Social Media Boycott To Protest Online Abuse (theverge.com) 54

English soccer teams and organizations are all shutting down their Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram accounts for the weekend as part of a massive social media blackout to advocate for better policies regarding discrimination and abuse that players and members of clubs receive on those platforms. From a report: Groups participating in the blackout include the Premier League, the English Football League, the Professional Footballers' Association, the Football Association, the League Managers Association, the Football Supporters' Association, and more. Clubs that are part of the Premier League, EFL, Barclays FA Women's Super League, and Women's Championship will all be shutting down their social channels over the weekend as part of the protest. The blackout comes after the various English soccer organizations banded together in February to request changes from Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey in an open letter requesting that the companies take stronger action against discriminatory and racist comments.

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