An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Guardian: In May 2021, a celebration for Portsmouth, New Hampshire's new $17m water treatment facility drew local and national officials who declared the city's water free of toxic "forever chemicals." Firefighting foam from the nearby Pease air force base had polluted the water for decades with per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), and in recognition of the public health threat the US military funded the city's new filtration system. Officials said after implementing the upgraded filtration, testing no longer found detectable levels of PFAS chemicals in the water. They called the work in Portsmouth a "national model" for addressing PFAS water contamination. "We are here to celebrate clean water," Senator Maggie Hassan said at the time. But the water may not be clean after all.

A Guardian analysis of water samples taken in Portsmouth and from eight other locations around the United States shows that the type of water testing relied on by the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) -- and officials in towns such as Portsmouth -- is so limited in scope that it is probably missing significant levels of PFAS pollutants. The undercount leaves regulators with an incomplete picture of the extent of PFAS contamination and reveals how millions of people may be facing an unknown health risk in their drinking water.

The analysis checked water samples from PFAS hot spots around the country with two types of tests: an EPA-developed method that detects 30 types of the approximately 9,000 PFAS compounds, and another that checks for a marker of all PFAS. The Guardian found that seven of the nine samples collected showed higher levels of PFAS in water using the test that identifies markers for PFAS, than levels found when the water was tested using the EPA method -- and at concentrations as much as 24 times greater. "The EPA is doing the bare minimum it can and that's putting people's health at risk," said Kyla Bennett, policy director at the advocacy group Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility. "PFAS are a class of chemicals used since the 1950s to make thousands of products repel water, stains and heat," notes the Guardian. "They are often called 'forever chemicals' because they don't fully break down, accumulating in the environment, humans and animals. Some are toxic at very low levels and have been linked to cancer, birth defects, kidney disease, liver problems, decreased immunity and other serious health issues."

"[W]hen it comes to identifying PFAS-contaminated water, the limitations of the test used by state and federal regulators, which is called the EPA 537 method, virtually guarantees regulators will never have a full picture of contamination levels as industry churns out new compounds much faster than researchers can develop the science to measure them," adds the report. "That creates even more incentive for industry to shift away from older compounds: if chemical companies produce newer PFAS, regulators won't be able to find the pollution."

The U.K. government has tabled an amendment (PDF) to the Online Safety Bill that could put it on a collision course with end-to-end encryption. TechCrunch reports: It's proposing to give the incoming internet regulator, Ofcom, new powers to force messaging platforms and other types of online services to implement content-scanning technologies, even if their platform is strongly encrypted -- meaning the service/company itself does not hold keys to decrypt and access user-generated content in the clear. The home secretary, Priti Patel, said today that the governments wants the bill to have greater powers to tackle child sexual abuse.

"Child sexual abuse is a sickening crime. We must all work to ensure criminals are not allowed to run rampant online and technology companies must play their part and take responsibility for keeping our children safe," she said in a statement -- which also offers the (unsubstantiated) claim that: "Privacy and security are not mutually exclusive -- we need both, and we can have both and that is what this amendment delivers." The proposed amendment is also being targeted at terrorism content -- with the tabled clause referring to: "Notices to deal with terrorism content or CSEA [child sexual exploitation & abuse] content (or both)."

These notices would allow Ofcom to order a regulated service to use "accredited" technology to identify CSEA or terrorism content which is being publicly shared on their platform and "swiftly" remove it. But the proposed amendment goes further -- also allowing Ofcom to mandate that regulated services use accredited technical means to prevent users from encountering these types of (illegal) content -- whether it's being shared publicly or privately via the service, raising questions over what the power might mean for E2E encryption.

Yesterday, Phoronix reported that the lead developer of systemd, Lennart Poettering, left Red Hat. "It turns out he had joined Microsoft and [is] continuing his work on systemd," writes Phoronix's Michael Larabel in a new report. He continues: While some may not always align with his views or approaches to handling some things, there is no overstating his enormous contributions to the Linux/open-source world and his dedication to advancing the ecosystem over the years. This may take many by surprise but let's not forget Microsoft has over time employed a number of Linux developers and other prominent open-source developers... Microsoft currently employs Python creator Guido van Rossum, GNOME creator Miguel de Icaza had been employed by Microsoft from 2016 when they acquired Xamarin to earlier this year when he left, Nat Friedman as part of Xamarin-Microsoft served as GitHub CEO following Microsoft's acquisition, Gentoo Linux founder Daniel Robbins was previously employed by Microsoft, Steve French as the Linux CIFS/SMB2/SMB3 maintainer and Samba team member works for Microsoft, and Microsoft employs/previously-employed a large number of upstream Linux developers like Matteo Croce, Matthew Wilcox, Shyam Prasad N, Michael Kelley, and many others beyond just the usual immediately recognizable names to Linux enthusiasts/developers. It was also just earlier this year that Christian Brauner as another longtime Linux kernel developer joined Microsoft. Christian Brauner is Berlin-based like Lennart and moved on to Microsoft after the past half-decade at Canonical working on the Linux kernel, LXC, systemd, and more.

As noted by a Reddit user and confirmed by Ars Technica, Microsoft's xCloud game streaming looks noticeable worse when running on Linux than Windows. From the report: With the Linux User-Agent, edges are generally less sharp and colors are a little more washed out. The difference is even more apparent if you zoom in on the Forza logo and menu text, which shows a significant reduction in clarity. Interestingly, the dip in quality seems to go away if you enable "Clarity Boost, an Edge-exclusive feature that "provid[es] the optimal look and feel while playing Xbox games from the cloud," according to Microsoft. That's great for Linux users who switched over to Microsoft Edge when it launched on Linux last November. But Linux users who stick with Firefox, Chrome, or other browsers are currently stuck with apparently reduced streaming quality.

That Linux quality dip has led some to speculate that Microsoft is trying to reserve the best xCloud streaming performance for Windows machines in an attempt to attract more users to its own operating system. But using a Macintosh User-Agent string provides streaming performance similar to that on Windows, which would seem to be a big omission if that theory were true. Microsoft also hasn't published any kind of "best on Windows"-style marketing in promoting xCloud streaming, which would seemingly be a key component of trying to attract new Windows users. (The quality difference could be a roundabout attempt to get Linux users to switch to the Edge browser, where Clarity Boost offers the best possible quality. But that still wouldn't fully explain why Windows users on other browsers, without Clarity Boost, also get better streaming quality than their Linux brethren.)

Others have suggested that the downgrade could simply be a bug caused by Microsoft's naive parsing of the User-Agent strings. That's because the User-Agent strings for Android browsers generally identify themselves as some version of Linux ("Linux; Android 11; HD1905," for example). Microsoft's xCloud code might simply see the "Linux" in that string, assume the user is running Android, then automatically throttle the streaming quality to account for the (presumably) reduced screen size of an Android phone or tablet.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the BBC: The heads of UK and US security services have made an unprecedented joint appearance to warn of the threat from China. FBI director Christopher Wray said China was the "biggest long-term threat to our economic and national security" and had interfered in politics, including recent elections. MI5 head Ken McCallum said his service had more than doubled its work against Chinese activity in the last three years and would be doubling it again. MI5 is now running seven times as many investigations related to activities of the Chinese Communist Party compared to 2018, he added. The FBI's Wray warned that if China was to forcibly take Taiwan it would "represent one of the most horrific business disruptions the world has ever seen."

The first ever joint public appearance by the two directors came at MI5 headquarters in Thames House, London. McCallum also said the challenge posed by the Chinese Communist Party was "game-changing," while Wray called it "immense" and "breath-taking." Wray warned the audience -- which included chief executives of businesses and senior figures from universities -- that the Chinese government was "set on stealing your technology" using a range of tools. He said it posed "an even more serious threat to western businesses than even many sophisticated businesspeople realized." He cited cases in which people linked to Chinese companies out in rural America had been digging up genetically modified seeds which would have cost them billions of dollars and nearly a decade to develop themselves. He also said China deployed cyber espionage to "cheat and steal on a massive scale," with a hacking program larger than that of every other major country combined.

The MI5 head said intelligence about cyber threats had been shared with 37 countries and that in May a sophisticated threat against aerospace had been disrupted. McCallum also pointed to a series of examples linked to China. [...] The MI5 head said new legislation would help to deal with the threat but the UK also needed to become a "harder target" by ensuring that all parts of society were more aware of the risks. He said that reform of the visa system had seen over 50 students linked to the Chinese military leaving the UK. "China has for far too long counted on being everybody's second-highest priority," Wray said, adding: "They are not flying under the radar anymore."

Toyota sold its 200,000th plug-in electric vehicle in the US, triggering a slow phaseout of the federal EV tax credit over the next 15 months, according to Bloomberg. The automaker is the third manufacturer to pass this mark, following Tesla and General Motors. The Verge reports: The phaseout for Toyota is poorly timed, coming just weeks after the company's new electric SUV, the bZ4X, went on sale in the US. It's the latest bad piece of EV news to hit the automaker, coming just a few weeks after it was forced to recall the bZ4X over loose hub bolts that could cause the wheels to come off while driving. Toyota pledged to spend $17.6 billion to roll out 30 battery-electric models by 2030.

The phaseout of the federal tax credits begins two quarters after an auto manufacturer sells 200,000 plug-in vehicles. Customers of Toyota cars that are eligible for the credit (like the bZ4X and the plug-in hybrid Prius Prime) will only be able to receive a maximum of $3,750 starting on October 1st. The maximum available credit will halve again on April 1st to $1,875, and it will completely phase out six months later in October 2023. A Toyota spokesperson confirmed the scheduled phase-out to The Verge.

Longstanding Thunderbolt and network-attached storage company Drobo filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in late June, and will hold its first creditors meeting on July 17. AppleInsider reports: First formed as Data Robotics in 2005, Drobo manufactured solutions for remote and network storage. Parent company StarCentric filed bankrupcy papers with the California Northern Bankruptcy Court (San Jose) on June 20, 2022. According to official court documentation, the company is to hold its first creditors meeting on July 19. There is also a final deadline for filing claims against the company, which is October 17, 2022.

The company has no commented publicly on the decision. However, the company appears to have been badly affected by the coronavirus. [...] Drobo's online US and European stores are currently both showing every product as sold out. The Chapter 11 filing implies that the company is trying to reorganize and return to full operations at some point. It isn't yet clear what the reorganization will look like, nor the magnitude of the creditors' demands.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: The burgeoning low-code and no-code movement is showing little sign of waning, with numerous startups continuing to raise sizable sums to help the less-technical workforce develop and deploy software with ease. Arguably one of the most notable examples of this trend is Airtable, a 10-year-old business that recently attained a whopping $11 billion valuation for a no-code platform used by firms such as Netflix and Shopify to create relational databases. In tandem, we're also seeing a rise in "open source alternatives" to some of the big-name technology incumbents, from Google's backend-as-a-service platform Firebase to open source scheduling infrastructure that seeks to supplant the mighty Calendly. A young Dutch company called Baserow sits at the intersection of both these trends, pitching itself as an open source Airbase alternative that helps people build databases with minimal technical prowess. Today, Baserow announced that it has raised $5.2 million in seed funding to launch a suite of new premium and enterprise products in the coming months, transforming the platform from its current database-focused foundation into a "complete, open source no-code toolchain," co-founder and CEO Bram Wiepjes told TechCrunch.

So what, exactly, does Baserow do in its current guise? Well, anyone with even the most rudimentary spreadsheet skills can use Baserow for use-cases spanning content marketing, such as managing brand assets collaboratively across teams; managing and organizing events; helping HR teams or startups manage and track applicants for a new role; and countless more, which Baserow provides pre-built templates for. [...] Baserow's open source credentials are arguably its core selling point, with the promise of greater extensibility and customizations (users can create their own plug-ins to enhance its functionality, similar to how WordPress works) -- this is a particularly alluring proposition for businesses with very specific or niche use cases that aren't well supported from an off-the-shelf SaaS solution. On top of that, some sectors require full control of their data and technology stack for security or compliance purposes. This is where open source really comes into its own, given that businesses can host the product themselves and circumvent vendor lock-in.

With a fresh 5 million euros in the bank, Baserow is planning to double down on its commercial efforts, starting with a premium incarnation that's officially launching out of an early access program later this month. This offering will be available as a SaaS and self-hosted product and will include various features such as the ability to export in different formats; user management tools for admin; Kanban view; and more. An additional "advanced" product will also be made available purely for SaaS customers and will include a higher data storage limit and service level agreements (SLAs). Although Baserow has operated under the radar somewhat since its official foundation in Amsterdam last year, it claims to have 10,000 active users, 100 sponsors who donate to the project via GitHub and 800 users already on the waiting list for its premium version. Later this year, Baserow plans to introduce a paid enterprise version for self-hosting customers, with support for specific requirements such as audit logs, single sign-on (SSO), role-based access control and more.

Edge Autonomy announced a deal with the US Department of Defense (DoD) to produce an unspecified amount of long-endurance Penguin drones for the US Army. From a report: The company manufactures a range of light drones capable of carrying a range of payloads for intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR), as well as targeting. Edge Autonomy's press release indicates that the company has previously supplied its products to the DoD. However, it did not disclose the extent of either the new or existing orders. Penguin C, one of the models the company manufactures, has a payload capacity of 25 kilograms (55 pounds), a range of 180 kilometers (112 miles) and a payload-dependent endurance of up to 25 hours. While outwardly similar to the famous Bayraktar TB2, the Penguin is significantly smaller and occupies a different niche while retaining similar endurance.

Elad Gil, a high-profile angel investor, writes: The high level view is that things have yet to get truly bad in private tech. 2021-2022 were an anomaly due to COVID policies which both created an incredibly cheap low interest money environment, pumped the stock market, and facilitated adoption of certain types of tech. This environment led to both excess in fundraising but also in hiring. This means that as money transitions back to to "normal" levels teams that were hired too far ahead need to shrink. Many areas (hiring plans, valuations, time venture capital raised lasts, etc) are roughly reseting to 2018/2019 norms, which themselves were all time highs prior to the COVID era.

If interest rates and money supply continue to tighten and a recession happens, then things should get worse. The below largely deals with the base case of things roughly stay where they are now. More likely, things will get worse before they get better. Nonetheless, it is still a great time to start a company. So what do the next few quarters look like?

1. Valuations will continue to drop and are not stable yet.
2. Top up rounds: Many companies are doing quick top-up rounds to add 6-18 months of runway and ensure the company has 36 months of cash to outlast any economic downturns or recessions.

3. Money leaving the market: Many investors who can invest in either public or private companies are mainly just focusing on public companies. This not only includes hedge funds, but also family offices and in some cases traditional venture funds. They view public markets as superior in terms of multiples and returns. Why invest in a $5B valuation private tech company with $50M in ARR when you can invest at a $5B valuation for a public company adding $50M in ARR every two months? Public companies are also liquid at most moments so you can exit the position more easily, and you can also hedge the position.

British scientists and academic researchers have been dealt a blow after 115 grants from a flagship EU research programme were terminated because of the continuing Brexit row over Northern Ireland. From a report: One academic said he was "relieved" to be exiting the country and feared the UK was going down a "dark path" like Germany in the 1930s. One hundred and fifty grants were approved for British applicants after the then Brexit minister, David Frost, successfully negotiated associate membership of the $95.3bn Horizon Europe programme but most will now be cancelled. Beneficiaries in the UK were told by the European Research Council (ERC) that unless associate membership had been approved by 29 June, the grants would not be available unless the researchers moved their work to a European institution.

Ratification of the membership has been in abeyance because the UK has not implemented the Brexit trading arrangements agreed under the Northern Ireland protocol. With the deadline passed, it has emerged that just 18 of the 150 academics will take up the grants but must move to an EU institution to get the funds. Thiemo Fetzer, a professor of economics at the University of Warwick who was approved for $1.53m of funding for research into media and geopolitics, confirmed he was one of the 18 who had reluctantly decided to move to the EU. He said: "I am relieved as this whole Brexit process has eroded my trust in the UK's institutions and this Horizon Europe association was just another incarnation of this."

What is likely one of history's largest heists of personal data -- and the largest known cybersecurity breach in China -- occurred because of a common vulnerability that left the data open for the taking on the internet, say cybersecurity experts who discovered the security flaw earlier this year. WSJ: The Shanghai police records -- containing the names, government ID numbers, phone numbers and incident reports of nearly 1 billion Chinese citizens -- were stored securely, according to the cybersecurity experts. But a dashboard for managing and accessing the data was set up on a public web address and left open without a password, which allowed anyone with relatively basic technical knowledge to waltz in and copy or steal the trove of information, they said. "That they would leave this much data exposed is insane," said Vinny Troia, founder of dark web intelligence firm Shadowbyte, which scans the web for unsecured databases and found the Shanghai police database in January.

The database stayed exposed for more than a year, from April 2021 through the middle of last month, when its data was suddenly wiped clean and replaced with a ransom note for the Shanghai police to discover, according to Bob Diachenko, owner of the cybersecurity research firm SecurityDiscovery, which similarly found the database -- and later the note -- through its periodic web scans earlier this year. "your_data_is_safe," the ransom note read, according to screenshots provided by Mr. Diachenko. "contact_for_your_data...recovery10btc," meaning the data would be returned for 10 bitcoin, roughly $200,000. The ransom amount matches the price that an anonymous user began asking for last Thursday on an online cybercrime forum in exchange for access to a database the user claimed contained billions of records of Chinese citizens' information stolen from a Shanghai national police database.

A prison term of up to one year and other tougher penalties for online insults came into effect Thursday as part of Japan's efforts to tackle cyberbullying. From a report: The revised Penal Code also raised the fine for insults to up to 300,000 yen ($2,200), upping the ante from the current penalty of detention for less than 30 days or a fine of less than 10,000 yen. The statute of limitations for insults has also been extended from one year to three years.

Moves to amend the law gained traction after Hana Kimura, a 22-year-old professional wrestler and cast member on the popular Netflix reality show "Terrace House," was believed to have committed suicide in May 2020 after receiving a barrage of hateful messages on social media. Two men in Osaka and Fukui prefectures were fined 9,000 yen each for insults posted about TV personality Kimura before her death, but some expressed concern the penalties were too light, which led to the push for the legal changes.

Apple introduced a security tool for iPhone, iPad and Mac devices that is designed to prevent targeted cyberattacks on high-profile users such as activists, journalists and government officials. From a report: The optional feature, called Lockdown Mode, will offer "extreme" protection for a "very small number of users who face grave, targeted attacks," Apple said Wednesday in a statement. The tool vastly reduces the number of physical and digital ways for an attacker to hack a user's device. Apple said the feature is aimed primarily at trying to combat attacks from "spyware" sold by NSO Group and other companies, particularly to state-sponsored groups.

[...] Lockdown Mode will affect the Messages app, FaceTime, Apple online services, configuration profiles, the Safari web browser and wired connections. With the tool in place, the Messages app will block attachments other than images and disable link previews. Those are two common mechanisms that hackers use to infiltrate devices remotely. The web browser, another frequent conduit for hackers, will also be severely limited, with restrictions on certain fonts, web languages and features involving reading PDFs and previewing content. In FaceTime, users won't be able to receive calls from an individual that they haven't previously called within the preceding 30 days.

The U.K.'s competition watchdog on Wednesday opened an investigation into Microsoft's proposed acquisition of video game publisher Activision Blizzard. From a report: In a statement, the U.K.'s Competition and Markets Authority said its investigation would consider whether the deal may harm competition -- "for example, through higher prices, lower quality, or reduced choice." The CMA set a Sept. 1 deadline for its initial decision. The regulator said it wants feedback from interested third parties, with a consultation running until July 20.

Lisa Tanzi, Microsoft's corporate vice president and general counsel, said regulatory scrutiny of the deal was to be expected, adding the company would "fully cooperate" with the CMA. "We're committed to answering questions from regulators and ultimately believe a thorough review will help the deal close with broad confidence, and that it will be positive for competition," Tanzi said. "We remain confident the deal will close in fiscal year 2023 as initially anticipated."