Comic-Con went virtual again in 2020. (San Diego businesses will miss the chance to profit from the 100,000 visitors the convention usually attracted.) And NPR reports the convention has gotten smaller in other ways: Both Marvel Studios and DC are staying away; as it did last year, DC is again directing its resources towards its own event, DC FanDome, set for mid-October. But fans of shows like Doctor Who, Dexter and Comic-Con stalwart The Walking Dead will have lots to look forward to.
Rotten Tomatoes and The Verge have gathered up the trailers that did premier. Some of the highlights:

• Blade Runner: Black Lotus , an upcoming anime television series set to premiere in late 2021 on Crunchyroll and Adult Swim (co-producing it with Alcon Television Group).
• The upcoming remake of Dune
• J.J. Abrams' new four-part Showtime documentary about UFOs.
• Season 2 of Star Trek: Lower Decks and the new Star Trek: Prodigy, a CGI-animated series about a group of aliens who escape captivity onboard the Enterprise.

But interestingly, one of the more visibile presenters was: NASA. Current and former NASA officials made appearances on several different panels, according to Space.com, including one on modern space law, U.N. treaty-making, and how it all stacks up against the portrayal we get in our various future-space franchises. And a former NASA astronaut was also part of a panel touting a virtual simulation platform, "where students can have access to the same tools that professionals use and in the case of space are given the opportunity to solve real problems related to missions to our Moon, Mars, and beyond... from piloting to terra-forming to creating habitats and spacecraft."

There was also a panel of four NASA engineers titled "No Tow Trucks Beyond Mars," on "how we go boldly where there's no one around to fix it. Hear stories from the trenches of the heartbreaks, close calls, and adventures of real-life landing (and flying!) on Mars and our round-table discussion of what Netflix got right in their movie Stowaway."

Sunday's panels will include an astronomer, an astrobiologist, and a geologist/paleontologist discussing "The Science of Star Wars" with the concept designer for Star Wars episodes 7-9, Rogue One, and Solo.

Zoom, the video-conferencing platform that became hugely popular during the Covid-19 pandemic, is spending a whopping $14.7 billion on cloud-based software company Five9 to boost its appeal with business clients. From a report: Zoom announced the acquisition Sunday night. In a statement, it said the move will "help enhance Zoom's presence with enterprise customers and allow it to accelerate its long-term growth opportunity." Five9 provides software to customer service centers for over 2,000 clients around the globe. Eric Yuan, Zoom's billionaire CEO and founder, said the addition of Five9 was a natural fit. "Enterprises communicate with their customers primarily through the contact center, and we believe this acquisition creates a leading customer engagement platform that will help redefine how companies of all sizes connect with their customers," he said in a statement.

In light of COVID-19 driving all communication online, free Google Meet users with personal Gmail accounts could take advantage of group calls without a duration limit over the past year. That benefit ended at the start of this month and Google has detailed the new limitation. 9to5Google reports: When Meet became available for all users in April of 2020, Google said it wouldn't enforce a 60-minute time limit on calls until September 30. That deadline for group calls that could run all day long was later extended to March 31, 2021, and again to June 30. Google did not bump it again before July, and free Gmail users now have to live with one key group Meet limit. "Calls with 3 or more participants" are limited to 60 minutes.

"Tip: At 55 minutes, everyone gets a notification that the call is about to end," says Google. "To extend the call, the host can upgrade their Google account. Otherwise, the call will end at 60 minutes." That said, one-on-one calls can continue to run for up to 24 hours on free and enterprise accounts. The upgrade mentioned by Google is the $9.99 per month Workspace Individual tier that just launched in five countries. If the hosts upgrade, calls can run for up to a day.

Republicans are questioning Amazon's relationship with the Pentagon after newly released emails show that defense officials praised tech executives vying for a $10 billion contract during the Trump administration. The Verge reports: On Tuesday, The New York Times reported on previously unreleased emails that show Pentagon officials applauding Amazon executives while the company sought out a lucrative defense contract between 2017 and 2018. The Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure project, or JEDI, set out to find a tech company that would move the Defense Department's computer networks over to the cloud. In one instance, the Times reports that former Trump Defense Secretary Jim Mattis traveled to Silicon Valley to meet with executives from companies like Apple, Amazon, and Google in 2017. During this trip, Mattis was made "uncomfortable" while Amazon representatives aggressively pitched their cloud-computing products to him. A former Mattis adviser, Sally Donnelly, also referred to Bezos as "the genius of our age." Donnelly, who later sent Mattis a list of reasons he should meet with Bezos, had previously worked at a consulting firm where her clients included Amazon.

"This is exactly what we were concerned about, and it contradicts Amazon's insistence that there is nothing to see here," Rep. Ken Buck (R-CO) and Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) said in a joint statement Tuesday. "It's become more and more clear that Amazon used its market power and paid-for connections to circumvent ethical boundaries and avoid competition in an attempt to win this contract." Microsoft won the multibillion-dollar contract in 2019 after a closely watched bidding fight between Amazon. But earlier this month, the Defense Department announced that it would cancel its contract amid an ongoing legal battle alleging that Trump wrongfully interfered in the bidding process. In canceling the prior contract, Amazon is given a second chance to win the $10 billion deal. But Republicans in Washington are calling for the company to testify regarding its Pentagon relationships in light of the newly released emails.

Broadcom is in talks to buy SAS, WSJ reported Monday, citing people familiar with the matter, in the latest move by the acquisitive technology giant to beef up in enterprise software. From the report: A deal, which would value closely held SAS in the range of $15 billion to $20 billion, could be finalized in the coming weeks assuming the talks don't fall apart, the people said. That number is so-called enterprise value, some of the people said, which typically includes assumed debt and is adjusted for cash on the target's balance sheet. Broadcom has a market value of nearly $200 billion after its shares have risen around 50% over the past year.

The Department of Defense announced Tuesday it's calling off the $10 billion cloud contract that was the subject of a legal battle involving Amazon and Microsoft. From a report: The JEDI, or Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure, deal has become one of the most tangled contracts for the Department of Defense. In a press release Tuesday, the Pentagon said that "due to evolving requirements, increased cloud conversancy, and industry advances, the JEDI Cloud contract no longer meets its needs." But the fight over a cloud computing project does not appear to be completely over yet. The Pentagon said in the press release that it still needs enterprise-scale cloud capability and announced a new multi-vendor contract known as the Joint Warfighter Cloud Capability. The agency said it plans to solicit proposals from both Amazon and Microsoft for the contract, adding that they are the only cloud service providers that can meet its needs. But, it added, it will continue to do market research to see if others could also meet its specifications. [...] The lucrative JEDI contract was intended to modernize the Pentagon's IT operations for services rendered over as many as 10 years. Microsoft was awarded the cloud computing contract in 2019, beating out market leader Amazon Web Services.

"Organizations are beginning to develop, design, and manage their own AI-powered voice assistant systems independent of platforms such as Siri and Alexa," reports VentureBeat: The transition is being driven by the desire to manage the entirety of the user experience and integrate voice assistance into multiple business processes and brand environments, from call centers to stores. In a recent survey of 500 IT and business decision-makers in the U.S., France, Germany, and the U.K., 28% of respondents said they were using voice technologies and 84% expect to be using them in the next year.

To support the evolution, the Linux Foundation launched the Open Voice Network (OVN), an alliance advocating for the adoption of open standards across voice assistant apps in automobiles, smartphones, smart home devices, and more. With founding members Target, Schwarz Gruppe, Wegmans Food Markets, Microsoft, Veritone, Deutsche Telekom, and others, the OVN's goal — much like Amazon's Voice Interoperability Initiative — is to standardize the development and use of voice assistant systems and conversational agents that use technologies including automatic speech recognition, natural language processing, advanced dialog management, and machine learning... It was first announced as the Open Voice Initiative in 2019, but expanded significantly as the COVID-19 pandemic spurred enterprises to embrace digital transformation.

"Voice is expected to be a primary interface to the digital world, connecting users to billions of sites, smart environments and AI bots ... Key to enabling enterprise adoption of these capabilities and consumer comfort and familiarity is the implementation of open standards," Mike Dolan, SVP and general manager of projects at the Linux Foundation, said in a statement. "The potential impact of voice on industries including commerce, transportation, healthcare, and entertainment is staggering and we're excited to bring it under the open governance model of the Linux foundation to grow the community and pave a way forward."
Besides a focus on standards and technology-sharing, the group plans to collaborate with existing industry associations on regulatory/legislative issues — including data privacy."

"When Red Hat killed off CentOS Linux in a highly controversial December 2020 announcement, Gregory Kurtzer immediately announced his intention to recreate CentOS with a new distribution named after his deceased mentor," Ars Technica reported in February.

And this week, "The Rocky Enterprise Software Foundation has announced general availability (GA) of Rocky Linux 8.4," reports ZDNet. "It's an important milestone because it's the first Rocky Linux general availability release ever." Huge companies, including Disney, GoDaddy, Rackspace, Toyota and Verizon, relied on CentOS, and they were reportedly not happy about RedHat's decision... It turns out that Kurtzer's decision has been a popular one. Besides quickly building up an army of hundreds of contributors for the project, Rocky Linux 8.4 - which follows the May 18 release of Red Hat's RHEL 8.4 - was downloaded at least 10,000 times within half a day of its release... "If we extrapolate the count to include our other mirrors we are probably at least 3-4x that (if not even way more)!" boasts Kurtzer in a LinkedIn post. "Lots of reports coming in of people and organizations already replacing their CentOS systems (and even other Linux distributions) with Rocky. The media is flying off the hook and business analysts also validating to me personally that Rocky Linux might soon be the most utilized Linux operating system used in enterprise and cloud!"

Rocky Linux 8.4 took seven months for the newly formed community to release, and is available for x86_64 and ARM64 (aarch64) architecture hardware in various ISOs.
"Sufficient testing has been performed such that we have confidence in its stability for production systems," explains a blog post at RockyLinux.org, adding that free community support is available through the forums as well as live chat avaiable through IRC and Rocky Linux Mattermost. "Paid commercial support is currently available through CIQ..."

"Corporations come and go, their interests as transient as they are self-serving. But a community persists, and that's who we dedicate Rocky Linux to: you." Rocky is more than the next free and open, community enterprise operating system. It's a community. A commitment to an ideal bigger than the sum of its parts, and a promise that our principles — embedded even within our repositories and ISOs — are immutable...

This is just the beginning, and the Rocky Enterprise Software Foundation is more than just Rocky Linux — it's a home for those that believe that open source isn't just a switch that can be toggled at will, and that projects that many rely on not be subject to the whims of a few. To this point, you can easily find all of our sources, our build infrastructure, Git repositories, and everything else anyone would need to fork our work and ensure that it continues if need be...

When we announced our release candidate, we asked you to come build the next free, open, community enterprise operating system with us. Now we're asking you for more: join us as we build our community.
They also thanked 11 sponsors and partners for contributing "resources, financial backing, software, and infrastructure."

Bleeping Computer reports: Microsoft has now confirmed signing a malicious driver being distributed within gaming environments. This driver, called "Netfilter," is in fact a rootkit that was observed communicating with Chinese command-and-control IPs.

G Data malware analyst Karsten Hahn first took notice of this event last week and was joined by the wider infosec community in tracing and analyzing the malicious drivers bearing the seal of Microsoft... This incident has once again exposed threats to software supply-chain security, except this time it stemmed from a weakness in Microsoft's code-signing process.
G Data writes: We forwarded our findings to Microsoft who promptly added malware signatures to Windows Defender and are now conducting an internal investigation. At the time of writing it is still unknown how the driver could pass the signing process.
In a Friday blog post, Microsoft said it was contacting other antivirus software vendors "so they can proactively deploy detections," but also emphasized the attack's limited scope: The actor's activity is limited to the gaming sector specifically in China and does not appear to target enterprise environments. We are not attributing this to a nation-state actor at this time. The actor's goal is to use the driver to spoof their geo-location to cheat the system and play from anywhere. The malware enables them to gain an advantage in games and possibly exploit other players by compromising their accounts through common tools like keyloggers.

It's important to understand that the techniques used in this attack occur post exploitation, meaning an attacker must either have already gained administrative privileges in order to be able to run the installer to update the registry and install the malicious driver the next time the system boots or convince the user to do it on their behalf.

We will be sharing an update on how we are refining our partner access policies, validation and the signing process to further enhance our protections. There are no actions customers should take other than follow security best practices and deploy Antivirus software such as Windows Defender for Endpoint.

An anonymous reader shares a report: Blender is one of the most important open source projects, as the 3D graphics application suite is used by countless people at home, for business, and in education. The software can be used on many platforms, such as Windows, Mac, and of course, Linux. Today, Ubuntu-maker Canonical announces it will offer paid enterprise support for Blender LTS. Surprisingly, this support will not only be for Ubuntu users. Heck, it isn't even limited to Linux installations. Actually, Canonical will offer this support to Blender LTS users on Windows, Mac, and Linux.

Executives at some of the world's largest technology firms are leaving prime jobs to join startups that build communications and collaboration tools, a market expected to skyrocket as more businesses settle into hybrid work arrangements. From a report: Raymond Endres, Facebook's former top engineer for its Messenger app, left the company last month to oversee technology at Airtable, which makes cloud-based spreadsheet collaboration software. His initial focus will be on prepping the San Francisco-based startup to meet an expected surge in enterprise demand. That means ramping up investing in new product features and infrastructure in the year ahead, while tripling the size of his engineering team to roughly 300 workers, he said.

[...] Sarah Cannon, a partner at Index Ventures, said she knows of at least a dozen recent communication and collaboration startups founded or led by former top people at big tech firms. Many high-level developers and engineers have been building these kinds of apps inside large companies for years, she said, and Covid-19's impact on conventional workplaces is now prompting them to strike out on their own. On the funding side, she said, investors have grown less skeptical of productivity, communications and collaboration tools, which many companies in the past were reluctant to adopt at scale. Spending in the global collaboration and enterprise social software market is forecast to reach $4.5 billion this year, a 17.1% increase from 2020, according to the latest forecast by information-technology research and consulting firm Gartner Inc. It expects to see double-digit gains into 2022. As the pandemic wanes, an estimated 60% of global companies are developing a permanent hybrid workplace model, Gartner has said, where most employees come into the office no more than three days a week. Gartner estimates that more than 1.1 billion workers around the world worked remotely last year, up from 350 million in 2019.

As ubiquitous as Google Docs has become in the last year alone, a major criticism often overlooked by the countless workplaces that use it is that it isn't end-to-end encrypted, allowing Google -- or any requesting government agency -- access to a company's files. But Google is finally addressing that key complaint with a round of updates that will let customers shield their data by storing their own encryption keys. From a report: Google Workspace, the company's enterprise offering that includes Google Docs, Slides and Sheets, is adding client-side encryption so that a company's data will be indecipherable to Google. Companies using Google Workspace can store their encryption keys with one of four partners for now: Flowcrypt, Futurex, Thales or Virtru, which are compatible with Google's specifications. The move is largely aimed at regulated industries -- like finance, healthcare and defense -- where intellectual property and sensitive data are subject to intense privacy and compliance rules.

In a blog post this morning, Google announced plans to increase its update cadence for Chromebooks. Like Chrome, its operating system will now also follow a four-week Stable channel before moving to the next major milestone release. Android Police reports: Google will deliver fresh features more rapidly to Chromebooks starting with Chrome OS 96 -- all while keeping it stable, secure, and speedy. To adapt to the rigorous update release schedule, Google will skip Chrome OS 95, which will help it bridge the gap between M94 and Chrome's new four-week rollout strategy. Enterprise and education folks can opt enroll in an Extended Stable option for Chromebooks, which will update every 6 months. In light of the new rollout strategy, Google updated its documentation and pushed an update to its release calendar. The company will share plans about the choices Chrome OS administrators will have for milestone updates "in the coming months."

After temporarily grounding its fleet of more than 500 DJI drones in January 2020 over cybersecurity concerns, the Pentagon has finally cleared two of DJI's drones of any security risks. An analysis of the two DJI drones built for government use found "no malicious code or intent" and are "recommended for use by government entities and forces working with US services," a report summary said. Pocketnow reports: Specifically, the Pentagon has cleared only two drone models so far -- the DJI Mavic Pro and Matrice 600 Pro. However, it will still come as a relief for the brand after being under the scanner for over security threats, especially after giants like HUAWEI have had to face terrible consequences after being blacklisted for similar reasons. DJI, on the other hand, has maintained that the company is not involved in any secretive data-sharing practices with the Chinese government and that its drones are safe to use.

"This U.S. government report is the strongest confirmation to date of what we, and independent security validations, have been saying for years -- DJI drones are safe and secure for government and enterprise operations," a DJI spokesperson was quoted as saying. While two of DJI's drone models can now be again used by the Interior Department, there is no relief for the company regarding its inclusion on the Commerce Department's Entity List. Even though the sale of its product has not been banned, sourcing technology from US-based firms would still require approval, and then there are risks of supply chain disruption as well as reputation loss.

Two tech industry organizations are suing Florida over its newly passed rules for social networks, claiming it violates private companies' constitutional rights. The Verge reports: SB 7072, which Florida Governor Ron DeSantis signed earlier this week, restricts how large social apps and websites can moderate user-generated content. It makes banning any Florida political candidate or "journalistic enterprise" unlawful, lets users sue if they believe they were banned without sufficient reason, requires an option to "opt out" of sorting algorithms, and places companies that break the law on an "antitrust violator blacklist" that bars them from doing business with public entities in Florida. Notably, it includes an exception for companies that operate a theme park.

NetChoice and the CCIA say SB 7072 conflicts with both constitutional protections and federal Section 230 rules. "As private businesses, Plaintiffs' members have the right to decide what content is appropriate for their sites and platforms," their complaint says. "The Act requires members to display and prioritize user-generated content that runs counter to their terms, policies, and business practices; content that will likely offend and repel their users and advertisers; and even content that is unlawful, dangerous to public health and national security, and grossly inappropriate for younger audiences." The lawsuit claims Florida lawmakers and DeSantis specifically tailored the law to punish services whose moderation policies they disagreed with, while adding the arbitrary theme park exception to pacify Disney, Comcast NBCUniversal, and a handful of other big companies.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Engadget: [T]he Responsible Artificial Intelligence Institute (RAI) -- a non-profit developing governance tools to help usher in a new generation of trustworthy, safe, Responsible AIs -- hopes to offer a more standardized means of certifying that our next HAL won't murder the entire crew. In short they want to build "the world's first independent, accredited certification program of its kind." Think of the LEED green building certification system used in construction but with AI instead. Work towards this certification program began nearly half a decade ago alongside the founding of RAI itself, at the hands of Dr. Manoj Saxena, University of Texas Professor on Ethical AI Design, RAI Chairman and a man widely considered to be the "father" of IBM Watson, though his initial inspiration came even further back.

Certifications are awarded in four levels -- basic, silver, gold, and platinum (sorry, no bronze) -- based on the AI's scores along the five OECD principles of Responsible AI: interpretability/explainability, bias/fairness, accountability, robustness against unwanted hacking or manipulation, and data quality/privacy. The certification is administered via questionnaire and a scan of the AI system. Developers must score 60 points to reach the base certification, 70 points for silver and so on, up to 90 points-plus for platinum status. [Mark Rolston, founder and CCO of argodesign] notes that design analysis will play an outsized role in the certification process. "Any company that is trying to figure out whether their AI is going to be trustworthy needs to first understand how they're constructing that AI within their overall business," he said. "And that requires a level of design analysis, both on the technical front and in terms of how they're interfacing with their users, which is the domain of design."

RAI expects to find (and in some cases has already found) a number of willing entities from government, academia, enterprise corporations, or technology vendors for its services, though the two are remaining mum on specifics while the program is still in beta (until November 15th, at least). Saxena hopes that, like the LEED certification, RAI will eventually evolve into a universalized certification system for AI. He argues, it will help accelerate the development of future systems by eliminating much of the uncertainty and liability exposure today's developers -- and their harried compliance officers -- face while building public trust in the brand. "We're using standards from IEEE, we are looking at things that ISO is coming out with, we are looking at leading indicators from the European Union like GDPR, and now this recently announced algorithmic law," Saxena said. "We see ourselves as the 'do tank' that can operationalize those concepts and those think tank's work."

Zoom is announcing an expanded live events product today that's launching this summer. From a report: Zoom Events builds on Zoom's previous paid event marketplace, OnZoom, by layering in features that can support larger multiday events and non-video activities like chat. Zoom says it's still building out Zoom Events in the lead up to its launch, but as it stands, it's both a rebranding of the more small-business focused OnZoom, with new features that serve Zoom's original pre-pandemic customers -- enterprise companies. Like OnZoom, with a paid Zoom Meetings or Zoom Webinar license you'll be able to host live events, organize them in a hub, sell tickets, and track stats like ticket sales or attendance.

Twenty companies are responsible for producing more than half of all the single-use plastic waste in the world, fuelling the climate crisis and creating an environmental catastrophe, new research reveals. From a report: Among the global businesses responsible for 55% of the world's plastic packaging waste are both state-owned and multinational corporations, including oil and gas giants and chemical companies, according to a comprehensive new analysis. The Plastic Waste Makers index reveals for the first time the companies who produce the polymers that become throwaway plastic items, from face masks to plastic bags and bottles, which at the end of their short life pollute the oceans or are burned or thrown into landfill. It also reveals Australia leads a list of countries for generating the most single-use plastic waste on a per capita basis, ahead of the United States, South Korea and Britain.

ExxonMobil is the greatest single-use plastic waste polluter in the world, contributing 5.9m tonnes to the global waste mountain, concludes the analysis by the Minderoo Foundation of Australia with partners including Wood Mackenzie, the London School of Economics and Stockholm Environment Institute. The largest chemicals company in the world, Dow, which is based in the US, created 5.5m tonnes of plastic waste, while China's oil and gas enterprise, Sinopec, created 5.3m tonnes. Eleven of the companies are based in Asia, four in Europe, three in North America, one in Latin America, and one in the Middle East. Their plastic production is funded by leading banks, chief among which are Barclays, HSBC, Bank of America, Citigroup and JPMorgan Chase.

Slashdot reader storagedude writes: The MITRE cybersecurity product evaluations use adversarial attack techniques instead of basic malware samples, and as a result are the best tests of enterprise security products — particularly in light of dramatic recent attacks on SolarWinds and Colonial Pipeline.

What's especially interesting is just how well first-generation antivirus vendors like Symantec, McAfee and Trend Micro have fared in the MITRE tests. An eSecurity Planet article analyzes the data and speculates on why the old guard may have a built-in advantage over the hot upstarts:

"They may have been overshadowed in recent years by some of the flashy marketing of the upstarts, but that long history gives the old guard a product depth that's tough to beat," eSecurity Planet wrote. "Just one example: Symantec was prepared for last year's SolarWinds hack because it long ago faced attacks when hackers tried to disable endpoint agents, a primary vector for the Sunburst malware.

"In cybersecurity, experience still counts for something."

Elon Musk-founded SpaceX is in the process of rolling out Starlink as a satellite internet provider around the world. As part of a new partnership, Google Cloud data centers will be home to key Starlink infrastructure in order to let enterprise users better access key services. 9to5Google reports: This partnership starts with SpaceX building Starlink ground stations inside Google data centers for "secure, low-latency, and reliable delivery of data" from existing fiber networks to space and back to end users. There are currently over 1,500 Starlink satellites in orbit, with more launching on a regular basis aboard Falcon 9 rockets. The end goal is to make cloud services, data, and applications available to businesses in rural or remote areas: "Connectivity from Starlink's constellation of low-Earth-orbit satellites provides a path for these organizations to deliver data and applications to teams distributed across countries and continents, quickly and securely." The first Google Cloud and Starlink customers will be able to benefit from this partnership in the second half of 2021.