Snap announced plans to "substantially reduce" hiring and shake up its strategy as it posted bleak second-quarter results, blaming tough macroeconomic conditions but also stating it was "not satisfied with the resultsâ... regardless of the current headwinds." From a report: The social media company lost about a quarter of its value on Thursday after posting the results, which chief executive Evan Spiegel said "do not reflect our ambition." Revenues at the Los Angeles-based social media company increased 13 per cent to $1.11bn in the three months to the end of June, just shy of analysts' consensus of $1.13bn. Net losses stood at $422mn, a drop of 178 per cent year-on-year and far greater than analyst estimates of losses of $340mn, according to data compiled by S&P Capital IQ.

[...] Spiegel said that Snap planned to focus on product innovation, diversifying revenue and investment in its direct response advertising business in order to address the slowdown. In a letter to investors on Thursday, Snap said that brands were slashing digital advertising budgets due to the wider economic slowdown and inflationary pressures, as well as privacy changes by Apple that have made it harder to target advertising and measure the success of campaigns. It also said business had been hurt by increased competition, as new entrants such as Chinese-owned TikTok take market share.

Hyundai Motor, factory robot builder ABB and Swedish fridge maker Electrolux see the semi-conductor chip shortage easing, executives said Thursday, in a boost for manufacturers after a long struggle for components. From a report: An increased supply of chips will reduce one burden facing an industry that is also battling raw material price inflation, a tight energy market and rising interest rates that are throwing a dampener on consumer demand. Hyundai turned in its best quarterly profit in eight years on Thursday as a weak won currency lifted the value of its earnings abroad and demand stayed strong for the South Korean automaker's high-margin sport utility vehicles (SUVs). The carmaker was also boosted by the easing of a global chip shortage, which helped it resume overtime and weekend shifts at domestic plants. It now plans to step up vehicle production in the second half to meet consumer demand.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from 9to5Google: With the addition of the developer-generated Data safety section this year, Google Play removed the old list of app permissions. The Play Store is now reversing this decision in response to user feedback and will have both coexist. In a short thread this morning, Android Developers (@AndroidDev) on Twitter said it "heard your feedback that you find the app permissions section in Google Play useful, and we've decided to reinstate it." It will be "back shortly," but the company did not specify if this will be done through a server-side change or whether a new version of the Play Store app is required: "The Data safety section provides users with a simplified view of how an app collects, shares, & secures user data, but we also want to make app permissions information easily viewable for users to understand an app's ability to access specific restricted data & actions too."

As Google summarizes, the Play permissions list is "based on the install-time permissions that an app declares in its manifest," and "represents an app's ability to access specific data." Data safety is focused on what an app collects and shares with third parties, similar to Apple's App Store. As of July 20, Google is directly warning "non-compliant new app submissions and app updates" that don't completely fill out the Data safety form. Developers have until August 22 to comply or they won't be able to publish new apps or updates. After that, applications might be removed from the Play Store.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Federal Communications Commission Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel has ordered mobile carriers to explain what geolocation data they collect from customers and how they use it. Rosenworcel's probe could be the first step toward stronger action -- but the agency's authority in this area is in peril because Congress is debating a data privacy law that could preempt the FCC from regulating carriers' privacy practices.

Rosenworcel sent letters of inquiry Tuesday "to the top 15 mobile providers," the FCC announced. The chairwoman's letters asked carriers "about their policies around geolocation data, such as how long geolocation data is retained and why and what the current safeguards are to protect this sensitive information," the FCC said. The letters also "probe carriers about their processes for sharing subscriber geolocation data with law enforcement and other third parties' data-sharing agreements. Finally, the letters ask whether and how consumers are notified when their geolocation information is shared with third parties," the FCC said. "Mobile Internet service providers are uniquely situated to capture a trove of data about their own subscribers, including the subscriber's actual identity and personal characteristics, geolocation data, app usage, and web browsing data and habits," the letters say. Under US communications law, carriers are prohibited from using or sharing private information except under specific circumstances. Rosenworcel told carriers to answer the questions by August 3.

[...] Among other things, Rosenworcel's letters ask carriers to describe in detail the geolocation data they collect and retain from customers, to explain why such data is retained for current and former subscribers, how long the data is retained for, a description of safeguards used to protect the data, and what country or countries the geolocation data is stored in. The letters also ask for details regarding how data retention policies are disclosed to subscribers, data deletion policies, and whether subscribers can opt out of data retention. A second list of questions focused on data sharing asks for each carrier's "process and policies for sharing subscriber geolocation data with law enforcement;" for descriptions of "the arrangements, agreements, and circumstances in which [the carrier] shares subscriber geolocation data with third parties that are not law enforcement;" and whether subscribers are "notified of the sharing of their geolocation information with third parties that are not law enforcement." The data-sharing section also probes whether the carriers let customers opt out of programs that share data with third parties. Because geolocation data is highly sensitive and can be combined with other types of data, "the ways in which this data is stored and shared with third parties is of utmost importance to consumer safety and privacy," Rosenworcel told carriers in the letters. Further reading: Homeland Security Records Show 'Shocking' Use of Phone Data, ACLU Says

Microsoft is eliminating many open jobs, including in its Azure cloud business and its security software unit, as the economy continues to weaken. From a report: These hiring cuts will continue for the foreseeable future, Microsoft said, while declining to comment on which departments and businesses are affected. The company said it is honoring job offers that have already been made for open roles and will make some exceptions for critical jobs.

It's an expansion of a hiring slowdown disclosed in May, which mostly affected its Windows, Office and Teams groups. In June, Insider also reported cuts to new headcount in the security business. The latest slowdown, which was communicated by executives in the groups to their teams, impacts the company's cloud crown jewels -- a key source of growth and investor scrutiny -- as well as a newer priority area in security.

Samsung Electronics has floated the prospect of investing nearly $200 billion for 11 new chip-making plants in Texas over the next two decades, a mega splurge that if executed would dramatically boost its semiconductor foothold in the U.S. From a report: The South Korean tech giant's proposed spending was divulged in recent filings submitted to the Texas Comptroller's office and made public Wednesday. One likely motivation is a year-end expiration of a Texas state incentive program offering property tax breaks for 10 years for large investments. The filings don't commit Samsung to invest. The Suwon, South Korea-based company doesn't currently have specific plans to pursue the new factories outlined in the filings, a Samsung spokeswoman said. The spending proposals reflect the company's long-term planning process to evaluate the viability of further U.S. expansion, she added.

Facebook parent Meta Platforms is changing the way it shows users posts and videos on its flagship social network, part of an effort to get people to watch content from accounts they don't already follow and better compete with the video app TikTok. From a report: The main feed on Facebook will now be called "Home," and will be a place for people to "discover new content" that Facebook thinks that they'll like, according to a company blog post. That includes photos and videos selected by software algorithms, which will surface content based on users' interests, from both accounts they follow and those they don't.

The changes will start Thursday, but the majority of the content will still come from accounts users follow, a Meta spokeswoman said. The company plans to increase the new content it shows over time as it improves the recommendation algorithm. A new tab, called "Feeds," will exclusively show posts from friends, family, pages and groups that a person has chosen to follow, with the most recent content at the top. "Your Home tab is uniquely personalized to you," the company explained in its blog. "This system takes into account thousands of signals to help cut through the clutter and rank content in the order we think you will find most valuable."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Gizmodo: Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and former COO Sheryl Sandberg will have to provide testimony to a federal court to discuss their alleged involvement in the company's notorious Cambridge Analytica scandal, over half a decade since it first captured the world's attention. [...] Cambridge Analytica was a British political consulting firm that used Facebook user data to target and lobby potential voters ahead of the 2016 election in favor of Donald Trump. The ensuing scandal helped trigger an investigation from the Federal Trade Commission that resulted in Facebook agreeing to a record-setting $5 billion settlement over its privacy practices.

A new filing (PDF) in the Northern District of California Tuesday shows Zuckerberg and Sandberg agreed to be deposed for six and five hours respectively in September of this year. This comes as part of a class action lawsuit filed against Meta, claiming the company violated consumer privacy laws when it shared user data with Cambridge Analytica back in 2015. [...] In addition to Zuckerberg and Sandberg, the court's also seeking to depose Meta's newly named CTO Javier Olivan -- who previously served as the company's Chief Growth Officer -- as well as a handful of other "key witnesses." Olivan's deposition is expected to last three hours. According to Tuesday's filing Meta will also hand over 1,200 documents "previously withheld as privileged." Plaintiffs in the case previously accused Meta and the law firm representing it of "stonewalling," during the court's discovery phase.

Up to 8,000 Ford employees could be hit by job cuts, according to a Wednesday report from Bloomberg. The move could be part of a plan to cut $3 billion in operational costs from the company's gasoline-powered business operations in order to boost profit and invest more into Ford's electric-vehicle endeavors. Car and Driver reports: The cuts will reportedly come in the Ford Blue division, which handles production of Ford's internal-combustion-engine vehicles, and primarily come from salaried positions. There are approximately 31,000 salaried workers at Ford currently. Ford CEO Jim Farley announced in March a radical restructuring of Ford called the Ford+ plan, creating the Ford Blue division and the Model e division, which handles electric vehicles. As part of the plan, he also boosted spending on EVs to $50 billion, which he said in an interview with Bloomberg Television was "based on our core automotive operations." Farley also added that "We need [Ford Blue] to be more profitable to fund this."

Previously, in February at a Wolfe Research conference appearance in reference to Ford's ICE operations, Farley said, "We have too many people, we have too much investment, we have too much complexity, and we don't have expertise in transitioning our assets." Ford lost $3.1 billion in the first quarter of 2022, although much of that was driven by a sharp value decline in its stake in EV startup Rivian. Operating profit, meanwhile, was at $2.3 billion, down from $3.9 billion in the first quarter of 2021.

Today, DALL-E 2, OpenAI's AI system that can generate images given a prompt or edit and refine existing images, is becoming more widely available. TechCrunch reports: The company announced in a blog post that it will expedite access for customers on the waitlist with the goal of reaching roughly 1 million people within the next few weeks. With this "beta" launch, DALL-E 2, which had been free to use, will move to a credit-based fee structure. First-time users will get a finite amount of credits that can be put toward generating or editing an image or creating a variation of an image. (Generations return four images, while edits and variations return three.) Credits will refill every month to the tune of 50 in the first month and 15 a month after that, or users can buy additional credits in increments of $15. Artists in need of financial assistance will be able to apply for subsidized access, OpenAI says. Along with new techniques to mitigate bias and toxicity in DALL-E 2's generations, OpenAI says that starting today it's granting users "full usage rights" to commercialize the images they create with the tool, including the right to reprint, sell and merchandise -- including images they generated during the early preview.

A decade after Google Glass, Google is getting back to testing smart glasses in public again. From a report: Google's AR glasses prototype testers are prohibited from using the glasses "in schools, government buildings, health care locations, places of worship, social service locations, areas meant for children (e.g., schools and playgrounds), emergency response locations, rallies or protests and other similar places," or while driving or playing sports. Google hasn't revealed where in the US, specifically, these glasses will be tested. According to Google, "an LED indicator will turn on if image data will be saved for analysis and debugging. If a bystander desires, they can ask the tester to delete the image data and it will be removed from all logs."

The glasses don't take photos or videos, but use image data for its assistive AI. Google promises that "the image data is deleted, except if the image data will be used for analysis and debugging. In that case, the image data is first scrubbed for sensitive content, including faces and license plates. Then it is stored on a secure server, with limited access by a small number of Googlers for analysis and debugging. After 30 days, it is deleted." Field-testing for future smart glasses is an increasing trend, it seems. Meta started testing prototype depth-sensing camera arrays on a pair of glasses called Project Aria two years ago, focusing on how smart sensor-filled glasses could be used responsibly in public places.

The U.S. Postal Service will order more than twice the number of electric vehicles initially projected for its new fleet, the agency announced Wednesday. From a report: The move follows months of controversy after the Postal Service initially sought to make about 10 percent of its fleet electric. Now it plans to make at least 40 percent of its fleet electric. The Postal Service said in a statement it adjusted the fleet's Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement to include more electric vehicles under the current contract. The Postal Service is targeting a purchase of at least 25,000 electric vehicles, it said. The Postal Service said in February that its initial order to have 10 percent of its new trucks be electric included an option to adjust the percentage later, but the announcement sparked pushback from members of Congress and the Environmental Protection Agency. The Postal Service maintains the largest vehicle fleet in the federal government, and critics argued that not including more electric vehicles in the fleet would fly in the face of President Biden's push for the federal government to pursue carbon neutrality.

Microsoft has launched a platform to train the artificial intelligence (AI) systems of autonomous aircraft. From a report: Project AirSim is, in effect, a flight simulator for drones, which companies can use to train and develop software controlling them. It makes it possible for test flights in places that would be too risky in reality, such as near power lines. And it means, Microsoft says, that millions of flights can be simulated in seconds. For example, companies can virtually see how the vehicle flies in rain, or how strong winds might affect its battery life. In a statement announcing the launch, Microsoft's Gurdeep Pall said that it showed "the power of the industrial metaverse -- the virtual worlds where businesses will build, test and hone solutions, and then bring them into the real world." The firm envisages the tech being used to train the AI systems which fly autonomous air vehicles from air taxis to delivery drones.

Google said it will pause hiring for two weeks, after saying last week it would slow its pace of hiring for the rest of the year. From a report: In an email to employees viewed by The Information, Prabhakar Raghavan, a senior vice president at Google, said the hiring pause would not impact offers that had already been extended to applicants, but that Google would not make any new offers until the pause was over. "We'll use this time to review our headcount needs and align on a new set of prioritized Staffing Requests for the next three months," Raghavan said.

Zipmex, a Singapore-based digital assets trading platform, today announced that it is pausing customer withdrawals. From a report: The company took to Twitter on Wednesday to announce the move, citing "a combination of circumstances beyond our control" that made it take the decision. "Due to a combination of circumstances beyond our control including volatile market conditions, and the resulting financial difficulties of our key business partners, to maintain the integrity of our platform, we would be pausing withdrawals until further notice," said the exchange.

Zipmex, which markets itself as "Asia's leading digital assets exchange" and has offices in Thailand, Indonesia, and Australia, offers a variety of products including cryptocurrency spot trading and interest-bearing accounts. According to the company's website, users can enjoy up to 10% in rewards per year by depositing their funds on the platform. For example, Zipmex claims to offer 6% returns on Bitcoin (BTC) and Ethereum (ETH), and 10% on the USDC stablecoin. The startup, which counts Eduardo Saverin's B Capital as an investor, had concluded a $52 million fundraise in March this year.

An installation-art company called META (or Meta.is) announced Tuesday that it will be suing Meta (or Facebook) for trademark violation, alleging that Zuckerberg's name change violated the smaller company's established brand. The Verge reports: "On October 28, 2021, Facebook seized our META mark and name, which we put our blood, sweat, and tears into building for over twelve years," reads a post on the smaller company's site. "Today, after eight months of trying to negotiate with Facebook in good faith to no avail, we were left with no choice but to file a lawsuit against them."

Much of the case hinges on Facebook's many privacy scandals, which Meta.is argues has made it impossible to share the name. "Meta can no longer provide goods and services under the META mark," the complaint argues, "because consumers are likely to mistakenly believe that Meta's goods and services emanate from Facebook and that Meta is associated with the toxicity that is inextricably linked with Facebook."

Meta.is holds a valid trademark for the name but may still be facing an uphill battle in court, given the broad range of trademark applications Facebook has made since the name change became official -- including separate marks for messaging, social networks, and financial services. There are also a number of trademarks claiming the Meta name for non-tech products, including a hard seltzer and manufacturer of prosthetic limbs.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TorrentFreak: An Italian court has ordered Cloudflare to block three torrent sites on its public DNS resolver 1.1.1.1. The anti-piracy measures were requested by local music industry group FIMI and anti-piracy group FPM. [...] Rightsholders agree that there's no silver bullet to stop piracy, but they argue that Cloudflare can and should do more to address the problem. In a case before the Court of Milan, they argued that Cloudflare should go even further. In court, anti-piracy outfit FPM and the music group FIMI pointed out that Cloudflare's DNS resolver is problematic too. This DNS resolver helps people to access pirate sites, even when the sites are not using Cloudflare's CDN services. As such, Cloudflare should be required to block problematic sites on its DNS servers too. After hearing these arguments the Milan Court agreed. It issued an interim injunction that requires Cloudflare to block three torrent sites: kickasstorrents.to, limetorrents.pro and ilcorsaronero.pro. These sites are already blocked by ISPs in Italy following an order from local regulator AGCOM.

This is the first time that Cloudflare has been ordered to make pirate sites unavailable through its public DNS resolver 1.1.1.1. This is an important expansion since many Italians switched to public DNS resolvers to bypass ISP blocking measures. With the court order, rightsholders can remove this shortcut. "We welcome the Court's decision which will further strengthen the ongoing infringing site blocking program performed by AGCOM in Italy, whilst also increasing the efficiency of the enforcement actions carried out by the rightsholders to protect their online content," says FIMI CEO Enzo Mazza. [...] In theory, similar injunctions could follow against other DNS providers as well, including Google and OpenDNS. "The ruling opens the door to others that offer similar services, such as Google," Mazza told local media.

NSO Group's Pegasus spyware was used to target Thai pro-democracy protesters and leaders calling for reforms to the monarchy. "We forensically confirmed that at least 30 individuals were infected with NSO Group's Pegasus spyware," reports Citizen Lab. "The observed infections took place between October 2020 and November 2021." Here's an excerpt from the report: Introduction: Surveillance & Repression in Thailand: The Kingdom of Thailand is a constitutional monarchy with a parliamentary-style government divided into executive, legislative, and judiciary branches. The country has been beset by intense political conflict since 2005, during the government of former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra. Corruption allegations against the regime culminated in a military coup on September 19, 2006 that ousted Thaksin. The military launched another coup on May 22, 2014 and seized power following mass protests against the civilian government led by Thaksin's sister, Yingluck Shinawatra. The junta claimed that the 2014 coup was needed to restore order and called itself the National Council for Peace and Order (NCPO).

Findings: Pegasus Infections in Thailand: On November 23, 2021, Apple began sending notifications to iPhone users targeted by state-backed attacks with mercenary spyware. The recipients included individuals that Apple believes were targeted with NSO Group's FORCEDENTRY exploit. Many Thai civil society members received this warning. Shortly thereafter, multiple recipients of the notification made contact with the Citizen Lab and regional groups. In collaboration with Thai organizations iLaw and DigitalReach, forensic evidence was obtained from notification recipients, and other suspected victims, who consented to participate in a research study with the Citizen Lab. We then performed a technical analysis of forensic artifacts to determine whether these individuals were infected with Pegasus or other spyware. Victims publicly named in this report consented to be identified as such, while others chose to remain anonymous, or have their cases described with limited detail.

Civil Society Pegasus Infections: We have identified at least 30 Pegasus victims among key civil society groups in Thailand, including activists, academics, lawyers, and NGO workers. The infections occurred from October 2020 to November 2021, coinciding with a period of widespread pro-democracy protests, and predominantly targeted key figures in the pro-democracy movement. In numerous cases, multiple members of movements or organizations were infected. Many of the victims included in this report have been repeatedly detained, arrested, and imprisoned for their political activities or criticism of the government. Many of the victims have also been the subject of lese-majeste prosecutions by the Thai government. While many of the infections were detected on the devices of prominent figures, hacking was also observed against individuals who are not publicly involved in the protests. Speculatively, this may reflect the attackers' intent to uncover details about how opposition movements were organized, and may have been prompted by specific financial transactions that would have been known to Thai financial institutions and the government, but not the public.

Volkswagen's plan to roll out a new line of sporty electric trucks and SUVs under the resurrected Scout brand is a rare chance to win back Americans' hearts, Scout's new boss tells Axios in an exclusive interview. From the report: VW sees an opportunity to reconnect with U.S. consumers by offering EVs in the segments they care most about: pickup trucks and large SUVs. [...] "It's time now to concentrate more on the U.S. market and the U.S. customer, and one piece of the puzzle, for sure, is Scout," Volkswagen Group CEO Herbert Diess said while chauffeuring me in one of his company's first U.S.-built EVs, the ID.4 compact SUV. Between Scout and further growth of the Volkswagen and Audi brands, the VW Group aims to double its U.S. market share, which currently stands at about 5%. "America is probably the country where we have the biggest potential worldwide," Diess told me.

Scout will be an independent U.S.-based company, which will allow it the flexibility to take on partners or other investors -- or even go public some day, Volkswagen execs said. Scout will develop what the company calls a "true American" electric SUV and pickup truck designed for rugged, off-road use. With a dedicated engineering platform, Scout expects to provide new conveniences and connectivity to meet different needs, like camping, off-roading or work site use. The hope is that the iconic Scout name can help the company penetrate the highly profitable American market for big SUVs and pickup trucks, which is currently dominated by U.S. brands like Ford, Chevrolet, Jeep and Ram. Production will start in 2026, and the aim is to sell up to 250,000 Scout-branded vehicles annually in the U.S. The report notes that Scout was originally developed in 1961 by International Harvester as a precursor to the modern SUV. "It was marketed as an all-terrain family recreational vehicle and eventually came in several body styles, competing with Land Rover, Jeep, and the Ford Bronco," reports Axios. "Production ended in 1980, but Scout SUVs remain popular with collectors."

Volkswagen acquired the rights to the Scout brand name in 2020.

Cloud services and servers hosted by Google and Oracle in the UK have dropped offline due to cooling issues as the nation experiences a record-breaking heatwave. From a report: When the mercury hit 40.3C (104.5F) in eastern England, the highest ever registered by a country not used to these conditions, datacenters couldn't take the heat. Selected machines were powered off to avoid long-term damage, causing some resources, services, and virtual machines to became unavailable, taking down unlucky websites and the like.

Multiple Oracle Cloud Infrastructure resources are offline, including networking, storage, and compute provided by its servers in the south of UK. Cooling systems were blamed, and techies switched off equipment in a bid to prevent hardware burning out, according to a status update from Team Oracle. "As a result of unseasonal temperatures in the region, a subset of cooling infrastructure within the UK South (London) Data Centre has experienced an issue," Oracle said on Tuesday at 1638 UTC. "As a result some customers may be unable to access or use Oracle Cloud Infrastructure resources hosted in the region.