The startup promises a fairly-distributed, cryptocurrency-based universal basic income. So far all it's done is build a biometric database from the bodies of the poor. MIT Technology Review reports: On a sunny morning last December, Iyus Ruswandi, a 35-year-old furniture maker in the village of Gunungguruh, Indonesia, was woken up early by his mother. A technology company was holding some kind of "social assistance giveaway" at the local Islamic elementary school, she said, and she urged him to go. Ruswandi joined a long line of residents, mostly women, some of whom had been waiting since 6 a.m. In the pandemic-battered economy, any kind of assistance was welcome. At the front of the line, representatives of Worldcoin Indonesia were collecting emails and phone numbers, or aiming a futuristic metal orb at villagers' faces to scan their irises and other biometric data. Village officials were also on site, passing out numbered tickets to the waiting residents to help keep order. Ruswandi asked a Worldcoin representative what charity this was but learned nothing new: as his mother said, they were giving away money.

Gunungguruh was not alone in receiving a visit from Worldcoin. In villages across West Java, Indonesia -- as well as college campuses, metro stops, markets, and urban centers in two dozen countries, most of them in the developing world -- Worldcoin representatives were showing up for a day or two and collecting biometric data. In return they were known to offer everything from free cash (often local currency as well as Worldcoin tokens) to Airpods to promises of future wealth. In some cases they also made payments to local government officials. What they were not providing was much information on their real intentions. This left many, including Ruswandi, perplexed: What was Worldcoin doing with all these iris scans?

To answer that question, and better understand Worldcoin's registration and distribution process, MIT Technology Review interviewed over 35 individuals in six countries -- Indonesia, Kenya, Sudan, Ghana, Chile, and Norway -- who either worked for or on behalf of Worldcoin, had been scanned, or were unsuccessfully recruited to participate. We observed scans at a registration event in Indonesia, read conversations on social media and in mobile chat groups, and consulted reviews of Worldcoin's wallet in the Google Play and Apple stores. We interviewed Worldcoin CEO Alex Blania, and submitted to the company a detailed list of reporting findings and questions for comment. Our investigation revealed wide gaps between Worldcoin's public messaging, which focused on protecting privacy, and what users experienced. We found that the company's representatives used deceptive marketing practices, collected more personal data than it acknowledged, and failed to obtain meaningful informed consent. These practices may violate the European Union's General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR) -- a likelihood that the company's own data consent policy acknowledged and asked users to accept -- as well as local laws.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation has disclosed it carried out an operation in March to mass-remove malware from thousands of compromised routers that formed a massive botnet controlled by Russian intelligence. From a report: The operation was authorized by courts in California and Pennsylvania, allowing the FBI to copy and remove the so-called Cyclops Blink malware from infected Asus and WatchGuard routers across the U.S., severing the devices from the servers that remotely control and send instructions to the wider botnet. The Justice Department announced the March operation on Wednesday, describing it as "successful," but warned that device owners should still take immediate action to prevent reinfection.

The Justice Department said that since the news first emerged about the rising threat of Cyclops Blink in February, thousands of compromised devices have been secured, but justified the court-ordered operation because the "majority" of infected devices were still compromised just weeks later in mid-March. Cyclops Blink is believed to be the successor to VPNFilter, a botnet largely neglected after it was exposed by security researchers in 2018 and later targeted by a U.S. government operation to disrupt its command and control servers. Both Cyclops Blink and VPNFilter are attributed to Sandworm, a group of hackers working for Russia's GRU, the country's military intelligence unit.

AMD has confirmed to Tom's Hardware that a bug in its GPU driver is, in fact, changing Ryzen CPU settings in the BIOS without permission. This condition has been shown to auto-overclock Ryzen CPUs without the user's knowledge. From the report: Reports of this issue began cropping up on various social media outlets recently, with users reporting that their CPUs had mysteriously been overclocked without their consent. The issue was subsequently investigated and tracked back to AMD's GPU drivers. AMD originally added support for automatic CPU overclocking through its GPU drivers last year, with the idea that adding in a Ryzen Master module into the Radeon Adrenalin GPU drivers would simplify the overclocking experience. Users with a Ryzen CPU and Radeon GPU could use one interface to overclock both. Previously, it required both the GPU driver and AMD's Ryzen Master software.

Overclocking a Ryzen CPU requires the software to manipulate the BIOS settings, just as we see with other software overclocking utilities. For AMD, this can mean simply engaging the auto-overclocking Precision Boost Overdrive (PBO) feature. This feature does all the dirty work, like adjusting voltages and frequency on the fly, to give you a one-click automatic overclock. However, applying a GPU profile in the AMD driver can now inexplicably alter the BIOS settings to enable automatic overclocking. This is problematic because of the potential ill effects of overclocking -- in fact, overclocking a Ryzen CPU automatically voids the warranty. AMD's software typically requires you to click a warning to acknowledge that you understand the risks associated with overclocking, and that it voids your warranty, before it allows you to overclock the system. Unfortunately, that isn't happening here. Until AMD issues a fix, "users have taken to using the Radeon Software Slimmer to delete the Ryzen Master SDK from the GPU driver, thus preventing any untoward changes to the BIOS settings," adds Tom's Hardware.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: The U.S. government owns about 1,100 charging stations. It may need more than 100,000 charging stations to support widespread EV use in the next decade, according to testimony from the Government Accountability Office (GAO) on Tuesday. The testimony, which was first reported by Reuters, mainly delved into the U.S. Postal Service's efforts to transition its fleet to EVs and federal fleet transition issues. GAO found that federal agencies like USPS held certain incorrect assumptions about the cost and benefits of using gas versus electric vehicles, namely that USPS used gas prices that are about $2 per gallon less than the current national average in its estimates, and assumed maintenance and acquisition costs that are higher than the reality.

GAO has identified charging infrastructure costs and installation as a key challenge to acquiring EVs for federal fleets. [...] The General Services Administration (GSA) said that as of March 10, federal agencies have only ordered an additional 1,854 zero-emission vehicles since its prior report. The U.S. government usually purchases about 50,000 vehicles annually. The federal fleet currently has about 657,000 cars, SUVs and trucks, out of which less than 1% are currently electric, according to GSA data.

Apple today announced that its 33rd annual Worldwide Developers Conference is set to take place from Monday, June 6 to Friday, June 10. As with the last several WWDC events, the 2022 Worldwide Developers Conference will be held digitally with no in-person gathering. MacRumors reports: There will be no cost associated with WWDC 2022, with all developers worldwide able to attend the virtual event. Apple plans to provide sessions and labs for developers to allow them to learn about the new features and software updates that will be introduced at the event, plus there will be a traditional Swift Student Challenge.

Apple says that this year's event will feature additional information sessions, more learning labs, more digital lounges to engage with attendees, and more localized content, with the aim of making WWDC22 "a truly global event." Though the event will be digital, Apple also plans to host a special day for developers and students at Apple Park on June 6 to watch the keynote and State of the Union videos together. Space will be limited, and Apple will take applications.

Apple is expected to hold an online keynote on the first day of WWDC to unveil new software, including iOS 16, iPadOS 16, macOS 13, tvOS 16, and watchOS 9. It is also possible we could see new hardware at WWDC, as Apple is working on an updated Apple silicon Mac Pro, a new version of the MacBook Air, and more.

Epic Games has officially launched Unreal Engine 5, its newest set of software tools for making video games. From a report: While Epic may be known to much of the public for its hit game Fortnite, its core business has long been Unreal. Epic's goal is to make Unreal Engine the definitive toolset for building games, virtual worlds and other digital entertainment. The engine is free to download, but Epic then takes a 5% cut of games that generate more than $1 million in revenue. During a kickoff video showcase today, the selling point wasn't just what the engine can do, but who is using it.

Epic workers demonstrated how the engine could be used to make and tweak modern games. Then came the key slide showing dozens of partners, including PlayStation, Xbox and Tencent followed by testimonials from recent Unreal Engine converts CD Projekt RED, which had previously used its own tech to make games in the Witcher and Cyberpunk franchises and ending with the kicker that Crystal Dynamics, another studio that long operated its own in-house engine, would use Unreal on its next Tomb Raider game. More details at Kotaku.

Today IBM unveiled the latest mainframe in its storied history, the z16. It runs on the IBM Telum processor, which the company released last summer. The chip has been optimized to run massive workloads, processing 300 billion high-value financial transactions per day with just one millisecond of latency, according to the company. From a report: That's for customers who have a serious need for speed with heavy volume. The primary use case the company is selling for this monster machine is real-time fraud prevention. Financial institutions in particular are the target customers, but Ric Lewis, SVP for IBM systems, says it's for just about any company processing a lot of business-critical transactions. "It's still banking, insurance, public sector, government, healthcare, retail -- anywhere where you really have high transaction throughput, where you need security, reliability and the world's best transaction processing," Lewis said. That comes down to the largest companies in the world, including two-thirds of the Fortune 100, 45 of the world's top 50 banks, eight of the top 10 insurers, seven of the top 10 global retailers and eight out of the top 10 telcos, which are using mainframes, according to data provided by IBM. Most of those machines come from IBM.

An anonymous reader shares a report: Microsoft Endpoint Manager is the company's platform for helping IT teams manage and secure large fleets of devices, something that's become increasingly complicated since the start of the pandemic. As part of its larger "Future of Hybrid Work" event, the company also today launched some updates to Endpoint Manager that go beyond some of the traditional feature sets for similar services, with the promise to expand on these in the future.

The first new feature Microsoft is adding to the platform under the name of "Microsoft Advanced Management" is remote help. If you've ever used Teamviewer to help a family member fix a computer issue, you can basically think of it as that, but with all of the enterprise bells and whistles it takes to make sure a service like this is secure, the devices on both ends are configured correctly and everybody is who they say they are. And that's why this is part of the overall Endpoint Manager story, because that's what provides the access and idenity controls through a tight integration with Azure Active Directory and helps verify the users and devices. You wouldn't just want your employees to be able to give control over their machines to any random social hacker, after all.

Microsoft is bringing tabs to the File Explorer in Windows 11 soon, alongside a refreshed design that makes it easier to quickly access folders or find favorite files. The highly requested tabs feature was first spotted in Windows 11 test builds last month, and now Microsoft is making it official at a hybrid work event for Windows 11 today. From a report: The updated File Explorer design includes tabs to navigate multiple folders in a single window and the ability to move tabs around. Microsoft first started testing tabs in Windows 10 apps, under a feature named Sets. This included support for tabs inside File Explorer, but Microsoft eventually canceled the project and never shipped it to Windows 10 users. Microsoft is also adding a new File Explorer homepage that includes the typical Quick Access folders, recent documents, and a new favorites option. You'll soon be able to right-click a file to add it to favorites, and it will appear pinned on the homepage of File Explorer. There are even improved sharing options for files, with an updated share dialog that lets you send to recent contacts or apps like Teams, Outlook, and OneDrive.

Microsoft put PCs in the cloud with Windows 365 last year, and now it's integrating these Cloud PCs directly into Windows 11. From a report: Windows 365 lets businesses access Cloud PCs from anywhere to stream a version of Windows 10 or Windows 11 inside a web browser. It's something Citrix and many others have been doing for years, but now Microsoft will allow Windows 11 PCs to boot straight to Windows 365 Cloud PCs or easily switch between them using Windows 11's virtual desktops feature. It's part of a hybrid work push for Windows, allowing businesses to support a mix of working remotely on traditional devices or through virtual cloud-powered ones. Microsoft is working on three new Windows 365 features that will be deeply integrated into Windows 11. The first is Windows 365 Boot, which will enable Windows 11 devices to log directly into a Cloud PC instance at startup instead of the local install of Windows. It's designed for devices that are shared between multiple people or for businesses that allow employees to bring your own device (BYOD) to work.

Donald Trump's Truth Social has "been a disaster," says Joshua Tucker, director of NYU's Center for Social Media and Politics. According to the BBC, "The app launched on Presidents' Day, 21 February, but six weeks later is beset by problems. A waiting list of nearly 1.5 million are unable to use it." From the report: Truth Social might look like Twitter, but it isn't available on Android phones, web browsers or, apparently, to most people outside the US. And a Republican ally of Mr Trump's, who did not wish to be identified, said: "Nobody seems to know what's going on." On 21 February, Truth Social was one of the App Store's most downloaded apps -- but many who downloaded it were unable to use it. There was an assumption this problem would soon be resolved and Mr Trump would start posting his "truths" in the coming days -- but neither of those things happened. My attempt to register, this week, was placed at number 1,419,631 on the waiting list.

While YouTube, TikTok, Instagram and Facebook are among the 10 most downloaded apps, according to Similar Web, Truth Social is outside the top 100. Users who find their way in can find the app a little empty, as many big voices on the American right have so far stayed away. Another study found downloads have fallen by as much as 95%. And many are feeling frustrated. "Signed up for Truth Social a couple weeks ago and still on a waiting list," one Twitter user said, on Tuesday. "By the time I'm off the waiting list and on to Truth Social for real, Trump will be President again," joked another. The report says Mr Trump "has not posted a 'truth' for well over a month."

"Maybe they're holding him back," Mr Tucker said. "That's his last chance to launch it - when suddenly Trump comes in and starts being really active on it, that will get a buzz."

Google is preparing to bring its employees back to the office this week, and as an added bonus, it'll be offering them free electric scooters to help ease the transition. The Verge reports: The tech giant is teaming up with e-scooter maker Unagi to launch a new program called "Ride Scoot," in which most of Google's US-based workers can get reimbursed for the full cost of a monthly subscription to Unagi's stylish Model One scooter. The Model One, which retails for $990, is a lightweight dual-motor scooter with a top speed of 20mph and a range of 15.5 miles. Unagi founder and CEO David Hyman said the idea was to help Google employees get to work -- or even just to the closest bus stop. (Google famously provides free shuttle bus service to its employees in Silicon Valley.) "They know there's apprehension amongst employees," Hyman said. "People got really accustomed to working from home. And they're just trying to do everything they can to improve the experience of coming back."

Unagi won't just be handing out free scooters to every Google employee, though. Unagi plans on setting up booths at various Google offices to sign up employees for a monthly scooter subscription at the discounted rate of $44.10 per month, plus the $50 enrollment fee -- the total of which will be fully reimbursable by Google. Scooter subscriptions will also be added as a transportation option to Google's internal employee portal. And Google and Unagi will host demo days for employees to try out the Model One at various office locations.

Employees must also use the scooter for at least nine commutes per month to get fully reimbursed for their monthly subscription. (Google plans on using the honor system and won't be tracking employees' scooter usage.) In addition to Google's main headquarters in Mountain View, other eligible locations include Seattle, Kirkland, Irvine, Sunnyvale, Playa Vista, Austin, and New York City.

Hertz will buy "up to" 65,000 Polestar EVs for its rental fleet over the next five years. It follows a similar decision last year to order 100,000 Tesla vehicles by the end of 2022, which helped Tesla's market valuation surpass the $1 trillion mark. Engadget reports: The initial mix will focus on the Polestar 2 sedan, but should expand to other models over time. Vehicles will be available to rent in Europe starting this spring, and should reach both North America and Australia late this year. The team-up is a continuation of Hertz's plan to offer the biggest selection of EV rentals in North America, and "one of the largest" worldwide. The strategy includes offering EVs to rideshare drivers working for companies like Uber.

The purchase is a gradual one, and Hertz has clearly given itself wiggle room in case it wants fewer models. This is still a large order, though, and could significantly increase the chances that your next rental might be an EV. It's also a bigger deal for Polestar than it was for Tesla. Polestar sold just 29,000 cars in 2021, and 'only' expects to more than double that number in 2022 -- Hertz could play a large role in the manufacturer's near-term success.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: What's it like to spend $10,000 for Internet service and wait six months for Comcast to hook it up? Jonathan Rowny knows the answer. Rowny and his wife and child moved from Virginia to Washington state in May 2021. Rowny told Ars that before closing on the house in the city of Buckley, he checked Comcast's website to confirm that he could sign up for broadband. "I went ahead and placed my order and scheduled the install for the day after we moved in or whatever... I think it was about four days before closing [on the house] that Comcast canceled my order," he said. Rowny said that someone from Comcast called him with the message that "your house is not serviceable."

Comcast initially told Rowny that he'd have to pay over $19,000 for a line extension. After spending a couple of months investigating his options, Rowny hired a contractor to do part of the work and paid Comcast to do the rest, for a total of about $10,000. Construction took a bit longer than expected, and there was one final frustration after the line extension was completed: Comcast wouldn't send an installer to Rowny's house because the company's records incorrectly showed the work wouldn't be done until April. Rowny had to contact a senior vice president to get that issue sorted out and finally got service in mid-January.

We confirmed last week that Comcast's online ordering system was still giving false availability information on Rowny's street. At another house about 400 feet further down Rowny's street, the Xfinity.com address checker said that Internet service is available, and the website let us add an Internet plan to the cart for purchase. That was on Tuesday, and we notified Comcast of the likely error. Comcast has since corrected the address checker so that it now says the home is "out of footprint" and "Xfinity service is not available at this address." A Comcast spokesperson told Ars that this address "doesn't have service and is not currently connected to our network, and we have never had a request for service construction to that address... that is an error and our local team is looking into why it is listed on the site." If someone had ordered service for this address before it was corrected, that person would have faced the same problem Rowny encountered in May 2021. We also asked Comcast if it is evaluating the rest of the area for similar mistakes and did not get an answer.

The U.K.'s top regulator has been cracking the whip on crypto companies, but the government just sent a strong message on its blockchain game plan: The British are coming. The U.K. government on Monday unveiled a big push into crypto, including a plan to mint its own NFT. From a report: "I am announcing today that the Chancellor has asked the Royal Mint to create a non-fungible token -- an NFT... to be issued by the Summer, an emblem of the forward-looking approach we are determined to take," John Glen, economic secretary to the Treasury, said in a speech. The announcement was part of an ambitious plan to "make the U.K. a global hub for crypto-asset technology" and "to ensure firms can invest, innovate and scale up in this country," Rishi Sunak, chancellor of the Exchequer, also said in a statement.

An anonymous reader shares a report: In 2017, TikTok's parent company, ByteDance, scraped short-form videos, usernames, profile pictures, and profile descriptions from Instagram, Snapchat, and other sources and then uploaded them -- without users' knowledge or consent -- to Flipagram, a TikTok predecessor, according to four former employees of the company. BuzzFeed News spoke with the four former ByteDance employees, all of whom worked on Flipagram (later renamed Vigo Video), and viewed internal documents that indicate the scraping was run by an engineering team in China and began soon after ByteDance acquired Flipagram in January 2017. The former employees described the project as one of several "growth hacks" -- including the manipulation of like and video view statistics â" employed by the company.

One of the former employees said the scraping affected hundreds of thousands of accounts, and a document viewed by BuzzFeed News detailed plans to "crawl video > 10k/day in P0 countries" -- according to the former employee, this meant the team's goal was to scrape more than 10,000 videos a day in the highest priority countries. The former employees spoke to BuzzFeed News under the condition of anonymity because they feared retribution from ByteDance. The former employees do not know when the scraping they say they were aware of stopped. Two of them say that the scraped content was used to train ByteDance's powerful "For You" personalization algorithm on US-based content so that it would better reflect the preferences of US users. Today, the "For You" algorithm powers both TikTok and its Chinese equivalent, Douyin.

The great Google Play billing crackdown is finally here. From a report: Developers selling digital goods inside their Android apps all need to switch to Google Play billing, or they will be locked out of the Play Store. This has technically always been the rule at Google Play, but it went mostly unenforced until Google gave developers a deadline of September 2021 to get on board. The company then delayed the transition by letting app developers request a six-month extension, which ran out on March 31. So it has been a few days now -- what's different?

The Verge reports that Amazon and Barnes & Noble are both complying with Google's rules. Amazon can sell whatever physical products it wants on its own billing system, but the company's Audible division sells digital purchases, which means it's Google Play or the highway. Amazon has responded by pulling digital book purchases from the Android Audible app. A new support page entry says, "Starting with the Audible for Google Play Android app version 3.23, purchasing titles with a debit or credit card in the app is no longer supported." While you can no longer make a la carte purchases, Amazon decided to let Audible subscriptions run through Google Play. Android app signups before April 1 go through Amazon, and after April 1, they'll need to go through Google.

Spain plans to invest 11 billion euros ($12.4 billion) to develop microchips and semiconductors in a bid to modernize its tourism-dependent economy. From a report: "We want our country to be at the vanguard of industrial and technological progress," Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez said Monday in Madrid, without giving more details. He said the project will be approved soon by his cabinet. The investment is the latest effort to rebuild the economy, which suffered more than most European peers from the pandemic and is under pressure again following Russia's invasion of Ukraine. Sanchez said the war has disrupted supplies of gases such as argon and neon that are key for making semiconductors.

AMD said early Monday that it plans to acquire networking chip maker Pensando for $1.9 billion in cash, in a bid to arm itself with tech that competes with directly with Nvidia and Intel's data-center chip packages. From a report: Pensando was founded by several former Cisco engineers, and makes edge computing technology that competes with AWS Nitro, Intel's DPU launched last year, and Nvidia's data processing units called BlueField. In a release distributed in advance of the announcement, AMD said that buying the closely held Pensando will give it a networking platform that will bolster its existing server chip lineup. Pensando's chips are an increasingly important part of data center design, as it becomes impossible to simply throw larger numbers of processors at demanding computing tasks. As regular chips scale up, the networking connections become a bottleneck, and the DPU's goal (Intel calls it an IPU) is to free up the central processor to perform other functions.

What happened after Russia blocked 80 million users of Instagram? Reuters reports: A black and white, melancholy alternative to Instagram that asks users to post sad pictures of themselves may launch in Russia this week, its creators said, to express sadness at the loss of popular services such as the U.S. photo sharing platform....

Although people can still sometimes access [Instagram] using a Virtual Private Network, domestic alternatives have started appearing, the latest being 'Grustnogram', or 'Sadgram' in English. "Post sad pictures of yourself, show this to your sad friends, be sad together," a message on the platform's website read.... "We are very sad that many high quality and popular services are stopping their work in Russia for various reasons," Afisha Daily quoted Alexander Tokarev, one of the service's founders as saying. "We created Grustnogram to grieve about this together and support each other."
Insider looks at the larger landscape now for Russia's social media apps: Rossgram joins a slate of Russian versions of major platforms that seek to mimic larger and more popular social media companies, resulting in a landscape of Russian knockoffs that often struggle to attract users while raising questions about how much access the Kremlin has to users' data.... Russia has been trying to coax internet users to turn to its own versions of popular sites, such as YouTube knockoff RuTube, for years. Authorities this year offered online creators the equivalent of $1,700 a month to move their content to RuTube, according to Coda Story, attempting to make up for its minuscule audience.

A 2021 report by the Levada Center, an independent polling organization, found that YouTube is used by 37% of Russians, Instagram by 34%, and TikTok by 16%. But some native platforms hold influence too. Out of Russia's 70 million active social media users, according to research by Linkfluence, a market research platform, 83% use a social media platform similar to Facebook called VKontakte, and 55% use another called OdnoKlassniki. According to Alyssa Demus, an associate international and defense researcher at Rand corporation, Russia has long been building up an ecosystem of alternative social media platforms. But people tend to be more skeptical and cautious when using them out of fear that the government is involved in their operations and users' information isn't secure.

"Either Russia has a hand in the building of the platform from this start, or they strong arm or co-opt whatever is popular later," Demus told Insider. "I know there's significant use of platforms like WhatsApp or others that are believed to be encrypted for that very reason — so that there can be open communication without the fear of reprisal." Russia has also enacted laws to exert influence on non-Russian social media platforms, including passing legislation stating companies need to place their servers for Russian accounts on Russian territory. "Presumably so they can then sort of meddle and do whatever kind of surveillance they need to," Demus said.
Demus adds at one point that "anything Russia touches has the potential to land you in jail."

But the article also notes that younger tech-savvy Russians are using VPNs to access sites blocked by the government — ultimately resulting in a kind of "generation gap" where they're less aligned with pro-government rhetoric from state-controlled media.