Slashdot readers fahrbot-bot and Tangential share a report from Defense One: Within weeks, scientists at the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research expect to announce that they have developed a vaccine that is effective against COVID-19 and all its variants, even Omicron, as well as previous SARS-origin viruses that have killed millions of people worldwide. Walter Reed's Spike Ferritin Nanoparticle COVID-19 vaccine, or SpFN, completed animal trials earlier this year with positive results. Phase 1 of human trials, which tested the vaccine against Omicron and the other variants, wrapped up this month, again with positive results that are undergoing final review, Dr. Kayvon Modjarrad, director of Walter Reed's infectious diseases branch, said in an exclusive interview with Defense One. The new vaccine will still need to undergo phase 2 and phase 3 trials.

Unlike existing vaccines, Walter Reed's SpFN uses a soccer ball-shaped protein with 24 faces for its vaccine, which allows scientists to attach the spikes of multiple coronavirus strains on different faces of the protein. The vaccine's human trials took longer than expected, he said, because the lab needed to test the vaccine on subjects who had neither been vaccinated nor previously infected with COVID. The next step is seeing how the new pan-coronavirus vaccine interacts with people who were previously vaccinated or previously sick. The next step is seeing how the new pan-coronavirus vaccine interacts with people who were previously vaccinated or previously sick. Walter Reed is working with a yet-to-be-named industry partner for that wider rollout.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Gizmodo: A new report released by Ookla placed the U.S. at the very top of a list of 40 countries in terms of 5G availability. To determine this, Ookla tested to see what percent of users with 5G devices spent the majority of their time actually on 5G during Q3. Under that criteria, the U.S. ranked number one with 49.2% availability. But hold on, don't whip out your red, white, and blue foam finger just yet, it's not all good news. The actual download and upload speeds (in other words, the whole point) of 5G networks still vary significantly by country according to the report. Though the U.S. ranked first in availability, its actual download speeds were amongst the worst of early 5G adopter nations. Ookla placed median 5G download speeds at 93.73 Mbps in the US, far lower than the UK's 184.2 Mbps median and far lower still than South Korea, which led the pack at 492.48 Mbps. The U.S. placed around the same relative position for upload speeds as well. And while U.S. wireless customers can take some solace knowing they're on the top of the availability list, the list itself is unimpressive as a whole, especially in relation to the types of coverage necessary for 5G's most ambitious promises.

Seoul is reining in tech giants Kakao and Naver to save small business -- but it might be too little, too late. From a report: South Korea has left hard cash in the dust. The country is a virtually friction-free, digital payments dream, where just a fraction of purchases are done in notes and coins. Park Se-hwa's bookstore, on a commercial street in Seoul, is a holdout. Inside the narrow door, a sign reads: "The best way to support the bookstore is to pay cash." She bristles every time she processes a purchase by card, since it means she has to pay a fee to the bank, taking a slice out of the already thin income she brings in from book sales. Park refuses, on principle, to use payments services from local tech giants like KakaoPay or Naver Pay. She won't build a platform on Amazon, the e-commerce behemoth that built itself up by reinventing the publishing world. "Those big companies are the public enemy of booksellers," she said. Park, 31, has operated her bookstore for a little more than a year. Her first vocation out of college was in the national Air Force, working seven-hour shifts monitoring radar for signs of North Korean missile launches. She started again as an entrepreneur after spending years in a series of unfulfilling jobs, like an increasing number of young, educated Koreans.

With South Koreans' buying activity moving almost entirely online, and the margins of small businesses contracting, she worries that the texture is disappearing from Seoul's streets. "If you look in any new area, it's always just chain stores that open, the same corporate convenience stores and coffee shops. Independent stores can't compete with them," she told Rest of World. Park may seem an anomaly, but she isn't. Her fears reverberate as high up as South Korea's lawmakers and its steely antitrust commission, who have spent this year attempting to rein in the country's vastly powerful tech giants. Kakao and Naver, both multibillion-dollar, publicly-traded empires, are the main targets: They have rapidly expanded their tentacles into South Koreans' digital lives in a way that uncomfortably mirrors the country's previous generation of conglomerates, like Samsung and LG. The government worries that their growth is coming at the sacrifice of the country's small businesses, who they say are being crushed with fees and impossibly high levels of online competition. Over the second half of this year, the battle with regulators has intensified. Both Naver and Kakao recently backpedalled on plans to expand their fintech services when the Financial Services Commission abruptly tightened standards. As the companies' jitters mounted, KakaoPay twice delayed its plans for a stock debut, infecting potential investors with concern. A total of eight different bills, proposed by lawmakers from both main parties, are pending in the legislature. They look to impose stricter standards on what kinds of fees online platforms can charge users, how much they can charge advertisers, and other measures intended to rein in their growth.

Long-time Slashdot reader bird writes: Without admitting wrong-doing, would-be electric truck maker Nikola has agreed to a $125,000,000 settlement to settle charges that it defrauded investors with false claims about their EV vehicle technology. You may recall the video of a supposedly electric-powered truck that was later admitted to be powered not by a motor but rather by gravity? Nikola. The Seattle Times provides additional details about the settlement: Nikola violated the antifraud and disclosure control provisions of the federal securities laws, the Securities and Exchange Commission said Tuesday. In July the founder and one-time chair of Nikola, Trevor Milton, was freed on $100 million bail after pleading not guilty to charges alleging he lied about the company. The U.S. Attorney's Office in Manhattan, New York, charged Milton, 39, with two counts of securities fraud and wire fraud. He resigned as chairman in September. The SEC said in its order that Milton embarked on a public-relations campaign aimed at inflating and maintaining Nikola's stock price before the company had produced a vehicle. The SEC also found that Milton misled investors about Nikola's technological advancements, in-house production capabilities, hydrogen production, truck reservations and orders, and financial outlook. In addition, it found that Nikola misled investors by misrepresenting or omitting information about the refueling time of its prototype vehicles, as well as the economic risks and benefits associated with a potential partnership with General Motors.

Nikola, based in Phoenix, didn't admit or deny the SEC's findings. The company did agree to cease and desist from future violations and to the $125 million penalty. Nikola also agreed to continue cooperating with the SEC's ongoing investigation. The order also establishes a fund to return penalty proceeds to investors who were affected. "We are pleased to bring this chapter to a close as the company has now resolved all government investigations," Nikola said in a statement. We will continue to execute on our strategy and vision to deliver on our business plan."

David E. Sanger and Julian E. Barnes reporting via the New York Times: In the closing days of 2015, the lights went out across a swath of Ukraine as Russian hackers remotely took over an electric utility's control center and flipped off one power station after another, while the company's operators stared at their screens helplessly. The next year, the same thing happened, this time around Kyiv, the capital. Now the United States and Britain have quietly dispatched cyberwarfare experts to Ukraine in hopes of better preparing the country to confront what they think may be the next move by President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia as he again menaces the former Soviet republic: Not an invasion with the 175,000 troops he is massing on the border, but cyberattacks that take down the electric grid, the banking system, and other critical components of Ukraine's economy and government. Russia's goal, according to American intelligence assessments, would be to make Ukraine's president, Volodymyr Zelensky, look inept and defenseless -- and perhaps provide an excuse for an invasion.

The Russian cyberactivity was discussed by roughly a dozen officials, who requested anonymity because the information was derived from classified intelligence and sensitive discussions about how to mitigate the Russian threat. Those conversations have focused on whether Mr. Putin thinks that a crippling of Ukraine's infrastructure could be his best hope of achieving his primary goal: ousting the Ukrainian government and replacing it with a puppet leader. The calculus, one senior intelligence official said, would be that such an attack would not require him to occupy the country -- or suffer as many of the sanctions that would almost certainly follow a physical invasion.

Already Mr. Putin has been working to build support domestically and in Africa and South and Central America. Russian-led information campaigns have been focused on denigrating the Ukrainian government and accusing its leader of creating a humanitarian crisis in the country's east, where Ukrainian government forces have been battling Russia-led separatists for years, according to U.S. and allied officials. American officials declined to describe the cyberteams that have been inserted into Ukraine. In a statement, the Biden administration said only that "we have long supported Ukraine's efforts to shore up cyberdefenses and increase its cyberresiliency." A spokeswoman for the British government said the assistance that Britain and its allies were providing was defensive in nature. While neither government would provide details, officials said the United States was considering a larger deployment, including resources from U.S. Cyber Command. But it is unclear how much good a bigger team could do beyond demonstrating support.

Cloudflare blog: Let's start with our Top Domains Ranking and 2021 brought us a very interesting duel for the Number 1 spot in our global ranking. Google.com (which includes Maps, Translate, Photos, Flights, Books, and News, among others) ended 2020 as the undefeated leader in our ranking -- from September to December of last year it was always on top. Back then TikTok.com was only ranked #7 or #8.

Top 10 -- Most popular domains (late) 2021

1 TikTok.com
2 Google.com
3 Facebook.com
4 Microsoft.com
5 Apple.com
6 Amazon.com
7 Netflix.com
8 YouTube.com
9 Twitter.com
10 WhatsApp.com

Top 10 -- Most popular domains (late) 2020

1 Google.com
2 Facebook.com
3 Microsoft.com
4 Apple.com
5 Netflix.com*
6 Amazon.com
7 TikTok.com
8 YouTube.com
9 Instagram.com *
10 Twitter.com

2021 told a different story. It was on February 17, 2021, that TikTok got the top spot for a day. Back in March, TikTok got a few more days and also in May, but it was after August 10, 2021, that TikTok took the lead on most days. There were some days when Google was #1, but October and November were mostly TikTok's days, including on Thanksgiving (November 25) and Black Friday (November 26).

The first text message ever sent, reading "Merry Christmas," was sold on Tuesday for 107,000 euros ($121,000) as a 'Non-Fungible Token' at a Paris auction house. From a report: The text, which was sent on Dec. 3, 1992, was put up for auction by the British telecoms company Vodafone. Vodafone engineer Neil Papworth sent the SMS from his computer to a manager in the United Kingdom, who received it on his 2-kg (4 lb) "Orbitel" telephone -- similar to a desk phone but cordless and with a handle.

The number of people using Android Apps on Chromebooks grew 50 percent year over year, according to a blog post from Chrome OS product managers Fahd Imtiaz and Sanj Nathwani this week. The execs cited internal Google data recorded from 2020-2021. From a report: In 2021, as some smartphones moved to Android 12, Google worked on updating Chromebooks to support Android 11, while attempting to boost security and performance by bringing Android on Chrome OS to a virtual machine, rather than a container. The company also improved its general usability, using runtime improvements to make the resizing and scaling of Android apps on Chromebooks work better, as well as app rendering. As the developer-focused blog noted, Chromebooks on Chrome OS 93 or newer (the latest is Chrome OS 96) automatically run Android apps made for mobile devices in a window that's set to stay in a "phone or tablet orientation." And, yes, you can turn this feature off. Additionally, Imtiaz and Nathwani pointed to Android's Nearby Share feature coming to Chrome 96 for Android 11 and Android 9 apps as another way to try to get developers excited about making their apps fit devices with larger screens.

Fresh off relinquishing the chief executive reins of Twitter, Bitcoin enthusiast Jack Dorsey has taken to the service he co-founded to voice his displeasure with so-called Web3 technology and the involvement of venture capital firms like Andreessen Horowitz. From a report: Web3, the still hazy term for blockchain-based, decentralized systems and tech that are meant to replace the internet as we know it, has garnered much attention and funding this year, with Andreessen Horowitz being among its loudest cheerleaders. Trading of non-fungible tokens, or NFTs, on the Ethereum and Solana blockchains has been the most visible manifestation, with many companies now investing in the development of decentralized apps as well as games for those platforms.

"You don't own 'web3'," tweeted Dorsey. "The VCs and their LPs do. It will never escape their incentives." The post drew more than 16,000 likes and thousands of retweets. Many pushed back with comments like "highly disagree" and "dead wrong," though many others chimed in with support. Tesla chief Elon Musk got in on the discussion by asking if anyone has seen Web3, to which Dorsey replied "it's somewhere between a and z," hinting that it's held under the control of the VC firm founded by Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz, commonly contracted to a16z.

New York-based firm Pliant Energy Systems is building a marine system reminiscent of the cuttlefish with its rippling underwater motion, a report from The Economist reveals. The company's biomimetic machine, called Velox, is based on the principle that propellers are nowhere near as efficient as the fins of sea creatures that are prevalent in nature. Interesting Engineering reports: Unlike propellers, fins and flippers can extend around a sea creature, meaning more propulsion without the need for a large protruding propeller that could get caught or damaged by hitting the seabed. Fins are also flexible, meaning that if they do come in contact with any other object in the sea, they are less likely to get damaged. In an interview with The Economist, an ex-marine biologist and founder of Pliant Energy Systems, Benjamin Pietro Filardo, explained how he is designing submersible machines that are propelled using flexible fin-like materials. He said Velox will produce approximately three times as much thrust per unit energy as the average propeller of a small boat. The system can travel underwater and even come out onto land, using its fins almost like robotic legs. The video below shows Velox skating on ice and swimming in a pool.

Filardo showed his new design to America's Office of Naval Research, leading them to commission a new iteration, called C-Ray, that will be faster and lighter than Velox. C-Ray also won't be tethered, unlike Velox, which is currently controlled via a cable. Autonomous swarms of the machine could eventually be used for missions such as undersea patrols, mine removal, and deepsea exploration and monitoring. [...] Filardo said the system has great potential for scalability, giving the blue whale as an example of a massive sea mammal that uses fins for propulsion. Impressively, he also revealed that he is also working on a concept that would allow his system to moor itself, and then use the undulations of its fins, thanks to the sea current, to recharge. A lot of testing is still needed, but if Filardo's system delivers on its promise, we might eventually see giant mechanical sea beasts silently gliding through the oceans.

A Philadelphia mother has given birth to what is believed to be the world's first Tesla baby: an infant delivered in the front seat of an electric smart car while it was driving on autopilot. From a report: The remarkable delivery, reported by the Philadelphia Inquirer, took place in September while Yiran Sherry, 33, and her husband Keating Sherry, 34, were taking their three-year-old son Rafa to pre-school. Yiran Sherry's waters broke while the family was stuck in traffic. With contractions increasing rapidly and traffic barely moving, the couple realized they were not going to make it in time.

Keating Sherry placed the vehicle on autopilot after setting the navigation system to the hospital, 20 minutes away in the western suburb of Paoli. He said he laid one hand gently on the car's steering wheel as he attended to his wife. "She was squeezing my hand to the point where I thought she was going to shatter it," Keating Sherry told the Inquirer. "I was [saying] 'Yiran, OK, focus on your breathing.' That was advice to myself, as well. My adrenaline was pumping." Yiran Sherry said the decision over whether to try to wait to give birth until they reached the hospital was an agonising one. However, she said, she kept glancing at their estimated arrival time and saw it was barely moving.

Before Google Wifi was announced alongside the original Pixel phone, Google a year earlier released OnHub-branded routers from Asus and TP-Link. In late 2022, Google will end support for OnHub routers that will be seven years old at that time. 9to5Google reports: At six years old, currently, Google said "a lot has changed" in the router landscape, and that it will end support for them on December 19, 2022. This is according to emails that customers (via Droid-Life) have been receiving and a new support document. Until that date, "your OnHub router will continue to work as normal," but without security updates for new software features. The last combined OnHub and Google Wifi update came in October of 2019, while Google and Nest Wifi have had several OTAs since then. That said, a year later, the Google Home app added support for managing OnHub hardware ahead of the Google Wifi companion client getting deprecated.

Google recommends you "upgrade to a new Wi-Fi setup today" and emailed a 40% off Nest Wifi offer to existing OnHub router users that will be available until March 31, 2022. After December 19 next year, the OnHub router will continue to "provide a Wi-Fi signal" but no longer be manageable through the Google Home app, which is the downside of routers that are entirely managed via the cloud/companion app and do not offer local controls. While OnHub routers will continue to work and not disrupt existing networks, Google's decision to remove the ability to change basic settings is quite aggressive. Hopefully, the 2016 Google Wifi will see a longer support period.

Despite the European Union's highest court twice declaring that the United States does not offer sufficient protection for Europeans' data from American national security agencies, the social media giant's lawyers continue to disagree, according to internal documents seen by POLITICO. Their conclusion that the U.S. is safe for EU data is part of Facebook's legal argument for it to be able to continue shipping data across the Atlantic. From the report: In July 2020, the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) struck down a U.S.-EU data transfer instrument called Privacy Shield. The court concluded Washington did not offer adequate protection for EU data shipped overseas because U.S. surveillance law was too intrusive for European standards. In the same landmark ruling, the Luxembourg-based court upheld the legality of another instrument used to export data out of Europe called Standard Contractual Clauses (SCCs). But it cast doubt on whether these complex legal instruments could be used to shuttle data to countries where EU standards cannot be met, including the U.S. The CJEU reached a similar conclusion in 2015, striking down the predecessor agreement to Privacy Shield because of U.S. surveillance law and practices. In both rulings, Europe's top judges categorically stated Washington did not have sufficiently high privacy standards. Still, Facebook -- the company at the heart of both cases -- thinks it shouldn't follow the court's reasoning.

The company's lawyers argue in the documents that the EU court ruling "should not be relied on" for the social media company's own assessment of data transfers to the U.S., because the judges' findings relate to Privacy Shield data pact, and not the Standard Contractual Clauses which Facebook uses to transfer data to the U.S. "The assessment of U.S. law (and practice) under Article 45 GDPR is materially different to the assessment of law and practice required under Article 46 GDPR," the document reads. That refers to the two different types of legal data transfer instruments under the EU's General Data Protection Regulation and indicates that assessment under SCCs is different to assessment under Privacy Shield. The company also says that changes to U.S. law and practices since the July 2020 ruling should be taken into account. As an example, it cites the U.S. Federal Trade Commission, a watchdog, "carrying out its role as a data protection agency with unprecedented force and vigour." Those arguments have been central to Washington's pitch during ongoing transatlantic negotiations over a new EU-U.S. data agreement. "Though companies have to take the EU court ruling into account when making their own assessments of third party country regimes, they can, in theory, diverge from the court's findings if they believe it is justified in a particular situation," notes Politico. "This means that companies like Facebook can, in theory, continue to ship data out of Europe if they can prove its sufficiently protected."

Google's open-source team said they scanned Maven Central, today's largest Java package repository, and found that 35,863 Java packages use vulnerable versions of the Apache Log4j library. From a report: This includes Java packages that use Log4j versions vulnerable to the original Log4Shell exploit (CVE-2021-44228) and a second remote code execution bug discovered in the Log4Shell patch (CVE-2021-45046). James Wetter and Nicky Ringland, members of the Google Open Source Insights Team, said in a report today that typically when a major Java security flaw is found, it typically tends to affect only 2% of the Maven Central index. However, the 35,000 Java packages vulnerable to Log4Shell account to roughly 8% of the Maven Central total of ~440,000, a percentage the two described using just one word -- "enormous." But since the vulnerability was disclosed last week, Wetter and Ringland said the community has responded positively and has already fixed 4,620 of the 35,863 packages they initially found vulnerable. This number accounts to 13% of all the vulnerable packages.

A group of Meta shareholders, along with the Campaign for Accountability, has submitted a resolution calling for an independent evaluation of the board's ability to oversee public safety on Facebook's platforms, Axios has learned. From the report: Facebook's parent company is facing pressure on multiple fronts from regulators, legislators and former employees -- and now investors. A letter sent earlier this month to Meta's corporate secretary, a copy of which was seen by Axios, says that, "Shareholders request the board commission an independent assessment of the Audit and Risk Oversight Committee's capacities and performance in overseeing company risks to public safety and the public interest and in supporting strategic risk oversight on these issues by the full board."

The letter is being submitted by the Harrington Associates and Park Foundation, both Facebook shareholders, in conjunction with the Campaign for Accountability. It aims to be included in Meta's annual proxy and submitted to a vote of shareholders. Other shareholders are also pushing similar resolutions this year, including an effort led by state investment officials in New York and Illinois. Facebook maintains it takes its responsibilities seriously, and told the Wall Street Journal that it has spent more than $5 billion this year on safety and security.

Glaciers across the Himalayas are melting at an extraordinary rate, with new research showing that the vast ice sheets there shrank 10 times faster in the past 40 years than during the previous seven centuries. From a report: Avalanches, flooding and other effects of the accelerating loss of ice imperil residents in India, Nepal and Bhutan and threaten to disrupt agriculture for hundreds of millions of people across South Asia, according to the researchers. And since water from melting glaciers contributes to sea-level rise, glacial ice loss in the Himalayas also adds to the threat of inundation and related problems faced by coastal communities around the world. "This part of the world is changing faster than perhaps anybody realized," said Jonathan Carrivick, a University of Leeds glaciologist and the co-author of a paper detailing the research published Monday in the journal Scientific Reports. "It's not just that the Himalayas are changing really fast, it's that they're changing ever faster."

Scientists have long observed ice loss from large glaciers in New Zealand, Greenland, Patagonia and other parts of the world. But ice loss in the Himalayas is especially rapid, the new study found. The researchers didn't pinpoint a reason but noted that regional climate factors, such as shifts in the South Asian monsoon, may play a role. The new finding comes as there is scientific consensus that ice loss from glaciers and polar ice sheets results from rising global temperatures caused by greenhouse-gas emissions from the burning of fossil fuels. Many peer-reviewed scientific studies have identified human activity as a cause of rising global temperatures. So did a report issued in August by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which said "human influence is very likely the main driver of the global retreat of glaciers since the 1990s." For the new study, Dr. Carrivick and his colleagues scanned satellite photos of almost 15,000 glaciers in the region for signs of the large ridges of rock and debris that glaciers leave behind as they slowly grind their way through the valleys. Using the locations of these ancient glacial tracks, the scientists estimated the span of ice sheet coverage in previous centuries.

In the past three weeks, two major outages at Amazon's cloud computing service "led to widespread disruptions at other online services," reports NBC News. And they also cite June's "service configuration" issue at cloud CDN Fastly, which took countless sites offline including PayPal, Reddit and GitHub, and an AWS outage in November of 2020 which affected clients like Apple.

"The drumbeat of issues underscores that the internet, despite all it's capable of, is sometimes fragile...." The latest disruption occurred Wednesday, when customers of DoorDash, Hulu and other websites complained that they couldn't connect. The problems were traced to Amazon Web Services, or AWS, the most widely used cloud services company, which reported that outages in two of its 26 geographic regions were affecting services nationwide. A similar disruption took place Dec. 7, crippling video streams, halting internet-connected robot vacuum cleaners and even shutting down pet food dispensers in a series of reminders of how much life has moved online, especially during the coronavirus pandemic. AWS published an unusually detailed description of what went wrong, along with an apology.

The incidents helped to explode the illusion, reinforced by decades of steadily improving internet speed and reliability, that everyday consumers can rely on online services to be available without fail.... Experts in computer science and security said the interruptions don't really call into question the fundamental design of the internet, one of the founding ideas of which was that a distributed system can mostly continue functioning even if one piece goes down. But they said the problems are rooted in the uneven development of the internet, because certain data centers are more important than others; cloud businesses run by Amazon, Google and Microsoft concentrate more power; and corporate customers of cloud services don't always want to pay extra for backup systems and staff members.

Sean O'Brien, a lecturer in cybersecurity at Yale Law School, said the outages call into question the wisdom of relying so much on big data centers. " 'The cloud' has never been sustainable and is merely a euphemism for concentrated network resources controlled by a centralized entity," he said, adding that alternatives like peer-to-peer technology and edge computing may gain favor. He wrote after last week's outage that the big cloud providers amounted to a "feudal" system.

"There are many points of failure whose unavailability or suboptimal operation would affect the entire global experience of the internet," said Vahid Behzadan, an assistant professor of computer science at the University of New Haven... "The fact that we've had repeated outages in a short period of time is a cause for alarm," Behzadan said, noting that U.S. businesses have staked a lot on the assumption that cloud services are resilient.
NBC cites reports that some companies are now taking a look at using multicloud solutions. And these outages may encourage businesses to finally take the plunge, adds the CS professor from New Haven.

"The internet will not die any time soon. But whatever won't kill the internet makes it stronger."

Joe_Dragon shares a report from The Verge: An Amazon delivery driver in Illinois was told to keep delivering packages after she reported hearing tornado sirens, with the dispatcher saying that the sirens were "just a warning." According to a report by Bloomberg, which includes screenshots of the conversation, the driver was told that returning to the warehouse would be viewed as a route refusal, "which [would] ultimately end with you not having a job come tomorrow morning."

The conversation reportedly happened on Friday evening, around an hour and a half before a tornado hit an Amazon facility around 30 miles away from the driver. After being told twice to "just keep delivering," the driver was eventually instructed to shelter in place "for 15-20 minutes, then continue as normal." (The instructions to shelter in place were repeated several more times after.) The driver, expressing that a delivery van wouldn't provide much safety, said she wanted to return to base. ""If you decide to come back, that choice is yours.""

The dispatcher's response is harrowing: "If you decide to come back, that choice is yours. But I can tell you it won't be viewed as for your own safety. The safest practice is to stay exactly where you are." The dispatcher said drivers couldn't be recalled unless Amazon directed it and that she would lose her job if she returned. The tornado ended up touching down near a highway, throwing cars in the air, according to Bloomberg, though the driver involved in the text exchange is reported to be safe. Amazon told Bloomberg that the dispatcher "should have immediately directed the driver to seek shelter" when they reported hearing the sirens and said that "under no circumstance should the dispatcher have threatened the driver's employment." The company says it's investigating the incident.

Necklaces and accessories claiming to "protect" people from 5G mobile networks have been found to be radioactive. The BBC reports: The Dutch authority for nuclear safety and radiation protection (ANVS) issued a warning about ten products it found gave off harmful ionizing radiation. It urged people not to use the products, which could cause harm with long-term wear. [...] The products identified included an "Energy Armor" sleeping mask, bracelet and necklace. A bracelet for children, branded Magnetix Wellness, was also found to be emitting radiation.

"Don't wear it any more, put it away safely and wait for the return instructions," the ANVS said in a statement. "The sellers in the Netherlands known to the ANVS have been told that the sale is prohibited and must be stopped immediately, and that they must inform their customers about this." The ANVS has published a full list of the products it identified as radioactive on its website. Further reading: Worried About 5G's Health Effects? Don't Be

An anonymous reader quotes a report from NPR: The parent company of Facebook and Instagram has banned seven firms it says used its platforms to spy on some 50,000 unsuspecting targets, including human rights activists, government critics, celebrities, journalists and ordinary people in more than 100 countries. These "surveillance-for-hire" companies were linked to around 1,500 accounts on Facebook and Instagram that were used to collect information on people and try to trick them into handing over sensitive personal information so that the firms could install spyware on their devices, according to a report released on Thursday by Meta, formerly known as Facebook.

"Each of these actors rely on networks of fake accounts on our platforms that are used to deceive users and mislead them," Nathaniel Gleicher, Meta's head of security policy, told NPR. Some firms also used Meta's WhatsApp to infect targets' phones with malware. The surveillance was also carried out over other internet services, from email and text messages to Twitter and YouTube. The goal, Gleicher said, is to "spy on people or snoop on them without them knowing about it." Gleicher's team spent months investigating surveillance activity before taking action against the seven companies for violating Meta's community standards and terms of service. Four of the firms are based in Israel, and the other three in China, India, and North Macedonia.

They include Black Cube, an Israel-based intelligence group reportedly used by Harvey Weinstein to dig up dirt on his accusers and journalists. Meta said Black Cube created fake accounts posing as graduate students, human rights workers and film and TV producers and tried to set up phone calls and get email addresses for a wide range of targets, from Palestinian activists to people working in medicine, mining and nonprofit organizations to figures involved in Russia's tech, finance, real estate and media sectors. [...] Another Israeli firm called Bluehawk CI tried to trick government opponents in the United Arab Emirates by pretending to be reporters for Fox News and Italy's La Stampa, Meta said. Meta also took down accounts connected to "an unidentified entity in China" that, Meta says, made tools used by Chinese law enforcement to spy on minority groups in Xinjiang, Myanmar and Hong Kong. "Meta has banned the companies from its platforms, removed the accounts it linked to them, and sent them cease-and-desist warnings," adds NPR. "It is notifying around 50,000 people whom it believes were targeted, and shared its findings with security researchers, other tech companies and policymakers."