McDonald's is creating a limited number of NFTs or non-fungible tokens in celebration of its McRib sandwich's 40th anniversary. From a report: "Our McRib NFTs are digital versions of the fan favorite sandwich -- almost as saucy as the McRib itself -- and we're giving them away to a few lucky fans on Twitter beginning November 1," McDonald's said in a statement.

Three years after an employee revolt forced Google to abandon work on a Pentagon program that used artificial intelligence, the company is aggressively pursuing a major contract to provide its technology to the military. From a report: The company's plan to land the potentially lucrative contract, known as the Joint Warfighting Cloud Capability, could raise a furor among its outspoken work force and test the resolve of management to resist employee demands. In 2018, thousands of Google employees signed a letter protesting the company's involvement in Project Maven, a military program that uses artificial intelligence to interpret video images and could be used to refine the targeting of drone strikes. Google management caved and agreed to not renew the contract once it expired.

The outcry led Google to create guidelines for the ethical use of artificial intelligence, which prohibit the use of its technology for weapons or surveillance, and hastened a shake-up of its cloud computing business. Now, as Google positions cloud computing as a key part of its future, the bid for the new Pentagon contract could test the boundaries of those A.I. principles, which have set it apart from other tech giants that routinely seek military and intelligence work. The military's initiative, which aims to modernize the Pentagon's cloud technology and support the use of artificial intelligence to gain an advantage on the battlefield, is a replacement for a contract with Microsoft that was canceled this summer amid a lengthy legal battle with Amazon. Google did not compete against Microsoft for that contract after the uproar over Project Maven.

The Pentagon's restart of its cloud computing project has given Google a chance to jump back into the bidding, and the company has raced to prepare a proposal to present to Defense officials, according to four people familiar with the matter who were not authorized to speak publicly. In September, Google's cloud unit made it a priority, declaring an emergency "Code Yellow," an internal designation of importance that allowed the company to pull engineers off other assignments and focus them on the military project, two of those people said. On Tuesday, the Google cloud unit's chief executive, Thomas Kurian, met with Charles Q. Brown, Jr., the chief of staff of the Air Force, and other top Pentagon officials to make the case for his company, two people said. Google, in a written statement, said it is "firmly committed to serving our public sector customers" including the Defense Department, and that it "will evaluate any future bid opportunities accordingly."

The bots convincingly and effortlessly help hackers break into Coinbase, Amazon, PayPal, and bank accounts. From a report: The call came from PayPal's fraud prevention system. Someone had tried to use my PayPal account to spend $58.82, according to the automated voice on the line. PayPal needed to verify my identity to block the transfer. "In order to secure your account, please enter the code we have sent your mobile device now," the voice said. PayPal sometimes texts users a code in order to protect their account. After entering a string of six digits, the voice said, "Thank you, your account has been secured and this request has been blocked. Don't worry if any payment has been charged to your account: we will refund it within 24 to 48 hours. Your reference ID is 1549926. You may now hang up," the voice said.

But this call was actually from a hacker. The fraudster used a type of bot that drastically streamlines the process for hackers to trick victims into giving up their multi-factor authentication codes or one-time passwords (OTPs) for all sorts of services, letting them log in or authorize cash transfers. Various bots target Apple Pay, PayPal, Amazon, Coinbase, and a wide range of specific banks. Whereas fooling victims into handing over a login or verification code previously would often involve the hacker directly conversely with the victim, perhaps pretending to be the victim's bank in a phone call, these increasingly traded bots dramatically lower the barrier of entry for bypassing multi-factor authentication.

After Canada, now Australia has found that controversial facial recognition company, Clearview AI, broke national privacy laws when it covertly collected citizens' facial biometrics and incorporated them into its AI-powered identity matching service -- which it sells to law enforcement agencies and others. From a report: In a statement today, Australia's information commissioner and privacy commissioner, Angelene Falk, said Clearview AI's facial recognition tool breached the country's Privacy Act 1988 by:

Collecting Australians' sensitive information without consent
Collecting personal information by unfair means
Not taking reasonable steps to notify individuals of the collection of personal information
Not taking reasonable steps to ensure that personal information it disclosed was accurate, having regard to the purpose of disclosure
Not taking reasonable steps to implement practices, procedures and systems to ensure compliance with the Australian Privacy Principles.

Ford Motor unveiled Tuesday a custom truck that combines its past with its future electrification plans, including its highly anticipated F-150 Lightning pickup in 2022. CNBC reports: The "all-electric Ford F-100 Eluminator concept truck" features the retro-styling of a 1978 F-100 pickup with electric motors and batteries from the automaker's 2021 Mustang Mach-E GT Performance Edition. Its interior controls and screens also resemble the Mach-E electric crossover. Ford built the vehicle to showcase its new "e-crate motor" that's now on sale online and at its dealerships. Such "crate" engines or motors are assembled by the company but are available for general purchase for building, fixing or customizing vehicles.

"Our F-100 Eluminator concept is a preview of how we're supporting customers as they go all-electric and embrace zero-tailpipe emissions performance, even for our heritage vehicles," Ford global director of accessories and licensing Eric Cin said in a release. The concept pickup can produce 480 horsepower and 634 foot-pounds of torque, Ford said. It was designed and created by Ford Performance and built-in collaboration with aftermarket companies such as MLe Racecars and Roadster Shop. Each of Ford's e-crate motors produces 281 horsepower and 317 foot-pounds of torque and is street-legal in all 50 states, according to the company. Ford said the motor will retail for $3,900.

During the first three months of 2021, the United States installed its 100,000th EV charger. Ars Technica reports on the important electric vehicle milestone: Of course, the actual composition of those chargers is important. It's no good having half a million places to plug in if they're all level 1 (120 V AC) chargers that take days to top up a battery EV. But a new report (PDF) from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory has dug into the data, looking at trends to see whether the nation is on track to meet its goals. At first glance, the news is positive. We added 4,566 new chargers during Q1 2021 for a total of 100,709. That means the US is already 20 percent of the way to Biden's 2030 goal. Most of those were level 2 (240 V AC) chargers, which saw 5.4-percent growth. The number of level 1 chargers actually decreased by 2.4 percent, mostly as ChargePoint decommissioned them in favor of level 2 devices.

Because a level 2 charger usually takes 8-10 hours to fully recharge a 250-300 mile BEV, drivers (particularly those who have yet to convert to an electric car) are probably more interested in the number of the faster level 3 (usually known as DC fast) chargers. Depending upon the car and the power output of the DC fast charger, these can charge a battery to 80 percent in 20-50 minutes. There was essentially no growth in DC fast chargers between Q4 2020 and Q1 2021. After multiple quarters of rapid expansion, the number of public DC fast charging ports grew by just 0.4 percent. The NREL attributes this to the integration between ChargePoint's and Greenlots' APIs [...].

Level 2 chargers can recharge any electric car, but not all BEVs can plug in to all DC fast chargers. All US Teslas use a proprietary charging plug, and 56.7 percent of all public DC fast chargers in the US are part of the Tesla Supercharger network. The various charging network APIs don't all report exactly the same information in exactly the same way, so the NREL was only able to determine the charging power for a limited number (6,821) of DC fast chargers. That led to a rather scary-looking pie chart on the Department of Energy's website showing that 40 percent of DC fast chargers were only able to supply 50 kW or less. However, the chart is based on only 6,821 chargers and excludes almost the entire Tesla Supercharger network from its data set.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Motherboard, written by Janus Rose: During a tech demo in 2016, CEO Mark Zuckerberg described VR as "the next major computing platform" -- a space where all our social interactions will play out with new levels of physical presence thanks to headsets and motion-controllers. As I wrote at the time, this could only mean one thing: Zuckerberg wants to build virtual environments where all human behavior can be recorded, predicted, and monetized. At the time, the company told me it had "no current plans" to use physical motion data like head and eye movements as a means of predicting behavior and serving ads. Since then, it has made logging into Facebook a mandatory requirement for users of its Oculus headset -- a requirement it was recently pressured to remove. And earlier this year, the company announced its inevitable entry into VR-based advertising, inspiring enough backlash to cause one Oculus developer to abandon its plans for VR ads altogether.

While the bait-and-switch is a familiar and unsurprising move for The Company Formerly Known As Facebook, the announcement of Meta proves that there is no stopping Zuckerberg's plans to mine every human interaction in the world for data that can then be monetized. The brand shift notably comes at a time when the company is under intense scrutiny for its role in spreading disinformation and violence around the world, reinvigorated by revelations from whistleblower Frances Haugin. With Meta, it's safe to assume the predictive algorithms at work will be functionally the same as its predecessor. Data is collected about human behavior, which is then used to build profiles on users and automatically prioritize content they are more likely to interact with. Facebook itself proved the effectiveness of this manipulation with an "emotional contagion" experiment it secretly conducted on users in 2012, which showed that changing a user's feed to show positive or negative content altered the types of content they were likely to post.

This type of algorithmic manipulation forms the core business model of Facebook and countless other apps and social platforms. [...] Researchers have found that this algorithmic "nudging" is possible in embodied virtual spaces too, where the collection of intimate data about physical body movements provides new ways to influence human behavior on a large scale. Companies like RealEyes and Affectiva have marketed AI that they say can predict human emotions by analyzing body language and facial expressions -- a claim that is fiercely contested by AI experts but being widely deployed anyway. In one notable study, researchers determined that AI-controlled digital avatars can be used in virtual spaces to push people into accepting certain political views. In other words, Meta represents a massive investment into the very kind of algorithmic manipulation for which Facebook has been repeatedly maligned.

The National Bank of Pakistan (NBP) has suffered what two sources have described to The Record as a "destructive" cyberattack. From a report: The incident, which took place on the night between Friday and Saturday, impacted the bank's backend systems and affected servers used to interlink the bank's branches, the backend infrastructure controlling the bank's ATM network, and the bank's mobile apps. While the attack crippled some of these systems, no funds were reported missing, according to the bank and people familiar with the attack and the current investigation. "Immediate steps were taken to isolate the affected systems," the bank said in a statement on Saturday. Recovery efforts were in full swing over the weekend, and by Monday, NBP reported that more than 1,000 branches opened and catered to customers as normal and that all ATMs nationwide had been fully restored.

Citing the Korean automaker's "striking designs, interesting battery tech, and robust product pipeline," John Voelcker from The Drive makes the case for why Hyundai "could emerge among the companies that transition fastest to EVs." From the report: Its battery-electrics will come fast, entering the mass market on pace with those from GM and Ford. Hyundai's smart enough not to try to compete in full-size electric pickup trucks, still the last stronghold for the Detroit 2.5, not least because they're largely unsellable outside North America. The lackluster results for Nissan and Toyota after 20 years of building U.S.-style full-size pickups provide an object lesson. But Hyundai has aggressive plans for the rest of the light truck and passenger vehicle market.

Of course, every automaker worth its salt these days has a bold plan to launch a flotilla of electric vehicles over the next 5-10 years and is pouring billions of dollars into making it happen. What's slightly different here is that Hyundai has shown over the past decade it can notably improve its cars with each generation and break new ground as fast as any other maker, all while keeping prices relatively close to Earth. It was late to SUVs, but now it has a full lineup that leads its sales and offers good value for the money. With the playing field mostly leveled by a tectonic technological shift, expect Hyundai to do the same with electric vehicles, even as the global patchwork of emissions regulations and cultural divides means different markets will move at different speeds.

When the company launched vehicles with plugs in the U.S. in 2014, it didn't limit them to two vehicles (as GM did), but released half a dozen of them. They were BEVs with ranges from 100 to 230 miles, various plug-in hybrid models of sedan and now SUV, and more are coming. Hyundai also wants to play in the world of hydrogen vehicles, though it is wisely focusing on freight movement rather than personal-use vehicles. But that's a different story altogether. What matters now is understanding how Hyundai became a force to be reckoned with in this all-important, high-stakes battle.

The eNaira is supposed to live within a mobile wallet, have the same value and be interchangeable with the physical naira for everyday transactions. Nigerians believe the eNaira, which is governed by a centralized blockchain, is part of the central bank's drive to discourage cryptocurrencies' popularity among Nigeria's youth, just like China's effort with the digital yuan. From a report: And so last week, Nigeria's central bank made two types of eNaira wallets available on Google and Apple stores: one for individuals, and another for merchants. But some users say parts of the wallet for individuals have not worked properly. Fisayo Fosudo, a Nigerian YouTuber who reviews gadgets and apps, said he and three friends initially got error messages that the eNaira app could not match their emails to their bank verification numbers. He would later register successfully but found broken links that did not lead to helpful support pages on the central bank's website. "Was really looking forward to reviewing the eNaira app but it's been hard to get it to work seamlessly. We wait," Fosudo said. After many users left poor reviews for the Android version of the eNaira app for individuals, it was taken down. It had been downloaded 100,000 times before that. The Apple Store version remained available at press time.

theodp writes: Chicago Public School (CPS) teachers were 'blindsided' after access to popular classroom software was yanked due to CPS's interpretation of Illinois' Student Online Personal Protection Act (SOPPA), the Chicago Sun-Times reports. Sneha Dey writes, "Among the software products that violate the law, CPS now says, are programs like Code.org, which is widely used in computer science classes, and Adobe applications used for artistic design and newspaper page layouts. That left has many high school newspapers unable to produce their print editions. Also off limits is Scratch, software to create interactive stores, animations and games. CPS had partnered with the Scratch Foundation to hold family coding nights, among other events."

The Blueprint's Karen Buecking has more on how the new student data protection law has upended the computer science curriculum at CPS, noting that CPS teachers received an email from tech-backed Code.org explaining the situation: "We've already signed student data protection agreements with over 150 districts across the state to comply with the new law," said the Code.org representative. "The bad news is CPS's agreement and application process contains onerous requirements unrelated to student privacy that make it prohibitive for organizations like Code.org to agree to CPS's requirements as written."

Facebook plans to shut down its decade-old facial recognition system this month, deleting the face scan data of more than one billion users and effectively eliminating a feature that has fueled privacy concerns, government investigations, a class-action lawsuit and regulatory woes. From a report: Jerome Pesenti, vice president of artificial intelligence at Meta, Facebook's newly named parent company, said in a blog post on Tuesday that the social network was making the change because of "many concerns about the place of facial recognition technology in society." He added that the company still saw the software as a powerful tool, but "every new technology brings with it potential for both benefit and concern, and we want to find the right balance." The decision shutters a feature that was introduced in December 2010 so that Facebook users could save time.

The facial-recognition software automatically identified people who appeared in users' digital photo albums and suggested users "tag" them all with a click, linking their accounts to the images. Facebook now has built one of the largest repositories of digital photos in the world, partly thanks to this software. Facial-recognition technology, which has advanced in accuracy and power in recent years, has increasingly been the focus of debate because of how it can be misused by governments, law enforcement and companies. In China, authorities use the capabilities to track and control the Uighurs, a largely Muslim minority. In the United States, law enforcement has turned to the software to aid policing, leading to fears of overreach and mistaken arrests. Some cities and states have banned or limited the technology to prevent potential abuse.

Yahoo has officially exited China, shutting down all of its services in the communist country as of Monday, Nov. 1. From a report: "In recognition of the increasingly challenging business and legal environment in China, Yahoo's suite of services will no longer be accessible from mainland China as of November 1," a company spokesperson said in an emailed statement. "Yahoo remains committed to the rights of our users and a free and open internet. We thank our users for their support," the rep added. Yahoo's exit from China coincided with the enactment of the country's Personal Information Protection Law, a privacy law that went into effect Nov. 1 that imposes new data-collection restrictions on tech companies, the Wall Street Journal reported.

Amazon plans to launch its first prototype broadband satellites in Q4 2022, which would be nearly four years after SpaceX launched its first prototype Starlink satellites. Ars Technica reports: "This morning, we filed an experimental license application with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to launch, deploy, and operate two prototype satellites for Project Kuiper," Amazon said in a blog post. "These satellites -- KuiperSat-1 and KuiperSat-2 -- are an important step in the development process. They allow us to test the communications and networking technology that will be used in our final satellite design, and help us validate launch operations and mission management procedures that will be used when deploying our full constellation."

Amazon said it will launch the satellites from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida on ABL Space Systems' RS1 rocket, as part of a multilaunch deal the companies announced today. Amazon's prototype satellites will operate at an altitude of 590 km. "While operating under the experimental license, the KuiperSats will communicate with TT&C [telemetry, tracking, and control] Earth stations in South America, the Asia-Pacific region, and McCulloch, Texas, as well as with customer terminal units and a single gateway Earth station located in McCulloch, Texas," Amazon told the FCC.

Ahead of a key city council vote on a $28.5 million water pact with Google, the city of The Dalles filed suit in state court Friday in an effort to keep the tech giant's water use a secret. The Oregonian/OregonLive reports: The city is seeking to overturn a ruling earlier this month from Wasco County's district attorney, who found Google's water use is a public record and ordered The Dalles to provide that information to The Oregonian/OregonLive. The city sued the news organization Friday, asking a judge to intervene.

Google is contemplating two new server farms on the site of a former aluminum smelter in The Dalles, where it already has an enormous campus of data centers on its property along the Columbia River. Google says it needs more water to cool its data centers, but neither the company nor the city will say how much more -- only that The Dalles can't meet Google's needs without expanding its water system. The deal calls for Google to pay for the upgrade. Even so, the proposed water pact has attracted scrutiny and skepticism in The Dalles, a riverfront city of about 15,000 approximately 80 miles east of Portland.

Residents and nearby farmers are concerned about the city's water long-term water supply amid an ongoing drought. They complain they don't know enough about Google's actual water use. The city is now going to court to keep that information under wraps, arguing it's a Google "trade secret" exempt from disclosure under Oregon law. Regardless of how the city's suit plays out, the litigation won't be resolved before the city council votes on Google's water deal on the evening of Nov. 8. That means the public won't have access to that information, though city council members do. This new agreement "could boost property tax collections by several million dollars a year but still figure to save Google tens of millions of dollars over the 15-year life of the tax breaks," the report notes. "It doesn't appear Google can proceed without more water, however."

Tesla launched a pilot project in the Netherlands this week in which non-Tesla electric vehicles will be allowed to use its Supercharger network, representing the first time that the automaker is opening up its proprietary charging stations to EVs from other companies. The Verge reports: Tesla's Supercharger network is often held up as the best possible example of an EV charging network: fast, reliable, and plentiful. But Tesla's network is also exclusive to Tesla owners, meaning someone driving a Volkswagen or Ford EV wouldn't be able to use it. But that's now starting to change. Tesla CEO Elon Musk has, for years, talked about opening up his company's vast Supercharger network to other electric vehicles. And over this past summer, he started revealing key details about how it would actually work. Now the company is ready to start the process by announcing its first pilot project.

Initially, only 10 Supercharger stations in the Netherlands will be available to non-Tesla EVs. Vehicle owners will need to download the most recent version of Tesla's smartphone app (version 4.2.3 or higher) in order to access the stations. After downloading the app, customers will be prompted to select "Charge Your Non-Tesla" in order to find the closest participating Supercharger site. Tesla owners can still use the stations just as normal. "We will be closely monitoring each site for congestion and listening to customers about their experiences," the company said in a blog post. "It's always been our ambition to open the Supercharger network to Non-Tesla EVs and, by doing so, encourage more drivers to go electric," the company said. "This move directly supports our mission to accelerate the world's transition to sustainable energy."

Starlink, part of Elon Musk's SpaceX company, has formed a subsidiary in India and is preparing to apply for licenses from the local government, according to a top official. From a report: "Pleased to share that SpaceX now has a 100% owned subsidiary in India," Sanjay Bhargava, India director for Starlink, said in a LinkedIn post Monday. Starlink's local India unit is registered with the name Starlink Satellite Communications Private Limited. A local unit is required for an internet company to offer its services in India, where Starlink -- assuming that it gets the license -- plans to offer 200,000 active terminals in over 160,000 districts by December 2022, the company representatives said. That's an ambitious goal for the company, which as of August had shipped 100,000 user terminals in 14 countries.

Apple's long-rumored AR-VR headset may be arriving next year. According to a new report from notable analyst Ming-Chi Kuo, the iPhone-maker is aiming to put Wi-Fi 6 and 6E support into the device, which could arrive at some point towards the end of 2022. From a report: In a note to investors, spotted by MacRumors, Kuo writes that Meta (formerly Facebook), Sony and Apple will all have new virtual reality or augmented reality headsets of some kind next year, which will support the latest Wi-Fi standards. He expects that Meta's product will launch in the second half of the year, Apple's in the fourth quarter of 2022 and Sony's sometime in the second quarter. Last week during its Facebook Connect event Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg teased a new, higher-end headset dubbed Project Cambria that the company says will arrive next year. Sony, meanwhile, has been teasing a successor to its PlayStation VR headset that is designed for the PlayStation 5. It too is aiming to launch its VR product in 2022. Kuo writes that using Wi-Fi 6 or Wi-Fi 6E will be a "basic requirement for head-mounted displays to improve the wireless experience," adding that "Wi-Fi 6 is significantly better than Wi-Fi 5 in transmission speed and power consumption."

All over the country, hardware from Huawei and ZTE keeps American telecom networks humming. In the coming months, many of those networks are going to start ripping it all out. From a report: On Friday, the U.S. Federal Communications Commission officially kicked off the reimbursement program for replacing equipment from the two Chinese companies, both of which have been deemed a threat to national security. That means that telecoms can apply for subsidies to purge the hardware from their networks. A lot has been made of the geopolitical connotations of the technology blacklist, which includes Huawei and ZTE, but the physical logistics of overhauling the nation's connectivity infrastructure is just as complicated given how much banned equipment is currently in the wild.

The process that started last week allows telecoms to file expenses for wiping out the hardware. Whenever those funds are approved and sent, "the clock starts ticking," says John Nettles, president of Alabama-based Pine Belt Communications Inc. "You're expected to complete it within one year after receiving your first reimbursement." For the target recipients of the program, small and usually rural carriers with no more than 10 million customers, that means 2022 is going to be an insanely busy year. Without expansive subsidies, these telecoms have said they would not have been able to afford to comply with the government mandate, but now with federal reimbursements, they'll soon be under the gun to source enough labor and eligible replacement gear to meet the FCC's deadline. Nettles estimates it'll likely take a four-person crew a week to overhaul each of his 67 towers.

Twenty-somethings rolling their eyes at the habits of their elders is a longstanding trend, but many employers said there's a new boldness in the way Gen Z dictates taste. From a report: At a retail business based in New York, managers were distressed to encounter young employees who wanted paid time off when coping with anxiety or period cramps. At a supplement company, a Gen Z worker questioned why she would be expected to clock in for a standard eight-hour day when she might get through her to-do list by the afternoon. At a biotech venture, entry-level staff members delegated tasks to the founder. And spanning sectors and start-ups, the youngest members of the work force have demanded what they see as a long overdue shift away from corporate neutrality toward a more open expression of values, whether through executives displaying their pronouns on Slack or putting out statements in support of the protests for Black Lives Matter. "These younger generations are cracking the code and they're like, 'Hey guys turns out we don't have to do it like these old people tell us we have to do it,'" said Colin Guinn, 41, co-founder of the robotics company Hangar Technology. "'We can actually do whatever we want and be just as successful.' And us old people are like, 'What is going on?'"

Twenty-somethings rolling their eyes at the habits of their elders is a trend as old as Xerox, Kodak and classic rock, but many employers said there's a new boldness in the way Gen Z dictates taste. And some members of Gen Z, defined as the 72 million people born between 1997 and 2012, or simply as anyone too young to remember Sept. 11, are quick to affirm this characterization. Ziad Ahmed, 22, founder and chief executive of the Gen Z marketing company JUV Consulting, which has lent its expertise to brands like JanSport, recalled speaking at a conference where a Gen Z woman, an entry-level employee, told him she didn't feel that her employer's marketing fully reflected her progressive values. "What is your advice for our company?" the young woman asked. "Make you a vice president," Mr. Ahmed told her. "Rather than an intern." Starting in the mid-aughts, the movement of millennials from college into the workplace prompted a flurry of advice columns about hiring members of the headstrong generation. "These young people tell you what time their yoga class is," warned a "60 Minutes" segment in 2007 called "The 'Millennials' Are Coming." Over time, those millennials became managers, and workplaces were reshaped in their image. There were #ThankGodIt'sMonday signs affixed to WeWork walls. There was the once-heralded rise of the SheEO.