Google has announced that it's changing the way search works on mobile devices, initially in the U.S. From a report: Now, when you reach the bottom of a set of search results on your phone, you won't have to tap to go to the next page. Instead, the next set of results will automatically load so you can continuously scroll down to see more information. The change will roll out on the mobile web and will be supported on the Google mobile app for both iOS and Android in the U.S. for most English-language searches for the time being. Because it's a staggered release, you may initially encounter some results which scroll and others that do not.

Moscow's sprawling metro network on Friday launched a fare payment system using facial recognition technology at its more than 240 stations, an initiative the authorities said was the first of its kind in the world. From a report: Moscow, a city of 12.7 million, has one of the world's largest video-surveillance systems. It has used facial recognition technology to enforce COVID-19 quarantines, and protesters attending political rallies have also said police have used it to make preventive arrests and detentions. The authorities are now giving commuters the option to use facial recognition to pay their fare with a system called "Face Pay" at turnstiles equipped with cameras. "Moscow is the first city in the world where this system is operating on such a scale," Maxim Liksutov, head of the Russian capital's transport department, said in a statement.

The official Wizard of New Zealand, perhaps the only state-appointed wizard in the world, has been cast from the public payroll, spelling the end to a 23-year legacy. From a report: The Wizard, whose real name is Ian Brackenbury Channell, 88, had been contracted to Christchurch city council for the past two decades to promote the city through "acts of wizardry and other wizard-like services," at a cost of $16,000 a year. He has been paid a total of $368,000.

The Wizard, who was born in England, began performing acts of wizardry and entertainment in public spaces shortly after arriving in New Zealand in 1976. When the council originally tried to stop him, the public protested. In 1982, the New Zealand Art Gallery Directors Association said he had become a living work of art, and then, in 1990, the prime minister at the time, Mike Moore, asked that he consider becoming the Wizard of New Zealand. "I am concerned that your wizardry is not at the disposal of the entire nation," Moore wrote on his official letterhead.

Andrew Cunningham writes via Ars Technica: It has been well over a decade since PowerPC Macs roamed the earth -- so long that the Intel Macs that replaced them are themselves being replaced by something else. But to this day, there's a small community of people still developing software for PowerPC Macs and Mac OS 9. One of those projects was TenFourFox, a fork of the Firefox browser for G3, G4, and G5-based PowerPC Macs running Mac OS X 10.4 or 10.5. Maintained primarily by Cameron Kaiser, the TenFourFox project sprang up in late 2010 after Mozilla pulled PowerPC support from Firefox 4 during its development. And amazingly, the browser has continued to trundle on ever since.

But continuing to backport Firefox features to aging, stuck-in-time PowerPC processors only got more difficult as time went on. And in March of this year, Kaiser announced that TenFourFox updates would be ending after over a decade of development. The final planned release of TenFourFox was earlier this month. Kaiser's full post is long, but it's worth a read for vintage-computer enthusiasts or anyone who works on software -- Kaiser expresses frustration with the realities of developing and supporting a niche app, but he also highlights TenFourFox's impressive technical achievements and ruminates on the nature of the modern Internet and open source software development [...].

Kaiser doesn't intend to fully halt work on the browser, but he is downshifting it into what he calls "hobby mode." He will continue to backport security patches from newer ESR releases of Firefox and post them to the TenFourFox Github page, but anyone who wants to use these will need to build the app themselves. Kaiser also won't commit to providing support for these additions or providing them on any kind of schedule. Other developers are also welcome to continue to release TenFourFox builds on their own.

ArchieBunker writes: Everyone's favorite security-focused operating system, OpenBSD, released version 7.0 today. In addition to the usual bug fixes and performance enhancements, support for RISC-V processors has been added. The changelog and mirrors can be found at their respective links.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Protocol: A company proposing job-seekers ask past coworkers to pay money and "sponsor" them for a new job launched, and rather immediately shut down, its website on Wednesday. The main idea behind the site, called "Skip the Interview," was to partner with companies who would set sponsorship amounts for job postings. The job-seeker would then ask current or former coworkers to contribute to this sponsorship fund, controlled by Skip The Interview. The first person to raise the funds gets the job. It seems that Skip The Interview thinks people are willing to back up job references with money. Quite a few people on Twitter and Reddit disagree.

After being roasted on Twitter, an account with the handle @skipinterview responded to some concerns on developer Angie Jones' thread. "We decided to take the site down, as we clearly didn't talk to enough people before launching, and are going to talk to a lot more people before moving forward," the account wrote. The account later tweeted on the thread: "Hi everyone. This is Chris the founder. Our goal is definitely not to be discriminatory in any way. We actually won't do junior roles for that reason. We think anyone who has worked in a role for 3+ years before can raise funds from colleagues." An account named "Chris_Evans_1112" also responded to a negative thread on Reddit, saying the company had launched solely to receive feedback. According to their website, Skip The Interview is processing the negative feedback and refining their pitch. It appears they have more research to do.

Elon Musk touted SpaceX's plan to use Starlink for in-flight Wi-Fi, saying in a tweet on Thursday that the service could add "low latency ~half gigabit connectivity in the air!" CNBC reports: Starlink is the company's plan to build an interconnected internet network with thousands of satellites, known in the space industry as a constellation, designed to deliver high-speed internet to consumers anywhere on the planet. SpaceX has launched 1,740 Starlink satellites to date, and the network has more than 100,000 users in 14 countries who are participating in a public beta, with service priced at $99 a month.

Airlines work with satellite broadband providers for inflight Wi-Fi, with Viasat and Intelsat -- the latter of which purchased Gogo's commercial aviation business -- two such companies that add connectivity on flights by airlines including Delta, JetBlue, American Airlines and United. But, while existing services use satellites in distant orbits, Starlink satellites orbit closer to the Earth and could boost the speeds that passengers see inflight. SpaceX Vice President Jonathan Hofeller earlier this year said that the company is "in talks with several" airlines about adding Starlink in-flight Wi-Fi, noting that it has an "aviation product in development." Hofeller also emphasized that Starlink "provides a global mesh," so that "airlines are flying underneath that global mesh have connectivity anywhere they go."

On Thursday, Gov. Michael Parson (R) called a news conference to warn his state's citizens about a nefarious plot against a teachers' database by a reporter from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. From a report: "Through a multistep process," Parson said with great solemnity, "an individual took the records of at least three educators, decoded the HTML source code and viewed the Social Security number of those specific educators."

[...] The Post-Dispatch report explains what their reporter, Josh Renaud, did to view the Social Security numbers of Missouri teachers on a website run by the state education department. (The website has been taken down; you can view an old version of it at the Internet Archive.) "Though no private information was clearly visible nor searchable on any of the web pages," the Post-Dispatch's report stated, "the newspaper found that teachers' Social Security numbers were contained in the HTML source code of the pages involved." In other words, it seems, a search tool for teacher credentials responded to searches by including a bunch of information, some of which was embedded in the source code of the page but not visible when just reading the page.

Facebook has lost people's trust "for good reasons" and isn't responding well to whistle-blower claims that the social-media giant prioritizes profit over user safety, according to one of its earliest investors, Reid Hoffman. Bloomberg: "I'm disappointed," Hoffman said Wednesday in an interview. Facebook should have been more proactive in response to troubling signs revealed in its own research, he said. "Good for Facebook for doing the research," Hoffman said. "You discovered some things that are harmful -- what are you doing about it?" [...] Hoffman, who is a partner at venture capital firm Greylock Partners and a co-founder of LinkedIn, said he hasn't yet spoken to Zuckerberg but has offered his help with the crisis that the company is facing. To regain trust, Facebook has to be "extra transparent," he said. "They have to come forward and say, 'Look, here's our dashboards, here's our metrics, here is the ways we are trying to work on this and do things."

A normally quiet neighborhood in San Francisco is buzzing about a sudden explosion of traffic. Neighbors say their Richmond District dead end street has suddenly become crowded with Waymo vehicles. From a report: "I noticed it while I was sleeping," says Jennifer King. "I awoke to a strange hum and I thought there was a spacecraft outside my bedroom windowï." The visitors Jennifer King is talking about don't just come at night. They come all day, right to the end of 15th Avenue, where there's nothing else to do but make some kind of multi-point turn and head out the way they came in. Not long after that car is gone, there will be another, which will make the same turn and leave, before another car shows up and does the exact same thing. And while there are some pauses, it never really stops. "There are some days where it can be up to 50," King says of the WayMo count. "It's literally every five minutes. And we're all working from home, so this is what we hear." At several points this Tuesday, they showed up on top of each other. The cars, packed with technology, stop in a queue as if they are completely baffled by the dead end. While some neighbors say it is becoming a bit of a nuisance, everyone finds it a little bizarre.

Boeing and U.S. regulators said Thursday that some titanium 787 Dreamliner parts were improperly manufactured over the past three years, the latest in a series of problems to plague the wide-body aircraft. From a report: The quality issue does not affect the immediate safety of flights, the company and the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) said. Boeing said the parts were provided Leonardo, which bought the items from Italy-based Manufacturing Processes Specification (MPS). MPS is no longer a supplier to Leonardo, Boeing said.

The parts include fittings that help secure the floor beam in one fuselage section, as well as other fittings, spacers, brackets, and clips within other assemblies. Undelivered aircraft will be reworked as needed, Boeing said, adding that any fleet actions would be determined through its normal review process and confirmed with the FAA. The defect was found as the planemaker grapples with other problems in its 787 that have caused it to cut production and halt deliveries since May.

New submitter apcyberax writes: A judge has ruled that security cameras and a Ring doorbell installed in a house in Oxfordshire "unjustifiably invaded" the privacy of a neighbour, in a case that could have implications for home surveillance devices. Dr Mary Fairhurst claimed that the devices installed on the house of neighbour Jon Woodard broke data laws and contributed to harassment. The judge upheld both these claims. Mr Woodard now faces a substantial fine. He claimed he installed the devices in good faith as a deterrent against burglars.

The origin of the row stems from an invitation from Mr Woodard to his neighbour Dr Fairhurst to have a tour of his home renovations, during which she claimed he showed off his new security system. The judgement reads that Dr Fairhurst was "alarmed and appalled" to notice that he had a camera mounted on his shed and that footage from it was sent to his smartphone. A series of disputes about the cameras followed, which resulted in Dr Fairhurst moving out of her home. In the judgement it was found that the Ring doorbell captured images of the claimant's house and garden, while the shed camera covered almost the whole of her garden and her parking space.

Amazon gives a leg up to hundreds of house brand and exclusive products that most people don't know are connected to Amazon. From a report: It took Robert Gomez about five months to get his Kaffe coffee grinder to the big leagues in e-commerce: among the first three search results for "coffee grinder" on Amazon.com. Gomez, founder of Atlanta-based consumer goods startup 4Q Brands, said he obsessively refined his photos and description, amassed reviews from happy customers, and paid Amazon $40,000 a month on advertising to boost sales, one of the elements Amazon tells sellers will increase search ranking. Then Amazon introduced a competitor from house brand Amazon Basics and another from a brand that sells exclusively on Amazon, DR Mills. "They ranked well right away," Gomez said, each of them appearing among the top-three results for "coffee grinder" searches immediately. The reason, he said, was clear: "Their search ranking is high because they're an Amazon brand."

An investigation by The Markup found that Amazon places products from its house brands and products exclusive to the site ahead of those from competitors -- even competitors with higher customer ratings and more sales, judging from the volume of reviews. We found that knowing only whether a product was an Amazon brand or exclusive could predict in seven out of every 10 cases whether Amazon would place it first in search results. These listings are not visibly marked as "sponsored" and they are part of a grid that Amazon identifies as "search results" in the site's source code. (We only analyzed products in that grid, ignoring modules that are strictly for advertising.) When we analyzed star ratings and number of reviews, neither could predict much better than a coin toss which product Amazon placed first in search results. Amazon told Congress in 2019 that its search results do not take into account whether a product is an Amazon-owned brand. Sellers say it doesn't seem that way to them. Gomez said Amazon's brands have "unfair advantages" that make it harder for small merchants like him to compete on its open marketplace. "Who bears the cost are those entrepreneurs and small businesses that don't have the means to fight." From Wednesday: Amazon Copied Products and Rigged Search Results To Promote Its Own Brands, Documents Show.

Apple said today that one of the reasons it does not allow app sideloading or the use of third-party app stores on iOS is because of privacy and security reasons, pointing to the fact that Android sees between 15 to 47 times more malware compared to its app ecosystem. The Record reports: Apple says that the reason its iOS devices are locked into the App Store as the only way to install applications is for security reasons, as this allows its security teams to scan applications for malicious content before they reach users. Apple cited statements from multiple sources (DHS, ENISA, Europol, Interpol, NIST, Kaspersky, Wandera, and Norton), all of which had previously warned users against installing apps from outside official app stores, a process known as app sideloading.

Apple's report then goes on to list multiple malware campaigns targeting Android devices where the threat actors asked users to sideload malicious apps hosted on internet sites or third-party app stores. [...] The list includes a host of threats, such as mundane adware, dangerous ransomware, funds-stealing banking trojans, commercial spyware, and even nation-state malware, which Apple said threat actors have spread by exploiting the loophole in Android's app installation process that allows anyone to install apps from anywhere on the internet. Today's 31-page report (PDF) is the second iteration of the same report, with a first version (PDF) being published back in June, shortly after EU authorities announced their investigation.

Activision unveiled its Ricochet anti-cheat system for Call of Duty games as it tries to attack a longstanding cheating problem that has frustrated a lot of players. From a report: The new system will get rid of players cheating in Call of Duty: Warzone later this year and it will debut with Call of Duty: Vanguard, the new premium game coming on multiple platforms on November 5. Activision, whose parent company Activision Blizzard has been sued for having an alleged toxic culture of its own, said in its announcement that cheating in Call of Duty is frustrating for players, developers, and the entire community. The anti-cheat team has made great strides in fighting this persistent issue that affects so many, but the company said it knows more must be done. Ricochet is supported by a team of dedicated professionals focused on fighting unfair play.

The Ricochet anti-cheat initiative is a multi-faceted approach to combat cheating, featuring new server-side tools which monitor analytics to identify cheating, enhanced investigation processes to stamp out cheaters, updates to strengthen account security, and more. Ricochet's backend anti-cheat security features will launch alongside Call of Duty: Vanguard, and later this year with the Pacific update coming to Call of Duty: Warzone. In addition to server enhancements coming with Ricochet is a new PC kernel-level driver, developed internally for the Call of Duty franchise, and launching first for Call of Duty: Warzone. This driver will assist in the identification of cheaters, reinforcing and strengthening the overall server security. The kernel-level driver launches alongside the Pacific update for Warzone later this year. Further reading: Cheat Maker Is Not Afraid of Call of Duty's New Kernel-Level Anti-Cheat.

Epic Games keeps piling up lawsuits with app store owners. This time, Google is countersuing Epic for breach of contract. From a report: Epic signed contracts with both Google and Apple, pledging to use the default payment systems for in-app purchases. As part of its push for more open payment systems, though (and to dodge each platform's 30 percent fee), Epic boldly pushed out updates to the Android and iOS apps that switched the payment processing from the platforms' in-app purchases to Epic's in-house system. Google and Apple both allege this action was a breach of their app store contracts with Epic.

Apple sued and got its ruling last month. Epic was ordered to pay $3.65 million in damages, covering Apple's lost revenue from Epic's three months of self-powered payments. Following that ruling, Google wants its missing money, too, and now it's countersuing Epic, hoping for a similar ruling. Google's suit reads, "Epic willfully breached the DDA [Developer Distribution Agreement] by submitting a version of Fortnite for publication on Google Play with a payment method other than Google Play Billing for purchases of in-app content. By doing this, Epic denied Google its service fee under the DDA for any purchases made through the app outside of Google Play Billing." Google continues: "The users that downloaded the non-compliant version of Fortnite before its removal from Google Play are still able to use Epic's hotfixed external payment mechanism to make in-app purchases -- allowing Epic to evade its contractually agreed service fee to Google for those purchases." Google argues that "Epic has alternatively been unjustly enriched at Google's expense" and is seeking restitution of its missing earnings and damages.

A coalition of nonprofits on Wednesday debuted HowToStopFacebook.org, a fresh push to encourage greater government regulation of the social networking giant aimed at forcing the company to change its business model. From a report: The campaign hopes to take the outrage expressed by legislators over the revelations of whistleblower Frances Haugen and translate it into action. The campaign is pushing for two goals: A Congressional investigation with subpoena power into harms caused by Facebook; and a strong federal data privacy law that makes it illegal for companies like Facebook and YouTube to collect the vast amounts of data they use to personalize recommendations. The more than 30 groups involved include Accountable Tech, Article 19, Center for Digital Democracy, Fairplay, Global Voices, Media Justice, National Hispanic Media Coalition, Presente, Public Knowledge, United We Dream, Ranking Digital Rights, SumOfUs, Win Without War, and the Sex Workers Project of the Urban Justice Center.

AMD warned last week that its chips are experiencing performance issues in Windows 11, and now Microsoft's first update to its new OS has reportedly made the problems worse. From a report: TechPowerUp reports that it's seeing much higher latency, which means worse performance, after the Windows 11 update went live yesterday. AMD and Microsoft found two issues with Windows 11 on Ryzen processors. Windows 11 can cause L3 cache latency to triple, slowing performance by up to 15 percent in certain games. The second issue affects AMD's preferred core technology, that shifts threads over to the fastest core on a processor. AMD says this second bug could impact performance on CPU-reliant tasks. TechPowerUp measured the L3 cache latency on its Ryzen 7 2700X at around 10ns, and Windows 11 increased this to 17ns. "This was made much worse with the October 12 'Patch Tuesday' update, driving up the latency to 31.9ns," says TechPowerUp. That's a huge jump, and the exact type of issue AMD warned about.

Google Cloud today announced a new (and free) feature that will provide its users with custom carbon footprint reports that detail the carbon emissions their cloud usage generates. TechCrunch reports: "Customers can leverage this data for reporting as well as internal audits and carbon reduction efforts. Build in collaboration with customers like HSBC, L'Oreal and Atos, our carbon footprint reporting introduces a new level of transparency to support customers in meeting their climate goals," said Jenn Bennett, who leads Google Cloud's data and technology strategy for sustainability in the Office of the CTO. "Customers can monitor their cloud emissions over time by project, by product and by region, empowering IT teams and developers with metrics that help them reduce their carbon footprint. Digital infrastructure emissions are really just one part of their environmental footprint, but accounting for carbon emissions is necessary to measure progress against the carbon reduction targets that they all have."

As Bennett noted, once a company has accurate reporting in place, providing recommendations for how to reduce their climate impact is a natural next step. Specifically, this means adding carbon estimates to Google Cloud's Unattended Project Recommender, which helps customers reduce their number of idling resources, and adding a sustainability impact category to its Active Assist Recommender.

Sam Biddle writes via The Intercept: To ward off accusations that it helps terrorists spread propaganda, Facebook has for many years barred users from speaking freely about people and groups it says promote violence. The restrictions appear to trace back to 2012, when in the face of growing alarm in Congress and the United Nations (PDF) about online terrorist recruiting, Facebook added to its Community Standards a ban on "organizations with a record of terrorist or violent criminal activity." This modest rule has since ballooned into what's known as the Dangerous Individuals and Organizations policy, a sweeping set of restrictions on what Facebook's nearly 3 billion users can say about an enormous and ever-growing roster of entities deemed beyond the pale. [...] The Intercept has reviewed a snapshot of the full DIO list and is today publishing a reproduction of the material in its entirety, with only minor redactions and edits to improve clarity. It is also publishing an associated policy document, created to help moderators decide what posts to delete and what users to punish.

The list and associated rules appear to be a clear embodiment of American anxieties, political concerns, and foreign policy values since 9/11, experts said, even though the DIO policy is meant to protect all Facebook users and applies to those who reside outside of the United States (the vast majority). Nearly everyone and everything on the list is considered a foe or threat by America or its allies: Over half of it consists of alleged foreign terrorists, free discussion of which is subject to Facebook's harshest censorship. The DIO policy and blacklist also place far looser prohibitions on commentary about predominately white anti-government militias than on groups and individuals listed as terrorists, who are predominately Middle Eastern, South Asian, and Muslim, or those said to be part of violent criminal enterprises, who are predominantly Black and Latino, the experts said.

The materials show Facebook offers "an iron fist for some communities and more of a measured hand for others," said Angel Diaz, a lecturer at the UCLA School of Law who has researched and written on the impact of Facebook's moderation policies on marginalized communities. Facebook's policy director for counterterrorism and dangerous organizations, Brian Fishman, said in a written statement that the company keeps the list secret because "[t]his is an adversarial space, so we try to be as transparent as possible, while also prioritizing security, limiting legal risks and preventing opportunities for groups to get around our rules." He added, "We don't want terrorists, hate groups or criminal organizations on our platform, which is why we ban them and remove content that praises, represents or supports them. A team of more than 350 specialists at Facebook is focused on stopping these organizations and assessing emerging threats. We currently ban thousands of organizations, including over 250 white supremacist groups at the highest tiers of our policies, and we regularly update our policies and organizations who qualify to be banned."