Businesses

Africa Internet Riches Plundered, Contested by China Broker (sfgate.com) 55

An anonymous reader shares a report: Outsiders have long profited from Africa's riches of gold, diamonds, and even people. Digital resources have proven no different. Millions of internet addresses assigned to Africa have been waylaid, some fraudulently, including through insider machinations linked to a former top employee of the nonprofit that assigns the continent's addresses. Instead of serving Africa's internet development, many have benefited spammers and scammers, while others satiate Chinese appetites for pornography and gambling. New leadership at the nonprofit, AFRINIC, is working to reclaim the lost addresses. But a legal challenge by a deep-pocketed Chinese businessman is threatening the body's very existence. The businessman is Lu Heng, a Hong Kong-based arbitrage specialist. Under contested circumstances, he obtained 6.2 million African addresses from 2013 to 2016. That's about 5% of the continent's total -- more than Kenya has.

The internet service providers and others to whom AFRINIC assigns IP address blocks aren't purchasing them. They pay membership fees to cover administrative costs that are intentionally kept low. That left lots of room, though, for graft. When AFRINIC revoked Lu's addresses, now worth about $150 million, he fought back. His lawyers in late July persuaded a judge in Mauritius, where AFRICNIC is based, to freeze its bank accounts. His company also filed a $80 million defamation claim against AFRINIC and its new CEO. It's a shock to the global networking community, which has long considered the internet as technological scaffolding for advancing society. Some worry it could undermine the entire numerical address system that makes the internet work.

Apple

Apple App Store Payment Rules Anti-competitive, Dutch Watchdog Finds (reuters.com) 20

The Dutch antitrust authority has found that Apple's rules requiring software developers to use its in-app payment system are anti-competitive and ordered it to make changes, Reuters reported on Thursday, in the latest regulatory setback for the iPhone maker. From a report: Apple's app-store payment policies, in particular its requirement that app developers exclusively use its payment system where commissions range between 15% and 30%, have long drawn complaints from developers. The Dutch investigation into whether Apple's practices amounted to an abuse of a dominant market position was launched in 2019 but later reduced in scope to focus primarily on dating market apps. They included a complaint from Match Group, owner of the popular dating service Tinder, which said Apple's rules were hindering it from direct communications with its customers about payments. The Netherlands' Authority for Consumers and Markets (ACM) last month informed the U.S. technology giant of its decision, making it the first antitrust regulator to make a finding the company has abused market power in the app store, though Apple is facing challenges in multiple countries.
Japan

Apple and Google Under Antitrust Scrutiny in Japan for Mobile OS (nikkei.com) 9

Japan's Fair Trade Commission will investigate whether Apple and Google are leveraging their dominance in the smartphone operating system market to eliminate competition and severely limit options for consumers. From a report: The study will involve interviews and surveys with OS operators, app developers and smartphone users, commission Secretary-General Shuichi Sugahisa told reporters Wednesday. The initiative will explore market conditions not only for smartphones, but for smartwatches and other wearables. The antitrust watchdog will compile a report outlining OS market structure and the reason why competition has remained static. The commission will work with the central government's Digital Market Competition Council, which is moving forward with its own market probe. Practices found to be anticompetitive will be itemized in the report, along with possible violations of Japan's law against monopolies. In February, the government implemented the Act on Improving Transparency and Fairness of Digital Platforms. If officials decide that the law applies to the OS market, OS operators will be told to submit regular reports on transactions to the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry. In Japan, Apple's iOS commands a nearly 70% share among smartphone operating systems while Android's share stands at 30%. Any developer of apps -- whether they specialize in music, streaming videos, e-books or mobile games -- need to match the software with specifications of the operating systems if they want to appear on smartphones.
Google

Google Maps Can Now Show You the Most Fuel-Efficient Route (fastcompany.com) 56

Google has introduced a number of new "eco-friendly routing" tools to Google Maps, including the ability to view the route that's most fuel-efficient, and how much you can save on fuel with a slight detour. Here's a list of the new features rolling out for consumers, as reported by Fast Company: 1.) When you search for flights on Google, you'll see the CO2 emissions for each flight, with green badges for the lowest-footprint options. The tool also calculates emissions per seat; first-class seats have a larger footprint since they take up more of the plane.
2.) If you search for appliances like furnaces in the U.S., you'll now see suggestions in Google's Shopping tab for the most cost-effective and sustainable options.
3.) Google Finance now shows sustainability scores for companies, based on data from the nonprofit CDP, and the tool will soon also include a sustainability score for your whole portfolio.
4.) If you search for hotels, you'll see information about the sustainability of different hotels.
5.) In cities that offer bike navigation directions, a new "lite navigation" option will soon be available that lets cyclists easily see their progress, ETA updates, and elevation along the route without having to leave their screen on continuously.
6.) Information about bike and scooter share locations will expand to 300 cities around the world.
7.) Nest is offering a new service that will let you shift heating and cooling to the times that the grid is cleanest or the energy is least expensive. Another option will let consumers buy renewable energy credits for the energy they're using at home.
8.) In new pilots in Israel and Brazil, Google is testing the use of AI to optimize traffic lights. In early results, the intervention saves fuel use (and time, waiting at lights) by 10% to 20%.

Windows

Microsoft Shares Windows 11 TPM Check Bypass For Unsupported PCs (bleepingcomputer.com) 74

Microsoft has published a new support webpage where they provide an official method to bypass the TPM 2.0 and CPU checks (TPM 1.2 is still required) and have Windows 11 installed on unsupported systems. Bleeping Computer reports: [I]t looks like Microsoft couldn't ignore the fact that bypassing TPM checks is fairly simple, so to avoid having people breaking their systems by using non-standardized third-party scripts, they decided to just give users an official way to do it. Installing Windows 11 on unsupported hardware comes with some pitfalls that users must be aware of, and in some cases, agree to before the operating system will install. "Your device might malfunction due to these compatibility or other issues. Devices that do not meet these system requirement will no longer be guaranteed to receive updates, including but not limited to security updates," Microsoft explains in a new support bulletin. [Y]ou will still require a TPM 1.2 security processor, which many will not likely have. If you are missing a TPM 1.2 processor, you can bypass all TPM checks by using this script that deletes appraiser.dll during setup. To use the new AllowUpgradesWithUnsupportedTPMOrCPU bypass to install Windows 11 on devices, Microsoft instructs you to perform the following steps:

1. Please read all of these instructions before continuing. 2. Visit the Windows 11 software download page, select "Create tool now," and follow the installation instructions to create a bootable media or download an ISO. 3. On Windows, click 'Start', type 'Registry Editor' and click on the icon to launch the tool. 4. Navigate to the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\Setup\MoSetup Registry key and create a new "REG_DWORD" value named "AllowUpgradesWithUnsupportedTPMOrCPU" and set it to "1". Alternatively, you can download a premade Registry file that you can double-click on and merge it to create the above value for you. 5. Reboot your system

Having done all that, you may now upgrade to Windows 11 by double-clicking on the downloaded ISO file and running Setup.exe or by using the bootable Windows 11 media you created in Step 1. Microsoft states that standard installation options such as 'Full Upgrade', 'Keep Data Only', and 'Clean Install', will all be available as usual.

AI

A Blank Wall Can Show How Many People Are in a Room and What They're Doing (scientificamerican.com) 23

Stare at a blank wall in any room, and you are unlikely to learn much more than the paint color. But a new technology can inconspicuously scan the same surface for shadows and reflections imperceptible to the human eye, then analyze them to determine details, including how many people are in the room -- and what they are doing. From a report: This could be used to spy on activity from around a corner, learn more from a partial view of a space or watch someone avoiding a camera's line of sight. As people move around a room, their bodies block a portion of any available light to create subtle and indistinct "soft shadows" on walls. Brightly colored clothing can cast a dim, reflected glow. But these faint signals are usually drowned out by ambient light from a main source. "If we could do something like subtracting this ambient term from whatever we are observing, then you would just be left with camera noise -- and signal," says Prafull Sharma, a graduate student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Sharma and other M.I.T. researchers isolated that ambient term by filming a wall in a room as its occupants moved around and averaging the frames over time.

This eliminated the shifting shadows cast by the humans, leaving only the light from the main source, plus shadows from furniture or other stationary objects. Then the researchers removed this term from the video in real time, revealing moving shadows on the wall. Next, Sharma's team recorded blank walls in several more rooms in which the researchers enacted various scenarios and activities. Groups of one or two people moved around outside the camera's view. Others crouched, jumped or waved their arms. Then the team fed the videos into a machine-learning model to teach it which soft shadow patterns indicated which behavior. The resulting system can automatically analyze footage of a blank wall in any room in real time, determining the number of people and their actions. The work was accepted as an oral presentation at the 2021 International Conference on Computer Vision in October. Although this system can function without calibration in any room, it performs poorly in dim lighting or in the presence of a flickering light source such as a television.

Privacy

Apple Says Apps Must Offer a Way To Delete Your Account Starting In Early 2022 (engadget.com) 23

Apple says that as of January 31st, 2022, all applications will need to offer people a method of deleting their accounts. This applies to all iOS, iPadOS and macOS apps. Engadget reports: The company announced this requirement alongside other App Store guideline changes at the Apple Worldwide Developers Conference in June as part of a push to give users more control over their data. As The Verge notes, Apple is only requiring developers to let people "initiate deletion of their account from within the app," so apps might send you to a website or even a chat with an agent before you can actually close your account.
AMD

Windows 11 Might Tank Ryzen CPU Performance, AMD Warns (pcworld.com) 54

AMD said Windows 11 can cut game performance on Ryzen CPUs by 10 to 15 percent, and the operating system may not utilize AMD's "preferred core" technology, but a fix is in the works. PCWorld reports: A support note on AMD's web site published this week said Windows 11 may increase L3 cache latency a whopping threefold, which can cause slowdowns in latency sensitive applications. Lighter duty, cache-sensitive games might see a 3 percent to 5 percent hit, and lighter-duty games as e-sports titles could see frame rates drop from 10 to 15 percent. AMD also said its "preferred core" feature, which tells the operating system which core in each CPU can hit the highest clock, also doesn't work right in Windows 11. Each CPU is tested to see which core will run the fastest at the factory and is marked so the OS will dispatch tasks to that "preferred core." Since Windows 11 doesn't seem to work with it right now, any performance bump from using the best core wouldn't happen. The company said the performance cost would be most noticeable in CPUs with more than 8 cores and with TDP ratings above 65 watts.
Security

Navy Facebook Account Hacked To Stream 'Age of Empires' (vice.com) 37

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Motherboard: The U.S. Navy has lost control of the official Facebook page for its destroyer-class warship, the USS Kidd. Someone has hacked the page and, for the past two days, done nothing but stream Age of Empires. The first stream went on for four hours. As first reported by Task & Purpose, the USS Kidd lost control of its Facebook account at 10:26 p.m. on October 3. The destroyer class warship then streamed Age of Empires for four hours under the headline "Hahahahaha." It's since streamed Age of Empires five more times, each time for at least an hour. Whoever is playing sucks, because they never make it past the Stone Age. As of this writing, the six videos are still up and watchable. The Navy confirmed to Task & Purpose that it had been hacked, adding: "We are currently working with Facebook technical support to resolve the issue."
IT

How Downdetector Has Become Go-To Site for Online Disruptions (bloomberg.com) 26

An anonymous reader shares a report: When Facebook's platforms went down early on Oct. 4, the online tracker Downdetector was among the first places users looked to find out what was happening. Downdetector, which uses crowdsourcing to track outages, recognized Facebook's problems were dramatically different than a typical outage. Its system automatically released a notification, including a tweet, informing the internet of the disruption. The outage was among the biggest ever declared by Downdetector, said Luke Deryckx, chief technology officer at closely held Ookla LLC, the Seattle-based company that owns it. "Downdetector is a vehicle for users to report their experience," he said, adding that the company crowdsources "users' relationship with the internet." "In this case, we'd received a clear and almost instantaneous signal that there was a Facebook-related outage."

The idea of Downdetector was born over drinks at a bar in Haarlem, a city in the Netherlands, in February 2012. Tom Sanders and Sander van de Graaf were both working at IDG Communications Inc., the media publisher of magazines including CIO and Computerworld. Van de Graaf was a developer, and Sanders was the editor in chief. Readers would often call the newsroom to report an online outage at a company or service provider, but the reporters would often get no response -- or have to wait hours -- when they called to ask about the disruption. "We thought, wouldn't there be ways to automate this so we didn't have to check with the press office and we could get the data directly ourselves?" Van de Graaf said.

Google

Google To Invest $1 Billion in Africa Over Five Years (reuters.com) 39

Google plans to invest $1 billion in Africa over the next five years to ensure access to fast and cheaper internet and will back startups to support the continent's digital transformation, it said on Wednesday. From a report: The unit of U.S. tech company Alphabet made the announcement at a virtual event where it launched an Africa Investment Fund, through which it will invest $50 million in startups, providing them with access to its employees, network and technologies. Nitin Gajria, managing director for Google in Africa told Reuters in a virtual interview that the company would among others, target startups focusing on fintech, e-commerce and local language content. "We are looking at areas that may have some strategic overlap with Google and where Google could potentially add value in partnering with some of these startups," Gajria said. In collaboration with not-for-profit organisation Kiva, Google will also provide $10 million in low interest loans to help small businesses and entrepreneurs in Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria and South Africa so they can get through the economic hardship created by COVID-19.
Media

Instagram Ditches the IGTV Brand, Combines Everything But Reels Into An 'Instagram Video' Format (techcrunch.com) 9

On Tuesday, Instagram announced that it will now combine IGTV's long-form video and Instagram Feed videos into a new format called simply "Instagram Video." TechCrunch reports: These videos, both longer and shorter, will be found on users' profiles in a new "Video" tab. Meanwhile, when people encounter videos on Instagram, they'll be able to tap anywhere on the video to enter into a fullscreen viewing mode. After watching, they can then choose to keep scrolling to discover more video content from creators or tap the back button to exit. None of these changes will impact what Instagram is doing with Reels, though. The company's short-form video platform and TikTok rival will continue to remain separate, we're told. They won't be mixed into this feed of videos, if users choose to scroll.

The IGTV app, however, isn't going away. Instagram tells us it will now be rebranded as "Instagram Video" and will host the "Instagram Video" formatted content, along with Instagram Live videos. But it will not host Reels videos. With today's update, users will still be able to upload their non-Reels videos in the same way as before -- by clicking on the plus sign (+) in the top-right corner of the Instagram home page and selecting "Post." Videos can be up to 60 minutes in length. Instagram is also adding new features like trimming, filters, and people and location tagging as part of the updated upload experience. [...] Instagram's goal with these changes will be a more streamlined video experience. Instagram says the changes are rolling out globally starting today across both iOS and Android.

Google

Google Is About To Turn On Two-Factor Authentication By Default For Millions of Users (theverge.com) 108

Google is reminding us that it will enable two-factor authentication for 150 million more accounts by the end of this year. The Verge reports: In 2018, Google said that only 10 percent of its active accounts were using two-factor authentication. It has been pushing, prodding, and encouraging people to enable the setting ever since. Another prong of the effort will require more than 2 million YouTube creators to turn on two-factor authentication to protect their channels from takeover. Google says it has partnered with organizations to give away more than 10,000 hardware security keys every year. Its push for two-factor has made the technology readily available on your phone whether you use Android or iPhone.

A tool that also helps users keep their accounts secure is using a password manager, and Google now says that it checks over a billion passwords a day via its built-in manager for Chrome, Android, and the Google app. The password manager is also available on iOS, where Chrome can autofill logins for other apps. Google says that soon it will help you generate passwords for other apps, making things even more straightforward. Also coming soon is the ability to see all of your saved passwords directly from the Google app menu. Last but not least, Google is highlighting its Inactive Account Manager. This is a set of decisions to make about what happens to your account if you decide to stop using it or are no longer around and able to make those decisions.

Facebook

Oculus Quest Becomes a Paperweight When Facebook Goes Down (vrfocus.com) 79

When Facebook went down yesterday for nearly six hours, so did Oculus' services. Since Facebook owns VR headset maker Oculus, and controversially requires Oculus Quest users to log in with a Facebook account, many Quest owners reported not being able to load their Oculus libraries. "[A]nd those who just took a Quest 2 out of the box have reported that they're unable to complete the initial setup," adds PCGamer. As VRFocus points out, "the issue has raised another important question relating to Oculus' services being so closely linked with a Facebook account, your Oculus Quest/Quest 2 is essentially bricked until services resume." From the report: This vividly highlights the problem with having to connect to Facebook's services to gain access to apps -- the WiFi connection was fine. Even all the ones downloaded and taking up actual storage space didn't show up. It's why some VR fans began boycotting the company when it made all mandatory that all Oculus Quest 2's had to be affiliated with a Facebook account. If you want to unlink your Facebook account from Oculus Quest and don't want to pay extra for that ability, you're in luck thanks to a sideloadable tool called "Oculess." From an UploadVR article published earlier today: You still need a Facebook account to set up the device in the first place and you need to give Facebook a phone number or card details to sideload, but after that you could use Oculess to forgo Facebook entirely -- just remember to never factory reset. The catch is you'll lose access to Oculus Store apps because the entitlement check used upon launching them will no longer function. System apps like Oculus TV and Browser will also no longer launch, and casting won't work. You can still sideload hundreds of apps from SideQuest though, and if you want to keep browsing the web in VR you can sideload Firefox Reality. You can still use Oculus Link to play PC VR content, but only if you stay signed into Facebook on the Oculus PC app. Virtual Desktop won't work because it's a store app, but you can sideload free alternatives such as ALVR.

To use Oculess, just download it from GitHub and sideload it using SideQuest or Oculus Developer Hub, then launch it from inside VR. If your Quest isn't already in developer mode or you don't know how to sideload you can follow our guide here.

Microsoft

Microsoft's .NET Foundation Under Fire As Resigning Board Member Questions Its Role (theregister.com) 45

The role of Microsoft's .NET Foundation, set up for the governance and support of open-source .NET and related projects, has been questioned by a former board member who resigned in frustration. Here's an excerpt from The Register's report: Rodney Littles II is a software engineer at Megsoft Consulting and core maintainer of an open-source project, ReactiveUI, which is a .NET Foundation project. The .NET Foundation was formed in 2014 and describes itself as "an independent, non-profit organization established to support an innovative, commercially friendly, open-source ecosystem around the .NET platform." Littles joined the .NET Foundation board in August 2020. In his campaign pitch he spoke of a "serious disconnect in the .NET ecosystem" in that Microsoft promotes .NET open source but that the community around it is not healthy. "Maintainers of .NET OSS that Microsoft wants to help thrive are still in rough shape," he said. The sustainability of open-source projects was a key concern, as was expanding the .NET open-source ecosystem.

Littles resigned from the .NET Foundation board ahead of its elections in September. He intended to say nothing in public about it, but changed his mind when the foundation posted that "we wish him all the best as he refocuses on his personal life." Concerned friends contacted him, resulting in this post, where he explains some of the background to his resignation and said: "I am fine. No issue in my personal life took me away from the board." According to Littles' post, "the .NET Foundation was not concerned about its membership" and "hasn't been transparent with the community about anything." He asked the foundation: "Are you here to enforce Microsoft's will on .NET Open Source, or are you here to help foster and promote a healthy community?" He added: "The scoreboard doesn't look good for the latter... I watched Microsoft kill an Open Source Project, while my friends in the community demanded the Foundation say something, I felt powerless to do anything. It was clear the reasons I joined the Foundation weren't important."

We asked Littles about his experience of being on the board. He joined, he told us, with the awareness that the previous board "was not a fully functioning board... it didn't seem coherent, it didn't seem that it was a board moving towards a goal. They put up the maturity model which I had a very big issue with." Project Maturity was a pilot including "maturity profiles," designed to improve software quality. The project was abandoned shortly after its introduction after community members complained that it was over-reaching, with board member Ben Adams acknowledging that "we didn't then open this discussion up to all projects, to find out if it was acceptable to them, or if there was a better way. This was wrong." Littles told us: "My problem with the maturity model was it seemed too Microsoft bureaucratic... member projects would have to provide a service level agreement for consumers of those libraries... it was elitist and exclusionary. I felt the model should have been more about how do we open up a path for a small open-source library to go from a one-person labour of love to a library that the community can depend on? I felt the focus was more on overseeing and dictating versus nurturing and helping."

Microsoft engaged in some strange behavior with regard to its WinGet project, finding out all the details of an existing open-source project called AppGet by dangling the prospect of a job at Microsoft for its creator, but then in effect killing that open-source project though borrowing many of its ideas. Littles was more than disappointed. "The foundation, which is supposed to be the champion for open source, said nothing," Littles told us. "The foundation remained silent and to me, that was extremely loud... that is what made me wake up and realize the foundation doesn't care about the community or incidents like this... the community was in outrage behind this and the Foundation that's supposed to be Microsoft's open source arm said nothing." AppGet was not a .NET Foundation project, but Little felt that "if you're here for open source, you cannot be exclusionary, you cannot say it's not a foundation project so we don't care."

Encryption

Telegram Founder Says Over 70 Million New Users Joined During Facebook Outage (reuters.com) 50

Messaging app Telegram gained over 70 million new users during Monday's Facebook outage, its founder Pavel Durov said on Tuesday, as people worldwide were left without key messaging services for nearly six hours. Reuters reports: Facebook blamed its outage, which kept its 3.5 billion users from accessing services such as WhatsApp, Instagram and Messenger, on a faulty configuration change. "The daily growth rate of Telegram exceeded the norm by an order of magnitude, and we welcomed over 70 million refugees from other platforms in one day," Durov wrote on his Telegram channel. Durov said some users in the Americas may have experienced slower speeds as millions rushed to sign up at the same time, but that the service worked as usual for the majority.
Microsoft

Microsoft Explains How It Keeps PC Makers Happy While Also Competing With Them (cnbc.com) 60

The partners that license Windows haven't always supported Microsoft's moves to step on their turf with its own tablets and laptops. So how is Microsoft navigating those relationships now? From a report: The CEO of Acer told the Financial Times Microsoft should "think twice" when it first introduced its Surface tablet in 2012. And Asus reportedly felt blindsided when Microsoft chief product officer Panos Panay unveiled the Surface Book -- which was more like a traditional laptop computer -- in 2015. When Panay speaks at Microsoft events about the latest Surface computers, he almost unnaturally enthusiastic and oddly specific about hardware components. Now, he said, he's excited -- he likes to use the word "pumped" -- about the diversity of options for consumers and organizations, no matter who builds the hardware.

"OEMs provide choice for customers," Panos said of Microsoft's partners. "Not just choice for choice's sake. What do you want to accomplish? You can pick a device that suits you." In 2016, Microsoft announced a partnership with Lenovo, the world's biggest seller of PCs, in an effort to prevent conflicts that might arise between the Surface business and Windows. "We came to a very simple approach...we call it a level playing field," said Lenovo's leader of worldwide strategic alliances, Christian Eigen, who has known Panay for 15 years. "It means Microsoft does not give, from an operating system point of view, any feature exclusively to Surface." The CEOs of Microsoft and Lenovo communicate four to six times per year, and teams lower down in the organizations talk 12 to 24 times per year, Eigen explained. Microsoft also improved its communications with partners around Windows 11. "It was definitely, by far, more transparent and open and kind of cooperative development," Eigen said. [...] "My whole goal is, 'Hey, what do your customers need?' This is from an OEM brand perspective," Panay said. "Same with Surface. 'What do the Surface customers need?' Ultimately, they're all Windows customers." He said has has had input on every Surface model, including the Surface Laptop Studio PC that went on sale this week.

Government

Ransomware Bill Would Give Victims 48 Hours To Report Payments (bloomberg.com) 89

Victims of ransomware attacks would be required to report payments to their hackers within 48 hours under a proposal from Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren and Democratic Representative Deborah Ross. From a report: The Ransom Disclosure Act would give the Department of Homeland Security data on ransomware payments, including the amount of money demanded and paid, and the type of currency used. The lawmakers say this is essential to bolster the U.S. government's understanding of how hackers operate and the extent of the ransomware threat. "Ransomware attacks are skyrocketing, yet we lack critical data to go after cybercriminals," Warren said in a statement on Tuesday.
Technology

Amazon is Working on a Smart Fridge That Tracks What's Inside (techcrunch.com) 105

Amazon is reportedly aiming to bring some of the tech it uses at cashierless Amazon Go stores to your kitchen. According to Insider, the company has been working on a smart fridge that can monitor items and help you order replacements if you're running low on something. From a report: The team behind the Amazon Go systems is said to be heading the charge on the project, which has been in the works for at least two years. The Just Walk Out tech used at Go stores tracks what shoppers put in their carts and automatically charges them when they leave. Members of the Amazon Fresh and Lab126 hardware teams are reportedly involved with the fridge project too. The fridge would monitor the items inside and keep tabs on your purchasing habits, according to the report. If you run low on something you buy frequently, the fridge would notify you and make it easier to order more from Whole Foods or Amazon Fresh, which could give the company's grocery division a boost. The fridge could offer recipe suggestions too, which may prove useful if you forget about an item that's about to expire.
United States

US Lawmakers Demand Facebook Probes; Whistleblower Says Children Harmed (reuters.com) 100

U.S. lawmakers pounded Facebook on Tuesday, accusing CEO Mark Zuckerberg of pushing for higher profits while being cavalier about user safety and they demanded regulators investigate whistleblower accusations that the social media company harms children and stokes divisions. Reuters: Coming a day after Facebook and its units including Instagram suffered a major outage, whistleblower Frances Haugen testified in a congressional hearing that "for more than five hours Facebook wasn't used to deepen divides, destabilize democracies and make young girls and women feel bad about their bodies." In an era when bipartisanship is rare on Capitol Hill, lawmakers from both parties excoriated the nearly $1 trillion company in a hearing that exemplified the rising anger in Congress with Facebook amid numerous demands for legislative reforms.

As lawmakers criticized Facebook and Zuckerberg, the company's spokespeople fought back on Twitter, arguing Haugen did not work directly on some of the issues she was being questioned on. Senate Commerce subcommittee chair Senator Richard Blumenthal, a Democrat, said Facebook knew that its products were addictive, like cigarettes. "Tech now faces that big tobacco jawdropping moment of truth," he said. He called for Zuckerberg to testify before the committee, and for the Securities and Exchange Commission and Federal Trade Commission to investigate the company. "Our children are the ones who are victims. Teens today looking in the mirror feel doubt and insecurity. Mark Zuckerberg ought to be looking at himself in the mirror," Blumenthal said, adding that Zuckerberg instead was going sailing.

Haugen, a former product manager on Facebook's civic misinformation team who has turned whistleblower, said Facebook has sought to keep its operations confidential. "Today, no regulator has a menu of solutions for how to fix Facebook, because Facebook didn't want them to know enough about what's causing the problems. Otherwise, there wouldn't have been need for a whistleblower," she said. The top Republican on the subcommittee, Marsha Blackburn, said that Facebook turned a blind eye to children below age 13 on its sites. "It is clear that Facebook prioritizes profit over the well-being of children and all users."

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