Donald Trump's Facebook account should not be reinstated, the social media giant's oversight board said on Wednesday, barring an imminent return to the platform. From a report: However, the board has punted the final decision over Trump's account back to Facebook itself, suggesting the platform make a decision in six months regarding what to do with Trump's account and whether it will be permanently deleted. Facebook suspended Trump's account after the Capitol attack of 6 January, when a mob of Trump supporters stormed Congress in an attempt to overturn the former president's defeat by Joe Biden in the 2020 presidential election. Trump was initially suspended from Facebook and Instagram for 24 hours, as a result of two posts shared to the platform in which he appeared to praise the actions of the rioters. The company then extended the president's ban "at least until the end of his time in office." His account was suspended indefinitely pending the decision of the oversight board, a group of appointed academics and former politicians meant to operate independently of Facebook's corporate leadership.

Berkshire Hathaway is trading at more than $421,000 per Class A share, and the market is optimistic. That's a problem. From a report: The price has grown so high, it has nearly hit the maximum number that can be stored in one common way exchange computers handle digits. On Tuesday, Nasdaq temporarily suspended broadcasting prices for Class A shares of Berkshire over several popular data feeds. Such feeds provide real-time price updates for a number of online brokerages and finance websites. Nasdaq's computers can only count so high because of the compact digital format they use for communicating prices. The biggest number they can handle is $429,496.7295. Nasdaq is rushing to finish an upgrade later this month that would fix the problem. It isn't just Nasdaq.

Another exchange operator, IEX Group Inc., said in March that it would stop accepting investors' orders in Class A shares of Berkshire Hathaway "due to an internal price limitation within the trading system." It's the stock-market version of the Y2K bug. And it's becoming an increasingly urgent issue as shares of Warren Buffett's company have risen more than 20% this year, buoyed by a rising market and a return to profitability after fallout from the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020. Here's the trouble: Nasdaq and some other market operators record stock prices in a compact computer format that uses 32 bits, or ones and zeros. The biggest number possible is two to the 32nd power minus one, or 4,294,967,295. Stock prices are frequently stored using four decimal places, so the highest possible price is $429,496.7295. No other stock is anywhere near Berkshire Class A's stratospheric price levels, so it is understandable why the engineers behind Nasdaq's and IEX's systems chose the number format, which programmers call a four-byte unsigned integer.

sciencehabit shares a report from Science Magazine: When humans first set foot in Australia more than 65,000 years ago, they faced the perilous task of navigating a landscape they'd never seen. Now, researchers have used supercomputers to simulate 125 billion possible travel routes and reconstruct the most likely "superhighways" these ancient immigrants used as they spread across the continent. The project offers new insight into how landmarks and water supplies shape human migrations, and provides archaeologists with clues for where to look for undiscovered ancient settlements.

It took weeks to run the complex simulations on a supercomputer operated by the U.S. government. But the number crunching ultimately revealed a network of "optimal superhighways" that had the most attractive combinations of easy walking, water, and landmarks. Optimal road map in hand, the researchers faced a fundamental question, says lead author Stefani Crabtree, an archaeologist at Utah State University, Logan, and the Santa Fe Institute: Was there any evidence that real people had once used these computer-identified corridors? To find out, the researchers compared their routes to the locations of the roughly three dozen archaeological sites in Australia known to be at least 35,000 years old. Many sites sat on or near the superhighways. Some corridors also coincided with ancient trade routes known from indigenous oral histories, or aligned with genetic and linguistic studies used to trace early human migrations. "I think all of us were surprised by the goodness of the fit," says archaeologist Sean Ulm of James Cook University, Cairns.

The map has also highlighted little-studied migration corridors that could yield future archaeological discoveries. For example, some early superhighways sat on coastal lands that are now submerged, giving marine researchers a guide for exploration. Even more intriguing, the authors and others say, are major routes that cut across several arid areas in Australia's center and in the northeastern state of Queensland. Those paths challenge a "long-standing view that the earliest people avoided the deserts," Ulm says. The Queensland highway, in particular, presents "an excellent focus point" for future archaeological surveys, says archaeologist Shimona Kealy of the Australian National University. The study has been published in the journal Nature Human Behavior.

schwit1 shares a report from CNN: The Biden administration is considering using outside firms to track extremist chatter by Americans online, an effort that would expand the government's ability to gather intelligence but could draw criticism over surveillance of US citizens. The plan being discussed inside DHS, according to multiple sources, would, in effect, allow the department to circumvent' [restrictions the U.S. government has to surveil American citizens]. A source familiar with the effort said it is not about decrypting data but rather using outside entities who can legally access these private groups to gather large amounts of information that could help DHS identify key narratives as they emerge.

In response to CNN's story, DHS said it "is not partnering with private firms to surveil suspected domestic terrorists online" and "it is blatantly false" to suggest that the department is using outside firms to circumvent its legal limits. "All of our work to address the threat of domestic terrorism is done consistent with the Constitution and other applicable law, and in close coordination with our privacy and civil liberties experts," the DHS statement added. But the department has considered partnering with research firms who have more visibility in this space, though it has not done so to this point, the sources said. If that ultimately happens, DHS could produce information that would likely be beneficial to both it and the FBI, which can't monitor US citizens in this way without first getting a warrant or having the pretext of an ongoing investigation. The CIA and NSA are also limited on collecting intelligence domestically.

Researchers who already monitor such activity online could act as middlemen to obtain the information. DHS officials maintain the materials provided would only consist of broad summaries or analysis of narratives that are emerging on these sites and would not be used to target specific individuals. But some of the research firms and non-profit groups under consideration by the DHS periodically use covert identities to access private social media groups like Telegram, and others used by domestic extremist groups. That thrusts DHS into a potential legal gray area even as it plugs an intelligence gap that critics say contributed to the failure to predict the assault on the Capitol.

The Apple vs. Epic legal battle has brought new documents to light, revealing the strained relationship between Apple and Facebook that dates as far back as 2011. 9to5Mac reports: Around this time, Facebook had not yet released a dedicated app for the iPad, which debuted in 2010. Apple's Scott Forstall, then serving as the company's software chief, sent an email to Phil Schiller and Steve Jobs regarding a meeting he had with Mark Zuckerberg about bringing Facebook to the iPad. At the heart of Facebook's concerns was that Apple would not allow the Facebook for iPad application to include "embedded apps." Forstall wrote: "I just discussed with Mark how they should not include embedded apps in the Facebook iPad app -- neither in an embedded web view or as a directory of links that would redirect to Safari. Not surprisingly, he wasn't happy with this as he considers these apps part of the 'whole Facebook experience' and isn't sure they should do an iPad app without them. Everything works in Safari, so he is hesitant to push people to a native app with less functionality, even if the native app is better for non-third party app features."

Zuckerberg suggested a few compromises to Forstall: Do not include a directory of apps in the Facebook app, links, or otherwise; Do not have third-party apps run in the embedded web view; Allow user posts in the news feed related to apps; and Tapping on one of these app-related links would (1) fast switch to a native app if one exists and the user has it installed, (2) take the user to the App Store if a native app exists and the user has not installed it, (3) link out to Safari otherwise.

"I think this is all reasonable, with the possible exception of #3," Forstall wrote in the email. Steve Jobs responded and wrote, "I agree -- if we eliminate Fecebooks third proposal it sounds reasonable." Note Jobs's spelling of Facebook there. A few days later, Forstall followed up and said that Zuckerberg did not like Apple's counterproposal. [...] CNBC adds: "When Facebook's iPad app eventually launched, it said that it would not support its own Credits currency on iOS for apps like Farmville -- a compromise along the lines of what Apple's executives discussed.

Microsoft is preparing to issue two more Windows 10 updates in June and July that will eliminate unsupported Adobe Flash Player from Windows PCs for good. ZDNet reports: The update KB4577586 called "Update for Removal of Adobe Flash Player" has been available as an optional update since October and now looks set for a broader deployment. Flash Player officially reached end of life on December 31, 2020 as per an announcement by Adobe and major browser makers in 2017.

"Starting in June 2021, the KB4577586 "Update for Removal of Adobe Flash Player" will be included in the Preview Update for Windows 10, version 1809 and above platforms. It will also be included in every subsequent Latest Cumulative Update," Microsoft said. "As of July 2021, the KB4577586 "Update for Removal of Adobe Flash Player" will be included in the Latest Cumulative Update for Windows 10, versions 1607 and Windows 10, version 1507. The KB will also be included in the Monthly Rollup and the Security Only Update for Windows 8.1, Windows Server 2012, and Windows Embedded 8 Standard," it added.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Frontier Communications emerged from Chapter 11 bankruptcy on Friday, saying that it plans to double its fiber-to-the-premises footprint by extending fiber to an additional 3 million homes and businesses. "Frontier is deploying capital and pursuing an extensive fiber build-out plan that will accelerate the company's transformation from a legacy provider of copper-based services to a fiber-based provider... Under the first phase of the plan, Frontier intends to invest heavily and pass more than 3 million homes and business locations, enabling a total of over 6 million homes and businesses with Gig-plus speeds," the company said in a press release.

Expanding to 3 million additional homes will take multiple years, as Frontier said it plans to reach "approximately 495,000 additional locations in 2021." That apparently includes 100,000 new fiber locations already built in the first three months of this year. Frontier is analyzing whether it can "at least double the build rate next year," Frontier's newly hired CEO Nick Jeffery said, according to FierceTelecom. "We have 3.4 million total fiber passings today and plan to at least double this footprint over the coming years," Jeffery also said.

Frontier's current network consists of copper lines that pass 11.8 million homes and businesses and fiber lines passing 3.4 million homes and businesses, Frontier said in a presentation for investors. Even if Frontier achieves its goal of doubling its fiber network, over 8 million homes and businesses would remain stuck on Frontier's old copper network, which provides slower DSL service. Although Frontier didn't promise to extend fiber to all or even to a majority of its copper locations, its presentation said the company's network has a "substantial competitive advantage relative to competitors" because it includes "12 million copper passings to potentially convert to fiber."

Indian telecom ministry on Tuesday said it has granted several telecom service providers permission to conduct a six-month trial for the use and application of 5G technology in the country. From a report: New Delhi has granted approval to over a dozen firm spanning multiple nationalities -- excluding China. Among the telecom operators that have received the grant include Jio Platforms, Airtel, Vodafone Idea, and MTNL. These firms, the ministry said, will work with original equipment manufacturers and tech providers Ericsson, Nokia, Samsung, and C-Dot. Jio Platforms, additionally, has been granted permission to conduct trials using its own homegrown technology. In a press note, the Department of Telecommunications didn't specify anything about China, but a person familiar with the matter confirmed that Chinese giants Huawei and ZTE aren't among those who have received the approval. [...] India's move on Tuesday follows similar decisions taken by the U.S., UK, and Australia, all of which have expressed concerns about Huawei and ZTE and their ties with the Chinese government.

New data from Chartbeat finds that working from home has pushed people to scroll deeper through article pages on desktop, and slightly less through articles on mobile. From a report: The change, which coincides with the start of the pandemic, could suggest that users prefer to engage more with article pages when they have the opportunity to read them on a bigger screen. Several factors could be influencing the trend, says Bonnie Ray, head of data science at Chartbeat, an analytics company. Desktop usage has spiked overall as people spend more time at home. Pre-pandemic article reading habits on mobile may have shifted to desktop. Articles are encountered differently on desktop versus mobile. Ray found the portion of article views from search with no scrolling has gone down significantly over time, but hasn't changed on social. A higher percentage of search traffic versus social occurs on desktop, so "it could be that articles we seek out via search are more relevant to us versus ones served up to us on social," Ray says.

Window heights: Desktop scrolling may have increased more relative to mobile because window heights on desktop have changed very little over the past year, hovering at ~780 pixels, while window heights on mobile have increased from ~580 to 650 pixels. The trend mostly holds true for all but the smallest of websites.

wiredmikey shares a report from SecurityWeek: Security researchers have shown how a Tesla -- and possibly other cars -- can be hacked remotely without any user interaction from a drone. This was the result of research conducted last year by Ralf-Philipp Weinmann of Kunnamon and Benedikt Schmotzle of Comsecuris. The attack, dubbed TBONE, involves exploitation of two vulnerabilities affecting ConnMan, an internet connection manager for embedded devices. A hacker who exploits the vulnerabilities can perform any task that a regular user could from the infotainment system. That includes opening doors, changing seat positions, playing music, controlling the air conditioning, and modifying steering and acceleration modes. They showed how an attacker could use a drone to launch an attack via Wi-Fi to hack a parked car and open its doors from a distance of up to 100 meters (roughly 300 feet). They claimed the exploit worked against Tesla S, 3, X and Y models. "Tesla patched the vulnerabilities with an update pushed out in October 2020, and it has reportedly stopped using ConnMan," the report notes. Since the ConnMan component is widely used in the automotive industry, similar attacks could be launched against other vehicles.

RealNeoMorpheus writes: Arm pioneer Hermann Hauser has once again criticized Nvidia's plan to acquire the semiconductor design company, with The Telegraph reporting Sunday that he believes Nvidia is "clearly showing it will compete unfairly" if the deal is approved. Hauser's concerns reportedly centered on the Grace processor Nvidia announced at GTC 2021. The company's first Arm-based CPU will connect to high-end GPUs via NVLink, which purportedly offers data transfer speeds up to 900 GBps. That's significantly faster than other technologies -- it's also exclusively available to Nvidia.

This is why Hauser told The Telegraph that he believes using a proprietary interface like NVLink could end up "locking customers into [Nvidia] products," which "clearly shows that they will compete unfairly with other Arm-based server companies such as Amazon and Fujitsu," rather than retaining Arm's neutrality. [...] Nvidia told The Telegraph that Hauser "does not understand what Grace will do or its benefits to Arm" and that "we have been working on Grace using off-the-shelf Arm technology, available to all Arm licensees, long before we agreed to acquire Arm."

Amid the hodgepodge of Verizon Media assets that Apollo Global Management is buying from Verizon -- Yahoo Finance, TechCrunch, advertising technology, Yahoo Fantasy -- there's one cash flow stream that will not die: AOL. From a report: The famed internet company that once bought Time Warner for $182 billion and used to make billions of dollars annually selling dial-up modem access, still has a monthly subscription service called AOL Advantage. In 2015, 2.1 million people were still using AOL's dial-up service. That revenue stream has dried up. The number of dial-up users is now "in the low thousands," according to a person familiar with the matter.

But AOL still has a fairly lucrative base of customers who pay for technical support and identity theft services each month. There are about 1.5 million monthly customers paying $9.99 or $14.99 per month for AOL Advantage, said another person, who asked not to be named because the information is private. If average revenue per user is $10 per month, conservatively, that's $180 million of annual revenue.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from New Atlas: A fascinating new study from a team of US researchers has used machine learning techniques to develop algorithms that can analyze naturalistic driving data and detect mild cognitive impairment and dementia in a driver. The work is still in the preliminary stages, however, the researchers claim it could be possible in the future to detect early signs of dementia using either a smartphone app or devices incorporated into car software systems. The research utilized data from a novel long-term study called LongROAD (The Longitudinal Research on Aging Drivers), which tracked nearly 3,000 older drivers for up to four years, offering a large longitudinal dataset.

Over the course of the LongROAD study, 33 subjects were diagnosed with MCI and 31 with dementia. A series of machine learning models were trained on the LongROAD data, tasked with detecting MCI and dementia from driving behaviors. "Based on variables derived from the naturalistic driving data and basic demographic characteristics, such as age, sex, race/ethnicity and education level, we could predict mild cognitive impairment and dementia with 88 percent accuracy," says Sharon Di, lead author on the new study. Although age was the number one factor for detecting MCI or dementia, a number of driving variables closely followed. These include, "the percentage of trips traveled within 15 miles (24 km) of home ... the length of trips starting and ending at home, minutes per trip, and number of hard braking events with deceleration rates 0.35 g." Using driving variables alone, the models could still predict those MCI or dementia drivers with 66 percent accuracy. The new study was published in the journal Geriatrics.

EBay is open to the possibility of accepting cryptocurrency as a form of payment in the future and is looking at ways to get non-fungible tokens (NFTs) on its platform, the company said on Monday. Reuters reports: "We are always looking at the most relevant forms of payment and will continue to assess that going forward. We have no immediate plans, but it (cryptocurrency) is something we are keeping an eye on," eBay said in a statement to Reuters. In an interview with CNBC, Chief Executive Officer Jamie Iannone said that accepting virtual currency was an option the company was looking at.

EBay, which disappointed investors with a weak second-quarter profit forecast last week, said it was looking at a "number of ways" to get into the NFT space. NFTs, a type of digital asset that exists on a blockchain, have exploded in popularity this year, with NFT artworks selling for millions of dollars and musicians such as the Kings of Leon rock group embracing them for their latest album. "We're exploring opportunities on how we can enable it (NFTs) on eBay in an easy way," Iannone said on CNBC. "Everything that's collectible has been on eBay for decades and will continue to be for the next few decades."

iFixit has ripped apart Apple's recently-released AirTag, a small battery-powered tag that will allow you to track your items within Apple's "Find My" app on iOS. An anonymous reader shares an excerpt from an Ars Technica article: Like with most Apple products, it looks like some serious engineering went into the $29 tracker. The device is barely larger than the user-replaceable CR2032 battery that powers it, putting competing devices like the Tile and Samsung Galaxy SmartTags to shame with their comparative bulk. Inside, a single circuit board uses a unique donut-shaped design that crams all the components into a ring under the battery. The hole in the middle of the circuit board lets Apple pack in a surprisingly huge voice coil speaker. The speaker is just for playing ringtones so you can find your AirTagged thing when you lose it, but apparently, the ringtones will be super high quality.

The other very Apple-like quality of the AirTag is that it almost seems designed to sell accessories. The most popular use for these trackers is to help find your car keys, but out of the box, there is no way to attach a keychain to an AirTag. Instead, Apple has enabled a wide ecosystem of AirTag cases ranging from a $13 keyring holder to a $449 (yes, that's four hundred forty-nine dollars) Hermes' luggage tag. iFixit's solution to the much-demanded keyring hole is -- what else -- a power drill! The teardown experts found some suitable dead space inside the AirTag that somehow isn't blocked by either the battery, speaker, or circuit board, and after some careful drilling, iFixit's AirTag now has a keychain hole with the least possible bulk. "The AirTag survived the operation like a champ and works as if nothing happened," the site says. iFixit went on to note that the sound profile "didn't seem to change much," but the IP67 dust and water resistance rating is now greatly compromised.

AOL and Yahoo are being sold again, this time to a private equity firm. From a report: Wireless company Verizon will sell Verizon Media, which consists of the once-pioneering tech platforms, to Apollo Global Management in a $5 billion deal. Verizon said Monday that it will keep a 10% stake in the new company, which will be called Yahoo. Yahoo at the end of the last century was the face of the internet, preceding the behemoth tech platforms to follow, such as Google and Facebook. And AOL was the portal, bringing almost everyone who logged on during the internet's earliest days. Verizon spent about $9 billion buying AOL and Yahoo over two years starting in 2015, hoping to jump-start a digital media business that would compete with Google and Facebook.

"After more than 25 years of Canadian governments pursuing a hands-off approach to the online world, the government of Justin Trudeau is now pushing Bill C-10, a law that would see Canadians subjected to the most regulated internet in the free world," argues the Vancouver Sun (in an article shared by long-time Slashdot reader theshowmecanuck): Although pitched as a way to expand Canadian content provisions to the online sphere, the powers of Bill C-10 have expanded considerably in committee, including a provision introduced last week that could conceivably allow the federal government to order the deletion of any Facebook, YouTube, Instagram or Twitter upload made by a Canadian. In comments this week, NDP leader Jagmeet Singh indicated his party was open to providing the votes needed to pass C-10, seeing the bill as a means to combat online hate...

The users themselves may not necessarily be subject to direct CRTC regulation, but social media providers would have to answer to every post on their platforms as if it were a TV show or radio program. This might be a good time to mention that members of the current Liberal cabinet have openly flirted with empowering the federal government to control social media. In a September Tweet, Infrastructure Minister Catherine McKenna said that if social media companies "can't regulate yourselves, governments will." Guilbeault, the prime champion of Bill C-10, has spoken openly of a federal regulator that could order takedowns of any social media post that it deems to be hateful or propagandistic...

Basically, if your Canadian website isn't a text-only GeoCities blog from 1996, Bill C-10 thinks it's a program deserving of CRTC regulation. This covers news sites, podcasts, blogs, the websites of political parties or activist groups and even foreign websites that might be seen in Canada...

The penalties prescribed by Bill C-10 are substantial. For corporations, a first offence can yield penalties of up to $10 million, while subsequent offences could be up to $15 million apiece. If TikTok, Twitter, Facebook and YouTube are suddenly put in a situation where their millions of users must follow the same rules as a Canadian cable channel or radio station, it's not unreasonable to assume they may just follow Facebook's example [in Australia] and take the nuclear option.

This week ZDNet dedicated an article to "the most popular Fedora Linux in years." Red Hat's community Linux distribution Fedora has always been popular with open-source and Linux developers, but this latest release, Fedora 34 seems to be something special. As Matthew Miller, Fedora Project Leader, tweeted, "The beta for F34 was one of the most popular ever, with twice as many systems showing up in my stats as typical."

Why? Nick Gerace, a Rancher software engineer, thinks it's because "I've never seen the project in a better state, and I think GNOME 40 is a large motivator as well. Probably a combination of each, from anecdotal evidence." He's onto something. When Canonical released Ubuntu 21.04 a few days earlier, their developers opted to stay with the tried and true GNOME 39 desktop. Fedora's people decided to go with GNOME 40 for their default desktop even though it's a radical update to the GNOME interface. Besides boasting a new look, GNOME 40 is based on the new GTK 4.0 graphical toolkit. Under the pretty new exterior, this update also fixed numerous issues and smoothed out many rough spots.

If you'd rather have another desktop, you can also get Fedora 34 with the newest KDE Plasma Desktop, Xfce 4.16, Cinnamon, etc. You name your favorite Linux desktop interface, Fedora will almost certainly deliver it to you... Another feature I like is that, since Fedora 33, the default file system is Btrfs. I find it faster and more responsive than ext4, perhaps the most popular Linux desktop file system. What's different this time around is that it now defaults to using Btrfs transparent compression. Besides saving significant storage space — typically from 20 to 40% — Red Hat also claims this increases the lifespan of SSDs and other flash media.
Although the article does point out that most users will never reach the end of that SSD lifespan (approximately ten years of normal use), it suggests that "developers, who might for example compile Linux kernels every day, might reach that point before a PC's usual end of useful life."

In a possibly related note, Linus Torvalds said this week in a new interview that "I use Fedora on all my machines, not because it's necessarily 'preferred', but because it's what I'm used to. I don't care deeply about the distribution — to me it's mainly a way to get Linux installed on a machine and get all my tools set up, so that I can then replace the kernel and work on just that."

This week the New York Times published their online investigation into the seamy world of the professional slander industry. (Alternate URL.)
At first glance, the websites appear amateurish. They have names like BadGirlReports.date, BustedCheaters.com and WorstHomeWrecker.com. Photos are badly cropped. Grammar and spelling are afterthoughts. They are clunky and text-heavy, as if they're intended to be read by machines, not humans. But do not underestimate their power...

One woman in Ohio was the subject of so many negative posts that Bing declared in bold at the top of her search results that she "is a liar and a cheater" — the same way it states that Barack Obama was the 44th president of the United States. For roughly 500 of the 6,000 people we searched for, Google suggested adding the phrase "cheater" to a search of their names. The unverified claims are on obscure, ridiculous-looking sites, but search engines give them a veneer of credibility. Posts from Cheaterboard.com appear in Google results alongside Facebook pages and LinkedIn profiles....

That would be bad enough for people whose reputations have been savaged. But the problem is all the worse because it's so hard to fix. And that is largely because of the secret, symbiotic relationship between those facilitating slander and those getting paid to remove it.
Who, exactly? The Times spoke to:

• Cyrus Sullivan, the Portland-based owner of one site who also runs a reputation-management service "to help people get 'undesirable information' about themselves removed from their search engine results. The 'gold package' cost $699.99. For those customers, Mr. Sullivan would alter the computer code underlying the offending posts, instructing search engines to ignore them...."

• 247Removal's owner Heidi Glosser, who "charges $750 or more per post removal, which adds up to thousands of dollars for most of her clients. To get posts removed, she said, she often pays an 'administrative fee' to the gripe site's webmaster. We asked her whether this was extortion. 'I can't really give you a direct answer,' she said." She appeared to have links to...

• Web developer Vikram Parmar, who seemed to be running several sites that produced slander while also simultaneously running sites that made money by removing that slander.

But finally, the Times reminded their readers that "in certain circumstances, Google will remove harmful content from individuals' search results, including links to 'sites with exploitative removal practices.' If a site charges to remove posts, you can ask Google not to list it.

"Google didn't advertise this policy widely, and few victims of online slander seem aware that it's an option. That's in part because when you Google ways to clean up your search results, Google's solution is buried under ads for reputation-management services..."

An anonymous reader quotes Inside.com's developer newsletter: GitHub is blocking Google's new third-party cookie tracking alternative, Federated Learning of Cohorts (FLoC), across all of GitHub Pages. Those GitHub Pages served from the github.io domain will now come with a Permissions-Policy: interest-cohort=() header set, although Pages sites with custom domains will not.

Several big names have also spoken out against the new alternative and implemented similar moves. WordPress is proposing automatically blocking FLoC by default on its websites, dubbing it a security risk. However, WordPress says it may add a setting that will enable admins to control whether FLoC is allowed.

Firefox, Brave, and Vivaldi have also issued similar moves...

One web developer recently published a guide showing others how to opt their site out of Google's FLoC Network. Developer Paramdeo Singh shows you how to ensure your web server doesn't participate in the network by adding a custom HTTP response header to web and proxy server configurations.