An anonymous reader quotes a report from 9to5Google: Smartphones have already obviated single-purpose gadgets like point-and-shoot cameras and MP3 players. Google today announced the Android Ready SE Alliance to make sure new phones have the underlying hardware to eventually replace car/home keys and wallets. "Emerging user features" -- digital keys, mobile driver's license (mDL), national ID, ePassports, and eMoney solutions (wallets) -- require two things. The first is tamper-resistant hardware, like the Pixel's Titan M chip, which makes possible tamper-resistant key storage for Android apps (to store data) called StrongBox. "All these features need to run on tamper-resistant hardware to protect the integrity of the application executables and a user's data, keys, wallet, and more," writes Google in a blog post. "Most modern phones now include discrete tamper-resistant hardware called a Secure Element (SE)."

Google has determined that "SE offers the best path for introducing these new consumer use cases in Android." To "accelerate adoption," the company and partners (Giesecke+Devrient, Kigen, NXP, STMicroelectronics, and Thales) today announced the Android Ready SE Alliance. Besides phones, StrongBox is also available for Wear OS, Android Auto Embedded, and Android TV. Google says it's currently focusing on digital car keys, mobile driver's license, and other identity credentials, with unnamed "Android OEMs adopting Android Ready SE for their devices."

phalse phace shares a report from CNBC: WeWork has agreed to go public through a merger with blank-check firm BowX Acquisition Corp in a deal that values the office-sharing startup at $9 billion including debt. It marks a steep drop from the $47 billion that WeWork was valued for a listing in 2019, ahead of a botched listing plan that imploded due to investor concerns over its business model and its founder Adam Neumann's management style.

Back then Goldman Sachs bankers had said the valuation could hit as much as $65 billion, but instead it plummeted to roughly $8 billion after SoftBank was forced to extend a life-saving financing lifeline to WeWork. The startup told prospective investors it lost about $3.2 billion last year as part of a pitch for a stock market listing by merging with a special purpose acquisition company (SPAC), sources told Reuters earlier this week.

nickwinlund77 shares a report from The Register: The chorus of disapproval over Richard M Stallman, founder and former president of the Free Software Foundation (FSF), rejoining the organization has intensified as Linux giant Red Hat confirmed it was pulling funding. Stallman announced he had returned to the FSF's Board of Directors last weekend -- news that has not gone down well with all in the community and Red Hat is the latest to register its dismay.

CTO Chris Wright tweeted overnight: "I am really outraged by FSF's decision to reinstate RMS. At a moment in time where diversity and inclusion awareness is growing, this is a step backwards." Describing itself as "appalled" at the return of Stallman to the FSF board of directors "considering the circumstances of Richard Stallman's original resignation in 2019," Red Hat said it decided to act. "We are immediately suspending all Red Hat funding of the FSF and any FSF-hosted events. In addition, many Red Hat contributors have told us they no longer plan to participate in FSF-led or backed events, and we stand behind them," said Red Hat.

The ACLU will be seeking information about how the government is using artificial intelligence in national security, Axios reported Friday. From a report: The development of AI has major implications for security, surveillance, and justice. The ACLU's request may help shed some light on the government's often opaque applications of AI. Later today the ACLU will be filing a broad Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request to the CIA, the NSA, the Department of Homeland Security and other agencies concerning the government's use of AI, especially in the area of national security. "The problem with these AI systems is that they're black boxes," says Patrick Toomey, senior staff attorney at the ACLU National Security Project. "The public needs to know exactly what kinds of fundamental decisions about our lives the government is handing over to AI." The ACLU is specifically concerned about "vetting and screening processes in agencies like Homeland Security, and tools that can analyze voice, data and video," says Toomey. Another area of concern is the possibility that AI systems could be "biased against people of color, women and marginalized communities," he adds. "AI systems could be used to supercharge government activities to unfairly scrutinize communities through intrusive surveillance, questioning and even detention and watchlisting."

Facebook will start to reopen its Silicon Valley offices beginning in May, a signal the technology industry may return -- at least in part -- to the office after more than a year of working from home during the global pandemic. From a report: Facebook will begin by opening Bay Area offices at just 10% capacity, and expects that its largest offices, including its headquarters in Menlo Park, California, won't reach 50% capacity until early September. Employees have been able to work remotely since offices were closed last spring, and will be allowed to continue doing so until a month after their office returns to 50% capacity, a spokesperson said.

China's Xiaomi plans to make electric vehicles (EVs) using Great Wall Motor Co Ltd's factory, Reuters reported Friday, citing three people with direct knowledge of the matter, making it the latest tech firm to join the smart mobility race. From a report: Xiaomi, one of the world's biggest smartphone makers, is in talks to use one of Great Wall's plants in China to make EVs under its own brand, said two of the people, who declined to be identified as the information is not public. Xiaomi will aim its EVs at the mass market, in line with the broader positioning of its electronics products, the two people said. Great Wall, which has not before offered manufacturing services to other companies, will provide engineering consultancy to speed up the project, said one of the people.

H&M disappeared from the internet in China as the government raised pressure on shoe and clothing brands and announced sanctions Friday against British officials in a spiraling fight over complaints of abuses in the Xinjiang region. From a report: H&M products were missing from major e-commerce platforms including Alibaba and JD.com following calls by state media for a boycott over the Swedish retailer's decision to stop buying cotton from Xinjiang. That hurts H&M's ability to reach customers in a country where more than a fifth of shopping is online. Shockwaves spread to other brands as dozens of celebrities called off endorsement deals with Nike, Adidas, Burberry, Uniqlo and Lacoste after state media criticized the brands for expressing concern about Xinjiang. Brands are struggling to respond to pressure abroad to distance themselves from abuses without triggering Chinese retaliation and losing access to one of the biggest and fastest-growing markets. That pressure is rising as human rights activists are lobbying sponsors to pull out of the Beijing Winter Olympics planned for February 2022. Tencent, which operates games and the popular WeChat message service, announced it was removing Burberry-designed costumes from a popular mobile phone game.

The Trades Union Congress (TUC) is calling for new legal protections for workers, warning that they could soon be "hired and fired by algorithm." "Among the changes it is calling for is a legal right to have any 'high-risk' decision reviewed by a human," reports the BBC. From the report: TUC general secretary Frances O'Grady said the use of AI at work stood at "a fork in the road." "AI at work could be used to improve productivity and working lives. But it is already being used to make life-changing decisions about people at work -- like who gets hired and fired. "Without fair rules, the use of AI at work could lead to widespread discrimination and unfair treatment -- especially for those in insecure work and the gig economy," she warned.

The union body is calling for:
- An obligation on employers to consult unions on the use of "high risk" or "intrusive" AI at work
- The legal right to have a human review decisions
- A legal right to "switch off" from work and not be expected to answer calls or emails
- Changes to UK law to protect against discrimination by algorithm

Grantbridge writes: Nominet is the UK Domain registrar and has been increasing prices for years. This resulted in the various UK domain hosting companies setting up a campaign to make them obey their public service mission. This has resulted in an emergency meeting and the voting out of the CEO and half the board members. "In an extraordinary turn of events, half of Nominet's board has been voted out with immediate effect; the culmination of a long-drawn public campaign calling for the board's overhaul," reports TechRadar. "Board members of the Internet infrastructure firm Nominet, which regulates UK domain names, had been under fire for several months now for their decisions to take the company away from its not-for-profit mission."

"I find it sad that we've got to this point," said board chairman Mark Wood at the start of the extraordinary general meeting (EGM) as reported by The Register. "In the past, we clearly haven't listened well enough to our members. We know that many things we need to do better," said Wood, who was one of the members voted out, along with Nominet CEO Russell Haworth.

It's unclear what happens next, but as it stands, non-executive director Rob Binns has been asked to serve as acting chair.

Sustainable smartphone manufacturer Fairphone has gotten Google's certification for its Android 9 update for the Fairphone 2. The Verge reports: Getting certification for a nearly three-year-old version of Android doesn't sound that impressive until you realize that it's running on a phone originally released five years ago when it ran Android 5. The roll-out of the software starts today, and will continue until April 18th, Fairphone says. It's a length of support that's basically unheard of among Android phone manufacturers. Although Fairphone 2 owners aren't going to be able to enjoy the latest Android 11 features, the more important thing is that they're running a version of Android that's still officially supported. Google's latest Android security bulletin from this month includes multiple fixes for security issues in Android 9. "To get Google certification for Android 9 for Fairphone 2 just as we hit five years of support for the smartphone is a huge achievement for Fairphone," says CEO of Fairphone Eva Gouwens. "In order to get certification, we had to pass approximately 477,000 Google tests." "We want to show the industry that this kind of thing is possible, that a smartphone doesn't have to be discarded after 2-3 years, we can prolong it's lifespan," the CEO added.

On March 24, 2001, Mac OS X first became available to users around the world. Ars Technica's Samuel Axon reflects on the OS and the many new features and technologies it brought that we now take for granted. From the report: Of course, Mac OS X (or macOS 10 as it was later known) didn't quite survive to its 20th birthday; last year's macOS Big Sur update brought the version number up to 11, ending the reign of X. But despite its double life on x86 and ARM processors and its increasingly close ties to iOS and iPadOS, today's macOS is still very much a direct descendant of that original Mac OS X release. Mac OS X, in turn, evolved in part from Steve Jobs' NeXT operating system -- which had recently been acquired by Apple -- and its launch was the harbinger of the second Jobs era at Apple.

[Mac OS X] enabled Apple's laptops to wake up from sleep immediately, and it introduced dynamic memory management, among other things. Mac OS X's greatest impact in retrospect may be in the role it had in inspiring and propping up iOS, which has far surpassed macOS as Apple's most widely used operating system. [...] Despite Apple's resounding success in the second Steve Jobs era, as well as in the recent Tim Cook era, the Mac is still a relatively niche platform -- beloved by some, but skipped by much of the mainstream. After 20 years, a lot has changed, but a whole lot has stayed the same.

Samsung has unveiled a new RAM module that shows the potential of DDR5 memory in terms of speed and capacity. Engadget reports: The 512GB DDR5 module is the first to use High-K Metal Gate (HKMG) tech, delivering 7,200 Mbps speeds -- over double that of DDR4, Samsung said. Right now, it's aimed at data-hungry supercomputing, AI and machine learning functions, but DDR5 will eventually find its way to regular PCs, boosting gaming and other applications. Developed by Intel, it uses hafnium instead of silicon, with metals replacing the normal polysilicon gate electrodes. All of that allows for higher chip densities, while reducing current leakage.

Each chip uses eight layers of 16Gb DRAM chips for a capacity of 128Gb, or 16GB. As such, Samsung would need 32 of those to make a 512GB RAM module. On top of the higher speeds and capacity, Samsung said that the chip uses 13 percent less power than non-HKMG modules -- ideal for data centers, but not so bad for regular PCs, either. With 7,200 Mbps speeds, Samsung's latest module would deliver around 57.6 GB/s transfer speeds on a single channel.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Researchers at the Tech Transparency Project found that Facebook created dozens of pages for groups like the "Universal Aryan Brotherhood Movement" when a user did something as simple as listing it as their employer. Some of the autogenerated pages garnered thousands of likes by the time they were discovered by researchers. TTP also discovered four Facebook groups that had been created by users. The researchers shared their findings with Facebook, which removed most of the pages. Yet, two of the autogenerated pages and all four Facebook groups remained active when the group published its findings. Facebook reportedly banned "white nationalist" content following the 2019 mass shooting at a New Zealand mosque, expanding on an earlier ban of white supremacist content.

It wasn't hard for the researchers to find offending pages and groups. They simply searched Facebook for the names of neo-Nazi and white supremacist groups identified by the Anti-Defamation League and the Southern Poverty Law Center. More than half of the groups in their query of 221 names returned results. A total of 113 white supremacist organizations and groups had a presence on Facebook, sometimes more than one. One user-generated page that has been active for over a decade had 42,000 likes. Ten other pages and one group had more than 1,000 likes each. [...] Facebook's own user-interfacing algorithms have also been coming up short. TTP found that on a page for an organization called the "Nazi Low Riders," Facebook recommended that users also like a page for the "Aryanbrotherhood." The company's tactic for combatting rising extremism on the site also appears to be failing. Searches for known hate groups are supposed to direct users to the page for Life After Hate, a nonprofit group that seeks to deradicalize right-wing extremists. But that only worked in 14 of the 221 searches the researchers performed.

Slack rolled out a new feature Wednesday designed to build out its email replacement service called Slack Connect, but had to backtrack almost immediately after backlash over its potential for abuse. From a report: The new Slack Connect DM (direct messaging) functionality allowed paid subscribers to invite any other Slack user to a private conversation, accompanying their invite with a customizable message. The problem that many pointed out on social media was that those messages could be used to direct harassment at strangers online, without an easy option to block them because the invites come from a generic Slack address. The company reversed course by disabling the custom invite option and said it's heeding the feedback it has received and is committed to fixing the issue.

Citigroup CEO Jane Fraser told staff that she is banning internal video calls on Fridays, encouraging staff to set boundaries for a healthier work-life balance and instituting a firmwide holiday called Citi Reset Day as Covid pandemic fatigue takes a toll on employees. From a report: Fraser, who took over for predecessor Mike Corbat this month, told staff of the changes in a memo sent Monday afternoon to her 210,000 employees around the world, according to a person with knowledge of the matter. "The blurring of lines between home and work and the relentlessness of the pandemic workday have taken a toll on our well-being," Fraser said in the memo. "It's simply not sustainable. Since a return to any kind of new normal is still a few months away for many of us, we need to reset some of our working practices." The Citigroup memo was sent the day after Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon was forced to address his staff after an internal survey of first-year analysts, reported by CNBC last week, went viral. The survey detailed brutal working conditions at the premier investment bank, including employees' health concerns about working more than 100 hours a week, as well as more mundane issues like junior bankers being ignored in meetings.

The chief executives of Facebook, Google and Twitter faced criticism from U.S. lawmakers on Thursday about their approaches to extremism and misinformation in their first appearances before Congress since pro-Trump rioters assaulted the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6. From a report: "We fled as a mob desecrated the Capitol, the House floor, and our democratic process," said Democratic Representative Mike Doyle. "That attack, and the movement that motivated it, started and was nourished on your platforms," he added. Facebook Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg said there was content related to the riot on its platforms but, when asked if the company bore responsibility for the event, he said the company's responsibility was to "build effective systems."

"We did our part to secure the integrity of the election, and then on Jan. 6, President Trump gave a speech rejecting the results and calling on people to fight," he said. He argued that polarization in the country was due to the political and media environment. Former President Donald Trump was banned by Twitter over inciting violence around Jan. 6, while Facebook has asked its independent oversight board to rule on whether to bar him permanently. He is still suspended from YouTube. The hearing was virtual but advocacy group SumOfUs erected cut-outs of Zuckerberg, Sundar Pichai, chief executive of Google parent Alphabet; and Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey dressed as Jan. 6 rioters on the National Mall near the Capitol. One showed Zuckerberg as the "QAnon Shaman," a shirtless rioter wearing horns. Lawmakers speaking at the joint hearing, held by two subcommittees of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, also slammed the companies over the proliferation of COVID-19 and vaccine misinformation and raised concerns about the impact of social media on children's mental health.

New submitter Grantbridge writes: On Monday, 740 members of .uk internet registry operator Nominet made the drastic decision to ditch five of its 11-strong board of directors, including the CEO and chairman, in a fierce rebuke of the company's efforts to move from a non-profit organisation to a commercial one. Today, Nominet has an interim chair -- one of the remaining non-executive directors -- and no CEO. Two of its senior management -- Eleanor Bradley and Ben Hill -- were also removed from the board, and remain in their jobs at Nominet for the moment. The fifth board member to get the boot is non-executive director Jane Tozer MBE, OBE. And while the remainder of the board have said they "will be working on a strategic change in direction," the reality is that they have all supported the CEO and chair's action over the past five years, all unanimously opposed the vote, and in some cases were highly critical of the reasoning behind it. The vote was close. The 740 members in favor faced 632 opposing, resulting in a narrow five per cent margin of victory. Of those opposed, many acted on the former chair and CEO's claims that a yes vote would be destabilizing for the organisation. That still might be the case.

An anonymous reader shares a report: To paraphrase one of the most iconic tweets of the past 10 years, Amazon's recent denial about employees not being forced to urinate in bottles at work has people asking a lot of questions already answered by the denial. In a tweet sent last night, the official Amazon News account for the behemoth corporation, whose CEO, Jeff Bezos, saw his personal net worth increase by $70bn during the pandemic, wrote: "You don't really believe the peeing in bottles thing, do you? If that were true, nobody would work for us. The truth is that we have over a million incredible employees around the world who are proud of what they do, and have great wages and health care from day one." In under 12 hours the tweet has been quote-tweeted 9,000 times. (For those unversed in the dark Twitter metric arts that's ... not good.)

The thousands of gleeful and mocking rejoinders to Amazon's post came with good reason. The company is currently in the midst of a public relations battle with a group of workers in Alabama attempting to unionize. In an attempt to forestall such a historic move, Amazon has been on a campaign to illustrate just how well, in fact, they treat their workers. It doesn't seem to be working! Numerous high-profile labor organizers, celebrities and politicians like Bernie Sanders have joined the side of the striking workers. The Vermont senator is set to travel to Alabama on Friday to meet with them. The botched PR response in question in this case came as a reply to a tweet from another lawmaker, the Wisconsin congressman Mark Pocan, who himself was responding to jabs thrown by another Amazon executive, Dave Clark. Clark had attempted to draw a snarky analogy between his company and the success record of Sanders in his home state, saying: "I often say we are the Bernie Sanders of employers, but that's not quite right because we actually deliver a progressive workplace." Further reading: Amazon Denies Workers Pee in Bottles. Here Are the Pee Bottles.

Comcast will invest $1 billion over the next decade to help address the digital divide among low-income Americans. The company announced this week its plan to continue investment in its Internet Essentials program as it marks the 10th anniversary of the effort this year. From a report: Comcast said it'll put that $1 billion toward a number of initiatives, including supporting its new Lift Zone effort, which establishes Wi-Fi connections in public spaces such as community centers. These Lift Zones can be used to provide internet access to adults and children who are homeless and may not have permanent access to an address. Comcast began opening up these Lift Zones in cities, such as Philadelphia and Chicago, in September when many schools and libraries were closed because of the coronavirus pandemic. The company said it expects to connect more than 1,000 community centers nationwide by the end of 2021. Comcast also plans to continue funding its new laptop and computer donations efforts through Internet Essentials. It'll also continue to provide grants for nonprofit community organizations to create opportunities for low-income Americans, particularly in media, technology and entrepreneurship.

An anonymous reader shares an excerpt from a ZDNet article, written by Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols: Linux is the poster-child for the C language. But times change. The Rust language has been slowly gathering support for use as a system language in Linux. For example, at the 2020 Linux Plumbers Conference, developers gave serious thought to using the Rust language for new Linux inline code. So, where is it today? I asked Linux's creator, Linus Torvalds, and the Linux stable kernel maintainer Greg Kroah-Hartman for their thoughts. [...] What does Torvalds make of all this? He's in "the 'wait and see' camp -- I'm interested in the project, but I think it's driven by people who are very excited about Rust, and I want to see how it actually then ends up working in practice." "Personally," Torvalds is "in no way "pushing" for Rust, [but] I'm open to it considering the promised advantages and avoiding some safety pitfalls, but I also know that sometimes promises don't pan out."

Torvalds thinks "Rust's primary first target seems to be drivers, simply because that's where you find just a lot of different possible targets, and you have these individual parts of the kernel that are fairly small and independent. That may not be a very interesting target to some people, but it's the obvious one." Another point is taking on drivers first for "any initial trials to drivers is simply the architecture side," said Torvalds. "Lots of drivers are only relevant on a couple of target architectures, so the whole issue with Rust code not being supported on some architectures is less of an issue." Kroah-Hartman agrees that "drivers are probably the first place for an attempt like this as they are the 'end leafs' of the tree of dependencies in the kernel source. They depend on core kernel functionality, but nothing depends on them."

Torvalds knows some people don't like the idea of Rust in userspace at all. "People complain[ing] about "Rustification" in userspace isn't a great sign for any future kernel use, but hey, we'll see. The kernel is different from userspace projects -- more difficult in some respects (we use a lot of very odd header files that pushes the boundary of what can be called "C"), but easier in many other respects (mainly in the sense that the kernel is fairly self-contained, and then doesn't rely on other projects for the final binary)." From where Kroah-Hartman sits, "it will all come down to how well the interaction between the kernel core structures and lifetime rules that are written in C can be mapped into Rust structures and lifetime rules for drivers in Rust to be able to use them properly. That's going to take a lot of careful work by the developers wanting to hook this all up and I wish them the best of luck."