Microsoft's livestreaming platform Mixer will shut down later today and encourage users to migrate over to Facebook Gaming's livestreaming service, with treasured Mixer Partners getting partner status over there too. Rock Paper Shotgun reports: From what I've seen on my stroll through Mixer on this final day, a whole lot of folks are planning to switch to Twitch. The shutdown comes less than a year after Microsoft went wild recruiting top Twitch streamers including Tyler "Ninja" Blevins with exclusivity contracts rumoured to be worth millions.

Mixer first launched in 2016 under the name 'Beam' then was bought by Microsoft later that year, who renamed it 'Mixer' in 2017. One of its big selling points was shorter delays between the broadcaster and the viewers, so folks could have more back-and-forth and interact more. It also had built-in support for novelty streams like Pokemon controlled by viewers. Microsoft also had their studios integrate Mixer features into games, so Forza Horizon 4 gave rewards for both streaming and watching it on Mixer, Minecraft let viewers vote on things, and so on. "Ultimately, the success of Partners and streamers on Mixer is dependent on our ability to scale the platform for them as quickly and broadly as possible," Microsoft said in the shutdown announcement in June. "It became clear that the time needed to grow our own livestreaming community to scale was out of measure with the vision and experiences that Microsoft and Xbox want to deliver for gamers now, so we've decided to close the operations side of Mixer and help the community transition to a new platform."

More than half of tech workers in the Bay Area are concerned about being laid off or furloughed in the next six months, or their salaries hitting a plateau or dropping, according to a new report from Hired. From a news article: The tech industry has generally fared better than other sectors in the pandemic downturn, offering more chances to work from home and fewer layoffs. However, there are concerns that companies won't be willing to pay Bay Area salaries if remote workers decide to relocate to less expensive areas. [...] However, if allowed to work from home permanently, many said they would consider moving to a less expensive location, including 42% of those in the Bay Area and 40% of those in New York, compared to just a third of those in the U.K. Further reading: Behind Tech Layoffs Lay Systemic Cash Flow Negative Companies.

Twitter has removed thousands of accounts linked to QAnon, a group known for spreading conspiracy theories and disinformation online. From a report: "We've been clear that we will take strong enforcement action on behavior that has the potential to lead to offline harm," Twitter's safety team said late Tuesday in a tweet. "In line with this approach, this week we are taking further action on so-called 'QAnon' activity across the service." More than 7,000 accounts have been removed in the last several weeks, according to Twitter. It also expects that additional actions it is taking to limit the reach of QAnon activity on its platform could affect 150,000 accounts worldwide. QAnon began as a single conspiracy theory. But its followers now act more like a virtual cult, largely adoring and believing whatever disinformation the conspiracy community spins up. Its main conspiracy theories claim dozens of politicians and A-list celebrities work in tandem with governments around the globe to engage in child sex abuse. Followers also believe there is a "deep state" effort to annihilate President Donald Trump.

One of the biggest announcements made in Google's recent announcement of security enhancements for G Suite services is that authenticated logos are coming for emails from participating companies. Engadget reports: Last year Google announced it joined the Brand Indicators for Message Identification (BIMI) group, which is pushing an email spec that adds brand logos to authenticated emails. In practice it seems a lot like the verified stamps that have proliferated across social media, but when you see them it won't be a blue check, it will be the logo of the company that sent the email (Example). Emails are authenticated using the existing DMARC system and then there's certification that applies the associated logo, which hopefully gives people trust an email came from the company or person it's claiming to represent. Google said it will kick off a pilot of the technology within Gmail "in the coming weeks," so don't be surprised when you see those kinds of indicators popping up in the existing avatar box.

sciencehabit shares a report from Science Magazine: The ramps for disabled people that smooth entry into many public buildings today aren't a modern invention. The ancient Greeks constructed similar ramps of stone to help individuals who had trouble walking or climbing stairs access holy sites, new research suggests. That would make the ramps -- some more than 2300 years old -- the oldest known evidence of architecture designed to meet the needs of the disabled.

Archaeologist Debby Sneed focused on the fourth century B.C.E., when sanctuaries to Asclepius -- the Greek god of healing -- proliferated. She found that the two best documented healing sanctuaries she looked at were outfitted with more ramps than other sacred sites, and that their ramps were more likely to access buildings other than the main temple. At Asclepius's main sanctuary at Epidaurus, near Athens, for example, a broad stone ramp led up to the temple. Two more ramps led through the sanctuary gates. And a series of smaller side buildings also feature narrow ramps just wide enough to walk up, Sneed reports today in Antiquity. High stairs would be hard for people using crutches. And though wheelchairs wouldn't be invented for more than 1,000 years, visitors to healing shrines who couldn't walk sometimes had to be carried on litters or stretchers -- both easier to navigate up a ramp.

Elon Musk says Neuralink recipients will be able to stream music directly into their brains, with no headphones needed. Futurism reports: It's still entirely unclear if Neuralink's brain-computer interfaces will ever be able to bypass the ear, the cochlear nerves, and beam music magically to the auditory brain. But Musk has already set his sights on bigger things. When asked by another Twitter user if Neuralink's devices could also help "estimulate the release of oxytocin, serotonin, and other chemicals when needed," Musk replied with another "yes." To make that feature and more a reality, Neuralink is looking to add more, well, brains to its operations. "If you've solved hard problems with phones/ wearables (sealing, signal processing, inductive charging, power management, etc.), please consider working at [Neuralink]," Musk tweeted over the weekend. On August 28th, the mysterious computer-brain interface startup will release an update on its progress.

TikTok said Tuesday that it plans to create 10,000 jobs in the United States over the next three years, a substantial increase from the roughly 1,400 employees it currently has in the country. From a report: The announcement comes as the company faces mounting criticism over its handling of user data and its ties to China through its parent company, ByteDance. "These are good-paying jobs that will help us continue to build a fun and safe experience and protect our community's privacy," a TikTok spokesperson said in a statement provided to CNN on Tuesday. TikTok said it has already tripled its US workforce this year, and the new jobs will be based in California, Texas, Florida and New York -- focusing on areas including sales, content moderation, engineering and customer support. The jobs announcement is part of a wider game of defense that TikTok has been playing to meet allegations by policymakers that TikTok poses a national security risk. The move also appears to follow a tried and true playbook for tech companies: when under fire, play up the job creation potential. Lawmakers including Sens. Chuck Schumer, Tom Cotton and Josh Hawley worry the company's user data could ultimately find its way to the Chinese government.

SUSE has released the next versions of its flagship operating system, SUSE Linux Enterprise (SLE) 15 Service Pack 2 and its latest infrastructure management program, SUSE Manager 4.1. ZDNet reports: SLE 15 SP2 is available on the x86-64, Arm, IBM POWER, IBM Z, and LinuxONE hardware architectures. This new Linux server edition is based on the Linux 5.3 kernel. This new kernel release includes upstream features such as utilization clamping support in the task scheduler, and power-efficient userspace waiting. Other new and noteworthy features include:

- Support for migration from openSUSE Leap to SUSE Linux Enterprise Server (SLES). With this, you can try the free, community openSUSE Linux distro, and then, if you find it's a good choice for your business, upgrade to SLES.
- Extended Package Search. By using the new Zypper, SUSE's command line package manager, command option -- zypper search-packages -- sysadmins can now search across all SUSE repositories, even unenabled ones. This makes it easier for administrators to find required software packages.
- SLE Software Development Kit (SDK) is now integrated into SLE. Development packages are packaged alongside regular packages. - Python 3: SLE 15 offers full support for Python 3 development. SLE still supports Python 2 for the time being.
- 389 Directory Server replaces OpenLDAP as the LDAP directory service.
- Repository Mirroring Tool (RMT) replaces Subscription Management Tool (SMT). RMT allows mirroring SUSE repositories and custom repositories. You can then register systems directly with RMT. In environments with tightened security, RMT can also proxy other RMT servers.
- Better business continuity with improved SLE Live Patching. SUSE claims Live Patching increases system uptime by up to 12 months. SLE Live Patching is also now available for IBM Z and LinuxONE mainframe architectures.

As for SUSE Manager 4.1, this is an improved open-source infrastructure management and automation solution that lowers costs, identifies risk, enhances availability, and reduces complexity in edge, cloud, and data center environments. With SUSE Manager you can keep servers, VMs, containers, and clusters secure, healthy, compliant, and low maintenance whether in private, public, or hybrid cloud. That's especially important these days thanks to coronavirus pandemic IT staff disruptions. SUSE Manager 4.1 can also be used with the Salt DevOps program. Its vertical-market brother, SUSE Manager for Retail 4.1, is optimized and tailored specifically for retail. This release comes with enhancements for small store operations, enhanced offline capabilities and image management over Wi-Fi, and enhanced virtual machine management and monitoring capabilities. Simultaneously it can scale retail environments to tens of thousands of end-point devices and help modernize point-of-service rollouts.

Microsoft is allowing third-party app developers to integrate into the Microsoft Teams meeting experience for the first time. The Verge reports: The new developer-focused features will let apps integrate into Teams meetings during video calls, and even before and after meetings. Third-party apps will be able to display content during Microsoft Teams calls, and even display notifications during calls. It's a big expansion of what third-party apps are able to do in Microsoft Teams right now. Applications will be able to add a tab to meeting invites where Teams users can interact with the app before a meeting begins. Once a meeting begins, Teams participants will be able to pull apps into the live call. This could include bots that trigger live notifications about events while a Teams meeting is taking place or an app that shows information to participants in the sidebar. The integration also includes the ability for apps to appear as a button in the meeting controls bar.

In what sounds like a Black Mirror episode, Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskiy complied with a hostage-takers demands and posted a six-second video urging the public to watch the 2005 film "Earthlings," a movie about mankind using animals for pets, food and clothing. "Everyone should watch the 2005 film 'Earthlings,'" he said in the video posted to his Facebook page, which has been since deleted. The hostage-taker eventually surrendered to police and the bus passengers were freed unharmed. Deutsche Welle reports: Ukrainian police say the armed man who took 13 people aboard a long-distance bus in the western city of Lutsk hostage on Tuesday morning has been detained after authorities stormed the vehicle. The country's SBU Security Service said no one was injured in the incident. A man with explosives and weapons seized the bus and took 13 people hostage in northwestern Ukraine early Tuesday morning, the SBU said in a Facebook statement. Metro reports: The man called police after taking control of the bus and introduced himself as Maksim Plokhoy, deputy interior minister Anton Gerashchenko said. But the minister added that police have identified the man as Maksim Krivosh, a 44-year-old Ukrainian born in Russia. In a Telegram account reportedly belonging to him, Krivosh apparently admitted taking people on the bus hostage, and said "the state has always been and always is the first terrorist," while demanding that senior Ukrainian officials release statements on their social media pages calling themselves terrorists. He also called for Ukrainian president President Zelensky to urge people to watch the 2005 movie Earthlings. The film chronicles the day-to-day practices of large industries, and how they rely on animals for profit.

The U.S. government's approach of letting Silicon Valley drive the country's technological boom has left the government itself scrambling for tech talent. Now, a federal commission led by ex-Google CEO Eric Schmidt and former Deputy Secretary of Defense Robert O. Work wants to create a university to train new government coders. From a report: The school would be called the U.S. Digital Service Academy, and it would be an accredited, degree-awarding university that trains students in digital skills like cybersecurity and artificial intelligence. Students would get a traditional school year of coursework, with internships in the public and private sector during summers. The Digital Service Academy would theoretically supply the United States with a fresh stream of young talent already ideologically invested in serving the federal government. However, it would compete with elite institutions like Stanford and MIT, where graduates often have their pick of private-sector work and can still go into the public sector if they choose.

The commission set to recommend the new institution, called the National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence (NSCAI), unanimously voted to make the recommendation in an upcoming report to Congress during a publicly broadcast meeting on July 20. NSCAI commissioner and former FCC head Mignon Clyburn raised the issue that whatever organization Congress created would have to make an effort to be inclusive in its recruitment. "Talent comes in many forms and from many places," Clyburn said. "If the recruitment only happens where the roads are paved, you've missed a lot of opportunities and a lot of talent." Congress created the NSCAI in 2018 as a response to China's drastic investment into artificial intelligence. It taps industry and government veterans to rethink how the government funds and sanctions artificial intelligence efforts.

Thelasko writes: Last year Slashdot reported on the Randonaut phenomenon. The Atlantic reports how a new app has spread the phenomenon further this summer From the report: Randonauting is also simple. You can do it using the free app Randonautica, which asks you for your location, prompts you to select one of a handful of different "entropy" generators -- which one you choose should not really matter -- and then asks you to focus your mind on your "intent." Then it spits out a set of coordinates that could, allegedly, be influenced by your mind interacting with the machine, or not, and you can choose to go there, or not, and submit a report of what you find, or not. (You can generate 10 sets of coordinates a day for free and pay to generate more.) The app's logo, fittingly, is an owl, because owls see in the dark; randonauts see what other people don't. In particular, they see what they otherwise wouldn't.

A ransomware gang has infected the internal network of Telecom Argentina, one of the country's largest internet service providers, and is now demanding $7.5 million as ransom to unlock encrypted files. From a report: The incident took place over the weekend, on Saturday, July 18, and is considered one of Argentina's biggest hacks. Sources inside the ISP said hackers caused extensive damage to the company's network after they managed to gain control over an internal Domain Admin, from where they spread and installed their ransomware payload to more than 18,000 workstations. The incident did not cause internet connectivity to go down for the ISP's customers, nor did it affect fixed telephony or cable TV services; however, many of Telecom Argentina's official websites have been down since Saturday. Since the attack's onset, multiple Telecom employees have now also taken to social media to share details about the incident, and how the ISP has been managing the crisis.

Microsoft's professional networking site LinkedIn said on Tuesday it would cut about 960 jobs, or 6% of its global workforce, as the coronavirus pandemic is having a sustained impact on demand for its recruitment products. From a report: California-based LinkedIn helps employers assess a candidate's suitability for a role and employees use the platform to find new job. Jobs will be cut across sales and hiring divisions of the group globally. Announcing the plan in a message posted on LinkedIn's website, Chief Executive Ryan Roslansky said the company would provide at least 10 weeks of severance pay as well as health insurance for a year for U.S. employees, and will hire for newly-created roles from laid-off staff. "I want you to know these are the only layoffs we are planning," Roslansky said in his message. Affected staff, who have not yet been told, would be able to keep company-issued cell phones, laptops, and recently purchased equipment to help them work from home while making career transitions, he said.

AmiMoJo shares a report from The Guardian: Minicab drivers will launch a legal bid to uncover secret computer algorithms used by Uber to manage their work in a test case that could increase transparency for millions of gig economy workers across Europe. Two UK drivers are demanding to see the huge amounts of data the ride-sharing company collects on them and how this is used to exert management control, including through automated decision-making that invisibly shapes their jobs. The case is being brought on Monday by the UK-based App Drivers and Couriers Union in the district court in Amsterdam, where the international headquarters of the $56 billion ride-hailing firm is located. The union said transparency was essential in checking if Uber was exercising discrimination or unequal treatment between drivers. It will also allow drivers to organize and build collective bargaining power over terms of work and pay in a way that is currently impossible.

The claim says Uber uses tags on drivers' profiles, for example "inappropriate behavior" or simply "police tag." Reports relate to "navigation -- late arrival / missed ETA" and "professionalism -- cancelled on rider, inappropriate behavior, attitude." The drivers complain they were not being provided with this data or information on the underlying logic of how it was used. They want to how that processing affects them, including on their driver score. The union members Azeem Hanif and Alfie Wellcoat claim Uber has failed to fulfill its obligations in its response to their requests under general data protection regulations (GDPR). They want to see their detailed driver profiles, comments about them made by Uber staff and how more than two dozen categories of data gathered about them are processed, legal papers show. A spokesperson for Uber said: "Our privacy team works hard to provide any requested personal data that individuals are entitled to. We will give explanations when we cannot provide certain data, such as when it doesn't exist or disclosing it would infringe on the rights of another person under GDPR. Under the law, individuals have the right to escalate their concerns by contacting Uber's data protection officer or their national data protection authority for additional review."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The New York Times: When Google and Apple announced plans in April for free software to help alert people of their possible exposure to the coronavirus, the companies promoted it as "privacy preserving" and said it would not track users' locations. Encouraged by those guarantees, Germany, Switzerland and other countries used the code to develop national virus alert apps that have been downloaded more than 20 million times. But for the apps to work on smartphones with Google's Android operating system -- the most popular in the world -- users must first turn on the device location setting, which enables GPS and may allow Google to determine their locations.

Some government officials seemed surprised that the company could detect Android users' locations. After learning about it, Cecilie Lumbye Thorup, a spokeswoman for Denmark's Health Ministry, said her agency intended to "start a dialogue with Google about how they in general use location data." Switzerland said it had pushed Google for weeks to alter the location setting requirement. "Users should be able to use such proximity tracing apps without any bindings with other services," said Dr. Sang-Il Kim, the department head for digital transformation at Switzerland's Federal Office of Public Health, who oversees the country's virus-alert app. Latvia said it had pressed Google on the issue as it was developing its virus app. "We don't like that the GPS must be on," said Elina Dimina, head of the infectious-disease surveillance unit at Latvia's Center for Disease Prevention and Control. Google's location requirement adds to the slew of privacy and security concerns with virus-tracing apps, many of which were developed by governments before the new Apple-Google software became available. Now the Android location issue could undermine the privacy promises that governments made to the public. Pete Voss, a Google spokesman, claims the virus alert apps that use the company's software do not use device location. "The apps use Bluetooth scanning signals to detect smartphones that come into close contact with one another â" without needing to know the devices' locations at all," reports The New York Times. "Since 2015, Google's Android system has required users to enable location on their phones to scan for other Bluetooth devices, Mr. Voss said, because some apps may use Bluetooth to infer user location. For instance, some apps use Bluetooth beacons in stores to help marketers understand which aisle a smartphone user may be in."

"Once Android users turn on location, however, Google may determine their precise locations, using Wi-Fi, mobile networks and Bluetooth beacons, through a setting called Google Location Accuracy, and use the data to improve location services. Mr. Voss said apps that did not have user permission could not gain access to a person's Android device location."

Facebook says its fact-checking process is one of the ways it plans to fight disinformation heading into the U.S. presidential election, but as Ars Technica points out, opinion content is largely exempt from review. "New reports about the way the site handles the fact-checking of climate science stories [...] make clear that fact-checking can only work as well as Facebook allows it to," reports Ars. "While Facebook has heavily invested in efforts to stem the overwhelming tide of false and misleading COVID-19 information, for example, it does not heavily fact-check information related to climate change." From the report: Rarely reviewed, however, is different from never. "When someone posts content based on false facts -- even if it's an op-ed or editorial -- it is still eligible for fact-checking," Facebook communications director Andy Stone told the NYT. "We're working to make this clearer in our guidelines so our fact checkers can use their judgment to determine whether it is an attempt to mask false information under the guise of opinion." The line has been clear as mud, so far, and Facebook has at least twice overturned the rulings of climate scientists who determine content to be partly or fully false. The first time, a group that partners with Facebook as one of its fact-checkers -- Climate Feedback -- marked a 2019 Washington Examiner op-ed as false. A climate-change denial organization, the CO2 Coalition, complained to Facebook about the fact-check, and the content warning was then removed.

More recently, an article about climate change published by The Daily Wire, a right-leaning site that generates very high traffic on Facebook, also earned a "partly false" rating from Climate Feedback. The author of the Daily Wire article publicly complained about being "censored," and Facebook staff reviewed the fact-check. Popular Information obtained internal Facebook documents showing that the Facebook staff agreed with the "partly false" rating. An email thread that alerted high-ranking company executives to the kerfuffle showed that the fact-checking and communications teams apparently wanted to leave it alone, but the policy team said its "stakeholders" thought the fact-check was "biased." The notice no longer appears on Facebook shares of the Daily Wire story. A group of senators led by Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) last week demanded Facebook explain its inconsistent position on fact-checking.

"Notably, since Facebook issued a blog post on its efforts to combat misinformation on Facebook in April 2017, disinformation campaigns on the platform have continued and expanded, often with state-sponsored support," the senators wrote. "If Facebook is truly 'committed to fighting the spread of false news on Facebook and Instagram,' the company must immediately acknowledge in its fact-checking process that the climate crisis is not a matter of opinion and act to close loopholes that allow climate disinformation to spread on its platform."

Further reading: The New York Times has an article explaining Facebook's reasoning behind how it handles climate change.

"Many VPN services advertise themselves as ideal tools to offer security, privacy, and anonymity. To ensure the latter, they often have no-logging policies to prevent individual users from being exposed," writes Ernesto Van der Sar via TorrentFreak. "However, this is not necessarily true for the small group that use dedicated or static IP-addresses." From the report: Today, most of the top providers pride themselves on their "no logging" policies. They go to extreme lengths to ensure that anonymity is taken seriously, and some have hired third-party auditors to back up this claim. While we have no reason to doubt these results, not all VPN subscriptions are perfectly anonymous. Even companies with no-log policies can keep records that can link VPN IP-addresses to user accounts. That is, when they also offer dedicated IP-addresses, which are different from regular VPN connections.

With a dedicated IP-address, which is often sold as an add-on, users get a unique IP-address as opposed to a shared one. This can be very convenient as it reduces annoying captchas and can bypass regular VPN blacklists. However, it comes at an anonymity cost. By connecting through a single IP-address, monitoring outfits can build up a profile of the user's online activity. The real anonymity tradeoff, however, is that the VPN provider knows the user's IP-address and can connect it to other account information it has on record. This sometimes includes an email address. This may not be a concern for most people, but it's certainly something to keep in mind for the small subset of subscribers that use a dedicated VPN IP-address.

Broadly speaking, we would say that the "no logs" policies of VPN providers don't apply to dedicated IPs. That conclusion is backed up by several VPN providers we reached out to, which include VPNArea, NordVPN, CyberGhost, and Torguard. These providers all have a no-logging policy for their regular VPN service, which relies on shared IP-addresses. However, they see dedicated IP-addresses as a separate and different service, which is treated differently anonymity-wise.

Marc Levoy, the researcher who used software to turn Google's Pixel camera into a powerhouse, has joined Adobe to build a universal camera app, Adobe announced today. The Verge reports: Levoy headed up the team that developed the impressive computational photography technology used in Google's Pixel smartphones, including features like Night Sight, Portrait Mode, and HDR+. His work also helped Pixels take great photos without requiring as much hardware as competing phones -- the Pixel line famously only needed a single camera to stay competitive with Apple's iPhones, until a desire for sharper zoom images pushed Google to add a second, telephoto lens with last year's Pixel 4. (The first iPhone with a second lens, the iPhone 7 Plus, came out in 2016.)

At Adobe, it sounds like Levoy could be planning to make a great camera not just for Pixel users, but for anyone with a smartphone. Levoy will be working on computational photography initiatives across Adobe, and intriguingly, his efforts will be "centered on the concept of a universal camera app," the company said in an email. [...] And Adobe said in an email that Levoy will also be working with the Photoshop Camera, Adobe Research, and Sensei AI teams, so maybe Photoshop Camera will be the focus for these bigger efforts. Levoy will report to Adobe CTO Abhay Parasnis, and he starts today. [...] That said, Adobe wasn't immediately able to define "universal camera app" for us -- we've also heard that phrase refer to an app platform that companies like Facebook and Snapchat could use to produce their own camera apps or an app that could work across, say, a cameraphone and a larger camera like a DSLR. We're hoping to narrow that down.

Microsoft will stop relying on Amazon to help it run the popular Minecraft video game. CNBC reports: The shift represents an obvious way for Microsoft to cut back on payments to one of its toughest competitors and promote its own product. Amazon Web Services rules the market for public cloud infrastructure for running software from afar through vast data centers, and Microsoft has been working to take share with its Azure cloud. Azure is growing faster than many other parts of Microsoft, helping it lean less on longstanding properties like Windows and Office. Moving more of its own software to Azure can help Microsoft make the case to customers that it doesn't look anywhere else for computing, storage and networking resources to deliver its online services. That's an important consideration, because Amazon can tell customers that its sprawling e-commerce business consumes resources from AWS.

The use of AWS for Minecraft for a version called Realms -- virtual places for small groups to gather and play the open-world game together -- dates to 2014. Months after AWS published a blog post about how Mojang, the game developer behind Minecraft, had chosen to tap AWS for Realms, Microsoft announced that it would acquire Mojang for $2.5 billion. It would not have been right to make Mojang get off AWS immediately after the acquisition, Matt Booty, the head of studios at Microsoft, suggested in a recent interview. Now there is an end in sight for the dependence on a rival. "We'll be fully transitioned to Azure by the end of the year," the Microsoft spokesperson wrote.