An anonymous reader quotes a report from Motherboard: Earlier this year, we brought you the sordid tale of the GE refrigerator that won't dispense filtered water unless consumers pay extra for "official" filters from the company. This sort of digital rights management and artificial, software-enforced monopoly is a scourge on consumer rights. Now, finally, a fed up customer has found a way to bypass GE's refrigerator DRM, and has posted instructions online.

The anonymous person registered a website called gefiltergate.com, and explained that by swapping the RFID tag from an official GE refrigerator to a third-party filter they bought on Amazon, they can get the refrigerator to continue filtering water as normal. For reference, third-party filters cost as little as $13; GE filters cost $55. I'm gonna go ahead and call this a "hack," because they're bypassing an artificial software lock to circumvent DRM, which is, at least in spirit, a hack, and a cool one at that. The hack was also done by Jack Busch over at GroovyPost last month. To make your fridge use "unauthorized" filters, you need to take the old filter out, flip it over, and carefully remove the RFID chip. This chip tells the fridge that it's a "real" filter. This chip is glued down, and the person on gefiltergate suggested that rather than try to pry it up, you can simply cut around it with a Dremel or a saw. They then taped the RFID chip to the circuit board that checks whether a filter is authorized. This then allows them to use third-party filters, no problem. As Busch explains in his blog post, the refrigerator will say "not filtering," but it will dispense water that goes through the new filter, so it does indeed work.

Homeowners and pool operators are turning to artificial intelligence for an extra layer of safety to prevent drownings in backyard and public pools. From a report: The detection systems, which use submerged cameras and a form of AI known as computer vision, analyze live videos of swimmers and send alerts if they spot a person who appears to be drowning. Jenny Naggatz, 33, of Gulf Breeze, Fla., installed an AI device from technology company Coral Detection Systems in her family's pool to safeguard her two children, both of whom are under 4. Coral Detection's triangle-shaped device sits in the corner of a pool with an attached camera hanging a few inches below the water surface. "It has definitely given me more peace of mind," Ms. Naggatz said. "I'm just as careful around the water as I would be without it, but it's just another layer of protection."

The safety of young children around swimming pools remains a cause for concern, according to a U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission report released last week. On average, 379 children under 15 drowned each year in pools, spas or hot tubs from 2015 through 2017, the most recent statistics available, and hit a peak of 395 in 2017, the commission said. Noting that most child drownings occur at home during the summer months, the commission urged caution given that Covid-19 measures had confined more families to their homes and delayed the opening of public pools. AI drowning-detection products are not intended to replace adult supervision or lifeguards, but rather to serve as an extra safeguard.

Detections rates for stalkerware applications on Android and Windows devices are slowly improving, according to the findings of a seven-month research project carried out by independent antivirus testing lab AV-Comparatives and the Electronic Frontier Foundation. From a report: The study, published earlier this week, took place in two phases, with the first in November 2019, and the second in May 2020. Researchers looked at how 10 Android mobile antivirus apps and 10 Windows antivirus products detected some of today's most prevalent stalkerware strains. The stalkerware strains, 20 on Android and 10 on Windows, were chosen by AV-Comparatives together with the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), based on their popularity in the US. The study discovered that many antivirus companies have improved their detection rates between the November 2019 scan and May 2020.

Google escalated a fight with Sonos over the wireless home-speaker market, filing a lawsuit that alleges patent infringement. From a report: The conflict between the two companies, which had been collaborating on incorporating some Google features in Sonos's speakers, erupted in January when Sonos sued Google for infringing its patents. The speaker maker is facing increased competition from tech giants such as Google and Amazon.com that are expanding into selling Internet-connected home gadgets, including less expensive wireless speakers. "Sonos has made false claims about the companies' shared work and Google's technology in the lawsuits," the Alphabet unit said in a complaint filed Thursday in San Francisco federal court. "While Google rarely sues other companies for patent infringement, it must assert its intellectual property rights here." Sonos, the Santa Barbara-based pioneer of wireless speakers, is using Google's patented technology for search, software, networking, audio processing and digital-media management and streaming, while refusing to pay a license, according to the lawsuit.

During an internal presentation at Facebook on Wednesday, the company debuted features for Facebook Workplace, an intranet-style chat and office collaboration product similar to Slack. From a report: On Facebook Workplace, employees see a stream of content similar to a news feed, with automatically generated trending topics based on what people are posting about. One of the new tools debuted by Facebook allows administrators to remove and block certain trending topics among employees. The presentation discussed the "benefits" of "content control." And it offered one example of a topic employers might find it useful to blacklist: the word "unionize."

Facebook Workplace is currently used by major employers such as Walmart, which is notorious for its active efforts to suppress labor organizing. The application is also used by the Singapore government, Discovery Communications, Starbucks, and Campbell Soup Corporation. The suggestion that Facebook is actively building tools designed to suppress labor organizing quickly caused a stir at the Menlo Park, California-based company. Facebook employees sparked a flurry of posts denouncing the feature, with several commenting in disbelief that the company would overtly pitch "unionize" as a topic to be blacklisted.

Three U.S. lawmakers asked Zoom to clarify its data-collection practices and relationship with the Chinese government after the firm said it had suspended user accounts to meet demands from Beijing. From a report: The California-based firm has come under heavy scrutiny after three U.S. and Hong Kong-based activists said their accounts had been suspended and meetings disrupted after they tried to hold events related to the anniversary of China's Tiananmen Square crackdown. Zoom said on Friday it was notified of the events and asked to take action by the Chinese government in May and early June. It said it suspended one account in Hong and two in the United States but has now reinstated these accounts and will not allow further requests from China to affect users outside the country.

"We did not provide any user information or meeting content to the Chinese government," Zoom said in a statement. "We do not have a backdoor that allows someone to enter a meeting without being visible." The online meeting platform, which has surged in popularity as the COVID-19 pandemic has forced millions around the world indoors, has seen its downloads soar in China.

An anonymous reader writes: FreeBSD has has adopted a new LLVM-derived code of conduct. The code of conduct requires users to: be friendly and patient,
be welcoming,
be considerate,
be respectful,
be careful in the words that you choose and be kind to others,
when we disagree, try to understand why.

This isn't an exhaustive list of things that you can't do. Rather, take it in the spirit in which it's intended - a guide to make it easier to communicate and participate in the community. This code of conduct applies to all spaces managed by the FreeBSD project. This includes online chat, mailing lists, bug trackers, FreeBSD events such as the developer meetings and socials, and any other forums created by the project that the community uses for communication. It applies to all of your communication and conduct in these spaces, including emails, chats, things you say, slides, videos, posters, signs, or even t-shirts you display in these spaces. In addition, violations of this code outside these spaces may, in rare cases, affect a person's ability to participate within them, when the conduct amounts to an egregious violation of this code.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: On Wednesday evening, ZFS founding developer Matthew Ahrens submitted what should have been a simple, non-controversial pull request to the OpenZFS project: wherever possible without causing technical issues, the patch removed references to "slaves" and replaced them with "dependents." This patch in question doesn't change the way the code functions -- it simply changes variable names in a way that brings them in conformance with Linux upstream device-mapper terminology, in 48 total lines of code (42 removed and 48 added; with one comment block expanded slightly to be more descriptive). But this being the Internet, unfortunately, outraged naysayers descended on the pull request, and the comments were quickly closed to non-contributors. I first became aware of this as the moderator of the r/zfs subreddit where the overflow spilled once comments on the PR itself were no longer possible. "The horrible effects of human slavery continue to impact society," writes Ahrens in his pull request. "The casual use of the term 'slave' in computer software is an unnecessary reference to a painful human experience." Ahrens' pull request has been reviewed by fellow lead developers Brian Behlendorf and Ryan Moeller and merged into the OpenZFS project repository.

"It looks like Twitch streamers are the latest targets for coordinated DMCA attacks," writes Slashdot reader stikves. "What is more concerning is that these could potentially cripple their accounts." Engadget reports: The company has acknowledged (via Evening Standard) a "sudden influx" of DMCA takedown requests against streamers for allegedly violating music copyright in clips captured by viewers between 2017 and 2019. As each request potentially represents a strike against an account, this raises the threat of permanent bans for streamers who might get three strikes with relatively little warning -- and for clips they didn't even choose to create.

The Amazon-owned service is recommending that broadcasters delete any affected clips. However, it's a very slow process. You can only delete a handful at a time, and popular streamers may have thousands of clips. Twitch said it was working to "make this [process] easier," but didn't elaborate how.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Axios: U.S. video conferencing company Zoom issued a statement on Thursday acknowledging that the Chinese government requested that it suspend the accounts of several U.S.- and Hong Kong-based Chinese activists for holding events commemorating the anniversary of the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre. Zoom claims that it only took action because the Chinese government informed the company that "this activity is illegal in China" and that meeting metadata showed "a significant number of mainland China participants." Zoom said it does not have the ability to block participants from a certain country, and so it made the decision to end some of the meetings and suspend the host accounts.

Zoom said that it will no longer allow requests from the Chinese government to impact anyone outside of mainland China, and that it is working on technology that will allow it to remove or block participants based on geography. The statement indicates that Zoom is agreeing to China's demands to construct an in-company censorship apparatus to prevent mainland users from accessing sensitive meetings.

Facebook said on Thursday that Chris Cox, a former top executive, was returning to the company as chief product officer (Warning: source may be paywalled; alternative source. The New York Times reports: Mr. Cox had left the social network in March 2019 over disagreements with Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook's chief executive. In coming back as chief product officer, Mr. Cox, 37, who was previously at the company for more than a decade, will again become one of the highest-ranking executives at Facebook. "Facebook and our products have never been more relevant to our future," Mr. Cox said in a statement to his Facebook page announcing his return. "It's the place I know best, it's a place I've helped to build, and it's the best place for me to roll up my sleeves and dig in to help."

In his previous stint at Facebook, Mr. Cox also held the title of chief product officer. At the time, he was seen as a mitigating force to Mr. Zuckerberg internally, according to people who have worked with both executives, and was popular with many rank-and-file employees. Mr. Cox oversaw efforts around Facebook's main app and its other apps, including Instagram, WhatsApp and Messenger. Last spring, Mr. Cox and Mr. Zuckerberg disagreed on the future of the apps, including a "unified messaging" project intended to connect Facebook's multiple apps. Mr. Zuckerberg wanted to tie the apps together more, while Mr. Cox was concerned about the difficulties of that effort. Mr. Cox later announced his departure.

Apple CEO Tim Cook on Thursday announced a $100 million project focused on the systemic barriers to opportunity and dignity faced by the black community, with special emphasis on education, economic equality and criminal justice reform. Details: The effort will begin in the U.S., then expand internationally over time.
It will be led by Lisa Jackson, the former EPA administrator who has led Apple's environmental efforts for the last several years.
Apple is also addressing internal issues, promising to boost its hiring of underrepresented minorities and increase its spending with black-owned suppliers. YouTube announced a multiyear, $100 million fund dedicated to "amplifying and developing the voices of Black creators and artists and their stories," according to CEO Susan Wojcicki. From a report: "At YouTube, we believe Black lives matter and we all need to do more to dismantle systemic racism," Wojcicki wrote in a blog post. "We're committed to doing better as a platform to center and amplify Black voices and perspectives." As an example of content being funded under the new initiative, Wojcicki announced that this Saturday, June 13, YouTube will host livestream fundraising event produced by YouTube Originals, called "Bear Witness, Take Action."

Even fed-up tech workers are paralyzed by Silicon Valley's culture. From a column: It's easier for tech workers to talk about taking a stand than to do so. For one, big technology companies such as Facebook and Google are viciously competitive about acquiring talent. They hire or poach the best people, sometimes just to prevent a competitor from having access to them instead. Some workers don't want to rock the boat for fear they might get blacklisted, Ian McCarthy, a vice president of product at Yahoo, said. And ironically, the brokenness at companies such as Facebook and Uber can also make their jobs enticing. Disruption is appealing, and the promise to move fast and break things (even priceless and irrecoverable ones, such as democracy) can be a recruiting tool.

Others already in a company's employ may see an opportunity to fix some of its ills. One product manager at a large tech firm, who also advises many early-career professionals, spoke with me on the condition of anonymity because she fears reprisal from within the industry. She told me about her "activist" friends who refuse to leave jobs at Facebook, even if they disagree with the company's practices. "They came to change the world," she said, "and stayed to work within the system on issues they cared about." The same drive that makes these workers care about the consequences of Facebook's impact on democracy also makes them want to stick it out in an effort to improve the service.

Even so, Facebook seems to have crossed the line of tolerable abhorrence for some tech workers. Inside the business, nextplayism may offer the best, and maybe the only, way for them to show their distaste. "The vast majority of people I know at the director-and-up level, when they are leaving a company and looking for a new gig, they're Never Facebookers," McCarthy, who is also an occasional collaborator of mine, said, referring to senior-level roles. "They're offended if you even offer to do introductions to someone at Facebook." But that is a privileged attitude. Much of the magical operation of online services is driven by rote laborers, such as moderators, AI-training wranglers, and gig workers. They aren't counted as members of the industry, except perhaps as its casualties.

CIStud writes: The 1.05-acre lot near the Las Vegas Strip houses a 5,000-square-foot home built in 1978. Beneath the five-bedroom, six-bathroom home across the entire property is a 15,000-square-foot subterranean concrete and steel rectangular-shaped doomsday wellness bunker outfitted with an array of lighting control that highlights a pool, spa, waterfall, trees, guest house, barbecue, fountain and 500-linear feet of floor-to-ceiling illuminated murals. While the home's lighting mimics dawn, dusk, day and night, CE Pro notes that it's not automated or tied to an astronomic clock. "In order to change from day to night to dawn to dusk, the user has to physically flip the lights switches on multiple banks of fixtures, each one containing four separate colored fluorescent tube bulbs," the report says.

The home has been for sale for nearly two years at a price of $18 million. All furnishings and one year of caretaker and upkeep are included in the price.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Politico: On Sunday, researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the University of Michigan revealed numerous security flaws in the product that West Virginia and Delaware are using, saying it "represents a severe risk to election security and could allow attackers to alter election results without detection." In fact, it may be a decade or more before the U.S. can safely entrust the internet with the selection of its lawmakers and presidents, according to some experts. Still, a handful of states are pushing ahead, with the encouragement of one politically connected tech entrepreneur -- and the tempting logic of the question, "If we can bank online, why can't we vote the same way?" These are the problems with that logic:

1) Elections are different. Lots of people bank, shop and socialize online -- putting their money and personal details at potential risk of theft or other exploitation. But elections are unique for two reasons: They are anonymous and irreversible. Aside from party caucuses and conventions, virtually all U.S. elections use secret ballots and polling places designed for privacy. That protects people from being blackmailed or bribed to vote a certain way -- but it also means that, barring an advance in the technology, voters have no way to verify that their ballots were correctly counted or challenge the results. That's far different from a consumer's ability to contest a fraudulent credit card purchase, which depends on their financial institution linking their activity to their identity.

2) The internet is a dangerous place. Even if it were possible to require electronic ballots to travel through servers only in the U.S., no method exists to ensure security at every server along the way. It would be like trusting FedEx to deliver a package that had to pass through warehouses with unlocked doors, open windows and no security cameras. The most effective way to protect data along these digital paths is "end-to-end" encryption [...] Researchers have not figured out how to use end-to-end encryption in internet voting.

3) People's devices may already be compromised. It's hard enough to protect a ballot as it transits the internet, but what really keeps experts up at night is the thought of average Americans using their computers or phones to cast that ballot in the first place. Internet-connected devices are riddled with malware, nefarious code that can silently manipulate its host machine for myriad purposes. [...] Importantly, election officials cannot peer into their voters' devices and definitively sweep them for malware. And without a secure device, end-to-end encryption is useless, because malware could just subvert the encryption process.

4) Hackers have lots of potential targets. What could an attacker do? "There are literally hundreds of different threats," said Joe Kiniry, chief scientist of the election tech firm Free & Fair. Among the options: Attacking the ballot; Attacking the election website; Tampering with ballots in transit; Bogging down the election with bad data; and/or The insider threat involving a "bad" employee tampering with an election from the inside.

5) Audits have faulted the major internet voting vendors' security. Virtually every audit of an internet voting system has revealed serious, widespread security vulnerabilities, although the ease with which a hacker could exploit them varies.

6) Internet voting advocates disagree. Election officials who embrace internet voting deny the risks are as serious as the experts say.

7) What it would take to make internet voting secure. Secure internet voting depends on two major advances: technology that allows voters' computers and phones to demonstrate that they are malware-free, and end-to-end encryption to protect ballots in transit. [...] Solving these problems would require expensive, long-term collaboration between virtually every big-name hardware- and software-maker, Kiniry said. Note: Each point listed above has been abbreviated for brevity. You can read the full article here.

Software developer Danny Bittman tweeted about how he's convinced that his eyesight was damaged from wearing a VR headset for hours a day. The BBC reports: Danny Bittman, who has worked as a virtual reality developer for four years, suggested it could have affected his eyesight. "Just had my first eye doctor visit in three years. Now I'm very worried about my future VR use. I have a new eye convergence problem that acts like dyslexia. The doc, a headset owner, is convinced my VR use caused this. He said "these glasses we usually prescribe to 40-year-olds," he tweeted. He went on to describe the problem: "My eyes jump when I read things like a screen or books. I've always had a small level of this but it's greatly intensified now. It's also linked to headaches and vertigo."

He said that the issue was about "prolonged use," and admitted that he could spend up to six hours a day wearing a headset, split into 30-minute sessions. Ceri Smith-Jaynes, from the Association of Optometrists, told the BBC: "We currently do not have any reliable evidence that VR headsets cause permanent deterioration in eyesight in children or adults. There have been some studies looking into the effects of short-term use of VR headsets only; these did not reveal a deterioration in eyesight. "However, some people do suffer from temporary symptoms such as nausea, dry, irritable eyes, headache or eyestrain." But she did have some advice about usage: "If you spend all day in VR without a break, you'll need time to readjust to the light and the different visual environment of the real world. I would suggest taking a five-to-ten minute break each hour, using that time to move about, blink and look out of a window, or take a short walk.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: Amazon on Wednesday said it was implementing a one-year moratorium on police use of its facial recognition software, reversing its long-time support of selling the technology to law enforcement. Civil liberties activists have voiced concern that facial recognition could lead to unjust arrests during demonstrations against police brutality, racial injustice and the death of George Floyd. Critics also have questioned the software's accuracy, pointing to a past study showing Amazon's "Rekognition" service struggled to identify the gender of individuals with darker skin tones. Amazon has taken issue with that research.

The company, which sells cloud computing technology via its Amazon Web Services division, said in a statement it has pushed for regulations to ensure the software was used ethically. "We hope this one-year moratorium might give Congress enough time to implement appropriate rules, and we stand ready to help if requested," Amazon said. The company said it would continue to permit use of its technology by customers Thorn and Marinus Analytics to help law enforcement find human trafficking victims. The decision follows IBM's announcement earlier this week that it was getting out of the facial recognition business entirely. It's also urging Congress to enact reforms to advance racial justice and combat systemic racism.

If you try to tweet the link to an article you haven't opened, Twitter may suggest that you read it before posting. It's all part of a new feature the company is rolling out in an effort to "help promote informed discussion." Business Insider reports: "Sharing an article can spark conversation, so you may want to read it before you Tweet it," the announcement reads. It's one of the latest measures Twitter has taken in recent months to more actively steer discourse on the app. It's not clear whether Twitter plans any wider rollout for its prompt urging people to read articles before sharing them. In other Twitter-related news, the company is also rolling out its version of Snapchat/Instagram-style stories. "Fleets," as they're called, just became available in India and is gradually rolling out around the world; after initially launching in Brazil.

Mike Dano, reporting for Light Reading: Cox Communications -- one of the nation's largest cable providers -- is preparing to launch a mobile service, according to several sources familiar with the company's plans. However, the details of Cox's mobile strategy, including when it might launch and which wireless network provider it might partner with, are still unclear. AT&T executives have publicly indicated that the carrier is looking to sign MVNO partnerships with cable operators, and the sources said the two pursued MVNO talks earlier this year, but it's not clear whether the companies consummated the deal. It's noteworthy that Cox is preparing to re-enter the mobile industry by offering cellphones and wireless services to its broadband cable customers. The action would put Cox alongside fellow cable companies Altice USA, Comcast and Charter Communications, which have all also launched mobile services to their broadband customers. Comcast's Xfinity Mobile and Charter's Spectrum Mobile piggyback on Verizon's wireless network. Altice Mobile runs on T-Mobile's network. A Cox representative confirmed the company is interested in entering the mobile industry. "We believe the market is becoming more attractive for us to enter the wireless space and we are exploring it more aggressively now, but have not announced any specific plans," company spokesperson Todd Smith wrote in response to questions from Light Reading. "We have not entered into any MVNO agreements yet."

The U.S. video-conferencing company Zoom closed the account of a group of prominent U.S.-based Chinese activists after they held a Zoom event commemorating the 31st anniversary of the June 4 Tiananmen Square Massacre, Axios has learned. From the report: Zhou Fengsuo, founder of the U.S. nonprofit Humanitarian China and former student leader of the 1989 Tiananmen protests, organized the May 31 event held through a paid Zoom account associated with Humanitarian China. About 250 people attended the event. Speakers included mothers of students killed during the 1989 crackdown, organizers of Hong Kong's Tiananmen candlelight vigil, and others. On June 7th, the Zoom account displayed a message that it had been shut down, in a screenshot viewed by Axios. Zhou has not been able to access the account since then, and Zoom has not responded to his emails, he told Axios. A second Zoom account belonging to a pro-democracy activist, Lee Cheuk Yan, a former Hong Kong politician and pro-democracy activist, was also closed in late May. Lee has also received no response from Zoom. "We are outraged by this act from Zoom, a U.S company," Zhou and other organizers told Axios in a statement. "As the most commercially popular meeting software worldwide, Zoom is essential as an unbanned outreach to Chinese audiences remembering and commemorating Tiananmen Massacre during the coronavirus pandemic."