Starting in May 2020, every new Volvo will stop accelerating when its speedometer displays 112 mph. It also announced a feature named Care Key that lets owners set additional speed-related restrictions when letting another motorist drive their car. Autoblog reports: This number wasn't chosen at random, or because it's thought to bring good luck in Swedish folklore. It simply corresponds to 180 kph, which is well above the speed limit in nearly every country around the world. The exception to the rule is Germany, where motorists are free to press the accelerator until their car runs out of breath -- or gas. The latter is a finable offense on the autobahn, so we recommend keeping the tank full.

Volvo also announced its cars now come with a Care Key that allows users to set a lower speed limit. Volvo previously offered this as an accessory called the Red Key, but it is now standard equipment. It's similar to the teen driving profiles already offered by many automakers. Parents concerned about putting a 16-year old behind the wheel of an XC90 can use the Care Key to limit it to 65 mph, for example. "We believe we have an obligation to continue our tradition of being a pioneer in the discussion around the rights and obligations of car makers to take action that ultimately save lives, even if it means losing potential customers," the company wrote in a statement. Autoblog learned from a spokesperson that there will not be a way to override the speed limiter, even in the event of an emergency.

The mythical, unreleased version of the 2017 superhero film "Justice League" will finally see the light of day on Warner Media's HBO Max in 2021. From a report: After years of campaigning from talent and comic book fans, the studio behind the DC Films ensemble "Justice League" will offer original director Zach Snyder's cut of the film, which saw heroes Batman, Wonder Woman, Aquaman, The Flash, Cyborg and Superman share the same screen. Director Zack Snyder announced the news on a live Q&A Wednesday, following a virtual screening of his Henry Cavill-led Superman film "Man of Steel." Snyder completed the majority of work on "Justice League" in 2016, but stepped away from post-production and editing in light of a family tragedy. Warner Bros. brought in "The Avengers" helmer Joss Whedon to finish the job, and the varying styles of both men led many fans to believe Snyder had envisioned a much darker take on the project.

Budgeted at a reported $300 million, the film grossed over $650 million worldwide and did not resonate with critics, sitting at 40% fresh on Rotten Tomatoes. The DC assemblage was largely perceived as a miss in comparison to the juggernaut of Marvel Studios, and led to a creative pivot away from a tightly connected cinematic universe in favor of a far more loosely assembled collection of comic book adaptations.

Twitter today acknowledged that it's begun testing a new setting that let users limit who can reply to tweets. From a report: The setting was first noted earlier this year. Similar to Facebook's post view settings, the current implementation features a small glove icon in the corner. Tapping on it brings up a "Who Can Reply?" window. From there, users can pick from one of three options: Everyone, People You Follow and Only People You Mention. If you opt for either of the latter, the reply function will greyed out for all who don't fit the description. They can view, like and retweet the thing, but they won't be able to reply directly to the sender. The thread itself will also acknowledge that replies are limited.

Secure instant messaging app Signal launched this week a new feature called "Signal PINs" which the company says will help users migrate account data between devices. From a report: Signal says that in the long run, this new feature is the base and the first step towards moving away from using phone numbers as profile IDs. The new Signal profile PIN feature is already live and available for all Signal users. The feature can be enabled in the Signal Settings section, under Privacy, and the Signal PIN option. Once enabled, users will be asked to create a PIN code that will be associated with their account. The PIN can be anything from a four-digit number to a long alpha-numerical string.

A former Apple contractor who helped blow the whistle on the company's programme to listen to users' Siri recordings has decided to go public, in protest at the lack of action taken as a result of the disclosures. From a report: In a letter announcing his decision, sent to all European data protection regulators, Thomas le Bonniec said: "It is worrying that Apple (and undoubtedly not just Apple) keeps ignoring and violating fundamental rights and continues their massive collection of data. I am extremely concerned that big tech companies are basically wiretapping entire populations despite European citizens being told the EU has one of the strongest data protection laws in the world. Passing a law is not good enough: it needs to be enforced upon privacy offenders."

Le Bonniec, 25, worked as a subcontractor for Apple in its Cork offices, transcribing user requests in English and French, until he quit in the summer of 2019 due to ethical concerns with the work. "They do operate on a moral and legal grey area" he told the Guardian at the time, "and they have been doing this for years on a massive scale. They should be called out in every possible way." Following the revelations of Le Bonniec and his colleagues, Apple promised sweeping changes to its "grading" program, which involved thousands of contractors listening to recordings made, both accidentally and deliberately, using Siri. The company apologised, brought the work in-house, and promised that it would only grade recordings from users who had explicitly opted-in to the practice.

Infamous Israeli surveillance firm NSO Group created a web domain that looked as if it belonged to Facebook's security team to entice targets to click on links that would install the company's powerful cell phone hacking technology, according to data analyzed by Motherboard. From the report: It is not uncommon for hackers working for governments to impersonate Facebook, perhaps with a phishing page that displays a Facebook login screen but which secretly steals a target's password. But NSO's approach complicates its ongoing conflict with the tech giant. NSO is currently embroiled in a lawsuit with Facebook, which is suing the surveillance firm for leveraging a vulnerability in WhatsApp to let NSO clients remotely hack phones. Motherboard has also found more evidence that NSO used infrastructure based in the United States; a server used by NSO's system to deliver malware was owned by Amazon. A former NSO employee provided Motherboard with the IP address of a server setup to infect phones with NSO's Pegasus hacking tool.

The Bitcoin network just fine-tuned a key parameter to coax back miners who quit after last week's halving hammered their profits. From a report: More than 20 exahashes per second (EH/s) of computing power -- the equivalent of around 1.5 million older-generation mining machines -- has been switched off from Bitcoin since the network's halving. The 7-day rolling average of Bitcoin's hash rate has dropped over 20% from around 122 EH/s just prior to the halving on May 11 to now 97 EH/s. The once-in-four-years event reduced miners' block rewards from 12.5 to 6.25 bitcoin (BTC) per block. The hash rate drop after the halving has significantly outrun the hashing sprint prior to it. As such, Bitcoin's mining difficulty, which measures how hard it is to compete for block rewards, decreased 6% to 15.14 Trillion at 2:00 UTC on Wednesday in the network's first biweekly difficulty adjustment since the halving. The amount of computing power connected to Bitcoin has been on a roller-coaster ride over the past two weeks. Bitcoin's mining difficulty adjusts itself every 2,016 blocks, roughly 14 days, to ensure the average interval between blocks remains at 10 minutes. If a large number of miners are switched off from the network, resulting in a longer-than-10-minute average block interval, the difficulty will decrease to encourage participation. And Bitcoin's third halving on May 11 happened exactly at the halfway mark of the previous 2,016-block difficulty cycle.

Cars that can drive themselves in certain situations are an expensive luxury, but programmers, hobbyists, and gearheads across the world are working to drive down the cost of the technology and make it easier to use. Comma.ai, founded by infamous hacker George Hotz (AKA "geohot"). is one of those companies. Drivers can install the "comma two" kit in supported models and take the technology for a spin. From a report: For those not ready to make the leap, 15-year-old programmer Leon Hillman has taken Comma.ai's open source driving software and retrofitted it to control vehicles in Grand Theft Auto V. What that means is they have figured out a way to put self-driving cars into a video game from 2013, relieving the player of the compulsion to, uh, play the game. Comma.ai lets people retrofit recent model Honda and Toyota cars with software that brings automated lane centering and adaptive cruise control for use on highways and in stop-and-go traffic to the vehicles. The software, Openpilot, is open source so anybody can manually add support to more vehicles, if they have the ability to do so. Comma.ai places a camera system inside the car that views the road and the driver, a tablet to give driver feedback, and a cabling system that lets the system connect up to the car and run Openpilot. "Openpilot works by taking the radar data integrated with supported car models and combining it with the camera built into comma hardware, to determine what acceleration, braking, and steering events are required," Comma.ai's website explained.

Andrew Pulver writes via The Guardian: Film-maker Lilly Wachowski has responded to Elon Musk and Ivanka Trump after the pair bantered on social media using a phrase from the Wachowskis' hit 1999 film, The Matrix. After Musk tweeted "Take the red pill" -- referring to a key scene in The Matrix, which subsequently gave rise to the phrase "redpilling" as an alt-right, misogynist meme, along with a red rose emoji normally associated with the Democratic Socialists of America, the party to which Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Rashida Tlaib belong -- Trump replied: "Taken!"

Wachowski then pithily responded, "Fuck both of you," before following up with a tweet supporting the Brave Space Alliance, which describes itself as "the first Black and trans led LGBTQIA center located on the South Side of Chicago." Musk, the South African-born entrepreneur who is CEO of SpaceX and Tesla, posted his original tweet with no other comment, but it is thought to refer to his clash with authorities in California over his plans to reopen the Tesla factory in Fremont, in which he was supported by Donald Trump.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Robotaxis have a real public image problem, according to new survey data collected by an industry group. Partners for Automated Vehicle Education surveyed 1,200 Americans earlier this year and found that 48 percent of Americans say they would "never get in a taxi or ride-share vehicle that was being driven autonomously." And slightly more Americans -- 20 percent versus 18 percent -- think autonomous vehicles will never be safe compared to those who say they'd put their names down on a waiting list to get a ride in an autonomous vehicle.

PAVE says its data doesn't reflect skepticism or fear based on the killing of a pedestrian by one of Uber's autonomous vehicles, nor the series of drivers killed while using Tesla's Autopilot. In fact, those events don't even register with much of the population. Fifty-one percent said they knew nothing at all about the death of Elaine Herzberg in Arizona, and a further 37 percent only knew a little about the Uber death. Similar numbers said they knew nothing at all (49 percent) or very little (38 percent) about Tesla Autopilot deaths. But those who reported knowing a lot about the deaths were more likely to tell the survey they thought autonomous vehicles were safe now. According to the survey data, getting a ride in a robotaxi might change some of those minds. Three in five said that they'd have more trust in autonomous vehicles if they had a better understanding of how those vehicles worked, and 58 percent said that firsthand experience -- i.e. going for a ride in a self-driving car -- would make them trust the technology more. "Of the 1,200 survey respondents, 678 reported owning an [advanced driver assistance system] ADAS-equipped vehicle, and three-quarters of them said they 'will feel safer on the road when I know that most other vehicles have enhanced safety features,' with the same number saying they are eager to see what new safety features will be on their next vehicle," the report adds.

"Interestingly, drivers who own cars with forward collision warning (FCW), blind spot monitoring (BSM), lane departure warning (LDW), and automatic emergency braking (AEB) were also more likely to believe that safe autonomous vehicles would be available within the next 10 years compared to those without those features."

According to CEO Kyle Wiens, teardown and repair website iFixit has just posted "the most comprehensive online resource for medical repair professionals." The Verge reports: The new database contains dedicated sections for clinical, laboratory, and medical support equipment, in addition to numerous other categories of devices. It also provides more than 13,000 manuals from hundreds of medical device manufacturers. Wiens says the effort began with a crowdsourcing campaign to collect repair information for hospital equipment, with a focus on "ventilator documentation, anesthesia systems, and respiratory analyzers -- devices widely used to support COVID-19 patients." But the effort grew from there, spanning more than two months as iFixit added dozens more staff members to the project; began talking to more biomedical technicians, doctors, and nurses about their day-to-day needs; and started collecting and cataloging information from libraries and other sources.

The medical repair database is split up into nine categories, with each containing countless subcategories for basically any type of device you'd find in a medical setting. For instance, the clinical equipment category contains 53 subcategories for everything from anesthesia systems and Bilevel Positive Airway Pressure (BiPAP) machines to respiratory analyzers and ventilators. The database also has medical training manuals, information on medical furniture like decontamination systems and hospital beds, and an exhaustive section on surgical equipment repair and maintenance. Wiens explains in iFixit's announcement post that some medical device manufacturers make this information more easily available online than others. "But for their day-to-day work, biomeds have long relied on a rag-tag set of web resources to get the job done. Among the most popular is Frank's Hospital Workshop, a Tanzania-based site that hosts hundreds of medical device manuals -- it's the unofficial biomed bible," Wiens writes. The goal was not to outdo that website or try to overtake it in popularity, but to add new documents and manuals that weren't available before to a database including existing resources. Another bonus: the website will not make money on this project. "We are providing hosting and curation free of charge, and free of advertising, to the medical community," Wiens says.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from VentureBeat: It's finally happening. Microsoft is giving developers a command line interface to install their favorite tools. That's right -- at Build 2020 today, Microsoft announced Windows Package Manager in preview. This is not simply about helping developers build for Windows. It's about helping developers and businesses embrace Windows. Microsoft is on a mission to get developers to love using Windows over macOS and Linux. Part of that mission involves releasing tools like Windows Terminal for enterprises and improving WSL for anyone who needs Linux while they code. Another part is helping developers (and IT admins) set up their Windows environments as effortlessly as possible. In a similar vein, Microsoft today also threw in highly requested features for PowerToys: Run and Keyboard Remapper. But the former is definitely the bigger news.

Windows Package Manager is a command line interface for searching, viewing, and installing commonly used developer tools. Developers list their applications in a GitHub repository; the package manager grabs and installs them. Even better, Windows Package Manager is open source -- Microsoft is asking for developers to help improve it.

Microsoft is releasing a new Spotlight-like launcher app for Windows 10 today. Designed to replace and modernize the existing Win + R shortcut, the new PowerToys Run launcher includes quick search for apps and files across Windows, plugins like a calculator, and the ability to find running processes. From a report: This early version will support basic search tasks that are typically handled by the built-in Windows Start menu search functionality. But there are plans to make this a more powerful launcher that's similar to Alfred on macOS and more functional than Apple's Spotlight search. The current Win + R functionality is basic and used by Windows power users to launch cmd prompts, regedit, powershell instances, and even shortcuts to areas in Windows like the Control Panel. This new PowerToys Run launcher will support all of the same commands that Run does currently in Windows, but Microsoft is collaborating with an open-source community that's contributing to make it far more powerful. Also read: Microsoft Debuts Windows Package Manager for Your Dev Environment.

The New York Times will no longer use 3rd-party data to target ads come 2021, executives tell Axios, and it is building out a proprietary first-party data platform. From a report: Third-party data, which is collected from consumers on other websites, is being phased out of the ad ecosystem because it's not considered privacy-friendly. This has forced several big publications to rely on their own first-party data, or data that they collect directly from their users. Beginning in July, The Times will begin to offer clients 45 new proprietary first-party audience segments to target ads. Those segments are broken up into 6 categories: age (age ranges, generation), income (HHI, investable assets, etc.), business (level, industry, retirement, etc.), demo (gender, education, marital status, etc.) and interest (fashion, etc.) By the second half of the year, The Times plans to introduce at least 30 more interest segments.

New submitter xhonza writes: New OpenBSD version. String of good news. Some of the new changes, as highlighted by Phoronix, include:
- FFS2 file-system improvements including using 64-bit timestamps and block numbers by default for new installs.
- Support for the Raspberry Pi 4 on ARM64 while improving the Raspberry Pi 3 support too. Raspberry Pi 2/3 support has also improved for OpenBSD ARMv7.
- Better support for Rockchip systems like the Pinebook Pro.
- Various SMP improvements including better AMD SMT/Core/Package detection.
- A wide variety of different hardware driver improvements, including Intel AX200 WiFi device support.
- A FIDO driver introduced for FIDO/U2F security keys support.
- Fixed handling of USB 2.0 devices when in use on different USB 3.0 controllers.
- The PowerPC OpenBSD build switched over to Clang as its default code compiler.
- Various dhclient fixes.
- Various security improvements.

The changelog, announcement, and list of mirrors can be found at their respective links.

After a year of weathering criticism from tech workers, politicians, and activists over its oil industry contracts, Google has stated that it will not create new custom A.I. or machine learning algorithms that would help the oil and gas industry enhance its ability to extract fossil fuels. From a report: "We will not ... build custom A.I./ML algorithms to facilitate upstream extraction in the oil and gas industry," a Google spokesperson said in a statement provided to OneZero. The declaration comes in response to a new Greenpeace report that details 14 separate contracts between three of the biggest tech companies -- Google, Amazon, and Microsoft -- and major oil firms. Over the last two years, Google Cloud, Microsoft Azure, and Amazon Web Services have inked deals with firms like Exxon, Chevron, and Total to use A.I. and automation to accelerate fossil fuel exploration and extraction, linking the last generation of the world's richest, most powerful companies with the newest. Microsoft, Google, and Amazon have built web portals to entice oil and gas clients, and each company has set up divisions aimed at winning business from the oil industry. With a surfeit of disorganized, backlogged data, tapering production rates, and deep financial reserves, major oil corporations are attractive clients to cloud service providers.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from NBC News: The coronavirus pandemic has forced countries around the world to enact strict lockdowns, seal borders and scale back economic activities. Now, an analysis published Tuesday finds that these measures contributed to an estimated 17 percent decline in daily global carbon dioxide emissions compared to daily global averages from 2019. It's a worldwide drop that scientists say could be the largest in recorded history. At the height of coronavirus confinements in early April, daily carbon dioxide emissions around the world decreased by roughly 18.7 million tons compared to average daily emissions last year, falling to levels that were last observed in 2006, according to the new study, published in the journal Nature Climate Change.

Drastic changes in transportation, industrial activities and air travel in nations under lockdowns could also fuel a decrease in this year's annual carbon emissions of up to 7 percent, the study found. Though significant, scientists say these declines are unlikely to have a long-term impact once countries return to normal unless governments prioritize investments and infrastructure to reduce harmful emissions. "Globally, we haven't seen a drop this big ever, and at the yearly level, you would have to go back to World War II to see such a big drop in emissions," said Corinne Le Quere, a professor of climate change science at the University of East Anglia in the U.K., and the study's lead author. "But this is not the way to tackle climate change -- it's not going to happen by forcing behavior changes on people. We need to tackle it by helping people move to more sustainable ways of living." The sharpest decline in carbon emissions came from reduced traffic from cars, buses and trucks, which made up 43 percent of the total decrease. Although emissions from air travel fell by 60 percent, it made up a much smaller portion of the overall decreases because air travel typically accounts for only 2.8 percent of yearly global carbon emissions.

Facebook and Instagram are making their biggest push yet into online shopping with Facebook Shops, which allows businesses to turn their Facebook and Instagram pages into online storefronts for their fans and followers. From a report: Facebook, as with pretty much all its recent product updates, is billing the feature as one that will further help small businesses affected by the economic fallout of COVID-19. But the update, which is starting to roll out now, is also the company's biggest move into e-commerce yet. With Shops, business owners can create a dedicated "shop" section of their Facebook or Instagram page and build out a catalog of their products for users to browse and buy. Importantly, most actual purchases won't be happening on Facebook. Product listings will direct to a business' existing website -- unless it's one of a handful of companies using Instagram's in-app checkout feature.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from CNBC: Mark Zuckerberg has again sounded the alarm on China, calling out the country's approach to regulating internet services. The Facebook CEO on Monday said that he was worried about other countries that are looking to replicate the Chinese model, which he labeled "really dangerous." "What I worry about is, right now I think there are emerging two very different frameworks underpinned by very different sets of values," Zuckerberg said in a livestreamed discussion with EU official Thierry Breton.

"Just to be blunt about it, I think there is a model coming out of countries like China that tend to have very different values than Western countries that are more democratic," Zuckerberg said. He said Western countries should counter China's approach with a democratic alternative. He praised Brussels' 2018 overhaul of privacy laws, claiming the reforms have prompted Facebook to change its approach to data privacy around the world. The "best antidote" to China's approach "is having a clear framework that comes out of Western democratic countries and that can become a standard around the world," Zuckerberg said.

Disney's Head of Streaming, Kevin Mayer, is leaving to become the chief executive of TikTok and ByteDance, the Chinese company that owns TikTok. CNBC reports: It's a huge score for TikTok, a social media platform that hosts short form videos. Mayer was considered one of the top candidates to replace former Disney CEO Bob Iger, before Bob Chapek was ultimately named chief executive. Mayer is also leaving Disney after the successful launch of its streaming platform, Disney+, which rolled out in November and had 54.5 million subscribers as of May 4. Mayer earned a reputation at Disney as being the company's top deal maker. He spearheaded the company's acquisition of BAMTech, which makes the streaming technology that powers the company's online video services. He was also instrumental in Disney's acquisitions of Lucasfilm (and the Star Wars franchise), Pixar, Marvel and 21st Century Fox over the last decade and a half.

Disney veteran Rebecca Campbell will take over as Disney's head of streaming, the company announced in a news release. Campbell is a 23-year veteran of the Disney company and has held leadership roles across Disney's media, international and parks businesses. Most recently she served as president of Disneyland Resort.