If you've been getting owned in Call of Duty: Warzone a lot before you even hit the ground and thought it would be more fun to play if you could use cheats to see other players through walls, you're not alone. From a report: Last month, the developers of the hugely popular game banned more than 70,000 cheaters and promised to combat the game's cheating problem. "We are watching. We have zero tolerance for cheaters," tweeted the official account of Infinity Ward, the game's developer. This week, Infinity Ward rolled out a new, basic security feature which appears to have had the added bonus of locking out many cheaters: two-factor authentication. Infinity Ward announced that new Warzone players on PC will have to use SMS to login to the free version of the game, "as another step to provide an additional layer of security for players." Infinity Ward and Activision did not immediately respond to a request for comment, but cheaters are currently complaining about the effect this simple move has had on them.

After testing the waters this spring with its incubator-esque MVP Lab, Mozilla is doubling down on the effort with a formal program dangling $75,000 investments in front of early-stage companies. From a report: The focus on "a better society" and the company's open-source clout should help differentiate it from the other options out there. Spurred on by the success of a college hackathon using a whole four Apple Watches in February, Mozilla decided to try a more structured program in the spring. The first test batch of companies is underway, having started in April an 8-week program offering $2,500 per team member and $40,000 in prizes to give away at the end. Developers in a variety of domains were invited to apply, as long as they fit the themes of empowerment, privacy, decentralization, community and so on. It drew the interest of some 1,500 people in 520 projects, and 25 were chosen to receive the full package and stipend during the development of their MVP. The rest were invited to an "Open Lab" with access to some of Mozilla's resources.

Facebook has agreed to buy Giphy, the popular platform of sharable animated images, Axios reported Friday. The deal value is around $400 million.

XXongo writes: Although the problems with internet voting have been pointed out over and over again, with the arrival of COVID-19, the idea has again been brought up as a way to avoid the problems of in-person voting. If we can do banking by internet, why can't we do online voting? But, voting by an app is still a really stupid idea. If you want the government to belong to whichever hacking group can exploit a zero-day vulnerability first, this is it.

And, as Kaleigh Rogers of FiveThirtyEight points out, citing the co-founder of security consultancy firm Nordic Innovation Labs, "even if there was a completely secure system, there's currently no way to have an online vote that is both anonymous and auditable. An anonymous vote protects against voter coercion, suppression, or vote selling. An auditable vote protects against any errors or breaches, because officials can conduct a recount. But that combination, which is possible with a paper ballot, isn't yet possible online." And, even if the privacy and security issues were solved, online voting vendors would likely not be able to handle this fall's presidential election in time. "Nationwide would be a huge stretch," said Nimit Sawhney, co-founder and CEO of Voatz, one of the most prominent voting apps on the market. "We are a tiny little startup. There are about 25 people on our team. For us to be able to claim that we can do elections for 200 million people on a smartphone? That would be naive."

What the security experts are recommending a country do amidst a pandemic is to vote by mail.

"Planning needs to start now, to make sure ballots are printed off and mailed in time, and that voters know their options for casting a ballot," writes Rogers. "In-person voting will still most likely take place as well. But experts told me if we want those well-spaced lines for the ballot boxes to be less than a few miles long, we'll have to vastly ramp up mail-in voting by November."

France's lower chamber has passed a controversial law that will require social networks and online platforms remove flagged hate speech within 24 hours. If companies do not comply, they will have to pay hefty fines every time they infringe the law. Other more extreme content, such as terrorist content and child pornography, will require online platforms react within an hour. TechCrunch reports: While online hate speech has been getting out of control, many fear that online platforms will censor content a bit too quickly. Companies don't want to risk a fine so they might delete content that doesn't infringe the law just because they're not sure. Essentially, online platforms have to regulate themselves. The government then checks whether they're doing a good job or not. "It's just like banking regulators. They check that banks have implemented systems that are efficient, and they audit those systems. I think that's how we should think about it," France's digital minister Cedric O told me in an interview last year.

There are multiple levels of fines. It starts at hundreds of thousand of euros but it can reach up to 4% of the global annual revenue of the company with severe cases. The Superior Council of the Audiovisual (CSA) is the regulator in charge of those cases. Germany has already passed similar regulation and there are ongoing discussions at the European Union level.

Long time reader schwit1 shares a report: At the ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction (HRI 2020), researchers at Yale University's Social Robotics Lab led by Brian Scassellati presented a paper taking the first step towards determining whether dogs, which are incredibly good at understanding social behaviors in humans, see human-ish robots as agents -- or more specifically, whether dogs see robots more like humans (which they obey), or more like speaker systems (which they don't). The background research on dog-robot interaction that forms the basis for this work is incredibly interesting. The paper is absolutely worth reading in its entirety, but here are a few nuggets of prior work that should help you understand how dogs interact with non-human animated objects:

"Pongracz et. al tested whether dogs followed commands from their guardians with various levels of embodiment. The guardians may be present in the same room as the dogs (i.e., 3D condition), or interacted with the dogs via live-stream life-size interactive videos (i.e., 2D condition), or interacted with the dogs with only their voices came out of a loudspeaker (i.e., 0D condition). Dogs followed the commands most reliably in the 3D condition. They followed the commands least consistently in the 0D condition, and their performances were between 3D and 0D condition in the 2D condition.

Lakatos et. al conducted a study to test how dogs responded to the pointing cues given by a PeopleBot with customized arms. The PeopleBot either exhibited human-like behaviors or no social behaviors, depending on the condition. A dog participant observed the robot interacting with the guardian either socially or mechanically for six minutes in the interaction phase. The robot then delivered a food reward for the dog. In the subsequent testing phase, the robot pointed to one of the two buckets with hidden food rewards. In the testing phase, dogs performed better in the condition with a social robot than with a nonsocial robot. However, no evidence suggested the mean performance with the social robot was significantly different from 50 percent, which is the chance level in two-choice tasks. Therefore, the dogs did not consistently follow the pointing cues provided by the social robot, even though dogs in general follow human pointing cues well."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from ZDNet: Adobe has released security patches to resolve 36 vulnerabilities present in DNG, Reader, and Acrobat software. On Tuesday, the software giant issued two security advisories (1, 2) detailing the bugs, the worst of which can be exploited by attackers to trigger remote code execution attacks and information leaks. The first set of patches relate to Adobe Acrobat and Reader for Windows and macOS, including Acrobat / Acrobat Reader versions 2015 and 2017, as well as Acrobat and Acrobat Reader DC.

In total, 12 critical security flaws have been resolved. Six of the bugs, a single heap overflow problem (CVE-2020-9612), two out-of-bounds write errors (CVE-2020-9597, CVE-2020-9594), two buffer overflow issues (CVE-2020-9605, CVE-2020-9604), and two use-after-free vulnerabilities (CVE-2020-9607, CVE-2020-9606) can all lead to arbitrary code execution in the context of the current user. The remaining problems, now patched, include a race condition error (CVE-2020-9615) and four security bypass bugs (CVE-2020-9614, CVE-2020-9613, CVE-2020-9596, CVE-2020-9592). 12 vulnerabilities, deemed important, were also disclosed in Acrobat and Reader. Null pointer, stack exhaustion, out-of-bounds read, and invalid memory access issues have been patched. If exploited, the bugs can be weaponized for information disclosure and application denial-of-service.

Adobe's DNG Software Development Kit (SDK), versions 1.5 and earlier, is the subject of the second security advisory. The worst vulnerabilities are four heap overflow issues (CVE-2020-9589, CVE-2020-9590 , CVE-2020-9620, CVE-2020-9621) that can all lead to remote code execution attacks. In addition, eight out-of-bounds read problems in the software have also been fixed (CVE-2020-9622, CVE-2020-9623, CVE-2020-9624, CVE-2020-9625, CVE-2020-9626, CVE-2020-9627, CVE-2020-9628, CVE-2020-9629). If exploited, these issues can lead to information disclosure.

hcs_$reboot writes: The world's first trillionaire will likely be Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos. Projections show Bezos reaching trillionaire status by 2026. [Comparisun, a company which allows small- to medium-size firms to compare different business products] said their projection is based on taking the average percentage of yearly growth over the past five years and applying it to future years. "The projection has sparked anger on Twitter, noting how many people are financially struggling during the coronavirus pandemic as Bezos rakes in billions of dollars," reports USA Today.

Huawei has found a neat workaround to keep bundling Google apps on its smartphones: Launch new variants of old smartphones. From a report: The way the export ban has worked in practice is that Huawei devices that launched before the export ban (and some that launched even slightly after) can still be sold with Google apps. Devices that launched well after the ban, like the Mate 30 Pro, are stuck without the Google apps. So Huawei's solution, and its interpretation of the law, is that re-releases of old devices can still ship with Google apps. So meet the "New Editions" of old Huawei phones. This week, the company announced that the Huawei P30 Pro would be returning as the "Huawei P30 Pro New Edition," and earlier this year it re-launched the P30 Lite as the "P30 Lite New Edition." Both of these phones are from March 2019, so they're well over a year old now, but they both have Google app licenses, so welcome back!

Electric car maker Tesla plans to introduce a new low-cost, long-life battery in its Model 3 sedan in China later this year or early next that it expects will bring the cost of electric vehicles in line with gasoline models, and allow EV batteries to have second and third lives in the electric power grid. Reuters reports: For months, Tesla Chief Executive Elon Musk has been teasing investors, and rivals, with promises to reveal significant advances in battery technology during a "Battery Day" in late May. New, low-cost batteries designed to last for a million miles of use and enable electric Teslas to sell profitably for the same price or less than a gasoline vehicle are just part of Musk's agenda.

With a global fleet of more than 1 million electric vehicles that are capable of connecting to and sharing power with the grid, Tesla's goal is to achieve the status of a power company, competing with such traditional energy providers as Pacific Gas & Electric and Tokyo Electric Power. The new "million mile" battery at the center of Tesla's strategy was jointly developed with China's Contemporary Amperex Technology Ltd and deploys technology developed by Tesla in collaboration with a team of academic battery experts recruited by Musk. Eventually, improved versions of the battery, with greater energy density and storage capacity and even lower cost, will be introduced in additional Tesla vehicles in other markets, including North America. Tesla's plan to launch the new battery first in China and its broader strategy to reposition the company have not previously been reported. "Tesla's new batteries will rely on innovations such as low-cobalt and cobalt-free battery chemistries, and the use of chemical additives, materials and coatings that will reduce internal stress and enable batteries to store more energy for longer periods," the report adds. The company is also employing new high-speed, heavily automated battery manufacturing processes to reduce labor costs and increase production. According to the report, Tesla will produce the new batteries "in massive 'terafactories' about 30 times the size of the company's sprawling Nevada 'gigafactory.'"

Finally, in addition to improving the recycling and recovery of expensive metals, Tesla is working on new "second life" applications of electric vehicle batteries in grid storage systems. "The automaker also has said it wants to supply electricity to consumers and businesses, but has not provided details," Reuters reports.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Register: Privacy pressure group Noyb has filed a legal complaint against Google on behalf of an Austrian citizen, claiming the Android Advertising ID on every Android device is "personal data" as defined by the EU's GDPR and that this data is illegally processed. Based in Vienna, Austria, Noyb is a nonprofit founded by Max Schrems, a lawyer and privacy advocate, to focus on "commercial privacy and data protection violations." It says that "the core task of the office is to work on our enforcement projects and to engage in the necessary research for strategic litigation."

The complaint against Google, which was filed with the Austrian Data Protection Authority, is based on the claim that Google's Android operating system generates the advertising ID without user choice as required by GDPR. "In essence, you buy a new Android phone, but by adding a tracking ID they ship you a tracking device," said Noyb lawyer Stefano Rossetti. [...] The complaint can be viewed here [PDF] and raises key questions about privacy, choice, and tracking. It states that the complainant (the name is redacted) completed a Google contact form to withdraw consent to use of the advertising ID (if consent had been given, which is disputed), and to object to its processing. Article 7 of the GDPR states that "the data subject shall have the right to withdraw his or her consent at any time." Article 21 is a "right to object at any time to processing of personal data concerning him or her" for marketing and profiling, following which the law states that "the personal data shall no longer be processed for such purposes."

The complaint says that there is no opt-in "consent button" for the advertising ID. Although users have to agree to the general Google privacy policy, according to the complaint this consent "was neither informed, specific (the data subject has to agree to all Google services in a single step), nor free (the user cannot use a 800-euro phone without agreeing)." [...] The complaint requests that Google is ordered to "permanently delete the advertising ID", provide access to the data collected, and be fined based on various GDPR breaches.

Apple has purchased virtual reality company NextVR, Apple confirmed to CNBC. From the report: The purchase is further evidence of Apple's plans to enter virtual reality and related augmented reality technologies as a new product category, although the company has not announced firm plans or a new hardware product, aside from AR software for iPhones. An Apple spokesperson provided the the company's boilerplate statement when it makes an acquisition: "Apple buys smaller technology companies from time to time, and we generally do not discuss our purpose or plans," the spokesperson said.

The Newport Beach, California startup previously focused on broadcasting and producing live and recorded events in virtual reality, like sporting events and concerts. The company had a deal with the NBA to broadcast virtual reality highlights of the 2019 NBA Finals, for example. Apple did not specify a price or terms for the transaction, but 9to5Mac, an Apple-focused website that first broke the news, estimates the transaction to be worth $100 million.

The Epic Games Store has been down for several hours as people flood the service to snap up GTA V for free. "We are currently experiencing high traffic on the Epic Games Store," Epic acknowledges in a tweet. "We are aware that users may be encountering slow loading times, 500 errors, or launcher crashing at this time and we are actively working to scale. We'll provide an update as soon as we can." ExtremeTech reports: The surge in traffic for the Epic Game Store has apparently been intense enough that it has actually created issues for related Epic services like Epic Battle Breakers and Fortnite.

If you can't get on the EGS to pick up your copy of the game, don't worry -- it's going to be free through May 21. It isn't clear which edition of the game Epic is giving away, however, because nobody can log in to check. Rumors ran wild on this point, with some implying Epic would give away the "latest premium edition with additional content." At the very least, the rumor is that this represents the complete title, not just a front-end for accessing either the single-player campaign or GTA Online. Epic is having something of a banner week. "First, Tim Sweeney's company wowed the internet with the new PS5 demo built on Unreal Engine 5," reports ExtremeTech. "Now the EGS has broken down under the weight of Grand Theft Auto, which puts Epic news front-and-center before PC gamers who might not have cared about the console announcement."

Also worth mentioning is the company on Wednesday launched Epic Online Services, giving developers free access to the same kinds of tools used to support Epic Games' massive Fortnite player base.

Vint Cerf on the great many lessons that the coronavirus crises has taught us about infrastructure writ large: More directly associated with COVID-19 is the need for detecting exposure and tracking contacts to reduce the spread of the disease. Mobiles and the Internet appear to have roles to play for at least some tracking and tracing system designs. The application of machine learning to large medical datasets may help identify the ways in which SARS-COV-2 actually works. It seems that we are finding new syndromes triggered by this virus as research progress is made. We don't know enough and we must learn more.

Among the stark lessons we have learned is the fragility of food and medical equipment supply chains, either because of excessive concentration or because transport connections are broken. We are seeing this dramatically in the United States where farmers have been unable to sell to restaurants that are closed or operating at much reduced capacity out of concern for the propagation of the virus. These lessons should teach us to create much more resilient infrastructure in every dimension. We need to refresh national stockpiles of protective equipment, medical devices and vaccines. More generally, we must imagine other potential global catastrophes and put in place plans to mitigate. The time to agree on best practices for emergency response is before the emergency, not during. We must not allow this pandemic or a future one to become our society's Titanic.

Facebook and some of the world's largest telecom carriers including China Mobile are joining forces to build a giant sub-sea cable to help bring more reliable and faster internet across Africa. From a report: The cost of the project will be just under $1 billion, according to three people familiar with the project, who asking not to be identified as the budget hasn't been made public. The 37,000-kilometer (23,000 miles) long cable -- dubbed 2Africa -- will connect Europe to the Middle East and 16 African countries, according to a statement on Thursday. The undersea cable sector is experiencing a resurgence. During the 1990s dot-com boom, phone companies spent more than $20 billion laying fiber-optic lines under the oceans. Now tech giants, led by Facebook and Alphabet's Google, are behind about 80% of the recent investment in transatlantic cable, driven by demand for fast-data transfers used for streaming movies to social messaging.

Starting with Windows 10 2004, Microsoft is changing the minimum hardware requirements for the device. The change affects new, not existing PCs from OEMs only. From a report: According to the documentation, Microsoft isn't making available copies of 32-bit Windows 10 media. For now, Microsoft is still allowing users to buy 32-bit Windows 10 at retail and to continue to get updates for their existing 32-bit Windows implementations. Anyone with a 32-bit PC should be fine for as long as their devices remain usable. "Beginning with Windows 10, version 2004, all new Windows 10 systems will be required to use 64-bit builds and Microsoft will no longer release 32-bit builds for OEM distribution. This does not impact 32-bit customer systems that are manufactured with earlier versions of Windows 10; Microsoft remains committed to providing feature and security updates on these devices, including continued 32-bit media availability in non-OEM channels to support various upgrade installation scenarios," Microsoft wrote.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Motherboard: The state of Ohio won't deny unemployment benefits to people who refuse to work during the COVID-19 pandemic after people targeted the website it was using to track these workers, according to officials at the state's Department of Job and Family Services (ODJFS). The state previously set up a "fraud" website encouraging employers to report those who refused to go back on the job, angering workers and labor rights advocates. State officials say they are now reconsidering the policy after Motherboard reported that a hacker created a script to flood the "COVID-19 Fraud" website with junk data, with the goal of making it impossible to process these claims.

"No benefits are being denied right now as a result of a person's decision not to return to work while we continue to evaluate the policy," ODJFS Director Kimberly Hall told Cleveland.com. "Because Ohio is still examining its policies in this area, no adjudications concerning a refusal to return to work have been initiated," Bret Crow, a spokesperson for the department, told Motherboard in an email. "While the hacker's script has since stopped working after changes to Ohio's website, another hacker has taken up the project and plans to release an updated version," adds Motherboard.

According to The Information, two top executives left Google's Pixel team following the poor reception of the Pixel 4 and "rare internal criticism" of the phone. Ars Technica reports: Pixel general manager Mario Queiroz and "the mastermind behind Google's Pixel camera," Marc Levoy, have both left the Pixel team in the past year. Both Queiroz and Levoy have been visible members of the Pixel team at launch events, where they usually give lengthy presentations about the new features. Levoy, in particular, is cause for concern, since the Pixel's camera has been one of the major bright spots of the phone line. The Pixel 4 has not been a huge success. It has sold less than the Pixel 3 and Pixel 3a in its first two quarters. Osterloh was not confident about the device in the leadup to launch, either. The report says that "ahead of the [Pixel 4] October launch in New York," Osterloh called an all-hands meeting and shared his misgivings about the phone. He reportedly "did not agree with some of the decisions made about the phone" and that "in particular, he was disappointed in its battery power." Osterloh runs the Pixel team, so this reporting gives some insight into his management style. For a Steve Jobs type, approving these kinds of broad directions would be a big part of his day-to-day decision making. Osterloh, apparently, is more of a hands-off delegator.

The report says that, following "sluggish sales and tepid reviews" for the Pixel 4, "the company's hardware division needs to maintain favor and funding as Google's top brass look to rein in costs because of a recent slowdown in advertising revenue." Seeing Google Hardware in the same sentence as Google's cost-cutting efforts is a bit scary -- Google has been aggressively killing products that don't regularly pull in millions of users, and it's hard to make an argument that the Pixel line has been doing well or is even getting better over its four years of existence. We've already seen some branches of Google Hardware get the ax: Osterloh has admitted the team has quit the tablet business after poor performance from the Pixel Slate.

9to5Mac has learned more exclusive details about Apple's upcoming over-ear headphones, dubbed the "AirPods Studio," including specifications and settings. From the report: One of the key features of regular AirPods is ear detection, which automatically pauses the song when you take the earphones off. We've learned that AirPods Studio will have a similar feature, but it will work in a different way. Instead of ear detection, Apple is working to include sensors that can detect whether the headphones are on your head or neck. Based on this, we assume that AirPods Studio will play or pause content when they detect being placed on your head. Neck detection can be used to keep the headset turned on while the music is paused, just like when you take just one of the AirPods out of the ear.

Another new sensor will be able to detect left and right ears to automatically route the audio channels. That means there's likely no right or wrong side to use AirPods Studio, whereas current headphones have fixed left and right channels. Just like the AirPods Pro, Apple's new headphones will have Active Noise Cancellation and Transparency Mode. Users will be able to easily switch between the two modes to reduce external noise or to hear the ambient sound.

As AirPods Studio are expected to be mainly focused on professional users, pairing the earphones with a Mac or iOS device will unlock custom equalizer settings, with low, medium, and high frequency adjustments available, sources told us. According to a Bloomberg recent report, Apple's own-brand over-ear headphones will be available in at least two variations of the headphones -- one using leather fabrics and another with lighter materials to fitness use cases. Bloomberg also said Apple is testing a new modular design with exchangeable magnetic ear pads. [...] As for the price, rumors suggest that it will cost $349.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Electronic Frontier Foundation: A core part of EFF's mission is transparency and access to information, because we know that in a nation bound by the rule of law, the public must have the ability to know the law and how it is being applied. That's why the default rule is that the public must have full access to court records -- even if those records contain unsavory details. Any departure from that rule must be narrow and well-justified. But litigants and judges aren't always rigorous in upholding that principle. For example, when Brian Fargo sued Jennifer Tejas for allegedly defamatory Instagram posts, he asked that the court seal portions of his filings that contained those posts, references to other people and private medical information. The court granted Fargo's request, with little explanation or apparent care.

That approach set a dangerous precedent for others. The public has a right to know what courts consider defamatory. So, with help from the First Amendment Clinic at UCLA School of Law, EFF and the First Amendment Coalition moved to unseal the records containing the Instagram posts and references to other people. The judge denied that request. Undeterred, we appealed -- and won (PDF download). The appeals court chided the trial court for its failure to adequately justify its sealing order, and its equal failure to make sure the order was narrowly tailored so that as little as possible would be hidden from the public. While it did allow some information to remain sealed -- information related to private medical records can be kept from the public, and pseudonyms should be used in some exhibits to protect the privacy of third parties -- it ordered the rest released.