Microsoft will retire MCSA, MCSD and MCSE certifications on June 30, 2020, according to a new post by Alex Payne, GM, Global Technical Learning at Microsoft Worldwide Learning, on the Microsoft Learning Blog. twocows shares a report: Microsoft shifted its focus to role-based training and certifications in September 2018 and has added 34 different certifications since then to its portfolio "across Azure, Modern Workplace, and Business Applications". Since Microsoft is now focusing on role-based training and certifications, it will retire all remaining Microsoft Certified Solutions Associate (MCSA), Microsoft Certified Solutions Developer (MCSD) and Microsoft Certified Solutions Expert (MCSE) certifications on June 30, 2020.

Apple has agreed to pay up to $500 million to settle litigation accusing it of quietly slowing down older iPhones as it launched new models, to induce owners to buy replacement phones or batteries. From a report: The preliminary proposed class-action settlement was disclosed on Friday night and requires approval by U.S. District Judge Edward Davila in San Jose, California. It calls for Apple to pay consumers $25 per iPhone, which may be adjusted up or down depending on how many iPhones are eligible, with a minimum total payout of $310 million. Apple denied wrongdoing and settled the nationwide case to avoid the burdens and costs of litigation, court papers show. Friday's settlement covers U.S. owners of the iPhone 6, 6 Plus, 6s, 6s Plus, 7, 7Plus or SE that ran the iOS 10.2.1 or later operating system. It also covers U.S. owners of the iPhone 7 and 7 Plus that ran iOS 11.2 or later before Dec. 21, 2017.

Turkey deployed dozens of unmanned "drone" combat aircraft over Syria, calling the maneuver a new military milestone, reports Bloomberg: Turkey deployed swarms of killer drones to strike Russian-backed Syrian government forces, in what a senior official said was a military innovation that demonstrated Ankara's technological prowess on the battlefield. The retaliation for the killing last week of 33 Turkish soldiers by Syrian forces involved an unprecedented number of drones in coordinated action, said the senior official in Turkey with direct knowledge of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's Syria policy. It was the first time a country had commanded the air space over such a large area using drone swarms, according to the official.

The series of strikes since Thursday by dozens of the remotely-controlled aircraft targeted Syrian bases and chemical warfare depots, the Turkish military said. But Turkey also located and destroyed some Syrian missile-defense systems, raising questions about the effectiveness of the Russian-made equipment intended to deter such air attacks.... Ankara appeared eager to show off its aerial firepower. The Defense Ministry posted a series of videos on Twitter showing Syrian tanks and artillery being destroyed in apparent drone attacks.

"Tesla CEO Elon Musk suggested that Lockheed Martin's F-35 Lightning II, the costly stealth jet considered to be pinnacle of U.S. military aviation, 'would have no chance' if pitted against a drone [fighter plane] that is remotely piloted by a human," writes Business Insider.

Long-time Slashdot reader DeadlyBattleRobot shares their report: At the U.S. Air Force's Air Warfare Symposium in Florida, Musk said there should be a competitor to the F-35 program, according to a tweet by Lee Hudson, the Pentagon editor at Aviation Week... The Air Force conference at which Musk made his comments included senior US military officials and pilots. Speaking with Space and Missile Systems Center Commander Lt. Gen. John Thompson, Musk said autonomous drone warfare "is where it's at" and "where the future will be," according to Defense News.

"It's not that I want the future to be this. That's just what the future will be," Musk added. "The fighter jet era has passed. Yeah, the fighter jet era has passed. It's drones."

Jack Dorsey co-founded Twitter in 2006, coding up the first prototype (with the help of a contractor) when he was still in his 20s. Dorsey's now it's CEO -- but "A major Republican donor has purchased a stake in Twitter and is reportedly seeking to oust him," reports the Guardian.

Bloomberg News first reported that Elliott Management has taken a "sizable stake" and "and plans to push for changes at the social media company, including replacing Dorsey". Paul Singer, the billionaire founder of Elliott Management, is a Republican mega-donor who opposed Donald Trump during the real-estate magnate's run for the presidential nomination but has since come onside...

Elliott Management is an activist investor, which means it regularly pushes for change in companies in which it buys shares.
Gizmodo referred to them as "hedge fund goons". But Reuters adds that Twitter "is one of the few U.S. technology companies headed, but not controlled, by one of its founders.

"It has given shareholders equal voting rights, making Dorsey, who owns only about 2% of the company, vulnerable to a challenge from an activist investor..."

LetterRip (Slashdot reader #30,937) shares a report from Ars Technica: More than 34,000 people have deluged the Federal Aviation Administration with comments over a proposed regulation that would require almost every drone in the sky to broadcast its location over the Internet at all times. The comments are overwhelmingly negative, with thousands of hobbyists warning that the rules would impose huge new costs on those who simply wanted to continue flying model airplanes, home-built drones, or other personally owned devices...

The new rules are largely designed to address safety and security concerns raised by law enforcement agencies. They worry that drones flying too close to an airport could disrupt operations or even cause a crash. They also worry about terrorists using drones to deliver payloads to heavily populated areas. To address these concerns, the new FAA rule would require all new drones weighing more than 0.55 pounds to connect over the Internet to one of several location-tracking databases (still to be developed by private vendors) and provide real-time updates on their location. That would enable the FAA or law enforcement agencies to see, at a glance, which registered drones are in any particular area...

The rules require that the drone itself have an Internet connection. That will instantly render many existing drones obsolete, forcing hobbyists to upgrade or discard them. And it will also make it significantly more expensive to own a drone, since you'll need to sign up for a data plan.... Apparently anticipating a backlash, the FAA does offer a workaround for people with existing or custom-built aircraft: special FAA-designated areas where people could fly non-compliant aircraft. These would be run by "community-based organizations" — most likely existing model airplane clubs that already operate fields for hobbyists to fly their aircraft.

Bustle's tech site Input reports on some research from the U.K.-based human rights charity Privacy International: Facebook wants you to think it's consistently increasing transparency about how the company stores and uses your data. But the company still isn't revealing everything to its users, according to an investigation by Privacy International.

The obvious holes in Facebook's privacy data exports paint a picture of a company that aims to placate users' concerns without actually doing anything to change its practices.

The most pressing issue with Facebook's downloadable privacy data is that it's incomplete. Privacy International's investigation tested the "Ads and Business" section on Facebook's "Download Your Information" page, which purports to tell users which advertisers have been targeting them with ads. The investigation found that the list of advertisers actually changes over time, seemingly at random. This essentially makes it impossible for users to develop a full understanding of which advertisers are using their data. In this sense, Facebook's claims of transparency are inaccurate and misleading.
A tool showing "Off-Facebook Activity" is also criticized for its "extremely limited" detail and lack of conclude, and the article concludes that Facebook's transparency tools "come off as nothing more than a ploy to take pressure off the company."

The report's title?

"No, Facebook is not telling you everything."

"Amazon has pulled more than 1 million items from its digital shelves due to claims that the products could either cure or help prevent the spread of coronavirus," reports SiliconValley.com: The move comes during the same week that Facebook said it would ban advertisements on its platform for products purporting to cure or curtail the spread of the virus that has so far infected more than 80,000 people, and results in almost 3,000 deaths, mostly in China. Amazon said has been taking the products in question down throughout the month... "Amazon has always required sellers provide accurate information on product detail pages and we remove those that violate our policies," said an Amazon spokesperson, in a statement given to this news organization.

An anonymous reader quotes CNN: French automaker Citroën has unveiled the Ami, a tiny electric car that's designed from the outset to be as cheap as possible. The car isn't very fast and it looks a bit like a washing machine, but it only costs €6,000, or the equivalent of about $6,600.

It would be hard to get a good used car at that price, but the two-seat Ami is barely a car. In fact, Citroën refers to it as a "non-conformist mobility object." It has a top speed of just 45 kilometers an hour, roughly equal to 28 miles per hour. It's powered by a 6 kilowatt, or 8 horsepower, electric motor. For that reason, though, the Ami can be driven by kids as young as 14 in France, or 16 in many other European countries, without a license. Under the laws of these countries, the Ami qualifies as a voiture sans permis (literally "car without license"), or quadricycle, a category of small and slow vehicle that, for purposes of regulation, is treated like a four-wheeled scooter...

The Ami is built using as few unique parts as possible. For instance, the body parts used for the front end are exactly like those used in the back. Also, the right door is exactly like the left door. That means the driver's side door hinge is at the front while the passenger side door hinge is at the back... Since it's a lightweight car with a small battery intended mostly for use in cities, the Ami has a range of only about 70 kilometers, or 43 miles, per charge. On the plus side, though, it can be fully charged in only three hours using a household electrical outlet...

Besides buying the car, shoppers will also have the option to lease it for €20, the equivalent of $22, per month.

"I love that my car recorded a hit-and-run on my behalf," writes a technology columnist at the Washington Post. "Yet I'm scared we're not ready for the ways cameras pointed inside and outside vehicles will change the open road..."

Long-time Slashdot reader Strudelkugel shared the Post's report: It's not just crashes that will be different. Once governments, companies and parents get their hands on car video, it could become evidence, an insurance liability and even a form of control... [I]t's not just the bad guys my car records. I've got clips of countless people's behinds scooching by in tight parking lots, because Sentry Mode activates any time something gets close. It's also recording my family: With another function called Dash Cam that records the road, Tesla has saved hours and hours of my travels -- the good driving and the not-so-good alike.

We've been down this road before with connected cameras. Amazon's Ring doorbells and Nest cams also seemed like a good idea, until hackers, stalkers and police tried to get their hands on the video feed... Applied to a car, the questions multiply: Can you just peer in on your teen driver -- or spouse? Do I have to share my footage with the authorities? Should my car be allowed to kick me off the road if it thinks I'm sleepy? How long until insurance companies offer "discounts" for direct video access? And is any of this actually making cars safer or less expensive to own? Your data can and will be used against you. Can we do anything to make our cars remain private spaces...?

Their design choices may well determine our future privacy. It's important to remember: Automakers can change how their cameras work with as little as a software update. Sentry mode arrived out of thin air last year on cars made as early as 2017... Tesla is already recording gobs. Living in a dense city, my Sentry Mode starts recording between five and seven times per day -- capturing lots of people, the vast majority of whom are not committing any crime. (This actually drains the car's precious battery. Some owners estimate it sips about a mile's worth of the car's 322-mile potential range for every hour it runs.) Same with the Dash Cam that runs while I'm on the road: It's recording not just my driving, but all the other cars and people on the road, too. The recordings stick around on a memory card until you delete them or the card fills up, and it writes over the old footage... Now imagine what Google or Facebook might want to do with that data on everywhere you drive...

Without Sentry Mode, I wouldn't have known what hit me. The city's response to my hit-and-run report was that it didn't even need my video file. Officials had evidence of their own: That bus had cameras running, too.
"Thank You St. Tesla," jokes Slashdot reader DenverTech, linking to a story in which a Tesla owner shared the video it recorded of another car struck in a hit-and-run accident in the parking lot of a Colorado Olive Garden. "It just makes me really thankful that there are cars out there, that can prove what happened so justice can happen," that car's owner told a local news station -- though the Tesla owner had also already written down the license number of the truck which struck her vehicle.

The news station also links to another story in which a man accused of dragging a knife across a parked Tesla "was also captured on the vehicle's built-in camera."

Several pundits criticized Google for warning Edge users to switch to Chrome if they wanted to use Chrome extensions "securely". "In Chrome, a plugin can be remotely disabled by the Chrome team if it's considered unsafe for whatever reason," notes PC World. "Google lacks the ability to remotely disable the same plugin within Edge, prompting Google to recommend switching to Chrome, a source close to Google said."

Though PC World notes that Google isn't giving the same warning to Opera users...

Yet now when you try to add Chrome Extensions to Edge, Microsoft also gives you a warning of its own -- that extensions installed from sources other than the Microsoft Store "are unverified [by Microsoft], and may affect browser performance." And while Google.com is still displaying an ad for Chrome to web surfers using Edge, now if you search for "Chrome web store" on Bing, the first result is an ad ("promoted by Microsoft") for Microsoft's own Edge browser.

ZDNet's Chris Matyszczyk asked both Google and Microsoft for a comment: [N]othing from Google. But suddenly, a confirmation from Microsoft that it wouldn't offer official comment. My sniffings around Google suggest the company may have been taken aback by the positive public reaction to Edge... My nasal probings around Redmond offer the reasoning that, well, Microsoft hasn't tested or verified extensions that arrive from places other than they Microsoft Edge add-ons website. Why, they're far too busy to do that. And, well, it's the Chrome web store. Who knows what you'll find over there? Oh, and Edge gives you more control over your data, so there.

Could it be, then, that Google is being vacuously childish and trying to scare people into resisting the lures of Microsoft's browser handiwork? Could it also be that Microsoft is doing something rather similar in either retaliation or merely homage to the brutally competitive instincts of social activist Bill Gates?

Could it be that both of these companies should pause to examine their consciences, go sit in a corner and embrace their customers' needs and choices a touch more fully?

"Mats Järlström's emotions were clearly visible Friday morning. After years of arguing red light traffic cameras are flawed, the official Journal of the Institute of Transportation Engineers said he was right," reports a local news station in Portland, Oregon: The ITE sets traffic policy recommendations for the United States — and they said cities should be using his formula. "It is a big deal," Järlström told KOIN 6 News. "It's the top."

Six years ago he tried to tell the Beaverton City Council there's a problem with its red light cameras. Then there was the State of Oregon, which fined him for practicing engineering without a license. He had to file a federal lawsuit to continue his research to prove drivers making turns at intersections often get caught in a dilemma when they're slowing down to make a turn and the yellow light isn't long enough.

Järlström said he used 8th-grade math skills to prove drivers have been getting tickets they can't avoid.
"It didn't take an engineering license to realize that the formula for traffic light timing was flawed," Järlström says on the Institute for Justice site. "I'm just glad that the ITE and the professional engineering community were willing to listen to an outsider, consider my work, and finally update their formula."

"The First Amendment protects Americans' right to speak regardless of whether they are right or wrong," said the Institute for Justice attorney who represented Järlström. "But in Mats's case, the ITE committee's decision suggests that he not only has a right to speak, but also, that he was right all along." The ITE's vote updates a 55-year-old equation, the site reports.

Järlström added, "We will never know how many Americans have received red light tickets for making perfectly safe right-hand turns."

The Federal Communications Commission announced Friday that it has proposed fining the nation's four largest wireless carriers $200 million for selling access to their customers' location information without taking reasonable measures to protect customers' real-time location information. From a report: The agency is proposing T-Mobile face a fine of more than $91 million. AT&T will be fined more than $57 million. It's fining Verizon more than $48 million. And Sprint's fine will be more than $12 million. FCC Chairman Ajit Pai said the proposed fines have put wireless carriers on notice that they need to do a better job protecting consumers' privacy. "This FCC will not tolerate phone companies putting Americans' privacy at risk," he said in a statement. Still, the amount of the fines is a drop in the bucket for the nation's carriers. For instance, Verizon reported fourth quarter revenue of $34.78 billion; AT&T reported revenue of $46.82 billion; and T-Mobile reported revenue of $11.88 billion.

U.S. regulators approved a plan to pay Intelsat SA and other satellite providers to give up airwaves so they can be redeployed for the fast 5G mobile networks being rolled out. From a report: The Federal Communications Commission on a 3-2 vote Friday approved Chairman Ajit Pai's plan for as much as $9.7 billion to clear the frequencies, with the money coming from bidders expected to include large telephone companies such as Verizon Communications Inc. The action "will help deliver 5G services to consumers across our country and promote our global leadership," said Pai. The satellite companies use the spectrum to beam TV and radio programs to stations, but say they can give up part of it while still serving customers on frequencies they retain, in part because they would use new satellites to carry data. The FCC will sell the airwaves at a public auction. Pai earlier proposed that Intelsat get as much as $4.85 billion for clearing airwaves quickly. The FCC in its vote didn't say if that figure had changed.

Adrianne Jeffries, Leon Yin, and Surya Mattu, reporting for The Markup: Pete Buttigieg is leading at 63 percent. Andrew Yang came in second at 46 percent. And Elizabeth Warren looks like she's in trouble with 0 percent. These aren't poll numbers for the U.S. 2020 Democratic presidential contest. Instead, they reflect which candidates were able to consistently land in Gmail's primary inbox in a simple test. The Markup set up a new Gmail account to find out how the company filters political email from candidates, think tanks, advocacy groups, and nonprofits. We found that few of the emails we'd signed up to receive -- 11 percent -- made it to the primary inbox, the first one a user sees when opening Gmail and the one the company says is "for the mail you really, really want."

Half of all emails landed in a tab called "promotions," which Gmail says is for "deals, offers, and other marketing emails." Gmail sent another 40 percent to spam. For political causes and candidates, who get a significant amount of their donations through email, having their messages diverted into less-visible tabs or spam can have profound effects. "The fact that Gmail has so much control over our democracy and what happens and who raises money is frightening," said Kenneth Pennington, a consultant who worked on Beto O'Rourke's digital campaign. "It's scary that if Gmail changes their algorithms," he added, "they'd have the power to impact our election."

IBM and Microsoft have signed an "ethical resolution" with the Vatican to develop AI in a way that will protect the planet and the rights of all people [Editor's note: the link may be paywalled; alternative source]. From a report: The pledge, called the "Rome Call for AI Ethics," will be presented on Friday morning to Pope Francis by Brad Smith, the president of Microsoft, and John Kelly, IBM's executive vice-president, as well as Vatican officials and Qu Dongyu, the Chinese director-general of the UN Food and Agriculture Organization. The two US tech companies lead the world in AI development, measured by the number of patents they have amassed. The document calls for AI to safeguard the rights of all humankind, particularly the weak and underprivileged, and for new regulations in fields such as facial recognition. It said that there must be a "duty of explanation" that would show not only how AI algorithms come to their decisions but also what their purpose and objectives are.

The Senate unanimously approved legislation on Thursday that would ban the use of federal funds to purchase telecommunications equipment from companies deemed a national security threat, such as Chinese group Huawei. From a report: The bipartisan Secure and Trusted Telecommunications Networks Act, which the House passed in December, bans the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) from giving funds to U.S. telecom groups to purchase equipment from companies deemed threats. The bill would require the FCC to establish a $1 billion fund to help smaller telecom providers to rip out and replace equipment from such companies, and to compile a list of firms seen as posing a threat to telecom networks.

9Game.com, a portal for downloading free Android games, was the mobile app store hosting the most malicious apps in 2019. From a report: 9Game ranked number one on the list of app stores with the most "new" malicious app uploads, but also number one on the list of app stores with the highest concentration of malicious apps overall. According to RiskIQ's 2019 Mobile App Threat Landscape report, 61,669 new malicious apps were uploaded on 9Game in 2019. In this ranking, 9Game was followed at a considerable distance by the official Android app store -- the Google Play Store -- with 25,647 new malicious apps. Completing the top 5 are Qihoo 360's Zhushou store, the Feral app store, and Huawei's Vmall app store. But while the Play Store ranked second on the list of new malware uploads, its sheer size diluted the impact these malicious apps had on Android users. The Play Store didn't rank at all in the top 5 app stores with the highest concentration of malicious apps, which included (1) 9Game, (2) the Feral app store, (3) the Vmall app store, (4) the Xiaomi app store, and (5) Qihoo 360's Zhushou store.

India is in the middle of a YouTube-powered coronavirus frenzy that could kill people. From a report: The most popular YouTube video in the world about the coronavirus was created by a channel called Wonderful Secrets of the World, which typically publishes Hindi-language videos about sports and cars, as well as roundups like "Top 5 Secret Places Hidden in Famous Locations" or "30 Amazing Facts About Human Body." The channel, the logo of which looks uncannily like that of Volkswagen, hides its subscriber count, but 16 of its videos have been viewed over a million times -- the most popular being the coronavirus explainer, which has been seen 13.6 million times as of Wednesday. Wonderful Secrets of the World isn't an outlier. It is the tip of a huge Indian YouTube iceberg of content about the outbreak. The disease has 75,280 confirmed cases, and 2,014 deaths, mostly in mainland China. Shared at high rates, these videos often combine basic facts about the novel coronavirus from Wuhan, China, with Indian nationalist propaganda and hearsay -- with serious real-life consequences.

There are reports of a man in southeast India who had a urinary tract infection and killed himself on Feb. 10, mistakenly thinking he had the coronavirus. His son told local media he was watching a lot of videos about the virus online. "We told him that he did not have coronavirus, but he refused to let us near him. He told all the villagers to stay away. He would tell them that their kids would also end up contracting it if they came close to him," his son told reporters. Karen Rebelo, deputy editor for Boom, an Indian fact-checking organization that reported on the story, told BuzzFeed News it's extremely difficult to fact-check YouTube videos because often it's not a straightforward question of whether the content is true or false. "Most Indians coming online for the first time start by streaming YouTube videos because it's free," Rebelo said. She said that most fact-checking efforts in India are only being done in English and Hindi, so things are even more complicated for videos being created in regional languages. It's also hard to fact-check videos that mix truth and hoax freely together.

From a report: Andrew Walz calls himself a "proven business leader" and a "passionate advocate for students." Walz, a Republican from Rhode Island, is running for Congress with the tagline, "Let's make change in Washington together," or so his Twitter account claimed. Earlier this month, Walz's account received a coveted blue checkmark from Twitter as part of the company's broader push to verify the authenticity of many Senate, House and gubernatorial candidates currently running for office. Twitter has framed this effort as key to helping Americans find reliable information about politicians in the leadup to the 2020 election. But there's just one problem: Walz does not exist. The candidate is the creation of a 17-year-old high school student from upstate New York, CNN Business has learned.

The student, who CNN Business spoke to with the permission of his parents and has agreed not to be named as he is a minor, said he was "bored" over the holidays and created the fake account to test Twitter's election integrity efforts. The blue checkmark is a hallmark of Twitter and one that was later copied by Facebook. It is often given to prominent accounts belonging to journalists, politicians, government agencies and businesses. The feature is central to Twitter's goal of helping users find reliable information on the platform, often from verified newsmakers.