AI

Amazon To Kill AI Program That Sent Shoppers Free Items Based on Prior Purchases (cnbc.com) 28

Posted by msmash from the good-riddance dept.
Amazon says it will shut down a program that sends shoppers free samples based on what it thinks they want to buy. From a report: The program, which Amazon began testing earlier this year, used machine-learning tools to discern shoppers' buying habits, then sent them free product samples curated to their tastes. Samples included items such as Maybelline mascara, Calvin Klein perfume and Kind bars, among other things. While Amazon likened it to the site's product recommendation tools, the program raised privacy concerns among some consumers who have grown increasingly wary of data mining and targeted advertising across the web. Now, Amazon says it is winding down the program. "Amazon is constantly testing and launching new offerings to innovate on behalf of customers," an Amazon spokesperson told CNBC. "At this time, we have decided to discontinue the sampling program in 2020."
Security

Some Fortinet Products Shipped With Hardcoded Encryption Keys (zdnet.com) 21

Posted by msmash from the security-woes dept.
Fortinet, a vendor of cyber-security products, took between 10 and 18 months to remove a hardcoded encryption key from three products that were exposing customer data to passive interception. From a report: The hardcoded encryption key was found inside the FortiOS for FortiGate firewalls and the FortiClient endpoint protection software (antivirus) for Mac and Windows. These three products used a weak encryption cipher (XOR) and hardcoded cryptographic keys to communicate with various FortiGate cloud services. The hardcoded keys were used to encrypt user traffic for the FortiGuard Web Filter feature, FortiGuard AntiSpam feature, and FortiGuard AntiVirus feature. A threat actor in a position to observe a user or a company's traffic would have been able to take the hardcoded encryption keys and decrypt this weakly encrypted data stream.
Facebook

Zuckerberg's Quest to Explore Future Featured Mostly White Men (bloomberg.com) 217

Posted by msmash from the well-he-tried-his-best dept.
Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg completed his 2019 "personal challenge" on Monday, his version of a New Year's resolution. From a report: This year he pledged to "host a series of public discussions about the future of technology in society -- the opportunities, the challenges, the hopes, and the anxieties." The problem? Almost all of Zuckerberg's discussions were with fellow white men -- who have always dominated the technology industry. In the six discussion videos Facebook posted throughout the year, 8 of Zuckerberg's 9 guests were male, and all of them were white. Seven were professors or doctors -- and all but one were over the age of 40. The group's homogeneity speaks to one of the biggest criticisms of Silicon Valley: That tech is primarily driven and shaped by the decisions of white men, a reality evident in the employee demographics for almost all major technology companies. Facebook has positioned itself as a leader in the push to diversify the industry, and even promised earlier this year to double its female workforce in the next five years.
Data Storage

Some HPE SSDs Fail After 3 Years and 9 Months, Company Warns (hpe.com) 113

Posted by msmash from the how-about-that dept.
New submitter AllHail writes: HPE SAS solid state drives are affected by a firmware problem which causes these drives to stop working after 32768 power-on hours (3 years and 9 months). If these drives are not flashed with updated firmware before the failure, the drives and the data on them become unrecoverable at that time. If several of these drives are installed and operated together in a RAID, they are going to fail almost simultaneously. Patch or assume the risk of failure, says Hewlett Packard Enterprise.
Google

Google Fires 4 Workers Active In Labor Organizing (bloomberg.com) 125

Posted by BeauHD from the partially-open-culture dept.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The New York Times: Google on Monday fired four employees who had been active in labor organizing at the company (Warning: source may be paywalled; alternative source), according to a memo that was seen by The New York Times. The memo, sent by Google's security and investigations team, told employees that the company had dismissed four employees "for clear and repeated violations of our data security policies." Jenn Kaiser, a Google spokeswoman, confirmed the firings but declined to elaborate.

The dismissals are expected to exacerbate rocky relations between Google's management and a vocal contingent of workers who have protested the company's handling of sexual harassment, its treatment of contract employees, and its work with the Defense Department, federal border agencies and the Chinese government. Tensions have increased as Google has cracked down on what had long been a freewheeling work culture that encouraged employees to speak out. Google recently canceled a regular series of companywide meetings that allowed workers to pose questions to senior executives and began working with a consulting firm hat has helped companies quell unionization efforts. Earlier this month, Google placed two employees, Laurence Berland and Rebecca Rivers, on administration leave, "saying they had gotten into confidential documents that were not relevant to their work," reports The New York Times. "They were among the four workers who were fired."

"In the memo, Google said the fired employees had repeatedly searched for, looked through and distributed information 'outside the scope of their jobs.' One of the workers set up notifications to receive emails detailing the work and whereabouts of other employees without their knowledge or consent, the memo said. 'This is not how Google's open culture works or was ever intended to work,' the memo said."
Social Networks

Facebook and Twitter Users' Data Exposed Due To Third-Party SDK Bug (thurrott.com) 10

Posted by BeauHD from the here-we-go-again dept.
Facebook and Twitter announced on Monday that the companies were notified about malicious software development kits (SDKs) that allowed certain apps to collect users' data from the apps without their permission. Paul Thurrott reports: The main culprits here are One Audience and Mobiburn, developers of the malicious SDKs that apparently paid developers to use the SDKs and secretly collect users data. Twitter noted that the issue isn't due to a vulnerability in its software. The breach was caused by "the lack of isolation between SDKs within an application," according to the company. The company also said that the malicious SDKs could allow apps to access personal information like your email, username, and your last tweet without your permission. "We have evidence that this SDK was used to access people's personal data for at least some Twitter account holders using Android, however, we have no evidence that the iOS version of this malicious SDK targeted people who use Twitter for iOS," the company said. The two social networks said that they will notify the affected users about the breach.
Star Wars Prequels

The Filmmaking Tech Behind 'The Mandalorian' Is Straight Out of the Star Wars Universe (qz.com) 90

Posted by BeauHD from the we're-living-in-the-future dept.
In a Quartz article, Adam Epstein writes about the filmmaking technology used to film The Mandalorian on Disney+: Industrial Light & Magic (ILM) -- the Lucasfilm subsidiary George Lucas founded in 1975 to make the visual effects for Star Wars -- deployed a real-time 3D projection system called "Stagecraft" on the Disney+ series that could, eventually, replace green-screen as the film industry standard for rendering virtual environments. The company has been testing Stagecraft for five years -- most recently on the Star Wars spin-off movie Solo in 2018. But The Mandalorian, the flagship series on Disney's new streaming service, likely marks the most extensive use yet of the new system.

Stagecraft's chief innovation is that it can project a 3D visual environment around the actors that changes in real time to match the perspective of the camera. When the camera moves, the background moves too, simulating the experience of filming in a different location. It's a significant upgrade from green-screen technology, which requires the filmmakers layer in a static image or footage after filming in front of the blank backdrop. [...] The tech has a wide range of benefits. For starters, it can draw better performances from the actors, who don't have to imagine the environment they are in, as they do when filming in front of green-screen. They can instantly be transported to any location, real or made-up, and feel as though they are there. And that's another big advantage: Stagecraft allows films and TV shows to simulate environments without actually having to send an entire production there to film. "One downside is that the displays used in Stagecraft require liquid crystals that take several years to grow," the report adds. "Growing and maintaining these crystals, which are the backbone of LCD (liquid crystal display) screens, can be expensive and time-consuming, perhaps complicating the attempts of other companies to adapt the technology."

This video from Unreal Engine shows a smaller scale version of the tech in action.
United States

US Tech Sector Skews Younger Than the Workforce As a Whole, Study Finds (wsj.com) 118

Posted by BeauHD from the tech-sector-trends dept.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Wall Street Journal: Older information-technology professionals are being passed over by employers, even as IT job openings soar to record highs and employers say recruiting tech talent is a challenge. The IT workforce in the U.S. skews young: Workers aged 22 to 44 account for 61% of the IT sector, but only 49% of the workforce across all occupations, according to 2019 data compiled by IT trade group CompTIA. On the other side, workers aged 45 and older represent 38% of all IT employees at U.S. companies, while the comparable figure for all occupations is 44%, CompTIA said. The largest gap occurs among workers ages 35 to 44. They make up 29% of the IT workforce, but just 21% of the overall national workforce, said Tim Herbert, CompTIA's senior vice president for research and market intelligence. One problem is that some older IT workers who get too comfortable with their skills risk falling behind, says Michael Solomon, an advisory firm for senior technology job seekers. Another issue is cost.

"By the time many tech workers are in their 50s and 60s, they often have top-level compensation packages," the report says. "The age imbalance between IT and the overall U.S. workforce began roughly a decade ago and has grown over the years, researchers have found."
Transportation

Elon Musk Explains Why Tesla's Cybertruck Windows Smashed During Presentation (theverge.com) 145

Posted by BeauHD from the cause-and-effect dept.
When Elon Musk unveiled the Tesla Cybertruck last week, things didn't go according to plan when lead designer Franz von Holzhausen tested the durability of the Cybertruck's "armor glass." He managed to smash two of the vehicle's windows onstage with a metal ball, soon after smacking the door with a sledgehammer (unlike the glass, it was fine). We have now learned that, according to Musk, it was this sledgehammer impact that damaged the glass, which is why the windows subsequently smashed when hit by the ball. The Verge reports: This seems plausible, especially as Musk also shared a slow motion video of von Holzhausen performing the same exact test before the event, with the ball bouncing harmlessly off the window. The combined impacts likely weakened the glass, setting the stage for the eventual smash. (Though why the back window broke as well isn't clear: the passenger door didn't get whomped by the sledgehammer.) At any rate, the smashed glass was just one moment in an event which gave viewers plenty to talk about without the on-stage mishaps. The divisive design and impressive specs of the Cybertruck have caught the world's attention, and since the unveiling Musk has been drip-feeding bits of information on Twitter to keep people engaged.
Cloud

Google Addresses Complaints of Sub-4K Image Quality On Stadia (arstechnica.com) 44

Posted by BeauHD from the finger-pointing dept.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Since March, Google has been promising that its streaming Stadia platform would be capable of full 4K, 60fps gameplay (for users with a robust Internet connection and $10/month Stadia Pro subscription). But technical analyses since launch have shown that some of the service's highest profile games aren't hitting that mark. A Digital Foundry analysis of Red Dead Redemption 2 on Stadia, for instance, found that the game actually runs at a native 2560x1440 resolution, which is then upscaled to the 4K standard of 4096x2160 via the Chromecast Ultra. And a Bungie representative said that the Stadia version of Destiny 2 runs at the PC equivalent of "medium" graphics settings and that the game will "render at a native 1080p and then upsample [to 4K] and apply a variety of techniques to increase the overall quality of effect."

Over the weekend, Google issued a statement to 9to5Google that essentially places the blame for this situation on Stadia developers themselves (emphasis added): "Stadia streams at 4K and 60fps -- and that includes all aspects of our graphics pipeline from game to screen: GPU, encoder, and Chromecast Ultra all outputting at 4K to 4K TVs, with the appropriate Internet connection. Developers making Stadia games work hard to deliver the best streaming experience for every game. Like you see on all platforms, this includes a variety of techniques to achieve the best overall quality. We give developers the freedom of how to achieve the best image quality and frame rate on Stadia, and we are impressed with what they have been able to achieve for day one. We expect that many developers can, and in most cases will, continue to improve their games on Stadia. And because Stadia lives in our data centers, developers are able to innovate quickly while delivering even better experiences directly to you without the need for game patches or downloads."
Media

Smartphone Videos Can Now Be Analyzed To Locate a Shooter (gizmodo.com) 40

Posted by BeauHD from the technology-to-the-rescue dept.
Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University have found that videos captured by smartphones can be useful for determining the location of a shooter. Gizmodo reports: The Video Event Reconstruction and Analysis system -- or VERA, for short -- was developed at CMU's Language Technologies Institute with the cooperation of SITU Research who shared its expertise on ballistics and architecture, and the tool was released last month as free-to-use open-source code at the Association for Computing Machinery's International Conference on Multimedia in Nice, France. Using machine learning, VERA first synchronizes footage from multiple videos shot on smartphones in and around an event where a shooting occurs. The more footage collected the more accurate the results will be, but the researchers found the system even performed well when using footage from just three devices. Once synchronized, VERA calculates the position of where each video was filmed based on landmarks and other notable features in the actual footage.

The system then processes the audio from each clip, specifically identifying two distinct sounds: the crack of the shock wave created by the supersonic bullet in flight, and the sound of the blast emanating from the weapon's muzzle. The time delay between the two parameters provides a crucial clue, but the sounds also help reveal the type of gun used, which in turn helps determine the speed of the bullet. By processing all of that information, VERA is then able to determine the location of the shooter with a surprising level of accuracy. During its development, VERA was tested using video captured by three smartphones during the first minute of the 2017 mass shooting in Las Vegas, Nevada, which included multiple shots fired. The system was able to accurately estimate that the shooter was located in the north wing of the Mandalay Bay hotel, even with a margin of error that still pointed to the hotel as being the probable location.
AMD

AMD Launches Threadripper 3970X, 3960X and Smokes Intel's New 18-Core CPU (hothardware.com) 44

Posted by BeauHD from the new-and-improved dept.
MojoKid writes: Intel and AMD have been duking it out in the high-end desktop processor space lately. AMD's return to competitive footing versus Intel has propelled the company forward and the brand has a loyal, passionate following due the competitive performance-per-dollar its 3rd Generation Ryzen processors bring versus Intel offerings. Today, both companies have launched new flagship many-core CPUs, the Intel Core i9-10980XE, which is an 18-core chip, and the AMD 3rd Gen Threadripper 3970X and 3960X, which are 32-core and 24-core chips, respectively. Intel's Core i9-10980XE brings a lower price of $999 and competes more favorably versus AMD's lower-end 16-core Ryzen 9 3950X that's priced at just $750. Meanwhile, the new AMD Threadripper 3960X at $1399 and Threadripper 3970X at $1999 leave Intel's fastest desktop chip in the dust in multi-threaded workloads, sometimes by a wide margin. In addition, while Threadripper 3960X and 3970X pull only about 26 to 36 Watts of additional power versus Intel's new Core i9-10980XE, they do it with 33-77% more core resources. Regardless, it's impressive how the tables have turned, as AMD is now firmly entrenched with some better value propositions in high-end desktop processors, and better performance in many cases as well.
Youtube

YouTube Needs To Chill With Its Annoying Premium Spam (theverge.com) 117

Posted by msmash from the calm-down,-youtube dept.
Tom Warren, writing for The Verge: YouTube has been pissing me off for weeks. I'm starting to feel like I should pay $11.99 a month to subscribe to YouTube Premium just to get rid of the annoying pop-ups Google sends me almost daily. Google has decided to place pop-up ads in its own YouTube app for Premium subscriptions. This feels slightly acceptable at first, but Google has also decided these should spam you to death, sometimes full-screen, with no option to permanently dismiss them so you see them all the damn time. It's a classic growth hack designed to get more people to use YouTube Music or YouTube Premium because, honestly, who cares about either of those services? I already subscribe to Spotify, which is far superior to YouTube Music, and I'd never pay $11.99 just to have fewer YouTube ads and background playback of videos on my phone. It's a pointless subscription that Google is trying to lazily ram down my throat instead of improving its offering, competing fairly with others, and, most importantly, focusing on its customer experience. Google's efforts here have made sure I, and I bet many others, will never touch YouTube Music or YouTube Premium. I absolutely loathe both of these services to the point where I'm left swearing at my phone like an idiot, simply because these stubborn ads keep appearing on top of the YouTube videos I'm trying to watch.
Operating Systems

Linux 5.4 Released 35

Posted by msmash from the new-releases dept.
diegocg writes: Linux 5.4 has been released, featuring the new kernel lockdown mode, intended to strengthen the boundary between UID 0 and the kernel; virtio-fs, a high-performance virtio driver which allows a virtualized guest to mount a directory that has been exported on the host; fs-verity, for detecting file tampering, like dm-verity, but works on files rather than block devices; dm-clone, which allows live cloning of dm targets; two new madvise() flags for improved app memory management on Android, support for new Intel/AMD GPUs, support for the exfat file system and removing the experimental status of the erofs file system; a new haltpoll cpuidle driver and governor that greatly improves performance for virtualized guests wanting to do guest-side polling in the idle loop; and blk-iocost, a new cgroup controller that attempts to calculate more accurately the cost of IO. As always, many other new drivers and improvements can be found in the changelog.
Network

The RIPE NCC Has Run Out of IPv4 Addresses (ripe.net) 172

Posted by msmash from the wow dept.
Kelerei writes: The RIPE NCC, the regional internet registry for Europe, West Asia, and the former USSR, has allocated the final /22 remaining in their address pool, and has stated that they have now run out of IPv4 addresses. RIPE will continue to recover IPv4 addresses from organisations that go out of business, close, or that return them due to lack of need, but expects these small amounts of recovered IPv4 addresses to fall well short of demand: RIPE will now only assign IPv4 addresses to entities that have never received any IPv4 allocation in the past, and even then will assign no more than a /24. RIPE puts out a call to action for IPv6 migration:

This event is another step on the path towards global exhaustion of the remaining IPv4 addressing space. In recent years, we have seen the emergence of an IPv4 transfer market and greater use of Carrier Grade Network Address Translation (CGNAT) in our region. There are costs and trade-offs with both approaches and neither one solves the underlying problem, which is that there are not enough IPv4 addresses for everyone. Without wide-scale IPv6 deployment, we risk heading into a future where the growth of our Internet is unnecessarily limited — not by a lack of skilled network engineers, technical equipment or investment -- but by a shortage of unique network identifiers. There is still a long way to go, and we call on all stakeholders to play their role in supporting the IPv6 roll-out.


Facebook

Facebook's Viewpoints Research App Pays Users To Take Surveys (engadget.com) 16

Posted by msmash from the once-bitten,-twice-careful dept.
Facebook is once again offering a market research app, but this one appears to avoid some of the privacy concerns from before. From a report: The social media behemoth has introduced a Viewpoints app that pays you for completing surveys, research and other tasks that will help refine its products. Unlike Google's Opinion Rewards, you don't get the goods straight away -- instead, you earn points and automatically receive PayPal contributions whenever you reach point milestones. You don't have to worry about your rewards expiring, at least. Not surprisingly, Facebook wants to avoid claims that it's snooping on users without their full consent. You have to be at least 18 years old to use Viewpoints, and you'll be told what information is collected and how it's used. The company also vows not to sell data to third parties or publicly share your activity without permission.
Operating Systems

Zorin OS 15 Lite Linux Distro Can Rejuvenate Your Aging Windows PC (betanews.com) 69

Posted by msmash from the something-to-try dept.
An anonymous reader writes: Called "Zorin OS 15 Lite," it is not only lightweight, but thanks to the Xfce desktop environment and integrated Flatpak support, it should be quite familiar to those switching from Windows. In fact, the developers are intentionally targeting existing Windows 7 users, as Microsoft's operating system will be unsupported beginning January 2020. Zorin OS 15 Lite, in comparison, is based on Ubuntu 18.04 LTS and supported until 2023! It even comes with the very modern Linux kernel 5.0. "With Zorin OS 15 Lite, we've condensed the full Zorin OS experience into a streamlined operating system, designed to run fast on computers as old as 15 years. With version 15, we've gone the extra mile to make the XFCE 4.14-based desktop feel familiar and user-friendly to new users, especially those moving away from Windows 7 leading up to the end of its support in January 2020. By pairing the most advanced and efficient software with a user-friendly experience, we've made it possible for anyone to extend the lifespan of their computers for years to come," explains the Zorin OS developers.
The Internet

Slack's New Rich Text Editor Shows That Markdown Still Scares People (vice.com) 45

Posted by msmash from the closer-look dept.
Slack just updated its longtime editor for its primary interface -- and the rich-text result hints at a longstanding tension over how much of a helping hand users need from their text editors and communication programs. From a report: Power users, like programmer Arthur O'Dwyer, make the case that they don't really need any -- and the rich-text interface they added just gets in the way. "I wish Slack would provide a way to disable the WYSIWYG rich-text-input box," he wrote in a viral blog post. "I don't think it's useful, and it's extremely annoying to have to keep backspacing to fix mistakes." After the decision was criticized by O'Dwyer and others (and after this article was published), Slack told Motherboard that it would switch gears and provide an option to bring the old interface back.

It noted that it was trying to make the app more palatable to the broader audience of users it's gained in recent years since. But concerns from older users who liked the prior Markdown-driven interface led the company to rethink the decision, and bring the tool back in the coming weeks. "Our recently introduced WYSIWYG formatting toolbar was developed with that broader customer community in mind," the company said. "We thought we had nailed it, but we have seen an outpouring of feedback from customers who love using Slack with markup." The situation will find a happy medium resolved in the coming weeks as Slack brings back the old editor, but it nonetheless highlights a central question that created the debate in the first place: Can we ever truly accept Markdown formatting -- which the old Slack editor relies on -- in the mainstream?
Transportation

Uber Loses License To Operate in London, One of Its Biggest Markets (venturebeat.com) 109

Posted by msmash from the tussle-continues dept.
Uber has lost its license to operate in London, one of its biggest markets globally, with a local transport regulator reaffirming a previous claim that Uber is not a "fit and proper" operator. From a report: The regulator also found that Uber's systems are "easily manipulated" by unauthorized drivers. The announcement follows a two-year battle with Transport for London (TfL) that kicked off back in September 2017, when the local transport regulator ruled that Uber failed to take sufficient "corporate responsibility" when it came to safety and security. Concerns included its approach to reporting crimes and its process for driver background checks. Although TfL conceded that Uber has since made some "positive changes," the regulator identified a continued "pattern of failures," including "breaches that placed passengers and their safety at risk." "As the regulator of private hire services in London, we are required to make a decision today on whether Uber is fit and proper to hold a licence," said Helen Chapman, TfL's director of licensing, regulation, and charging. "Safety is our absolute top priority. While we recognize Uber has made improvements, it is unacceptable that Uber has allowed passengers to get into minicabs with drivers who are potentially unlicensed and uninsured."
The Internet

Web Creator Tim Berners-Lee Launches Plan To 'Fix' the Internet (cnbc.com) 109

Posted by msmash from the taking-a-stand dept.
Tim Berners-Lee, the creator of the World Wide Web, is officially launching his plan to "fix" the internet. From a report: The World Wide Web Foundation, a non-profit campaign group set up by Berners-Lee, has secured the backing of tech giants Facebook, Google and Microsoft for the scheme, dubbed the "contract for the web." The British computer scientist first outlined his vision to overhaul organizations' approach to the internet at the Web Summit event last year. At the time, he said the web was "at a tipping point." The contract calls on companies to respect consumers' data privacy and urges governments to ensure everyone has access to the internet. "Never before has the web's power for good been more under threat," Adrian Lovett, CEO of the World Wide Web Foundation, told CNBC in an interview Friday. He added that the rise of hateful content and fake news being propagated online meant something had to change. "We're launching the contract for the web for the world's first-ever global action plan to protect the web as a force for good, bringing together companies, governments and citizens from around the world to say these are the things that need to be done to put things back on the right track."

Other organizations backing the contract include DuckDuckGo, Reddit, GitHub and Reporters Without Borders. One major component of the pledge is the requirement that the web remains an accessible tool for all users. Lovett said that, "despite the progress we've seen in getting the world connected, half the world doesn't have access." He said the contract comes with nine core principles, while underneath them is a total of 76 clauses. "Not every organization has to abide by all of them," he insisted. "A good number of those 76 will be relevant." Berners-Lee will deliver a speech in Berlin, Germany, on Monday where he is due to say the contract will serve as a blueprint for governments, companies and citizens to safeguard the web as a force for good. The World Wide Web Foundation says it is working with partners to develop tools that can measure progress on the contract's various clauses.

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