New York State Attorney General Letitia James announced Tuesday that 47 attorneys general from states and U.S. territories plan to take part in a New York-led antitrust probe into Facebook. Shares of Facebook fell as much as 2.2% on the news. From a report: The multistate investigation was first announced in September with participation from seven other states, but it has since expanded considerably. The probe will zero in on Facebook's dominance in the social media industry and whether it broke any state or federal laws as a result of any anticompetitive conduct related to that dominance. "After continued bipartisan conversations with attorneys general from around the country, today I am announcing that we have vastly expanded the list of states, districts, and territories investigating Facebook for potential antitrust violations," James said in a statement.

"Our investigation now has the support of 47 attorneys general from around the nation, who are all concerned that Facebook may have put consumer data at risk, reduced the quality of consumers' choices, and increased the price of advertising. As we continue our investigation, we will use every investigative tool at our disposal to determine whether Facebook's actions stifled competition and put users at risk." It comes as Facebook already faces a separate antitrust investigation launched by the Federal Trade Commission in July.

Comcast made headlines last month when it announced plans to give a free streaming box to all of its internet-only subscribers -- except, there's an extra fee that Comcast didn't clearly disclose at the time. From a report: It'll only give the box to internet-only subscribers who also rent a modem and router from the company for an additional $13 per month. After the free offer was announced last month, a Comcast spokesperson told me the rental requirement would be dropped "in the coming weeks" so that all internet-only customers could get the device for free. But a month later, that requirement is still in place, and Comcast's checkout interface has even been updated to emphasize that its streaming box, called Flex, is only included when you rent the company's modem / router combo, the xFi Gateway. The Comcast spokesperson now says the ability to use your own router and avoid the fee is "coming imminently."

Blink-182 singer Tom DeLonge's UFO research organization has signed an agreement with the U.S. Army in which it will help the military study and develop advanced materials for the purposes of develpoing "active camouflage, beamed energy propulsion, and quantum communication" for use on military vehicles. Motherboard reports: On October 17th, To the Stars joined forces with the Army's Combat Capabilities Development Command, a research and development body. While To the Stars has made recent headlines with its UFO themed content, such as its acquisition of "exotic" materials which it claims are not from Earth, and videos acquired from the Navy purporting to show unidentified anomalous phenomena, this recent deal with the military portrays a different side of To the Stars: as a potential technology company.

In recent months, DeLonge's organization has made a big deal out of obtaining those "exotic" metals that it believes may come from UFOs. Though the contract doesn't specifically mention the origin of any of those metals, it does say that To the Stars and the U.S. Army will use government labs to study "meta materials," which could refer to these alloys. "Government shall: Perform assessments, testing, and characterization of Collaborator-provided technologies. The Government is interested in a variety of the Collaborator's technologies, such as, but not limited to inertial mass reduction, mechanical/structural meta materials, electromagnetic meta material wave guides, quantum physics, quantum communications, and beamed energy propulsion," the contract states. The contract lasts for five years. The government isn't paying TTSA anything, rather, it is agreeing to collaborate with TTSA on researching new technologies and has committed to spend at least $750,000 on the research.

Netflix has always been aware of password sharing and has never seemed to mind it, but that attitude may change as the company says it's looking into "consumer-friendly ways" to address the issue. When Guggenheim Securities' Miachael Morris asked about it, Netflix CFO Spencer Neumann said: "We continue to monitor it. "We're looking at the situation and we'll [look for] those consumer-friendly ways to push on the edges of that." However, Neumann noted that Netflix has "no big plans to announce at this time in terms of doing something different" with how password sharing works. MobileSyrup reports: As it stands, users can sign into Netflix on as many devices as they want, with the only limitation being how many can stream at the same time (depending on the plan). Naturally, this allows people to share their accounts with family or friends. Given how open this is, it's possible that Netflix would want to reduce the number of devices an account can be registered to. For example, Sony allows users to share content between PlayStation 4 systems by logging into the same account, although it limits this functionality to two consoles. Trying to do this with additional consoles could get an account flagged and blocked.

Facebook on Monday removed nearly 200 newly discovered fake accounts linked separately to Iran and to Russia's Internet Research Agency. The takedowns demonstrate that foreign influence operations are already targeting the 2020 election, but provide evidence that Russia's notorious troll farm is struggling to regain anything close to the influence in held in 2016. The Daily Beast reports: The new wave of takedowns targeted separate networks of deceptive accounts created by Iran and Russia, including dozens of fake Facebook organization pages. In a press call, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg said the takedowns show the company has come far since getting caught flat-footed in 2016. "The fact that we've identified them proactively should provide some confidence that our systems here are working," Zuckerberg said. The Russian accounts were far more focused on U.S. domestic issues, but in terms of sheer numbers and longevity, the Iranian effort outstripped Russia. The Iranian accounts included 21 Instagram accounts and 135 fake Facebook accounts propping up 26 phony organization pages and four Facebook groups. More than 90 of the accounts were primarily focused on U.S. readers, with the others mostly targeting Latin America. The accounts largely pushed links to Iranian propaganda on state-run news outlets, according to Facebook.

As with past takedowns, the company's announcement only identified a handful of the Iranian personas. Of those, though, one stands out as eerily reminiscent of Russia's 2016 efforts -- a Facebook page called "BLMnews" that purported to be a news site covering the Black Lives Matters movement. The page had a meager 45 followers, and, according to Facebook, was devoted to driving traffic to an associated website that's been operating since August 2016, according to Internet registration records. Russia's Internet Research Agency ran similar sites and Facebook pages during and after the 2016 election season, some with sizable followings. But so far the Saint Petersburg troll farm appears to have a long way to go. Of the 50 accounts banned by Facebook on Monday, all but one were on Instagram alone, with no Facebook presence at all. The Russian operation appears to be in the early stages, Facebook said. "They're still trying to build their audience, and they put significant operation security into concealing who they were," said company cybersecurity chief Nathaniel Gleicher in Monday's press call.

In the latest swirl of T-Mobile-Sprint merger drama, Colorado is exiting a lawsuit challenging the deal after Dish Network agreed to house its new wireless headquarters in the state. The Verge reports: The Colorado Attorney General's Office announced its decision on Monday after Dish promised that the state would be one of the first in the nation to receive 5G services and become the home of its new wireless headquarters, creating thousands of jobs. The DOJ approved the T-Mobile-Sprint merger back in July after it was able to piece together a new wireless competitor by allocating some of Sprint's spectrum to Dish. The Federal Communications Commission formally voted to approve the merger late last week. Dish is positioned to become the third largest wireless competitor after negotiations with the Justice Department to approve the merger.

Dish won't be building out a new headquarters, however. The company already houses its call center employees at the "Riverfront" facility in Littleton, Colorado and any new wireless HQ employees will work in that building (which looks eerily like a Cabela's location) as well. Colorado was formerly part of a multistate lawsuit spearheaded by the New York State Attorney General's office aimed at blocking the merger. Colorado is now the second state to drop out of the suit along with Mississippi. A trial date is set for December 9th. In a press release, Dish said that it "expects to employ 2,000 full-time employees" at the Colorado headquarters over the next three years. "The agreements we are announcing today address those concerns by guaranteeing jobs in Colorado, a statewide buildout of a fast 5G network that will especially benefit rural communities, and low-cost mobile plans," Chief Deputy Attorney General Natalie Hanlon Leh said in a statement to The Colorado Sun. "Our announcement today ensures Coloradans will benefit from Dish's success as a nationwide wireless competitor."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Wired: To transition the United States from fossil fuels to green energy, [Democratic Presidential candidate Andrew Yang] wants the government to invest $50 billion in the development of thorium molten-salt nuclear reactors -- and he wants them on the grid by 2027. "Nuclear isn't a perfect solution, but it's a solid solution for now," Yang's climate policy page reads. It calls out thorium molten-salt reactors in particular as "a technology we should invest in as a stopgap for any shortfalls we have in our renewable energy sources as we move to a future powered by renewable energy."

Thorium molten-salt reactors were first invented 60 years ago, but Yang appears to be the first presidential candidate to campaign on their promise to make nuclear energy safer, cleaner, and cheaper. Like all molten-salt reactors, they eschew solid rods of uranium-235 in favor of a liquid fuel made of thorium and a small amount of uranium dissolved in a molten salt. This approach to nuclear energy reduces proliferation risk, produces minimal amounts of short-lived toxic waste, and resists nuclear meltdowns. As in a conventional nuclear reactor, splitting the nuclei of a nuclear fuel -- a process known as fission -- produces heat, which gets used to turn a turbine to generate electricity. But the Cold War arms race meant the US was already in the business of enriching uranium for weapons, so nuclear reactors based on solid uranium took off while liquid reactors stalled. No country has built a commercial molten-salt reactor. As a result, many practical questions remain about the best way to design a thorium liquid-fuel reactor. Foremost among them, says Lin-Wen Hu, director of research and irradiation services at MIT's Nuclear Reactor Laboratory, is finding materials that can contain the corrosive molten salts. Furthermore, figuring out how to extract unwanted elements produced as thorium decays -- such as protactinium-233 -- from the fuel remains a major technical challenge. "The main advantage of thorium is that the waste has a half-life on the order of dozens, rather than thousands, of years," the report adds. "From a power-generation perspective, the better option for Yang and other Democratic candidates may be to invest in advanced uranium-based technologies. This includes molten-salt reactors, but also solid-fuel systems like next-generation fast reactors, which are safer and more efficient than previous nuclear reactor designs. In some designs, next-generation reactors can even use preexisting nuclear waste as fuel."

The Pixel 4 is shipping with a face-unlock security issue that's not expected to get fixed for quite some time. "Unlike the iPhone's FaceID (and Google's earlier face-unlock system on Android 4.1), the Pixel 4's face unlock doesn't look for the user's eyes, so the phone could be pointed at a sleeping or unconscious owner and unlocked without their consent," reports Ars Technica. Google said in a statement that a fix requiring a user's eyes to be looking at the device "will be delivered in a software update in the coming months." Ars Technica reports: The Pixel 4 was announced last week, and instead of including a fingerprint reader like most Android phones do, the Pixel 4 features Google's newly developed face-unlock system as the only biometric option. Google is clearly chasing the iPhone here, and the Pixel 4's face unlock works just like Apple's Face ID system: an IR dot projector blasts a grid of invisible dots onto the user's face, and a camera (a pair of cameras, in the case of the Pixel 4) reads the user's face in 3D. As part of the many pre-release Pixel 4 leaks, screenshots of pre-release builds of the Pixel 4's software showed an option to "require eyes to be open." So we know Google hasn't been completely blindsided by this problem; the fix just wasn't ready in time for launch.

If you plan on streaming content from the new Disney+ streaming service on Linux devices, you'll likely be greeted with Error Code 83. Fedora Linux package maintainer Hans De Goede from the Netherlands first made the unpleasant discovery. gHacks reports: De Goede noticed that Disney+ would not work in any of the web browsers that he tried on systems running Fedora Linux. He tried Firefox and Chrome, and both times Disney+ threw the error "error code 83." Disney+ Support was not able to assist de Goede. It replied with a generic message stating that the error was known and that it happened often when customers tried to play Disney+ in web browsers or using certain devices. Support recommended to use the official applications on phones or tablets to watch the shows or movies. Other streaming services, e.g. Netflix, work fine on Linux.

A user on the Dutch site Tweakers dug deeper and uncovered the response code that the site returned when a device or browser was used that could not be used to play streams. According to the information, error code 83 means that the platform verification status is incompatible with the security level. Disney uses the DRM solution Widevine to protect its streams from unauthorized activity. Widevine supports three different security levels, called 1, 2 and 3, which have certain requirements. The supported level determines the maximum stream quality and may even prevent access to a stream if the requirements are not met. It appears that Disney set Widevine to a more restrictive level than its competitors. The decision affects Disney+ on Linux devices and on other devices that don't support the selected Widevine security standard.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from CleanTechncia: UK engineer and former Royal Navy officer Trevor Jackson began experimenting with aluminum air batteries at his workshop in the Cornish town of Callington in 2001. At that time, the electrolyte used was extremely caustic and poisonous. After years of experimentation, Jackson devised a new electrolyte -- whose composition is a closely guarded secret -- he says make it possible for his invention to power an electric car for up to 1,500 miles. What happens when it runs out of juice? You replace it with a new one while the old one gets recycled. At the beginning of the electric car era when charging infrastructure was nonexistent, the idea of swapping spent batteries for fully charged new ones was considered feasible. Jackson says such a thing could be the future, with his batteries/fuel cells sold at grocery stores and retail outlets. He says the process of disconnecting the old one and connecting the new one will take about 90 seconds.

[A]n independent evaluation by the UK Trade and Investment agency in 2017 said Jackson's invention was a "very attractive battery" based on "well established'" technology, and that it produced much more energy per kilogram than standard electric vehicle types, according to a report in the Daily Mail. A Tesla Model S can drive up to 370 miles on a single charge. Jackson says if you drove the same car with an aluminum-air cell that weighed the same as the Tesla's lithium-ion battery, it would have a range of 2,700 miles. Aluminum-air cells also take up less space. If that same Tesla were fitted with an aluminum-air fuel cell the same size as its current battery, it could run non-stop for 1,500 miles. The report goes on to say that Jackson just signed a multi-million dollar deal with Austin Electric, which will begin putting thousands of the batteries into electric vehicles next year.

"Austin Electric has three targets for the new batteries -- the three-wheeled tuk-tuks used for transportation in many countries such as Pakistan, electric bicycles with far more range than current models, and a program that will convert front wheel drive cars with internal combustion engines into hybrids by fitting aluminum-air batteries and motors to drive the rear wheels," reports CleanTechnica. "Jackson expects the conversion operation to start next year. He says the cost of each conversion will be [...] about $4,000."

Heaven forbid a political candidate's Facebook account gets hacked. They might spread disinformation ... like they're already allowed to do in Facebook ads ... From a report: Today Facebook made a slew of announcements designed to stop 2020 election interference. "The bottom line here is that elections have changed significantly since 2016" and so has Facebook in response, CEO Mark Zuckerberg said on a call with reporters. "We've gone from being on our back foot to proactively going after some of the biggest threats out there." One new feature is called Facebook Protect. By hijacking accounts of political candidates or their campaign staff, bad actors can steal sensitive information, expose secrets, and spread disinformation. So to safeguard these vulnerable users, Facebook is launching a new program with extra security they can opt into. Facebook Protect entails requiring two-factor authentication, and having Facebook monitor for hacking attempts like suspicious logins. Facebook can then inform the rest of an organization and investigate if it sees one member under attack.

Scientists have raised fresh hopes for treating people with genetic disorders by inventing a powerful new molecular tool that, in principle, can correct the vast majority of mutations that cause human genetic diseases. From a report: The procedure, named "prime editing," can mend about 89% of the 75,000 or so harmful mutations known to mangle the human genome and lead to conditions such as cystic fibrosis, sickle cell anaemia, and a nerve-destroying illness called Tay-Sachs disease. The landmark work opens the door to a new era of genome editing, but scientists caution that more research is needed before it can be safely used in humans. Beyond proving its safety, another major hurdle is how to deliver the molecular machinery to cells that need it in sufficient amounts to treat a disorder.

"This first report of prime editing is the beginning rather than the end of a longstanding aspiration in the life sciences to be able to make any DNA change in any position of a living cell or organism, including potentially human patients with genetic diseases," said David Liu at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The ability to rewrite the genetic code is one of the most striking scientific advances of recent years. The most common approach, known as Crispr-Cas9, has been likened to "molecular scissors" which home in on a particular DNA sequence and then cut it in two. The procedure allows scientists to disable specific genes and even correct harmful mutations by providing cells with fresh strands of DNA with which to repair the cut.

A Swedish engineer's umbrage at a traffic ticket has led to a six-year legal fight and now a global change in the speed with which traffic light signals are timed. From a report: After Mats Jarlstrom lost an initial legal challenge in 2014, a federal judge in January this year ruled Oregon's rules prohibiting people from representing themselves as engineers without a professional license from the state are unconstitutional. And now Jarlstrom's calculations and advocacy have led the Institute of Transportation Engineers (ITE) to revisit its guidelines for the timing of traffic signals. As a result, yellow lights around the globe could burn for longer -- ITE is an international advisory group with members in 90 countries. Jarlstrom discovered a problem with the timing of traffic lights in Beaverton, Oregon, after his wife Laurie received a $260 ticket for a red light violation from an automated traffic light camera in 2013. Jarlstrom, who studied electrical engineering in Sweden, challenged the ticket, arguing the timing interval for yellow lights fails to account for scenarios like a driver entering an intersection and slowing to make a turn. A slightly longer interval, he argued, would allow drivers making turns on a yellow light to exit intersections before the light turned red. Even a small timing increase would help -- the automatically generated ticket in this case was issued 0.12 seconds after the light turned red.

American companies have an obligation to defend the freedom of expression, even at the risk of angering China, writes The New York Times' Editorial Board. From the article: China's assertive campaign to police discourse about its policies, even outside of its borders, and the acquiescence of American companies eager to make money in China, pose a dangerous and growing threat to one of this nation's core values: the freedom of expression. The Communist state is becoming more and more aggressive in pressuring foreign companies to choose between self-censorship and the loss of access to what will soon be the world's largest market. An old list of taboo topics, sometimes described as the "three Ts" -- Tibet, Tiananmen and Taiwan -- has been joined by newer subjects that must not be mentioned, including protests in Hong Kong and China's mistreatment of its Muslim minority. The Constitutions of China and the United States both enshrine freedom of speech, but China's totalitarian regime has long taken a narrow view of that freedom -- and American companies have long accepted those restrictions while doing business in China. Now, however, China is seeking to control not just what is said in China but what is said about China, too. If China has its way, any topic it deems off limits will be scrubbed from global discourse.

For the first time since the end of the Cold War, the United States finds itself in a contest of ideas and principles with a country in its own weight class. But this time is different. The United States and China are economically intertwined: The trade volume between the two countries is the greatest of any between two countries in the history of the world. There is no reasonable prospect of disengagement, nor is that a desirable outcome. The clear necessity is for the two countries to find ways of living together, and coexistence requires respect for differences. Instead, China is engaged in the kind of cultural imperialism it often decries. China insists that its national interest is at stake. So is the national interest of the United States and other free nations. China has taken a hard line, and it's time for the United States to respond in kind. The United States and American businesses have a duty to not appease the censors in Beijing -- even if the price of insisting on free expression is a loss of access to the Chinese market.

A user writes: When it comes to using strong username and passwords for administrative purposes let alone customer facing portals, Equifax appears to have dropped the ball. Equifax used the word "admin" as both password and username for a portal that contained sensitive information, according to a class action lawsuit filed in federal court in the Northern District of Georgia. The ongoing lawsuit, filed after the breach, went viral on Twitter Friday after Buzzfeed reporter Jane Lytvynenko came across the detail. "Equifax employed the username 'admin' and the password 'admin' to protect a portal used to manage credit disputes, a password that 'is a surefire way to get hacked,'" the lawsuit reads. The lawsuit also notes that Equifax admitted using unencrypted servers to store the sensitive personal information and had it as a public-facing website. When Equifax, one of the three largest consumer credit reporting agencies, did encrypt data, the lawsuit alleges, "it left the keys to unlocking the encryption on the same public-facing servers, making it easy to remove the encryption from the data." The class-action suit consolidated 373 previous lawsuits into one. Unlike other lawsuits against Equifax, these don't come from wronged consumers, but rather shareholders that allege the company didn't adequately disclose risks or its security practices.

NordVPN, a virtual private network provider that promises to "protect your privacy online," has confirmed it was hacked. From a report: The admission comes following rumors that the company had been breached. It first emerged that NordVPN had an expired internal private keys exposed, potentially allowing anyone to spin out their own servers imitating NordVPN. For its part, NordVPN has claimed a "zero logs" policy. "We don't track, collect, or share your private data," the company says. But the breach is likely to cause alarm that hackers may have been in a position to access some user data. NordVPN told TechCrunch that one of its datacenters was accessed in March 2018. "One of the datacenters in Finland we are renting our servers from was accessed with no authorization," said NordVPN spokesperson Laura Tyrell. The attacker gained access to the server -- which had been active for about a month -- by exploiting an insecure remote management system left by the datacenter provider, which NordVPN said it was unaware that such a system existed.

Project Trident is moving from FreeBSD to Void Linux, reports Its FOSS: According to a later post, the move was motivated by long-standing issues with FreeBSD. These issues include "hardware compatibility, communications standards, or package availability continue to limit Project Trident users". According to a conversation on Telegram, FreeBSD has just updated its build of the Telegram client and it was nine releases behind everyone else.

The lead dev of Project Trident, Ken Moore, is also the main developer of the Lumina Desktop. The Lumina Desktop has been on hold for a while because the Project Trident team had to do so much work just to keep their packages updated. (Once they complete the transition to Void Linux, Ken will start working on Lumina again.)

After much searching and testing, the Project Trident team decided to use Void Linux as their new base.
More from the Project Trident site: It's important to reiterate that Project Trident is a distribution of an existing operating system. Project Trident has never been a stand-alone operating system. The goal of Project Trident is enhancing the usability of an operating system as a graphical workstation through all sorts of means: custom installers, automatic setup routines, graphical utilities, and more...

The more we've tested Void Linux, the more impressed we have been. We look forward to working with an operating system that helps Project Trident continue to provide a stable, high-quality graphical desktop experience.

A publicly-funded group of designers, artists and privacy experts from Amsterdam have designed a smart home system prototype to "prove it's technically possible to build a privacy respecting smart home while maintaining convenience."

Its controller uses an Arduino Nano to disconnect the system from the internet during times when it's not in use. They're building everything on Mozilla's open smart home gateway software. The system's microphone is a separate USB device that can be easily unplugged. For extra security, the devices don't even use wifi to communicate.

"The Candle devices offer the advantages of a smart home system -- such as voice control, handy automations and useful insights -- without the downsides of sending your data to the cloud and feeling watched in your own home," explains their blurb for Dutch Design Week, where they're launching their prototypes of trust-worthy smart locks, thermostats, and other Internet of Things devices: Most smart devices promises us an easier life, but they increasingly disappoint; they eavesdrop, share our data with countless third parties, and offer attractive targets to hackers. Candle is different. Your data never leaves your home, all devices work fine without an internet connection, and everything is open source and transparent.
One of the group's members is long-time Slashdot reader mrwireless, who shares an interesting observation: Smart homes track everything that happens inside them. For developing teenagers, this makes it more difficult to sneak in a date or break the rules in other subtle ways, which is a normal, healthy part of growing up. Candle is a prototype smart home that tries to mitigate these issue. It has given its sensors the ability to generate fake data for a while. In the future, children could get a monthly fake data allowance.

Some of the devices have "skirts", simple fabric covers that can be draped over the devices to hide their screen. If you own a dust sensor, this can be useful if your mother in law comes over and you haven't vacuumed in a while.

CNET reports on a new crowdsourced public awareness campaign: Mozilla is publishing anecdotes of YouTube viewing gone awry -- anonymous stories from people who say they innocently searched for one thing but eventually ended up in a dark rabbit hole of videos. It's a campaign aimed at pressuring Google's massive video site to make itself more accessible to independent researchers trying to study its algorithms. "The big problem is we have no idea what is happening on YouTube," said Guillaume Chaslot, who is a fellow at Mozilla, a nonprofit best known for its unit that makes and operates the Firefox web browser.

Chaslot is an ex-Google engineer who has investigated YouTube's recommendations from the outside after he left the company in 2013. (YouTube says he was fired for performance issues.) "We can see that there are problems, but we have no idea if the problem is from people being people or from algorithms," he said....

Mozilla is publishing 28 stories it's terming #YouTubeRegrets; they include, for example, an anecdote from someone who who said a search for German folk songs ended up returning neo-Nazi clips, and a testimonial from a mother who said her 10-year-old daughter searched for tap-dancing videos and ended up watching extreme contortionist clips that affected her body image.

For the third time, someone who vandalized a Tesla discovered that the car's "Sentry Mode" had filmed them -- and after the video went viral online, decided to turn themselves in.

An anonymous reader quotes Electrek: The 20-year-old said that he was frustrated after a car cut him off and he thought the Model 3 might have been the same car. The Edmonton man said that he saw the video online and "became overcome with disappointment and embarrassment." He added that he doesn't have anything against Tesla and he regretted doing it right away...

Earlier this month, we reported on the case of Alan Tweedie's Tesla Model 3 being keyed badly by a woman for seemingly no reason while he was at his daughter's soccer game. The Tesla Sentry mode video of her keying the car went viral and she ended up turning herself in. There was also another similar incident involving two men who ended up turning themselves in earlier this year and now this new incident in Canada becomes the third example of vandals turning themselves in because of Sentry mode.

While Tesla Sentry Mode is useful to capture those incidents and pressure the vandals, the hope is that the feature gets publicized enough that people become less inclined to vandalize Tesla vehicles in the first place.